How's your city today?

Nice and warm, but humid and smoggy! I checked today and found that today’s temperature is 28ºC, but the rate of suspended particles in the air is 62.1. “But hey… Taipei is cleaner than New York,” says the woman in my neighboring cubicle. Not so! Most days, New York (which is one of the dirtiest places in the US) is under 50! So is Tokyo for that matter. I suppose I should look on the bright side and be glad we are doing better than Seoul’s 85 or New Delhi’s staggering 370. I hear this is a topographical problem as Taipei is located in a kind of bowl and is ringed by mountains - a situation which keeps the pollution from escaping. (It would be worse if Taipei’s mayor hadn’t added all those trees and introduced better public transit). However, I don’t really believe this accounts for all of the chocking smog. There are still huuge throngs of motor scooters clogging every major intersection, weaving in and out of lanes and knocking over pedestrians at crossings.

Years ago in Vancouver, I ran into a student from Mexico City at the university fitness center. She was thrilled at being able to exercise at the gym (even if it only was for just 20 minutes). The pollution in her hometown, combined with her asthma, kept her from doing anything overly active. At that time, I was proud of Vancouver, which is still considered one of the top 3 best places to live. Although quality of life surveys include crime rates, income and other more biased factors, air pollution surveys still place all included Canadian cities in the top 20 (out of over 300) category of cleanest cities. I used to think that to clean cities were also sterile cities, but I am now revising that opinion. Carrying a Ventolin inhaler everywhere is more of an inconvenience than not being able to find a “happening” nightclub mid-week.