One of the great tragedies in life is to lose that little spot of sun in your favorite park.
It’s a mournful little death when the sun sneaks behind a cloud but the possibility of it shortly returning always makes it easier to endure.
But what happens when that sun is gone for good? What happens when some deep-pocketed curmudgeon erects a small building between your favorite sunning spot and the sun itself?
Well, in a perfect world, Apollo would never allow such a travesty to occur. Since it is not a perfect world, however, an actual commission has stepped in to deal with issues of shadows in one of the most shadowy cities on this planet.
According to a recent article in the New Yorker, the Environmental Simulation Center is responsible for conducting studies in the city of New York to determine the shadows that a new building might cast upon surrounding parks and neighborhoods. The commission creates computer simulations of future buildings and then measures how the sun interacts with them across all four seasons.
Unfortunately, the non-profit organization is not an official city commission and its studies are not required to move forward with new construction. The mere fact that it exists, however, and that New Yorkers are passionate about the endangered spots where the sun creeps thought the skyscrapers, is nonetheless very heartwarming. I never imagined that someone out there is keeping an eye on my sun, but know that I know there is, it makes me very happy indeed.