Climb any tower in Spartanburg, SC.
Look around you.
We live in the woods.
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The City of Spartanburg is an urban woodland.
We are a park, only we rarely see it from ground level.
Consider our assets, within and bordering the small limits of the city:
University of South Carolina-Upstate
Montgomery Commons, connecting First Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church of the Advent
Peter’s Creek Heritage Trust Preserve
Hatcher Garden & Woodland Preserve
Cedar Springs & Croft State Park
Arcadia [named for a place of unspoiled, pastoral beauty in ancient Greece]
Roebuck
Moore
Pauline & Glenn Springs
And many more.
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Why do we not see this?
These remarkable spaces are disconnected by billboards, storefronts, and urban landscape.
But climb 4 floors above ground level and look around.
We live in trees.
A carpet of green covers our hills.
Mountains rise just north.
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Imagine what this means:
– the gentleness of rolling hills.
– the healing color of green.
– the power of the natural environment to still us.
– woods to roam.
– the architecture we could conjure from this place.
– streams that feed the garden that is our home.
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To see and share this, what is needed?
A clearer image of our home, and connections between these treehoods that we can see and walk and bike and inhabit.
We can do this.
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