Recognizing Urban Slippage

I walk everywhere and everyday. In the morning I walk with my dog from the Marginal Way commuter parking lot 1.5 miles back to my home. After I arrive home I walk another half mile back to work. In the evenings I usually walk my dog an additional half mile. That’s a base of 2 ½ miles a day. It doesn’t count the walks to the movies, coffee shop, art galleries, stores, etc. What I see on these walks amazes me. The streets of Portland are covered with wealth that is composting in to garbage.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you think. We all find change on the streets and maybe the occasional bill. I’ve found much more than that. Here’s a short list of what I’ve found walking in Portland, Maine over the past 10 years (with retail or street value):

• Estwing 20-Oz. Smooth Hammer with Straight Handle ($29.68)
  
• (two separate occasions)eighth schwag weed brick packed ($25.00 ea)
• Kobalt 6" Long Nose Pliers (8.98)
• (two separate occasions) Task Force #3 x 6"L Phillips Screwdriver with Acetate Handle (4.94 ea)
• FatMax 2" Striking Chisel ($13.48)

This list alone represents over $100.00 worth of lost items or what I like to refer to as Urban Slippage. It doesn’t take into account the actual cash (over $100.00 worth) and change (about $30.00/year) that I’ve found as well as other tools, paraphernalia, pocket knives and general stuff that I’ve stumbled over.

This urban slippage amazes me. We have a large, visible homeless population in Portland. At the same time our streets are lined with lost value. The juxtaposition of these two facets of my city raise several questions:

• Why do we have this disconnect?
• Just how much slippage is there?
• Is it possible to convert some of this urban slippage back into value?
• How can this be done?

I propose an experiment to explore this phenomenon. Perhaps by quantifying the amount of urban slippage I walk past in my daily life, I can answer some of these questions. Maybe the slippage can be converted back into value and maybe not.