Urbanization - the dangerous disconnect

Christopher Hume, the Toronto Star's urban columnist recently wrote a column entitled "Can Toronto Learn to Love Winter?"
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/578823
in which he observed:

"Most of us would rather pretend it [winter] isn't happening and carry on regardless. And given the hermetically sealed nature of the modern city, we're nearing the point where that's almost possible."

Sadly, Mr Hume's observations are correct about a good many cities that have come to ignore the reality of their location or the world in which they find themselves. (Has anyone checked out Dubai lately?)

Here's Freda's comment on Hume's article:

"It is truly frightening that so many who know only the cave of their built environment would become so blind as to think that copious quantities of fossil fuels and a multitude of technofixes would be sufficient to overcome their geographic reality. I live in the City of Kenora, where, as in other border-hugging southern Canadian cities like Winnipeg, Ottawa and Calgary, we smile and celebrate the shared understanding of our place in the cosmos, -a place that makes Sorels quite acceptable ...even the recommended footwear with a winter's evening gown. Torontonians' denial of winter hints at a much deeper disconnect from what it means for a society to live WITH their place or this Earth."

The disconnection of human beings from our life and death relationship with the world, a disconnection that is fostered by an increasingly urbanized, (read: man-made,) sense of Canadian self, is dangerous to all of us, not the least of whom is Mother Earth.