When 'sense of place' gets discussed, the agenda always includes topics about where your food comes from, where your water comes from since that helps people connect their every day lives to their landscape/watershed.
Should we also include 'where does your trash go?' and 'where does your sanitary sewage go?' and 'where does your storm water runoff go?' These latter points aren't generally held up as points of pride for a community, and thus may not play into building a sense of place, but they are important aspects for people to know regarding their ecological footprints. Grade school field trips sometimes include the waste water treatment plant.
But how would a city go about bragging up their up-to-date sewage treatment in a tasteful manner?
Our town is partly through a very expensive sewer separation project. Most people know that some portion of the city's streets are torn up any given year because of some sewer project, but I'm not sure everyone understands the, ahem, ins and outs of it all.
The fact that the city is updating our waste water handling is a good thing for our local water quality, just not really something that someone is likely to hold dearly as fond memories of their place.
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