#lodgeout

Danielle Fortier Sheffield Resident....It's 3.49 am. I'm awake, nearly 8 months pregnant and seriously wondering what the hell is going on in the city I love. 

I came here as a student at the age of 19, nearly 15 years ago to study. From the moment I stepped off the bus to go to the open day at Sheffield University, Sheffield felt like home. I can't explain the feeling of coming home to a place I'd never been before, but that's what it felt like. A massive part of that was the environment. The trees. The greenest city in Europe. I've moved away and come home, because it is home, twice and up until now there was nowhere else I wanted to live.

I'm starting a family here and I don't want to have to show my little boy what Sheffield used to be in photos. I want him to see it for himself. 

I don't want to show him in books how we used to have streets lined with beautiful, graceful mature trees, but now only have struggling saplings. I don't want to have to walk down the Rivelin or Mayfield Valleys with an ipad to show him that once there were thriving woodlands full of wildlife, instead of 30ft catchment dykes. 

I want him to be able to visit the central library building and appreciate its beautiful architecture, and borrow books and read stories, not stand in the lobby of a 5* hotel. 

I want my son to grow up proud of being from Sheffield, not ashamed that the generations before him put money before the planet he will inherit.