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Editorial, Mark David Major, News, Press, Urban Planning

Planning Naked | April 2015

Planning Naked | April 2015
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Observations on the April 2015 issue of Planning Magazine.

1. APA President William Anderson in the Guest Column on page 5 says “that planning is relevant, alive, and needed now more than ever.” Planning, generic? Instead, what about saying we need good planning now more than ever? Bad planning is a waste of time and effort. The good intentions of “dedicated and earnest planners” are not enough. The road is Hell is paved with good intentions. Leadership is about setting a high standard for the profession and advocating to achieve that standard. Planners should always lead, not only “sometimes”. Let’s stop playing small ball with our language.

2. Man, there are a LOT of advertisements in this month’s issue. It’s like flipping through pages and pages of Cosmopolitan in search of  that interview with Anna Kendrick, which is the only reason you bought the issue…. oh, OK… and the quiz about improving your sex life.

3. Zones for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs) are discussed in the article “Honduras Tries Charter Cities”. This is an intriguing concept that appears to merge early 20th century New Towns in the UK with 19th century company town models in the USA into a new 21st century application. The article admits the track record of ZEDEs around the world is a mixed bag. Like everything else, the devil is in the details.

4. Pamela Ko and Patricia Salkin discuss incorporating the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) into land-use planning decisions in the “Legal Lessons” article. The word ‘walking’ is oddly absent from their article, which suggests HIAs (and the authors do discuss in terms of) are really a tool of exclusionary zoning. Let the buyer beware.

5. Goodness, that looks like a space syntax model of Portland, Oregon on page 27 in the “Big Data” article!!! I don’t think it is but it looks like someone has been reading about space syntax.

6. Any article that starts off with a rhetorical “what is planning?” question from The Editors (!) of Planning Magazine (page 36, 2015 National Planning Awards), I’m inclined to immediately skip. However, I glanced through the award winners and found them – for the most part – underwhelming.

7. C. Gregory Dale’s “Findings of Fact for Planning Commissioners” article presents an off-putting straw man public hearing scenario to jump into some otherwise good points. A good planning staff writes the finding of facts for approval AND denial on behalf of the Planning Commission. It’s the single most important tool that planning staffs have in their toolkit to guide their commissions to the best planning decisions.

8. Review of Poor Richard: Another Almanac for Architects and Planners by Mark David Major on page 69-70. Awesome sauce! This review is decidedly neutral but that’s OK since Volume 2 has more content about architects, architecture, and building than urban planning compared to Volume 1.

9. Jon Arason’s Viewpoint article about “The Planner’s Lament: Night Meetings” is only funny because it is true! I once did the same calculation about the amount of additional hours of unpaid work at night meetings while serving as a Senior Planner for a local Florida county. The revelation sent me straight into the private sector for good!

Planning Naked is a regular feature with observations and comments about a recent issue of Planning: The Magazine of the American Planning Association.

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Architecture, Books, Mark David Major, News, Poor Richard, Press, Review

Poor Richard Volume 2 Review | Portland Book Review

Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) by Mark David Major | Portland Book Review
by George Erdosh, April 20, 2015

The review of Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners by the Portland Book Review is available.

Excerpt:

“Here is a strange paperback that some readers will love and others won’t read past page three. Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners consists of fifty-two pages of text, one for each week of the year, and a facing black-and-white high-contrast photo illustrations, somewhat related to the subject author Mark David Major selected for that week.”

Read the full review here: Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) by Mark David Major | Portland Book Review

Down the full review here: Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) by Mark David Major | Portland Book Review

PoorRichardv2_FrCoverPoor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2)
by Mark David Major, Foreword by Steve Mouzon
140 pages with black and white illustrations.

Available in print from Amazon, CreateSpace, and other online retailers.

Available on iBooks from the Apple iTunes Store and Kindle in the Kindle Store.

For the best digital eBook experience, the author recommends purchasing the iBook version of the book.

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Art, Books, Mark David Major, Philosophy, Review

FROM THE VAULT | Creative Confessions | Paul Klee

FROM THE VAULT | Creative Confessions and other writings by Paul Klee
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Creative Confessions is a series of short essays (vignettes, really) by Modern abstract artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) on art and composition, which the artist wrote while teaching at the Bauhaus in Germany during the 1920s with a postscript essay by the editor, Matthew Gale. In this, it is a thought-provoking read that can be managed in a single sitting (in a real sense: perfect for the Internet Era). It is stuffed full with quotes that have direct bearing on composition in art (“art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible”). However, Klee’s vignettes also carry (perhaps indirect) importance for composition in architecture and urban planning. For example, “a tendency towards the abstract is inherent in linear expression” when you think of this concept in terms of movement in the city. When Klee discusses “the formal elements of graphic art are the dot, line, plane, and space – the last three charged with energy of various kind”, we can easily translate this into built environment terms (dot=location, line=axis of movement, plane=convex space, and space itself is self-explanatory). Klee means this in terms of the energy of artistic gesture but we can also easily understand how these things in an urban environment are similarly ‘charged with energy’ in terms of movement, avoidance, and encounter.

Indeed, it is easy to make transitions such as these from art to architecture/planning since Klee himself tends to express these ideas in terms of movement/counter movement in encounter and vision, i.e. a journey across “an unploughed field” or crossing a “river” or “walking across the deck of a steamer”, which are described in terms of linear expression. Klee’s explicitly acknowledges this, arguing that “movement is the source of all change” and “space, too, is a temporal concept.” “When a dot begins to move and becomes a line, this require time.” In planning terms, we can think of this as our location in space changing by the action of our movement and thus our experience of space evolves with that movement. This is not only expressed in terms of geospatial reality but also in time since we, as human beings, are bound in space and time.

“Movement is the basic datum” of the universe, Klee tells us. In understanding this (in art as well as the science of urbanism), we can “reveal the reality that is behind visible things”.  Klee argues “the object grows beyond its appearance through our knowledge that the thing is more than its outward aspect suggests”. Indeed, in discussing art, is Klee begins to tap into the inherent nature of observation and science itself.

Creative Confessions and other writings
by Paul Klee (Matthew Gale, Editor and Postscript)
32 pages
Tate; Act edition (May 6, 2014), London UK

You can purchase Creative Confessions and other writings from Amazon here.

 

Check out the Artsy.net Paul Klee page here.

From the Vault is a series from the Outlaw Urbanist in which we review art, architectural and urban design texts, with an emphasis on the obscure and forgotten, found in second-hand bookstores.

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Architecture, Art, Books, Press, Science, The Biblical City, The City in Art, Urban Planning

Virtual Exhibition on Urban Utopias | The mheu

The mheu (A historical museum of the urban environment) is a virtual museum that offers thematic exhibitions comprising a range of works including pictures, literature, sound and video.

Virtual exhibition on Urban Utopias

Excerpt:

“In urban planning, as elsewhere, the utopian ideal is more than an instinctive desire for a better world: it is also a source of progress. Even the wildest urban projects lend impetus to more efficient ways of living in one way or another… In the words of Lamartine: “Utopias are often simply premature truths.” The (exhibition) is an overview of cities whose bricks and mortar are the stuff of dreams, ideas and achievements.”

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Visit the virtual exhibition here: The mheu | Virtual Exhibition on Urban Utopias.

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Art, Essay, The City in Art

Bathe in New Light | The City in Art

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Rejcel Harbert’s Under Neons (2010), 16″ x 20″, acrylic on stretched canvas, Art by Rejcel.

Bathe in New Light | The City in Art
By Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Neon, noun, ne·on, ˈnē-ˌän – a colorless odorless mostly inert gaseous element that is found in minute amounts in air and used in electric lamps. From the Greek, neuter of neos new, first Known Use: 1898.

Art is rarely or merely about the physical representation of the thing but instead about light, shadow and reflection as represented in counter pose to the physical reality of the thing itself.

The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck (1434) Copyright © The National Gallery, London.

This is a widespread tradition that can be traced back to long before Modernism with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Jan van Eyck. For example, Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait  (1434, National Gallery, London) where the artist paints his own reflection in the mirror located on the back wall behind his subjects (see below).

In Under Neons, Harbert paints the city as bathed in neon light, as if physicality of the thing itself did not have an objective existence until awash in shadows and reflections birthed by the light itself. In the same tradition as Georgia O’Keefe’s Radiator Building-Night, New York (1927) and Harbert’s The Blue City (2012), the artist encourages us to see the city in a new and different way; not merely as a physical entity but also as an abstract reality bathed in its all-consuming light. This is given urgent power by the artist through the use of primary colors (reds, yellows, and blues) and blacks/whites, which hint at Piet Mondrian’s famous abstract paintings of New York. However, the control and preciseness found Mondrian’s abstract formalism is sacrificed in favor of a kinetic energy – of vibrant motion – painted in the light and dark of the city. Of course, Under Neons immediately suggests the city we most associate with neon spectacle: Las Vegas. However, this could be any city. This could be our city, given life anew in the light.

About Rejcel Harbert
Rejcel Harbert has over ten years of experience as the owner of Art by Rejcel, where she sells photographic services, paintings, and abstract and expressionistic acrylic arts. She received her bachelor of arts in business, economics, and Spanish from Jacksonville University in 2001. She is a member of the Business Fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, the Honor Society Phi Kappa Phi, and received an award from the Women’s Business Organization for Achievement. Ms. Harbert does religious volunteer work including construction and repair work for community members in need. For more information on Art by Rejcel, visit www.rejcel.com.

The City in Art is a series by The Outlaw Urbanist. The purpose is to present and discuss artistic depictions of the city that can help us, as professionals, learn to better see the city in ways that are invisible to others. Before the 20th century, most artistic representations of the city broadly fell into, more or less, three categories: literalism, pastoral romanticism, and impressionism, or some variation thereof. Generally, these artistic representations of the city lack a certain amount of substantive interest for the modern world. The City in Art series places particular emphasis on art and photography from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.

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