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FUBAR Absurdities, Mark David Major, Rants, Satire

Planning | Stopping Stupid People from Killing Themselves | AbFab

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“I was just trying to do my best, trying to get from A to B, do a little shopping. I was trying to take control of my life…” – Edina Monsoon

Sunday’s Boston Globe article “The too-smart city” by Courtney Humphries reminded me of one of my favorite and funniest (implicit) critiques of urban planning: Edina Monsoon’s “Tax the Stupid People” rant from a 1994 episode (“Poor”) of Absolutely Fabulous. I thought I would post it for your amusement because sometimes we all need a reminder and laughter about the absurdities of life. The first time I saw this I was in tears from laughing so hard, especially once Patsy interjects her opinion.

No doubt the reason I found this rant so funny was, having lived in London for 8 years, the thought did cross my mind on more than one occasion that the purpose of the railings along Oxford and Regent Streets (and others) was, indeed, to prevent stupid people from running into traffic and getting killed. Of course, this is not the case. Instead, the purpose of the railings is to corral pedestrians on the sidewalk in areas with high foot traffic (like pigs in a pen) so the majority of street space is reserved for automobile traffic. London’s railings are fundamentally anti-pedestrian, pro-automobile planning measures. God forbid if pedestrians occupy more of the street space for their use to the detriment of keeping traffic moving! So, the real purpose of the railings was to prevent stupid drivers in 5-ton death machines from killing pedestrians, awarding ‘exclusivity’ of street space to these drivers when we should be slowing the traffic down in deference to pedestrians. In the late 1990s, London has begun to learn and adjust to this lesson. When I visit London (hopefully) sometime in the next 4-6 months, I’m eager to see for myself how far they have taken the lesson over the last decade. I like to think Eddie’s satirical rant played a small role in changing the dynamic.

A more complete transcript of Eddie’s rant in her audacious – but ultimately doomed – attempt to evade a parking ticket is below.

Eddie: Right – I, the proposed accused, think that, well, I mean, you know, well the day in question was not a good day for me, all right? But I put it to you that I don’t see how any day could have been good the way this bloody country’s run. Well, you know, I was just trying to do my best, trying to get from A to B, do a little shopping. I was trying to take control of my life, you know, only to find that it’s actually controlled for me by petty bureaucracy and bits of bloody paper – ignorant bloody petty rules and laws that just obstruct every tiny little action until you’ve committed a crime without even knowing it! I mean, you know, why can’t life just be made a little easier for everybody, eh? Why can’t it be more like the Continent, and then run down the street in front of charging bulls whilst letting fireworks off out of his bloody nostrils without anyone blinking an eye? Uh? Because it’s probably a local holiday and nobody’s at work because they all want to have just a little bit of fun and they’re not intimidated by some outdated work ethic. I mean, there has to be more to life than just being safe…

Judge: Is there a point to all of this?

Eddie: Yes, Yes!… Why, oh why, do we pay taxes, hmmm? I mean, just to have bloody parking restrictions- and BUGGERY-UGLY traffic wardens, and BOLLOCKY-pedestrian-BLOODY-crossings?… and those BASTARD railings outside shops windows, making it so difficult, so you can’t even get in them! I mean, I know they’re there to stop stupid people running into the street and killing themselves! But we’re not all stupid! We don’t all need nurse-maiding. I mean, why not just have a Stupidity Tax? Just tax the stupid people!

Patsy: And let them DIE!

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Art, Essay, The City in Art

The Kinetic City | The City in Art

Olga Rozanova’s City (1916).

The Kinetic City | The City in Art
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Olga Rozanova has been labeled a Futurist, a Cubo-Futurist, and Suprematist (focused on geometric forms and a limited range of colors, see Piet Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism), all of which places her in the middle of the early 20th century Russian Avant Garde Movement. The number of works she completed is impressive both in terms of the quality, many of her abstracts are intricately beautiful, and quantity, given her untimely death at such a young age (see this Pinterest page). However, the quality and quantity of her work ultimately – and sadly – indicates her unfulfilled promise as an artist. Because of this, her contemporaries have largely overshadowed Rozanova.

Olga Rozanova’s City (1916) is a wonderful abstract painting, which takes the city as its subject. Her city is all kinetic energy, the canvas almost ‘alive’ with movement. Her painting builds on the Cubist tendency to compress time and space into a single glance at a subject, which conveys a plenitude of information to the viewer. This, in itself, builds on the earlier Impressionist technique, which included movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience in the painting. However, in the case of Cubism, it is not the movement of human perception that depicted in the painting but rather the movement and energy inherent in the subject itself across time and space, which is both compressed and captured in the representation. Olga Rozanova’s City is a brilliant look at all that is inherent in the city: people, buildings, movement, transportation, streets, setting, and light. The city she depicts is not an inanimate object but an animate organism worthy of our attention. I love this painting.

One of the few photographs of the Russian artist, Olga Rozanova.

About Olga Rozanova
Olga Rozanova (1886-1918) was born in 1886 in Malenki, Vladimir province in Russia. She trained at the Bolshakov Art School and the Stroganov School of Applied Art in Moscow. In 1911, she moved to St. Petersburg where she became an active member of the Union of Youth Group, exhibiting with them regularly from 1911 to 1914. She also attended the Zvantseva School of Art from 1912 to 1913. In 1912, Rozanova began illustrating books of Futurist poetry written by her husband, Aleksey Kruchonykh. She also wrote trans-rational Futurist verse (sound poetry), experimented with Cubism and Futurism in painting, produced abstract constructions, and created Suprematist embroidery and textile designs. By 1917, she had developed a completely individual abstract style of painting. After the Revolution in 1917, she supervised the reorganization of craft workshops in provincial towns. She died in Moscow on November 8, 1918, due to diphtheria at 32 years of age.

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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Urban Patterns

Urban Patterns | Salt Lake City, Utah USA

“Day is done but there’s no job to be found in Salt Lake City,
Room’s cold no one to hold so I’ll just walk around,
And think of all the times that she said that she loved me,
But that’s just a mem’ry in Salt Lake City.”
— Salt Lake City, Hank Williams, Jr.

Urban Patterns | Salt Lake City, Utah USA
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A
Originally posted on May 17, 2013

This week we are looking at the urban pattern of Salt Lake City, Utah USA in honor of where CNU21 (21st Congress for New Urbanism Conference) will be (was) held May 29-June 1, 2013. Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 in what was still Mexican Territory by Brigham Young, Isaac Morley, George Washington Bradley and several other Mormon followers, who extensively irrigated and cultivated the arid valley. Brigham Young claimed to have seen the area in a vision prior to their arrival. Due to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was originally named “Great Salt Lake City” but the word “great” was dropped from the official name in 1868. Although Salt Lake City is still home to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), less than half of its population are Mormons today (Source: Wikipedia).

Satellite view form 10 km of Salt Lake City, Utah (Source: Google Earth).

The urban pattern of Salt Lake City is extremely interesting for an American city due to the emphasis on square blocks. This is atypical for most pre-20th century American cities, which usually and rapidly developed using a well-defined land speculation process. 19th-century American land speculators tended to elongate urban blocks into a rectangular shape (for example, in Denver and Chicago) to maximize the number of available lots for sale and, hence, their profits. However, Salt Lake City was founded by the Mormons, who were (initially) more interested in the social order of their settlement as imprinted in its physical pattern than personal economic gain. So, they laid out the settlement using a regular grid composed of square blocks. Salt Lake City is a perfect illustration of Poor Richard’s maxim that, “Compact block sizes are about community. Ample block sizes are about profit.”

(Updated:  May 18, 2017)

Urban Patterns is a series of posts from The Outlaw Urbanist presenting interesting examples of terrestrial patterns shaped by human intervention in the urban landscape over time.

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Architecture, Concrete Blonde, Editorial, News, Press

Comment | We Need Women Designing Buildings | CNN.com

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Opinion: We need women designing buildings – CNN.com

We Need to Prize Talent, not Self-Promotion
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Denise Scott Brown should (have) be(en) recognized with Robert Venturi for the 1991 Pritzker Prize. However, the ongoing debate on this subject is frustrating. It is frustrating because the ideal of gender equality expounded for the architectural profession – and, by implication, other professions –  too often relies on arguments that are, at best, manifestly superficial and, at worse, reinforce the gender stereotypes underlying the problem.

This particular debate has not been helped by public comments (perhaps taken of out context) by both Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown that do not ‘hold water’ in explaining why she was not recognized with Venturi for the Pritzker Prize in the first place. For example, in the above CNN article, Scott Brown is quoted as saying””we could not afford to pass up the Pritzker Prize for the sake of our fledgling firm.” It seems far-fetched to describe Venturi Scott Brown and Associates as a “fledgling firm” in 1991. A Wikipedia listing of their selected works identifies four major projects in 1991, more than any other year listed over a 44-year period (Source: Wikipedia). Quite the opposite, in fact, since it is fair to argue the late 80s/early 90s represents the earning power highpoint for Venturi Scott Brown’s particular brand of post-modern architecture in the profession. Venturi and Scott Brown’s public comments suggest they are protecting somebody for the initial oversight, either Venturi himself or The Hyatt Foundation, which organizes and awards the Pritzker Prize.

However, this is a side issue to larger problems: namely, the promotion of talent, in general, and insidious effects of gender discrimination, in particular, in the architectural profession. Marika Shioiri-Clark and John Cary’s CNN opinion piece manages to negatively typify these problems at a gross level while still being right in some of its details. First, we do not need “women designing buildings.” This is the same superficial argument we have heard from feminists for decades; namely, if we only elected women to political leadership we would have world peace. Female political leaders have proven time and time again over the last 40 years that equality has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with how women can be equally inspirational, vicious, divisive and (in)competent as their male counterparts. Instead, what we need are talented people (women and men) designing buildings. We should have zero interest in promoting mediocre architects, regardless of their gender.

As Shioiri-Clark and Cary correctly point out, female architectural students regularly outperform their male counterparts in school, substantially so in our experience. If the profession truly prized and promoted talent, female architects would naturally rise to the top because there lies the talent (sorry, male architects but it is true). However, the profession is still trapped within the grips of the (often self-manufactured) ‘myth of architectural genius’. This practice prizes the architect’s ability to self-promote and network that myth in the profession, popular media, and books. In doing so, the superficial is valued over the substantive in architecture (very post-modern, indeed). Unfortunately, the profession’s manifest failure to promote talent also sweeps women architects out of the limelight as a result. Once you get pass the names Zaha Hadid, Denise Scott Brown and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, it’s damn difficult to name any superstar women architects. It’s even worse for planners (Jane Jacobs was an economist, so don’t even try it). However, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.” Our vision is my-opic (literally and metaphorically).

Shioiri-Clark and Cary also correctly call out the Architectural Registration Exam (ARE) process for institutionalizing discriminatory practices against women but then incorrectly name the reason (i.e. financial). The real discriminatory practice against women associated with the ARE lies in the limit to a 6-month reporting period for the Intern Development Program (IDP). When a woman temporarily leaves the workforce to bear a child, the typical disruption to her career is much longer than 6 months. Sure, there are some ‘super’ women out there in the profession, for whom this is not the case. They may work until 4-6 weeks before giving birth and return to work 3-4 weeks afterwards. But, more typically, the disruption to a woman’s career extends over a two-year period from the early decision-making stages of pregnancy to the early childhood-raising stages after birth. Let’s be honest, given the supreme and unchallenged role that mothers play in raising their children (especially compared to fathers), the real disruption is 18 years… or even a lifetime. In any case, the one thing the profession could do today to promote gender equality and enable more women to become registered architects is extend the reporting period for IDP to two years.

In their opinion piece, Shioiri-Clark and Cary then transition to the visibility of women architects in the profession. If we focus the question on the promotion of talent instead of valuing the promotion of self, then this is the same problem, i.e. the crème will rise to the top if we value talent.

Architect Barbie: She is clearly not wearing enough black to be an architect.

At this point, the Shioiri-Clark and Cary article takes a mind-bogglingly bizarre turn to discuss “Architect Barbie”, which manages to be both comical and hypocritical, thereby undercutting every point they are trying to make in the article. Perhaps it’s true that Shioiri-Clark and Cary only do this to spark controversy and drive visitor hits on the article. However, when it comes to the larger question of gender discrimination, it’s hard to get more inconsequential than discussing dolls within the context of a serious subject.

Shioiri-Clark and Cary close the article by further expounding further on the ‘world would be a better place if it was run by women’ argument/fallacy. It would not be any different except women would more equally share in the blame for our problems as well as the praise when those problems are solved. That is true equality. So give Denise Scott Brown her share of the 1991 Pritzker Prize but women and men should not make the mistake of thinking it addresses the real problem in the profession. At this point, the Pritzker Prize controversy is a distraction from that problem, which is promoting and prizing talent, whatever the gender. If the playing field was level in this regard, there is little doubt women would rise en masse to the top of the profession… and our built environment would, indeed, be better served.

Read the full CNN.com article here: Opinion | We need women designing buildings – CNN.com

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Art, Essay, The City in Art

Form Arranged in Light | The City in Art

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Radiator Building – Night, New York (1927), oil on canvas, 48” x 30”, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Fisk University.

Form Arranged in Light | The City in Art
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Many descriptions of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Radiator Building – Night, New York (1927) unduly focus on the expressed title and the (presumed) subject of the artwork itself. For example, “Towering above the viewer’s eyesight, the Radiator Building extends almost to the top of the work, illuminated in silhouette by its own lights and several spotlights that shoot into the black sky, giving it a slight red hue. Most of O’Keeffe’s paintings of New York City feature various skyscrapers of the city of the time, such as the Ritz Tower” (Source: Cultural Mechanism). Such descriptions are limited because they appear to be missing the point of O’Keeffe’s cityscape paintings. It seems likely this is not helped by O’Keeffe’s own vagueness on the subject of this painting (or her many others), saying she had “walked across 42nd Street many times at night when the black Radiator Building was new — so that had to be painted, too” (Source: Georgia O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York: Penguin Books, 1976).

O’Keeffe is not painting a building. She is painting light and the form of the Radiator Building and surrounding cityscape emerges solely from the arrangement of light. We can say this with some confidence because if you were to remove all of the ‘painted light’ from this painting, only a black canvas would remain. It is this ‘painted light’ that provides a subtle richness and contextual depth to the best of O’Keeffe’s cityscape paintings. Later, we will see more explicit examples in her other paintings, for example in The Shelton with Sunspots (1926). In this sense, the subject is the artifice of form emerging from the arrangement of light. The fact the words ‘Radiator Building’ and ‘New York’ are in the title of the painting is completely inconsequential and accidental to the subject of the piece. It is also misleading on O’Keeffe’s part by naming the painting in this manner. However, this is completely consistent with her tendency to be opaque when it comes to the subject matter of her own paintings. As architects and planners, O’Keeffe’s painting shows us how we can expand our perception of the city beyond the conventional (form) to see its richness in other, more subtle – and, perhaps, richer – ways (light).

Georgia O’Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz.

About Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. She revolutionized modern art during her time and, in the present, she was the first female artist to have a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her paintings vividly portrayed the power and emotion of objects in nature. Her charcoal drawings of silhouetted bud-like forms exhibited in 1916 first brought her fame. During the 1920s, she explored this theme in magnified paintings of flowers, which to this day enchant people amorously, although her purpose was to convey that nature in all its beauty was as powerful as the widespread industrialization of the period. After spending a summer in New Mexico, enthralled by the barren landscape and expansive skies of the desert, she would explore the subject of animal bones in her paintings during the 1930s and 1940s. Just as with the flowers, she painted the bones magnified to capture the stillness and remoteness of them, while at the same time expressing a sense of beauty within the desert. O’Keeffe was married to the pioneer photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) in 1924. It was at his famed New York art gallery “291” that her charcoal drawings were first exhibited in 1916. The union lasted 22 years until Stieglitz’s death. O’Keeffe was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awarded the Gold Medal of Painting by the National Institute of Arts and Letters and Medal of Freedom (the United States’ highest civilian honor). In 1985, President Reagan presented to her the National Medal of Arts. She died March 6, 1986, at the age of 98 in Sante Fe, New Mexico (Source: Women in History).

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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