Category Archives: Education

Editorial, Education, Essay, Ethics, Mark David Major, Philosophy

The Geography of Thought Policing

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a satire of the article “The Geography of Hate” by Richard Florida about ‘hate’ groups published in The Atlantic on May 11, 2011 and recently re-tweeted by Florida on June 26, 2016 in the aftermath of the Brexit results to leave the European Union. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s simple definition of hate is “a very strong feeling of dislike” so a ‘feeling’ (the overall quality of one’s awareness or thought) is being monitored and mapped in the original article.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THOUGHT POLICING

Goodthink concentrates in certain regions, which correlates with secular religion, Obama votes, and ‘self-identified’ elitism

Goodthink (“orthodox thought of the political left”) abounds in our glorious nation, comrades! However, there are still pockets of crimethink (“orthodox thought of the political right”) to be eradicated. We have much to fear from crimethink. And not just from individuals suffering from the insanity of ownlife (“free will”). All citizens must participate in crimestop (“ridding themselves of unwanted thoughts interfering with the ideology of the political left”).

Since 2000, the amount of crimethink has climbed more than 5,000 percent, according to the Ministry of Truth. This rise has been fueled, as all citizens graced with goodthink know, by ignorance, racism, xenophobia, and fascism. Most crimethink merely espouses violent theories against the goodthink; some of them are stock-piling weapons and actively planning attacks against our glorious state.

But not all people and places goodthink equally; some regions of the United States – at least within some sector of their populations – are a virtual artsem (“artifical insemination”) of goodthink. What is the geography of goodthink and crimethink? Why are some regions more susceptible to one or the other?

The Ministry of Truth maintains a detailed database of crimethink, culled from the prolefeed (“steady stream of mindless entertainment to distract and occupy the masses”). The Ministry defines crimethink as “beliefs or practices that attack or malign goodthink people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: “immutable characteristics” means that any speech advocating religious persecution does not qualify as crimethink unless, of course, Christians are the subject of that persecution, which is goodthink. For example, ISIS beheading Christians does not qualify for categorization because the executioner may convert (i.e. mutable) to the crimethink of Christianity on the road to Damascus at some unknown date in the future.

The map below, created by the Ministry of Truth, graphically presents the geography of goodthink in the United States. Based on the number of goodthink groups per one million people across the U.S. states, it reveals a distinctive pattern, which dictates the amount of thinkpol (“thought policing”) required of all goodthinking citizens in their communities.

Goodthink is most highly concentrated in the broader regions associated with New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, concentrated in the Northeast, Great Lakes, and the West Coast. Two states have by far the largest concentration of crimethink groups – Montana with 13.8 groups per million people, and Mississippi with 13.7 per million. Arkansas (10.3), Wyoming (9.7), and Idaho (8.9) come in a distant third, fourth, and fifth.

Minnesota has the most effective thinkpol with 1.3 crimethink groups per million people, nearly ten times less than the leading state, followed by Wisconsin (1.4), New Mexico (1.5), Massachusetts (1.6), and New York (1.6). Connecticut (1.7), California (1.9), Rhode Island (1.9) all also have effective thinkpol per million people.

But beyond their locations, what other factors are associated with crimethink? With the help of the Ministry of Truth, I looked at the social, political, cultural, economic and demographic factors that might be associated with the geography of crimethink. I also considered a number of key factors that shape America’s geographic divide: Red state/Blue state politics; income and poverty; religion, and economic class. It is important to note that correlation does not imply causation – we are simply looking at associations between variables. It’s also worth pointing out that Montana and Mississippi are fairly extreme outliers, which may skew the results somewhat. Nonetheless, the patterns we discerned were robust and distinctive enough to warrant reporting.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “might be” also means ‘might not.’ “Red state/Blue state politics” means there is an implicit political agenda associated with the article.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “It is important to note that correlation does not imply causation – we are simply looking at associations between variables.” Translation: this entire article is statistical bullshit but the author is hoping all goodthinking readers are stupid enough to draw conclusions, that are, in fact, not supported by objective, rigorous interpretation of the statistical analysis.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Montana and Mississippi are fairly extreme outliers, which may skew the results somewhat.” Possible translation: if  Montana and Mississippi are removed from the data set, then the correlations fall apart and this article can’t posted to the prolefeed; not that it should have been in the first place.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Nonetheless, the patterns we discerned were robust and distinctive enough to warrant reporting.” Translation: reporting doublethink promotes groupthink (the last phrase was coined by the notorious crimethinker, William H. Whyte).

First of all, the geography of crimethink reflects the Red state/Blue state sorting of American politics. Crimethink is positively associated with McCain votes (with a correlation of .52). But we already knew that because it’s a self-evident truth that any state that did not vote for Barack Obama in 2008 is racist; made obvious by their refusal to concede electoral college votes to a man of color.

EDITOR’S NOTE: It is not self-evident. It is only the starting point of the author’s initial assumption for compiling and analyzing the data set in this manner. However, the author is careful to hide this initial assumption because doubethink pomotes goodthink. The author is also unclear whether these correlations represent the R value or R squared value. The editor’s rule of thumb for R values: unsquared=0.75 or less is most likely a mess.

Conversely, goodthink groups voted for our glorious leader. Goodthink and crimethink also cleaves along religious lines. Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, higher concentrations of crimethink are positively associated with states where individuals report that religion plays an important role in their everyday lives (a correlation of .35), indicating the true value of our secular religion.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Whether a R-value or R-squared value, a correlation of 0.35 means bullshit.The geography of crimethink also reflects the sorting of Americans by education and human capital level. Crimethink groups were negatively associated with the percentage of adults holding a college degree (-.41). The geography of goodthink and crimethink also sorts across economic lines. Crimethink is more concentrated in states with higher poverty rates (.39) and those with larger blue-collar working class workforces (.41). Higher income states with greater concentrations of goodthink workers provide a less fertile medium for crimethink. Crimethink was negatively correlated with state income levels (-.36), and the percentage of goodthink workers (-.48).

EDITOR’S NOTE: Most of these correlations appear to be nonsense, all with r-values (?) mostly well below 0.50.

Citizens, if you want to succeed in the United States and earn money, it’s best to adopt goodthink (even if you don’t really mean it, see Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post). You will be well compensated for groupthink: discipline your ownlife and crimestop yourself!

The geography of crimethink follows the more general sorting of America by politics and ideology, religion, education, income levels, and class. But the presence of crimethink does not necessarily lead to crime. A 2010 study of “Crimethink and Think Crimes” by the Ministry of Love found no empirical connection between the two. Tracing the association between crimethink and think crimes between 2002 and 2006, the Ministry found that while the amount of crimethink grew substantially, the number of think crimes did not – in fact such crimes actually decreased slightly.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “the presence of crimethink does not necessarily lead to crime… no empirical connection.” Again, this unmasks the author’s article as nothing but goodthink propaganda since there isn’t any relationship between crimethink and actual crimes. The author’s article is, in fact, only promoting thinkpol (“thought policing”).

But the Ministry found a strong connection between crimethink and adverse economic conditions, particularly unemployment and to a lesser extent poverty. This proves citizens should adopt goodthink to avoid the classic crimethink-aggression thesis of the Ministry of Love, which, as its name implies, links aggression to high levels of crimethink. “When people refuse to adopt goodthink, the resulting economic hardship leads to crimethink and frustration,” wrote the deputy assistant undersecretary for the Department of Mutual Masturbation in the Ministry of Love. “They take their frustration out on goodthink citizens.”

Even if crimethink is not directly connected to crime, crimethink arises from the same underlying economic factors that are dividing Americans by class, ideology and politics. Crimethink, like think crimes, are strongly associated with ownlife. The geography of crimethink in America reflects and reinforces the need for more robust thought policing of crimethink.

Remember: Big Brother is watching… and watching goldfish positively correlates with cancer rates so watching goldfish is also crimethink for the greater good of our glorious citizenry. Crimethink clings to bibles and guns!

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Architecture, Editorial, Education, Ethics, Housing, News, Professional, Science, Urban Planning

Planning Naked | June 2016

Planning Naked | June 2016
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Your (hopefully) hilarious guide to everything about the latest issue of APA’s Planning Magazine.

 

The Rise of the Aqua Planner. “Water Everywhere” in From the Desk of APA’s Executive Director section by James M. Drinan (pp. 3) discusses the intense focus on water issues during sessions of the recent APA National Conference. While the subject of water management and resources is, of course, important, especially in light of rapid urbanization and population growth around the world, I can’t figure out if the APA was being intentionally ironic, cleverly subversive, or just plain clueless by setting this conversation in Phoenix, Arizona. A city on the edge of an arid desert that gets a lot of its water from the Colorado River and probably should not exist at all based the precepts of generic function. It suspiciously sounds like APA is more interested in creating another specialized planning silo – the Aqua Planner.

June. 2016. A date. Which will live. In infamy. APA is finally forced to publish the obituary of Robert Moses’ ideas in “Farewell, Robert Moses Parkway North” by Tara Nurin (pp. 6). More like ‘good riddance’ since the real infamy is it took a quarter of a century for this project to get off the ground.

The Advance of Shared Space. “Chicago Neighborhood Puts Pedestrians First” by Allen Zeyher (pp. 7) details the shared space conversion of a three-block stretch of Argyle Street in Chicago. Pedestrians First? Isn’t that slogan some sort of right-wing synthesis of vehophobia (“fear of driving”) and xenophobia (“fear of outsiders”)? Brad McCauley at Site Design Group, Ltd. offers the absolutely priceless quote of the article: “in pedestrian-heavy corridors, it’s a no-brainer to reclaim space that was formerly given over to cars,” which implicitly confirms our suspicion that the overwhelming majority of urban planners do not possess a brain. Perhaps a trip to Emerald City to see the Wizard is in order?

States lead. Federal hampers. Oh wait, State hampers, too. At first glance, there is more evidence in the News Brief section (pp. 7) that there isn’t any problem the Federal government won’t try to regulate its way out of (e.g. more EPA requirements) whereas it is the States that are really leading (e.g. Colorado Supreme Courts overturns local fracking ban)… except for the last news item about the Texas Department of Transportation adding ‘informal’ lanes by using inside shoulders during rush hour for motorists to double average speeds and produce “smooth sailing.” That’s called medicating the symptoms, not curing the disease. At least, TexDOT have their ‘evidence’ for another costly lane widening project. Let’s be honest, motorists were probably already using the inside shoulders and TexDOT merely acknowledged the fait accompli.

Speaking of fait accompli. “Tactical Urbanism Goes Mainstream” by Jake Blumgart in the News and Legal Lessons section (pp. 8) seems to stamp tactical urbanism with APA’s approval because the brand has now been proven capable of securing money for things that don’t, in fact, have anything to do with tactical urbanism. The Philadelphia example cited in the article is for pool amenity improvements, not tactical urbanism. The $184,080 granted in Detroit isn’t for tactical urbanism, it’s nominally ‘planning for tactical urbanism’ but the first project discussed is – yes, you guessed it – pool amenity improvements. It’s disturbing how concepts get twisted to mean almost anything you want when the money gets involved in the United States.

Real Reporting. In “Scalia’s Land-Use Legacy,” William Fulton briefly reviews the legacy of the recently deceased Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia on land use law for the Legal Lessons section (pp. 9). It is a well-written, objective piece about, primarily, the Nollan and Lucas decisions. Fulton discusses their legal importance and Scalia’s intellectual role in crafting the majority decisions. The article is informative while blessedly free of ‘hidden’ agendas or positions. Ah, real reporting!

Tsk-tsk. Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh. “Mixed Income, Mixed Results” by Craig Guillot (pp. 10-17) discusses the combination, for good or ill, of market rate and targeted affordable housing in developments. Housing policies in the United States from the Federal level to State and local government has been completely ass-backwards ever since the 1949 Housing Act and APA has been – and continues to be – complicit in perpetuating this ass-backwardness. All of the evidence you need is this quote, “Brennan says funding has been a barrier,” which again boils everything down to ‘give us more money.’ Giullot’s article therefore ably covers all of the problems this ass-backwards approach entails and reaps without ever addressing the core problem that everyone is basically talking out of their ass when it comes to housing. The short answer is found in the scale of developments, build-out times, land appreciation, and recognizing that a city does not ever, ever, ever remain statically frozen in time or character. The purposeful convolution of this issue is frustrating beyond belief and a direct consequence of early 20th century Euclidean zoning and suburban land tenure theories. But, by all means, continue to fiddle with market and affordable housing percentages and waste the next 50 years as well.

Here’s Your Consolidation Prize. “Separated City” by Lee R. Epstein (pp. 18-23) about Capetown in South Africa is actually a really interesting, informative article. Epstein seems to skip over the fact (or maybe, I missed it) that cities like Capetown actually represent traditional urban patterns in most of the world where lower income people live at the edges (e.g. suburbs) and higher income people live in the center. In contrast, the American urban model became inverted due to suburbanization during the post-war period. However, what’s really suspicious is how this story on Capetown immediately follows Guillot’s article about mixed income neighborhood planning efforts in US cities. Am I being paranoid that this article represents a consolidation prize to make American urban planners feel better about themselves (“See, it could be worse. Just look at Capetown, South Africa”)? Maybe, maybe not.

My God! Real Science in Planning Magazine! The use of biometrics to track human eye movement in the built environment is not new (perhaps it’s new to the APA and/or Americans). It’s been around for a while now – being worked on at University College London using virtual reality 20 years ago – in one form or another. It’s a fascinating area of research about the built environment but we need to be careful to fully appreciate the implications and not assume it’s an issue of quantity [“No wonder visitors from around the world like walking through Venice or Copenhagen — there’s so much (our emphasis) there to stimulate our sensory system, no matter one’s native language, culture, or personal history”]. There is a LOT of meat in this subject, too much to go into here but you can look at some of the work of Dr. Ruth Conroy Dalton at the Northumbria University and Dr. Beatrix Emo, Cahir of Cognitive Science at ETH Zurich. The key takeaway from the article for architects and planners right now is this quote: “I realized how people are really attracted to people.”

My God! Housing Sanity in Planning Magazine! Finally, someone articulates a reasonable perspective about the issues of housing in the Viewpoint section, “The New Home Ownership Reality” by Professor Anthony Nelson (pp. 48) of the University of Arizona. Professor Nelson does not implicitly tackle the house size part of the equation (e.g. tiny houses/small house movement) but any discussion about affordability has to begin with rental housing and ownership of affordably sized homes. Professor Nelson’s Viewpoint article is a good place to start.

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

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Architecture, Education, Essay, Philosophy, Photography, Professional, Urban Planning

PHOTO ESSAY | Downtown Springfield IL

God bless, historic downtown Springfield, Illinois… they are trying, they really are. Unfortunately, for every smart decision to promote vibrant urbanism, you can find another decision (or indecision) holding things back. The most important and destructive is the continual adherence to a one-way traffic system that has only one purpose: moving vehicles as quickly as possible through downtown. It is especially mind-boggling considering the large numbers of people (including school groups) visiting the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Historic downtown Springfield is vibrant urbanism waiting to happen, trapped in its cage so automobiles can pass through quickly while only paying the minimal, necessary attention to pedestrians.

Historic Union Station and Union Station Plaza in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Historic Union Square (to left) and Museum Parking Garage (to right) along East Madison Street in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).

Another questionable design choice: locating a ‘dead’ facade parking garage across the street from beautiful, historic Union Station (now an accessory structure to the Lincoln Museum), thus creating an urban void absent of any active frontages. The parking garage was obviously built for the convenience of people visiting the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum located one block away but does nothing for the street life along this one-way, ‘rat run’ segment of East Madison Street. The street trees seem like an apologetic, after-the-fact attempt to hide this failure of urban design and planning from citizens and visitors alike.

Historic Union Station and Union Station Plaza from the corner of Sixth Street and East Jefferson Street in downtown Springfield (Photograph: Mark David Major).

In the above photograph, you can see how much street width is dedicated to moving cars through the one-way street system in downtown Springfield and the amount of pavement pedestrians have to overcome to cross a street even though there is plenty of room for landscaped medians, enhanced pedestrian crosswalks, and on-street parking with a 20-25 mph speed limit to efficiently move (instead of stop-and-start) the traffic… perhaps, even the elimination of some stop lights using the design principles of shared space.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (foreground) and Museum (background) at East Jefferson Street (center) and Sixth Street in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).

The HOK design of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is O.K. (not great, not awful, hardly objectionable) though the 2nd floor structural crossover of East Jefferson Street wouldn’t be necessary at all with traffic calming, generally in historic downtown Springfield and, specifically, on this segment of East Jefferson Street so people could pass freely from one ground level entrance to the other using the street without having to wait for the crosswalk lights to change.

View east along East Adams Street from Sixth Street in downtown Springfield, Illinois. The high-rise Modernist building in the background was originally constructed in 1973 as Forum 30 but is now the Wyndham Springfield City Centre Hotel (Photograph: Mark David Major).
View south down Sixth Street from the pedestrianized segment of East Adams Street in front of the Old State Capitol in downtown Springfield, Illinois. The historic Lincoln-Herndon Law Office building is located to the right (Photograph: Mark David Major).
View northwest across Old State Capitol grounds from the pedestrianized segment of East Adams Street with the historic Myers Brothers Building in the background in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
View east down the pedestrianized segment of East Adams Street with Old State Capitol to the left in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
View west down East Adams Street from the the pedestrianized segment of that street and 5th Street in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
View east down the pedestrianized segment of East Adams Street with historic shop frontages located to the right including the Feed Store and the National Museum of the Korean War in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
View south down Sixth Street from East Adams Street showing the retention of historic buildings (including Lincoln-Herndon Law Office to the right) and the flow of vehicles down this one-way traffic corridor. Off-street parking is allowed along this segment of Sixth Street in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
View west down the pedestrianized segment of East Adams Street with historic shop frontages located to the left such as the Feed Store and the National Museum of the Korean War and the Old State Capitol to the right in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Historic Lincoln-Herndon Law Office building at the corner of Sixth Street and East Adams Street in downtown Springfield, Illinois (Photograph: Mark David Major).
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Architecture, Books, Education, Housing, Professional, Review, Urban Patterns, Urban Planning

FROM THE VAULT | Bourgeois Utopias | Robert Fishman

FROM THE VAULT | Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia by Robert Fishman
Review by Dr.  Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

I’ve been an admirer of historian Robert Fishman ever since reading Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 1982) in the early 90s but especially after hearing him speak at CNU20 in West Palm Beach, FL in 2012. Given this, I was a naturally excited to read this book when I came across it many years after its publication. However, I have to begrudgingly admit I was mostly underwhelmed by Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (Basic Books, 1987). Partially, this is a matter of timing. When Fishman wrote and published this book in the late 1980s, it seemed like the cumulative apex of suburban expansion and urban decline in the United States. In hindsight, Fishman’s history of suburbia come across as a dated, unconditional surrender to what must have seemed to many people at the time as the inevitable (despite the ‘fall’ mentioned in book’s title). Of course, we now realize there was still a significant part of the story waiting to play out over the subsequent three decades (see New Urbanism/Smart Growth, collapse of the mortgage bond market, and 2008 Financial Crisis).

However, it is not all a matter of timing. Fishman is so determined to fit his subject into the thematic structure began in Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century that he tends to cast aside any evidence contrary to his central thesis, especially when it comes to the American experience of suburbia. For example, you will not find the phrases ‘exclusionary zoning’ or ‘restrictive covenants’ anywhere in Bourgeois Utopias, which seems like an odd oversight for a purported history of suburbia. Fishman also oddly ignores ample evidence in the historical record (as well as John Reps’ seminal histories The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States and Cities of the American West: A History of Frontier Urban Planning) that there were, in fact, only a few examples of the modern American suburb type (Llewellyn Park, New Jersey and Frederick Law Olmsted’s Riverside, Illinois being the most obvious 19th century forerunners) before World War II because the regular grid dominated in American land speculation activities until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.

Riverside, Illinois (Photo: Wikipedia).

This creates a problem because Fishman has to, more or less, cast aside the narrow, formal definition of suburbia he adopts at the start of the book when discussing early suburbs in London and Manchester, England  for a much looser definition (basically, any single family home with front yard setbacks) when approaching the American experience, especially in Los Angeles. In fact, Fishman’s entire chapter on Los Angeles reads as a regurgitation of Reyner Banham’s arguments in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) so both have the same flaws in underestimating the power of the urban grid. It is also another case in bad timing since Mike Davis’ City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles was published only a few years later in 1990. Davis’ book has its own flaws but it is an invaluable resource for understanding the historical development of urban form in Los Angeles including the role of water pilfering in that city as well as the insidious role of the automobile industry in the Red Car’s demise.

By far, the best and most compelling part of Bourgeois Utopias is Fishman’s research on early suburbs in England during 18th and 19th century and Olmsted’s mid-19th century plan for Riverside, Illinois (basically, pages 1-148). Indeed, any reader should be able to sense the author’s greater interest in these pre-20th century examples compared to the amalgamated cancer of 20th century suburbanization in the United States, when it seems as if Fishman is trying to ‘run out the clock’ on the book. In fact, if Fishman wasn’t so determined to ambitiously fit this topic into the ‘utopia’ theme, he might have been better served to limit his historical research to these pre-20th century examples. Fishman astutely identifies the changing nature of family related to longer life expectancy during the 18th and 19th century in England as the social origins for suburbia. Fishman briefly mentions life expectancy (which seems far more important than the words given in this book) before devoting most of his time to the evolution of familial relations in the workplace and/or home. Fishman also makes an important, useful distinction between the productive and consumptive suburb that has broader implications than spelled out in the book. It is fascinating research, which alone makes the book worth the effort. In the end, though, there are some good parts (Anglo examples) and some head-scratching parts (American examples) in Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia so the book deserves, at best, only a 3-star rating.

Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia
by Robert Fishman
Basic Books, 1987
Paperback, 272 pages, English
ISBN-10: 0465007473
ISBN-13: 978-0465007479

You can purchase Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia from Amazon 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, Education, Essay, Housing, Mark David Major, Photography, Professional

PHOTO ESSAY | Dana-Thomas House | Frank Lloyd Wright

Dana-Thomas House located on East Lawrence Avenue in Springfield, Illinois is one of the earliest examples of the Modernist Prairie Style of architecture designed by its leading advocate, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, circa 1902-04. The State of Illinois bought the house in 1981 and it became a historic site under the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, which led a restoration effort in 1987-1990 to refit the house to its appearance in 1910. It is believed to contain one of the most intact Frank Lloyd Wright architectural interiors in the United States (Source: Wikipedia).

There is an interesting, contradictory dynamic at work in the scale of the house in the horizontal and vertical dimension. Simply put, this house has a gigantic footprint! The house is 12,600 square feet, with thirty-five rooms and sixteen major spaces (Source: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency). This square footage is so far over-the-top that the top “is a dot to you” and me. This is the equivalent of five houses for the average American homeowner today! The horizontal emphasis in the designed elevations of the house (especially adjacent to busiest, public streets) allows this house to somewhat sit comfortably in the Springfield neighborhood in the vertical dimension of the elevation of the houses. However, the footprint of the house is equal to the size of four lots either immediately across the street or adjacent to the house. I suppose it is a testament to horizontal emphasis in Wright’s elevation designs that the house fooled me into thinking it was (only) around 6,000 square feet; itself, a extremely large house (and perhaps the footprint of only the first floor without the accessory structure/courtyard to the rear is around this number). The more you move around the house, the more conscious you become of how out-of-scale the Dana-Thomas House is to the surrounding urban context in the horizontal dimension of the plan.

First floor plan for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois, USA (Source: Wikipedia).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from 4th Street (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from sideyard (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from interior courtyard (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from interior courtyard (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from interior courtyard (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from interior courtyard (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from East Lawrence Avenue looking toward 4th Street (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Detail of Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois side entrance from East Lawrence Avenue (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from corner of 4th Street and East Lawrence Avenue at side elevation of the house (Photograph: Mark David Major).
Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois from corner of 4th Street and East Lawrence Avenue at front elevation of the house (Photograph: Mark David Major).
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