More than an extreme or excessive economy or frugality, extreme unwillingness to spend money or use resources, the quality of being very unwilling to spend money/being careful with money or resources, or a thrift in the quality or state of being stingy – economy in the use of means to an end – for not only creating things but in thinking about things. In cities, this most often refers to an excess of quantity in the short-term as an unfair exchange for a cheapness of quality in things or ideas over the long-term. For example, a cheap idea efficiently implemented in the short term is often inevitably more expensive than a good idea carefully crafted and implemented over the long term. Synonyms include: miserliness, niggardliness, penny-pinching, or tightfistedness; see also FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) or clusterfuck. (1400-50; late Middle English parcimony < Latin parsimōnia, parcimōnia frugality, thrift, equivalent to parsi– combining form of parsus, past participle of parcere to economize or parci– combining form of parcus sparing + –mōnia –mony suffix signifying action, state, or condition).
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A quickness or speed of motion, action, or operation; rapidity or swiftness: speed or the rapidity of movement; speed imparted to something; a measure of the rate of motion of a body expressed as the rate of change of its position in a particular direction with time. It is measured in metres per second, miles per hour, etc: the derivative of position with respect to time; a rate of occurrence or action, the rate of speed with which something happens; rapidity of action or reaction; the rate of turnover (Middle French velocité, from Latin velocitat-, velocitas, from veloc-, velox quick or swift; probably akin to Latin vegēre to enliven – more at wake; related to volāre to fly. See velocipede, -ty: First Known Use: 15th century).
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A contraction of impervious, meaning not allowing something to enter or pass through; not allowing entrance or passage (Latin impervius, from in- + pervius pervious, First Known Use: mid-17th century) and perversity, meaning a deliberate act in an unreasonable or unacceptable way; contrariness; the quality of being contrary to accepted standards or practice; the quality of being perverted or perverse, meaning wrong or different in a way that is strange or offensive, turned away from what is right or good, contrary to the evidence (Middle English, from Anglo-French purvers, pervers, from Latin perversus, from past participle of pervertere, First Known Use: 14th century). In cities, imperviousity most commonly refers to impervious materials in constructing the built environment (such as roads, walls, etc.) or the obscuring, inversion or privatization of components of the built environment necessarily associated for human activity (such as doors, windows, and porches).
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An empty space orvoid in the city; specifically a site unoccupied by human activity; first known use of vacancy 1598; the state of being vacant: not continuously filled, used, or lived in on a everyday basis for activity, as distinguishable from the storage of things; not occupied, being without content, free from activity; devoid of thought, reflection, or expression; a state of absence; not put to use; also the opposite of full: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin vacant-, vacans, present participle of vacare (to be empty); First Known Use: 14th century.
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“VIEWPOINT: Theory Makes Perfect”, was the most read post of the 2014 on The Outlaw Urbanist. We would have never guessed. The Outlaw Urbanist had visitors from 101 countries around the world with the most coming in order from: the United States, followed closely by the United Kingdom and Israel; the last being something of a surprise.
“Good theory leads to good planning. Normative theory – without quantitative observation and validation using scientific method – is nothing more than subjective opinion masquerading as theoretical conjecture.”
Viewpoint | Theory Makes Perfect By Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor
Regularly brandishing the bogeyman of Modernism, the architects of CIAM, and their industrial age vernacular to deride scientific method and endorse normative theory is a late-20th century practice du jour of the planning profession and education. It is a lot like suggesting a rape victim needs to marry her attacker to get over the experience. A shocking metaphor? Perhaps, but it is not a casual choice.
Early 20th century Modernist planning was a normative theory that aspired to science in its assertions. However, Modernism fails even the most basic tenets of being science. It was long on observation and way short on testing theoretical conjectures arising from those observations. Without scientific method to test its conjectures, Modernism in its infancy never made the crucial leap from normative to analytical theory. Instead, the subjective opinions of the CIAM architects and planners were embraced – sometimes blindly – by several generations of professionals in architecture and planning, and put into practice in hundreds of towns and cities. Today, for the most part, Modernism has finally been tested to destruction by our real world experience of its detrimental effects, though we continue to suffer from its remnants in the institutionalized dogma of planning education and the profession. Nonetheless, it has – at long last – made the transformation from normative to analytical theory and validated as a near-complete failure; at least in terms of town planning.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City (1934-35) (Image: Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation).
Modernism is a failure of normative theory, not scientific method. Ever since Robert Venturi published his twin polemics Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture/Learning from Las Vegas, it has been chic to assert that Modernism – and by implication, science – was responsible for the rape of our cities during the 20th century. A direct line can be drawn from the proliferation of late-20th/early-21st century suburban sprawl to Frank Lloyd’s Wright Broadacre City, and even further back to its infancy in Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City. However, like a DNA test freeing a falsely accused rapist, scientific method reveals the true culprit is, in fact, normative theory. The 20th century is a wasteland littered with normative theories: modernism, futurism, post-modernism, deconstructivism, traditionalism, neo-suburbanism and many more ‘-isms’ than we can enumerate. After the experience of the 20th century, it seems absurd to suggest we require more theoretical conjecture without scientific validation, more opinion and subjective observation – that is, less science – if we want to better understand the “organized complexity of our cities” (Jacobs, 1961). Sometimes it seems as if the planning profession and education has an adverse, knee-jerk reaction to anything it does not understand as “too theoretical”. Of course, the key to this sentence is not that it is “too theoretical” but rather that so many do “not understand” the proper role of science and theory in architecture and planning, in particular, and society, in general.
Science aspires to fact, not truth. The confusion about science is endemic to our society. You can witness it every time an atheist claims the non-existence of God on the basis of science. However, science does not aspire to truth. Not only is ‘Does God exist?’ unanswerable, it is a question any good scientist would never seek to answer in scientific terms. It is a question of faith. The value judgment we place on scientific fact does not derive from the science itself. It derives from the social, religious or cultural prism through which we view it. Right or wrong is the purview of politicians, philosophers and theologians. There are plenty – perhaps too many – planners and architects analogous to politicians, philosophers and theologians and not enough of the scientific variety. And too often, those that aspire to science remain mired in the trap of normative theory and institutionalized dogma. The Modernist hangover lingers in our approach to theory. But we require less subjective faith in our conjectures and more objective facts to test them. We persist with models that are colossal failures. When we are stuck in traffic, we feel like rats trapped in a maze. We apply normative theory to how we plan our transportation networks and fail to test the underlining conjecture. The robust power of GIS to store and organize vast amounts of information into graphical databases is touted as transforming the planning profession. But those that don’t understand science, mistake a tool of scientific method for theory. We project population years and decades into the future, yet fail to return to these projections to test and expose their (in)validity, refine the statistical method and increase the accuracy of future projections. And we hide the scientific failings of our profession behind the mantra, “it’s the standard.”
Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1898).
We require analytical theory and objective knowledge. If the facts do not support our conjectures, then they need to be discarded. In normative theory, ideas are precious. In analytical theory, they are disposable in favor of a better conjecture on the way to a scientific proof. Scientific method is the means to test and validate or dispose of theory. Our profession and communities have paid a terrible price for the deployment of normative theory. However, quantitative observation and analysis of its failings has offered enlightenment about how to proceed confidently into the future. The work of notable researchers in Europe and the United States are leading the profession towards an analytical theory of the city. Even now, we will be able to deploy scientific method to derive better theory about the physical, social, economic and cultural attributes of the city. This leap forward will eventually propel planning out of the voodoo orbit of the social sciences and into the objective knowledge of true science. Until then, we need to focus a bit more on getting there and less time raising the SPECTRE of dead bogeymen to endorse the creation of entirely new ones.
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In cities, this most often refers to an excess of quantity in the short-term as an unfair exchange for a cheapness of quality in things or ideas over the long-term. For example, a cheap idea efficiently implemented in the short term is often inevitably more expensive than a good idea carefully crafted and implemented over the long term. Synonyms include: miserliness, niggardliness, penny-pinching, or tightfistedness; see also FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) or clusterfuck. (1400-50; late Middle English parcimony < Latin parsimōnia, parcimōnia frugality, thrift, equivalent to parsi– combining form of parsus, past participle of parcere to economize or parci– combining form of parcus sparing + –mōnia –mony suffix signifying action, state, or condition).
Purchase your copy of Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2) today!
It is measured in metres per second, miles per hour, etc: the derivative of position with respect to time; a rate of occurrence or action, the rate of speed with which something happens; rapidity of action or reaction; the rate of turnover (Middle French velocité, from Latin velocitat-, velocitas, from veloc-, velox quick or swift; probably akin to Latin vegēre to enliven – more at wake; related to volāre to fly. See velocipede, -ty: First Known Use: 15th century).
accepted standards or practice; the quality of being perverted or perverse, meaning wrong or different in a way that is strange or offensive, turned away from what is right or good, contrary to the evidence (Middle English, from Anglo-French purvers, pervers, from Latin perversus, from past participle of pervertere, First Known Use: 14th century). In cities, imperviousity most commonly refers to impervious materials in constructing the built environment (such as roads, walls, etc.) or the obscuring, inversion or privatization of components of the built environment necessarily associated for human activity (such as doors, windows, and porches).
not continuously filled, used, or lived in on a everyday basis for activity, as distinguishable from the storage of things; not occupied, being without content, free from activity; devoid of thought, reflection, or expression; a state of absence; not put to use; also the opposite of full: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin vacant-, vacans, present participle of vacare (to be empty); First Known Use: 14th century.
