Courteous Reader,
I am tempted to win your favor by declaring I wrote this Almanac for Planners solely for the public good. However, this is insincere and you are too wise for the deception of this pretense. The fact is I am excessively poor and, unfortunately, excessively wifeless. To address both problems, I must begin to make some profit since every potential wife always asks, “What kind of car do you drive?” I always have to reply, “I walk”, and the potential wife thinks I am a deviant.
Indeed, this motive would have been enough to write this Almanac many years ago except for the overwhelming desire of the public and professionals to only hear what they want to hear and my overwhelming desire to secure a salary. I am now of sufficient age to no longer care about telling people what they want to hear but only about what they need to know. This has freed me to write this Almanac for Planners in increments of ten cause it worked for Moses and the Almighty. Hopefully, my Almanac gains your likes and retweets as a means of demonstrating the usefulness of my efforts but also your charity to this poor Friend and Servant,
Richard
On Cities
91. A city is only as strong as its weakest street.
92. A city is as old as it feels and suburban sprawl is as old as it looks.
93. Behind every successful city are good streets.
On the Automobile
94. Don’t put all of your automobiles on one road lest it apt to become a parking lot.
95. Cities designed for the automobile shall only live and die for the automobile.
On Urban Planners and Architects
96. Not all urban planners are created equal and the dumb ones are usually the most dangerous and easily found.
97. Whoever speaks the loudest is often the worst ‘planner’ in the room.
98. What an architect or urban planner is not telling you is usually far more important than what they are saying.
On Great Cities
99. Faint hearts never built great cities.
100. All the great cities of the world predate urban planning’s emergence as a distinct profession in the early 20th century. It is not coincidence.
Editor’s Note: This is the last issue of Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners posted on The Outlaw Urbanist. Poor Richard wrote about 100 more common sayings and witticisms for urban planners, which will appear in the book version of Poor Richard’s Almanac. Stay tuned for the announcement.
