Tag Archives: Outlaw Urbanist

Editorial, Poor Richard

Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 8

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 Committees

71. Committees default to the average in pursuit of consensus and, over time, lower the standard of average to absurd levels of mediocrity.

72. “For God so loved the world that He did not send a committee.”

73. There aren’t any statues to committees anywhere in the known world.

On Architects and Planners

74. Architects and planners are notorious for making your bed but never laying in it.

75. “Would I live here?” should be the first question any architect or planner asks. If the answer is no, then it is wrong.

On Urban Planning

76. Old planning paradigms die hard when they most deserve immediate execution.

77. With Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes at epidemic levels, it’s time to stop planning cities to have our cake and eat it too.

78. Cul-de-sacs are not just about disconnecting streets. They are about disconnecting ourselves from the world around us. Isolation is their nature.

On Institutional Inertia

79. It is always better to do something and be wrong then do nothing.

80. “That’s the way we’ve always done it” is a clear sign of institutional inertia that nobody is thinking.

The Issue 9 cometh soon!

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Editorial, Poor Richard

Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 7

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 Planners

61. A sucker is born every minute with the credentials to be a bad urban planner.

62. An urban planner whose only priority is to save their job isn’t a very good one.

63. Too often, planners default to saying nothing when they should be saying plenty with meaning.

64. Planners often talk the talk and rarely walk the walk but should always talk the walk and walk the talk. Repeat and rise.

65. If you don’t want to pay the piper, then don’t pretend to dance to his tune.

66. An urban planner whose priority is to save their job is a bad planner but often an excellent bureaucrat and politician. Be wary.

67. Too often, planners make the mistake of being quiet when they should speak up and talking when they should listen. Resolve to learn the difference and do better.

On Urban Decay

68. Entropy increases. (Second Law of Thermodynamics)

69. Wall Street’s philosophy is ‘the shit rolls downhill.’ The planner’s philosophy should be ‘clean up the shit before it accumulates.’

70. The more you put things back together, the more they fall apart and sometimes it’s best to let things fall apart completely so you can start over fresh.

The Issue 8 cometh soon!

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Editorial, Mark David Major, Satire

The Spectre of the Ultimate Green Building

The Spectre of the Ultimate Green Building
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist Contributor

Imagine the ultimate sustainable green building… housing hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, drawing on geothermal power as an almost inexhaustible source of energy, and constructed to use the Earth itself to provide a natural means of cooling. This building is the very ideal of “Gizmo Green”, as defined by Steve Mouzon, since it draws upon cutting edge technological advances to provide ecological solutions. This magnificent building of our imagination even has its own light rail transit system. However, it also has a distinctly anti-urban quality about it. It can only be found in exurban locations, i.e. near to an urban location but not too close. Somehow, it reconciles an inherently contradictory nature into its very function. In short, this magnificent green building is all things to all people.

Can such a green building really be imagined? It already has; it is Ernst Stavo Blofeld’s underground volcano lair in You Only Live Twice (1967).

Ken Adams’s concept art for Ernst Stavo Blofeld’s underground volcano lair in You Only Live Twice (1967).

Blofeld’s lair was built in a dormant volcano so presumably draws on geothermal power for energy. It was also built underground so the building uses the Earth itself to provide natural cooling for its interior. In the film, we see hundreds of Blofeld’s minions in the lair but presumably its capacity is much larger than portrayed… or the film’s budget would allow in terms of extras. The building even has its own small-scale light rail system as well as a helipad and space launch pad! The design also appears, in part, to draw upon Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon in terms of visual surveillance. This is likely necessary since paranoia is a fundamental aspect of Blofeld’s autocratic power in the Bond films. The design of Blofeld’s underground volcano lair was Michael Myers’ satirical inspiration for Dr. Evil’s ‘secret’ volcano lair in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999). It is fair to conclude the specifications for Dr. Evil’s lair were much the same as Blofeld’s in You Only Live Twice.

Dr. Evil’s ‘secret’ volcano lair in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999).

Blofeld and Dr. Evil are not the only ‘Bond’ villains to dabble in radical environmentalism. Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) attempts to manipulate the United States and Soviet Union into launching global nuclear war while he is safely secluded in his underwater lair, Atlantis, with a chosen few to rebuild human civilization after the holocaust. Stromberg is a marine scientist who implicitly – and paradoxically – appears to have a radical environmentalist agenda. We say ‘paradoxically’ because his plan involves plunging the Earth into Nuclear Winter. His underwater lair, Atlantis, off the coast of Sardinia appears to draw on many of the same design specifications for Blofled’s lair with some modifications, i.e. drawing upon underwater thermal vents for energy, using the Mediterranean Sea for natural cooling of the structure, and so on. In the follow-up film, Moonraker (1979), the villain Hugo Drax explicitly engages in large-scale eco-terrorism by hatching a scheme to release a viral toxin on the Earth, which will destroy all human life but leave unharmed all other plant and animal life. Drax takes the position of environmentalists to their logical – and inevitable – conclusion, which is the Earth would be better off without any human beings. Drax attempts to implement his dastardly plan while safely secluded in his moon base lair (also Michael Myers’ satirical inspiration for Dr. Evil’s moon base lair in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me). Finally, the Bond villain in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Francisco Scaramanga, uses solar power for energy at his small-scale lair (in comparison to the Blofeld, Stromberg, and Drax hideouts) on an island in the South China Sea.

Karl Stromberg’s underwater lair, Atlantis, in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

Indeed, a strong radical environmentalism strain appears to be common to many of the most-noteworthy ‘Bond’ villains, more so than one might expect at first glance. Putting aside the issues of international nuclear terrorism and blackmail, counter-intelligence, terrorism, revenge, and extortion (the “Special Executive for…”, i.e. S.P.E.C.T.R.E.), it is a legitimate question to ask whether ‘Bond’ villains represent some sort of ideal model for environmental protectionism in the world today. Is this the future of an Environmental Protection Agency and other government/non-governmental entities gone mad with power and their own narrow agenda? Are Ernst Stavo Blofeld and Dr. Evil the future faces of radical environmentalism?

The Future Faces of Radical Environmentalism? (left) Ernst Stavo Blofeld (Donald Pleasance) and (right) Dr. Evil (Michael Myers).

Of course, in the end, James Bond and Austin Powers always defeat the villain. In contrast to the radical environmentalist strain of these villains, Bond and Powers are the ultimate urbane individualists. Powers lives in a bachelor pad (depending on the film and time period, above Piccadilly Circus or on the South Bank in central London). Bond apparently lives in a central London row house, presumably in the Bloomsbury or Chelsea neighborhood judging from an early scene in Live and Let Die (1973). Perhaps Bond even lives next door to Patrick McGoohan’s “Number Six.” Is there a Spy Row a couple of blocks over from Saville Row in London? In any case, in the end, the traditional urbanist always defeats the radical environmentalist to save the day and the world… and get the girl.

Updated: December 11, 2012

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Editorial, Poor Richard

Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 6

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

51. We should have greater faith in the capacity of our cities to reach a state of dynamic equilibrium without the excesses of our interference.

52. Cities are not about where we are from or where we are going but how we are getting there.

53. Bad planning and road rage are directly related. Always design happy cities, not angry ones.

On Walking

54. “As the crow flies” is a useless measure of walkability because we are not crows and do not fly.

55. An apple a day may keep the doctor away but walking costs less in money and apples.

On Walls

56. When Robert Frost wrote, “Good fences make good neighbors,” he was being sarcastic.

57. Private walls are often about hiding what we have, public walls are often about hiding what we don’t want to know.

58. The height of walls directly relates to our level of fear when those walls are breached.

59. The fatal flaw of walls is you can usually breach any wall by going around it.

On Social Justice

60. Social justice lies in opportunity, not reward.

The Issue 7 cometh soon!

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Editorial, Poor Richard

Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 5

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 Rail Transit

41. Density makes rail transit viable, not the other way around.

42.  If you want rail transit tomorrow, then have the courage to densify today.

43. Rail transit that does not serve large populations most in need on a day-to-day basis is a financial boondoggle. Let the buyer beware.

On Suburban Sprawl

44. Suburban sprawl became a cancerous infection on the American landscape after the Euclid decision in 1926. It is causality, not coincidence.

45. Rome was not built in a day. Suburban sprawl can be designed in about 30 minutes.

46. When it comes to suburban sprawl, it is a non sequitur to say the customer is always right.

47. False pretenses sell suburban sprawl in situations that offer little or no choice. It is a mirage.

On Professionals

48. “The first thing we do (is) kill all the lawyers.” However, half will do.

49. Architects and planners are notorious for making your bed but never lying in it.

On Money

50. You get what you pay for… as long as what you pay for is what you are really getting.

The Issue 6 cometh soon!

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