Tag Archives: Outlaw Urbanist

Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 4

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 Design

31. Turning movements are about going in circles. Humans are about moving forward in a straight line.

32. The best planning has everything to do with design and nothing to do with bureaucracy or politics.

33. Signage supplements good design and planning. It can never replace it.

34. Front porches have nothing to do with the house and everything to do with the street.

35. All that floats melts in the air.

On Institutions

36. There is a reason why ‘institution’ is a synonym for asylum.

37. Never institute mediocrity in pursuit of consensus. Always pursue excellence in defiance of institutions.

38. Objective science attracts grants. Grants attract subjective science. Always be wary of the difference.

39. Revolution quickens when evolution slackens.

On Developers

40. Profiteering on land value is the mashed potatoes for the developer and cost savings is only the gravy. Either way, mashed potatoes still taste great.

The Issue 5 cometh soon!

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Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 3

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 the Regular Grid

21. Ancient Greeks and Romans built civilization on the regular grid. It is arrogant to think we know better.

22. Underestimating the instrumental power of the regular grid is a mistake and often leads to its abuse.

23. Regular grids are about right angles. Deformed grids are about open angles. Sprawl is where angles go to die.

24. Regular grids are relentless in their rightness… think about it.

25. Thomas Jefferson gave us the American regular grid. A committee of roadway engineers gave us suburban sprawl. Always walk with giants, never ride in the clown car.

On Real Estate Agents

26. Real estate agents are salesmen. They are natural-born obfuscators. Never believe a word they say.

27. Standing on your head while looking in a mirror is usually the best way to detect the realtor’s truth.

28. Real estate agents sell space, not walls.

On Urban Planning

29. If urban planning isn’t about good design, then it’s about nothing and worth as much.

30. “Whatever is best for me” is not a valid philosophy for urban planning… or living.

The Issue 4 cometh soon!

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Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 2

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

11. Cities are vibrant because its residents are alive. Cemeteries are tranquil because its residents are dead. Do not ever confuse the two.

12. People are alive, cars are not. Always build your cities for the living and never for those things that are not.

13. Nothing about cities is ideal, that is what makes them so fascinating.

On Planners

14. A planner who leads never worries about being loved. A planner who worries about being loved never leads.

15. 19th century land speculators were a lot smarter than you think and 20th century urban planners were lot dumber than they pretend.

16. Life is fast enough without urban planners trying to speed things up.

On NIMBYism

17. NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) is polite terminology for “I’ve got mine, Jack, so screw you.”

18. Environmentalism is often the wolf of NIMBYism masquerading in sheep’s clothing.

19. Highly praise altruistic motives but have the courage to condemn selfish ones for what they really are.

On Urban Space
20. Space flows, never congests.

The Issue 3 cometh soon!

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Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 1

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 Streets
1. Always ask yourself, what would the Romans do?

2. Curved roads may be pretty but straight roads are divine.

3. Curved roads are only about themselves, straight roads are about each other.

On Right and Wrong in Planning
4. The right thing to do is always right and nothing to do with what your client, employer, or the public wants.

5. Right is objective, want is subjective, and it is always a mistake to confuse the two.

6. Right and wrong really is black and white. When you see gray, others see green. Gray is the color of greed.

On the Urban Pattern
7. Compact block sizes are about community. Ample block sizes are about profit.

8. Journeys should be short and walkable because they can and not because there is nowhere to go.

9. Street inter-connectivity is about the function of ‘us’. Cul-de-sacs are about the dysfunction of ‘me’.

On Urban Space
10. Space is a living thing, not merely the absence of things.

The Issue 2 cometh soon!

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Bumper Sticker Paradigms

Bumper Sticker Paradigms
An Editorial by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Day-to-day, many of you will have probably seen the above bumper sticker. Perhaps some of you even have this bumper sticker on your car. It is an amusing and sarcastic – albeit cheap – political shot from the political left against the political right’s concerns about budget deficits and the national debt in the United States. For the record, we are talking about an annual Federal budget deficit of more than $1 Trillion Dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) over the last 4 years, and now almost $16 Trillion Dollars ($16,000,000,000,000) of total debt accumulated by the Federal government (more than 100% of the 2012 Gross Domestic Product, i.e. GDP). Incidentally, almost a third of the national debt was raided from and is now owed to the Social Security Trust Fund. On top of this, there are some (cautious) estimates that the Federal, State and local governments in the United States has more than $55 Trillion Dollars ($55,000,000,000,000) in total unfunded liabilities. The point is estimates vary from worse to even worse. Anyone who does not treat the collective debt burden of the United States with the greatest concern is a fool, a liar, or a Nobel-winning economist working for the New York Times.

However, this editorial is actually not about debt and deficits. It is about the insidious message this bumper sticker conveys for urbanism in the United States, once we dig a little deeper beneath the superficial sarcasm of the message itself to the paradigm hiding underneath. What do we mean?

First, the message is explicitly about “paved roads.” It is not about the value of roads in general. Indeed, a key aspect of the sarcasm contained in the message lies in the fact that the bumper sticker is readable while you are driving your car, i.e. “isn’t it nice to have a smooth ride on this paved road so you can read my amusing bumper sticker?” Now, of course, not all paved roads necessarily have to be asphalt or concrete roads. For example, cobblestones and brick roads are also paved roads; even the Land of Oz had its yellow and red brick roads. However, such road surfaces rarely qualify as a ‘smooth ride’, especially over the lifetime of that road. Such roads are not conducive to mobile reading, especially for those of us prone to motion sickness. It is fair to conclude that most people will understand the reference to paved roads in the bumper sticker to mean asphalt or concrete roads. After all, most road surfaces in the United States are paved asphalt or concrete and this will constitute most people’s everyday experience of paved roads.

The minimal graphic design of the rudimentary lane striping in the bumper sticker also suggests “paved” is an implicit reference to only asphalt or concrete roads. Alternatively, the graphic design and elongated shape of the “Paved Roads” portion at the top of the bumper sticker could be interpreted as a rudimentary road construction sign, which every American will have experienced; extensively and usually regretfully so in urban areas. More importantly, either interpretation is appropriate to the message itself because this is not how anyone would choose to typically represent an alternative surface such as brick or cobblestone for a paved road. There should not be any doubt that the design of the bumper sticker is both simple and excellent, which is usually the best kind of graphic design.

The paradigm underlying the message should be important to any professional urban designer, planner, traffic engineer, or knowledgeable layman because it explicitly favors impervious road surfaces. For the uninitiated, this means such road surfaces are impenetrable to stormwater, seals the soil surface and eliminate rainwater infiltration and natural groundwater recharge, collect solar heat in their dense mass and when that heat is released, raises air temperatures. More importantly, the lack of rainwater infiltration makes impervious surfaces the ‘carriers’ for non-point pollution sources. Non-point sources typically means rainwater falling on the asphalt shingles of you house, from there to the lawn with fertilizers and pesticides (or, in some areas, septic tanks), from there to the road into the stormwater sewer system, and usually directly into a nearby water body without any treatment. If you want more pollution, then you want more impervious road surfaces, i.e. precisely the type of “paved roads” this bumper sticker is referencing. Irony has never been an especially strong point of the political left in the United States so it is doubtful that progressives and liberals appreciate the fundamentally anti-environmental message of the bumper sticker on their car (probably a gas-guzzling SUV anyway). The irony, of course, is radical environmentalism has been a mainstay of the political left in the United States since the 1960s.

What about the second part of the message, i.e. “another fine example of unnecessary government spending?” This is also rich with irony in undercutting the superficial message the political left is trying to convey to voters. The power of the message exclusively relies on the reader being uninformed. Most roads in the United States (in gross terms, not total linear miles) are residential streets. The private sector builds most of these roads including many arterial and collector roads to support a plethora of suburban subdivisions. Developers later convey ownership of these arterial (and some collector) roads to public agencies for maintenance purposes. However, these days most of the residential roads remain private roads, which non-governmental agencies such as homeowners associations, neighborhood groups, or community development districts maintain on behalf of their residents. Developers always pass on the cost of constructing the roads to their customers in the price of your home. HOA usually pass on the cost of maintaining the roads in their community to their residents through HOA fees, etc.

The government does build and maintain roads, the interstate highway system being the most obvious example most commonly cited by both the political left and right in the United States. However, most government revenue for capital improvements comes from the taxpayers via user fees and taxes on income or property. In this sense, because the private and public sector always passes the costs of all road construction to you in the price of your home or the taxes you pay to the government, all roads are ‘public’ roads. When it comes to roads, we really did build that…

…Or, more accurately, we paid for it even if we did not need or want that road. New road construction only has two purposes. First, to access new land uses, most usually residential (i.e. subdivisions) and/or second, to spur economic development in the form of commercial or industrial land uses (i.e. see numerous examples of ‘roads to nowhere’ that eventually string together an infection of suburban sprawl characterized by strip malls, office parks, and gated communities); and, both are founded on a single principle. The principle is: if you build it, they will come. This is the status quo. It has been the status quo in the United States for several decades. This brings us back to the message of the bumper sticker, i.e. “Paved roads: another fine example of unnecessary government spending.” It is message that insidiously favors the status quo for our contemporary models of urbanism. How has the status quo been working for our cities over the last half-century? The answer to that question should define your reaction the next time you come tail-to-front with this bumper sticker. Perhaps you will find the message as superficial as the vacant paradigm hiding behind it.

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