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Preview | Poor Richard | An Almanac for Architects and Planners

COMING IN APRIL 2013! POOR RICHARD, AN ALMANAC FOR ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS BY MARK DAVID MAJOR, AICP

A high-resolution preview of the front cover is below.

The witticisms and sayings of Poor Richard are organized by calendar weeks, one generic theme per week, and a single saying for each day of the week – plus one for “years in the state of leaping” – adding up to a full calendar year. Each week of the calendar week is accompanied by a high contrast, black and white illustration designed or selected to get people thinking differently about cities. A high-resolution preview of “On Cities” for pages 86-87 with an accompanying illustration (inverted detail of the Nolli map of Rome presenting civic space in black and blocks in white) is below.

“On Cities” for the 34th Week in the Calendar Year on pages 86-86. Click on the image to see a high resolution version.


Poor Richard, An Almanac for Architects and Planners also includes a foreword by Julia Starr Sanford, a preface from the author, an Introduction incorporating the “Declaration of Planning Independence” previously published on The Outlaw Urbanist, bibliography and illustration credits, and an Afterword featuring The Outlaw Urbanist manifesto.

Poor Richard, An Almanac for Architects and Planners by Mark David Major, AICP, Foreword by Julia Starr Sanford, Forum Books, an Imprint of Carousel Productions, 136 pages, 5.0″ x 8″, $9.99 (in print); also available in eBook, format and price TBD.

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Editorial, Poor Richard

Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 10

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.

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Editorial, Poor Richard

Poor Richard’s Almanac for Planners | Issue 9

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

81. “Gizmo Green” (Steve Mouzon) is often a vague promise to have your cake and eat it too by avoiding the real problem all together.

82. Hitler’s greatest devastation of British cities occurred after the war, courtesy of British town planners.

83. Americans consume land like prostitutes consume clients. These days, in both cases, the outcome is rarely as good as we imagined.

84. Parking is never a right or a privilege but should always be a pleasant surprise. Why do you want to take surprise out of our lives?

85. Having to take out the garbage by car is unnatural… and kinda disgusting.

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

87. No man is a traffic island.

88. British town planners had already started devastating their cities before World War II. Hitler only sped up the process.

89. Fortune never knocks at the gates of a suburban community. It hides like a thief within…

90.  A pedestrian who never slows is in a hurry. A car that never slows is a harbinger of death.

The Issue 10 cometh soon!

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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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