Tag Archives: Suburban Sprawl

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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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, 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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