Tag Archives: Urban Planning

News, Satire

Disturbing Photo from 1972 APA Future Leaders Conference

We came across this disturbing photograph taken at the 1972 American Planning Association Future Leaders Conference:

From left to right (standing):

John de Lancie gave up planning and became an actor, getting his start playing several roles on The Six Million Dollar Man before most famously playing “Q”, a being with God-like powers, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. When asked how he approached playing an omnipotent being, he replied, “I based Q’s pretentiousness on one of my planning professors at Kent State University.”

Steven Littleton, PA became a real estate attorney and broker as well as part-time magician in Las Vegas, Nevada. He still performs weekly at the Leopard Lounge and Style Revue in North Las Vegas under the pseudonym “The Magnificent Steven.”

William Bonin was convicted and executed in 1996 as the “Freeway Killer” in Los Angeles, California.

Gregory Marmalard, FAICP became the Special Assistant for Community & Development to Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. He advised Governor Blanco that Lousiana did not need Federal assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He is currently serving as a Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C.

Douglas C. Neidermeyer, AICP was killed by his own planning staff in Little Vietnam in the Uptown area of the City of Chicago. The planning staff was acquitted of the murder on the grounds of “temporary sanity.” It is still the only case in history of the United States judiciary that was ever decided on these grounds.

Dr. Ronnie F. Farley, FAICP received his PhD from the University of Santa Barbara, Remote Learning Campus and became APA President in the late 1980s. He was convicted of money laundering for misuse of Federal housing funds in the mid-1990s and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released for good behavior in 2002 from the Federal Prison Camp, Alderson in West Virginia. He became a best-selling author, publishing under the pseudonym “Stephanie Meyer.”

Seventh person standing to the far left remains unidentified though several eye witnesses have sworn his name is Abad’on Beel z’bub, an exchange student from Hierapolis in southwest Turkey.

Center, being spanked:

Chip Diller, AICP has been the serving Planner II of Bacon County, Georgia since 1982 where he won 10 awards for meritorious long service before the County Commissioners discontinued the award. He is a avid fan of the 1980s game, Dungeon and Dragons, and a three-time winner of the P&D Championship Series.

Kneeling, left to right:

W.F. Scott never finished planning school at the University of Minnesota. He became a factory worker and the father of Seann William Scott, who co-starred in several American Pie films and The Dukes of Hazard remake in 2005.

William Patrick went missing in 1978. He was officially declared dead by his family in 1985.

Thurston Howell V served as the National Director of the Sierra Club from 1985-1992. Officially, he is “retired” though, according to anonymous sources, this really means he was committed to the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum in 2002 and screams “rising ocean levels” every hour on the hour, night or day.

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Urban Patterns

Urban Patterns | Ragusa, Sicily in Italy

“Can we move to Italy?
Meet me by the church up high on the hill.”
— Italy, Julia Fordham

Urban Patterns | Ragusa, Sicily, Italy
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

To many people, Ragusa, Sicily in Italy represents the prototypical Italian hilltop village lying below the Hyblaean Mountains. It is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The origins of the oldest part of the town on a 300-meter (980 feet) high hilltop (upper town to the right, below) lying between two valleys can be traced to the 2nd Millennium BC, i.e. more than 3,000 years ago. The ancient city came into contact with nearby Greek colonies and grew due to the nearby port of Camerina. Following a short period of Carthaginian rule, it fell into the hands of the ancient Romans and the Byzantines, who fortified the city and built a large castle. Ragusa was occupied by the Arabs in 848 AD, remaining under their rule until the 11th century, when the Normans conquered it. Thereafter Ragusa’s history followed the events of the Kingdom of Sicily, created in the first half of the twelfth century (Source: Wikipedia).

Satellite view from 2 km of Ragusa, Sicily in Italy (Source: Google Earth).

Upper town has a deformed grid layout where the street pattern conforms to the topography of the hill. This tends to make movement longer in terms of time and distance through upper town but changes in elevation are more gradual. This offers an excellent contrast to an urban pattern such as that found in San Francisco, where the regular grid layout enables movement through the layout to be shorter in terms of time and distance but changes in elevation tend to be much steeper. Together, Ragusa and San Francisco provide two models of how to incorporate acute topographical conditions within a settlement. The vertical construction of dwellings adapts to the topographical conditions of a local site in particular ways. In the case of San Francisco, this occurs by steeply adapting finished floors so they step up or down in section with the topography, which serves to maintain the conceptual logic of the regular grid imposed on the land. In Ragusa, the logic of the deformed grid in the town emerges from an apparently local process of aggregating dwelling units. During this aggregation process, finished floors are adapted to the contours of the topography so changes in finished floor elevation tend to be gradual instead of steep. In this way, the layout literally incorporates the acute topographical conditions into its functional pattern. This is why Moholy-Nagy (1968) describes such layouts as geomorphic. The street pattern of the newer areas adjacent to lower town (to the left, above) at the foot of the hill in the valley is a regular grid since the topography is less acute (e.g. more flat) at this location. The lower town also utilizes larger block sizes in its regular grid layout.

(Updated: April 11, 2017)

Urban Patterns is a series of posts from The Outlaw Urbanist presenting interesting examples of terrestrial patterns shaped by human intervention in the urban landscape over time.

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Books, News, Poor Richard

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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News, Satire

What do the ‘wet dreams’ of engineers and concrete-mixers look like?

The Outlaw Urbanist was able to gain access to this exclusive image, which accurately represents the dreaming state of members in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Concrete Institute (ACI). The image was compiled using the latest double-secret beta version of new Dreamscape Image Capture Technology (DIC-TEC 1.2) (you may assume from Apple). The subject matter of the dreamscape is fascinating. However, even more so was the remarkable degree of consistency found during the dreaming state for more than four dozen engineers and concrete-mixers, from which this composite image was created. Of course, being engineers and concrete-mixers they universally dream in black and white. Because of this, certain aspects of the composite image have been colorized using the ‘vibrancy’ function available in the DIC-TEC software.

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Architecture, Editorial, Mark David Major, Moreso, Philosophy, Professional, Urban Planning

MORESO | What Would Jesus Do | The Sermon on the Street

Blessings on the poorly connected street,
For they shall find a grid to call home.
Blessings on the street that suffers isolation,
For they shall find comfort in a family of streets.
Blessings on the meek street,
For they shall inherit the city’s fortunes.
Blessings on streets that hunger and thirst for righteous design,
For they shall be filled with people.
Blessings on the safe streets,
For they shall provide mercy to pedestrians.
Blessings on the richly connected streets,
For they shall become a city.
Blessings on the placemakers,
For they shall be called the children of the city.
Blessings on those who are persecuted because of righteous design,
For they shall one day live in a great city.
Blessings on you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against the city.
Rejoice and be glad because great are your rewards in the city, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
You are the salt of the Earth but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled over by the automobile.
You are the light of the city. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lantern and hide it. Instead they put it on a post in the street, and it gives light to all pedestrians on that street. In the same way, let your city lights shine before others, that they may see your good streets and glorify the greatness of your city.

Moreso is a series of short ruminations or thoughts of the moment, usually of less than 500 words, from The Outlaw Urbanist.

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