The Onion at its best

Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization

Rush Limbaugh, AAA and more

Our design editor MC Roethlisberger recently reminded us of the brilliant wit coming out of Project for Public Spaces every 4.1.

http://www.pps.org/info/newsletter/april2008/

Just a few samples cribbed from their "newsletter."

AAA shifts focus from autos to pedestrians

ORLANDO - AAA is re-branding itself the American Amblers Association to reflect its changing role in helping people enjoy the nation's parks, playgrounds, public markets and greenways.

Rush Limbaugh: Living the Good Life in Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN - In his first interview since moving here, reformed global-warming denier and ex-radio show host Rush Limbaugh said he has secretly vacationed in Copenhagen for years.

Saving Traffic: Transportation Planners are funnier than you think

This hysterical video, sent to us by our second new correspondent, GR Polonais, is part of the ongoing peace process between the editors here at Saturbia and the transportation planning community. We come in peace, and generally on the bus.

Guest Post: French finally justify their monopoly on urban theory

This post comes to us from Orale Suomi, our newest correspondent in the field. You too can write for Saturbia.

What is it with the French and urban theory? I never understood why they should have the market so cornered. I also often do not understand the theory. But I realized it is all about the context. You have to put yourself in their place to get it. Take Michel de Certau for example. I was wandering through the streets of Paris the other day and I finally understood what the hell the Walking in the City thing was about when I saw these guys:

Swiss Agree to Pay Reparations for Corbu

Zurich - The Swiss government announced today that it would spend $10 billion Swiss marks over the next five years to repay cities for the damage done by one of it's most famous citizens, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, aka Le Corbusier. Although the famed modernist and designer became a French citizen in his 30's, the Swiss acknowledged that their culture of precision and general disregard for the goings on in other places inextricably led to the production of Corbu, and hence his contribution to the systematic destruction of vibrant urban spaces on six continents.

Details of the reparations process are unclear, although cities like Chicago are reportedly preparing a multi-million dollar claim based on Robert Taylor houses alone.

Urbanists Agree to International Detente on Proliferation of Urbanisms

Singapore, 2.15.08 - An international committee of urban scholars and theorists came to a historic agreement Sunday to halt the dangerous and unwieldy proliferation of "urbanisms" that has threatened to overwhelm the intellectual ecosystem. Recent years have seen a spectacular increase in the practice of naming theory by attaching a snazzy adjective to Louis Wirth's not so favorite way of life - we now have dialectical, radical, splintered, blue, new, do-it-yourself, unitary, everyday, walkable, mega, sustainable, opportunity, green, postmodern, recombinant, magical, transnational, barrio, and postcolonial urbanisms. The lack of available adjectives has even led to the development of X-urbanism, which may be followed soon by F-urbanism, or 46-Urbanism.

Otto von Michnick, recent author of Flatular Urbanism and a co-signatory of the agreement, stated bluntly that he hopes that this agreement will convince urbanists to put down the adjectives and slowly walk away.

Not all were so sanguine about the possibilities of a peaceful transition. Esteban Wilson, noted planner, geographer and hypnotist, blamed the legendary Chicago-school sociologist for creating the dilemma in the first place, and sees further proliferation as inevitable. "Had only Wirth not perpetuated to everyone involved the ludicrous idea that urbanism could somehow refer to both the way of living in the city and the process of examining the city, this situation could have been avoided," Wilson stated from a press conference held by dissidents outside the coffee house where the agreement was developed and signed. "This confusion, and the emphasis on the former, has sullied the minds of urbanists (the people who think about the city, not just those who use it), and led to this ridiculous arms race. I predict that this will all come to naught, and we will soon see multi-adjectived or adverb-adjectived urbanisms emerging. Supposedly, some Scottish geographers are developing a transculturally-mitigated marginal urbanism that they plan to release in 2009."

In a related note, anthropologists and sociologists have announced plans for a human citizenship project, with plans to categorize all 4,278 forms of micro-citizenship. Citizenship, which some link to Aristotle or to the later emancipatory aspect of city life, was actually invented in Berkeley in the mid 1980's.