The Satirical Urbanist

Montgomery County sex-party host must role-play by the zoning rules

2010-02-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post, an article so hysterically true that it should be satire.

Americans Outraged at Sudden Realization Interstate Highways Are Government-Run

2010-01-25T19:24:00.000-08:00

A brilliant post from the Beast... even the graphic is the dog's bollocks.

"As the debate continues to rage on over whether or not the U.S. should include a public, government-funded plan in its healthcare reform, many citizens abruptly noticed that the federal government funds and regulates all Interstate Highways in the nation, and has done so for over 50 years.

Now, many are up in arms over the largest public works project in history, which has somehow gone unnoticed since the mid-20th century.

"I can't believe I didn't think of this before," said conservative analyst Paul Dobson, slapping his forehead in disbelief. "We were all so focused on the idea of the government ruining healthcare forever that we forgot how President Eisenhower -- who was obviously tricked by President Barack Hussein Obama -- already ruined our highways by building and then socializing them in the 1950s."

Go visit them for the rest ...

High Line voted top place for urban stonage

2009-12-16T17:39:00.000-08:00

Marseille, 4:36 EDT.

In a first for a rookie urban space, the Walter Benjamin Society for Urban Stonage announced Thursday that New York City's new bourgeois jewel, the HighLine, had been chosen as the top urban space for wandering around high making pointed comments about society, capitalism, urban development and pretty people. Voter's cited it's brilliant use of native plants and landscaping to highlight the vigorous mix of prewar buildings and New York's first decent modern architecture in ages, and it's outstanding collection of uberrich South Americans, young lovers, and people from Jersey. "To find a place that central to pretty much everything and be able to float above the street like a postmodern Baudelaire is just fucking awesome," noted Genevieve Maisonneuve, a delegate from Sheboygan.

As is often the case at the Benjamin Society annual meetings, the flaneurie awards votes were loud, intense and incoherent, with a vocal European contingent vociferously opposing the selection of the Highline. Some argued that it was too soon, while others disagreed with the sudden fetishization by some society members with the railroad truck turned pretty planted promenade. "Look, I have nothing against New York. It is a great city," said Tordsten Albroek from Freiberg. "But my colleagues only love it because it is so unAmerican (sic). For the first time you are actually seeing an alternative to it's shitty streets, which is a big reason they have such shitty cities. I mean fuck, you should see what happens with these American urbanists come see our bike lanes and pedestrian spaces. They are so excited they start to stutter slightly and jiggle around like they have to pee. And that is the sober ones."

Others felt that the massive billboard of Posh and Becks in their underwear gave the HighLine an unfair advantage, as it was a temporary visual, emotional and psychological orgy that could easily be replaced by an ad for Burger King. This too was rebutted by those who argued that the ginormous sign of two of the world's most attractive and richest people would most likely be replaced by some other monument to sex, beauty and capitalism which at least theoretically should be of equal or even greater interest. They argued in fact that the board served as a rotating gallery of sensory information that stood nicely in the urban gaze between the city and the Sunday strollers, and should be included as a permanent part of the urban experience.

This may be the last year that the East Coast is strongly represented in the awards. With the proliferation of legal medical marijuana in western states, the Benjamin society is considering abandoning its spiritual and intellectual roots in Europe and relocating to Hollywood, as society members seek to take advantage of the fact that the herb in Cali is just off the hook right now.

Hipsters Officially an Ethnic Group

2009-11-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

Following a brochure announcement by the Heart of Brooklyn Partnership which describes the greater Prospect Heights area as one where "you can encounter Caribbean, Hasidic or American hipster cultures," the Census department announcement plans to count the skinny-jeaned wonders in the upcoming decennial count of Americans. Preliminary evidence suggests that they/we are fucking everywhere.

French fire coach after poor showing on the Planetizen 100

2009-11-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

The Societe General d'Urbanisme in Paris announced today that Jean Baudrillard, the noted postmodernist intellectual and urbanist who was expected to lead France to a strong showing on this years list, has been removed as coach of the French team. Baudrillard, who is dead, defended his leadership of the French team, which was shut out completely from the top 20, and placed only four thinkers on the list overall.

"Our team was well prepared to think deeply about the metropolis and the contemporary urban experience. We produced excellent theory, and were simply blindsided by the fact that the voters considered porches more important than critical thinking."

The porch reference is due to the fact that the New Urbanists dominated the list, placing two of their own Andres Duany and Christopher Alexander, in the Top 3. The top French performers, Pierre L'Enfant and Baron George Haussmann, came in 21st and 22nd respectively.

Many close observers of the French team argue that internal dissension is at least part of the problem. Haussman reacted furiously that L'Enfant, whose design for Washington DC was ultimately overwritten by the American Congress, could place higher than he, the man who single-handedly rewrote Paris and urban modernity. There were some in Paris who were celebrating the victory of Henri Lefebvre (28) over Richard Florida (29) as a sign that the right to the city may just trump the creative class, but overall the feeling on the streets of Paris is bleak.

Commented one young parisian urbanist on the last second victory of Emily Talen over famed Situationist Guy Debord for 84th place, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Editorial: The Heeb 106

2009-11-04T09:04:00.000-08:00

In a sign of disrespect for the importance and sexiness of urban planning, the editors at Heeb Magazine declined to include a category for urbanists in their recent Heeb 100 list of the hippest, coolest young Jews. Despite sit-ins and protests outside of Heeb's offices, they refuse to budge from their position that fashion is more important or interesting than sewage or bike lanes.

We at Saturbia recognize that it would be all but impossible to select a half-dozen enterprising members of the tribe from amongst then legions of Jews engaged in urban activities these days. Therefore, we will examine another Top 100 list - Planetizen's Top 100 Urban Thinkers of All Time - to nominate candidates for what will surely be an important category in the 2010 Heeb list.

Despite some internet reports, there is little evidence that the #1 person on the list, St. Jane Jacobs, is Jewish, despite a good last name. This means that the leading Jewish urbanist of all time is...

7. Lewis Mumford. It seems that Mumford's feelings towards his Jewishness were highly ambivalent, as were his feelings about cities, people and anything that wasn't the medieval city. Makes him similar to Max Weber (definitely not a Jew) or Robert Park (Jew), except that neither of them managed to make the list.

20. Jaime Lerner. Heeb, are you listening? Do you even know there are Jews in Curitiba, Brazil, let alone ones that are working to redo how you move about the city?

23. Robert Moses. Alas. Just like Lerner, albeit the opposite.

27. Scott Bernstein. Everyone is excited about Scott making the list - he's young, cute, knows a lot about cargo and WATOD and TOD and lots of other cool things. Heeb, this guy is cover material, assuming he is actually Jewish.

31. Bruce Katz. An urban wonks wonk, Herr Katz and his Brookings team keep it real with great reports that you can get for free, cite and look smart. And what a good, strong, American Jewish name. Could be president of the shul.

There are of course a handful of others, complicated only by all of the Germans and German Americans whose names sound Jewish but probably are not. Yet we at Saturbia must mention the patron saint of Jewish urbanism, #58 Walter Benjamin, arguably the first urban hipster intellectual. Heeb, are you listening?

Planner on vacation solves critical urban issues in unsuspecting global city

2009-10-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

In a bold, three-step maneuver over the past two weeks, an American urban planner on a fortnight’s vacation in Istanbul has developed a clear and concise mental map for solving the burgeoning global city’s nagging problems through a new urban politics. The city, which has doubled in size since his last visit in 1995, tempers its glorious scenery, deep and complex patrimony and vibrant artistic and intellectual scenes with brutal traffic, an inadequate public realm and a growth machine threatening to wreak havoc on its human, built and natural environments.

“It’s really quite simple,” said Arthur Schatzburg, between sips of Efes™ while sitting in a funky outdoor café in Cihangir after a particularly challenging five lira yoga class at a nearby studio. “First of all, the global city discourse is a canard in the case of Istanbul. You could argue that it was one of the first global cities, and has always been a major crossroads of capital flows. The question is not how to resist globalization, but how to make the current round of globalization work for the majority of Istanbullers, as opposed to just a few. This stance will infuriate the radical Turkish left, but they just need to study judo and adopt a progressive community benefits framework where they insist on getting something out of development, as opposed to nothing, which is what is currently happening.”

“Second, this shift towards a community benefits framework will enable planners to focus on making the city more livable, which is its largest problem. The flight of the upwardly mobile middle classes to gated communities on the periphery is akin to suburbanization in the United States a generation ago. The core is hard to live in – too much traffic, terrible pedestrian realms, little access to parks and nature, almost impossible to bike without being killed. Take the Barbaros/Buyukdere corridor, the main boulevard going from Besiktas in the historic center through the burgeoning corporate towers of the Levent and now Maslak. Buyukdere may mean big stream or big river in Turkish, but in Istanbul it means big pedestrian nightmare that tears through the city and leaves dense older neighborhoods isolated from one another. It is a grade-level Cross-Bronx Expressway. People may associate Moses with Hausmann, but they are very different. This is pure Moses in Istanbul. Buyukdere and Tarlabashi Blvd. are just urban highways designed for movement. At least Hausmann built sidewalks. The only chances for leisurely flannerie in Istanbul is on Istiqual Street, which explains why it is so packed and popular, or the new shopping malls. Even walking on the street in bourgeois Bebek means dodging cars in between bites of waffle. The city must begin to extract concessions from the developers to rebuild the public realm in and around these development corridors, ensuring that local residents’ ability to walk to transit, to shopping and to parks and plazas is increased.”

“Third, this emphasis on livability may be the key to providing any sort of political traction to the various forces looking for a new direction for development in Istanbul. Right now, developers are running the show, and transportation planners seem to be operating in a vacuum, building two systems that barely talk to each other and certainly don’t communicate with the street and the neighborhoods. But opposition is tricky – the neighborhoods under threat of eviction are very different from each other and are having a hard time coming together across class and ethnic divides. The opposition to the third bridge is broad but shallow, and it is facing a powerful machine being driven from both Ankara and Istanbul, not to mention Dubai and London. Livability is about the little things – the ability to get where you need to go in less than two hours, the ability not to be killed by a minibus, the ability to get some exercise if you can’t afford the gym. This does not substitute for basic civil rights in a democracy or basic human rights under capitalism, but it is one thing that we all have in common. Poor people’s movements in urban cities ignore the middle classes at their own peril, and this could be one discursive shift that can restructure the redevelopment machine. It may not stop the third bridge, but perhaps it can work to shift ‘regeneration’ policy from an emphasis on buildings to an emphasis on the public realm, accessibility and mobility.”

In response to challenges from more learned colleagues native to Istanbul who actually have PHD’s and have been working on Istanbul’s problems for years – challenges which ranged from the difficulty of doing any of this given the power of capital and a semi-autocratic and highly centralized state to Schatzburg’s stunning naïvete and classic western arrogance – Schatzburg took another sip of his beer and continued talking about sidewalks and how awesome the Metrobus would be if you could get there without feeling like you were going to die.

All Urban Problems now Problem Spaces

2009-10-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

Dateline July 12, 2009. Paris. 12:45 CET

The International Association of Urban Intellectuals, meeting this week for their 112th global symposium at the Walter Benjamin Conference Center in Paris, announced that forthwith all problems associated with urbanization and metropolitan living would be converted to problem spaces. The change will go into effect on January 1st, leading some to speculate about the challenges faced by cities and their residents in anticipation of the conversion. Discursive shifts of this sort, while not unprecedented, often come with significant epistemological and pecuniary costs, including altering one’s outlook on daily urban living and buying lots of new books.

The rapid development of communications technology is expected to aid significantly in the conversion process. Microsoft announced a patch to PowerPoint™ which would enable architects, planners and engineers to rapidly alter old presentations to be rehashed in the new language. It includes an autocorrect function to prevent unwanted slippage into previous terminology. Similarly, Apple announce that at least three IPhone™ apps were under development by its army of independent programmers, including one app which reportedly includes daily maxims from poststructuralist thinkers in order to help stubborn positivists and bitter technocrats to effect the ontological shift needed for true adherence to the associations’ decision.

Nevertheless, the conversion is expected to cost upwards of €4.1 billion, a cost deemed negligible by Association spokesperson Robert van Dietrich. “The importance of clean and healthy discourse can not be underestimated in today’s rapidly urbanizing world,” said van Dietrich in a prepared statement. “After careful consideration by the association’s executive comitat, we recognized that the very survival of the human race depended on our ability to speak differently about the urban.”

The move is seen by some as the final push to move past the controversial Mike Davis era, when the world-renowned Planet of Slums author chaired the association through what many observers consider its most anti-urban phase since the long tenure of Louis Wirth in the 1930’s. Davis’ sensationalist account of slum dwelling masses in an amorphous global south sold millions of copies and catapulted hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens into the ranks of amateur urbanism, but similarly helped prop up a movement towards the aesthetisization of poverty, a tool often used by the global urban growth machine to redevelop poor communities and displace the poor from valuable land in the urban center.

Given both the fractious nature and significant power of this unelected body of professional scholars and itinerant organic intellectuals, internal and external criticism of the move has been swift. Prominent environmentalists dismissed the move as irrelevant, noting that the problem was urbanization itself, and that we should all read more Aldo Leopold. The Society of People Who Love Transportation released a terse statement indicating that the solution was not discourse, but bikes and BRT. In the most radical move yet, a dissident group of planning theorists interrupted the final deliberations at the Benjamin center by chaining themselves to the coffee makers in the lobby and chanting lines from Habermas. One of the dissident theorists, who was later arrested, had tattooed the groups’ rallying cry, “This is not our BATNA!” on his chest.

Despite these more radical protests, most debate about the edict, while passionate, was civilized and conducted with full knowledge of power relations and ample glasses of pastis. The problem space subcommittee, which will be in charge of licensing problem spaces in a post conversion era, remained deadlocked on the issue of whether the power of starchitects constituted a single problems space of its own or whether each individual architect constituted a separate space, determined by ego size and their ability to captivate developers and politicians with pornographic renderings of unbuildable and unnecessary megaprojects. On a similar note, the committee reserved the right to grandfather in some concerns as problems due to their seemingly intractable nature, including New Urbanism, academic conferences, and traffic.

In related urban news, members of the Lefebvrian liberation front declared the urban revolution to be complete, and Lefebvre to be the dominant paradigm. In a press release spray-painted on the Centre Pompidou, they urged us all to understand the urban as the newly dominant means of production while continuing to adhere to the classically Marxist emphasis on use value over exchange value. They also derided German efforts to scientifically produce a new generation of urban theorists in response to recent French hegemony. The French dominated the last World Urbanism Games held in Delhi, claiming medals in all events except land use modeling.

This piece is reprinted, with permission, from Volume 22 of the Berkeley Planning Journal, a fine, upstanding publication.

2008-04-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

The Onion at its best

2008-04-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization

Rush Limbaugh, AAA and more

2008-04-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-31T19:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-31T19:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-16T15:58:00.001-08:00

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.

The Douche Bag Factor

2007-11-29T23:21:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time not long ago, I was back in Brooklyn for the first time since my glorious and triumphant return to the Golden State. As is my custom, I embarked on a grand LIC/GPT/WB stroll, starting at the 21st street F station in Long Island City and slowly meandering down and along the waterfront and through the wacky, wonderful and warping neighborhoods. I try to do the tour regularly, as all decent urbanists love toxic industrial lands inhabited by hipsters and Poles. But more than skinny jeans and bad beer, the Newtown Creek sewershed is home to some of New York's newest and most massive creative destruction and renewal - 10,000 residents will soon occupy gleaming glass and steel wonders grown out of the remnants of the once vaunted East River industrial waterfront. Where better in America to watch the marriage of global real estate capital, modernist architecture and neoliberal urban policy in action? It is live nude urbanism at its apex.

In my mission to feel and touch the shininess and to play around in the new public space that comes with it, I strolled about here and there and everywhere, fueled by the joy of an urban jaunt, the heaven that is a slice of regular and my happiness that the dirty blue cup filled with dish soap no longer holds claim to being the only coffee in the city. The towers of Long Island City are what I expected - Vancouver without the people. But when I arrived at McCarron Park, I was shocked. It was lovely. (I mean that in a technical and very professional sense of course.)

For some unknown reason, the new buildings didn't truly suck. They even gave me the little tingle that I used to get in Williamsburg B.C.M.(Before Connecticut Muffin) - that kinda guilty feeling of liking something new and hip and exciting. I quickly grabbed my cellphone to call my friend KZ, a fellow urbane planner of the Pittsburgh school and semilongtimebyhipsterstandards GPT denizen.

Me: Dude, I'm at McCarron Park. I hate to say it, but it doesn't suck.
KZ: Ah yes. But you are forgetting the Douche Bag Factor.

Fuck. She was so right. The douche bag factor. These cute little buildings that neither KZ nor I nor anyone we liked could ever afford were likely filled with far too many douche bags. And this is not just conjecture by relatively privileged middle-class white kids who chose to convert their expensive degrees into underpaying professions instead of banking - countless studies by reputable academics have found a statistically significant correlation between fancy new expensive buildings in previously working class neighborhoods that were then taken over by artists before developers smelled blood in the water and douche bags.

Unfortunately, what research we do have has been unable to find the true causal mechanisms to what is shaping up to be one of America's most vexing urban problems. It is somewhat unclear whether the new residents were full douche bags before they arrived, or whether they were transformed into douche bags upon moving into their new abodes. Is douchebagness produced by the local environment? Do the handful of non douche bag residents run the risk of becoming douche bags due to increased exposure to small dogs, overpriced handbags and DINKs? Or are douche bags somehow integral to the production of new urban space?

As cities slowly but surely rezone every inch of waterfront land for high rise condos in the hoping of luring the Richard Florida Fan Club, a massive influx of complete, utter, quasi and mega class douche bags to what may have once been somewhat interesting, gritty or real places is inevitable. Planners, researchers and local NGO's must work together to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about douche bag origins and behaviors, and to craft real strategies for mitigating the undue dominance of douche bags on redeveloped urban space.

I am appalled at the labor conditions in New York

2007-11-27T00:44:00.000-08:00

It has been a double whammy this week for my fair New York. First the Times does a stinging expose into the working conditions in the factory in West Bengal that produces many of New York City manhole covers. To think that ConEd, a company that has never been sued for electrocuting passersby would sanction such a thing is ridiculous. I mean, the whole thing about them having the worst employee safety record of 24 major utilities is so last decade, and after all, we are only talking about PCB's and asbestos.* It is not like some of that stuff gets into the water.

Now comes the story from the other side of the pond on the horrendous working conditions of some of New York's brightest minds. Columbia is desperately trying to expand north into Manhattanville, aka West Harlem. I had previously been under the mistaken belief that this was a major urban-renewal style land grab by one of the most powerful and largest land owners in the city. I know now the truth. Our laureates are suffering.

"This is vital to the future of the university," said Warren Whitlock, one of the directors of the Columbia project. "Space is at a premium in this university. The way things are now we are asking Nobel laureates to work in antiquated facilities."** This is unacceptable. The very idea of all eight of those guys cramped together like they are on just a handful of acres on top of a hill is killing me. What will happen if Bhagwati or Sachs win?

The situation is truly grim. I used to worry about the University's long history of neglecting is poorer and more African American neighbors, including the famous proposal to build a private gym in a public park and allow locals to use the side door (Gym Crow, anyone?), about its direct role in removing low income tenants in the neighborhood by buying old rent-regulated buildings and SRO hotels and converting them to dorms, or its recent threat to use eminent domain to seize 400 homes. But now that I know they have half the space of Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and that Stiglitz doesn't have a good view, I have changed my mind. It helps that none other than the eminent urbanist Kenneth Jackson provides some comfort in that very same Guardian article. "What we are talking about is change. Manhattan is changing and when that happens somebody loses out."*** Thanks Ken. I feel much better now.

Fortunately, our urban designers have come up with a solution. New York's brave civic leaders are boldly rezoning the west side of Manhattan, and the designs look wonderfully devoid of Frank Gehry. Plus, it is clear that they are prioritizing the needs of average New Yorkers and key principals of good urban planning and bold design over the economic interests of corporate tenants. I mean, towers and parks worked for Corbu and Moses, why can't it work now?****

With the uncertainty in both the national economy and the real estate market, New York's civic leaders should make space for both Columbia's poor laureates and a unionized manhole foundry in the new west side. Mixed-use is important, and what could be more mixed-use than industrial, educational and residential all in one? Columbia students could get baked and watch the metal pours, the university could start minting Nobelniks and never run out of space, la gran manzana's peoplehole covers could be stamped "Made in New York Fucking City" and Columbia would have an entirely new and exciting neighborhood to shit all over. I know that the residents of West Harlem would be sad about the change in plans, but they'd recover.

*Wald, Matthew L., "Acknowledging Mistakes, Con Ed Takes Steps to Mend Its Ways," New York Times, December 11, 1994
** Pilkington, Ed, "Harlem takes on university in battle of town versus gown: Residents object to plans to turn black neighbourhood into 'Manhattanville'," The Guardian, November 20, 2007
*** ibid.
****Ouroussoff, Nicolai, "In Plans for Railyards, a Mix of Towers and Parks," New York Times, Nov 24, 2007

War between transportation, community development planners enters its fifth day

2007-11-12T01:22:00.000-08:00

Loud shouting, flying acronyms and rampant gesticulation marked the fifth day of internecine clashes between transportation and community development planners, sources tell Saturbia. Although there we no reports of injuries, feelings were hurt on both sides, and a transportation demand model was shattered during a heated battle early yesterday morning.

Fighting began late Wednesday after a community development planner accused his transport colleagues of being the “white people of planning”. “They control the vast majority of the money, have huge numbers of students, and seem to grow more popular by the day,” stated the disgruntled CD’er. “If we had that kind of money, think of the community meetings we could hold.”

A spokesperson for transport was unabashed in his rebuttal. “You try getting anywhere without transport. Transportation is pretty much everything. BRT rules!” He went on to state that transportation planners do not have nearly as bad of style as is commonly believed. “Many of us are very snazzy dressers, despite the number of engineers in our ranks. In fact, we give them special training in proper style once they decide to work with us.”

Both sides have been fighting for the hearts and minds of the economic development and environmental planners, who despite their name have little control over either the money or the planet. The housing community has been split, with those interested in TOD siding with transport, while the shared-equity/inclusionary zoning/land trusters seem to be leaning towards their CD comrades. Some outside commentators say that the diverted attention of the housing planners on Thursday allowed Toll Brothers to cover the entire state of Rhode Island with faux-colonial McMansions. The land use planners just keep making nice GIS maps with lots of pretty colors, while the urban designers were unavailable for comment due to an emergency planter and bollard shortage in Kazakhstan.

In an attempt to gain a critical toehold on contested territory, the CD’ers occupied the computer lab, even though most do not know how to use them. Sounds of kumbaya could be heard coming from the lab overnight, and police who retook the lab in the morning report that the computers had all been turned into easels for the mountains of flip chart paper that now littered the floor.

An urban theorist, interviewed between cigarettes while standing outside the main building, surmised that “it was really quite pathetic how neither group could recognize the overarching grid of neo-liberal discipline enshrining both sides in a web of postcolonial strategies, and what they took to be tactics of liberation were really manifestations of the (re)productive capacity of postcapitalist space. Honestly, the problem is epistemological and ontological - they are both fucked.”

There was some hope of reconciliation yesterday, when both sides came to an agreement that Randall O’Toole was a jackass. A group of collaborative planners attempted to put together a mediation plan late Saturday, but plans were called off after a spate of violence. Witnesses report that one of their group attempted to step in between the warring parties to inform them that their problem was that they each lacked a BATNA, and was summarily beaten by both sides.

Randall O'Toole has converted me

2007-11-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my wonderful friends at Planetizen, I have been introduced recently to the messiah of urbanity, Randy O'Toole, and his blog the antiplanner. I have somehow been mislead all these years (probably due to reading too much and spending too much time working and in school), that I have somehow not realized how evil planning truly is.

Randy tells us that most people want a single family home, and that not only is this ok, but it is the proper American way to live. High-density housing may have nice views, good transit access and interesting neighbors, but who in their right mind would want that? I mean, look at all those empty apartment buildings in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, London, Seattle, Vancouver, Portland (I could go on and on about these hell holes). The demand is just not there.

More importantly, contrary to what you may believe if you have been reading too much Kropotkin, it is planning that is theft - property is sacred. You should see the pretty picture of a tulip farm that he uses to commemorate all we have lost to planning over the years. He asks the wise question, "Who should get to decide how this land is used — the owner or the government?" Certainly not the farm workers in the background of the picture. I mean, most of us who own large tracks of land have them because God wants us too or we inherited them. And don't even think of calling farm subsidies or the mortgage income tax deduction a form of planning - as Jules Winnfield once said, a public process of long range thinking and billions of dollars in handouts ain't the same damn muthafucking thing.

But perhaps Randy's biggest gift has been to finally allow me to embrace my car. I have been taking the bus to work and school of late, and I realize how much I miss spending money on gas, looking for parking, and getting regular tickets. I mean, why haven't I been able to admit that my quasi-urban lifestyle is a sham? Who am I trying to be, some sort of eurotrash urbanite?

I love you Randy for showing us/me the light. Do I have to stop reading Planetizen now?

2nd Rate Urbanism

2007-11-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

This piece was originally published in MONU - Magazine on Urbanism, a wonderful newish, Germanish magazine. I recommend the .pdf version, as it has cool circles.....

They say that it takes one to know one, and when it comes to second rate urbanism, it helps to hire a 3rd rate urbanist. If there is anything this armchair quarterback knows, it is that each and every city, no matter how great, has second-rate places. Perhaps the difference between the A-list cities and the D-list disasters is merely the quantity of top-notch space – places that inspire, awe, entrance, and move. That and the food.

As a planner, the question in many ways is not what constitutes second rate urbanism, but rather what produces it? How have we taken hundreds of years of urban knowledge and harnessed it to create utter mediocrity? In my vain attempt to morph into the love child of Peter Marcuse, Jane Jacobs and Bill Simmons, I happily present some key ideas of how to make your city the mecca of secondrate urbanism:

1. Make sure that transit stops at midnight, and preferably runs on 15 or 20 minute headways the rest of the time. Nothing makes a place vibrant and diverse like round the clock transit, and vibrancy and diversity are the enemy of 2nd rate. If you have ever been packed like sardines on an uptown 2 train at 3:30 in the morning in New York City, you will understand how it is the hours of the transit system and not merely the physical infrastructure that is the backbone of its glorious urban fabric. Round the clock transit allows people to carve out interstitial spaces within the city, allowing more room for more lifestyles, jobs, circadian rhythm’s and opportunities, an utter necessity in a dense environment. Much better to shut down transit early, and make it run every half hour past 7pm.

2. Don’t plan for sidewalks, bike lanes or pedestrians. Only poor people, hippies and Europeans ride bikes, and walking is likely to cause seriously harmful exposure to UV rays. Real Americans drive places, as it is our right and duty and contributes to our economic expansion. Those other things undermine our way of life, contribute to prostate pain, and destroy the beauty of a perfectly smooth traffic pattern.

3. Make the city more affordable to dogs than to children. Nothing ruins a good city like children – they are loud, noisy and don’t have the purchasing power of a pooch. Better to become like my native metropolis, San Francisco, where dogs now outnumber children and where the school district is losing 1000 kids per years. (1) Schools are so expensive to run, but the new luxury dog hotels with flat-screen TV’s contribute to the tax base, and the rooftop dog cocktail parties just scream “This is my kind of city!” Dogs don’t tag up our storefronts at night, and now their waste is being turned into a source of alternative energy. Hell, U.S. pet owners in general spent $38.5 billion on their ersatz offspring in 2006, which is only $17.5 billion shy of the national education budget. Especially with the rising power of dog owners - DOGPAC is a rising player in San Francisco politics and “posing with dogs has become the equivalent of kissing babies” - this gross disparity should soon be a thing of the past. (2) Who needs good schools and affordable housing is everyone is a DINK with a dog?

4. Eliminate flea markets, street vendors, sidewalk fairs and anything else that interferes with efficient movement or otherwise reduces sales in chain stores. Urbanism is not about providing opportunity for budding entrepreneurs, a delicious bite to eat for 4 bucks, or colorful places where you can buy an African drum and then play it in a drumming circle right away. That kind of garbage would never happen in a proper shopping mall. How could you possibly make a wise consumer decision without air conditioning and florescent light? Why would you want to clutter up the sidewalk with humans beings? This type of unplanned, spontaneous human activity is anathema to the second rate and should either be banned or taxed into oblivion.

5. D o n ’ t even consider things like rent control, inclusionary zoning, industrial retention, or community land trusts. Policies like these help maintain economic diversity, which means that poor people and people of color may actually be able to maintain some sort of right to the city. Better to allow the geography of poverty to completely invert, creating a fortress of wealth at the urban core and glaring poverty on the fringes. What could possibly be second rate about an urban environment where the man washing the plates at your new brasserie can actually afford to live there?

6. M a k e every old industrial city just like Emeryville, California. Rezone all of your industrial land for big box stores, biotech and condos, make all public space corporate, and work to siphon off retail dollars from nearby major cities. If you really want second rate perfection, make corporations more important citizens than people – they are far more orderly and have nice logos that help structure public space. Don’t spend any of your tax windfall on affordable housing or improving your schools, as that may bring in more people that can vote, thereby diluting the power of your true citizens. Thankfully, this recommendation is being taken to heart, as you would be hard pressed to find an economic development director or planning consultant in the western United States who has not been to Emeryville and who doesn’t keep pictures of pretty lofts in their powerpoint portfolio.

7. E n f o r c e open container laws religiously. Thankfully, gringolandia was founded by Puritans, so most cities in the US already have strong open container laws and are wise to spend precious resources on sending men and women with bullet-proof vests walking through parks to make sure your paper bag only contains high-fructose corn syrup. Drinking a beer in the park on a hot day in the summer is completely uncivilized and not even really that much fun – look at horrible places like Rio and New Orleans – who would want that? If you are going to serve beer, make sure to pen all the drinkers into a confined space with police barricades, bar children (it is always a good idea to force people to choose between drinking and bringing the kids), and make people feel like the heathens they are for possibly wanting to consume alcohol in public.

As the pursuit of second-rate is never truly complete, one could continue – for example, faux vintage and pastel colors make wonderfully second-rate places. Yet part of the joy in our work is how many ways we have of truly turning the awfully vibrant into the wonderfully mundane. There is no reason to settle for diversity, spontaneity, good design, accessibility or energy in a place. Not only is the dream of a 2nd rate urban world possible, we may just see it happen in our lifetime.

Notes:
(1) Meredith May, “S.F.’S BEST FRIEND: Where pooches outnumber kids, impassioned,
doting owners and hounds dressed to the canines treat all days like
dog days,” San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, June 17, 2007
(2) Ibid.

Welcome

2007-11-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

Are you the love child of Jane Jacobs and Sarah Silverman? Are you hoping to be reincarnated as a cross between Manuel Castells and Woody Allen? Do you dream of a planning and development book written by the Onion? Have you ever come close to doing stand-up at a zoning board meeting?

The perhaps this is the blog for you. Starting today, November third, two thousand seven, I am going to attempt to gather all that is funny about cities, urbanism, planning and development in one place. So please, send me your satire, your humor, your links to all that is witty about urbane planning and armchair urbanism.

Viva la internet. Alex