Quote of the Day

"The City, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Make A Decision

A great interview with Will Smith about making a choice and making a decision. I decided to post this because in my profession of City Planning, I am confronted with making decisions on a daily basis.

Sometimes these decisions are tough, we are talking about planning people's livelihoods and as planners we can get bogged down in making a decision. We want to build consensus, adhere to our policies, make new precedents, match existing patterns and take in all these factors that make us contradict and second guess our choices. But sometimes we just have to make the decision with the best information that we have at that time.

That's why this interview really resonates with me. "Just Decide! What is going to be, who you're going to be, how you're going to do it..." To me this applies, to city planners, communities, everyone involved in a community. Too many times, communities only see what they do not want to be and never decide on what they do want to be. If only everyone could take this philosophy our communities would be much better places to live in.

Another point that Will made that resonated with me is that by making a decision, we have the power to control our fate instead of feeling like there are other powers that are always affecting how you, feel, think and respond.

I read a great article once in undergrad about processes versus objects. Basically the article stated that everything we do in our community is a process and not an object that can only be moved slowly. Processes can change by altering outcomes, objects are things that are blocking movement. So an issue like failing schools, is a process, blight, is a process, unemployment is a process. If we change the process of that are bringing ill conditions into a community, we can change the outcomes of those people living in that community.

But in order to change that process we have to view ill social conditions as objects and view them as processes that can change if we choose to change the formula of the equation that produces bad outcomes. But in order to do that we have to DECIDE what we want to be. Once we know the outcome, we can make the equation be whatever we want it to be to produce the results we want. "Two plus two is whatever I wanted to be" is what Will stated in the interview.

And we get to those outcomes by making a choice and making a decision, to quote again, "Just Decide! What is going to be, who you're going to be, how you're going to do it..."

Quote of the Day

"Yes, cities have souls - and Philadelphia, despite our rough-and-tumble veneer- has a sensitive soul within. Our sense of self as a city - as Philadelphians - is defined by intangibles. By the size of our streets and the dirt under our feet. By the crowning heights of our skyscrapers and the tattered edges of our former industrial glory. By the food truck and the sidewalk café.

Cities are ephemeral collectives of the best and worst of man, housing homages to civilization in our great temples of art and culture and barely housing the homeless lying on the sidewalks. Cities are places of contradiction and tension as much as places of change and choice."

From the January 28th Philadelphia Daily News article called "Saving the City's Historic Soul"
To read the entire article, click here.

Quote of the day

"Hip-Hop is not just a mirror of what is, it should be a mirror of what can be. A lot of people say, ‘I want to be real. I want to be down.' Then we’re just trapped in 'What is.' Imagine something different. Imagine communities that aren’t torn up by violence. Imagine that we’re respecting our women. Imagine communities where knowledge and reading and academic excellence are valued, communities where fathers are doing right by their kids. Art can’t just be a rearview mirror. It should have a headlight on there pointing to where we need to go."

- Barack Obama

For the rest of the article, click here.

Great Planning Quotes

Here's the link:
http://www.aboutplanning.org/quotes.html

But let's start with the very first quote on City Planning by Horace Bushnell:

Considering the immense importance of a right location, and a right planning for cities, no step should ever be taken by the parties concerned, without employing some person who is qualifies by a special culture, to assist and direct. Our engineers are trained for a very different kind of service, and are partially disqualified for this by the habit of a study more strictly linear, more rigidly scientific, and less artistic. The qualifications of surveyors are commonly more meagre still...Nothing is more to be regretted, in this view, than that the American nation, having a new world to make, and clean map on which to place it, should be sacrificing their advantage so cheaply, in the extempore planning of towns and cities. The peoples of the old world have their cities built for times gone by, when railroads and gunpowder were unknown. We can have cities for the new age that has come, adopted to its better conditions and ornament. So great an advantage ought not to be thrown away. We want, therefore, a city planning profession..."

Horace Bushnell
"City Plans" 1864

So check out the quotes from the link above and leave a comment about your favorite planning quote.