The thing that I don’t understand about this Jacob Anbinder piece about urban planning post-pandemic (via Aaron Michael Brown) is that he criticizes both planners for self-importance and the destruction of neighborhoods and public participation processes and things like “environmental review requirements” for blocking progress, yet says that planners should reassert their authority. What am I missing here? Was there some golden age of urban planning that didn’t also destroy neighborhoods, and usually Black ones? There doesn’t seem to be any illustration of how to reassert planning authority minus the abuses. He derides urban planners for thinking of themselves as “medicine men” but then exhibits nothing so much as his own magical thinking that planners reasserting themselves somehow will just be different this time.
Bix dot Blog
The unsupported use case of Bix Frankonis’ disordered, surplus, mediocre midlife in St. Johns, Oregon.
No fear, no hate, no thoughtless bullshit, and no nazis.