Why We Need A ‘Neil deGrasse Tyson’ of Urban Planning

[M II A II R II K]

Why We Need A ‘Neil deGrasse Tyson’ of Urban Planning


April 23, 2014

By Patrick McDonnell

Read More: https://medium.com/urban-design-and-...g/22ad0e7a334d

.....

How many well known Urban Planners can you name off the top of your head? I’m an Urban Planner, and I can’t even name five. Not because I don’t know any, because urban planning is about as sexy as fountain maintenance — no offense to fountain maintenance workers.

- Of course, there are iconic planners that we all know. But they’re all dead, well, they live in our hearts, but they’re not contributing to making urban planning cool at the moment. And today’s planners? We aren’t really helping ourselves out when it comes to action, excitement, adventure, danger, imagination or creativity. We’re boring people. Boring! --- We live in a world where mainstream urban planning is Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball and Kanye West dropping in on Harvard Graduate School of Design.

- I was watching Amanda Burden’s TED Talk about How public spaces make cities — just in case you don’t know Amanda, she’s the planner who spent the better part of a decade securing up all the rights to the elevated rail-road that would become the High Line in New York. I know, game-changing shit!— it occurred to me, this lady has spent 25-years of her life changing New York City on the Planning Commission and as the Director of the Department of City Planning and most people will only get to know her awesomeness through a TED talk.

- What if we got endorsement deals from Energizer to build city infrastructure or sponsorships from Bern and Linus to ride their bikes everywhere? Urban planners are hidden away. We stay locked up behind cubicles talking about GIS (Geographical Information Systems), mapping shit, and making sure that the citizens are complying with invisible codes and ordinances. Now for some that may be fun. Me, I’m not buying it. --- The way I look at it, we have entire cities to play in — they are our playgrounds. They are full of wonder and just as epic as the cosmos.

- Planners. Help me and the rest of the urban planning community to stop being boring! Loose the suits and ties and jargony language. You can still write your books, go on Charlie Rose, and hold esoteric conferences. But also go on Jimmy Fallon, take selfies with Obama, have someone make a few memes or gifs of you, co-host a podcast with Joe Rogan, and if you can get a muppet made of you…eff, I’ll wear a t-shirt with your face on it.

.....

[ue]

How many well known Urban Planners can you name off the top of your head?

Jane Jacobs? She seems to be the central figure to post-war urban planning and although not famous by any means, is certainly well known in many circles.

[Gresto]

Jacobs is dead, so she clearly cannot take an activist role. Wasn't Richard Florida all the rage, or has he fallen out of favour?

[ue]

Why does this hypothetical figure have to be alive to be considered relevant? People still read Shakespeare and listen to the Beatles.

[Reverberation]

Ok, you have convinced me, I'll do it. Let me know when I can start.

[SHOFEAR]

Anybody every hear of Jim Heid from Urban Green? I got the chance to see him at a development industry conference last year.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by ue

Why does this hypothetical figure have to be alive to be considered relevant? People still read Shakespeare and listen to the Beatles.

A dead person can't be an active figurehead of something that is ongoing. Shakespeare and the Beatles are still popular and their influence can still be felt on music and literature, but they certainly aren't furthering their mediums any longer. To bring it back to science, the work of great scientists like Isaac Newton and Nicola Tesla are similarly still relevant and provided the basis for much of what we know today, but they don't have any involvement in new discoveries - and most definitely cannot star in popular television series to bring science to the masses.


Going back to the original point - we can never have a "Neil de Grasse Tyson of urban planning" because there's no singular vision as to what "urban planning" is or should strive to be. Its more ideological than it is scientific.

[mrnyc]

well there are a lot of plutos that need to be thrown out of urban planning - efis, lifestyle malls, fritted glass, mesh facades, etc., so yeah the field could use one.

[Cirrus]

In the 1990s we had the New Urbanists. Duany in the east and Calthorpe in the west, plus Kunstler on the book circuit. They were pretty big, but their role has diminished a lot since the rebirth of central cities.

Jeff Speck is about the closest we've got to that in a book author now, although I'd say the biggest planning rock stars these days are more likely the really progressive big city DOT bosses, Janette Sadik-Khan in particular and Gabe Klein to a lesser extent (neither of whom are DOT bosses anymore). But none of them have begun to breach the mass consciousness even as much as Kunstler did, IMO.

[MonkeyRonin]

Going back to the Neil de Grasse Tyson connection, it would be cool - and a boon to American urbanity - if there were an entertaining, big budget educational show about cities on prime time television. Something sort of to urbanity what Cosmos is to science. Not a literal recreation of that in an urban planning format, but something that would generally engage and inspire a knowledge of and interest in cities. Which, contrary to what I said earlier, was probably the main thing to take away from this.

[brickell]

This guy's (Tom Hylton) documentary is what turned me from an antidevelopment environmentalist to an urbanist.
http://www.saveourlandsaveourtowns.org/video.html

The video is probably 20 years old by know though but I'm going to nominate him anyway.

[mhays]

Cities have my attention and deep interest, but outer space and the likelihood of life elsewhere have my fascination, preferably in small, easily-digestible doses.

I suspect that for most people, cities are something they live in, care about, and bitch about but lacking the fascination and even the deep interest to be a popular TV show.

The desire to have TV or movies cover one's area of interest or industry seems endless these days. Much of this is for recruitment. Cosmos is probably helping students choose science. Cooking shows are flooding cooking schools with students paying $50,000 to minimally boost their employability for $30,000 careers. The construction community has wished for a "Top Gun" to help in recruitment since recruitment is difficult despite the good pay.