Urban Planning

 Still on my mission to review thinking about urban planning since our legislature made such of an issue this time around. One thing that emerged to, perhaps, focus our attention. That is the new realization that there is more to urban planning than bike paths, pickleball courts, and roundabouts.

Now I'm Re-reading "Design With Nature" by Ian McHarg. The result? Reading it at my age makes me wish I had paid more attention when I read it in my 20s. For example, he wrote:

"Show me a man-oriented society in which it is believed that reality exists only because mean can perceive it, that the cosmos is a structure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is divine and given domination over all things, indeed that God is made in the image of man, and I well predict the nature of its cities and their landscapes. I need not look far, for we have seen them—the hot dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and mined landscapes. This is the image of the anthropomorphic anthropocentric man; he seeks not unity with nature but conquest. Yet unity he finally finds, but only when this arrogance and ignorance are stilled and he lies dead under the greensward. We need this unity to survive."

Hard to argue with that.