THE ELDERLY PLANNER

 Notes From The Elderly Planner: Walking with the young dog who rescued us and now manages our house, I thought about some ideas that young urban planners have. Some involve parking automobiles. They’re “agin” it. Some suggest if we eliminate parking requirements, world peace will descend upon us. I’m not so sure.

Truth is, cities do often over-require commercial parking. That’s a topic for another day. Today I’m stuck on residential parking.

On each day’s walk, we often have to take to the street because a car, actually usually a pickup truck, sits athwartships to the sidewalk (when there is one.) This is one of those problems that didn’t plague us so badly 50 years ago. Why? One reason is that people had more concern for their neighbors 50 years ago. Another is that a modern middle or upper middle-class family now with two teenagers may possess four automobiles and a hunting jeep. Visitors usually come in cars.

As Mayor Furlow Thompson of Pot Luck, Arkansas says, “Where the hell you gonna put ‘em?”

It's gonna get worse. Our state just passed a law that requires allowing accessory dwelling units in all residential districts (good idea) but prohibits cities from requiring parking for those extra units (what the hell were they thinking?) Somehow, things will work out. It’s called “pixie dust planning.” That’s the same thinking that allows if we build enough trails, people will walk or ride bikes to work. (Today here: 95 degrees F and 97 percent humidity.)

As Ernest Hemingway said (not about urban planning but it often fits) “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

THE ELDERLY PLANNER

 Notes from The Elderly Planner: Years ago, many years ago, I was present at a public meeting in my hometown. The room was packed. I forget what the original topic was, but the discussion turned to affordable housing, back then called "decent, safe, and sanitary" housing.

As public input progressed, a woman in her late 20s, known about town as a "neo-hippie" rose at one point and said, "I don't think anyone should profit from providing an essential human need like housing."

Everyone in the room laughed. I'm sure I did. With each passing year, I have found the statement less funny.

URBAN PLANNING

TRANSPORTATION 

More on my current readings on urban planning. Writer and planner Lewis Mumford once observed that transportation is simply a tool. It can be used to transfer goods from the farm or manufacturer to seller to buyer. It can be used to connect areas of commerce and trade and to connect cities for mutual benefit. It can be used for leisure, entertainment, and education.

Not so much these days

These days it is used to a great extent to support the exponential growth of entities that profit from its existence, primarily the automobile industry and the businesses that profit from highway and bridge construction or the production of fossil fuels.

It allows parents to choose the type children with whom their children will attend school.

It provides frontage and access for business, no longer neighborhood ones but city and regionally oriented chains and mega-facilities.

It is now a winding, slithering monster that controls our lives with scant regard for serving the overall public good.

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.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 STRUGGLES

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once wrote an interesting piece about working hard at something you’re not good at. The idea is counterintuitive, contrary to what some great thinkers said. Joseph Campbell, for example, wrote that we should follow our bliss. Shouldn't we concentrate on what energy and talents we have in areas of our strengths and talents?

 It makes me think of my own life. Are there examples therein?

 I once tried architecture. I was horrible at it, but I learned that fitting an idea to its setting was not only sublime, but functional. I learned lessons about such ideas as articulation, modulation, balance, and form that can relate to almost all professional endeavors. I also become an emotional companion to some of the most wonderful expressions of creativity ever imagined by humans. To follow our bliss, mustn't we first have to determine what bliss is?

I tried sports and was terrible at it. But I learned that it’s okay to be knocked down and lose as long as you get up and keep going. I learned that fear is transitory if you will it so.

I tried music and was terrible at it. But I learned that to strive to get a little better at something each day is of more value than seeking to be an overnight success. I learned that prodigies aren't good teachers. Prodigies say, "Just do it. That's what I do. That's all there is to it." The good teachers are the ones who have struggled to become good at it and are best friends with hard work. And, of course, I learned that nothing can heal like music.

What was I ever good at? I don’t know. Not much I guess, except picking friends and finding a wife. Oh, and I learned that one way to be successful in a profession is to be willing to do the things that others don't like to do. Usually these are things that it is hard for anyone to be good at. In my profession, it also involves the ability to see the good and beauty of places that history has treated unfairly, places most people find deplorable, places where people must pick themselves up and continue the struggle.

Memories of a walk

Thoughts on a quiet, thankful morning.

It has been a long time since I stood on the quarterdeck of the old USS Hunley, saluted The Flag, and requested to go ashore for the last time. I remember it well. I fully intended to head west, stop in my home town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and proceed to San Francisco, California where I lived when the Draft Board closed in on me. I was lived at 1016 Masonic Street, a half-block from Haight and two blocks from Ashbury. I thought it would be fun to go back.

It didn’t work out that way. My mother had a nephew. The nephew had a job with the city. At the job, he had a co-worker. The co-worker knew a couple of guys in Little Rock who had just started an urban planning firm. A 47-year marriage, a master’s degree, certification as an urban planner, and maybe 1,000 planning commission/city council meetings later I now look forward to completing my 50^th year in the profession.

Looking forward to it, I took a walk from my first lodging place at Fifth (Capitol) and State streets and recalled the city as I first found it.

In those days, I walked to my job in the Hall Building at Fifth and Louisiana streets. Looking that way, one could see two new high-rise buildings, named after two major banks, the Commercial, and Worthen. North of them was the Tower Building, one the first high-rises in the South. I developed from an urban renewal project wherein cities purchased sites in “blighted” areas and sold the land to private developers for redevelopment. It’s doubtful that such practices would go unnoticed these days.

Looking west, toward the State Capitol, one could see one of the last boarding houses in the state. It’s long been florist shop. There’s talk these days, though, that boarding-house type units, now called “Short-term rentals,” will re-emerge as a solution to the affordable housing crisis.

My colleagues at work struggled with the idea that I walked there each morning. They had never heard of such things. I found it both healthy and interesting. I particularly enjoyed walking past a local bakery and smelling the morning’s work. On the outside wall was a patch where a window once allowed view inside. There, legendary sportscaster Benny (“It doesn’t cost and extra cent to be a good sport.”) Craig would re-enact Traveler baseball games over the radio, using a tiny bat to make the sound of a hit, pop-up, or foul. We seem to need more extravagant entertainment these days.

I'll finish the walk later. Must go be more actively thankful now.

These days.

Hope

I often visit cities with major problems. Some are apparent, some aren’t. Some appeared with the mechanization of farming. Some appeared a hundred years earlier when we used the so-called “Black Laws” to systematize the disenfranchisement of former slaves. Some appeared with the opening of the Interstate Highway system. Some appeared with the Swan Decision on April 20, 1971, in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously upheld busing programs that aimed to speed up the racial integration of public schools in the United States. Some appeared when guns and drugs became the two products in America most easily acquired by the poor and hopeless. Some won’t become fully known until the Interstate Highway system becomes a vast parking lot covering the entire nation. (Casual observation suggests no more than ten years hence.) Some won’t appear until we see the psychological effects of children growing up in what I call “gated cities,” in which society shields them from any human that isn’t a mirror image.

I visit them all. I observe that the rain falls on the lucky and the unlucky.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m no genius. I can’t solve the problems generated by the foregoing causes, and others I didn’t mention. I can’t wave an academic voodoo-dust over a city and remove these problems. I can’t offer them a “bright-line” solution. I can’t promise them a magical prosperity just around the corner. I can’t say, “This too shall pass,” when I’m not sure it will.

What I can do is tp not insult, degrade, and humiliate them. What I can do is to not tell them that the problems are their fault and compare them to a third-world country. What I can do is offer them some ray of hope. What I can do is offer them, based on my experience and education, a path toward solutions that may help. At the same time, I might help lead them away from solutions that don’t work like those of the so-called urban designers who are telling them that planting trees on Main Street will bring back the retailers. They resemble the “cargo cult” natives of the South Sea islands who believed that making replicas of bombers would bring the Americans and their largess back to their islands after World War Two.

What I might do best is offer them the words of the Galilean in the 25^th Chapter of Matthew in the Christian New Testament:

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

If the Galilean heard what the President of the United States of America said to the people of Chicago, Illinois yesterday, I feel sure he— the Galileanؙ—wept again. Maybe we’ve lost account of what is just and holy. Maybe all of our urban problems began occurring the moment we began to care more about a person’s sexual orientation than about the young child in dirty diapers sitting on a front porch in the Arkansas Delta, hungry, hopeless, and weeping for all of us, both the just and the unjust.

Regrets

Feeling old today. It happens sometimes. This week, an old friend in the urban planning profession died, unexpectedly they say. Ron Newman was his name, and he was an extraordinarily fine person. I happen to be blessed that way with friends and colleagues. Among other professional accomplishments, Ron was the director of the Capitol Zoning District office. It enforced a state law designed to protect the Arkansas State Capitol grounds and the Governor’s Mansion from being overwhelmed by tall, tawdry buildings and incompatible, i.e. crappy, land uses. That law was passed back when lawmakers cared about such things.

I served on the Mansion Area advisory committee, so Ron and I worked closely for a number of years. It’s good to work with good people. Ron and his wife moved to Colorado years ago and I’ve only seen him once, I think, since. Hearing of his death made me feel sad, old, and mortal. I'm glad I knew him, and regret I didn't see him more often.

Speaking of feeling old, you should have seen me yesterday. Once a year or so, I have to climb a ladder and remove leaves and debris from the gutters on a shop building at our farm. The cornice is 12 feet off the ground and it takes a few steps to get within reach of the gutters. The building is 60 feet long and I have a total reach of about a “phantom.” That’s about six nautical feet, or the length of a fathom according to my beloved United States Navy.

If my “gazintas” and “timeses” bear trusting, that’s about 10 trips up and down the ladder. I know that my wife and others think that I’m just turning 50, but that’s not true. My muscles and joints can attest to that this morning with perfect certainty.

I did buy a new ladder this year. It’s fiberglass, aluminum, rustproof, and much more stable than the relic I used previously. It’s one heavy summich, though. My shoulders can testify.

Oh well. As long as I’m climbing ladders, I’m on the right side of the grass, so they say. My Sainted Mother always said, “a little hard work never hurt nobody.” She well knew about hard work. She once told me how, as a young girl, she would pick to the end of a cotton row and sneak a short break while nobody was looking. While “being excused,” she would dream of finding a shiny new lady’s wristwatch lying on the grass.

I guess regrets are just nature’s way of telling us things are going to be okay as long as you have hope.

R.I.P old friend.
 The world is a better
place because
 you were here.

Complexity

I don’t think this is classified. Even if it is, I’ll share it anyway. How could they prosecute me for breaking my Oath of Enlistment while Cadet Bone Spurs and pals daily violate their Oath of Office? Besides, I plan to make a professional point to fellow urban planners and students of public administration.

It starts this way: I possess certain information that I wish to pass along to those who never experienced the blessings of military service. It can be a hoot at times. Not so much so at others. But one learns things.

What I plan to divulge is this: There used to be, when I served my country, an approved military method of treating an infestation of crabs in the pubic area. It specified that one first shave half of said pubic area, leaving the other half bare.

Now we come to the useful part. I’m not sure this is still doctrine. I don’t think the U.S. Navy is as manly as it used to be. Anyway, having shaved half the infested area, one then applies cigarette-lighter fluid to the other half and sets it afire. The terrified crabs flee into the shaved area whereupon the subject stabs them to death with a sharp icepick. There, call me a whistle-blower if you wish.

You might ask, “ What’s the point? Okay keep up.

Fast-forward to modern times. This is exactly the method that many cities use in writing their zoning regulations. And the writers wonder why there is such screaming during the application of those regulations.

It extends to the state regulation writers as well. And the feds have fully-automatic icepicks that can deliver 60 strikes a minute. Have you ever read the U.S. Tax Code? It’s harder to read than some zoning codes. I once read the instructions for taking out money from your IRA. If I remember correctly, it was twelve pages of tiny-font gibberish.

And there are zoning codes that take four paragraphs to tell you where the front-yard setback line runs, an odd fact because front yard setbacks are a bit anachronistic in today’s world. The problem in deciding where they go stems from what to call the front of the house. See, there are overhangs, cornices, foundation extension, front porches, bay windows, and oh, my head is spinning.

And so we go. We no longer address problems with a “Hey kids, let’s put on a show.” Now it’s “Hey kids, let’s complicate the hell out of anything we can find.”

And we wonder why kids stare at their cell phones all day.

Being Young

Don’t know why, but I do. I have this pathological inability to say no. My pal Rob Middleton has the same malady, so we both spend a lot of time doing pro bono stuff for our professions. So … nearly a year ago, I acquiesced to a request from an assistant professor at Missouri State University in Springfield to speak to a class in geography/planning.

Of course, I forgotten all about it until an email reminded me that it was to be October 20 (yesterday) and in Mt. View, Arkansas at 11:30. That would put me there the day after a 12-hour bus tour to the sites of the Battle of Helena in 1863 and the following Little Rock Campaign. For those who may not know, that's from far SE Arkansas to far N Arkansas.

Jimmie wept.

But, things started getting better immediately. The World’s Best Travelling Companion, who, herself had just returned from a three-day “girls only” jaunt to NW Arkansas offered to accompany me. We hastily worked out the arrangements.

Things continued to get better when it turned out to be a beautiful Arkansas Fall Day. Traffic was slight and we talked away during the two-hour trip. Got there a little early and parked on the square by the Courthouse, our agreed upon rendezvous point.

I was feeling better by then, due somewhat to memories of escaping from college for a Saturday evenings of folk music with Jimmie Driftwood and crowd on the Courthouse lawn and, much later, afternoons spend picking the banjo in jam sessions with total strangers.

Have I ever mentioned that I love visiting with young folks who want to learn? Well, the group showed, we found a shady pavilion, and I told them about small town planning in Arkansas, to-wit, there ain’t none except what the Arkansas Chapter of our planning association, in conjunction with the Arkansas Political Action Coalition, and the Arkansas Municipal League furnishes.

They were fine folks, these students. They knew about the federal land grants to veterans of the War of 1812 that resulted in the settling of much of the land in North Arkansas. They knew about the great Ian McHarg, the father of GIS, and other things of note and interest. They knew about the relationship between planning and regulating. It always amazes me that, if one gets off social media and talks to actual living, breathing college students, our country’s future looks a lot brighter.

I smiled and had a ball.

After they left, we strolled around, my best pal and I. Went inside a few places that were open purchased some items of course, found a nice Mexican Restaurant, and dined.

I had forgotten how beautiful it is in and around Mountain View. We plan to go back.

Dr. Evans and part of her group.

Growth

I enjoy my profession of urban planning. That’s why I still dabble in it and try to stay somewhat informed. As part of this dabbling, I get to travel all over the state and visit any city that invites me. Each is different. Some problems are typical. Some are unique. The folks who run the cities and operate them are uniformly dedicated.

There is one common characteristic, however. Without fail, every city I visit is, at this very moment, chasing development away to other cities because of its onerous development regulations. This, in turn, is stifling population growth, making the city stagnant, and killing morale. These regulations include zoning codes, subdivision codes, and the state building code, i.e. The Arkansas State Fire Code. Actually, the last one is a state law, but “scolders” hate being burdened with facts.

Those regulations, by the way, are mandated, by ancient law, to “protect the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the community. Would that federal laws enjoyed the same strictures.

Anyhow, I decided to do an amateurish and simple study about this. I formed an operational definition of onerous regulations. Were they complex? Were they very detailed? Did observance result in delays in approval. Did some regs drift beyond the “police power” definition of protecting the health, safety, welfare, and morals of The People? Were some regulations unique to a particular city? In short, did their regulatory system “jump the fence” at times?

Then I went to work. I classified a sampling of major cities against a “ratio” level of measurement. That’s considered the most useful. For snorts and giggles, I factored in population growth since 1971. That’s the year that the U.S. Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upheld busing programs that aimed to speed up the racial integration of public schools in the United States. That, as most honest urbanists know, was the single most critical catalyst of population growth among many cities in America since.

Well, wouldn’t you know, strictness of development regulations and population growth came out almost perfectly correlated. Now one of the few things I remember from graduate school was not to confuse correlation with causation. I can’t argue that strict development regulations caused population growth. They sure as hell didn’t stop it though. Probably the perils of rapid and uncontrolled population growth moved cities toward more stringent development control. I’ll let future generations of urban scholars work on that one.

As with many things currently facing America, to understand why some cities flourish and some struggle with out-migration, we need to look elsewhere besides the complexity of municipal codes.

Maybe the mirror?

Professionals

Went to a public hearing last evening. For a change, I wasn’t involved, just there for informational purposes. I have no personal interest in the city where it happened. I’m doing some work for them and thought it might prove useful to attend.

The important thing was the man who made the presentation. His name is James Walden and he grew up in Benton, Arkansas. I’ve known him for, maybe, 10 years. He wondered into my office one day, back when I was working full-time. He was coming to Little Rock to attend graduate school and sought part-time work.

Wouldn’t you know it? He was soon working with me full-time and soaking in our profession like a huge sponge. After I sold the company to him, he ran it for a while and then went to one of the largest engineering firms in the South. Now, he’s the planning director for one of the major cities in our state. He had prepared a comprehensive plan for the City of Sherwood, Arkansas while he was still with the engineering firm and came back to present it.

Well. Now I know how if feels to have someone grow past you like William Faulkner did Sherwood Anderson. I feel good about it, if a little humiliated.

Oh well. Maybe if I work hard, I can catch up with him.

Thoughts

Ah, Fall! Just makes you remember the smell of new books and musty old classrooms, doesn’t it? Makes you feel as if a new world is opening again. We are all energized. Power to the people! Question authority. Don’t trust anyone over… let’s see… it would be 70 now, I suppose.

Autumn reminds me to question old ideas, consider new ones, and hold on to the ones that are timeless. Sorting those out is particularly tough in my profession. 

Sometimes I go back and re-read some of my old columns just to make sure I don’t have to use the “Law Professor’s Expostulation.” It is named after a teacher who was, in addition to being one of the country’s preeminent land-use law experts, somewhat of a character. A former student once trapped him on the witness stand with a quote from one of his law school textbooks—a quote that contradicted a statement Prof had just made to the opposing attorney. “Aren’t these your own words, Sir?” the cross-examiner said.

The old gentleman didn’t miss a beat. “Why hell,” he explained. “I’ve changed my mind since then.”

Few of us will ever achieve that level of respect. Most of us, however, remember things that we once thought were granite-hard truths only to see theme morph into putty as the years rolled by. Take some examples from urban planning.

We all used to believe that bigger and wider made everything better, particularly streets. Then we began giving mere children their own personal automobiles some six or seven years before they had enough sense to drive them. They see those wide streets not as a convenience but as the Neighborhood 500. Stuck with the streets, we sure wish we could see the front porch of our neighbor across the street without binoculars, but we sure aren’t going to risk walking over there for the privilege.

Meanwhile, the New Urbanists have shown us that narrow streets can not only function better, but also create a more person-friendly environment.

How about curbs and gutters? If there ever was a sacred cow in planning and engineering theory, it was the superiority of curb-lined streets. Suddenly now we are noticing that they sure wash a lot of impurities into creeks and rivers. And those curbs don’t seem to regenerate the aquifer the way grass swales do. Hmm.

We don’t even need to mention the practice of creating malls from our Main Streets. Oh heck, let’s do it anyway. This was going to save downtown when I was a cub planner. It was what the out-of-town experts were foisting on the locals back then.

Let’s move on to parking. Cities are slowly, from the literature I read, moving from a stance of “the more the better” to one of “do you really need that much?” If I can manage to last a few more years, I may see the day when we say “this is all you can have.”

“Tear it down and rebuild” was the going urban mantra in the 1940s and 1950s. Lay this one on the so-called “Greatest Generation.” It was before my time. After hundreds of thousands of displaced families and thousands of mutilated neighborhoods, they recognized the folly. (See The Power Broker  by Robert Caro or The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, the two most essential books, in my opinion, on American city planning.)

Back to my era—sometimes we must test the alternatives before we reach a sensible position. Take sidewalks. They used to be a given. Then we decided we didn’t need them. Then we decided that we need them sometimes. Then, more recently, we decided that we needed them everywhere after all. Now we are realizing that their presence or absence should reflect the context of the particular development. That is to say requirements for sidewalks might best be made according to considerations of density, location, and the function of the street. Again, thanks to the New Urbanists.

So what urban principles may be the fallen angels of the future?  I don’t know—maybe the assumed efficacy of highways and bypasses. Our traffic planners seem to operate under the belief that a new highway, an additional traffic lane, or one more bypass will solve every problem from slow growth to the “heartbreak of psoriasis.” So far they have only created more traffic. Planners in the future may point to the mess they have made by not expanding their mandate to transportation in general.

Or, as much as I hate to say it, the jury may still be out on new urbanism. I am a true believer and there is no doubt that they are building nicer-looking subdivisions—mostly for rich folks. Future city leaders may discover, though, that they failed to address the real urban problems facing our communities. I don’t see many of them, for example, in the Arkansas Delta. The movement may prove to be akin to pseudo medical treatments that make us think we feel better for a wile but don’t really get at the underlying cause of our misery.

Speaking of which—misery I mean—that’s enough for this now.

What we value

 If things work out, I hope to have a few good years left as an urban planner. Continuing to work at it remains more fulfilling than, say, trying to learn to play golf. I’m afraid, though, that I’m beginning to be known as a bit of an old curmudgeon. I’ve even developed a rep as hating the latest fad in my profession: vehicular roundabouts. May I set the record straight?

I don’t hate them. I think they work well. I think they meet their purpose in an excellent fashion. They are fine devices for moving traffic, if that’s the reason that urban planners were placed on Earth.

So, what’s the rub?

 I’m just tired of our spending so much public money to feed the insatiable demands of the automobile. If history tells us one thing, it’s that the demands of the automobile can never be met, nor can that monster ever be satiated. Someday we will know that. Drive slowly and sneak a look next time you cross over Interstate 40. What you’ll see now is the scene of a variety of cars sandwiched in between miles of 18-wheelers, resembling long trains with rubber wheels on concrete tracks.

What you’ll see in maybe five more years is a parking lot stretching from Wilmington, North Carolina to Barstow, California. Our state highway department will then tell us that it needs several trillions of dollars to fix the problem. Oh, and they won’t have a cent left for those kids I see sometimes walking several miles in the summer heat to their first job at a fast-food franchise.

I’m hoping our cities will decide to spend more on their people and less on cars. I don’t really care if someone gets their car from point A to point B faster. What I care about is how fast we can get that kid in dirty diapers off the front porch of that shack in the Arkansas Delta and into an education, a decent home, and a life with a future. He’s waiting for us to help, while his mother is inside earning enough for the next meal or the next hit of methamphetamine, whichever she needs first. Our fundamentalist “Christian” friends say, “Hey, no problem. He’s born now so all is well. Don’t worry, be happy, and just hope he doesn’t decide to be gay.”

Yesterday I visited the site of a memorial to a beloved niece whom I hired for her first job as a grant writer and grant administrator. After a long career, and a losing bout with cancer, she received, posthumously, a monument for procuring a grant to help a city build a splash pad for its youth. It stands as a fitting and well-deserved honor.

What she should receive a monument for, although she won’t, is for the many hot summer evenings she spent in small, frame, often unpainted, churches in the Arkansas Delta, one of the most neglected sections of our country. She’d be meeting, in the stifling heat and the hordes of mosquitoes with a group of poverty-stricken brothers and sisters trying to secure safe drinking water for their families, just drinking water is all.

It’s all a matter of priorities. Our priorities. It reminds me of a call I received in the late 1990s. I was enjoying a limited, but not particularly lucrative, success as a planning consultant. A friend, an attorney with whom I had done some work, was the caller. He had left his job in Little Rock and moved to Northwest Arkansas, a region richly blessed by the whims of modern history.

“You need to move up here,” he said. “There’s money to be made.”

I supposed that there was, but said, “No, I’ll stay down here.”

“Why? Don’t you want to be where the action is happening?”

I thought for a moment. “No,” I said again.

“Why?” he said again.

“Oh,” I said, “I think the Galilean would have me stay where the action isn’t happening.”

The Libertarian Roundabout

Resilience

Headed off today to a city where I’ve developed many good friends over the years. That would be Forrest City, Arkansas, partly nestled on the western slopes of Crowley’s Ridge and partly flowing into the flatlands of the Arkansas Delta.

Crowley’s Ridge is a strange and unique phenomenon, a large serpentine hill that runs north to south on the eastern side of Arkansas, pretty much parallel to the Mississippi River. Some geologists in the past posited that it forms a testament to the remains of erosion resulting from the forming of two rivers. I vaguely remember someone, after a pitcher of beer at the old Shakey’s Pizza in Little Rock’s Riverdale area, calling it an “eroidial remnant. I don’t think that’s a word but is sounds as good as anything. There are some places down east of Monroe, Louisiana where you can see where the ancient banks stood 4,000 years ago when the Universe was formed. (A joke, son. That’s a joke.)

Anyway, some think our city was named after one of the most effective, but morally-challenged generals of the American Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forrest, former slave trader and Confederate commanding officer at the notorious Fort Pillow massacre, a battle fought on April 12, 1864, on the Mississippi River in Henning, Tennessee. The battle ended with a massacre of African-American Union troops and their white officers attempting to surrender, by soldiers under the command of, yes, you guessed it, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Ironically, The Fort Pillow massacre increased Northern support for the war. Go figure.

So, is one of my favorite cities guilty of the aggrandizement of such a villain, by naming itself after him? Not exactly. After the war, a crew headed by then civilian contractor Nathan Bedford Forrest traveled to a remote area in eastern Arkansas for the purpose of working on the construction of a railroad, including a bridge. At some point at the western base of Crowley's Ridge, the crew chief said, “We camp here.” As it achieved somewhat permanent status, everyone called the site “Forrest’s Camp.” The name stuck and shortened itself over the years to Forrest City.

Later, in a surprising move, leaders established it as the county seat of St. Francis County. They did this by slipping over the ridge one night and stealing all the public records from the town of Madison, then the county seat.

Back when we built things in America, Forrest City became the site of the, then, largest industrial location in the state when Sanyo Corporation began building TV sets there. The plant was long-closed when community leaders convinced the federal government that, since it had located federal prisons in every state in the Union except ours, it would be nice to build one right there near the old site of Forrest’s Camp. Surprisingly, they did.

As part of the deal, the State of Arkansas was to build a bypass from Arkansas Highway One to allow direct access to the prison, avoiding the complexities of transporting prisoners through town. The trafficway opened 12 years after the prison, and is the purpose of today’s visit. Maybe it’s time for some re-thinking about future land uses along the corridor.

Forrest City is a diverse community. Historically, it created, as such cities do, segregated neighborhoods and segregated areas of entertainment. One area, the locals called “Downtown” and it once housed, among other niceties, an opera house. The locals called another street “Silk Stocking Lane,” and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Robert Johnson or Bill Broonzy performed at one of its venues.

In short, the city has faced and dealt with many racial difficulties that so-called “white-flight” cities could only imagine. During a dark period of American’s history, locals reportedly lynched a man from the very railroad bridge built by Forrest and his crew, within sight of the opera house.

But there are no “Sundown Signs” marking the entrance to this city. The modern community faces difficulties bravely, has produced quality leaders over the years, and continues to do so. If there is a Heaven, and if there are special places set aside in honor of cities that, during my professional career, did the Galilean’s work earnestly and devoutly while watching the rains of good fortune fall elsewhere, I’m sure that one such spot will be named after Forrest City, Arkansas.

Yesteryear

Dreams of a Better World

Sometimes we overthink solutions to urban problems, at least I believe so. I may be feeling that way because I just recently visited one of my favorite mayors in one of my favorite towns. I’m referring, of course to Mayor Furlough Thompson of the remarkable community of Pot Luck, Arkansas.

I reported fully on the visit for my monthly urban planning column. I won’t repeat the whole thing as that would spoil the surprise for the thousands of eager fans awaiting my next example of printed wisdom.

Would you believe the dozen or so Arkansans who still keep parakeets?

Anyway, Mayor Furlough enlightened me with several bits of administrative wisdom. Oh, you asked about his name. Let him explain.

“I was born in 1943,” he says, “while Daddy was over in Europe with the Big Red One.” He stops. “It’s an Infantry Division, son … the First Infantry Division … get that silly smirk off your face. Anyhow, I was born and Momma was still groggy when the Doc asked her what to call it and she thought he asked what caused it.”

“Furlough?”

“Ever since."

He calls himself the “best mayor in America.” That’s a hard claim to prove, but nobody has challenged him on it so far. He’s turned down offers for bypasses, roundabouts, and branding.

Of the first two, he says that they want traffic to come through Downtown kinda slow so the drivers and riders can check out the local businesses. "I think cities spend way too much money helping the automobile," he says. "We like to spend our money on people, not cars."

 About the latter? “We brand cattle around here, not our city.”

He explained further. “We had this feller come down from Little Rock wanting to sell us some slogan or such nonsense, something about ‘Small in size but great in dreams’ if you can believe that.”

“And?”

“I told him we was totally satisfied with what we have and we had just paid to have it painted on buildings on both ways coming into town.”

“The one I just saw? ‘Welcome to Potluck, but mind your own business?’”

“Yeah. Works fine for us. He stopped to send tobacco juice flying with the wind. “Branding,” he said, “have you ever heard such nonsense?”

“Well,” I said, “there was an actual article in our national planning magazine, the one for educated, sensible professionals. The article called for using feng shui to plan our cities. They actually printed it.”

“Fung what?” he says. “Son be careful, we have children in this town.” We changed the subject and he told me about a novel administrative technique he used to protect the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the citizens of Pot Luck.

“I’ve named it The Shaming Squad,” he told me.

 “The what?”

“The Shaming Squad. It’s a special group of women that helps me out.”

“What kind of special group?”

“You have to be a grandmother, auntie, retired school teacher, Sunday School teacher, librarian, or retiree from the health clinic to belong.”

“And they help you?”

“Oh hell, uh, heck yes.” He looked around, and said with a sheepish grin forming, “I’d better be careful myself. Don’t want them ladies on my case.”

“Are they effective?”

“Son,” he said, “Have you seen a boy wearing a baseball cap or a man wearing a cowboy hat while sitting down to eat in Pot Luck?”

“Uh, no.”

“Heard any tires squealing or seen vehicles exceeding the posted limits?”

"No."

“Seen anyone walking around with a stupid pistol strapped to their hip?”

“No.”

“Seen MAGA signs in anybody’s yard, implying our city is not already great?”

“No.”

“Seen any cheap metal buildings on Main Street? Seen any stores on Main Street with their front doors locked? Seen any tattoos that weren’t earned by military service, any droopy pants or backsass from our kids, any road rage, any overgrown yards, anyone falsely claiming to be a homeless veteran begging for money, any sort of rude behavior among our adults?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Well thank the Shaming Squad.”

“Really?”

“Really. Without them we might have to have a full-time police department.”

I couldn’t help wondering if he might hire them out to service our White House. Oh, and I quit reading our national planning magazine after the feng shui article.

I'll stick with Mayor Furlough.

Strategic planning in Pot Luck

On the Road Again

On the road today and I'll be headed for Mountain Home, a fine city in the far north part of Arkansas. I remember my first trip up there years and years ago.

I had never been to the city and found myself headed there for some reason or other. Today I go as a function of the Arkansas Municipal League. That fine institution pays for me to visit any member city once a year to provide information in urban planning.

That early trip occurred long before my association with the League. I think the the president of Garver Engineers had asked me to visit. Anyway, I drove up on the old highways of the era and visited this fine city for the first time.

Lo and behold, when I arrived, all I heard from the folks there was northern accents. Now you have to consider, I was young then, and had been away from Arkansas for nearly six years. Had I gotten so far north in the state that the residents had lost the Southern accent?

Holy diphthong.

Well no, that wasn't it. Not in our state. I met one of the old-time city street supervisors and felt right at home again. What it was, was migration. People from the north had moved to this fabulous retirement destination to the extent that the local Post Office had to create a special drop box for the Chicago Tribute.

Anyway. I'll be there today. An old friend, Jeff Pipkin, is Chamber director now and he and I will meet with the Mayor after lunch. A former mayor of the city once almost hired me to prepare a plan for the area. I had just started my own consulting firm and that contract would have been a career-generator. Lucky for the mayor, and unlucky for me, she fell in love, got married, and left Arkansas for Florida with her new husband.

Maybe it was fortuitous in its own way. It made me build my "empire" by working with the small, unfortunate cities of our state. Maybe that was ordained in some way. It surely taught me what urban struggles are all about.

I'll let you know what happens in Mountain Home. Whatever it is, I'll have the pleasure of spending a day in a wonderful place.

Contemplating a wondrous future.

Happiness is an Old House

Here we were, my young bride and I. We had just talked a doubtful bank into loaning us a little money on an old Victorian cottage on South Broadway in Little Rock, Arkansas. Did I mention that it was in what planners called “a neighborhood in transition?” That is to say it was transitioning from benign neglect and blight to strip commercial, a major downward trend. At the time, it was characterized by many rental properties, alongside a few homes being loved and cared for by a courageous, but foolish, band of young couples who saw the area as worth preserving.

“Worth preserving? Hah.” I can imagine those words echoing in the cigar-smoked rooms where decisions were made back then. “Tear ‘em the hell down and build gas stations.” How many gas stations and used car lots did Little Rock need? According to the good old boys, it needed a bunch.

That was one problem with which we had to deal. Fortunately, that courageous band of historic preservation nuts stood like the Spartans at Thermopylae against the destroyers of the area’s historic legacy. We stood on the shoulders of those brave giants and dared the dozers to come any closer.

Meanwhile, we were dealing with a lovable old couple to whom we had given 60 days to clean out their junk from the cottage we had just purchased. No problem. We still had our house in Leawood subdivision, though it was on the market. The first day the sellers of the cottage came to start cleaning it out, we met them on site. Straightaway, we discovered two things.

One, Skipper loved to talk.

Two, he was a master of what we call, in the South, “branching.” A typical conversation might run like this:

Skipper: (Holding up a painted, burned-out light bulb). “I used this for a commercial I did for a furniture store out on University. It’s not there anymore. The owner died of cancer not long after we made the commercial. My nephew died of cancer about the same time. He lived out Markham past the old Tijuana Club. We never went there but it was a popular place back then. A couple we knew used to go there all the time. He worked at a bank so they got a free membership. The bank is in one of those new high-rises now. Back then it was down near Fourth and Louisiana. They tore it down for the urban renewal project. Another couple we knew had a restaurant next to the bank. The city tore it down and built them a new building out off Cantrell. He liked to play golf, and the golf course was nearby, so he liked it. I went with him once to play, went with him and another friend who worked at Bruno’s Little Italy. It used to be out on Asher, but they’ve moved. Hey Nila, where is Bruno’s now? She liked it better than I did. She’d always order … “

You get the picture. After a three-hour branch, he wouldn’t have discarded a single item, but would have disclosed a lot of the history of Little Rock if you could keep up with him. Oh well, we had plenty of outside work around the cottage, so we weren’t in a hurry. It was true that there wasn’t an inch of vertical surface that wasn’t stacked with junk. There must have been over a hundred years of National Geographics alone. We didn’t care. We were young, dumb, and full of self-assurance.

Then we received an offer, a good offer—an offer we couldn’t refuse in fact—on our house in Leawood. Yeah, the one in which we were living. The offerors wanted to move in as quickly as possible.

We were almost always
happy then, I think.
(Apologies to Dylan Thomas)

Change ...

One of the things I’ve noticed about urban problems is the immediate tendency to blame someone or some individual group for them. While study sometimes proves this to be justified, it’s not always true. Sometimes things just happen and we have to act wisely. I think that some of us who matured in the turbulent 1960s when we suffered the indignity of being uprooted from whatever life we were leading and then thrust into a war halfway around the globe, a war that no one understands, or can justify, even today. Worse still, we are blamed for it.

We understand that sometimes stuff just happen. Survivors accept and adjust. Losers bitch and moan. But there are those who must suffer.

Some cities, including Little Rock, are now facing revenue shortfalls. Someone has to accept the blame. Who? Is it the previous Mayor who might have pursued policies that we didn’t like?

Is it a board member who once torpedoed a wise policy or program?

Is it the present mayor who should have soared into office on a wave of exuberant economic enthusiasm?

Is it the policy-makers of past years who worked hard to make the regressive and unreliable sales tax the basic revenue source for Arkansas municipalities?

Is it the local citizen who, having been denied learning how government works, during high school, no longer comprehends the need for municipal services and the cost thereof?

Is it the citizen who supports politicians from a party that starts wars on credit and requires its members to sign pledges never to increase public revenues, no matter what the need?

Is it the citizen who orders goods on-line for the convenience, then chortles about not paying sales tax on the goods as a delivery truck, protected by municipal fire and police, ambles along streets maintained by the city, to deliver those goods to homes whose mortgages are protected by public largess?

Is it the cult member who activates against birth control while unwanted children wander our streets with career options seemingly limited to pro sports or criminal enterprise?

Today’s social media drippings are rich with answers. Everyone has one and they are all true. So far though, no one has mentioned simply raising taxes to meet the demands of our brave new world.

Heck, I know only one thing: two plus two equals four. Always has. Always will. As my old college pal, John Keats would put it, “That is all you know on earth, and all you need to know"

Fantasy truths ...

Last night I dreamed the strangest thing. I was helping a city with some administrative work associated with planning when a man brought his mom in to see about getting some work done on her house. He was inquiring about the quality of contractors in the area. He needed some help in making a choice.

We, the city staff and I, explained to him that we couldn’t recommend a contractor but we could provide a list of those whom we knew had done work and possessed the proper credentials.

“That won’t exactly work,” the man said.

“Oh, why?”

“If you line them all up,” he said, “they ain’t going to say, ‘I’m qualified but I do crappy work from time to time.’ We’ve tried that,” He paused. “On top of that, they won’t take the blame for any mistakes. Oh, little things like overestimating the cost and having to make a refund, they will accept blame. Big things, like putting a fireplace in backwards, they blame the city.”

“The city?”

“Or Hillary Clinton.”

His mom stood at his side saying nothing.

“Could you just let her make the choice?” someone asked.

“Oh,” he said, “she’s off making mistletoe soup with the Little People. She don’t make decisions no more. Anyway, this whole idea about using qualified workers seems a bit farfetched to me.”

We all just stared.

“On top of it all,” the man said, “the city won’t let us do what we want on account of its stupid regulations.”

“Like what?” I said.

“We want to use a new type of electrical wiring we bought on the Internet. They use it overseas, but here? Noooo.”

We all just stared.

“You want to use untested and improper material on your mother’s house?” someone said.

“She wouldn’t care, as long as it’s cheaper. Besides, she ain’t got long left.”

We all just stared.

Finally, someone said, “Well, you can’t do that. It could start a fire and burn a whole block,”

“You and your stupid regulations are ruining this country.”

We all just stared.

I woke up then, realizing how dreams sometimes carry too much truth for comfort.