Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Urban Planning Poetry

Flint Mayor Dayne Walling just completed a Q & A with Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, Jr.

The best line of the evening came when Wharton resorted to rhyming to point out that idealistic redevelopment plans don't amount to much without the money to pull them off: "Romance without finance is just nuisance."



1 comment:

  1. Here's some free verse (and math) from Curitiba, Brazil mayor Jaime Lerner:

    "You get creative when you take a zero from your budget, but sustainability starts when you take two zeros from your budget. Many other mayors tell me their budget is small. For many things, we had no budget."

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/nov/05/jaime-lerner-brazil-green

    Don't wait for investors and their dreams of Brazilian Steakhouses and strolling yuppies. Git'er done.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.