I’ve been hearing the term “Fascist” bandied about quite a bit lately. But, I had not connected the “F” word to the growing debate about urban public spaces. Columnist Jay Walljasper doesn’t seem to have the same problem. In his latest column on the Project for Public Spaces website, he let’s it rip on control-freak urban pedestrian crowd control schemes. Linking the desire to control pedestrians at the expense of cars to fascistic tendencies, Waljasper asserts that, “It’s high time that we stand up to planners and politicians who don’t yet understand that it’s pedestrians that bring life to a community, and it’s cars who suck all the life out.” Right on, Jay! More power to the walking people!
More links:
Know a Fascist when you see one: Umberto Eco’s Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
Birth of a Movement? Gathering in Seattle claims to have kicked off the “Great Places movement”