Last week's record setting premiere of the Avengers movie franchise inspired the launch of a planning and design themed legion of superheroes on Twitter. Sommer Mathis interviews the urbanist behind the mask.
Marrying comic book and urbanist geekdom, @UrbanismAvenger has quickly established itself as a force to be reckoned with for the world's anti-urbanism super villains. Seeking nominations from followers for their favorite heroes & villains, @UrbanismAvenger has already bestowed titles on Janette Sadik-Khan: Black Widow, Jan Gehl: Odin All-Father, NRDC: Guardians of the Universe, and Rem Koolhaas as the arch-villain of context-sensitive urbanism.
In his interview, Mathis gets the person behind the profile to provide some tanatlizing clues to their identity:
"In my secret identity I'm a high-ranking multi-disciplinary urbanist
with a major metropolitan planning department, where speaking out is not
necessarily encouraged."
and inspiration:
"I believe that the heroic mission of designing + building better cities,
towns and communities needs symbols, inspiration ... and yes, some fun!
We can all be too pessimistic and stuffy at times about city-building,
and that's hardly influential either to the converted, or especially the
unconverted. The forces of evil are many - The Sprawl Gang of America,
Dr. Low-Density, Captain Car Dependence, and the Big Box Blob, just to
name a few! The Urbanism Avenger is positive, honorable, hopefully
inspirational, and not a stuffed shirt!"
Read the full story: Behind the Mask: @UrbanismAvenger Speaks!
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