The Best Sentences of the Week (Volume 4)

By no means authoritative or comprehensive, here's a collection of noteworthy phrases, paragraphs, commentaries, observations, and more from the recent week in the planning and urbanism discussion.

2 minute read

November 2, 2014, 1:00 PM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Lichtenstein Museum

Toni / Flickr

"While serving as acting mayor, he noted that a neighborhood newspaper headline had called him 'Action mayor Tom Menino,' and said that if elected he would try to live up to the typo." From "Thomas M. Menino, Boston’s longest serving mayor, dies at 71" by Bryan Marquard and Jim O'Sullivan for The Boston Globe.

"If the last few decades have proved anything, it’s just how much the city’s welfare depends on green space." From "Mayor de Blasio’s Plan for Parks Needs to Grow" by Michael Kimmelman for The New York Times.

"While the Beverly Hillbillies were exceptional outsiders, the characters in Slums are commonplace—the true stuff of the city. The dingbat represents their specific anyplace." From "The Veneer of Nostalgia Dingbat Life in Slums of Beverly Hills" by Joshua G. Stein for MAS Context.

"But as I talked to podcasters, they told me that the biggest reason for the podcast renaissance has nothing to do with the podcasts themselves, or the advertisers funding them….It's actually about cars." From "What's Behind the Great Podcast Renaissance" by Kevin Roose for New York.

"The New Yorker’s 2014 Halloween cover should look something like this: high angle on a shadowed cul-de-sac, pools of light illuminating the street. In those pools, row after row of tiny Elsas — the heroine of 'Frozen' — snowflake crowns glimmering, blue skirts shimmering, hands on hips in Wonder Woman’s power pose." From "Elsa or Else" by Alexandra Lange for Medium.

"He carefully posed his aging parents in snapshot tableaux and staged Latino day workers in empty fields among new tract houses to recapture the half-finished, half-raw terrain of his boyhood. In novels and movies, those suburbs are conventionally regarded as either appalling or ridiculous. Sultan showed them without any irony." From "Extra Ordinary Life" by D.J. Waldie for The California Sunday Magazine.

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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker

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Passengers board an Amtrak train under a cloudy sky.

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The Gross Reservoir, a large body of water surrounded by trees and mountains.

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A person scuba diving in a coral reef off Guam.

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A gray building partially obscured by trees, behind a four way intersection.

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