Lesson in Urban Design--to the Post, from the Post

Roger Lewis, a professor at University Maryland, writes a column every other week in the Post's Real Estate section about urban issues. It's the closest to an urban design column in the paper. It's called "Shaping the City."

Earlier in the week, I wrote about the ludicrousness of Steven Pearlstein's column comparing Tyson's Corner to Reston Town Center, and awarding "design superiority" points to Tysons because it exhibits more "messy vitality." (See "Reston vs. Tyson's Corner Misses the Point.")

So it was awesome yesterday, in "Tysons Corner's Chaos Hardly Translates Into 'Messy Vitality'" to see that Lewis wrote a column in response. In short, saying that Pearlstein doesn't know what he is writing about... (I used to write to Lewis every once in awhile, complaining about how much the previous architecture writer, Ben Forgey, was out of touch, but he never wrote a specific criticism.)

Now if we could only get Lewis a column in the Monday Business section of the Post, which tends to focus on development, and very rarely do the articles include the perspective of anyone not a card carrying member or water carrier for the Growth Machine.

Index Keywords: urban-design-placemaking