Where Things Are, From Near To Far
Halbur, Tim and Steins, Chris and Ryan, David (eds.) (2009).
Los Angeles: Planetizen Press; ISBN 0978932927.
I have sometimes attributed my career in planning to the hours I spent as a young boy pouring over Richard Scarry’s book What Do People Do All Day? I would lose myself exploring every illustration, fascinated by the anthropomorphic rabbit and pig families that inhabited the town squares, market places, dentist offices and bus stations of “Busy Town.” It was only after a fellow master’s student confessed that his path to planning ran down Disneyland’s “Main Street, USA” that I felt comfortable admitting this to anyone (including myself).
So hat’s off to Tim Halbur, Chris Steins, and David Ryan for their recent contribution to children’s planning-related literature. Told in verse and animated by drawings, the book is a walk through “the urban to rural transect” with a son and his mother as she reveals the disturbing truth of her day job: she’s an urban planner.
All joking aside, it’s a noble effort at explaining planning to the hard-to-reach 3-year-old market. The book uses simple language, bold text, rhyme, and detailed illustrations to walk us through the various built and natural environments of the city and to introduce the central idea that cities don’t just happen, they are built. Indeed, they are even planned.
My daughter enjoyed exploring each page, pointing out the squirrels, the dog riding in the bike basket, and the Waldo-esque frog that jumps along with the main characters through the book. But being the ripe age of seven, she haughtily declared that the book was boring and “too easy.” She allowed, however, that younger kids might enjoy it; a fact confirmed by her 4-year-old friend Phineas, who deemed the book “very nice” (even though his older brother Thaddeus wouldn’t go beyond the cover). My 12-year-old son Kieran was more insightful: “It’s a bit simplistic, but hey, it’s for 3-year-olds.”
Explaining planning to young children is no easy task. I remember my experience at parent career day when my son was in first grade. The dad before me was a fireman, and the mother after me was a nurse. My brief talk on being a planner drew many blank stares, and the thank-you note I received later from one of my son’s friends read: “Thank you for your talk. I didn’t know people did that.”
Where Things Are will not only help explain that indeed there are people who do that, but will also introduce some important realities of urban development: that we’ve constructed a Euclidean system of separated uses where density is concentrated at the core and tapers off into car-dominated suburbs and a distant rural hinterland. Well, that’s the traditional concept anyway, and it was one of the ideas I found myself taking issue with as I enjoyed the book with my daughter and her friends.
I certainly understand the usefulness of the transect, but worry that it perpetuates the idea that “good planning” has to provide for auto-dominated uses in sprawling suburban fringe areas. Does it? And if it does, can’t we at least shelter our 3-year-olds from that reality until they are, say, five? Or do I need to come clean with my kids and let them know that it is the planner’s job to make “the suburbs wide”? Perhaps I’m being naïve, but with climate change staring us in the face, I think it’s time to polarize our rose-colored glasses and question some of our current conceptions.
I detected that at least the book’s illustrator shares my sympathies. I could swear that the little boy in Where Things Are was walking with a bit less spring in his step as he passed the suburban strip mall. Even his mother is pointing off the page, into the promise of the less monotonous, more child-friendly environment of the transect’s rural segment. Both mother and child seemed much happier during their walk through the more compact, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods of the urban core. I pointed out these critical details to my kids, but they were uninterested. They wanted to find the frog on the page.
Maybe it’s that I yearn for a sequel, something titled, perhaps, Where Things Should Be, For You and Me, in which a child and his advocacy planning mother attend workshops to engage in discussions with their neighbors on the virtues of infill development, the joys of “complete streets,” and the beauty of urban-to-the-edge development policies. This would be a nice lead-in to a more complicated but enticing third volume: Where the Wild Things Really Are: Mommy and I Go to a Public Hearing. This would have to be heavily edited to remove inappropriate language, and the frog might not want to stay for the whole meeting. But it could provide a more comprehensive and accurate view of his mother’s daily work challenges.
But I digress, as cranky old planners do. It’s a nice book, and its 3-year-old audience may reflect back on it fondly as they prepare their applications to planning school in the years to come. In fact, planner-parents who want to start early in preparing their children for the AICP exam could start with Where Things Are, and then pass on their old Richard Scarry books, and maybe throw in Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax for good measure. Now that’s the makings of a respectable library for every 3-year-old planner.
Reviewer Information
Review by David Driskell, with help from Kieran, Mira, Thaddeus and Phineas
David Driskell, the UNESCO Chairholder, is now planning director in the City of Boulder, Colorado.