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Contact:​Mark David Major

​Forum Books

​​​(904) 404-6138

​​​mark@markdmajor.com

​​​www.markdmajor.com

 

Date:​​​March 23, 2017

 

Genius of ‘Poor Richard’ Laughs Our Way to Great Cities

 

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI – Architect, urban planner, and entrepreneur, Dr. Mark David Major has seen many things during a career of more than two decades in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world, and much of it is bad… or worse. Major was born and raised in the South St. Louis neighborhood of Tower Grove and attended Collinsville Senior High School on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. He is a graduate of Clemson University in South Carolina with Bachelor of Arts degrees in History and Design (Architecture) and University College London in the United Kingdom with Master of Science and Doctorate of Philosophy degrees in Architecture. Frustrated about the sprawling state of our cities and the complicity of many professionals entrusted with their care, Major decided to do something about it when he founded The Outlaw Urbanist, a blog dedicated to architectural and urban issues. He also began posting dozens and dozens of proverbs and witticisms (more than 1,000 to date) on Twitter. His purpose: to help professionals and laymen better understand what makes a great city, great architecture, and good practice. The result was a second volume of the occasionally biting, sometimes obscure, but always insightful aphorisms modeled after Benjamin Franklin’s 18th century moniker (“what you would seem to be, be really”) in Poor Richard, Yet Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Forum Books, 2014). Major admits Poor Richard is a homage to the wisdom of one of the America’s Founding Fathers but also a subtle dig at Canadian urban studies theorist, Richard Florida, who was named the World’s Most Influential Thinker in a 2014 ranking by MIT Technology Review. Crucially, Major points out the basis of MIT’s ranking was frequency of online social media mentions but not the content of those mentions. “Too often, we confuse talking with thinking,” said Major, “and we’re too thankful for half-wrong measures when it comes to our cities and architecture because we hope they might be half-right but the results are seldom satisfying.” Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners is 140 pages with black and white illustrations published by Forum Books, available for purchase from these online booksellers.

 

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Another-Almanac-Architects-Planners/dp/150290182X

CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/5059782

Kindle Store: http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Another-Almanac-Architects-Planners-ebook/dp/B00QE5G91E

iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/poor-richard-another-almanac/id946702161

 

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Visit the Major’s Architecture and Urbanism blog at www.outlaw-urbanist.com or the Author’s Website at www.markdmajor.com for more information, including other titles by Mark David Major.

 

Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners (Volume 2)

by Mark David Major with Foreword by Steve Mouzon

Paperback, English, 140 pages

Forum Books, 2014

ISBN-10: 150290182X

ISBN-13: 978-1502901828

ASIN: B00QE5G91E

BISAC: Architecture/Planning