Hipster Runoff Takes on Urban Design, Wins

I’m shocked by every day that goes by without some pseudo-academic hipster art-star type taking the urban theory world’s reins and making the whole effort look a little sexier. Sometimes that shock turns into worry that Next American City is just a placeholder to be left in a cooler, more culture-savvy kid’s dust. Urban thought is hot and waiting patiently for someone to capitalize on it. A new post on Gen-Y blog bible Hipster Runoff indicates the process may have begun.

If the blogosphere were a city, the mayor would clearly be Carles from Hipster Runoff. That is why I was so glad to see the mysterious boy wonder finally using his server space, incisive critical eye, and shockingly sympathetic generational mouthpiece to take on urban theory jargon. His latest post is about “meaningful space,” titled “What does ‘space’ mean 2 u?,” and it couldn’t hit any more nails more squarely on any more of their heads if he had spent the last 10 years getting his PhD in urban design at MIT. A new Jane Jacobs has been birthed in the post-ironic ether.

Here’s the HR post’s accompanying graphic, which should be on every planning grad students desktop shortly:

And I can hear the sound of a million urban design school networked Facebook newsfeeds ringing with “favorite quotes” being updated to this:

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Chapeaux, Hipster Runoff! I hope the streets of Williamsburg and globalized Williamsburg cells everywhere take heed, and Carles’s post incites a new generation of hip, young alt/authentic urban thinkers, or at least indicates one is ascendant. When that time comes, you can be sure that Next American City will tip our old, dork hats to them as well. I hope they will remember us like the cool pony-tailed teacher from high school who inspired you to learn by making up funny raps about nucleotides.

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