Jeffrey Barg

Jeffrey Barg is an urban planner at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Full Bio

Jeffrey Barg is an urban planner at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and received his master's in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. He previously worked for seven years as an alt-weekly journalist at Philadelphia Weekly, and wrote the award-winning nationally syndicated column "The Angry Grammarian." When not urban designing, he enjoys biking, playing guitar and banjo, and board-gaming for blood. He earned his undergraduate degree in American history from the University of Pennsylvania, and he thinks Philadelphia is better than your city.

Ferris Bueller: My Kind of City Planner

“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter: -isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism; he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon: ‘I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.’ A good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off of people.” <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <div align="left"> —Ferris Bueller

Class Conscience: When Is Clean-Slate Planning Okay?

My classmate was up in front of everyone, flapping and flailing, pleading his case and getting shot down at every turn. It was a bit like watching a train wreck in slow motion. It was also kind of like looking in the mirror. I’m just more than halfway through a planning school studio project working on the beautiful (no, really) Lower Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. They’ve teamed up about 15 planner/urban designers with about 45 landscape architects, who, as I mentioned <a href="/node/40796">last time</a>, are reasonably bonkers. That was about a month and a half ago; since then, I’ve begun to think maybe I’m the one needing a room with padded walls.

Ow! That hurt! Or: The Start of Planning School, Year Two

Forgive me Olmsted, for I have sinned. I have strayed. I have coveted. I have had doubts. I have thought about kicking urban design to the curb like a mangy puppy.

Working in Planning? Quit Your Job!

It’s Thursday! Sounds like a perfect day to quit your job. Stuck in the doldrums of office work? Itching to get outside as summer rolls around and the blue skies start looking more and more appealing? There’s never been a better time to pack up and leave, planners. Do it. Quit today.

Graduate School or Fight Club?: Finishing Up the First Year

Last week marked the end of my first year of planning school. It’s been by turns enlightening, angst-ridden, sleep-deprived, soul-baringly revelatory, stimulating and intellectually crushing. The bulk of the second semester is occupied by a first-year workshop—kind of a studio with training wheels—in which groups are assigned a client for whom they do a site analysis, come up with alternative solutions and then suggest a final plan and way to implement that plan. You know, kind of like in the real world. And, like in the real world, sometimes folks don’t always get along as well as they should.