Mark David Major
Mark David Major, AICP (born September 14, 1967) is an American writer, playwright, and poet of contemporary fiction, entrepreneur, and urban planner and theorist known for Poor Richard: An Almanac for Architects and Planners, a collection of witticisms about quality urban design and planning. Major has been referred to as a “genius” for his “brilliance” in fiction and non-fiction writing.
Major is the author of Mars Rising (2010), Everyday Objects: Collected Poems, 1987-2012 (2013), and Poor Richard: An Almanac for Architects and Planners (2013). He is the “avant-garde” playwright of The Persistence of Memory and Other Plays (2012). He is the coauthor with Layce Boswell of the children’s book An Infinitesimal Abundance of Color (2013).
Early life
Major was born and raised in the Tower Grove Park area of St. Louis, Missouri but attended high school on the east side of the Mississippi River in Collinsville, Illinois. While at Collinsville High School, he achieved recognition as an Illinois State Scholar and National Honor Society student, being listed in the 1985-86 edition of Who’s Who Among American High School Students. He demonstrated an early aptitude for architecture after placing 8th and 2nd place in the State of Illinois for a Vocational Industrial Schools of America (VICA) academic competition in architectural drafting during his junior and senior years of high school, respectively.
Education
Major attended Clemson University in South Carolina in 1986, 1988-1991 where he received a Bachelors of Arts in Design (Architecture) and Bachelor of Arts in History. Based on the comments of Dean James Barker (later named President of Clemson University in 1999) at the time Major requested approval for the dual degree program, Major is purportedly the only student in the history of the university to be conferred concurrent, separate degrees by the College of Architecture and College of Liberal Arts. The merging of these two colleges into the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities in 1995 eliminated the possibility of another student matching Major’s achievement. While at Clemson, Phi Alpha Theta inducted Major in the National Historical Honor Society. Major completed his dual degree program in 4 1/2 years after taking a year off from school in 1987-88 to work for an industrial architecture firm in Chicago as well as political (presidential primary) and issue advocacy (consumer and environmental) campaigns in that city as well as his hometown.
Major attended University College London (UCL) in London, England in 1992-1993 where the University of London conferred him a graduate degree Master of Science in Architecture. After completing this graduate degree, Major stayed in London as a full-time PhD student under the tutorship of Bill Hillier, one of the principal founders of space syntax. Major’s research focus was the urban morphology of American cities. Major received a Certificate in Education for Teachers of Architecture from The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies in 1994. In 1995, Major downgraded to a part-time student due to teaching and consulting duties at UCL as a member of the Unit for Architectural Studies (UAS). UAS was the precursor to Space Syntax Ltd., which was a joint business venture between UCL faculty for “evidence-based consulting services in economics, planning, design, transport and property development.”
Career in Europe
While at UCL during the 1990s, Major was quickly promoted from teaching assistant to Assistant Course Director and named Course Director/Lecturer of the MSc in Architecture course dedicated to space syntax studies of building and urban morphologies at UCL in 1996. Major served in this role from 1996-1999. At the same time, Major transitioned from a research assistant to project manager/consultant to an eventual appointment as a non-shareholding Director of Space Syntax Ltd. in 1998. He served in this role from 1998-2000. While at Space Syntax, he was a project manager/consultant on several notable projects including:
* Linz Solar City (or SolarCity Linz) in Austria with Foster & Partners, Richard Rogers Partnership, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and Thomas Herzog + Partner.
* South Bank Centre, London from 1994-2000 with a succession of architects including Foster & Partners, Richard Rogers Partnership, and Rick Mather Architects.
* Tate Gallery at Millbank Master Plan for the Trustees of the Tate Gallery.
* Illinois Institute of Technology Design Competition for a New Student Center and Campus Master Plan with Zaha M. Hadid Architects. Rem Koolhaas/OMA won the competition but the Hadid/Space Syntax campus master plan received the highest marks from the competition jury.
* First feasibility study for the Millennium Bridge in London (later designed by Foster & Partners) for the Trustees of the Tate Gallery.
* Crowds study to prepare for the Millennium New Year’s Eve celebrations in London from 1996-1999 with the British government, Metropolitan Police, London Transport, and others.
Major appeared in the BBC Southeast First Sight television program “Party, Party” about the Millennium New Year’s Eve crowds study. It aired on January 28, 1999 on BBC2 in England. Fifteen years later, Major publicly admitted on his architecture, urban design, and planning blog, The Outlaw Urbanist, about being the anonymous source quoted from Space Syntax Ltd. in the November 23, 1998 front page Evening Standard article “Shut the Tube For Millennium.” The article reported government preparations for the crowds expected to attend the Millennium New Year’s Celebrations in central London including London Transport’s plans to operate the London Underground at only 50% capacity over the objections of the Metropolitan Police. As the Evening Standard’s anonymous source on the project team, Major concurred with the assessment of the Metropolitan Police. Subsequently, Tony Blair had to respond to questions from Members of Parliament about the article during Prime Minister’s Question Time.
In the field of space syntax, Major is regarded as the founder of International Space Syntax Symposia due to his organizing of the inaugural event at UCL in 1997 in London, which has since been held every two years at different universities around the world. He was the co-editor with Luiz Amorim and François Dufaux of the three-volume First International Space Syntax Symposium Proceedings. The 18th year of the International Space Syntax Symposia will take place at UCL in 2015 in London.
Return to the United States
Major returned to the United States in 2000. After a brief stint with an architecture and planning firm in Sacramento, California, he became Senior Planner (later promoted to Strategic Planner) of Nassau County, Florida. While at Nassau County, he drafted Architectural Design Guidelines for American Beach listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a version of the Unified Land Development Code (including adopted Historic Designation and Tree Protection ordinances). He also co-wrote the county’s Inter-local Agreement on School Facilities Planning with Janet Adkins, then Nassau County School Board member and later member of the Florida House of Representatives for the 11th and 12th Districts since 2008. Major and Adkins’ adopted Inter-local Agreement was used as a state standard by the Florida Department of Community Affairs. While working for Nassau County, Major met his current business partner, Julia Starr Sanford of Starr Sanford Design, during a planning meeting for the Crane Island Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND).
In 2003, Major won election as Vice-Chair of the First Coast Section of American Planning Association (First Coast APA), representing the seven counties of Northeast Florida. In 2005, Major assumed duties as Chair of First Coast APA. He receives credit for reviving the formerly dormant professional organization while serving as Chair from 2005-2008. During the same time, he also served on the Executive Committee for the Florida American Planning Association (APA-FL). In 2006, APA-FL awarded the statewide Section of the Year Award to Major for reviving First Coast APA. In 2008, Major received a Leadership Award from First Coast APA in recognition of his term as Chair.
In 2004, the Jacksonville office of Pulte Homes/Del Webb recruited Major as its Land Entitlements Manager for all residential developments in Northeast Florida. While there, Pulte Land Council recognized Major’s planning and entitlements pro forma as a National Best Practice for the Fortune 500 Company. He left Pulte Homes in 2006 to start an urban planning consulting business, MAJOR Planning LLC. From 2006-2008, he served on Mayor John Peyton and the Jacksonville Economic Development Corporation’s Residential Task Force for the Downtown Master Plan. In 2007-2008, he served as a real estate and planning consultant for Starr Sanford Design on the Sky project in Northwest Florida, a new sustainable model for rural growth advocating compact development and preservation of open space, master planned by Andres Duany. In 2010, Major became the Business Director of Starr Sanford Design located in Jacksonville, Florida.
Over the last 20 years, Major has been a visiting lecturer and/or jury member on architecture, urban design and planning at Florida State University, University of Florida, University of North Florida, Florida Atlantic University, University of Texas, University of Illinois at Chicago, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Greenwich in London, University of São Paulo in Brazil, Architectural Association in London, Politecnico di Milano in Italy, and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago.
Playwright
Major wrote three plays during his last year at Clemson until the end of his first year in London from 1990-1993. The first, The Persistence of Memory, premiered on May 23, 1992 at the Historic Miners’ Theatre in Collinsville, Illinois to mixed reviews. One reviewer attributed this to an inexperienced cast and crew, saying:
“Major may have a play in him - this effort was not much worse than some of Eugene O’Neil’s, who probably wrote the worst plays of any major playwright.” The original director suffered a heart attack early in the production, so Major had to serve as Director and de facto Co-Producer of the play. The other plays Major wrote were The Truth of Glances and the later titled Song of My Childhood.
Twenty years later, Major revised and published all three plays in The Persistence of Memory and Other Plays. Major made only minor revisions to The Persistence of Memory but significant changes to The Truth of Glances and Song of My Childhood. In his “Introduction”, Major discusses in detail about the creative origins and influences of the plays, challenges and rewards of the 1992 production of The Persistence of Memory, and reasoning for later revisions to all three plays. The following year Major published all three plays separately in Actors Editions featuring cover art by artist Rejcel Harbert. Major designed the Actors Editions for theatre groups including character studies and scene-by-scene playwright’s commentary for each play.
Contemporary Fiction and Poetry
In 2011, Major published his debut novel Mars Rising, the first in a planned five-book science fiction series. Mars Rising was re-issued with illustrations by artist Jonathan Atkins in 2013. In the same year, Major co-authored a children’s book, An Infinitesimal Abundance of Color, with artist Layce Boswell.
In 2013, Major also published a collection of poems written over twenty-five years titled Everyday Objects: Collected Poems, 1987-2012. His poem, “Purchased Inertia” appeared in the February 2011 issue of The View from Here Literary Magazine. Other poems by Major have appeared in poetry anthologies, online magazines, and his plays.
Architecture, Urban Design, and Planning
In 2010, Major was one of few members of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) in Florida to publicly support Amendment 4 (“Florida Hometown Democracy”). While acknowledging its origins in radical environmentalism and NIMBYism (“Not in My Back Yard”), Major made the novel argument that an unintended consequence of approving Amendment 4 would be the imposition of de facto Urban Growth Boundaries on Floridian cities. He argued many Floridian planners have been championing urban growth boundaries based on Smart Growth principles for years and approval of Amendment 4 would achieve this goal. This would better enable urban planners to manage the spread of suburban sprawl throughout the state while also bringing the cost of housing in alignment with its real value, especially in the older historic neighborhoods of Floridian cities. Despite the novelty of Major’s approach, professional organizations such as the American Planning Association and American Institute of Architects almost universally opposed Florida Hometown Democracy. Florida voters defeated the ballot initiative by a 2-to-1 margin in November 2010.
In 2012, Major founded The Outlaw Urbanist to blog “about the heathens who are destroying our cities.” On the accompanying Twitter feed, Major began to post witticisms and proverbs about quality architecture, urban design, planning, and a range of other issues related to urban growth. Some of these were later collected together and posted in 10-part series on The Outlaw Urbanist. Major published a collection of these witticisms and proverbs in Poor Richard: An Almanac for Architects and Planners, which received good reviews. The February 2014 issue of Planning, the monthly magazine of the American Planning Association, said:
The author seems to be following both Benjamin Franklin and Ambrose Bierce, and those are big shoes to fill. Not all the epigrams reach their mark, but the successful ones make it worthwhile. (Week 33, Day 5: “As obese the governed so shall be the entity that governs them.”)
Major’s Poor Richard challenges architects and planners (“Half of the urban planners in the world are below average. See: statistics do lie.”) to “see cities in a different way”. However, Major’s witticisms, proverbs, and illustrations (some originals by Major) take aim at a variety of targets including politicians, attorneys, bureaucrats, radical environmentalists, traffic engineers (“Thomas Jefferson gave Americans the regular grid. A committee of roadway engineers gave us suburban sprawl. Always walk with giants, never ride in the clown car.”), developers, and many others. For example, an illustration of a mime seemingly trapped within the pages of the book accompanies the proverb “You have to outthink the box before you can think outside of it.” In Poor Richard, Major also published the manifesto of The Outlaw Urbanist as well as ““A unanimous Declaration of Planning Independence” modeled after the American declaration written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776.
In 2013, Major appeared on an episode of Urbanism Speakeasy podcast hosted by Andy Boenau promoting traditional urbanism, Smart Growth, and Poor Richard.
Major is the author of Mars Rising (2010), Everyday Objects: Collected Poems, 1987-2012 (2013), and Poor Richard: An Almanac for Architects and Planners (2013). He is the “avant-garde” playwright of The Persistence of Memory and Other Plays (2012). He is the coauthor with Layce Boswell of the children’s book An Infinitesimal Abundance of Color (2013).
Early life
Major was born and raised in the Tower Grove Park area of St. Louis, Missouri but attended high school on the east side of the Mississippi River in Collinsville, Illinois. While at Collinsville High School, he achieved recognition as an Illinois State Scholar and National Honor Society student, being listed in the 1985-86 edition of Who’s Who Among American High School Students. He demonstrated an early aptitude for architecture after placing 8th and 2nd place in the State of Illinois for a Vocational Industrial Schools of America (VICA) academic competition in architectural drafting during his junior and senior years of high school, respectively.
Education
Major attended Clemson University in South Carolina in 1986, 1988-1991 where he received a Bachelors of Arts in Design (Architecture) and Bachelor of Arts in History. Based on the comments of Dean James Barker (later named President of Clemson University in 1999) at the time Major requested approval for the dual degree program, Major is purportedly the only student in the history of the university to be conferred concurrent, separate degrees by the College of Architecture and College of Liberal Arts. The merging of these two colleges into the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities in 1995 eliminated the possibility of another student matching Major’s achievement. While at Clemson, Phi Alpha Theta inducted Major in the National Historical Honor Society. Major completed his dual degree program in 4 1/2 years after taking a year off from school in 1987-88 to work for an industrial architecture firm in Chicago as well as political (presidential primary) and issue advocacy (consumer and environmental) campaigns in that city as well as his hometown.
Major attended University College London (UCL) in London, England in 1992-1993 where the University of London conferred him a graduate degree Master of Science in Architecture. After completing this graduate degree, Major stayed in London as a full-time PhD student under the tutorship of Bill Hillier, one of the principal founders of space syntax. Major’s research focus was the urban morphology of American cities. Major received a Certificate in Education for Teachers of Architecture from The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies in 1994. In 1995, Major downgraded to a part-time student due to teaching and consulting duties at UCL as a member of the Unit for Architectural Studies (UAS). UAS was the precursor to Space Syntax Ltd., which was a joint business venture between UCL faculty for “evidence-based consulting services in economics, planning, design, transport and property development.”
Career in Europe
While at UCL during the 1990s, Major was quickly promoted from teaching assistant to Assistant Course Director and named Course Director/Lecturer of the MSc in Architecture course dedicated to space syntax studies of building and urban morphologies at UCL in 1996. Major served in this role from 1996-1999. At the same time, Major transitioned from a research assistant to project manager/consultant to an eventual appointment as a non-shareholding Director of Space Syntax Ltd. in 1998. He served in this role from 1998-2000. While at Space Syntax, he was a project manager/consultant on several notable projects including:
* Linz Solar City (or SolarCity Linz) in Austria with Foster & Partners, Richard Rogers Partnership, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and Thomas Herzog + Partner.
* South Bank Centre, London from 1994-2000 with a succession of architects including Foster & Partners, Richard Rogers Partnership, and Rick Mather Architects.
* Tate Gallery at Millbank Master Plan for the Trustees of the Tate Gallery.
* Illinois Institute of Technology Design Competition for a New Student Center and Campus Master Plan with Zaha M. Hadid Architects. Rem Koolhaas/OMA won the competition but the Hadid/Space Syntax campus master plan received the highest marks from the competition jury.
* First feasibility study for the Millennium Bridge in London (later designed by Foster & Partners) for the Trustees of the Tate Gallery.
* Crowds study to prepare for the Millennium New Year’s Eve celebrations in London from 1996-1999 with the British government, Metropolitan Police, London Transport, and others.
Major appeared in the BBC Southeast First Sight television program “Party, Party” about the Millennium New Year’s Eve crowds study. It aired on January 28, 1999 on BBC2 in England. Fifteen years later, Major publicly admitted on his architecture, urban design, and planning blog, The Outlaw Urbanist, about being the anonymous source quoted from Space Syntax Ltd. in the November 23, 1998 front page Evening Standard article “Shut the Tube For Millennium.” The article reported government preparations for the crowds expected to attend the Millennium New Year’s Celebrations in central London including London Transport’s plans to operate the London Underground at only 50% capacity over the objections of the Metropolitan Police. As the Evening Standard’s anonymous source on the project team, Major concurred with the assessment of the Metropolitan Police. Subsequently, Tony Blair had to respond to questions from Members of Parliament about the article during Prime Minister’s Question Time.
In the field of space syntax, Major is regarded as the founder of International Space Syntax Symposia due to his organizing of the inaugural event at UCL in 1997 in London, which has since been held every two years at different universities around the world. He was the co-editor with Luiz Amorim and François Dufaux of the three-volume First International Space Syntax Symposium Proceedings. The 18th year of the International Space Syntax Symposia will take place at UCL in 2015 in London.
Return to the United States
Major returned to the United States in 2000. After a brief stint with an architecture and planning firm in Sacramento, California, he became Senior Planner (later promoted to Strategic Planner) of Nassau County, Florida. While at Nassau County, he drafted Architectural Design Guidelines for American Beach listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a version of the Unified Land Development Code (including adopted Historic Designation and Tree Protection ordinances). He also co-wrote the county’s Inter-local Agreement on School Facilities Planning with Janet Adkins, then Nassau County School Board member and later member of the Florida House of Representatives for the 11th and 12th Districts since 2008. Major and Adkins’ adopted Inter-local Agreement was used as a state standard by the Florida Department of Community Affairs. While working for Nassau County, Major met his current business partner, Julia Starr Sanford of Starr Sanford Design, during a planning meeting for the Crane Island Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND).
In 2003, Major won election as Vice-Chair of the First Coast Section of American Planning Association (First Coast APA), representing the seven counties of Northeast Florida. In 2005, Major assumed duties as Chair of First Coast APA. He receives credit for reviving the formerly dormant professional organization while serving as Chair from 2005-2008. During the same time, he also served on the Executive Committee for the Florida American Planning Association (APA-FL). In 2006, APA-FL awarded the statewide Section of the Year Award to Major for reviving First Coast APA. In 2008, Major received a Leadership Award from First Coast APA in recognition of his term as Chair.
In 2004, the Jacksonville office of Pulte Homes/Del Webb recruited Major as its Land Entitlements Manager for all residential developments in Northeast Florida. While there, Pulte Land Council recognized Major’s planning and entitlements pro forma as a National Best Practice for the Fortune 500 Company. He left Pulte Homes in 2006 to start an urban planning consulting business, MAJOR Planning LLC. From 2006-2008, he served on Mayor John Peyton and the Jacksonville Economic Development Corporation’s Residential Task Force for the Downtown Master Plan. In 2007-2008, he served as a real estate and planning consultant for Starr Sanford Design on the Sky project in Northwest Florida, a new sustainable model for rural growth advocating compact development and preservation of open space, master planned by Andres Duany. In 2010, Major became the Business Director of Starr Sanford Design located in Jacksonville, Florida.
Over the last 20 years, Major has been a visiting lecturer and/or jury member on architecture, urban design and planning at Florida State University, University of Florida, University of North Florida, Florida Atlantic University, University of Texas, University of Illinois at Chicago, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Greenwich in London, University of São Paulo in Brazil, Architectural Association in London, Politecnico di Milano in Italy, and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago.
Playwright
Major wrote three plays during his last year at Clemson until the end of his first year in London from 1990-1993. The first, The Persistence of Memory, premiered on May 23, 1992 at the Historic Miners’ Theatre in Collinsville, Illinois to mixed reviews. One reviewer attributed this to an inexperienced cast and crew, saying:
“Major may have a play in him - this effort was not much worse than some of Eugene O’Neil’s, who probably wrote the worst plays of any major playwright.” The original director suffered a heart attack early in the production, so Major had to serve as Director and de facto Co-Producer of the play. The other plays Major wrote were The Truth of Glances and the later titled Song of My Childhood.
Twenty years later, Major revised and published all three plays in The Persistence of Memory and Other Plays. Major made only minor revisions to The Persistence of Memory but significant changes to The Truth of Glances and Song of My Childhood. In his “Introduction”, Major discusses in detail about the creative origins and influences of the plays, challenges and rewards of the 1992 production of The Persistence of Memory, and reasoning for later revisions to all three plays. The following year Major published all three plays separately in Actors Editions featuring cover art by artist Rejcel Harbert. Major designed the Actors Editions for theatre groups including character studies and scene-by-scene playwright’s commentary for each play.
Contemporary Fiction and Poetry
In 2011, Major published his debut novel Mars Rising, the first in a planned five-book science fiction series. Mars Rising was re-issued with illustrations by artist Jonathan Atkins in 2013. In the same year, Major co-authored a children’s book, An Infinitesimal Abundance of Color, with artist Layce Boswell.
In 2013, Major also published a collection of poems written over twenty-five years titled Everyday Objects: Collected Poems, 1987-2012. His poem, “Purchased Inertia” appeared in the February 2011 issue of The View from Here Literary Magazine. Other poems by Major have appeared in poetry anthologies, online magazines, and his plays.
Architecture, Urban Design, and Planning
In 2010, Major was one of few members of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) in Florida to publicly support Amendment 4 (“Florida Hometown Democracy”). While acknowledging its origins in radical environmentalism and NIMBYism (“Not in My Back Yard”), Major made the novel argument that an unintended consequence of approving Amendment 4 would be the imposition of de facto Urban Growth Boundaries on Floridian cities. He argued many Floridian planners have been championing urban growth boundaries based on Smart Growth principles for years and approval of Amendment 4 would achieve this goal. This would better enable urban planners to manage the spread of suburban sprawl throughout the state while also bringing the cost of housing in alignment with its real value, especially in the older historic neighborhoods of Floridian cities. Despite the novelty of Major’s approach, professional organizations such as the American Planning Association and American Institute of Architects almost universally opposed Florida Hometown Democracy. Florida voters defeated the ballot initiative by a 2-to-1 margin in November 2010.
In 2012, Major founded The Outlaw Urbanist to blog “about the heathens who are destroying our cities.” On the accompanying Twitter feed, Major began to post witticisms and proverbs about quality architecture, urban design, planning, and a range of other issues related to urban growth. Some of these were later collected together and posted in 10-part series on The Outlaw Urbanist. Major published a collection of these witticisms and proverbs in Poor Richard: An Almanac for Architects and Planners, which received good reviews. The February 2014 issue of Planning, the monthly magazine of the American Planning Association, said:
The author seems to be following both Benjamin Franklin and Ambrose Bierce, and those are big shoes to fill. Not all the epigrams reach their mark, but the successful ones make it worthwhile. (Week 33, Day 5: “As obese the governed so shall be the entity that governs them.”)
Major’s Poor Richard challenges architects and planners (“Half of the urban planners in the world are below average. See: statistics do lie.”) to “see cities in a different way”. However, Major’s witticisms, proverbs, and illustrations (some originals by Major) take aim at a variety of targets including politicians, attorneys, bureaucrats, radical environmentalists, traffic engineers (“Thomas Jefferson gave Americans the regular grid. A committee of roadway engineers gave us suburban sprawl. Always walk with giants, never ride in the clown car.”), developers, and many others. For example, an illustration of a mime seemingly trapped within the pages of the book accompanies the proverb “You have to outthink the box before you can think outside of it.” In Poor Richard, Major also published the manifesto of The Outlaw Urbanist as well as ““A unanimous Declaration of Planning Independence” modeled after the American declaration written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776.
In 2013, Major appeared on an episode of Urbanism Speakeasy podcast hosted by Andy Boenau promoting traditional urbanism, Smart Growth, and Poor Richard.
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