Urban planning, as a discipline, must breed a kind of fatalism in its disciples--outgoing Minneapolis Planning director Paul Farmer among them. According to the Farmer bible, planners can't expect results in a few weeks. Or months. Or years. All that waiting around for an idea to pan out--to turn into a building, a road, a neighborhood--makes planners an exceedingly patient bunch. There's a sense among Farmer's colleagues, locally and elsewhere, that when all of today's planners are gone and their plans turned to dust, cities will remember their efforts long after cities' residents forget. For a distinguished urban planner like Farmer, that means there's no point in worrying about leaving work for a week, even in the heat of crisis. It's unlikely that the city will change much while you're away. So when Farmer ducked out of the Planning Department office in mid-May to volunteer at a YMCA camp in the Adirondacks--just as his stint as director comes to an embattled close--he didn't give much thought to taking the week off. Minneapolis would be there when he got back, as would the political snarl that led to his dismissal. Though his champions in Minneapolis would have liked to change the fact that Farmer will be out the door on July 5--after watching the City Council's Executive Committee refuse to renew his contract this spring--even that ending hadn't been altered by the time he returned. Farmer, the "visionary" who rode into town three years ago with the assignment of restoring Minneapolis to some of its former glory, has been, simply put, fired. Perhaps it was inevitable, given the historical inability of the Planning Department to keep out of the political crossfire. Perhaps it was fate. Oh well, he says--a certain fatalism apparent in the shrug of his shoulders. "It's... More >>>