Power to the pedestrians: "Civic-engagement" guru Reggie Prim, writing on a beta blog by the Walker Art Center Education and Community Programs department, has this interesting offering:

I've been hearing the term Fascist bandied about quite a bit lately. But, I had not connected the word to the growing debate about urban public spaces. Columnist Jay Walljasper doesn't seem to have the same problem. In his latest column on the Project for Public Spaces website, he let's it rip on control-freak urban pedestrian crowd control schemes. Linking the desire to control pedestrians at the expense of cars to fascistic tendencies, Walljasper asserts that, it's high time that we stand up to planners and politicians who don't yet understand that it's pedestrians that bring life to a community, and it's cars who suck all the life out.

More at ECPblog.