By the time I actually met Ed Bacon in person, the legendary urban planner who died last week at the age of 95, he was already in his late 80s, cranky and quirky. He had just read my book The Reluctant Metropolis, which reminded him that I had written a magazine article many years before that he had liked (see "Visionaries, Deal Makers, Incrementalists: The Divided World of Urban Planning" below). He called me up out of the blue one day to discuss whether I should write his biography. >>read more