is that eventually you get to know your intellectual heroes, and then you get to work with them.

Peter Gordon and Robert Cervero have been my intellectual heroes since graduate school. While other planning students were muttering under their breath about “libertarian enemies of planning,” I was reading more and more of Peter’s work, enjoying the very productive conflicts he and his coauthors, Harry Richardson and Jim Moore, raised in the peaceful world of entirely too much groupthink in planning. Robert Cervero veritably alarmed me with his scholarly productivity: if he was the standard, how in heaven’s name was I ever going to get an keep an academic job? Fortunately, the standards for mere mortals are a bit lower than the pace Professor Cervero sets.

One of the joys of moving to USC for me was getting to know Peter, Jim, and Harry better, and all of them–particularly Peter–have been tremendously good to me.

So I was recently approached by a journal editor to ask whether I would be willing to write a commentary on a back-and-forth exchange between these two sets of authors.

Um, do the words YES YES YES YES FREAKING YES mean anything to you? Mind if I stroll into the cone of silence here and scream my head off like a meth-addicted cheerleader on steroids?

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Stay posted.