Urbane

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URBANE: “(of a person, esp. a man) suave, courteous, and refined in manner.” –New Oxford American Dictionary

“Urbane landscape: are city anthology films just a way of boosting tourism?”

This was the title of a recent movie review in The Guardian, and I knew immediately this would be our July entry. Provided the review made no references to the film’s sophistication, its gentility. Nope. Too much to hope for.

Urbane is not the same as cosmopolitan, which is the opposite of provincial. And it is most definitely not the same as urban, although they clearly share a common root. So urban planners attempt to mitigate urban problems such as traffic, crowding and too many Starbucks on the same block. Urbane planners make witty jokes about public transportation, but never at the expense of sanitation workers.

I will allow the use of urbane in this headline is probably intended to be a pun. But it’s a bad pun because it goes nowhere. Maybe the urban planner can help. To me, this looks like a job for the sanitation workers. It pays not to piss them off.

Otto E. Mezzo

Reference: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/jul/03/7-days-havana-city-anthology