With John there was a seamless web between his teaching, his research and his sharing of knowledge with all of us in the Twin Cities. I can’t separate out what he taught me in the classroom, as a co-teacher in our land use planning course and as a planner. My comments today are focused on John’s contribution as a citizen of the region but I can’t help but speak to his passion for teaching and what it meant to him. A former student recalled this week about a time in class when John was suffering from laryngitis and asked the class: what do you do with a professor that can’t talk – then answered "you just shoot him".

Minnesota and the region have lost a teacher and mentor whose service was simply unsurpassed in its breadth of vision and its impact on how we see the world around us. Whenever people at the university speak to its "land grant mission" for faculty and students to address the important issues facing the community I see John Borchert as its premier contributor. Would that we had a legion of his ilk.

John’s expertise was continually tapped by state legislators, state agencies and key regional leaders such as Cameron Thompson at the Federal Reserve Bank during the 1960s that brought him into public view. He was always examining the process of urban and regional development and I remember a Borchert Twin Cities seminar (I think it was 1955!) addressing land speculation on the urban fringe, and grad student Don Carroll working out with John the time lags between land going out of production and actually being developed for housing or business on a 40 acre tract basis. These "cells" of analysis were later incorporated into John’s work on the statewide land use map and lake shore development program that led directly to the legislature enacting statewide shore land zoning laws. I doubt that there would have been the public will to act had not John provided the data and it was easy then to extrapolate the consequences of inaction. Almost all of John’s work was to show on maps what was happening on the ground (and over time – he was a great believer that time series maps spoke volumes!) and then enter into discussions with those in public office on why and how. I think his lakeshore work was one factor why he was tapped to become a member of the first Minnesota Pollution Control Agency board.

Another of his large research projects was to forecast the urbanization of the Twin Cities metro region from 1965 to 1985 – and he was remarkably on target! I don’t know how many land speculators/developers read this in secret and then made their millions! I do know that the Minnesota Highway Department had many reasons to thank John when he testified before a condemnation hearing on the department’s right of way acquisition along T.H. 100. I think he saved the state quite a bit of money! He went back to review the 1985 forecast in the 1990’s when we taught our land use planning class together and explained to students how he did it and how some unexpected changes were the product of public policy. He was never a determinist, but he was able to understand how forces interact, how history created frameworks for future decisions. His work (and the contributions of his many students entering into public planning positions) led to his being recognized as the Regional Citizen of the Year by the Metropolitan Council in 1985. John played a significant role in the creation of the Metropolitan Planning Commission in the late 1950s and its successor, the Metropolitan Council, in 1967 with testimony before the legislature.

His knowledge of the Twin Cities geography also played an important role in his and Jane’s decision on where to live – first in the early 1950s in Golden Valley and then, the ultimate amenity, right on the St. Croix River valley bluff. Once there, Jane and he became involved and members of the Minnesota and Wisconsin Boundary Commission, guiding the Wild and Scenic River community development process. Jane – you have always been his sounding board and trusted critic so today we honor you both as regional citizens.

I know of only one instance where he was wrong! Even a saint has to have a few foibles. This was at the time when the Mall of America was being discussed (the Mega Mall as it was then referred to) and the Ghermazian consultants were predicting 40 million visitors /spenders a year. John was very skeptical and did a detailed analysis of retail trade areas and spending power outlining what would have to happen for the predictions to come true. He concluded that the project would either fail or that dire loss of profitability of other regional centers would prevail. Certainly Dayton’s did quite a bit of remodeling at the Southdale center to keep its competitive edge, but even John had not anticipated airplane loads of Japanese and Europeans coming for the weekend, shopping bags and credit cards in hand, nor the pull of the mall for entertainment. The globalization of retail shopping was not really in evidence at that time.

John was always a pioneer – stretching our thinking. He made enormous contributions to our land use and transportation policy making. He and his students did early impact studies on highway bypass projects and he was an advisor to the Met Council and transportation agency in the early 1960s when the massive Twin Cities Area Transportation Study was completed – the basis for our regional highway plans. We are still debating today, the chicken and the egg conundrum on the relationship between land use and transportation – but unfortunately we will have to engage in that research and public discourse without the insight of our beloved John Borchert. He was, and still is, a regional treasure.

First impressions are lasting. I first met John in 1949 at his interview lecture in 101 Burton Hall. His topic was from his thesis -–The Prairie Peninsula. It was pure Borchert..

First, he convinced you there was a question, a problem here.

Secondly, that geography mattered in the answer.

The last time I saw him was with Jane in St. Croix Falls at lunch, with Barbara, in February. He was still the same old Borchert. We talked about geography, about teaching – and what was wrong with the profession and the university. In other words, it was a faculty meeting of four. And Geography still mattered.

John’s thesis: "The Climate of the Central North American Grassland" was published in the Annals in Vol. 40 (1950) 1-39. For the next two decades he climbed the ladder of academic teaching and research and community service and outreach. How do you do this?

It’s tough enough being an academic paragon – because that’s what he was – the record is there. But also being an involved citizen – an activist in the broader civic and political world of local community and legislative service – the record is there.

John Borchert was luminous – he gave off light – he was a participant and though the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs he made this institution a comuniversity – the intended nature of a land-grant institution.

I said – two decades – that only takes us to 1970. Why stop here? By 1970 he was President of the Association of American Geographers. In his presidential address he summed up what he thought he was about- and what geography his profession should be about. He did by returning to his PhD thesis - "the Dust Bowl in the 1970s" in the 1971 Annals. Let me quote:

The grassland is a unique interaction zone between physical and human circulation systems. (Geographers) collective work illustrate the importance of combining concept, technique and specific regional problem in fashioning geography’s contribution to the scientific quest.

This 1970 articulation – midpoint in his career – geography as specific regional interaction between physical and human circulation systems – is exactly what Borchert practiced in his fifty scholarly years at Minnesota.

There is no geography without the study of this changing, moving, interaction between human settlement and social policy and the regional environmental resources. That is why it is so difficult to characterise John Borchert as some kind of special geographer. To be a geographer was to be involved in all aspects of your environs – that was John Borchert.