All-nighters will make you emotional

This isn't news to our students, but a new study found that sleep deprivation caused emotions to soar. We aren't talking about people just getting sentimental and listening to rock ballads on their ipods:

"While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn't predict they'd overreact as much as they did," Walker said. "They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That's a whopping increase—the emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok."

It becomes an interesting problem for the studio environment where so much work gets completed under stressful and compacted conditions.

Manhattan Project in Manhattan Interactive Map

The NY Times has an interactive map today highlighting key spots in Manhattan's role in the development of the Manhattan Project. Some, like Oppenheimer's boyhood home seem minor. But the first headquarters for the Project is a bit surprising.

Events at Bloustein

From the Rutgers HR Update:

The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy will present two public events on redevelopment and planning. On Thursday, November 1, Nicholas J. Masucci, president and CEO of Berger Group Holdings, Inc., will discuss his planning firm's experiences with international development and its role in the redevelopment of Afghanistan. On Monday, December 3, a special prerelease screening of the new film "Greetings from Asbury Park" will be held. The film, which explores the issue of eminent domain and its impact on the redevelopment of Asbury Park, will be followed by a conversation with filmmaker Christina Eliopoulos. Both events will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Bloustein School's Special Events Forum, Civic Square Building, College Avenue Campus. For additional information, visit http://policy.rutgers.edu/news/events.html .

A great talk on halloween

Wednesday, October 31, 6:30 p.m.
Visiting Artist Series
The Center for Land Use Interpretation

Matthew Coolidge, Director

Trayes Hall B

Douglass Campus Center
FREE

Farms are disappearing everywhere

NJ isn't the only place where farmland is being gobbled up by development. Farmers in Kentucky are watching the encroachment happen too:

John Lacy looked up from raking hay and saw a gray cloud in the distance. Rain is coming, he thought.

But as he moved toward the edge of his 142-acre farm, he realized it wasn't a storm, but dust billowing from construction.

It is interesting to hear how difficult it has been for Scott County to get a PDR Farmland Preservation program started up. We take our farms and our PDR programs for granted here, since they've been around for quite a while.

Don Berto, The Plant Whisperer

Orion Magazine's Don Berto's Garden makes you want to go to Belize, now.

Still bouncing around

Well, aside from Kansas sitting in the #1 spot, I thought that the Sagarin rankings were starting to get pretty predictable (in a good way). Until I saw the graph below and realized that my teams were really jumping around pretty good still. UK and RU saw that one loss can drop you quick, while UW climbed without beating anyone special. I expect that from the polls, but in the computer rankings the instability is a bit more of a surprise.


But the best play of the weekend might have been at the Div III level.

Best of DC

A few of my favorite photos from the DC Fall Field Trip...

Where is the center of the revolution?

According to the director of Morven, NJ's Center for the Crossroads of the Revolution needs to be in Princeton or Trenton. No way it should be in Middlesex County.

Interactive Fire Map Links

People are sending me different interactive maps of the SoCal fires. They are changing so fast that if I don't hurry and post them, you'll miss them.
The NY Times fire extent
The LAFD interactive map
KABC Southland Map
The LA Times map of the Witch fire
Hopefully the fires will be out so quick that the maps won't be interesting anymore.

LECTURE BLOG: Marty Johnson

Yesterday's lecture was by Marty Johnson who spoke about The Isles' work in the Trenton area. As usual, there are mostly comments written up live with only the lightest editing. Some comments may not reflect his statements or intent.


As background, Johnson tried to describe what he saw as the forces shaping The Isles. He pointed out that NGOs are set up so that they answer to funders, managers of organizations, and beneficiaries of their work. But, it is usually the funders who can really shape or steer things. He was involved with the national Success Measures Project about 10 years ago. "That which gets measured gets done."

Environmental Health issues are a key area of work
They are currently involved in coverting an old textile mill at the Hamilton-Trenton line into a LEED-Silver standard building. Trenton has 90 brownfields. But the homes can be more dangerous - especially as lead remains a threat in older communities like Trenton.

Promoting Financial Self-Reliance
The Isles uses techniques Individual Development Accounts which match every $3 saved with another dollar donated. The Isles is also promoting microlending techniques which can really make a difference.

Demographics
The problem is not trivial. Population in Trenton has dropped from 124k in 1940 to 85k in 2000. Mercer County has grown from 197k to 350k. Census data showed the poverty had deepened but also spread out over larger areas. Other indicators include the change in student eligibility for free lunch at school (the wealthiest school in Trenton is at 75% free lunch?).
"Thank God for GIS." It has shown us the patterns and helped us see what is really happening, quickly. He cited the help the have received from folks like Myron Orfield.

NJ has the 3rd most segregated schools for hispanic children and 5th most segregated for black. But we are BY FAR the most segregated by income. Today, more than 50% of NJ's residents are living in either in urban or distressed suburbs.

Marty also criticized the current system of regional contribution agreements - a "fair share" approach to affordable housing. This approach has fueled the concentration of poverty and further encouraged them to those who can to flee. We are creating lots of new jobs in places where there is no affordable housing. Yet, much of that pattern is due to public policy.

As he talked about Lessons Learned he pointed out that we have used an environmental approach based on Thou Shalt Not. We need to start trying the flip side of that saying effectively "build here and here". For New Jersey the inability to pursue annexation has been a connected problem - he described NJ as a small box state (deliberately avoiding "Home Rule").

He pointed out the deep need to elevate discussions of race - talk about things like white privilege, white flight.

Technology matters - even basic TIGER maps help. It has helped them prepare and position and understand and show what is going on. I interject for our students - please take a few minutes and explore the detailed demographic data online at SocialExplorer.Org. It is very detailed and very user friendly (I made these maps with it).
Here was a great lesson learned: The Magic is in the learning. It is important to do the work. The day-to-day work is makes a difference and keeps you inserted into the situation. BUT, the learning is what has kept him doing it.

When asked for lessons for designers, Marty came up with these:
1. Cultural competency
2. Manage participatory processes
3. Use technology

LECTURE: Sustainable Community Development—the Next Generation

If we are going to improve the living conditions in urban New Jersey we need to particular attention to the people living there. One example of this is the YouthBuild Institute at The Isles which just got a major Federal grant for job training and education for youth. Today's Common Lecture will include a visit from The Isles' Marty Johnson:

Environmental Planning Lecture

"Sustainable Community Development—the Next Generation:
A look at Isles, Inc."

Martin P. Johnson
Founder and President
Isles, Inc. of Trenton, New Jersey

Wednesday, October 24
Cook-Douglass Lecture Halls Room 110
4:00 - 5:15


For 45 years, community development corporations (CDCs) have worked to involve at-risk communities in economic development decision making and physical improvement projects. While countless examples of successful community development projects can be found, a closer look at the overall health of these communities in New Jersey raise serious questions about the best approach to addressing concentrated poverty, sprawling development patterns and urban revitalization. In this presentation, Martin Johnson, President and Founder of Trenton-based Isles Inc. will share how his environmental organization has learned to manage innovative local sustainable development and connect it to regional and state organizing and
policy change. Started by Princeton University students and faculty in 1981, Isles has received national and international recognition for its growing self-help urban development, asset-building, environmental, and educational activities. This session will explore how Isles learned about its real impact, adjusted course and now manages for local and regional impact.

Mr. Johnson has extensive experience with community development organizations. He is a founder and chairman of the New Jersey Regional Coalition, designed to organize civic and faith-based institutions in support of more equitable state and regional public policies. He is a member of the Capital Health System (a $300 million nonprofit health care system) Board of Directors, trustee of the Capital City Redevelopment Corporation, and trustee of the National Housing Institute. He is on the Advisory Board to Princeton University’s Architecture Department. He is a former Trustee and Executive Committee member of Princeton
University and former trustee of the Metropolitan Trenton African American Chamber of Commerce. He was also the founding director and former chairman of the New Jersey Community Loan Fund (now New Jersey Community Capital) and a founding trustee of the
Housing and Community Development Network of NJ.
He spent 1996-97 on sabbatical teaching community and urban economic development at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. During that time, he co-founded the Success Measures Project, a national effort managed by the Development Leadership Network to create a better system to measure the impact of community building work.

Isles website: www.isles.org

On this morning's coffee cup

So-called 'global warming' is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don't let them get away with it! – Chip Giller, Founder of Grist.org

Oh my, what grand Fellows (FASLA)

Truly, one of the great honors in landscape architecture is to be recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. This year's class of 33, inducted in San Francisco earlier this month, is an impressive crowd. Some are currently in the news, like Mia Lehrer and RU's Andrea Cochran. Others are working away in an environment where their work will be less noticed, like Alaska's Elise Huggins. You can read about them all online.

Photos of the fires

Remote sensing is helping the USDA Forest Service track the fires in Southern California. NOAA has some data online (including ArcIMS mapping services) that show that these aren't the only fires in North America, just the worst.

Design lessons from the Eames

Design should bring the most of the best to the greaterst amount of people for the least. - Charles Eames

What works is better than what looks good. The looks good can change, but what works, works. - Ray Eames

The Work of Ray and Charles Eames remains one of the great American design stories. Their work was simple, bold and innovative and might just be a good source of inspiration at this key moment of the semester. Take a peek at their house and ponder the revolution they sparked.

Art of the Revolutionary War in NJ

As we begin a class-wide conversation on the images that we associate with the War for Independence, I went out looking for web-based opportunities to see what artists have come up with in the past. Here is a rather rushed collection of resources.

The National Archives have posted a B/W list of Revolutionary War artistic depictions.

One of the most popular is the Met's very large painting, George Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. He also painted Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth. Someone else drew a b/w of Monmouth that is striking.

The depictions of the Battle of Trenton are less colorful but still reflect the style of art at that time. I like the one of the Hessians surrendering at Trenton.

The Battle at Princeton was remarkably short but still has spawned some good artwork:
I think this one might be more contemporary and this is a very colorful depiction.

Aside from artwork, there are lots of goods materials that have been scanned in, like this map of the Battle of Short Hills.

Beyond the art, there are several good information sources on the Revolution in NJ:

• In 2001, the Star-Ledger wrote a series of special reports on the Revolutionary War in NJ
• Wikipedia has an entire RevWar in NJ list
• The New Jersey State Library has assembled a digital collection of Revolutionary War documents
  

Continued shakeups

In my weekly college football note, I have been watching my teams go through some interesting changes. And while I am not surprised to have one team ranked in the 50s of the Sagarin rankings, I am surprised that it is Wisconsin. What a crazy season. Kentucky gets beat up by Florida only to see their rating rise. Rutgers bests the highly ranked USF and sees a good bump up.

Kentlands housing prices

Well, I don't mind admitting that I was wrong. When we visited the Kentlands this fall, some students asked me about prices and I guessed. (I knew better than to guess) It had been a while since I looked at real estate listings for the area and I guessed a little low.

I found a few real estate sites for the Kentlands area and discovered that a house like the ones above might go for about $1.2 million. Are they paying for the house or the new urbanist sense of community?

The NEW Catalog is out

Rutgers' 2007-2009 Undergraduate Catalog has finally been released.

Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia

Gaudi's Sagrada Familia has served as one of the real design touchstones for me in the last year or two. So I was excited to see it on Daily Dose of Architecture. it is beautiful. It is haunting. I just can't wait to see the finished product.

Spotted Owls redux

A NY Times report this morning makes things sound pretty bleak for the Spotted Owl. But the photos are pretty nice.

A nice view at the end of the day

After a long LiDAR teleconference at the JCNERR today we sat by the water and watched the sun dip towards the horizon. Some sunsetty goodness...

Great Park of OC

Metropolis has published an interview with Mia Lehrer about her firm's work on the Great Park of Orange County. (h/t PlaNetizen)

The most important function is for people to come together—in other cities you have streets where that happens. This is not a very pedestrian oriented part of the world, down here.

Using Places and Spaces

It is as if the blog is slowly emerging from the fog and getting more and more direct sunlight. We are getting a new spike in volume of web traffic on the blog, so I thought I should offer a few quick thoughts about how to take advantage of the Places and Spaces blog:

• Places and Spaces Map - One of the more unusual features of the blog is that I try to map some of the places I write about. You will often see a note at the end of a post that actually labels it as (Mapped) which is one way that I let you know it is mapped. But, if you hop straight into the map you'll often find links back to the blog posts, so that it is like a two-way street.
• Lecture reports - For many of our guest lectures I am essentially live blogging the presentations. It isn't meant as lecture notes, but random thoughts that may or may not accurately reflect on what was said. I often seek out online graphics that I wanted to study more than I could during the lecture, or additional reference materials on the topic. Many of them (but not all) are tagged Common Lecture, which is the RU LA Department's weekly lecture. Recent examples include: Sarah Whiting, Yoshiaki Shimizu, and Carla Yanni.
• 3 Landscapes - both a silly parlor game and a serious list to consider. We ask many of our guests this simple question: please name your 3 favorite examples of landscape architecture that you have ever visited. They get posted individually, mapped, and eventually added to a composite list.
• Options - Environmental Planning and Design is a major that is comprised of 4 distinct Options or degree paths: Landscape Architecture, Landscape Industry, Environmental Planning and Environmental Geomatics. Many posts are tagged with one of the 4 labels so that students can quickly seek out posts of interest to their specific Option.
• Class lectures and test hints - Both for my classes (like JrStudio, IntGeo, EnvPlan, AdvGeo) and the classes with which I interact (like EnvGeo and EDA) I like to drop links, news, follow-up, notes, and test hints on the blog so that students can use this as a meaningful supplement to the class materials.
• Archival materials - I use the blog as a place to drop materials that are meant to be useful resources for quite some time. There is a search bar in the upper left corner that is moderately successful and I am also trying to tag some long-term Resource of the Day type materials as Resources.

I know that we have visitors from all around the planet. But since the blog is kept more as resource for our current students that anyone else, I apologize if some of the features seem a little parochial. I entertain any suggestions for changes (easy changes) that make a difference.

Land deals in Somerset County

Somerset County has just decided to buy two sizable pieces of land, 26 acres in Bridgewater and 15 in Hillsborough, for unspecified future uses. Sometimes "planning" doesn't describe the process of preparing for the future:

"One of these days, if the county continues to grow, we're going to need more room to park stuff," Finance Director Brian Newman said.

"Real" Landscape Architecture

OK, so that title is meant as pretty sarcastic. But in a genuine sense I wanted to respond to someone who asked about the middle ground between the artistic side and the regional design side of the profession. So, for the students who are web surfing, here is a short first-stab at the firms that I would expect the average LAM reader to pick as mainstream-edgy-leaders (?) of the profession today:

• Hargreaves
• Peter Walker and Partners
• Olin Partnership
• Andrea Cochran
• Ken Smith
• Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
• Andropogon

Since I have rushed this as a response, I might sneak in and edit it later if I see one or two super-obvious ones to add. But I want to stress that this is NOT a list meant to define the proper boundaries of landscape architecture. If anything, it is the opposite. It is the list that demonstrates what is too easily seen as defining work when in fact the field is very broad, very creative, very hard to capture or define. Even after you account for the two previous posts, it omits the poorly publicized, the subtle, the hard to categorize, and the inappropriate.

Migration

The Woodecreeper reports that last night was a heavy migration night. A real sign of autumn.

Map samples

In studio someone asked about good graphic examples to look at for color, fonts, layout, and symbol inspiration. While it is hard to provide large libraries AND endorse their contents, I have come up with a few links worth of eye candy that might get you thinking in new directions.
ASLA 2006 Student Awards - more than just good graphics
NJ State Mapping contest - with Rutgers students as winners
ESRI's Map Museum - maps on virtually every topic
Visual Tools for Planners from the Lincoln Institute - 2 links since I can't tell the difference

Now here is where I go astray:
Hipkiss' Scanned Old Maps - Could give us ideas for faux-antique
Strange Maps - clearly not such good design ideas, but plenty of fun
Data Visualization - a few great examples that have nothing to do with our project
Edward Tufte - a graphics and visualization blog from a real master
things to look at - a blog for graphic ideas

Eminent Domain movie from Asbury Park

For those following the eminent domain debate, this should be of particular interest. Filmmaker Christina Eliopoulos has made a documentary about her hometown Asbury Park that looks back while looking forward. She uses historic films footage and images to set the stage for a story about the current use of various public policies in Asbury Park to try to reshape its future. Since Asbury Park has been viewed in recent decades as rough and rundown it is no surprise that they are turning to controversial practices like eminent domain to create new economic directions for the community, but I suspect that the movie will show that these techniques are not always used judiciously.

The history of Asbury Park is incredible, which makes it even sadder that it has seen such sad times. But the processes of change promise to be painful too. Hopefully this film will screen somewhere near you (and me) soon. (Mapped)

weekend funny

Instead of mentioning the countless meaningful things happening in the world, I'll just pass along this link from McSweeney's:
Trouble Report From the GUSSSSB (Government of the United States Secret Smithsonian Storage Building)

Like all government forms, the questions never seem to fit the situation:

Basic Description of Problem: Found crate with the Ark of the Covenant in it. Now everyone's dead.

Wlidcats rising

The battle of my Alma Maters is over. As the graphs show, the Sagarin computers now fully recognize Kentucky as real team. But, they also still think of UK as being far behind LSU, despite beating them yesterday. While the old numbers predicted that Kentucky would lose by 13, the updated numbers predict that Kentucky would lose by 3 if they played again. Based on what I saw yesterday, that actually sounds about right to me.

It also predicts a narrow margin of victory for Kentucky against Florida next week. We'll see if they have any gas left.



The graph above is the ranking. But below is the rating or score. Kentucky has separated from Rutgers and Wisconsin for now. But next weekend could shuffle the deck pretty quickly.

History weekend in Somerset County

Somerset County has a series of tours and sites to visit this weekend. Of particular interest to our LA Juniors would be the driving tours:
Northern Driving Tour
Central Driving Tour
Southern Driving Tour

It all seems very timely after getting a tour of the Belcher-Ogden House yesterday.

Metaphors as design tools

Research Design Connections reports on a recent paper explaining the role of metaphors in design work. The summary reports on a paper by Hernan Casakin in the International Journal of Design that examines the applications of metaphors.

He found that although, “Most literature conceives metaphors as analytical devices that facilitate the understanding of an unknown situation in terms of a familiar one,” participants in his study found metaphors mainly to be “a tool supporting the production of innovative design solutions” and only secondarily analytical and conceptual aids.

It is exciting to see someone who has been so serious in examining something like this in a methodical and scientific manner.

Where is the Crossroads of the Revolution?

Sure, the Revolutionary War started up in Massachusetts at Concord and Lexington. Sure, it ended at Yorktown in Virgina. But some are arguing that the center of it all belongs here at or near Exit 9. After all, NJ was home to Washington's Crossing, the Battle of Monmouth, the Battle of Princeton, and many others. That news story was carried locally in, at least, the Trenton Times, and reflects the excitement that many New Jerseyans have for this turning point in world history.

If you want to get out and experience some colonial living this weekend, there is a celebration in Somerset County with 25 different open sites including the Jacobus Vanderveer House in Bedminster.

Demographic mapping online

We've come a long way from the old TIGER maps online.

Now there is a speedy and elegant tool called Social Explorer that lets you make Census maps lickity split. while it doesn't give the user the same level of control as a full-featured GIS would, it is amazingly smooth. It lets users pick a study area, select a demographic feature and map it out in just seconds. This isn't just the usual population density map or income map.

For instance, we can map the percentage of residents using public transportation. It shows that even on Staten Island people are very clearly more actively using mass transit than here on the mainland. There is more commuting around the Princeton Junction train station and the NE Corridor is moderately visible.

Compare that with this map of percent of residents working for non-profits. Either Princeton has some of the most compassionate and caring people or there are some large 501(c)s there.

And look where the Hungarians are. Ever since the Hungarian Revolution it has been clear that New Brunswick was a hub, but the Census data really helps show how significant this area still is for Hungarian-American culture.

Yoshiaki Shimizu on copying

Dr. Shimizu spoke about the ways that copies and copying are an integrated activity within a variety of Japanese arts. It was hard for me to live blog because I was just learning many of the names and histories, so you will have to settle for graphic highlights.

One of the examples was the calligraphy of Teika. He was a great poet and writer but his calligraphy was good enough to copy.

He also talked about the ways that artistic technique was handed down from one generation to the next. One of his examples came from the Japanese art collection at the Met. My appreciation for Japanse art has always been fairly uninformed, but I feel pretty inspired to take another stab at it after this talk. Some of the ink and silk work was beautiful, and the copying processes were meticulous in ways I had not imagined.

He also spoke about the Edo Castle in Tokyo, which is one of those great landscapes that more of us should get to know. (anyone want to fund a field trip?) Someday I will get there.

LECTURE: Copies and Copying in Japanese Culture: Calligraphy, Painting, and Architecture

Copies and Copying in Japanese Culture:
Calligraphy, Painting, and Architecture

Yoshiake Shimizu., Ph.D.
Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology
Princeton University

Wednesday, October 10
Cook-Douglass Lecture Halls Room 110
4:00 - 5:15


The evolution of a given medium of art or a discipline
of design never occurs in isolation. Instead, there
is a continuous exchange across all the creative
practices about social concerns and critical positions
expressed through a language of lines, shapes, and
forms. In this talk, Yoshiake Shimizu, the Marquand
Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University,
will share his observations on the interrelationships
between painting, calligraphy, and architecture in
Japanese art.

Professor Shimizu specializes in Japanese and Chinese
painting and calligraphy. He received his B.A. in
Art History from Harvard, an M.A. in Art History
from the University of Kansas and, M.F.A. and Ph.D.
in Art and Archaeology from Princeton. He has taught
at University of California at Berkeley, University
of Heidelberg, and Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto,
and has been a Curator of Japanese Art at the Freer
Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
DC, and Guest Curator, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC. Earlier this year, he was co-curator
of "Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan"
at the Japan Society in New York. Beyond presenting
the traditions of Zen Buddhist figure painting in
medieval Japan, it introduced a shift the thinking
about Zen paintings. His publications include: Japanese Ink Paintings (with Carolyn Wheelwright);
Masters of Japanese Calligraphy (with John
Rosenfield); and Japan: The Shaping of Daimyo
Culture, 1185-1868.

High Tech High

Microsoft has helped build a brand new high-tech high school in Philadelphia. Every student will have a Tablet and the roof will be green. Will it change student performance or just make them more gimmicky?

“In those schools where we've introduced technology into the classrooms in such a way, the children are better behaved, the attendance is much better and the children are doing better academically,” says Vallas (CEO School District of Philadelphia).

Interestingly enough, the conditions for graduation include a requirement that you apply for college. Would this change the next generation of Geomatics students all that much? Will this allow us to focus less on the technology and more on the GIScience? It will be interesting to see.

Falling leaves

NJ.com has a short post quoting our favorite urban forester, Jason Grabosky, who says that the recent climate patterns mean our leaves are going to change soon and fall fast. The dry weather has been good for golfers but bad for leaf peepers.

And, they almost got the name of the school right. SEBS not CEBS. It is going to take a while to get that straightened out.

Celebration, Florida

Today's EDA lecture took a look at the trend of New Urbanism and how some planners and designers are worked to use physical design to shape community. Much of this is a response to urban sprawl which has been captured well by the National Geographic's New Suburb page. At the heart of it is an network of designers and planners that call themselves the Congress for New Urbanism.

One of the examples in class was Celebration, Florida which has two different official web pages: The city and the town center. During class we saw some quotes from Michael Pollan's exploration of Celebration several years ago in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine. But almost no one anticipated the possibility of 50% of the homes being for sale.

But there is much more information out there. Before class officially began I showed some of the Slate Slide Show looking at Celebration and how it is settling in. And Travel and Leisure magazine has written about a slew of the New Urban communities sprinkled around Florida.

These communities raise a different question about how sustainable they really are. New LEED standards could help evaluate that.

Andy Griffith Show

Since I mentioned a cultural reference in class that didn't connect for many of the students, I feel I need to help connect with contemporary culture. We spoke about The Andy Griffith Show, which is on TVLand these days. If you are not already familiar with the show, you might want to watch a few minutes of an episode online to get a sense for the small town lifestyles that they were presenting. The show's opening theme was a classic, but for some reason it was scrubbed out of this clip.

New Urban sightseeing

The last stop in our DC trip was to The Kentlands in Gaithersburg, MD. Designed by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, it is generally seen as a classic New Urban development.




We saw plenty of the hallmarks of New Urbanism: alleys, front porches, small front yards. And, no cul-de-sacs anywhere we looked.

So is this!

This is just an awesome looking project from Chile. And like the other posts below, it is NOT an obvious example of exactly what Landscape Architecture is, but it clearly falls well within the boundaries of LA. While we are clearly not training students for a project like this, I'd like to think that on our better days we are educating students in a way that prepares them unexpected opportunities and creative outcomes that this represents.

This is landscape architecture too

Claude Cormier, Landscape Architects got mentioned in the Talent Pool section of Fast Company this month. His name is unfamiliar to many in the US LA community, but the work might be more familiar. Certainly he isn't new on the scene, MoCo Loco interviewed him about a year ago.

After writing about how landscape architecture clearly includes the regional landscape design (or landscape planning (or environmental planning)) that is going on at places like EDAW, Jones and Jones and Design Workshop, I felt I should also mention another element that falls within the boundaries of LA while not fitting the centristic model of being an icon of exactly what LA is.

EDA lecture on New Urbanism

As I prep for my EDA lecture on New Urbanism, I should mention that Seaside turned 25 earlier this year. You can look back at other Places and Space posts on New Urbanism.

NPR reports on the growing trend to keep maps and GIS data secret as a means for fighting terrorism. This isn't just about hiding Dick Cheney's house, but it also includes keeping maps of fire hydrants and water mains secret.

Examples of Landscape Architecture

I recently had a student ask me whether he was better suited for landscape architecture or environmental planning. In answering that, I shared some websites for firms that are generally considered landscape architecture firms but that pursue projects that border on (or cross over into) environmental planning or landscape planning. The above image is a Design Workshop project at Pikes Peak that they have slotted into Regional Planning. Here are some of the firm sites where we were looking primarily at their projects and trying to find that invisible line:

EDAW

Design Workshop

Jones and Jones

O2