Atlantic Cities has posted a list of the most innovative maps of 2013. Some great stuff in there.

What do we know about design and health?

The Atlantic has a nice piece today emphasizing that despite some strong beliefs, "We Don't Know Nearly As Much About the Link Between Public Health and Urban Planning As We Think We Do."The impetus for the piece is a report on The State of Health + Urbanism by MIT's 10 year long Health and Urbanism Initiative. The more we study it, the more we see that we need to study it. And yet, what we do know, tends to be more about specific American cities. Imagine how little we know about the new megacities in other parts of the world.

Smart Campus folks

Last week in Santa Barbara, I met some very interesting folks that I either didn't know or didn't as well as I do now:

• Johannes Schöning - has written about augmented reality and Angry Birds
• Jeremy Crampton - Intell mapping, Bringing Foucalt to the Bluegrass
• Joaquín Huerta Guijarro - Spain, new remote sensing technology
• Carsten Keßler - VGI in education, linked data, semantics
• Michael Scott - Vulnerability, Caribbean

Of course there were plenty of folks that I already knew too, but we'll save that for another day.

Old trees, watch out!

There has been a change in the world's old tree standings. The Senator, a pond cypress in Florida, has moved off the Top Ten oldest living trees making room for one of the younger trees to move up on the list. Someone better check on The President.

Mandela memorial

The Washington Post has a photo of a fascinating Mandela memorial in Howick, South Africa.

London's answer to the High Line?

Slate writes about the new proposal for a garden bridge across the Thames. Does London even need an answer to the High Line?

Wi-fi trees

As seen on Twitter.

Great Networking Opportunity

MAC URISA's Fall meeting is just a few days away!

Data Sharing and Transparency: Using the Cloud to Manage Transportation GIS Data

Tuesday December 10, 2013 8am-3pm

www.macurisa.org/fall2013

Presentations Include: 

UPlan:“Utah’s Open Transportation Data in the Cloud”  by Mr. Frank Pisani

 

PennDOT’s Pennshare platform by Mr. Patrick Kielty

Who Should Attend:

GIS Professionals

Transportation Professionals

Regional Planners

Metropolitan Planning Organizations

Consultants

Chief Information Officers

State and Local Government Agencies

 

Venue Address:

RUTGERS EcoComplex
Environmental Research and Extension Center
1200 Florence-Columbus Rd.
Bordentown, NJ 08505-4200

Directions: http://ecocomplex.rutgers.edu/about_us_directions.php

Is the Sandy recovery is in the details?

The Star-Ledger seems to think that the details aren't working out as well as they ought. They offer this interesting piece of evidence, "A full 75 percent (of Sandy victims) now say they feel forgotten by the administration’s Sandy relief efforts."

Garden toilet

Last year when a Japanese designer named Sou Fujimoto built a garden space toilet, it might have seemed like a gag. After all, the video hardly makes it look like a garden. But this fall's garden toilet, also by Fujimoto, looks like a game changer. And before you write off Fujimoto as a Bansky-type provocateur, check out his extensive record as a serious architect.

The coming impact of climate change on forests

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran a 4-page feature on the impact that climate change is anticipated to have on the forests of Minnesota's famed Northwoods. Check out the slider bar that allows you to compare a map of the current forest and the anticipated changes.

 

Laurie Olin oral history

The Cultural Landscape Foundation has posted an amazing record of the career of landscape architect Laurie Olin with both video and transcripts. While you have a few hours of the holiday weekend left, it would be a great time to watch and reflect.