Notes from DLA 2018 1

At the Digital Landscape Architecture meeting at Wienhenstephan-Triesdorf, Penn State's Kelleann Foster gave a great keynote lecture. As a good keynote does, it covered lots of ground, which I will not try to summarize. But along the way she referenced some other interesting resources:

Carlo Ratti's idea that designers (especially geodesigners) are 'mutagens'.

APA's Metrics for Healthy Planning Communities

Map.social

iNaturalist
Moves-App
HBR Issue on Design Thinking
Diana Budds' 7 urban design trends

More summer

NYC is open for hikes and exploration of all types. To help you get more out of your summer, I made a running map online of potential places worth biking, hiking or lyfting to. Pick a handful and try them.

Another sign of summer

Interchanges is back, providing a daily dose of Interstate highway engineering and design.

All photography generously paid for by the USDA National Agricultural Imagery Program.

Stop being productive

Play with this.

National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery

Lots has already been posted online about the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL. Almost everything I have seen is positive. Here are a couple early reviews:

Chicago Sun-Times

LA Times

The New Yorker

more old news

While yo are away this summer, we will celebrate the 102nd anniversary of NYC's comprehensive zoning ordinance. It won't be a big party. But 2016, they partied like it was 1999.

Resources for Planning

Ian McHarg
Phil Lewis
USGS Topo quad maps
County Soil Surveys/Web Soils Survey
TRI
NJ GeoWeb
ArcGIS.com
NRIs
NASA World Wind / Google Earth

Claritas Prizm Groups

http://mapmaker.rutgers.edu/MAPS.html

Sanborn maps

Historic Aerials

National Trust for Historic Preservation

ParksScore

Local Newspapers like THNT and the Examiner and the Bergen Record 

Master plan

Ordinance.com

Books (PlaNetizen and ours and more)

e-Government

Old news

While talking about eminent domain in class, we skipped over New Jersey's most famous case: Donald Trump v. Vera Coking.

In 1998 the NY Times shared a short news piece stating that Donald Trump had failed in his five year effort to force a woman out of her home for a limo parking park.

Despite reported offers of over a million dollars, Vera Coking wanted to hold on to her boarding house and fought for that right. Eminent domain is a government power, and Trump's casino was a private interest, so he relied on Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) for the condemnation. An advocacy group called the Institute for Justice wrote about this extraordinary situation:

Unlike most developers, Donald Trump doesn’t have to negotiate with a private owner when he wants to buy a piece of property because a governmental agency-the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority or CRDA-will get it for him at a fraction of the market value, even if the current owner refuses to sell. Here is how the process works.

Unsurprisingly, the issue came up again during the 2016 campaign when Ted Cruz used it in a campaign ad where one kids condemned another kid's doll house.
 
The Coking house was photodocumented by HABS in 1991: