Wild Poinsettia

 The story of the taming of the wild poinsettia. I had no idea.

Mapping out the Scottish Gritter Spreaders

Where is Spready Mercury? What is For Your Ice Only? To help answer those questions, Scotland has created a live web map called the Trunk Road Gritter Tracker, that tracks their ice trucks with those entertaining names.

 

 

 

Paper: Evidence That Changes in Community Food Environments Lead to Changes in Children’s Weight

Excited to announce that capping more than 10 years of collaborative research, the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has published our paper, Evidence That Changes in Community Food Environments Lead to Changes in Children’s Weight: Results from a Longitudinal Prospective Cohort Study. A project with a long timeline deserves a long title, right? A special thanks to all of our collaborators and staff along the way.

Geohealth job in Europe

It is amazing to watch in real-time as geohealth continues its expansion from a small niche to a regular specialty. One more bit of evidence is this announcement of a post-doctoral position at the University of Twente, which mostly skips past the posturing and definitions and, instead, moves right into the specifics. And, like every conversation about human health these days, the description begins with COVID and then moves on to other areas.

 

 

COVID and design readings

Some pieces on redesigning our environment due to COVID-19

• Restaurants with very little outdoor space have been amazingly creative in shaping new dining spaces
• Different ways to use plexiglass instead of 6 feet spacing
  
• A Dutch proposal for a portable social distancing bench
• Kyle Chayka writes in The New Yorker that Coronavirus will change architecture
  
• On the other hand, Starchitect Norman Foster says it won't change our cities much
• Urban theorist Richard Florida talks about why density is not doomed by COVID-19

 

TodayFood reporting National Park news

 You know it is going to be an odd story when TodayFood is reporting on a news story in a National Park.

Let it flood?

Walter Hood's proposal to let the monuments around the Tidal Basin slowly get inundated is remarkable: 

"Let the waters be free," writes Walter Hood in his proposal. "It could start with living in a wetland rather than draining it." Hood, whose Hood Design Studio is based in Oakland, Calif., also calls for "a prophetic aesthetic ... that is really telling the truth about a place."

And the image from Field Operations, in NPR's Landscape Architects Unveil Plans To Save The National Mall's Tidal Basin, is downright haunting.

Tomorrow: Understanding and Managing the Risk of COVID-19

SEBS Virtual Science Cafe: Don Schaffner presents “Understanding and Managing the Risk of COVID-19” 

Dr. Schaffner, distinguished professor and extension specialist in food science, will present his experiences working with the general public and the news media during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on helping people to understand the risks posed by SARS-CoV-2 and how to minimize them.

The conversation is on Tuesday, October 13, 2020 at 11:30am, but advance registration is required.

 

 

CIP Codes

 In case it comes up, here are the CIP Codes for a few of our programs:

B.S. Landscape Architecture 040601
B.S. Environmental Planning and Design 040401
M.L.A. Landscape Architecture 040601

Exploring the National Parks

As part of the National Park Service guide to its parks, it has curated topic guides to the websites. For a topic, like Civil Rights, they provide a brief overview of the topic and then give the visitor link to a variety of parks where they could learn more about the topic.

 

Sample Topics

Civil Rights

Industry

Literature and poetry 

Presidential sites

Explorers and Exploration

Sample Features

Homes

Grasslands and Prairies

Waterfalls and Gorges 

Monuments, Memorials and Statues

 

Of course, some topics are too general to have a list associated with them. For instance, there is a fabulous guide to Cultural Landscapes without a list. And the guide to Natural Sounds is unexpected and remarkable.

 

One of the NPS' most popular events

 This week is a popular time for the National Park Service; it is Fat Bear Week. There will be lots of news coverage (CBS, WaPo, Smithsonian), plenty of voting, and a spike in searches on Katmai and Fat Bear. This is really a science awareness program to show people how Katmai National Park's amazing bears fatten up before the onset of the harsh Alaskan winter. So, watch some videos and vote for the fat ones.

Dialect Map

Aschmann's map of North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns is an enormous labor of love. The accompanying information about individual spoken traits adds details that enrich the maps. But my favorite part may be the close-up map of New Orleans that shows more distinct dialects inside those levees than in the entrety of the American West. I have been a sucker for this sort of stuff for years, including the old Joshua Katz maps and the Harvard dialect surveys.

 

Crowdsourced neighborhood mapping

Maps Mania undertook the exercise of mapping out a London neighborhood (or neighbourhood) using crowdsourced input to determine the boundaries. The neighborhood they mapped, London's West End, is a particularly undefined area and the submitted results show it. But, when combined, the final result seems a somewhat plausible. And the idea behind it remains pretty interesting.

Subpar Reviewers

 Amber Share turns horrifically bad one-star reviews of our National Parks into art that she calls, Subpar Parks.The art work is beautiful. And, as sophisticated commentary on attitudes to the parks, the reviews she has chosen are masterful.

Hudson Higlands Fjord Trail

 Take a hike (in the near future) on SCAPE's Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail from Cold Spring to Beacon.

Memorials

 

Knowledge

 

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. 

Willing is not enough we must do.

- Goethe

 

Maping the potential sports spread of coronavirus

This new feature from ESPN hits the trifecta of COVID-19, sports, and mapping. It uses maps to show the spatial reach of a single college football game. And, by extension, it shows how far and how many places could be touched by the COVID spread from that single game. Their examples are from Tuscaloosa, Lincoln, and Los Angeles.

The maps are fascinating and really make the story.

Project reusing seaweed

Kathryn Larsen shows an alternative to thatched roofs on Daily Dose of Architecture.

 

A return

 

 

 

Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), The Call of the Sun, 1919

Rutgers study gets attention

Our Lancet paper makes the news in Cost, Distance from Hospitals Present Barriers to Surgical Care. Good quotes from Gregory Peck.

Street View Road Cuts

Mexico (Chihauhua)


Bolivia


Bhutan


Austria


Hawaii


Ecuador


Romania


Turkey

An Open Letter to the UCSB Department of Geography

The UCSB Daily Nexus has published An Open Letter to the UCSB Department of Geography in response to its recent public statements on race. It will most likely get more attention in the coming days.

GIS Guide and challenge

The libraries at the Ohio State University have posted a 5 module exploration of ArcGIS Online that is a very user-friendly way to get information consumers started in making better use of these mapping tools.

New new urbainsm?

In April, ASLA's The Field published a piece looking at the latest examples of New Urbanism and calling for landscape architecture to assert itself in more meaningful ways in these projects. The author, Clemson Professor Thomas Schurch, talks about the role for landscape architecture on Professional Community Assistance Teams, which seems even more timely today.

As he points out, in between some compelling project photos and plans, the relationship between LA and our allied professions is incredibly important. And in a post-pandemic, post-protest, post-recession world, inclusive teamwork is going to be critically important.

Musical outlets

We each have our own ways of getting through this. I have been retreating to the music of  Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Jan Ladislav Dussek and Joseph Wölfl. This year is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, and we would have seen s series of concerts around the world to celebrate. But a few weeks ago the NY Times published a story on the French pianist Bavouzet, who was instead revisiting the work of Beethoven's contemporaries and colleagues. Since then, I have been enjoying the catalog of their work. It isn't the only thing I am listening to or watching, but it has been a nice backdrop to sheltering in place.

Access to care

Who has access to care? It has become a particularly timely question. Our recent team recently asked that question for the nation of Colombia. But a new set of maps pose it for US cities during the pandemic.

Mapping out testing sites

According to NJ.com, today's list of COVID-19 testing sites for New Jersey has 113 locations. They are not all open to the public. A couple are not very specific about the location. Some appear to be small and limited in ability while others are large and high volume.

The state relies on alternatives and private companies as part of that equation. Of the 113 listed testing sites, 58 are one of these retail locations:

Rite Aid drive-thru	13
CVS Pharmacy	11
MedExpress Urgent Care	7
MedExpress Urgent Care	7
Walmart	6
AFC Urgent Care	5
Immediate Care	4
PM Pediatrics	3
Patient First	2

UPDATE: CVS has announced that they are expanding to 45 drive-thru sites:
https://www.nj.com/news/2020/05/cvs-expands-drive-thru-coronavirus-testing-to-45-more-nj-locations.html (5/28)


The map below shows all 113 testing sites as points. The locations are generally more concentrated in urban areas than rural. The redlines are Voronoi polygons which calculate the areas closest to each site without regard to population or capability.

Looking closer, the list shows that the state's 4 largest cities only have a seven of the sites:
Newark:       3 sites   7.059 cases
Jersey City:  3 sites   6,709 cases
Paterson:      0 sites   7,007 cases
Elizabeth:    1 sites    5339 cases

That means those four municipalities represent about 9% of the state's residents and nearly 17% of the cases in New Jersey but have about 6% of the testing sites. The disparity is striking. Some of these are counting on larger sites in adjacent towns,  but those without cars might find this challenging. With limited information on capability, it is hard for us to know which sites contribute the most to New Jersey's burden. The map below shows distances from the sites (as the crow flies).

Even with a car, some areas are pretty distant. The map below shows areas within 20 minutes a of all sites, in yellow. Many of the underserved areas in North Jersey are from from other services too, so maybe they won't be surprised. But notice how much of the Jersey Shore is left without easy access - all of LBI is well over 20 minutes. The far ends of the island are over a 90 minute round trip to and from a testing center.

 

  

As the beaches reopen, New Jersey is going to need more testing near those active areas. Both for beachgoers and the many workers in LBI businesses.


I made these today with publicly available data and limited time while moving between other projects. But with more time and better data there is plenty more worth asking. What does the map look like if we remove few of the most selective sites (e.g., front line workers only)? Are the urban clusters of testing sites proportional to the populations in those areas? Do site capabilities change that any? How far do people without cars have to travel to access a walk-up or walk-in site? How does access compare with social vulnerability?

Remembering Candace McKee Ashmun

One of New Jersey's most important voices for preservation has passed away. Candace McKee Ashmun, whose environmental leadership included service on the Pinelands Commission, ANJEC, the Great Swamp Advisory Committee, the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment, and the NJ State Planning Commission, was 96 years old.

Sometimes called the Godmother of the NJ Pines, Ashmun's work as a founding member of the Pinelands Commission is permanently memorialized with the 4,000 acre NJCF Candace McKee Ashmun Preserve. But her impact was felt statewide.

I was struck by the way that all factions of the New Jersey environmental community respected her.  The Burlington County Times quoted Michelle Byers, “Within an environmental community that doesn’t always get along everyone respected Candy. She helped bring people together.”

Wendell Berry

“If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going.”

 ― Wendell Berry

Local rates of reported cases

The latest municipal map from the GeoHealth Lab shows recent activity down in Gloucester and Camden. But definitely keep watching AC as well. The earlier caveats still apply.

Fun with GIScience

The United States of Voronoi.

(If you can ever stop looking at that map, click on the link to his larger collection of maps.)

Step 1: Rethink your resume

As things reopen, employers are going to trying emerge from this storm with exceptional people. How are they going to know that you could be one of them? The first place to tell them about it is a better resume. Harvard Business Review recommends a quick tune up to make sure it is accomplishing what you need.

When the resume gets transformed from an obligatory tool, to a rich opportunity to reach someone who is hiring, the conversation might begin.

COVID-19 in NJ towns

New Jersey has 565 municipalities. Based on the reports I am seeing, there only 10 that still do not appear to be reporting a single case of coronavirus, yet. Altogether these 10 communities represent only about 3,000 people. Three of them, Pine Valley, Tavistock, and Walpack, each have fewer than 20 residents each. Pine Valley Borough CAMDEN Tavistock Borough CAMDEN Cape May Point Borough CAPE MAY Stone Harbor Borough CAPE MAY Shiloh Borough CUMBERLAND Stockton Borough HUNTERDON Harvey Cedars Borough OCEAN Mantoloking Borough OCEAN Elsinboro Township SALEM Walpack Township SUSSEX By April 7th the state had broken 500 municipalities reporting at least one case. On April 15th we had around 541 municipalities with cases. On April 27th we had 550. On May 10th Washington Township, Burlington County, reported a case leaving us with just 10 towns without reported cases.

Getting better

The map of the changes in infection rates is definitely going in the right direction. When it finishes up, you will see blue flecks in Bergen County. That area which was an epicenter is now seeing declines in numbers.

Don't get too comfy, we still have a long ways to go. According to the New Jersey data dashboard, the Garden State still has over 131,000 cases. Based on the JHU COVID Dashboard, there are only about 8 countries (including the US) that have more cases.

This map is part of the ongoing effort at the GeoHealth Lab @ CRSSA to explore alternative ways to see and track patterns of the COVID spread across New Jersey.

Land use maps

Oyez

In class we mentioned Oyez as a helpful resource on Supreme Court cases about takings. Among the details it provides about cases are the recordings of the oral arguments, which are relatively short. For instance, you can listen to the attorneys for both sides of Dolan v. City of Tigard spar with the justices. They ask a few practical questions about the proposed bike path, but they also ask big questions about the implications of the precedent they might be about to set.

Cinco de Mayo

Celebrate CInco de Mayo with some Mexican Landscape Architecture.

I finally made my first trip to Mexico City last year and was amazed.

Graceland Cemetery

One day after I mention it in class, the Chicago Tribune exhorts readers to visit Graceland Cemetery. After reminding us that the entire cemetery is an arboreal wonderland sprinkled with amazing architecture, including several Louis Sullivan monuments, the columnist drops an exclamation mark on it with a closing sales pitch for the Burnham burial site.

As powerful as the Sullivan-designed monuments are, my favorite place at Graceland is not a work of architecture, but a piece of environmental design — the island in the lake where the architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham and his family are buried. You reach the island by crossing a narrow wood footbridge. It leads to an irregularly-shaped boulder that marks the resting place of Burnham and his wife Margaret.

A canopy of trees offers a sense of shelter, while the water surrounding the island adds a dose of serenity. The lakefront that Burnham championed as a great public space is closed to the public, but here, at least, the visitor can honor the visionary who did so much to create it.

Coronavirus by town

 

                             
Hospitalizations are down and the rate of cases is slowing, but the spatial spread continues. There are not many places left in New Jersey that are free from COVID-19. This map shows the rate, by municipality, by date (Cases/100,000).

If we isolate the 20 largest municipalities (by population), the May 1 reported rates still some variability. I've added population numbers (2010) for quick reference. Please remember that these are being made quickly during the outbreak and not with unlimited time to check and confirm. Hamilton Township is in Mercer County.

May 1 rates and 2010 population data

	Reported Cases/100k	2010 Population	Population Density
East Orange City	2277	64270	16395
Gloucester Twp	433	64634	2776
Old Bridge Twp	1142	65375	1690
Union City	4052	66455	51918
Middletown Twp	647	66522	1528
Passaic City	3238	69781	21604
Cherry Hill Twp	626	71045	2939
Brick Twp	1081	75072	2316
Camden City	1015	77344	7394
Clifton City	2568	84136	7361
Trenton City	1427	84913	10317
Hamilton Twp	928	88464	2199
Toms River Twp	1178	91239	1731
Lakewood Twp	1830	92843	3700
Woodbridge Twp	1438	99585	4148
Edison Twp	1290	99967	3263
Elizabeth City	3164	124969	8984
Paterson City	3416	146199	16824
Jersey City	2127	247597	15611
Newark City	1958	277140	10574

Hands-on student learning in food production

Here is a great story about students getting hands-on experience in research and agribusiness here at Rutgers SEBS. It shouldn't be a big surprise. It shouldn't be a surprise, these students are getting help from people with a deep concern for students. It is interesting to read it with an eye to how we sustain these successes during a time of isolation.

NJ Cities with COVD

Going through yesterday's reports on COVID cases (which probably already lag a little), there were 22 cities and towns in New Jersey with over 1,000 cases. Four of those are in Middlesex County alone. For much of our mapping we have focused on rates (cases/100,000), but for these cities, the actual numbers are important. Imagine trying to track that many cases, or even simply trying to contact them. The cases from the 22 municipalities combine to represent 41% of the cases in New Jersey.  Of the 565 municipalities in New Jersey, only about a dozen do not report cases. That leaves the potential for about 550 separate places to watch and address coronavirus in NJ.

Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Elizabeth are the largest municipalities by population, so it is no surprise seeing them in those same spots on the list. But usually I expect to see Edison and Woodbridge next, so it is interesting to see Passaic with the 5th most cases even though it is the 15th largest by population. Here is the list for "on or close to" April 29th.

Newark     5,300
Jersey City     5,144
Paterson     4,751
Elizabeth     3,953
Union City     2,678
Passaic     2,172
North Bergen Township     2,095
Clifton     2,094
West New York     1,668
Lakewood Township     1,668
Perth Amboy     1,614
Plainfield     1,451
East Orange     1,420
Woodbridge Township     1,404
Union Township     1,404
Edison Township     1,252
Hackensack     1,125
Trenton     1,120
New Brunswick     1,113
Irvington Township     1,112
Toms River Township     1,060
Linden     1,046


The number of cases reported is a fairly one-dimensional representation of the situation (add in uncertainty about reporting, testing, etc. and it gets even tougher). But it is worth noting that while none of these appeared to yet be going down, few are growing nearly as rapidly as they were a week ago. Just remember that these numbers are constantly changing and not something easy to double-check.

Lancet paper on access in Colombian

Excited to share that our research team, led by Dr. Hanna and Dr. Peck, has published Use of the six core surgical indicators from the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery in Colombia: a situational analysis in The Lancet Global Health.

Working in Colombia has given me a great chance to discover an amazing country. And the diversity of its landscapes produce some pretty amazing challenges to access to emergency surgical care. Mapping those with and without 2-hour access, was only the first of the six indicators, but it helped illustrate how much both the physical and cultural landscapes of Colombia shaped that access.

Part of what made this possible was a commitment by Colombia to keep good records across their entire nation. Part what it took was a large team with diverse backgrounds and skills. And part of it was a leadership with a vision sustained over years. There is plenty left to do. Updates and refinements and comparisons with other factors. But this was a huge step and I am proud to have been part of this amazing team.

Exploring coronovirus over time

The GeoHealth Lab @ CRSSA has been exploring municipal patterns of COVID-19 in New Jersey. With 565 municipalities, this is a fairly detailed look at the movement of the virus across the landscapes of the Garden State. It is fraught with challenges since not all municipalities are reporting these numbers every day, they may not be using consistent definitions, and the municipalities range wildly in area and population. While we are culling these data from a variety of sources - tweets by mayors, county web sites, various newspapers - the reporters at NJ.com have not only been publishing numbers, but they published a great explanation of why you should be wary of these data. In that spirit, these early data visualizations are offered as a rapid response. 

While you should be careful in reading these data, as longitudinal data they display some remarkable patterns. Eventually there will be more carefully checked data that is presented in carefully balanced representations. But as we are currently surrounded by this pandemic, we should see what we can in the moment.  As a simple example, we can start just comparing the reported rates (cases per 100,000 residents) for just a few cities:

Early reports asked why New Brunswick (yellow) wasn't experiencing growth as fast as a few other cities, but the graph shows New Brunswick (blue) catching up with Newark's rate in  recent days. There is also a spatial pattern implied, as the southern cities lagged - it seems that northern New Jersey started first but Trenton is starting to catch up. Will Atlantic City (light blue at the bottom) see a later jump in its rate? The answer to that will have policy implications for the statewide shutdown.

Having suggested that the pattern is spatial, what we need is a map that shows us the changes over time. Here is an animated GIF tracking the municipal data from March 31 to April 27. (If it isn't animated for you, you can download it or refresh this page.)

The first time through you might just notice that the map gets darker. But with a second run through the animation you might notice that it starts with higher rates in Bergen County and spreads West and South. As it does, you can also see that it moves like a wave, washing across both large and small towns.

To see if large cities were having similar experiences, we selected out the 20 largest municipalities in New Jersey by population. For each of these, we graphed their change in reported rates over time. With so many squiggles it is hard to pick out just one town, but the legend shows their rankings and. more importantly, the graph shows that most of them are experiencing similar trends (consistent growth), but at decidedly different rates. Again, don't get lost in details, since these data could still use some polish. But the big pattern can help identify where to watch in the coming days.

Keep an eye out for updates. There is plenty more in the pipeline.

Different scenarios for the fall

Inside Higher Ed has come up with 15 different scenarios for the Fall semester. And, having already posted those, they are now exploring each with a deeper dive (e.g., The Late Start). For planners, scenarios are an important first step in addressing uncertainty.

3-d printing PPE at Rutgers

Rutgers' Dr. Joseph Hanna is making sure that his coworkers at the hospital have additional protection from COVID-19, so he started making parts with a 3-d printer. Now there are people working all over Rutgers to help create extra PPE for Dr. Hanna and his fellow front line workers.

RotD: Books

Q. I have some extra time this summer/semester/winter and would like to read an extra book or two. Can you suggest anything good?

A. It depends on your interest.

A) An easy avenue to consider as a start would be to get some recent issues of Landscape Architecture Magazine which is published by the American Society of Landscape Architecture and is meant as their semi-official portrayal of the state of the profession.

B) For environmental planning students I frequently recommend the following (although some are recommended as examples of trends that I may or may not fully endorse):

Ian McHarg's Design With Nature and A Quest for Life.

Anything written by Wendell Berry. My favorite was Home Economics, but that was a while ago.

Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck's Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape.

Oh, what the heck. Maybe you should just pick from Planetizen's Top 20 Planning Books list for this stuff. (Or their latest, the Best of 2019)

C) For those who are trying to move up from entry level students to serious students of landscape architecture, here is an edited version of the list Dr. Shearer prepared for some our past design students:

There are several books by John R. Stilgoe that are well worth reading. He is an historian, not a designer, and holds a joint appointment between the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Visual & Environmental Studies Department of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Also worth mentioning, he writes a bi-monthly column in the Sunday Boston Globe--South Shore Edition. You can find these by searching his name on Google News.

John Stilgoe, Common Landscapes of North America. His first major work, this book examines how North America has been intentionally shaped from the colonial era through the early nineteenth century by non-designers. Topics include measures taken by government--such as the Ordering of Towns which was penned before the Puritans stepped off the Arabella, the Spanish Law of the Indies, and the Jefferson-era Northwest Ordinance; by farmers--how northerners made fences to keep things in vs. how southerners made fences to keep things out and why barns are red; and by what might be considered visionary industrialists--such as the people who funded the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Erie Canal. As one might expect, this book is chock full of historical facts, but its real strength is that demonstrates how "traditional" practices for shaping the landscape are not conventions to be followed uncritically. Instead, they are based on a complex combination of ideals and practicalities. At a minimum, this book would complement your landscape history class in that it describes the "non-art" shaping of the environment. But separate from that potential, I think this book would be of interest to everyone, regardless of whether you are in the landscape architecture, landscape industry, or environmental planning & management programs.

John Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic. Relatively short and very approachable, this book was written for a broad audience and intended to get everyone to go outside, look around, and think about the implications of what they see. For example, how does the US Post Office organize space and how, in turn, do we--in part--live by that organization?

John Stilgoe, Landscape and Images. This book is a compilation of some of JRS' articles and essays. Topics include the role of photography in shaping our understanding of the landscape (for better and worse), the specter of hobgoblins in suburbia, and bikinis. This book came out last year through the University of Virginia Press and I do not know if it is available as a paperback yet.

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory. Schama is another historian, but unlike Stilgoe does not focus on the environment. (For example, a previous book was on Dutch painting and he has recently been compiling a multivolume history of the Britain.) As a result of his range, he is not as insightful on particular points about landscape change, but his breadth makes connections that a more specialized mind might miss. Some of the places described in Landscape and Memory will be familiar to you from your landscape history class; others--like Mount Rushmore--you will know from elsewhere. What I think is useful about this book is its organization: Rather than go through a discussion of these sites by time or by location, it is arranged in three parts by material: wood, water, and rock. This perspective can help you re-think not only what you learned in your history class, but how you might apply design themes based on materials in studio.

William Cronan, Natures Metropolis. If you are looking for patterns in this list, Cronan is also an historian. If he has a fault, it would be that he occasionally sentimentalizes some activities associated with shaping the environment. That particular problem is not so evident in this history of Chicago in which he describes how the idea (the promise?) of "progress," natural resources, and technology combined to create a new kind of urban condition. I recommend this book not because I think everyone should know about America's second city, but because it lays out, in clear language, how possibilities can be combined to create something bigger than most people can imagine. Whether or not such things should be built is another question, but it is happening at a rapid clip in China as you read. Admittedly, this book will be of more obvious interest to those in the environmental planning & management program, but it could help everyone think about the built environment.

J. Nicholas Entrikin, The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. This book is not an easy read: most graduate students need to keep a very good dictionary at hand, and you will want to (or need to) pause and think about what is expressed after each and every page. In essence, Entrikin tries to synthesize two opposing ways we understand the creation of regions. On the one side, there is the German "science of space" view which holds that law-like forces of change operate universally over time. On the other side is the French, "description of place" view which holds that regions emerge from entirely idiosyncratic opportunities and decisions. If you can get through it, it will help you to understand arguments of geographic limitation-determinism.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. If you pick up Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack's Site Planning, you will be able to start applying what you read very quickly; It's just that kind of book. The Poetics of Space is the opposite in term of easy application, but it is arguably as important. You do not "use" this book. Instead, you live with it, and as you do it infuses your own ideas and makes them richer. Most of the points are made in terms of architecture—and indeed, this book is read by just about every architect at some point in his or her education—but do not let that get in the way of you reading it. (Stilgoe thought it important enough that he wrote an introduction to one of the more recent editions.)

Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension. Hall is an anthropologist who writes on a variety of issues that frequently go unnoticed in daily life because they are so ingrained in a culture. In this book he examines what might be considered the dynamics of personal space and indirectly, what designers might do to influence how social places are designed.

Niall Kirkwood, The Art of Landscape Detail and Weathering and Durability in Landscape Architecture. Kirkwood now deals with bioremediation and other technologies for brown field sites, but his first book and follow-up were careful studies of construction details. On the surface, they are about what combinations of material and forms work, what do not work, and why. However, their underlying premise is that for site scale design to be successful, the ideas of the larger scheme should be expressed in the thoughtful execution of the smallest elements. Admittedly, most books on building details are hopelessly dull and this text might suffer a certain lack of glamour. But if you want to further explore how a curb or a flight of steps might matter and, moreover, how thinking about these things might contribute to a richer design process, then these books are worth a look. Also of note, when I last looked, they were quite expensive.

James Corner [Editor], Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture. Corner was the Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Some of the essays in this collection are difficult to read, but if you are interested in wrestling with big ideas, it is a good place to start.

Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. Another disclaimer: I was GB's teaching fellow for several years. There is "smart," there is "really smart," and there is "scary smart"—so smart that you are glad the person uses their mind for good and not to rule the planet for their own enrichment. Giuliana Bruno is scary smart. This book is about the relationship between seeing and traveling, about the "motion" in emotion. That topic alone makes it engaging, but what I think is even more important about this book is the way it brings together different arts.

Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. During pin-ups and reviews we have talked about how the making of drawings and models is a matter of craft—of knowing about the qualities of materials and how they can be shaped for a certain effect. Very soon you will be making representations with a computer in addition to with a lead holder and chipboard and you might be wondering, is there such a thing as "digital craft"? After all, most AutoCad plots look as if they could have been made by anyone any time. McCullough, who was trained as an architect and urban planner, thinks that digital craft does exist, even if the ideas of craft are not discussed or taught in a computer lab. This book places digital media within a larger context of visual arts. It will not teach you how to make the most of the Photoshop magic wand tool, but it will introduce you to a way of thinking about your efforts with keyboard and mouse that will lead to better works.

Douglas Cooper, Drawings and Perceiving: Life Drawings for Students of Architecture and Design. Cooper teaches at Carnegie Mellon and this book might be considered a translation or adaptation of the well known The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicholaides for designers. The instructions and exercises are quite good.

Robert W. Gill, Basic Rendering. This book is all about black and white rendering. Its strength is its discussion of how light behaves on the objects around us. It will help you to become a master of stippling.

What's next?

For the long term recovery, I am pondering the ideas in The Hammer and The Dance. It was posted on March 10 and has gotten serious attention. Today the author posted a follow up called Coronavirus: Learning How to Dance, Part 1: A Dancing Masterclass, or What WeCan Learn from Countries Around the World. Much of what he is saying is Public Health 101. But he puts it together remarkably well (and I suspect with the support of an impressive staff).

For my students I encourage them to think about: What will it mean for higher education? What will it mean for planning and design? For employment over the next five years?

But I am also curious about what it might mean about the geospatial patterns in COVID-19. And, as we look at other countries, I can't help but notice that are landscapes will not be like theirs. Even those with sprawl do it differently than us. Food access is different. Workplaces are different. Movement across those landscapes is different too. So surely the maps of the roller coaster ride will look different too.