Wish list item

This is an installment in my list of simple things I want to do when we can do things again

 

Walk to the Zimmerli and see The Good Shepherd by Henry Tanner, "the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim."

Catching up

The NY Times critics have published their list of the 25 best movies of the new century. While I have made a substantial dent in the list (I read the reviews often enough that I am not surprised by much of the list) I think I need to take a few days off to catch up. This heat wave seems like the perfect time to start.

More of looking back at 2013

PlaNetizen has posted their most popular pieces from 2013.  My favorite might be Steven Snell's piece linking parks and healthy living.

Norman Wright, AICP has posted a column on PlaNetizen about the people who most inspired him in 2013.

Yanko Design had a list of best design concepts of 2013.

Design intelligence had their odd list of top design programs.

Top Ten lists

As landscape architecture and environmental planning have increasingly acknowledged an important and central role for climate and weather, this list of Top 10 weather events of 2012 seems interesting for our few year-end readers. Might as well throw in Slate's list of Top new species too.

6 Best Maps of 2012

GIS Lounge has posted a great list of the Top 6 maps of 2012.

Annoying buzzeword and catchphrases

Black Walnut Dispatch, a blog about gardening and nature, has posted their list of the Top Ten Most Annoying Garden Buzzwords and Catchphrases of 2011.  I don't that I agree with that many of them, but that is the point of a list like this.

High Line vs. The Law of the Indies

It is hard to imagine trying to compare New York's High Line with King Phillip's 1573 rules for where to develop, but somehow the Top 20 Urban Planning Successes of All Time sorted it out.

Top fight songs

As you watch the grandaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl, you can wonder whether those schools' fight songs are really so great. Or, you can just trust this completely unbiased list of the top 10 college fight songs:

10. Georgia Tech
9. Kentucky
8. Northwestern
7. USC and Tusk
6. Michigan St.
5. Notre Dame
4. Michigan (also)
3. Tennessee (unofficial)
2. LSU - PreGame - I am sure this will rock today's Capital One Bowl
1. University of Wisconsin - Both the fight song and Varsity

Note: Wisconsin's fight song was so good it became the state song.

Top 10 obscure Wikipedia posts on EP/LA/EG

When Wikipedia started people were mostly adding entries on more traditional encyclopedia entries like Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. Then they started creating an entry for every single character in Star Wars and Star Trek and The Wire. And then someone started turning their lecture notes into entries - that was good for us. Based on that here are some of the more arcane, obscure, or otherwise interesting entries from Landscape Architecture, Landscape Industry, Environmental Planning, and Environmental Geomatics.

Top 10 obscure Wikipedia posts on EP/LA/EG

10. New Pedestrianism
9. Merton Rule
8. Augustus Woodward
7. Arcology
6. Turf and Twig
5. Conurbation
4. Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army Corps of Engineers
3. The Sprawl
2. Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff
1. Cement Kiln (with the Snyder Estate Natural Cement Historic District)

On top of the 10 I'll add a couple local entries. Wikipedia allows local and global to compete as if they were of equal importance, which, to us they are.
COAH
Manhattanhenge

Top posts of 2009 by traffic

Since my traffic includes the average Googler wandering through and only visiting once, this is driven by popular search terms more than by popularity with devoted readers. For instance, #1 turns out to be a popular post with Dan Brown fans.

10. Roberto Burley Marx
9. Cheap Mansions Available
8. James Corner's House
7. Summer Internship in Chicago
6. Louis Kahn's Drawing
5. Streetmap Goes Off the Road
4. Monday Morning Quotes (Picasso)
3. Free Museums in NYC
2. Parc del Auditoris or South East Coastal Park
1. Capitol lawn statue of George Washington as Zeus

Top 10 Movies of 2009

Not many of these were released in 2009, but that is when I saw them and that'll have to do for this list.

10. Up
9. Wendy and Lucy
8. Gran Torino
7. Still Life
6. Frozen River
5. Up in the Air
4. The Wrestler
3. Elegy
2. Man on Wire
1. The Visitor

Top 10 fun-sounding landforms

1. Cuspate foreland
2. Tombolo
3. Monadnock
4. Thalweg
5. Hoodoo
6. Nunatak
7. Pingo
8. Tuya
9. Cuesta
10. Kame

End of the year Top 10 lists

So, to celebrate the end of the year and the end of the decade, many in the media are publishing their lists of Top 10 movies, or news stories, or books. A simple example would be Stephen Holden's Top 10 films of the year. He doesn't expect you to completely agree, and he probably would change it slightly by February or June, but it is a nice place to begin. Roger Ebert had to resort to 2 different lists this year. Time Magazine has a list of the Top 10 of Everything.

In our field, Arch News Now published their list of the Best Architecture Books of 2009. Daily Dose of Architecture posted their favorite posts of the year.

I've already offered my Top 10 Shapers of the America Landscape, but over the next few days we'll celebrate the change of year with our own Top 10 or Top 5 lists. In this case you should remember that "Top" is a construct that doesn't necessarily mean best or most outstanding. It can mean most notable, most biggest. Or it can just mean top. Don't read too much into it. If all that isn't enough you could just check out the List of Lists.