Master Plans

As an assigned reading for Fundamentals of Environmental Planning, students should look over this ANJEC piece on municipal Master Plans in New Jersey.  But they can optionally look over this scan of the 2006 Chatham Borough Master Plan. Does the quality of the scan say more about 2006 technology or the Borough's commitment to engaging the public in their plan? Before you judge, the slides from their 2016 update seem much more engaging.


And, in case you lost the link, this great Steve Strom handout on Suitability Analysis.

Summer reading

Here is your summer reading assignment:

ECOLOGIES OF EMPIRE: On the New Uses of the Honeybee by UC Berkeley's Jake Kosek.

Abstract: This essay examines the rise of the honeybee as a tool and metaphor in the U.S. “war on terror.” At present, the largest source of funding for apiary research comes from the U.S. military as part of efforts to remake entomology in an age of empire. This funding seeks to make new generations of bees sensitive to specific chemical traces—everything from plastic explosives, to the tritium used in nuclear weapons development, to land mines. Moreover, in an explicit attempt to redesign modern battlefield techniques, the Pentagon has returned to the form and metaphor of the “swarm” to combat what it takes to be the unpredictability of the enemy in the war on terror. At the same time, honeybee colonies are collapsing. Rethinking material assemblages of bees and humans in the war on terror, this essay moves beyond the constrained logic and limited politics of many epidemiological investigations of colony collapse. Honeybees are situated within a more expansive understanding of the role of and consequences for the animal in modern empire building.

The map of landmines generated by the flight patterns of trained honeybees is a remarkable twist on GIS on the battlefield.

IntGeo Readings

While these readings are primarily for students in Intro to Geomatics, all of our readers are invited to enjoy them.

• Z. Aslıgül Göçmen and Stephen J. Ventura "Barriers to GIS Use in Planning" (JAPA)
• Mapping Solar (ArcUser)
• Mapping Transportation and Health (PlaNetizen)
• GIS Designing our Future (ArcNews)

Readings

For Intro to Geomatics , it turns out that we just don't have enough class time to discuss all of the readings.  So, we are going to try discussing them here.  The comments are open to all, including readers who are not part of the class. 


Z. Aslıgül Göçmen and Stephen J. Ventura "Barriers to GIS Use in Planning" (JAPA)
Mapping Solar (ArcUser)
Mapping Transportation and Health (PlaNetizen)
GIS Designing our Future (ArcNews)

Since we were just dipping our toes into GIS this week, these articles were meant to highlight the different ways that GIS can be used by different groups. But the planning piece also showed that there are some fairly mundane issues that still loom large on the GIS horizon.