A different look for an ag school

There have been quite a few different design projects over the years wherein our students find themselves trying to explore a more appropriate design vocabulary for what our school is becoming. As we have transitioned from the College of Ag to the College of Ag and the Environment to Cook College to SEBS, there has remained an interest in creating a structural and visual system that appropriately reflects the nature of the learning that has and will go one here.

Daily Dose looks at a French school of agriculture that has a glassy proposal for structures that fill this bill. What I don't see is a means for finding the funding.

Weekend viewing

A classic little film about making British OS maps.

h/t to OpenGeoData

Go to the Yucatan!

Now is the time to sign up for the Rutgers LA winter 2008/2009 course in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. This class can count as either your jr/sr colloquium or a multicultural class (but not both). It will be taught by Jason Husveth. UPDATED: Check in with Rutgers Study Abroad http://studyabroad.rutgers.edu/index.html Phone: 732/932-7787

On an unrelated note, Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico has just visited New Brunswick announcing his intention to open a consulate here. According to the Home News and Tribune:

Latinos, and Mexicans in particular, make up a sizable portion of Central Jersey's population. According to census figures released in May, the Latino population in the state grew by 1.25 percentage points, to 1,382,000 from 2006 and 2007. Latinos in New Jersey account for almost 16 percent of the state's population, a percentage near equal to country's overall Hispanic population.

The NY Times Great homes page has the Yucatan Village and Resort. This is NOT where our students will be staying.

Still more meetings

The NJMC Sustainable Communities Planning Seminar is being held on October 1st in the Meadowlands. It appears to be emphasizing real things that can be done to green up a community. One of the speakers, Ariane DeLafosse, is a Rutgers grad and another, Kevin Lyons, is a Rutgers employee.

Basketball season is already here

Here is the proof.

Sanborn Maps as a resource

It turns out that Princeton U's Library has posted a pretty significant collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.

While the collection of New Jersey maps is fairly extensive, it isn't all scanned yet. The key to using this for much of New Jersey is that you have to first download their excel spreadsheet and click on the link for the appropriate set of Sanborn maps.

I've posted my photos of Sanborn maps from the Library of Congress map vault. The top photo shows some red brick buildings near the blue stone construction of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. You can even see that the area behind home plate was brick construction, which shows in some of the photos. The maps are great because they are so detailed and help track change over time.

Renzo Piano's California Academy of Science

Renzo Piano's new building just opened this week in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Treehugger offered a preview a few months back. And now the NY Times has posted a review and slideshow. No single photo tells the story. (The above photo is from Wikicommons)

Yet another meeting

And never the time or money to attend...

UDMS 2009
27TH URBAN DATA MANAGEMENT SYMPOSIUM
June 24-26, 2009
LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIJA

ANJEC 35th Annual Environmental Congress

This year's ANJEC 35th Annual Environmental Congress, is October 3rd, so sign up soon. It is a great opportunity for both networking and learning about what is happening on the ground in NJ.

East Brunswick bus and parking conflict

At a time when more communities are trying to help commuters cope with gas prices by promoting mass transit, East Brunswick finds itself with a problem. Their efforts to promote a linkage between a private bus line and a new parking deck have left the public bus line feeling left out.

The new Places and Space poll

I'm trying out the new polling widget from Blogger.com, in the right-hand column. I've started with a cheesy question about planning priorities and will report results next week. If it seems like we get some use out to fit we might try more interesting questions.

Blazing a new trail across the midwest

I seems that more and more people are taking the call for a Great Plains Trail seriously. It would be a National Trail, like the Appalachian Trail, and capture the Genius Loci of the Midwest. That is why its primary proponents are all from around here.

Lecture: Landscape Architecture in the New Renaissance

Landscape Architecture in the New Renaissance: A discussion on career paths and resources for professional growth
Nicholas Tufaro, PP, CLA, RLA, ASLA
Principal Planner, Division of Environmental, Parks and Comprehensive Planning. Middlesex County Planning Department

Department of Landscape Architecture Lecture Series
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
4pm in the Cook-Douglass Lecture Halls Room 110

Park(ing) Day

Park(ing) Day seems to have been pretty successful in generating some creative solutions.

Alan Berger in the Times

This morning's NYTimes takes a look at the role that landscape architects can play in bringing new life to a damaged landscape. They focus on Alan Berger's stint as a Rome Prize Fellow where he has looked at the Latina marshes:

For places as far gone as this one, however, a new breed of landscape architect is recommending a radical solution: not so much to restore the environment as to redesign it.

“It is so ecologically out of balance that if it goes on this way, it will kill itself,” said Alan Berger, a landscape architecture professor at M.I.T. who was excitedly poking around the smelly canals on a recent day and talking to fishermen like Mr. Assunto.

“You can’t remove the economy and move the people away,” he added. “Ecologically speaking, you can’t restore it; you have to go forward, to set this place on a new path.”

The article makes it sound like his plans are contrary to traditional WWF or TNC approaches, but even they are more appreciative of compromise than this makes it sound. And, while some see this as controversial, it isn't any different that what we have seen Jean Marie Hartman doing in the Meadowlands. Sometimes going back isn't even an option.

Quick peek at football

While the winners are holding pretty steady, Kentucky's off day and Rutgers loss didn't hurt them much either. You can decide for yourself. Here are the latest rankings from Sagarin:

Sierra Leone President speaking at Rutgers

It isn't every day that you get the chance to see the leader of a sovereign nation speak. Living close to the UN, I guess we have a few more chances than people living in Maine. But this is really close (note the mention of Franklin):

*PRESIDENT OF SIERRA LEONE TO SPEAK AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY*

His Excellency, Ernest Bai Koroma, to discuss progress, democracy and commerce

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- On the eve of his appearance before the United Nations, his Excellency, Ernest Bai Koroma, president of the Republic of Sierra Leone, will speak at Rutgers University on Sunday, Sept. 21.

The event is free and open to the public, and will take place at 4 p.m. at the Rutgers Student Center on College Avenue. The program is sponsored by the Rutgers' Center for African Studies, the School of Arts and Sciences' Office of International Programs, the Office of the President and the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs.

"The invitation to President Koroma sends a strong signal to African immigrants to New Jersey that Rutgers wants to engage with and welcome you to our community," said David McDermott Hughes, director of the Center for African Studies at Rutgers.

President Koroma was sworn in as president in September 2007 after a free election. Sierra Leone is located on the West Coast of Africa and has a population of approximately 6.2 million. Many immigrants from Sierra Leone reside in central New Jersey near the university's New Brunswick Campus. For example, the population of Franklin Township includes at least 7 percent Sierra Leoneans.

President Koroma will be accompanied by his ministers of foreign affairs, education and economics and will answer questions from the audience. He is scheduled to speak to the United Nations Assembly on Monday, Sept. 22.

Some good news for Rutgers

An anonymous donor has given $13 million. While always appreciated, it is especially valuable at a tough budget time.

World Water Monitoring Day

Today is World Water Monitoring Day 2008!

Reality TV show

Check out the new reality TV show where teams of landscape architects compete to design a town in Michigan.

Childhood obesity study

A few months ago we embarked on an interesting project at CRSSA where we are helping look at urban patterns of childhood obesity. The spatial analysis will compare patterns of incidence of childhood obesity with environmental factors. This project is being supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I mention it because it is the reason that I expect to be posting more obesity-related links, and I have created a new "obesity" tag for these posts. Stay tuned.

More Sourland land

The Sourlands just got bigger.

Galveston

In a rather prescient move, last summer Pruned posted some historic photos of Galveston's attempt to defy nature. More recently, The Big Picture has posted some photos of Ike's damage.

Free NJ Transit for students

NJ Transit is letting students ride free until September 21! So what are you going to do?

• Try out the Hudson Bergen Light Rail?
• Hop up to Newark for the big impressionist show? (starts Wednesday)
• Finally check out the waterfalls?
• Visit Public Farm 1 at PS1 in Queens (the most ethnically diverse county in the US)?
• Take a fall stroll through one of New York's 7 best gardens?
• Wander a new neighborhood in Montclair or Brooklyn?
• Ride the Dinky to the Prospect Garden and Princeton Art Museum?
  
• Get a cheap but incredible hamburger at the hidden burger bar in Le Parker Meridian?
  
• Head into Harlem for a free glance at the Goya and El Greco paintings at the Hispanic Society museum at Audubon Terrace?
• Or maybe try to see that giant green Lehman sign before it is gone?

The Legends of the Stony brook Millstone Watershed

This is turning out to be a culturally rich watershed where many interesting and odd things have happened. I'll start my list with the hopes that the comments will fill up:
George Washington slept here
The creepy Skillman stories
Albert Einstein
Elsie the Cow
Independence Day
War of the Worlds
Cannonball scars
The Beautiful Mind mathematician

The Lindbergh baby kidnapping happened either in the watershed of very nearby.

ESRI mapping tips

A recent post on the ESRI Mapping blog caught my eye, not so much for the tip it gave, but instead for the admission that knowing basic ArcGIS is different than knowing how to put together those steps elegantly.

It’s been possible to do this sort of thing in ArcGIS for many years, though it took knowing the combination of steps and tools to use.

This is true of some things in Illustrator or Photoshop too. Sophisticated treatments sometimes require multiple steps that aren't obvious, even when you know each of the individual actions.

Bayview Rural Village

I first read about the Bayview Rural Village in southern Delmarva in the book, Design Like you Give a Damn. The residents of Bayview, many descendants of slaves from that area, were living in very rundown housing that reportedly was without running water or electricity. The new community was designed to create not only livable housing but a neighborhood surrounded by farmland that the community would farm. This really is meant as a sustainable place in the sense that the community was designed in connection with a primary source of financial and edible sustenance.

These photos don't capture that very well, but since we were driving by, it seemed like I should at least snap a couple shots.

Monica Turner on the Radio

WPR's Here on Earth recently had Wisconsin landscape ecologist Monica Turner on to talk about NAture and Culture. You can listen here.

Greetings From Asbury Park

The New Jersey Film Festival is screening the local documentary, Greetings From Asbury Park, on Friday September 19th at Rutgers' College Ave Campus. The screening will include an appearance by the filmmaker, Christina Eliopulos. NJN has info and a preview.

A little football

While it seems a little weird to have Rutgers playing a nationally televised game on 9/11 so close to the WTC site Tribute in Light, I probably should go ahead and roll out the annual Sagarin chart of progress for UK, LSU, UW, and RU. I don't know why I am gdoing it again since LSU finished so far from first place last year , even though they won the National Championship.



LSU (1-0) is holding steady as a top3 team (good enough for now) and Kentucky (2-0) saw a boost after beating Louisville but suffered for not pummeling App St even worse. UW's 2-0 start is treated as solid but Rutgers (0-1) needs that first win to get back into the top 50.

GPS Phones vs. GPS Navigation

It is a little hard to be sure about this trend (as measure by Google Trends), but it looks like GPS phones are catching up with GPS navigation as search terms. Which means that they are increasingly becoming part of the everyday American experience.

Unpaid Internship at Edison Township

Edison Township engineer, John Medina, is looking for
two interns:
1. A 2nd or 3rd year intern specializing in Civil Engineering (College
of Engineering) and/or Landscape Architecture (Cook College) to assist
in design lay-out work using AutoCAD software. Instructions will be
provided through the Township Engineer.
2. A 2nd or 3rd year intern specializing in accounting to assist the
Planning Administrative Officer in escrow accounting/accounts
receivables/accounts payable. Instructions to be provided through the
Administrative Officer.

Internships are unpaid and hours are negotiable but should fall within
M-F 9-5. Any interested students should submit resumes and hours of
availability to John Medina at jmedina@edisonnj.org. For questions, call
732/248-7248.

ASLA Student Awards

ASLA announced its 2008 student design awards the other day. While clearly elegant design solutions dominate, it is interesting to see how many of the winners relied on GIS for both information and graphics. It is also great to see 2 of my alma maters recognized: LSU and UK.

Distillery District

An old industrial neighborhood in Lexington needs $81 million for improvements. In the abstract this isn't very different than proposals for Paterson NJ, or the areas in DC where the new Nationals stadium was built, but the theme here is a bit more eye-catching - this is Lexington's Distillery District. Once the site of the world's largest distillery, now a proposal seeks to preserve the old structures while using TIF money for infrastructure and attracting businesses to the revitalized area. A bourbon-themed hotel might be a memorable place on the nights of home games at nearby Rupp Arena.

9/11 Memorials

The Washington post has a video about the creative process of the architects of the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial.

The NY Times talks about the newest version of design plans for the World trade Center site.

Boston.com's The Big Picture has high-res 9/11 photos.

Live Blog: Clint Andrews on Greenhouse Gases

Live-blogging Clint Andrews speaking on Green House Gas Emissions along the Rural to Urban Transect

Clint began with a summary of recent climate change issues including the most recent IPCC report. He began by describing the role of greenhouse gases in contributing to global climate change. (Natural sinks are an important solution that helps make work for landscape architects.) He quickly moved on to looking at "the next level of detail" to talk about different categories of solutions and the different levels of uncertainty associated with each.

The heart of the talk focused on linking land use and GHG emissions. Settlement patterns can contribute by creating more (or less) efficient landscapes, infrastructure and buildings. The implication is that informed design and planning can impact these outcomes. To compare places in NJ, he used the categories of density gradients from Duany and Talen's Transect Planning. For each of the study areas, he estimated the per capita carbon output by source and sequestration.

Do we rely on behavioural change or technological fixes? Walking is one element. Cogeneration is a potential source of CO2 reductions, too. Electic cars are interesting. But neighborhood design could make a big impact, too. Some of these he called "no-regrets" solutions. Some were still futuristic techno innovations. But our students clearly are going to be dealing with this throughout their careers.

Diverse student body

According to US News and World Report, Rutgers has the most diverse student body of any university on the country. h/t puk

MotorTrends on cartographic trends

Even the gearheads are talking about neogeography. MotorTrends asks whether GPS has killed cartography (and assures you it hasn't quite).

A nice day out

One of the larger municipalities in the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed, Plainsboro, is holding an Art Day Festival and Flea Market this month. It is Saturday September 20th at the Plainsboro Library. It would be a great chance to get a peek at the people and cultural influences in this part of our study region.

Legalities

It was a pretty busy weekend for New Jersey's Governor Corzine. On Friday he accepted the minutes of the Highland Council, which had the legal effect of launching the controversial Highlands Plan. On Saturday he signed several bills into law including a few that appropriated funds for land preservation:

A-2146/S-1849 (Watson Coleman/Gordon) – Revises regulation of landscape architects
This law raises the status of landscpes architects as a profession by advancing them from certification to licensure.

A-2867/S-1919 (Greenwald, Malone, Cryan, Biondi, McHose/Sarlo, Van Drew) - The “Permit Extension Act of 2008”
The omnipresent Jeff Tittel called it "one of the worst environmental bills ever passed by the New Jersey legislators and one of the biggest giveaways to developers in the state's history."

The Chrome comicbook

Google has produced a comicbook to promote and explain their new Chrome browser. It is a creative, and unusual, way to present this information.

UPDATE: Clint Andrews Lecture

Green House Gas Emissions along the Rural to Urban Transect
Clint Andrews, Bloustein School of Planning and Policy
Wednesday Sept. 10, 2008 4:00 PM
The lecture will be in Cook-Douglass Lecture Hall Room 110

This talk will show how land use relates to greenhouse gas emissions. It links settlement patterns to greenhouse gas emissions via landscape impacts (deforestation, carbon sequestration by soils and plants, urban heat island), infrastructure impacts (transportation-related emissions,
waste management-related emissions, electric transmission and distribution losses), and buildings (residential, commercial). Exploratory case studies of New Jersey municipalities lying along a gradient of increasing population density suggest that per-capita carbon dioxide emissions vary widely, following an inverted “U” shape, with post-war suburbs riding the pinnacle. Reflecting their central regional roles, municipalities with good jobs-to-housing ratios have higher per-capita emissions because they host both residential and commercial buildings. Buildings typically contribute more emissions than personal transportation. Vehicle-miles traveled per capita shrink most dramatically at very high population densities and where transit options exist. Changing land-use patterns is a political challenge because localism and outdated zoning ordinances subvert regional solutions. Technical fixes, especially green buildings, must be part of the solution.

Sense of place places

In our studio we are exploring some different landscape architectural experiences hoping to develop a better response and sensitivity to inherent sense of place.

As a first example I offer up a road in Central Kentucky's horse country that used to be called Paris Pike. It wound through and around and past elegant horse farms, beautiful rolling hills, and historic stone walls. But it was twisty and windy and, often enough, deadly. So, for almost as long as I could remember, there was talking of widening the road, but with great opposition since standard KY DOT safety improvements would have destroyed the character of one of America's great scenic drives. After decades of talk, a design team was finally assembled to create a more context sensitive solution. They found a variety of creative solutions - like splitting the road ribbons apart and around old trees and fences and building some new fences and walls that enhance the experience - that stand as a testament to how designers should contribute on a project like this. Led by Jones and Jones of Seattle, the final solution is subtle and elegant, and the drive along the Paris-Lexington Road is still one of the great scenic drives in the US.

What are your examples?

Searching for the Jersey Devil

Getting serious about the search for the Jersey Devil, the NY Times Dan Berry heads out with what looks like a senior team of scientists (except for the senior and scientist parts).

Science Friday

Last week's Science Friday on NPR took a closer look at the new GeoEye satellite which promises to deliver high-resolution, on-demand imagery.

Lecture: Green House Gas Emissions along the Rural to Urban Transect

Green House Gas Emissions along the Rural to Urban Transect
Clint Andrews, Bloustein School of Planning and Policy
Wednesday Sept. 10, 2008 4:00 PM
The lecture will be in Cook-Douglass Lecture Hall Room 110

More students seeking UK architecture degrees

Building Design reports on a substantial increase in interest in architecture in Britain. I wonder if we'll see parallel statistics for the US and for Landscape Architecture.

Water pollution gets worse in New Jersey

Bill Wolfe posted a summary of a new report by the NJ DEP on declining water quality in NJ. UNfortunately I cannot get the link to the DEP report to work right now. But Wolfe reports that the DEP lists over 1,000 streams for which water quality is impaired.

(I don't know if the Pequest, pictured above, is on the list or is one of the remaining clean ones. But its reputation as a trout stream and great place for hotdogs is strong.)

NY Times lauds EPA on decision

An editorial in today's NY Times recognized EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson's successful efforts to fight the US Army Corps of Engineers and kill the Yazoo Pumps project in Mississippi. The project has been in discussions for around 60 years and was described by the Times a a major pork barrel project that would be both costly and environmentally reckless.

Visualizing Early Washington

Every three or four years we take our students on an extended field trip in Washington, DC. And, as we stand near the Jefferson Pier and look North towards the White House, I point out that everything to our left used to be water and the areas to our right were sheep or cow meadows with one museum in the field. To help, we look at a couple of old drawings and leave the rest to their imagination.

Now they can stop imaging what the city was like. The Chronicle reports on a Washington Post Magazine report on the UMBC Imaging Research Center's project Visualizing Early Washington. This includes some 3-d video that really captures the dynamic nature of the District, even if it isn't really within the United States.

Live Blog: Dean Cardasis, Against the Grain

As often as possible, I will be live-blogging the landscape architecture lectures again this semester. I'll try to clearly mark directly quoted words (or close to it), but the frantic pace of live-blogging and the multi-tasking it requires can make it harder than in a normal academic setting.

Dean Cardasis, FASLA
Graduate Program Director
Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture
Against the Grain: Jersey Roots in the Art of Sustainable Landscape Design

He began with some background about James Rose, the well-known landscape architect who was an important leader in the modernist movement. Rose rose to prominence in the 1930s due, in part, to some of his writings that helped establish this design revolution. Cardasis is an expert on Rose and the director of the James Rose Center.

Rose's gardens included a lot of plant materials because he wanted them to be so alive. He "sought an essential quality" in each of his projects that belonged to that site. It wasn't something you could manufacture, but you could uncover. He sought a timelessness in his projects that could allow them to endure - but his materials might not have been so timeless.

Rose enjoyed using what was already on the site. Taking advantage of the biophysical properties was not only efficient, but respected the greater truth of the site. He didn't like to bring in rocks, but he did like to use the ones already there to create space and bring ou the most of what was already there. Cardasis speculates on the possibility that Rose was the first landscape architect to use railroad ties in a garden. But he also used old doors for benches, copper roofing was turned into sculpture.

He is sometimes recognized for shunning 90 degree angles. "Why 90? Why not 89 or 92?" It all seemed an artificial construct to him.

Other signature ideas included:

• Create shallow terraces and depressions
• Use native, durable plants - "plants require deeper knowledge and familiarity than any other materials".
• Interlock existing features with new ones
• Use permeable materials

Cardasis points out that Rose "gave a strong form and meaning to the landscapes on which he worked while preserving natural features and themes". This not only made him a pioneering modernist but also a predecessor of today's sustainable approach to landscape architecture.

Korean Campus Valley

A campus in Korea has a building that is a landscape (pdf). Or is it a landscape that is a building? (Archidose has the non-pdf version)

LECTURE: Environmental violence and crises of legitimacy in New Caledonia

Title: Environmental violence and crises of legitimacy in New Caledonia

Leah Horowitz
9/12 at 2 pm
B120 Lucy Stone Hall; Livingston Campus

Abstract:
This paper addresses the question of what hidden tensions shape environmental conflicts by investigating the responses of residents of villages near a mining project in New Caledonia to Rhéébù Nùù, an indigenous environmental protest group. An overlooked and yet crucial factor in local support for the protest group was a lack of faith in the government and, more fundamentally, in the democratic system through which representatives were elected; instead, villagers put their faith in a revitalization of customary authority. Thus, this environmental violence masked a crisis of political legitimacy, grounded in a history of opposition to the colonial power. However, not all community members felt that Rhéébù Nùù indeed had the support of customary authority, and many disagreed with the group’s violent tactics. Thus, an examination of specific histories and cultural forms is necessary in order to understand people’s choices about who best represents their interests and, thus, to whom they should give their support in instances of environmental conflict.

Wanderlust

Good Magazine has posted an interactive map feature letting you track notable historic and literary pathways across the globe. Wanderlust, as it is called, maps out the ocean journeys of the Pequod, HMS Endeavour, and Columbus but it also has land routes like those of Kerouac and the Old Silk Road.

Old news grab bag

The start of the semester and a holiday weekend leave me too far behind to elaborate. But here are a few recent news articles that I might have written about if I had time:

• Revolutionary War-era blacksmith shop found in Franklin - THNT
• 'Sustainability Toobar' released for Sketch-Up - PLaNetizen
  
• LEED consultants for architects - NY Times
• A follow-up on the Edison neighborhood fighting against a commercial exit - THNT
  
• Stadiums Don't Pay - PlaNetizen
  
• The Nikon D90 SLR is a game changer - NY Times
• Built Landscape Photography of Mona Miri - Treehugger
• A Katrina follow-up graphic - NY Times
• Some great pictures of Rio - The Big Picture
  

Seeking an environmentally-based vision for Monroe

For much of the fall our junior regional design studio will be looking at different visions for a large watershed, the 265-square mile Stony Brook Millstone Watershed. SBMW just made a presentation to Monroe Township about an environmental vision for the future of the Township.

Some of the Watershed Association’s many suggestions included creating a network of trails that extend into other municipalities, adopting ordinances that limit pesticides and fertilizers, reducing the density of development in recharge areas, requiring native plant species in landscape design, inventorying plant and wildlife species and their habitats, adopting standards and incentives to promote green buildings and using the township’s Web site to inform and receive public input.

Of course, the Township could take it personally, but the quotes suggest that while they have to point out they they are already working towards much of this, they appreciated the review by an outsider.

Blog Day 2008

To celebrate Blog Day I wanted to add links to 5 blogs, none of which seem to have been mentioned on Places and Space yet. I've chosen one for each of our 4 EP&D Options and a 5th for hometown crowd. Since some are new to me, I'll admit that I am not yet a regular reader of all of them.

Landscape Architecture
A man after my own heart, Tom Turner's GardenVisit is trying hard to help you find the very best landscape and garden experiences around the world.

Environmental Geomatics
I don't how I have not gotten around to mentioning or linking to Spatially Adjusted (maybe I have and forgot?) but is a pretty big one out there.

Environmental Planning
How about a look into the profession at the Planning Commissioner's Blog?

Landscape Industry
A nurseryman in California maintains a very active blog that reflects on his perspective on the industry.

New Jersey/Rutgers
While it hasn't been so active, I saw that Rutgers' Joe Seneca and Dean Hughes have posted something again on their NJ.com NJ Voices blog.

NJ State Atlas online

While you wait for the new New Jersey Atlas to be published, you can enjoy an unrelated but similarly named New Jersey Atlas online produced by John Reiser.

As the school year gets going, this could be a great resource for students working on projects but with limited GIS access or skills.

What's popular on Places and Spaces?

The end of summer is a nice chance to look back. For Places and Spaces it is a chance to peek at the hit counts and see what has driven traffic. Here is a summary of findings without any proper methodology.

The top search categories have been, in order:
/search/label/Landscape Architecture
/search/label/Environmental Geomatics
/search/label/Environmental Planning
I know, no big surprises there.

The most visited postings have been these:
/2007/10/art-of-revolutionary-war-in-nj.html
/2008/08/jarad-patko.html
2007/04/jinhua-acrhitecture-park.html
/2007/05/opposite-side-of-world.html
/2007/12/2008-asla-awards-competition.html

A few of these rely heavily on links to other sources, but I do wish there was a little more traffic on unique items like the Citation Rankings for LA Scholarship or the student work from Design Week or our recent visit to Dig It! You'll notice that the posting about Jarad Patko is very recent and is also already very high on the list. I suspect that it will quickly move into first.

The top sources of referrals are (by far) Google, then various Rutgers pages, then Google Image searches.

Top search terms in external search engines (like Google) that land visitors here:
david tulloch
david tulloch blog
henry arnold associates
lincoln memorial
levittowns
jinhua architecture park
best neighborhoods in america
andrea cochran
opposite side of the world
asla awards

25% of the blog's traffic is International coming from 134 Countries
The most frequent international visits are the 2.7% from the United Kingdom and 2.6% from Canada
30% is from New Jersey

53% of all visits have been through Firefox.
39% have been through MS Internet Explorer.
6% through Safari.
Then you've got Opera, and Camino and AvantGo. Huh? Someone has been visiting on Playstation 3? This is BFG-free zone guys.

A short trip to the gallery

Not nearly enough of our student take advantage of art on campus, so I wanted to mention an exhibit going on right now: In Suspension. The Mason Gross School of the Arts currently has an exhibit art all of which is suspended from the ceiling. The Home News has a good photo to give you an idea. To juice it up a little, the exhibit includes a Calder piece. Of course, the exhibit is also free.

Dialect survey maps

While posting the recent soda vs. pop maps I remembered seeing this several years ago. A researcher at UWM (or Harvard, I get the two confused) created an online dialect survey and posted the results in the form of maps. THe results show that some are regional, some are not.

For instance, if you look into how people pronounce the word Pecan, residents of the low country of South Carolina say PEE-can pie. But the maps show that to be a more widespread usage than you might have thought. Living near Route 1 I will admit to struggling with the multiple ways I say route, this map shows that it is different here than where I grew up. But I wasn't nearly as aware of how many choices there were for your old fashioned tennis shoes. Did I miss the map for nucular vs. nuclear?

Flight 5191 Memorial Design

There has been some criticism lately of our rush to build memorials. Like reacting to problems with a hot-temper, rushing to memorialize a moment or experience can lead to us respond in ways that are focused more on the immediate experience than a lasting testimony to a sacrifice or loss.

For instance, while I have no particular complaints with the design, I think that the delays at the World Trade Center site might help the various parties find an increasing of areas for agreement. It might also create additional opportunities for someone to ask how this thing will look in 100 years. One of the reasons that I worry is that some of the memorials that have been rushed, have resulted in design decisions that might not stand the test of time. Will some of the smaller 9/11 memorials be moved or removed in the next few decades? Could the controversial WWII Memorial in Washington DC eventually be moved or removed? It sounds unlikely today, but in another 50 years the Mall and the sacred spaces there may be viewed differently. It isn't that WWII didn't deserve a big memorial, or that we didn't wait long enough after the war, but the design approvals process was rushed and the result was a level of contention that is unfortunate for veterans and their survivors who have sacrificed so much.

The thing that brings this up is a news item I saw recently on the Flight 5191 Memorial Design process in Lexington, KY. While I think some families may be questioning the cautious approach being taken, I found it refreshing to see that they were be very deliberate about the values they want captured and reflected in the design. For the memorial to have a lasting impact, the built landscpae needs to be something of lasting value. Otherwise, it may provide small comfort to a group who still needs comfort, but it will provide little more and quickly end up forgotten and abused. I wish the memorial's mission and values were more focused on celebrating the lives of the lost than comforting the families, but that might change as this process moves forward without the rush that we have seen elsewhere. And their response demonstrates how tightly connected the famlies and the community are when a tragedy like this strikes.

InfoViz

Edward Tufte has long championed the need to improve the ways that we design how to visualize complex information. Often, artists contribute at a different level than designers, but in both cases aesthetics are a key component. Computers have helped artists increase the volume of explorations of this topic with results like WordCount and NewsMap and Touch Graph of Google Searches.

A much simpler issue is the design of each basic GIS map that we make. It is still a form of visualization that often compresses large amounts of information into a pretty tight capsule.

But for a first time summary this is great: Slate.com has posted a slidehow on InfoViz that includes a Radiohead video.

Windmills for The City

Mayor Bloomberg's plans for windmill power aren't being received quite as poorly as his hopes for a change in the term limits.

Good idea turns bad

Bureaucracy seems so often to be a burden to creative and well-intentioned planning. The institutional controls of public hearings often force awkward compromises, lengthy processes, and seemingly unrelated conditions onto elegant proposals and potentially unique projects.

So, how can you get around these limitations that zoning and public policy impose? You could create a private setting with private rules and private roads where there is not public property and more of the control lies with a private organization like the developer or a homeowners organization. But then, who do you go to when you want to oppose a change? Do you have any say in the matter at all?

That is at the heart of a planning dispute described in the Home News and Tribune. Jack Morris is proposing a commercial development next to a higher density residential area where the residents are worried about the increased traffic. But, one of the problems is that since their road is private, Edison Township doesn't have the usual control over whether Morris' project, Beechwood Plaza, can connect to that road. They all signed up for a multi-use project, but didn't realize that this is how it would turn out. Here is the Home News quote:

Residents were told by township attorney Jeff Lehrer at the Council meeting that, as a matter of law, this is a private community and there is not much the Council can do other than write a letter to the Planning Board.

Lehrer said this is an internal configuration approved by the Planning Board in conjunction with the site plan approval. "If this were a public roadway, it would be a different issue," he said.

For a planning story, this one has some great elements. The photo has many many neighbors all posing together standing in the street - it stands out compared to most planning stories which lack good visuals and it shows that they present a unified front (unlike other stories where the opposition turns out to be one or two cranks). The fact that they knew it would be a multi-use project is interesting. Is it like suburbanites who buy into rural sub-divisions but then fight to prevent other rural subdivisions? Or did they not look at the plans before they bought? Is the developer forced into this situation against his will (did he sign on to an existing site plan)? Is he fighting the change?

Private roads are on the rise and make for an interesting twist to planning problems.

Sustainable gardens in the Times

Today's NY Times included a Stephen Orr piece on seductive and sustainable gardens. The focus is on how sustainability is not only becoming fashionable, but how the public (or at least the trend-setting wealthy garden-loving elite) are recognizing aesthetics qualities that have long been hidden in plain sight. That alone would be enough to mention here. It included a slideshow with beautiful photos. That alone would be enough to mention here. But it featured the work and words of RU LA alumna Andrea Cochran. That made it urgent.

Ms. Cochran helped describe the changes she has seen in client responses:

But after two years of drought, the worst in California’s history, Ms. Cochran can sense that attitudes are changing. “These days, everybody’s talking about green issues and sustainability,” said Ms. Cochran, who has run her own firm for 10 years. “I find my clients really want to engage in a more meaningful way. They want to think holistically about their property."

Clarifying wetlands

US wetlands law, with its basis in such diverse language as the Commerce Clause and the Clean Water Act, lacks some clarity. A recent Supreme Court decision helped point out how flawed it could be having the whole thing pinned on the definition of "navigable waterways". A NYTimes editorial this week said that:

This tortured middle way has effectively become the law of the land, and for various reasons — including the need to conduct laborious, case-by-case investigations into hydrological linkages among water bodies — it has led to regulatory paralysis.

They supported the proposed legislation that Congress is now considering called the Clean Water Restoration Act.

ESRI and Microsoft

Coming on the heels of the ESRI UC 2008 we hear that Microsft and ESRI are slowly but surely moving AcrGIS and Virtual Earth closer and closer together.

Presidential Debate - Tonight!

Two students have been chosen for a high stakes debate tonight. They will be debating, live on the Internet, whether Washington or Lincoln was the better president. The winner gets a $150,000 scholarship and the loser gets $50,000. If you bring that lame nonsense about Washington's wooden teeth, it could cost you $100,000. High stakes debating, indeed.

Forbes on the best colleges

Forbes magazine has published its own ranking system of universities. They worked with an economist to rank schools "based on the quality of the education they provide, and how much their students achieve." While there are some specifics I can't reconcile, I appreciate the basic notion that drove their effort.

No surprise that the magazine picks New Jersey's own Princeton #1. After all, they have a college within PU called Forbes College. Maybe we should try a US News and World Report School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

In the list of public schools, there system seems to have strongly favored smaller schools and military institutions. The service academies seem to be ranked higher here than in almost any other listing I see. I don't really have a problem with that, but it demonstrates how unique their ranking system must be. Rutgers ranking also suggests it is a different system than US News.

Any such ranking is ultimately a little silly, at best. But, I appreciate the more serious articles that accompanied the ranking.

Olympic Forest Park

For a place that was supposed to be such a premier space, it is funny that there hasn't been more publicity about the Olympic Forest Park in Beijing. The best set of computer plan images I have seen online are these from t-gardenblog. Is this video from the same place?

A summertime soda map

Since we live in New Jersey, a great way to cool down on a summer day would be to sit in a hammock in the shade and sip a soda. But, in Ohio we'd have some pop. And in Louisiana we'd have a Coke for sure (even if it was an RC).

If you are going to try to blend in, you'd better check out the soda map first.

The Freakonomics future of suburbia

The NY Times' Freakonomics crew asked several different notable individuals about the future of Suburbia. While a few of the responses are a bit unrestrained, the mosaic that these diverse opinions form is still one that demonstrates that:

1. this landscape-type is probably not nearly as stable is it looks when we drive through it; and,
2. the future of this landscape is not well understood.

While oil, energy and environmental issues come up as likely drivers for change in this dynamic landscape, there is potential for a wide variety of unknown factors to pop-up as well. Just as interesting is the nearly endless set of responses that readers have posted.

So what is the future of the suburban landscape? I encourage our regular readers (and, especially, my 331 students for the fall) to read and respond to this.

Roebling

The Princeton Packet compares model town Roebling, NJ with New Urbanist communities.


View Larger Map

Bruce Hamilton's retirement

Earlier this summer we celebrated Bruce Hamilton's lengthy career here at Rutgers. As part of that celebration we assembled quite a collection of photos of Dr. Hamilton. Here is a video slideshow from those photos (also available as a WMV).

Wear red, score more

Here's a time when design research spills over into the Olympics. We teach our students that colors are not neutral and they need to understand the implications. Research finds that competitors get better scores when they wear red. This is true even when the performance is the same. How'd that work out in the gymnastics? Oh.

Using Google Maps Religously

It is still amazing to me to see the breadth and depth of Google Maps applications. This one goes more to breadth.

A Google Map has been posted showing the boundaries of the Highland Park and New Brunswick Eruv. As I understand it, the boundary represents the walkable limits of the area for sabbaths and holidays - walking further would be work, not rest. There is also a very thin wire that is strung around town that shows this boundary to those are observant enough to see it.

Yet another very interesting mash-up.

Clock

Its time.

Is Manville aware as Monroe builds?

One of the many municipalities in Millstone River Watershed is Monroe Township. And, while it is very far from Manville, much of the rain that falls in Monroe ends up going through Manville (and occasionally the streets and homes of Manville). However, since we often don't treat watersheds as singular cohesive units, there is a limited regulatory or planing connection between the upstream development and the impacted landscapes downstream. The most recent changes in stormwater rules have attempted to address the problem on a site-by-site basis, but the watershed approach is left to NGOs and and a small unit within the DEP.
(Disclaimer: I am claiming to have deliberately posted a less attractive map of the watershed, to leave more options for my students to freely design attractive ones this fall)

For example, Monroe Township just approved a new village-style town center that sounds like the smart growth that planners have been pushing for throughout New Jersey. The developer says the village along the banks of the Millstone River will be small and dense (possibly limiting impervious surface) and it will be tree-heavy. According to the Star-Ledger, the Township thinks of the developer as environmentally-friendly:

In 2003, the Verde Group started work on a residential development in Monroe, named Windhaven, building around existing farmland and preserving it without using state preservation funds.

"He is the most environmentally conscious developer we have," said Riggs. "He understands all the environmental regulations better than anyone I know."

The buildings in the shopping center would be situated to maximize natural light and minimize energy consumption, said Ochsner. The center also would have underground stormwater drainage systems.

"We plan projects around the environment, not through it," he said.

And maybe that is an accurate reflection of the matter. If development is inevitable, this sounds far preferable to someone more controversial. But even if the stormwater rules do limit downstream impact, should we keep making decisions impacting Manville without their participation? Of course, Manville residents are welcome to attend the planning meetings in Monroe, Millstone, East Windsor, West Windsor, Princeton, Plainsboro, Hightstown, Cranbury, Hopewll, Montgomery, Franklin and Rocky Hill. Is that fair? That is a lot to ask of a small group of citizens from a small borough on the receiving end of some big floods.

An interesting twist would be to consider how the isolated view might be a more American perspective. In a very recent NY Times column, David Brooks mentioned some sociological research that highlights how this might connect with a difference between Americans and Asians:

If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.

These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.

When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow. They’re both animals. Most Asian people, on the other hand, would pick out the cow and the hay, since cows depend on hay. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships.

While Brooks applies this to larger geopolitical perspectives, I think we can really see it play out in local decision-making. It is easier for us to see how the economics of Monroe connect with the open space of Monroe with the policies of Monroe with the voters of Monroe. It is harder for us to see how the headwaters connect with the floodplain. Some of that is just an interesting phenomenon. But some of it is a lack of awareness that is costly and keeps getting us in trouble.

We'll be talking about this watershed this fall, so you can expect to hear more about some of the different upstream and downstream goings ons here.

Jarad Patko

We are sad to report that Jarad Patko (RU LA '03) has passed away. He was always enthusiastic and curious. Jarad was willing to try new things and follow new paths with little concern for consequences or how others would see him. He even got a letter published in LAM a few years ago. He was far too young, but will be remembered for a very long time.

His memorial service is on 8/14 Thursday at Temple Sinai, 208 Summit Avenue in Summit, NJ at 2pm. But for those that can't make it, feel free to use the comments here to post remembrances and comments.

UPDATE: The Star-Ledger has published an obituary for Jarad. It said, "He loved sunrises on the beach, sunroofs and all about the universe." Yep. That sounds like Jarad.

Earthquake memorials

While it was surprising to see how quickly a memorial competition opened after the 5.12 earthquake, it is even more surprising to see how quickly the winners were chosen. ALSA has a press release on their site highlighting winners and honorable mentions. The full results will be published in JoLA.

One of the honorable mentions went to RU LA alum, Laurel McSherry and her codesigner Fritz Steiner. Congrats guys!

LA prof helping schools

The recent issue of LAM had a Bill Thompson piece looking at a Denver professor who has worked with local schools to develop a better template for designing schoolyards. While it isn't as glamorous as public plazas or patios for billionaires, Thompson points out that it represents a larger pattern of designers trying to make a difference:

What does this transformed schoolyard have to do with making landscape architecture a more visible, more influential profession?

By itself, probably not much. But suppose this schoolyard was part of a school-system-wide program for transforming most or all of the schoolyards in a large American city, and a landscape architect was the instigator of it all? Would that not give landscape architecture a more powerful role in community affairs and people’s daily lives?

The online comments at The Dirt show that there is some support, but you can be sure that the line will be much longer at a session on New Urbanism than community design at ASLA this fall.

Bird's Nest drawing lesson'

You've seen the real thing, now you can learn to draw your own Bird's Nest.



h/t Daily Dose

Butterfly Festival

Saturday (August 9th) is the annual butterfly festival at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed.

More relevant Olympic madness

Can't get your visa in time to go to China? Google Earth has 3d buildings at the Olympic site in Beijing including the Birds Nest and Swimming Cube.

Olympic Medal Map

As part of their extensive preparation for the Olympics, the NY Times has prepared an interactive graphic that maps out the medals won by countries in all of the summer Olympics from 1896 to the present. You just most a slider bar to dial in the year you want and then, voila!

You can slide it over to the Paris Olympics in 1900 and see that Belgium got 5 gold medals. What you can't see in the graphic is that one of Belgium's 5 gold medals was for live pigeon shooting.

Is it a real Luis Barragon fountain?

A home in Los Angeles has a fountain thought to be designed by Barragon. Maybe they should call the History Detectives.

Free Reading material

The only thing better than finding free reading materials is finding time to read them. Andy at Digital Urban has posted two free things to read:

• The Renaissance of Geographic Information: Neogeography, Gaming and Second Life
• Fractal Cities by Michael Batty and Paul Longley

Supporting the plan

NJ Future, RPA, and Plan Smart NJ have jointly endorsed the Highlands Plan. Unlike some other proponents of the plan, it will be hard to suggest that these groups have the same political motivations as some other groups. But that also doesn't mean that it will settle anything. Will this give Corzine enough cover to accept the minutes?

Is bad publicity better than no publicity at all?

Forbes has published its list of the top ten dying cities in America. Don't expect to see Forbes ads on the sides of buses in Cleveland any time soon.

All of the dying cities could be described loosely as rust belt. But I wonder if Springfield MA and Charleston WV really belongs on the same list as the others. Both have things going on which could easily lead one to believe that they aren't dying - while Scranton's shift from Coal to Cool will probably end as soon as NBC cancels The Office.

Forbes mentioned New Orleans, but left it off the list even though it has experienced a serious economic and population setback. I guess it has potential that the others don't have.

Old neighborhoods are healthier

New research finds that people living in old neighborhoods weigh less. It looks like I can afford to have a banana split tonight.

Land8Lounge

I am a bit of a gadget head, so when new things pop up on the web I like to check them out. But I have been slow to catch up on the various social networks online. But this seemed like a great chance to jump in: Land8Lounge.

Land8Lounge is a social network site for landscape architects. In a very short few months it has grown to over 1100 members. It includes students, faculty and practitioners from around the world. Topos called it the "premier social network for landscape architects on the web." The web site facilitates the sharing of portfolios, formation of groups (like the LSU alumni group) and hosting of personal spaces. But it is also home to a forum area for conversations about things like graphics (which quickly included people posting their own work), LA tourism, and technical details about things like soil amendments and the LEED exam.

Mapping Civil War Veterans

Hopeworks N' Camden continues to impress me with the ways they manage to demonstrate impacts of GIS/GPs and related technologies while also impacting the lives of so many youth and college students.

Their latest example is Mapping Civil War Veterans. The team from Hopeworks used GPS to map out the gravesites in historic Harleigh Cemetery. So? Well, their Google Earth points were linked with photos of the headstones that hlped them connect one woman with the burial site of her great grandfather. Here is the Hopeworks description:

Recently Hopeworks was contacted by a woman looking for information about her great grandfather. He was a Civil War veteran, John Warner Kinsey, buried in Camden. She had various documents that belonged to him including letters, enlistment and discharge papers, and notifications about his government pension. However, she did not know where in Camden he was buried. Seeing our article in the paper about the Civil War veteran project, she contacted us about information on John Kinsey. It turns out he was included in our survey and we were able to provide information on John's location. He served in both the 7th and 37th Regt. NJ Volunteers. Another interesting note was that by viewing the image we took of the headstone, she found that John's wife was also buried there - who also served in the Civil War!

How not to get info from the web

At the VGI meeting in Santa Barbara in December, we were trying to talk through the ways that we assess whether or not information (particularly but not exclusively spatial information) is reliable enough for decision making. Examples included how differently you might consider a restaurant recommendation from a friend than one anonymously posted on a website.

Fast forward to this weekend. While listening to NPR's On The Media, I heard Mark Phillips talk about Quantum Leap (and the Ziggy) and how it resembled the way we can use Blackberry's and iPhones to ask questions online. Focusing on ChaCha, he described new ways of getting information that you know to be unreliable (but you do not necessarily know to be wrong). His closing comment really hit home:

Let's hope people still ask strangers for directions, friends for recommendations, and experts for opinions. Otherwise we'll all look like Al from Quantum Leap.

early golf course architects

The NY Times points out the obscurity of early 20th Century golf course architects other than Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie and A. W. Tillinghast. Instead they focus on Stiles and van Kleek.

But, I am asked, is golf course design really landscape architecture? Stiles started out as a landscape architect and those experience informed his course design:

"Stiles always found his green sites first, then worked backward from there,” Mendik said. “And as a landscape architect, he knew what the trees on a hole would look like in 60 or 80 years. He saw the picture from the tee.”

Olympics photos

Some new satellite photos are online just in time for the Beijing Olympics.

Princeton Junction redevelopment funding

It sounds like West Windsor's redevelopment plan for the Princeton Junction station is still active, but NJ Transit has clarified the current lack of available funds on their part.

Dig It! The Secrets of Soil

The Smithsonian Institute has just opened a new exhibit on soil. "Dig It! The Secrets of Soil" is open until 2010 and highlights a variety of issues and concerns about soils. It presents information in a variety of formats, which seems likely to reach a pretty wide age range.

We visited this past weekend and were duly impressed. One of the highlights was a mock-CSI episode in which the soil scientist wore an expensive pantsuit into a forested dig site and when the lead investigator over-dramatically donned his sunglasses after solving the mystery. Another cool exhibit included a monolith or profile of the state soil from each of the 50 states and a couple territories. Go Antigo! Great stuff.

Studying the PInelands

It sounds like some RU-Camden faculty and students are having a fun and productive summer using the Pinelands as an outdoor laboratory.

IFLA Student Design Awards

IFLA has announced the winners of the 2008 Student design Awards and Topos has published a summary including examples from the "3 winnars":

• Kemet by Philipp R. W. Urech and Antonio Sassano at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) - First Prize
  
• Landscape Architecture for Need/Slums by Tomas Degenaar, at Wageningen University - Second
  
• Waving Mat by Li Jingzhu, Zhao Yue, Yuan Shouyou, Ling Chunyang and Chen Jing at the School of Architecture of Tianjin University in China - Merit Award
  

This was a big competition that had 326 entries, but over a third (135) were disqualified for failing to follow the rules. The entries came from over 2 dozen countries, but over half of them (179) were from China and another 55 from the USA.