Cities are special

'God gave us the country
the skill of man hath built the town.'

 - Marcus Terentius Varro
Roman scholar (116-27 BC)

Carved over the door of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse

Friday fiddlin' around

Based on some quick spatial analysis, I believe that Fresno is the largest city in the Coterminous US without an Interstate highway. (It is well served by the Golden State Highway)



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Technology changing urban space

Recognizing that technology is indeed changing how people experience public space, the geniuses at ImrpovEverywhere showed up with Seeing Eye People to help pedestrians getting around more safely while looking down at their mobile devices.

And, yes, that is the ASLA award winning Capitol Plaza that makes a cameo at the start.

More cool maps

David Rumsey has added 38,000 historic maps to the Internet. There seems to be no concern that the Internet might soon be full, so bring it on.

Colloquium class notes

Elm Yellows

Climate Change Atlas


The Saranac Lake story

Dawes Arboretum and Dawn Redwood and John Kuser

Gravitropism

Bunya pine


Congress for New Urbanism


Washington Town Center (Mapped below)

View Places and Spaces Map in a larger map

Creating the Policy and Legal Framework for a Location–Enabled Society

Annual Spring CGA Conference: Creating the Policy and Legal Framework for a Location–Enabled Society

May 2 – 3, 2013

Location: 1730 Cambridge St. CGIS South Building, Tsai Auditorium, Room S010, Harvard University

It is free and open to the public.

For more information, please go to: http://gis.harvard.edu/conference

Geospatial People in Wisconsin

As part of a visit to Wisconsin's Geospatial Summit I am speaking on VGI, PPGIS, and data sharing.  Here are a few background papers that anyone can find online:

• Tulloch and Shapiro on Access and Participation
• Tulloch and Harvey on Data Sharing Practices
• Tulloch on PPGIS in First Monday

 For the scholars with academic access, a more longer list is available on scholar.google.com.

Homes turning into dunes

Mantoloking is going to use eminent domain to acquire some properties to turn back into dunes. Frankly, I am surprised we haven't seen more of these stories. There is a much greater public realization of how valuable dunes can be for an entire community, but we are still seeing more stories about owners refusing to let the Corps protect their property without an apparent regard for their neighbors and community.

Earth Day list

The commemorate Earth Day, Slate has posted a great list of "Seven Spectacular Places Saved by the Environmental Movement"

Earth Day photos

(Photo locations: Cannon Beach, OR; Cook Campus, NJ; Monterey Peninsula; Tuckerton, NJ; Little San Bernardino Mountains, CA?; Bedminster, NJ; Mt. St. Helens, WA; Monmouth Battlefield, NJ; Bedminster and Bedminster)

An unrelated recommendation

Late in the semester as the stress mounts, I will offer the unsolicited recommendation of the (now streaming) TV series Slings and Arrows. Mark McKinney leads a great ensemble cast mixing up some Shakespeare with a mix of drama and comedy, just the way the Bard would have liked it. Enjoy.

Alumni Reunion

RSVP requested.

Boston photos

Boston and Cambridge

LiveBlog: Sub-arctic landscapes

Janike Kampevold Larsen 
Beyond the Nation: Contemporary Challenges for Northern and Arctic Landscapes

Some sloppy notes from a great lecture today:

Current features includes glaciers, oil and gas industries, impassable mountain regions (until after WWII)
The landscapes were captures by Maximillian Carpelan and Johannes Flintoe

An abundance of minerals and metals (like aluminum) has led to an increased exposure to mining which is changing the landscapes of Northern Sweden




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Influences are shared beyond Norway:
Stourhead
Rockefeller State Park

Railing at the falls at Videseter shows how deep the notion of landscape at Stourhead really is

Nedre Oscarshaug
At Bergbotn, Senja, Code architecture's undulating cantilevered bridge

How do we learn how to see?

We also heard some quotes from Friends of the Pleistocene (FOP) Blog

Landskip and Landschaft as competing ideas
Everything is a story

(Our guest speaker never mentioned the Witch Monument in Vardø, but once I stumbled into it I had to link to it as well)

Contemporary Challenges for Northern and Arctic Landscapes

Janike Kampevold Larsen
Wednesday, April 17, 2013, 2013 @ 4:00 p.m.
Cook Douglass Lecture Hall - Rm 110  
Beyond the Nation: Contemporary Challenges for Northern and Arctic Landscapes

Janike Larsen, an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, will discuss her research on the landscapes in the sub arctic. Her talk will situate these landscapes in terms of mining, oil supply and energy supply, pollution and social development. The structuring theme will be geologic vs human agency in shaping the surface of the earth coupled with a reflection on how we experience and recognize form – on the desire to make thing resemble what we already now vs the ability to be overwhelmed.

Landscape Design Practicum at Duke Farms 

Date  & Time: Saturday, April 20th 3:30 to 5:00PM
Location: Farm Barn Orientation Center
1112 Dukes Parkway West, Hillsborough, New Jersey

Students from area colleges will present their ideas at this public event at Duke Farms. This will be a great opportunity for the public to get ideas for sustainable and ecologically friendly landscaping they can implement at home. It is also an opportunity for students to present their ideas in a public venue and before professional peer review. Professional landscape architects and landscape designers are invited to join the audience to ask thoughtful questions of the students and offer constructive critiques. Your attendance will be appreciated for its mentoring benefits and as a way to help "grow" the profession in these emerging designers.

GIS for the masses

Microsoft is adding spatial capabilities for Excel.

New building at Cook

Changes are coming to the Cook Campus. This week the Board of Governors gave final approval to start building the new Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health.  Watch the video.

Public Lecture Tonight: Kate Orff

Cekada Memorial Lecture

Douglass Student Center, Trayes Hall @ 6:30 PM

Parking is available at the Douglass Parking Deck (next to Lot 70) off Lipman Drive

Kate Orff –

Scape

Kate Orff is an assistant professor at Columbia University and founder of SCAPE, a landscape architecture studio in Manhattan. Her work weaves together sustainable development, design for biodiversity, and community-based change. Orff’s recent exhibition at MoMA, Oyster-tecture, imagined the future of the polluted Gowanus Canal as part of a ground-up community process and an ecologically revitalized New York harbor.

RIP: Paolo Soleri (1919-2013)

Visionary architect Paolo Soleri, responsible for Arizona's Cosanti and Arcosanti, has passed away.

 The NY Times obituary says that Soleri "showed a generation of younger architects an alternative to corporate modernism."

The LA Times describes the Italian born architect as still influencing recent projects:

Lately some hugely ambitious developments have echoed Soleri's call for an architecture that huddles densely in the desert, sharing resources, rather than spreading thinly across a vast area. One of them is the $22-billion Masdar City project on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, designed by architect Norman Foster as a hyper-efficient "cleantech cluster."

Daily Dose of Architecture has a touching obituary.


Here are some photos I took of Arcosanti a few years ago.

Jack Ahearn clearly teaches cooler classes than me. One of his is Landscape Architecture Study Tour which had includes student reports on Florence's Boboli Gardens. Worth a look. I also found this blog post on Boboli with nicely chosen photos, something different than the usual tourist photos. And this set of Boboli Gardens photos include the infamous dwarf and turtle.

Lisa Gimmy's disparate landscapes

Having just recently returned from California, I was struck by the recent feature in the NY Times on Califrnia landscape architect Lisa Gimmy. But I think I may have been most struck by this wonderful quote about her work:

“There is not a look,” she says. “My gardens are more about the site, plants and views, and about finding a design that is in sync with the architecture and that allows the clients to live the life they imagine for themselves.”

That sensitive response to site conditions is something that really sets apart much of the best landscape architecture from architecture. Take a look.

Ecology lecture

Ecology & Evolution Graduate Program Seminar

Dr. Bernd Blossey
Department of Natural Resources
Cornell University

 How deer, earthworms and invasive plants transform our neighborhoods, forests and protected areas

Thursday, April 11, 2013
4:00 p.m.
Alampi Room, Marine and Coastal Sciences

Majora Carter

Today's NY Times asks whether urban greening hero, Majora Carter, has betrayed her beloved Bronx. The problem is that her fame and success has made it hard for her to help in the same way and the article tries to capture the complexity, not just one side. But the comments really open up the broader issues. One of them asks whether this is "the TED effect" because her fame on TED Talks is directly behind her catapult into greater spheres of influence.

Pruning in the Park

Volunteer Now for Pruning in the Park, April 13th at Branch Brook Park Help preserve the vitality of a world famous cherry collection!! Date: April 13, 2013 Time: 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM. Free bagels and coffee from 8:00 AM. Location: Meet in Branch Brook Park, Newark, NJat the Abudato Center Parking Lot PLEASE RSVP THIS WEEK:Contact President Tim Delorm(tim.delorm@terranoble.net ), or call 609 393 7500 Volunteer for a "hands-on" Public Service morning. The cherry trees should still be in full bloom, so it will definitely be worth the trip!!!. Be on time for direction by Paul Cowie, Branch Brook Park Arborist. Paul will provide tips on pruning and safety precautions. Hand tools will be available, but bring pole saws and pole pruners, if you have them. If turn out is strong for this event, NJASLA hopes to continue public service efforts at Branch Brook Park. FYI: Take in the cherry blossoms, bike races, fun runs and other scheduled events for adults and children at the Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Festival, April 6 through April 20 (Essex County Branch Brook Park). Also, the North American Tree Climbing Competition will be held in the Southern Division on April 27 and 28. Top tree climbers from across the U.S. and Canada will be competing. All worth seeing.

Former Rutgers instructor (and now chair at Minnesota), Kristine Miller wrote about NYC's Jacob Javitz Plaza and its  controversies years ago in Designs on the Public.  At the time, Serra's Tilted Arc had been replaced by a Martha Schwartz plaza where Dr. Miller got in trouble for taking photos. Since then it has been replaced by a MVV landscape that Daily Dose of Architecture photographed and reports, "it looks like any day now it will be complete and this corner of Lower Manhattan may finally be free of controversy." Somehow I doubt it.

Rich Haag at CELA 2013

Using some of his classic lines, like calling landscape architecture the art of the visual swindle, Rich Haag addressed the crowd at CELA 2013. The LAM blog gives a great summary.

Where are the jobs?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has mapped out where landscape architecture jobs are. In our region, both New York and Maryland jump out as hot spots. These statistics also include estimates of average salaries and industries where LA's tend to work.

By themselves the numbers are not as meaningful, but if you compare them with other professions on the BLS website, you can begin to really see some patterns.

Ralph W. Voorhees Public Service Fellowships

Ralph W. Voorhees Public Service Fellowships

The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and the Voorhees Family have established the Ralph W. Voorhees Public Service Fellowships to honor Ralph W. Voorhees’ long commitment to community service. A 1948 graduate of Rutgers University, Mr. Voorhees was senior vice president for investments at Paine Weber and served as chairman of the boards of United Way of Central New Jersey, Family Counseling Services of Middlesex County, the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and the New Brunswick Cultural Center. He has also been chairman of the board of the Rutgers University Foundation and served on the Rutgers University Foundation’s Board of Overseers. Mr. Voorhees has given generously to Rutgers and also supports Voorhees College, a historically black institution in South Carolina.

For the 2013-14 academic year, up to five (5) undergraduate students from the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, who are dedicated to community service, will be selected to receive Ralph Voorhees Public Service Fellowships. Fellows receive $5000 so they may participate in a credit-bearing community research project with Elijah’s Promise and the New Brunswick Community Food Alliance related to urban agriculture and community food security. Students selected for the fellowship will be required to register for a course during the Fall 2013 semester that will take place on Fridays from 9:50-12:50 at the Bloustein School. Students will do research in partnership with community organizations and will make a public presentation on their work at the end of the Fall semester, and will serve as mentors for future Fellows.

   http://policy.rutgers.edu/rwv

Time to plan ahead

The Fall 2013 Schedule of Classes goes live on March 25th. Registration starts April 7th. Get ready.

After talking about Versailles in class last week, I thought we could celebrate Spring Break by pretending to visit the the city of lights. Well, not many lights in StreetView since they make their drives during daylight hours.These StreetView images are a repost of an old post.

The Lourve

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Place de la Concorde

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The amazingly elegant base of the Eiffel Tower

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Notre Dame

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Place des Vogues

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Palais de Versailles

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You can even drive into the garden and see The Grand Trianon

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Parque de la Vilette

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Euro Disney

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Par Andre Citroen

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Finally, some lights in the infamous tunnels along the Seine right underneath the torch

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Forecast for April: Hot lectures

04.03.13

Martin Cox - Multiplicity

04.10.13

Thaisa Way - Post Industrial Landscapes: Richard Haag & Gas Works Park

04.11.13

Kate Orff - "Scape" Cekada Memorial Lecture_ Trayes Hall 6:30

04.17.13

Janike Kampevold Larsen - Beyond Nation: Challenges for Northern & Arctic Landscapes

04.24.13

Laura Starr - Wild for the City: Creating & Sustaining Urban Nature

check http://landarch.rutgers.edu/ for details

New tumblr feed: Interchanges

If you enjoyed the recent aerial imagery of Interstate highway interchanges, then you'll love our new tumblr page which will be almost nothing but interchange photos.

If tumblr isn't your thing, you can just enjoy the photos from New Jersey, Kentucky, Louisiana, Kansas, Arizona, California, and more Kentucky in the blog archives.

Great summer competition

Looking for something different to try this summer? How about a Korean design competition?

Seoul Urban Design 2013 is going to be a high visibility competition.  ASLA's The Dirt offers a quick overview.

Is the High Line New York's Vasali Corridor?

Places and Spaces has written plenty about New York City's newest tourist landmark, the High Line. But a recent trip to the City got me thinking even more about how the new passageway above the city simply recalled another, much older elevated corridor.

In Florence, there is an elevated passageway hidden in plain sight called the Vasali Corridor. Not having been there, I have to experience it vicariously through other people's photos of the art-lined corridor.

Designed by its namesake, Giorgio Vasari, the corridor created a private passageway connecting many of Florence's landmarks: Palazzo Pitti, the Uffizi, Ponte Vecchio, and Palazzo Vecchio. This map of the Vasali Corridor shows that it really covers some ground.

Once you know it is there, you can see it plain as day in the picture on your pizza box.

Advice for students

Students, check out this list of Top Five Questions to Ask Yourself At Least Once A Week in College. Not all of them seem to fit perfectly for our students, but I particularly liked "Where is the nearest business that’d let me shadow for a day?" The overall point of the list is to get active and take steps to build your career now, instead of waiting until you graduate.

Liveblog: Alistair McIntosh on Observation

Alistair McIntosh
Sasaki
Observation & Landscape Architecture

Studied at Edinburgh and UPenn

from Scotland
Cold and bleak place with an austere beauty


Previously at Hanna/Olin where he worked on J & J headquarters
1979
Became, in part, about the idea of landscape and architecture coalescing.

(photos from Bria Holcomb's exhibit on New Brunswick changing landscape)

Self-Organizing Landscapes
  example: Walden Woods

Indianapolis Waterfront Master Plan (Mapped)    forms can be traced back to Aalto and 19th century harborworks and French engineering

Cincinnati Smale Waterfront Park (Mapped)    Includes geothermal elements
  terraces, adventure playground, earthworks
   past work upstream was done by Zion and EDAW

Choose between two open space typologies:

• Bryant Park - open space trees on the side
• Harvard Yard - continuous grove of trees in the middle

How can you take making things and find the material language that will allow you to embody your ideas?

Spatial Thinking Across the College Curriculum

The Final Report is out from the Specialist Meeting on Spatial Thinking Across the College Curriculum. The meeting, held in Santa Barbara, provided a great look at how spatial education could enhance learning in all corners of the academy. I was invited to present some thoughts about how design programs teach spatial thinking, and how different that is than many other fields.


In the end there were 4 overriding themes that came up throughout the meeting and deserve continued attention:

"1) claiming value in training spatial thinkers;
2) assessing the role of visualization in spatial thinking;
3) maintaining balance with technological changes; and
4) determining what can and should be done to advance spatial reasoning in undergraduate education."

While any meeting in Santa Barbara is pretty great, this cross-cutting meeting was incredibly stimulating. Take a peek at the report.
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Lecture: Observation & Landscape Architecture

Alistair McIntosh

Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 2013 @ 4:00 p.m.

Cook Douglass Lecture Hall - Rm 110

Observation and Landscape Architecture

Alistair McIntosh, a former design principal at Sasaki Associates, will present personal reflections on the design development of urban landscapes over the last 35 years. “These reflections explain where, in my own experience, design forms come from, how they are developed into built landscapes and why this approach to landscape design (if not necessarily the specific results) may help those starting in the profession to find their own way within the discipline.”

Biography:

Alistair McIntosh has over 35 years of experience in the practice and teaching of landscape architecture. Prior to founding his own consultancy he was a Design Principal in Sasaki Associates. He has also worked with: Burck/McIntosh; Benjamin Thompson and Associates; Hanna /Olin; Joseph Passonneau and David Skinner. His teaching and research at Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania continue to inform and challenge the ideas pursued in his practice.

Practice Philosophy:

The office of Alistair McIntosh is a landscape consultancy that specializes in the planning and design of public open spaces in cities. His planning and design thinking is guided by the idea that urban open spaces are environmentally situated stages for the conduct of contemporary public and private social life. His design practice is an enquiry into how built form can be deployed to first, environmentally situate a landscape design in a particular geographic context; second, physically calibrate the design forms to the aspirations and practices of a specific institution; and finally, address the psychological and dimensional needs of the actions of daily life. This design process makes places where concept and built landscape are inextricably linked because the act of construction turns ideas into tangible, enduring physical realities – environmental stages where life unfolds.

Google Glass and geospatial

Last year Matt Ball wrote about how he thought Google Glass could transform geospatial. Now that it is a reality new questions are emerging like, is it a threat to our privacy? (of course it is, but...)  And Matt has revisited the topic asking how Google Glass will change data collection.

Geomatics thoughts

A different lesson on suitability analysis:

• Strom notes on suitability analysis 

Snow's Cholera map

Color Brewer for map design 

Popular photo

Someone recently took a photo of New Brunswick from an airplane on a flight path for landing at Newark.The Star-Ledger reports that the photo has gone viral:

"The photo is now the sixth-most popular post of all time on Reddit’s New Jersey page, according to Kastner.
Number five is a politically incorrect map of New Jersey, he said."

I think it says something about  aerial photographs, that this simple (but sharp, crisp and well framed) passenger photo has had such an impact.

It’s Scholarship Season!

This is a great time of year for our students because there are so many different opportunities for scholarship and other awards. Our scholarship committee has compiled a list of scholarship opportunities that Rutgers’ students should be looking closer at.

The deadline for SEBS scholarship applications is NO LATER THAN APRIL 12, 2013.

Genius quote

“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary person sees one.”

 – Erza Pound

Admissions process still open!

Lecture notes

Roger Tomlinson in the movie Data for Decision
Part 1 (SLYT)
Part 2 (SLYT)
Part 3 (SLYT)

MLMIS land records inventory

How Computer mapping at Harvard Became GIS

3 Landscapes
Cheonggyecheon restored river
Park Güell 
Biltmore Estate

Alum in the news

A recent graduate of the geomatics program, Trevor Raynor, is in the news for going around Middlesex County and setting fires.

Hold the date

26^th Annual NJDEP GIS Mapping Contest!

GIS users from federal, state, county, municipal, local government, and non-profit agencies, as well as students are eligible to enter the contest.  Attendance is open to all.

Theme:                Hurricane Sandy - Response & Recovery

When:                  Thursday April 18, 2013

Time:                    10:00 a.m. - 12:00 Noon

                                   (Contestants please arrive by 9:15)

Where:                First Floor - Public Hearing Room

                                NJDEP Building, 401 E State St, Trenton, NJ          

Please join NJDEP for the Annual Mapping Contest. The event features the best non-commercial mapping in the State of New Jersey. Review the rules, categories and register online at the NJDEP GIS web site: http://www.nj.gov/dep/gis. We ask that all contestants pre-register (registration will open in mid-March) and submit a digital copy of their map after registration is confirmed.   

This year we expect to see many maps generated as a result of Hurricane Sandy but any map that pertains to New Jersey is eligible (see the contest rules on the web site).

For Mapping Contest questions contact the Bureau of GIS Help Desk at 609-777-0672 or gisnet@dep.state.nj.us.

www.nj.gov/dep/gis

Cool design in Thailand

Land8Lounge has great galleries of photography of landscape architecture. As a general rule I encourage readers to head over there when looking to stimulate the eyes. Today I am singling out a specific gallery set for Pause Court and Lawn Hill in Thailand.

A week of interchanges: New Jersey

After posting over 300 of these photos, I do think that NJ stands out a little. While it has a surprisingly small number of Interstate interchanges (lots of highways, only a few Interstates) many of ours are more varied and interesting than some other states. Not necessarily something to be proud of, but visually stimulating no less. This is the final installment of the week of interchanges. Please feel free to use Saturday as a chance to explore your nearby interchanges for their own creepy beauty.