Small projects aren't always minor

Our own Rich Bartolone gets a nice mention in the Home News today for a school's courtyard design that might impact the next generation of designers.

Hutcheson Memorial Forest Tour

Hutcheson Memorial Forest Tour
Sunday, October 23rd at 2:00 p.m.

Tour Leader: Dr. Jim Quinn
(Plant Ecologist)

"A Wild Plant Walk Amongst the Colors of Fall"

The Hutcheson Memorial Forest (HMF) is a unique area consisting of one of the last uncut forests in the Mid-Atlantic States, along with the surrounding lands devoted to protection of the old forest and research into ecological interactions necessary to understand the forest. The tract is administered and protected by Rutgers University.

It is apparently the only uncut upland forest in the Piedmont of New Jersey, and appears on the National Park Service Register of Natural Landmarks.

Tours leave from the entrance of the woods on Amwell Road (Rt. 514) in Somerset. From New Brunswick, follow Hamilton Street west past JFK Blvd, Cedar Grove Lane and Elizabeth St. HMF is on the left past Gardener’s Nook Nursery. The driveway is located just past the guardrail over the brook.

The trail may be muddy in places so come prepared.

The tour through the woods and fields takes between one and two hours.

Tours are free and reservations are not required for these guided tours.** Groups of more than ten persons may not attend the guided tours. Such groups are invited to arrange special tours.

For more information and a complete tour schedule visit: http://rci.rutgers.edu/~hmforest/
**HMF is not open to the public on a daily basis.

Campus entertainment

Twitter provides an entertaining new way to see how many people noticed that today's Targum was the fake Mugrat edition.

Internship opportunity in PA

Internship opportunity

Langan Engineering & Environmental Services is now offering GIS  intern and co-op opportunities in our Doylestown, PA Office.  Langan has immediate openings and are looking for qualified candidates for the winter, spring and summer 2012 semesters.  If you know of any students that would be interested in an opportunity, please have them contact Brett using the information provided in the signature below.

Brett Milburn, GISP
Corporate Data Solutions Manager                
Direct: 215.491.6555
Mobile: 215.605.0066

Langan Engineering & Environmental Services
Phone: 215.491.6500   Fax: 215.491.6501
2700 Kelly Road, Suite 200
Warrington, PA 18976
www.langan.com

GIS Day at Burlington County College in Mount Laurel , NJ

GIS Day at Burlington County College in Mount Laurel , NJ

Wednesday, November 9th 9-4:30

The event is FREE (including Breakfast and Lunch)

Registration is requested but walk-ins will be accepted.

Register at www.co.burlington.nj.us\dit


This event should have something for everyone; from beach dune maintenance and environmental remediation to using GIS for election campaign management and how ArcGIS Online is being applied locally, plus interactive GPS and GIS workshops.

9-12 Speakers

12-1 Lunch

1-2:15 GPS Activity

2:30-4:30 GIS Lab


Be a part of GIS Day! --

*** Display your map in the map gallery! ***

In addition to the speakers and workshops, a map gallery will be on display all day. All entries will be accepted from beginner to advanced.

It's easy to enter - Just send your map to Merrilee Torres either as hardcopy (to the mailing address below) or as a PDF or JPEG (to the email address below).

Please include your name, organization and a brief abstract about your map (optional).

This is a chance to show your work - Maps that show how GIS or GPS was used to answer a question, make a decision or make someone's work easier are especially of interest!

Please send your map by the morning of Tuesday, November 8th or bring it with you on the 9th.

All maps submitted for GIS Day will also be included in the Burlington County Map Gallery and Contest the following week (see attachments for details).

Some weekend reading

The Grand Map.

Great Public Spaces from APA

The APA has released their list of great public spaces for 2011 and it includes an impressive variety of public spaces from unknown urban and grand landmarks to natural places and preserved historic sites.

When art and obesity meet

One urban artist has been fighting obesity without permission.

Cheap energy = sprawl?

One of the smart growth measures used in New Jersey places the burden of new infrastructure on the new developments that need it.  If a new neighborhood needs an expensive extension off of the power grid, either the new neighbors should pay for it or maybe the neighborhood shouldn't get built.  But a change in policy might shift the burden of infrastructure for McMansions to the people who are already living in less inefficient ways.  Is this about finding appropriate policies for BPU or part of an ongoing fight against government efforts to shape the NJ landscape?

MLK Memorial

Dilemma

The Homes News and Tribune had as its top story the other day, a difficult environmental dilemma.  A protected meadow area in Franklin, the Negri-Nepote Grassland Preserve, has been overtaken by the Canada thistle an invasive species.  And, since the the thistle is spreading very quickly and impacting nearby farmland, many in the community want to see it sprayed with an herbicide that will minimize the weed for some time.

But wait! It turns out that the thistle have been great for bees.  And everyone knows that the diminished population of these pollinators has been an important issue.  So maybe we should wait an talk about this trade-off for a while.

Once there is a frost, the herbicide is not effective.  So if they are going to use it, they have to decide now.  Maybe.

Or could they go organic?

It would all be easier if invasives weren't brought in to begin with.  And maybe that is the lesson for future efforts.

More bikes

In addition to those DC bikes (posted this morning), I am reposting these photos of a Nice Ride bike station in downtown Minneapolis.  Admittedly DC has rough winters (remember Snowmegeddon?), but biking in a place where the football team has to play indoors seems like an occasional leisure activity than a serious form of transportation.  But the Twin Cities turn out to have plenty of 4 season bicycle commuters.  Think you could do it?

Guest Lecture in Fundamentals of Environemtnal Geomatics

One of the things we talked about was the UCGIS GIS&T Body of knowledge.  Most importantly, here is the list of 330 topic worth knowing about the field.

I also spoke briefly about the importance of open data sharing.  You can find a more complete explanation of my findings from that study at the URISA Journal (free).

We talked about the early days of GIS. Here is one of the people we talked about:



Links to different organizations and agencies mentioned in the lecture include:

• GSDI
• NJ OGIS
• FGDC
• The National Map
• URISA
• UCGIS
• Geospatial One Stop

Bikes in the nation's capitol

Like many other cities, Washington DC now has a pretty comprehensive bike rental system.  If you pop up the 2nd photo you can clearly see the map of bike stations across the city.

Check out this massive glass shed of bikes at Union Station. They look like they have enough bikes for every tourist in the District.

And the result, that I found exciting, was an increased number of bikes at the monuments and attractions.

Streetscapes in design competitions

In class we've been talking about how design competitions bring out some of the wilder solutions.  But the winning entries in "Designing the 21st Century Street" seemed to emphasize how realistic solutions that already exist (in some form) can be applied in a careful and coordinated manner to transform an existing street in New York City into something that is safer and more livable.  A common theme was making the city streets work for as many users as possible, often resorting to different kinds of traffic calming devices to make the streets safer.

For example, while Rogers Marvel Architects used some of the same elements as other entrants (bike lane in the middle, better pedestrian connections, reaching out beyond the street, etc.) their Streets for Everyone! design employed paving patterns in ways that emphasized their design concept.  "Shared Space" lives up to its name by altering the boundaries between sidewalks, bike lanes and car lanes to make the entire street space feel shared by all users.
If you want something wilder, you might have to look to Di Magazine's competition for a Beijing streetscape.  You can only get a tiny peek at the results of the Sunset Junction Competition.  And I don't see the entries, but you can check out the results of the Syracuse Connective Corridor process that began with a competition.

Who needs winners?  If we can look past streetscapes, the Rising Waters competition posted ALL of their entrants online.  So you can see the realistic, the visionary, the colorful and the wacky.

If all else fails, you should at least look over the ASLA Student Design Awards.

Avoiding Powerpoint comas

LifeHacker posted a guide to making presentations that suck less.  Edward Tufte's Congnitive Style of Powerpoint might be the best overall guide. If you want ongoing commentary, Presentation Zen offers some greate examples of ways to improve your visual aids.  And, watching Ted Talks is never a bad way to get some ideas.

A peanut park

New York City has a new park inspired by peanuts.  (Not Peanuts)

Jens Eschrich on Frankfurt Oder

LA Fall Lecture Series presents Jens Eschrich

Wednesday, 10/5 at 4:00 pm

Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall

3 College Farm Road

New Brunswick, NJ

Frankfurt Oder—Reconstruction of a City

The city of Frankfurt (Oder) was founded in the 13th century. During World War II, the historical centre was destroyed with the conquest by the Soviet Army. In the socialist society of the 1949 founded “German Democratic Republic”, the city was supposed to be developed as an industrial centre and a “Socialist City”. The city centre itself was totally restructured, only the main churches, the city hall and very few historical buildings of normal lodgement survived. Towards the end of the GDR in 1989, the city was one of the centres GDR of chip-technology with a population of about 88,000.

After 1989 and the reunifications of the two German states, the city had to find a new role in a changed society. Losing about 1.000 to 1.500 inhabitants every year, today the population down to 60,000 people, but it is projected that the shrinking process will continue.

The presentation provides an impression of the historical city as well as the socialist city. Three examples of reconstruction are presented: A church, the marketplace and a park. They illustrate a changed paradigm aspects of city development and reconstruction in the new political system and the transformed society after 1990.

Jens Eschrich, holds a degree  Art History, History and Sociology from the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. Since 1990, his work as an art historian focused different aspects of conservation of monuments in Berlin and Brandenburg. In 2000 he joined the Historic Preservation Office of the City of Frankfurt (Oder).

Career field of the future

Jack Dangermond writes about the job market, pointing out that spatial isn't just special but it is also going to be in high demand:

I think that the real growth opportunity is in the area of spatial thinking. As people in all types of positions become more familiar with the value of geography, they begin to ask more intelligent questions about the world, and they begin to make more informed decisions. The coming opportunities for spatial thinkers will be even greater than those we are seeing for geospatial technology professionals.

So do you want a job or not?

Designing infographics: sports edition

Information communication guru Edward Tufte has posted a interesting discussion by Ric Werme about creating communicative sports graphics. But it could could just as easily apply to changing demographics or stormwater runoff, etc.