The Barcelona grid

Today is a great day to learn a little more about the 19th Century planner, Ildefons Cerdà. A graduate student at Bloustein called him the The True Founder of Comprehensive Planning. While best known for the Cerda grid, his larger ensanche and regional planning ideas are all important too.

Now Barcelona is staying at the forefront of innovation and expanding on his ideas with the Superblock.

Here is one of the intersections that has been transformed from a car-centered traffic spot into a pedestrian-friendly urban plaza.

Old Postcards

 Spring Break might normally be a time to send postcards back to your friends in New Brunswick. This year, things are different, so it is a good time to look at postcards FROM New Brunswick.

Ken Lew has posted historic postcards from all around the campuses including these of the Old Queens campus entrance, Balantine's Gymnasium, and the always charming Commons.

He also has scanned a 1977 pictorial summary of New Brunswick history from the First Savings and Loan Association. It includes a late 1800s photo of the steamer, New Brunswick, a women's suffrage march at George and Albany, and the great flood of 1920.

 

 

In Jackson Heights

As a parallel to the Monrovia pieces, here are some Jackson Heights bits.

I think this is one of the shopping centers that is discussed in the movie:

Peter Bradshaw's review of the film for The Guardian talks about some of the grassroots discussions about redevelopment of the neighborhood. After talking up the diversity of the neighborhood, he describes the tension:

But all this is under threat. Jackson Heights' very identity could be slipping away. Rather like west London, it is being on the point of being gentrified and yuppified to within an inch of its life. Now that Manhattan and Brooklyn are costly and fashionable, the white-collar commuting classes are zeroing in on Jackson Heights, attracted by the charming community spirit that the modest locals have built up over decades - and pricing them out. Local businesses are also being threatened by a scheme called the Business Improvement District or BID which forces business owners to pay an additional tax to support the surrounding infrastructure. Poorer businesses below a certain threshold theoretically need not pay – but they find themselves under pressure to sell up by the bigger corporations moving in and the freeholders are putting their rents up.

The concerns about gentrification and the development of the BID were enough to stop it, eventually.

The NY Mag guide to the neighborhood. The NY Times diversity map of the City.

Manohla Dargis' review of In Jackson Heights talks about how it captures a complex place, "Each person and storefront sign carries a story, opens another world, from “Articulos Católicos” to “Himalayan Driving School” and “Whole Baby Goat.”"

Monrovia, Indiana

Aside from the Wikipedia entry, here are some other materials on the cinematic little town:

A second entrance to Homestead, a neighborhood of new homes

The public library on Street View does not yet seem to have the benches (as of July 2018).

The Town Council still has some familiar faces.

When the film was released, NPR said on Monrovia, Indiana that "Monrovia, Indiana lopes along pleasingly, if a bit too casually, with nothing more dramatic than Homestead resident complaining about the fire hydrants that serve a strictly ornamental purpose in his neighborhood." In November 2020 there was a fire in Homestead which made the hydrants seem pretty important.

The Census lists it as only 1504 people, with the average home value of $77,000. But the home home for sale on Zillow is listed at $299,484.

Learn about native plant gardens

The snow is melting and spring is 20 days away. Are you ready to prepare your garden fro something new?

As part of the Rutgers Environmental Stewards program, the Earth Day, Every Day webinar series will be presenting Starting a Native Plant Garden. The presentation is next Monday (March 8):

New to native plant gardening? Not sure which native plants will thrive where you live? Angela Monaghan, Master Gardener Coordinator for Middlesex County, taught us how to start native plants from seed back in the fall (EarthDay2020 is the recording password). Angela had so much fun with us that she's BACK to help you plan your new native plant habitat. She'll cover garden site assessment, finding the best native plants for your area, and how to provide resources for pollinators and other beneficial creatures in your garden.

You do need to register so go to Earth Day, Every Day.

Duke Farms Eagle Cam

 

 

Native Plant Society of NJ

What should be here? In New Jersey the Native Plant Society has tried to make some helpful lists of what should be here and what should not. Particularly helpful are the spreadsheets for each county with the species lists that are also coded for plant types, habitat types, and wetlands identification types.

If you don't live in New Jersey, maybe you could try the BONAP's Customized Geographic Database that allows you to build and share your own floristic database for any place in the US. Or, you could just check out some of the lists near you.

Monitoring global forest change

NPR reports on a remote sensing project that uses a novel approach to track changes in global forest cover.The GLAD alerts website and the Global Forest interactive map are both worth checking out.

Soil Judging Competition

 

 

Finding Equal Ground

These might be difficult times in some ways, but this is also a golden age of accessibility to great lectures. Landscape architecture fans should enjoy a talk that LSU is hosting late this afternoon (6ET/5CT) by EDSA Principal, Kona Gray.

Kona A. Gray, FASLA, PLA, EDSA Principal, will give a virtual lecture titled, “Exploration – The Pursuit of Finding Equal Ground” on February 8, 2021 via Zoom.

Kwate Talk on Thursday

 A great chance to see a talk by a Rutgers professor on a notional streaming outlet, hosted by the National Library of Medicine History of Medicine.

Savages cry easily and are afraid of the dark: What It Means to Talk about Race and African American health

	Thursday, February 11, 2021, 2:00:00 PM Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local
	Add an upcoming event to your calendar.
	National Library of Medicine History of Medicine This talk examines the impact of racism on African American health, looking at pervasive inequities that drive higher rates of morbidity and death in the United States. Where once explicitly racist theories of African American bodies and minds dominated public and scientific discourse, contemporary understandings of racial inequities in health tend to use less incendiary language, but still conceive of poor health as fundamentally a problem of individuals. Such framing centers health behaviors including diet and visits to the doctor, and leaves the role of social structures uninterrogated. This talk explores the deeply entrenched effects of racism on African American health through institutional policies and practices that defeat socioeconomic opportunity and cause overexposure to harms; stereotypes; day-to-day encounters with racism; and other aspects of American social life. This talk is co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Digital Humanities, as part of the recently reaffirmed partnership between NLM and NEH to collaborate on research, education, and career initiatives.
	Naa Oyo A. Kwate, PhD, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of Human Ecology, Rutgers University

A sign of the tides

As flooding becomes more common in some New Jersey coastal towns, flood gauges are getting reset so that more of them work together. Cook alum Joe Martucci reports that the gauges in Ship Bottom, Tuckerton, Absecon, South Dennis, Avalon and Stone Harbor are now calibrated with those in AC and Sandy Hook. Not only does it provide more widely consistent reports, but it also is forward looking:

“The new calculations will take into account the continued effects of sea level rise,” Iovino said.

According to a Rutgers University report released in 2019, sea levels rose an average of 1.5 feet along the New Jersey coast from 1911 to 2019, compared with the global average of 0.6 feet.

Planning Board meetings

Better than TV...

  New Brunswick has a meeting of its Planning Board on Monday February 8.

  Franklin Township has a virtual meeting on February 17.

  Sayreville Planning Board has a meeting on the 17th as well.

The agendas for the meetings include a link to the WebEx or Zoom meeting.

Samoan Circles

 While we are talking about different ways to facilitate public discourse, this description of the Samoan Circle helps show that there are alternatives. This is a specific method, since the Samoan Circle is a leaderless meeting.

Night Walk in Marseilles

Our wanderlust is unsated during this pandemic. Travel videos seem to be getting more viewing than normal. But technology can let us go even deeper. 

YouTube has leveraged their Street View technology to create an atmospheric virtual walking tour of the Cours Julien neighborhood in Marseilles. Instead of regular Street View, the tour makes the neighborhood feel a little more authentic by using nighttime imagery and providing narration by a couple urban storytellers. Check out Google's Promenade Nocturne. Talk a virtual walk, watch some videos, and just wish you could walk even more.

Friday Night Music

I don't know why there aren't more rock songs about trees. This isn't a good way to learn ecology, its just a song. And it doesn't end well for the trees. But it is a song about trees and that is better than listing our some planning boards to watch.

 

"But the oaks can't help their feelings

If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade"

Esri Map Gallery

 Looking for a little map inspiration? The Esri Map Gallery has many different maps for various purposes. Some are heavy on methodology and process, like this Access Impact Mapping poster from the Trust for Public Lands. Others are historic or complex. It is all great just for exploring and enjoying some beautiful maps.

Threats to GPS

 The Sunday NY Times has a guest column by Kate Murphy that explains why we need to update, strengthen and supplement our GPS network. She mentions attacks and interference. And, since we land planes with GPS, you should care. But she didn't mention the FCC as a potential threat, as they are handing over some of those public airwaves to private interests.

As a guest column, she also didn't have space to talk about supplements to GNSS, like RTK networks.

New book by Simon Winchester

 My current stack of books threatens to kill me if it topples, but I want to add one more to the stack. Simon Winchester has a new book out that is distracting me. His previous books includes The Map that Changed the World and Krakatoa. That alone would be enough. But PlaNetizen's review of his new book, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, has me ready to skip a few in the stack to get to this.  

Don't get me wrong, the review doesn't seem exactly like an endorsement. But the book sounds like it tried to help readers get to a new place, intellectually, in thinking about how we make decisions about land. The reviewer, Josh Stephens, offers this:

For urban planners working on local issues, with local people, Winchester implicitly begs for a reconsideration of the relationship between land and influence. Even if we agree that a homeowner's property is his castle, is the homeowner necessarily entitled to weigh in on, much less decide on, what happens on adjacent properties? And, of course, Winchester reminds us that even a home that is deeded and duly paid for was, initially, stolen from people who had essentially no concept of land ownership (and not enough firepower to defend their land).

Our world is changing. And, while this anglo-centric book might not present the final word on the matter, it sounds like a well-researched, well-written exploration of alternative ways to think about the land under our feet, under our homes, and under the communities that we are planning and designing for.

But (sigh) why did I need to read about this just as the new semester starts?

Wish list item

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

 

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