An opportunity at Rutgers:

Last year Rutgers University conducted an international design competition for the College Avenue Campus. The winning team, led by the architectural firm TEN Arquitectos and the landscape architectural firm Wallace, Roberts & Todd, will present an information session on Monday, October 15 to describe the first phase of this long-term project. The event, which is open to the public, will begin at 6 p.m. in the Rutgers Student Center Multipurpose Room, College Avenue Campus. More information is accessible at http://collegeavenuecampus.rutgers.edu/ .

$8.1 Billion

Directions Magazine reports that NAVTEQ just sold for $8.1 Billion. As a location-based service, that really indicates how quickly this field has grown and how valued geospatial technology has become. In buying NAVTEQ, Nokia paid 14 times the 2006 earnings which means they are paying a premium for growth and utility, not just strict property or short-term investment (unless they are blindly buying at the top of the bubble, which is a different post). Directions helps explain why this creates such value for companies like Nokia:

The "Holy Grail" for location technology is assumed to be local search and the advertising that comes with it. The goal is to reach an ever-narrowing target audience within a confined geography. Wild estimates of advertising dollars (1) (2) are predicted to be spent on local search. For mere pennies, "mom and pop" retailers will be able to reach their loyal and less-than-loyal customers more effectively. Those pennies will create billions of transactions, and therefore dollars, for Internet giants like Google, cellular carriers like Sprint, and their new friends in the mobile handset market like Nokia.

Geomatics is here. It is now. It is huge. $8.1 billion huge.

1-4 isn't so good, but that 1 was pretty memorable

Sigh. This weekend LSU was the only one of my teams to win. On the other hand, LSU didn't just win, they won a game that might end up looking like it was the national championship. They sure played like it was. The Sagarin rankings have shuffled the deck again (see below) but the ratings hardly changed at all (omitted). I wonder if the contrast between ratings and rankings reflects a tight cluster from around #4 to around #43. Parity certainly seems to be the watchword this fall - except when talking about the Fighting Tigers of LSU.

The changing forests of New Jersey

This Sunday the NY Times reported on changes impacting New Jersey's forests, even within existing or preserved tracts. While blaming everything from sprawl to gypsy moths, the story looked at the the changes in the composition and general health of our forests. To develop the story, the Times interviewed several friends of the program: Ed Goodell at NYNJTC, Joan Ehrenfeld at S.E.B.S., and Leslie Sauer author of "The Once and Future Forest: A Guide to Forest Restoration Strategies."

One example they used was the continued struggle facing Rutgers' Hutcheson Memorial Forest,
as a virgin forest that is under attack by invasives and other enemies of trees. And, the article included a great graphic showing the most common species in NJ's forests.

APA Top 10

The American Planning Association has published a list of its Top Ten Neighborhoods and Top Ten Streets in America. One of the neighborhoods is the highly underrated Chatham Village in Pittsburgh, which we visited on a very rainy Fall Field Trip a few years ago (photo above). I was surprised to see such an expensive area as North Michigan Avenue, but it is a truly notable American street.

But how much of the great qualities are from planning and how much just happens? Aside from Chatham Village, few were planned from scratch. Poor planning could surely ruin these places. But the conditions that create them are something else.

A weekend outing?

A great resource for planning a weekend outing is the NYNJ Trail Conference's Hike of the Week. This week they featured Hacklebarney State Park, which the boys really enjoyed. Thankfully, they don't get too hung up on trying to write flowery descriptions of the landscape, but they capture the basic appeal of the site:

This section is the highlight of the hike, as the Black River is one of the wildest and most scenic rivers in the State of New Jersey. It is particularly spectacular after a heavy rain, but the rushing river, with its rapids, cascades and boulders, is beautiful any time of the year. You’ll want to take some time to cover this stretch of the trail so that you can fully appreciate the magnificent scenery.

As I look back over previous Hikes of the Week I see plenty of others to consider - Pyramid Mountain, the Palisades, and the Torne - all stand out.

ASLA in SF

In welcoming the ASLA to San Francisco for the weekend, the SF Chronicle writes about the ASLA Design Award winners from the area. One of the big winners was Rutgers alum Andrea Cochran who is also being invested as a Fellow this weekend. I bet the alum reunion last night was something else.

Zoning decision

An unfortunate story from Tennessee showing that people can take zoning decisions very personally. Without reflecting on the scarce details of this case, it is simply an important reminder that the planing/zoning decisions we talk about in class can impact the lives of individuals and shouldn't be decided on the basis of whimsy.

EDA: Top 10 Shapers of the American Landscape

Here is the list of Top 10 Shapers that I am presenting in EDA listed in alphabetic order. For comparison purposes I have linked each one to its entry in Wikipedia, but these are not definitive descriptions. It is worth noting that, compared with Carl Steinitz' list of people, mine are less linked with the quality of their idea and more with the total impact.

Daniel Burnham

Andrew Jackson Downing

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Herbert Hoover

Thomas Jefferson

William J. Levitt

Robert Moses

John Muir

Frederick Law Olmsted

Gifford Pinchot

New AT book

As a fan of the Appalachian Trail, I am always pleased to see a new book on the AT. Jeff Alt's new book on the AT, A walk for sunshine sounds like a nice, reflective piece that captures both the challenge and the joy of hiking the AT. When we worked on the AT in Junior Studio studio a few years back, we started hearing more and more stories from through hikers that made us feel a depth of respect that was uniquely associated with the AT.

Meridian Hill Park

Our DC trip included a stop at Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park). Locals would be surprised to hear me say this, but I was pleasantly surprised by its condition. One of the challenges that faces the park is that it is run by the National Park Service but used as a local park.

The ubiquitous use of exposed aggregate in the park is not just a minor note. This was the first major use of exposed aggregate in the US and the process has been described in detail in Lori Aument, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, Vol. 42, No. 1, Architecture Issue (Spring, 2003), pp. 3-19. For a less well-known park, it has been written about quite a bit.

David Pogue reviews the $100 laptop for their temporary Give One, Get One offer which has been designed for the One Laptop Per Child program. I gather that it has its critics, but I remain excited about the potential.

Google wants you to clean up

Mark your calendar and your map - Google wants you to clean up on October 13-14.

color design

A question came up in class about using color on some of our design products. Hopefully, many of you have a fairly strong sense now about appropriate color use. But, the rocket scientists at NASA have a guide to help them with color selection and usage and you might want to peek at it. (h/t Metafilter)

Landscape first

The NY Times has an article today describing a property out on Long Island where the owner/designers first spent a decade building up the landscape and letting it become what it needed to become before they designed the house that the landscape deserved or demanded.

Anti-Icons

In his latest Slate slideshow, Witold Rybczynski compares some recent starchitecture with more modest building goals. An example of used was the Gehry/Olin collaboration we saw at MIT on our 2005 Boston Field Trip - Gehry was hired to create an icon more than a useful building. He points out that:

In architecture, a little excitement goes a long way, and the problem with iconic buildings is that they are generally too exciting, which detracts from their primary function.

Vitruvius wrote that designers should strive for durability, utility and beauty. Rybczynski's commentary suggests that (at best) some of the starchitecture of today is only shooting for 2 of the 3. But it seems that some of it comes up short on most or all of that as a goal.

ASLA Green Roof visit

During our trip to DC we went up on the much publicized Green Roof at ASLA. We got a great tour from Keith Swann (as seen on TV) and poked around the roof. My photos don't do the structure justice - I really didn't understand the design until we visited in person. But that is OK, they enjoy visitors.

Environmental Geomatics Lecture: Mike Batty

This evening CRSSA and Bloustein are co-sponsoring the Fall 2008 Environmental Geomatics Lecture by Mike Batty, director of the Centre [sic] for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the University College London. The lecture, titled "Visual Simulation and the City", is on new technologies for modeling, visualization and participation in the planning process.

Under Batty's leadership, CASA has become one of the world's leading centers for research in GIScience visualization and urban spatial analysis. Having him visit Rutgers is a special honor and privilege.

The lecture is at 5:30 at Bloustein.

Geography talks

The Geography Department has some great brown bag lunch talks scheduled. I am really hoping I can make the talk by John Wing on the "Guernica Oak and Galleon Hull: Exploring forest resource conflicts in Spain's early modern empire, 1550-1750". This is also a chance to see the Poppers talk about the Buffalo Commons.

http://geography.rutgers.edu/events/

More than just a name: Dwayne Reeves

While visiting DC this past weekend, we stopped for a while at The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. One of the most notable features of the memorial is a series of panels with the names of fallen officers inscribed. But, with 17, 500 names it becomes detached and impersonal. Technically, you know they had parents, spouses, kids, and friends and are missed in deeply meaningful ways. Similarly you know that those names represent valiant deaths and decades of service. But, unless you are there with someone already in mind, you just see the large white walls and don't identify the individuals.

I encouraged our students to get a paper and pencil a do a rubbing. I looked for one that was close to home and recent. I found Dwayne Reeves who was a Newark Schools Police Officer.
Dwayne Reeves was a father. He was a hero. The trials that followed revealed the sorts of problems that continue to plague Newark:

Dwayne Reeves, a 35-year-old father, was shot in the head at close range because Kahlil Tutt's teenage sister, Jalisa, got in a fight with some girls at Weequahic summer school and her brother went looking for revenge. A man died because of a high school catfight, no matter who pulled the trigger.

It has an unpredictability and senselessness that makes it so hard to prevent. And it has a gravity that can't be accessed on your first stroll through the monument. Remembering Dwayne Reeves makes the other 17,500 names seem more real too.