Roosevelt NJ

In studio we talked about Roosevelt and how we largely missed it in our first round of studying the regional landscape. Here are a few interesting links:

Roosevelt is home to the quietly famous Ben Shahn mural.

The NY Times Real Estate section took a look for "If You're Thinking of Living In Roosevelt" (If the link doesn't work, you could search on the author's name: Jerry Cheslow). They described it unique position in history:

The only town in New Jersey on both the National and State Registers of Historic Places in its entirety, Roosevelt was originally named Jersey Homesteads. It was one of 34 municipalities started by the federal Subsistence Homesteads program, an experiment that gave workers cooperative ownership over local farms and factories. In 1945, after President Roosevelt's death and long after the government had sold off the factory and farms, the borough renamed itself Roosevelt to honor F.D.R.

These historic photos are also pretty amazing.

US 1 is a dangerous place for a walk

I know this will be a surprise for some folks, but the Home News and Tribune reports that it is dangerous to walk on Routes 1 and 9. Of course, the problem is that the highways cut off a fair amount of lower to mid-income housing from the basic jobs and service that their residents rely on. And, since some of them can't afford to buy multiple cars, they find themselves needing make dangerous crossings just to get to work when their spouse is already away in the car. We've built the outer edges of our cities in ways that are so car dependent, even though many people can't afford that lifestyle.

Cool Class: The Yucatan Peninsula

11:015:437 COLLOQUIUM: Cultural and Ecological Landscapes of the YUCATAN

REGISTER THROUGH:
http://studyabroad.rutgers.edu/program_yucatan.html

Jason Husveth will be instructor for the class. He is a very well known ecologist with excellent understanding of cultural aspects of landscapes. If you want to learn more about him see:
http://www.ccesinc.com/CCES_Staff_files/CCES_Staff_Husveth.htm

A review of past years is also available online as a PDF.

Thoreau still helping research today

It turns out that Henry David Thoreau is helping researchers today as they try to track specific changes associated with climate change. The NYTimes reports on how researchers are using his detailed accounts of when local plants bloomed to establish that the seasons have changed by as much as about 7 days, due to warming. But the species present in his woods at Walden Ponds have changed as well:

Of the 21 species of orchids Thoreau observed in Concord, “we could only find 7,” Dr. Primack said.

The researchers are also looking at thorough listings by other area residents. They sound like they really appreciate a former shopkeeper from the area, not just for his knowledge of plants, but his pennmenship makes his notes far more readable than Thoreau's. Maybe his refusal to write neatly was part of his larger plan for Civil Disobedience.

Live Blog: Connecting Fragments: Notes on a Collective Landscape

Richard Alomar, formerly of di Domenico + Partners, LLP
Connecting Fragments: Notes on a Collective Landscape
Wednesday 4:00-4:55 PM
Cook Douglass Lecture Hall 110

Richard is
In transition to a new position Stantec
Another MLA from LSU, Geaux Tigers!
Keeper of The Landscape blog

COLLECTING FRAGMENTS

He started with a discussion of a specific plant that is closely linked to a landscape:
Saccharum

This led to a review of his entry in the Crossing the Drive Competition which referenced the old Burnham Plan for Chicago while building its own system of referencing the contemporary landscape of the city. They emphasized movement patterns, natural patterns, and walking distance to the park.

He used House and Home as a transition into a description of his work on the Dulles Corridor outside of DC and the Gun Hill Road Intermodal Project in the Bronx (check out these great 1973 photos of the neighborhood).

Finally he drew on some experiences with Co-op City where greenways and open space were proposed, but only after a community approval process. The history of the site was fascinating since it starts with Native Americans and (much later) Freedomland and most recently the original 1970s project required construction on fill and pilings. Today there are 7 schools in this isolated corner of the Bronx.

Cool Class: Environment and Society

David Hughes is teaching a course that sounds very interesting:

New Course for Spring 2009
Environment and Society

taught by
Professor David M. Hughes

Environmental Policy, Institutions, and Behavior 105 (11:374:105)
Anthropology 293 and 294 (01:070:293 and 01:070:294)



Nature - as places and processes independent of human will - is dead. This alarming proposition launches the course and guides its progress. Society and the environment, in other words, make each other in ways that are creative, dangerous, and often both at the same time. To substantiate this complex argument, a multiplex reading list draws from sources as diverse as social theory, environmental history, anthropology, activist writing, and political memoir. The first segment of the course deals with the ways in which people simplify nature for the sake of production - notably through agriculture and water engineering. These systems then spread across the globe. The second segment of the course considers historical trends of expansion and dispersal, such as, European conquest and colonialism and contemporary globalization. The course then turns to the consequences of radical and pervasive simplification. Under a notion of over-expansion and collapse, this last segment explores modern forms of social exclusion and expulsion. Industrial systems rely upon zones of sacrifice for the disposal of waste, and they increasingly identify and segregate surplus, sacrifice people. Tropical and subtropical urban populations, for instance, suffer from over-strained infrastructure and - as is becoming apparent - from an unforgiving, artificial climate as well. (Close to home, one need only remember Katrina.) What standards of fairness, justice, and power apply to such unprecedented conditions? On the threshold of disaster, how does one live an ethical life?

Lectures are held MW 4* (Mondays and Wednesdays 2:30-3:25) in Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall Room 103
Recitations are held T2*,T3*, and T4* (Tuesdays 11:10-12:05, 12:50-1:45, and
2:30-3:25) in Waller Hall room 203

(DT: I took this photo above the NJ Meadowlands where the Turnpike splits and thought it captured the human/environment conflict on enough different levels to warrant inclusion)

Green districts and green curriculum in Middlesex County

Middlesex County announced a plan to create special districts with financial incentives for green businesses. These Green Environmental Development Zones are an attempt to attract environmentally-focused businesses to empty warehouses. They also hope to support the development of more green education at area schools, including Rutgers.

Rebuilding Galveston, or not

After my recent visit to New Orleans, it is interesting to see the contrast with Galveston. A reporter who grew up there writes this interesting feature on "The city that isn't coming back."

Plants rights

Switzerland has been moving towards a growing recognition of plants rights. The same article also reports on Ecuador's new constitutional recognition of "ecosystem rights enforceable in a court of law."

EDA: Visiting Memorials

During Friday's EDA lecture I asked which memorials the students had already visited. Here is a summary of the answers:

Vietnam Memorial	41%
Korean War Memorial	33%
WWII	32%
FDR Memorial	24%
Irish Famine Memorial	8%

At the end of the lecture I asked the class to vote for their overall favorite Washington DC memorial. Here are the results:

Lincoln	28%
Vietnam	22%
WWII	17%
Jefferson	7%
Holocaust	25%

All questions have an n of around 250.

Surely 2 graphs are better than 1

We could blame Jeff Sagarin for this cruelty, but it is really just an integral part of intercollegiate football. After some tough slides, UW and RU bounce back. After some exuberance, UK and LSU are getting are tough dose of reality. Suddenly, 3 of the 4 are clustered together. RU has jumped to 58, which is where UW sat going into the weekend. Check it out...


This second graph is the actual RATING of the team that is used to help sort the teams for the rankings. The bar graph is ugly and hard to read, but that'll have to do for this advertisement-free blog. Today they predict that if the defending National Champion LSU Fighting Tigers came to Rutgers, they'd only win by about 6.

For/From EDA

Today, after my lecture on Memorials in Environmental Design Analysis, I was asked some interesting questions about places learn more. Follow these links and you can find more about memorials or more about Washington DC or more things that I have posted for past EDA classes.

And, with some lucky timing, Landscape Architecture Magazine's editor Bill Thompson just posted some comments about his first visit to the 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon.

Reverse address lookup on Google Maps

WebMonkey @ Wired reports on Google Maps new reverse address look-up. More interesting is how they relate it to the larger trending towards providing Lat Longs for a lot of purposes.

Frank Gehry joke in The Onion

The reposted Frank Gehry joke in The Onion this week was pretty good. (h/t puk)

Katrina Memorial in the Lower Ninth Ward

Some memorials rely on the fanciest and most expensive materials to show the seriousness of their intent. This memorial may have succeeded in using cheaper pavers in a way that achieved just that - something more elegant would have looked like a well-funded token, while this looks a bit more like a less well-funded work of heart. It obviously has a lot more polish than the makeshift memorials that popped up after the storm. It is designed by David Lee, FAIA and sits right at the bottom of the bridge as you enter the Lower Ninth Ward.



I read somewhere that the blue columns represented the different levels of water during the storm.
Since it is situated in the middle of a street, it is more of a piece on a pedastal than a place to visit and contemplate. But since it is still surrounded by one of the most devastated urban places in the US, there are plenty of other places nearby to dwell on the negative. This colorful offering tries to do something different than some other memorials.


This stone, which looks a lot like a cemetery headstone, seemed a little out of place. But it also quickly turned a colorful plaza into a serious space.
What do you think? Does it strike you as having the impact of a Vietnam Memorial or a WWII? Should it? What is being memorialized here?

Skillman redevelopment

It shouldn't be particularly surprising that the Skillman Village redevelopment plans become such a hot topic just weeks before election day. It is interesting to see in today's Home News account how the site is understood as an opportunity, but with the disagreement being over how to capitalize on that opportunity:

Dyer said he wants Somerset County to buy the land as open space and transform it into a south county park, noting it would relieve the township of its debt load. To date, the township's total debt is nearly $63 million. About 43 percent, or $27 million, of that debt was incurred as a result of the Skillman Village project, Committeeman Mark Caliguire has said.

Another proposal is to see the former psychiatric treatment facility "transformed with public lawns, plazas and an amphitheater, as well as shops and restaurants." How many of these opportunities do you think they are in the watershed? Should they be of greater interest to the larger community?

Hackensack Waterworks ar Oradell: An Interdisciplinary Approach on Adaptive Reuse

DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Presents a Seminar by:

Dr. WOLFRAM HOEFER
DEPT. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

TITLE: "HACKENSACK WATERWORKS AT ORADELL: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH ON ADAPTIVE REUSE"
DATE: Friday, October 24, 2008
TIME: 2:15 pm (Refreshments at 2:00pm)
PLACE: Dept. of Environmental Sciences - Room 223
(Environmental and Natural Resources Bld. - Cook Campus)
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Host: Dr. Lily Young, 732-932-8165 X312, lyoung@aesop.rutgers.edu
Dept. Environmental Sciences Seminar Website:
http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/info/seminar/seminar.shtml

Abstract:
The Hackensack Water Company operated continuously from 1882 until 1990 on a man-made island in the upper Hackensack River. In 1993 United Water of NJ donated the 18-acre island and its historic buildings to Bergen County for use as public open space. However, adaptive reuse and public access to the site has been stymied for 14 years as a result of conflicting environmental, ecologic, historic, and government agency visions for utilization of this space.
In our effort to develop a consensus plan that would allow public access to the site, Rutgers University landscape architects, hydrologic engineers, and environmental scientists undertook the challenge of producing a restoration design plan that the various constituents would support. The presentation will focus on the interdisciplinary character of the project and how the cooperation between engineers, scientists and designers can create innovative solutions for the environment.

Trail speakers

Ever since our Appalachian Trail project I have had a heightened appreciation for folks like Larry Luxenburg who maintain a passion for the same trail year after year. Here is a chance to hear from two speakers as part of the NYNJTC speaker series at Campmor...

Trail Conference Speaker Series at Campmor
Join the Trail Conference Wednesday evenings in October when we host a series of speakers at Campmor on RT. 17N in Paramus NJ. Guest presenters will begin at 7:00PM and run approximately 1 hour. Authors will be available to sign their books and plenty of copies will be on hand to purchase and be autographed. Seating will be limited, so arrive early. (For directions, click on Campmor link above.)

October 22, 2008
Larry Luxenburg, AT Thru-hiker and author of Walking The Appalachian Trail

October 29, 2008
Dan Chazin, syndicated Hike of the Week author in The Record and a local hiking authority and maven

Economy hits LA

ASLA reports on how the economic "dip" is impacting landscape architects.

Regional Design Studio

Yea! Our studio turned an important corner and are moving towards making some meaning out of it. However, over the next few days we need to sort out the following issues:

• NJ ASLA Planning and Analysis Design Award Submissions are due in Trenton on Friday
• The 2 team evaluation forms are in the class folder

Catch your breath. The downtime is going to be minimal.