BUILDING GOOD

Want to learn GIS?

March 12, 2013 in All, Building, Good

GIS

I have been completely swamped with a bunch of required coursework this semester. It has kept me from taking a couple course I was really interested, and one if particular I knew I should be taking, GIS. For those that don’t know GIS or Geographic Information Systems, is system for linking maps and data. When I was in undergrad no one, especially in the architecture school, was talking about GIS and now it’s everywhere. Heck, even the city planners and the census bureau are on board with this stuff now. Now most architects might not be interested in touching a tool for city planners, but don’t listen to them. This is what will be controlling the zoning, coding, and mapping of our cities for the indefinite future. If you we don’t engage it and learn to use it, we will become slaves to it.

For those that don’t want to abdicate the future to the city planners here are some exercises in GIS, specifically ArcMap. These tutorials will guide you through some of the basic capabilities of GIS. You will need to find a copy of ArcMap and ArcCatalogue to work through the tutorials. I would suggest going to your local university and talking to their geology department, they typically have a bunch of copies laying around. If you aren’t a student, then you can easily pick up a copy for $100 here.

Now, this link was given to me by a friend, as she’s currently in this class. I claim no rights to the information and I doubt I will be much help if you have any questions.

Before I let you go here are some other links I found in the course of running through the tutorials that are ripe with great data. Both of these sites are run by the US Census Bureau. The first link contains about any type of census info that you can imagine. The second link is a resource for geolocated census tracts for use with GIS. The information from both of these websites can easily be linked together -just do the exercises.

Enjoy!

Tags: ArcMap, GIS, Tutorial
No Comments »

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia, by VICE

March 10, 2013 in All, Good

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia

Ok, first off the guys over at VICE are completely nuts. The two places that they went, Red Light and West Point, are unsafe most times of the day, but they decided to go at night to West Point to interview prostitutes. In the course of 53 minutes, there were at least I dozen times that I must have said “Jesus Christ, are these guys trying to get killed?” I would not recommend doing many of the things they did in this video.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I can talk about a couple more things I noticed in the video.

I really appreciated the video as a whole, these did a great job in showing some of the crazy aspects of Liberia. The scene in which they were in the police station reminded me a lot of being there and the realities that one must deal with everyday. I must also applaud their ability to talk to and engage many of the ex-combatants. The interviews with the prostitutes could have been left out. Perhaps they were accurate, but they were obviously being lead by the questions to say the UN is acting inappropriately. These are women having sex for less than $1 US, do you think they wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear, if they thought they’d get paid for it later, by a white guy with expensive cameras?

Also, there were a couple parts of the Liberian history that they completely butchered. Near the beginning they said that Samuel K. Doe was the first indigenous Liberian to be voted into the Liberian presidency without mentioning the fact that he assassinated most of the previous administration on the beaches of Monrovia in 1983- he wasn’t some type of role model. Next, there was a line in there that Charles Taylor was “backed by the United States”. Well, I’m not sure were the proof of that is, but I do know that before coming to Liberia, he was trained in Lybia by Mummar Qaddafi. Qaddafi wanted to be the “president” of all of Africa, so he trained and sent out militant leaders throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. We can debate whether the US didn’t stop Charles Taylor -as the US marines there did nothing during the invasion of Monrovia- or if we actually funded Charles Taylor, but I’m pretty sure we weren’t working with Qaddafi. (It was around this time that Qaddafi admitted to killing hundreds of people, including several Americans, in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.)

All in all, this was a very entertaining video. It sensationalized many of the warlords and skewed the history up a bit. If you understand that, first, then I recommend giving it a go.

Tags: Liberia, UN, VICE
No Comments »

Travel Grant

February 24, 2013 in All, Good

West Point, Monrovia

Today, I have been trying to wrap my head around what my thesis will be next semester. Even though I knew before I even applied to go to grad school that I wanted to focus on the lack of planning and the application of social justice theory in the global South, I haven’t progressed much since then. School work seems to have taken most of my focus. I have learned a lot, about urban design, but I haven’t been able to get much closer to the first impulse that lead me to take out some hefty student loans. It makes me nervous. I want to dive into it.

The systemic issues involved in planning and construction of any place, especially a developing country (whatever that means anymore) can be so daunting, that it makes me wonder how to begin to unlock this puzzle. In Liberia, a post-conflict nation, that I had worked in for a couple years it was almost impossible to wade through who owned land, much less what to build on it. During the wars, many land owners left the country, and in their absence, the less well off and squatters moved in. In some instances, those squatters were there for almost 20 years, without any knowledge of the property owner’s whereabouts or even if they survived the conflict. Now, years later, refugees from the conflict have begun to re-immigrate and have decided that they want the property back they had before they left. Both sides have reasonable arguments, but who gets to stay and who becomes homeless – typically the squatters, who hold little political clout. This is but one tiny portion of the issues involved, but it shows how difficult the issues are.

Land rights and “slum” resettlement, is a very difficult problem -and one I doubt I can solve- but I do think I can help to at least help to define the problems better. It is for this reason that I’ve applied recently for a travel grant from UT to go back to Liberia for a couple months this summer. If I’m selected it will give me a jump start on my thesis next semester, and hopefully a career when I graduate. Wish me luck.

Tags: Grant, Liberia, resettlement, UT
No Comments »

No such thing as “low-income housing”?

February 10, 2013 in All, Good

“Low-income housing”

Recently, Robert Lerman made some interesting points, and a valid critique of the “low-income housing” block in The Atlantic Cities

. I have yet to dive into his references, but I curious what his current knowledge of the low-income housing is as almost no one today advocates for consolidated low-income housing. Almost any one working in the field is pushing for mixed developments where “low-income” is only a portion of development, not the entirety of it.

Perhaps the point of the article is to garner hits, not to push the conversation forward, though I do appreciate some of the links.

Tags: Low-Income Housing, Robert Lerman, Section 8, The Atlantic Cities
No Comments »

ULI Competition – Minneapolis

January 29, 2013 in All, Good

It’s finally over.

Looking back on the past two weeks of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) graduate student competition, it’s difficult to believe it wasn’t an entire semester. I feel sorry for the studio that will be using the review room this afternoon that our ULI team had made their home for the past few days. When I opened the door this morning, to collect my supplies, I was greeted with the musty odor of sweat, dirty tupperware containers, and a waste bin with (not a few) empty beer bottles. I hadn’t realized how badly we had abused the room. After getting over the smell, I must admit, I was slightly proud of what we made it through.

I haven’t had much sleep, but there are some images, below, of our presentation boards. Those will have to do as a summation of the project for now, at least for the next few days, as I catch up on sleep and my other classes.

Tags: Competition, Graduate School, Minneapolis, ULI, Urban Design
No Comments »

Fall 2012 – part 2 – Lamar Corridor Studies

January 5, 2013 in All

Lamar Corridor Studies

My first few weeks back at university began with some preliminary analysis of my first urban design project. The project site, selected by the professor, was the Lamar Street Corridor, in downtown Austin. Lamar is one of the main thoroughfares downtown from the north to south side of Austin – distinguished by the relative location to Town Lake which cuts through downtown. Just north of Town Lake, along Lamar, is the main headquarters for Whole Foods, which has drawn a large amount of development to the area.

Before we put any ideas together on an urban design for the corridor, we were broken up into 3 groups, in order to study the Infrastructure, Accessibility, and the Psychology of the area. I was in the group selected to analyze the psychology of the Lamar Street Corridor. In some respects I would have rather had either of the two other areas of focus, as they were more restricted and the goals were easier to define, but fortunately, that’s not what happened. Our team was forced to work from the ground up and begin by developing an understanding of what psychology implies, for who and what groups is it relevant, and how in the world can it be quantified.

For a week or two we groped for a way to get a handle on our objectives. We interviewed people on the site, we each walked the site at different times of day, we did whatever we could think of that would give us some quantifiable insights. By the final presentation, for the project analysis, we ended up with a broad range of information, but I’d like to focus on a few of the analyses in particular.

The first couple diagrams were derived using information gathered by walking the site. On the left is a diagram outlining the perceived width of the street to a pedestrian. On the right is a diagram whereby the light readings were taken along the street to understand where there may be an overabundance or lack of lighting in the evening.

: Site Lighting Diagram – Using light meter to analyze the brightness levels along Lamar Street.

Next were a set of analyses using the relatively new model of Space Syntax. It is a very intriguing method of understanding how people use space, where they are likely to move, rest, and even which areas are more likely to be economically disadvantaged. Thankfully, Dr. Laura Vaughan, at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, put some of her work online, here, which help me to perform some similar analyses on Lamar Street.

Site Map

Convex Map – Convex spaces created by structure and landscape.

Axial Map – Longest straight line that bisects the convex spaces (refer to Convex Map.

Base yMap – Each convex space is represented by a dot.

yMap – Convex Overlay – Greatest number of convex spaces joined by a single axial line intersecting the space.

yMap – Number of convex spaces joined by ALL axial lines intersecting the space.

Finally, building upon the the Space Syntax diagrams, I developed a few additional diagrams using the Convex Spaces Diagram, derived earlier. By locating the entrance of each building within the site and then calculating the distance of each convex space from a building entrance an Isolation Map was derived.

Entrance Analysis – Front entrances were located or hypothesized for all building on the site.

Isolation Map – Darker color represents greater isolation (i.e. distance from entrance to public or private buildings).

Tags: Lamar, School, Space Syntax
No Comments »

Fall 2012 – part 1

January 4, 2013 in All, Good

Well, I have finished my first semester of Urban Design. It was, on the whole, a good semester. I had the initial shock of being back in school/studio, as I had forgotten the masochism that is an architecture studio. I made it through, with only a few bad habits and sleepless nights. Out of these sleepless nights I got a good bit of urban design history, and two urban design group projects, of which I am very proud of the ideas that we investigated. I was honored that the second project was nominated for the Design Excellence exhibit put on by the School of Architecture.

Over the next week, I will be putting together a brief summary of some of the projects/studies from the past semester.

Projects include:

Hope for Kids School, Texas Impact Design – Tororo, Uganda;
Study of Lamar Street – Austin, Texas;
Healthy Living Lamar Street Corridor – Austin, Texas;
Connecting the Cedars – Dallas, Texas.

Dallas Platform Park

Tags: School, Urban Design
No Comments »

Back to School

September 12, 2012 in All, Good

Architecture Library, Battle Hall

So, I have recently gone back to school. I’m a bit older, and hopefully a bit wiser, but I am now a college student, again. I have moved to Austin, Texas to begin my Masters in Urban Design. It’s a new chapter, but it is one that will give me the opportunity to investigate some of the things that have become near and dear to me since I first got out of school, about ten years ago.

The plan right now is to try and keep a semi-regular schedule of posting that will include my coursework -Urban Design Theory; an Urban Studio survey and design for downtown Austin; and an Independent Study where I am working with a team to develop a school and community center in Uganda- as well, I hope to be able to touch on some of the many experiences or new events that happen.

-The college student edition (pt. II)

Tags: Austin, University of Texas, Urban Design
No Comments »

Fighting Crime with Architecture

May 26, 2012 in All, Good

La Raza de Rodrigo Arenas Betancur, Medellin, Columbia

A recent article in the New York Times brings to focus how architecture and urban planning can be part of the solution in our cities. Though many designers straight out of school would take this idea for granted -and the old-timers tend to have cynically lost any such grand allusions- the work done in Medellin, Columbia, the VPUU in South Africa, and other places is helping to prove that the aspirations of the younger generation right.

Michale Kimmelman, in speaking to local authorities and people within the community was able to pull out several point that I hope we remember:

“Around the world, followers of architecture with a capital A have focused so much of their attention on formal experiments, as if aesthetics and social activism, twin Modernist concerns, were mutually exclusive. But Medellín is proof that they’re not, and shouldn’t be. Architecture, here and elsewhere, acts as part of a larger social and economic ecology, or else it elects to be a luxury, meaningless except to itself.” -We are only making a meaningless luxury unto itself it it’s not part of the larger whole. This reaffirms exactly what I felt devotin so much of my early career to “prize winning” architecture, it was an end only to itself.
“You can’t begin to grasp Medellín’s architectural renaissance without understanding the role of E.P.M., the Empresas Públicas de Medellín, which supplies water, gas, sanitation, telecommunications and electricity. It’s constitutionally mandated to provide clean water and electricity even to houses in the city’s illegal slums, so that unlike in Bogotá, where the worst barrios lack basic amenities, in Medellín there’s a safety net” – They wrote ideas of social justice into their constitution.
“After an initial scheme to hire Norman Foster to devise another pavilion was rejected, a local competition was held, with the idea of advertising Medellín’s own young architectural talent.” – Architects were hired that had intrinsic knowledge of the problems, the people and the region.
“My impression from that conversation was that it’s politically easier to propose new plans for burying highways and building trams in the hills than to untangle old problems, and that the city still had to be vigilant when it comes to housing policies.” – Like anywhere, it’s easier to lend our expertise to new problems than to undo the failures that we as designers have caused.

Tags: Medellin, social justice, Urban Plann, VPUU
No Comments »

Urbmet.org

May 15, 2012 in All, Good

Kansas City analyzed.

Urbmet.org uses Google maps, overlaid with analysis of 42 cities, to create an interactive map of material, energy intensities, and population. Here’s a short synopsis by those at urbmet:

Urban planning has focused on identifying many important questions about the formation and functioning of our cities. However, there is a lack of understanding about the spatial patterns related to material and energy use in cities. This work attempts to address this knowledge gap.

Tags: map, materials, urban planning
No Comments »