TXT-Urbia

A new online journal a few of my [IN]City

cohorts and I have cooked up. Peep it here.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

The greatest British sci-fi/horror 80's hospital television show mockumentary comedy mini-series of all time! How the hell did it take me 34 years to discover this?!? (Thanks, Marijke!)

The End Of The Road

I can't believe it's already been 6 weeks. . . I've made so many new friends and learned so many new acronyms and opened so many new doors and feel my life is suddenly full of so many new possibilities to be almost paralyzing.

Some Things I Learned During The 2010 [IN] City

Introduction To Sustainable Cities Program

1. Density is everything.

2. Groucho Marx wrote a letter to the chairman of Chrysler in the early 50's asking if there wasn't something that could be done about all the pollution his automobiles caused.

3. If all the people in the Bay Area (7 million) lived at the same level of density as all the people in Hong Kong (7 million) we would fit in an area of land the size of Sausalito.

4. There are 27 distinct grids in San Francisco, one of which is the old Spanish highway that follows the direct path of the BART.

5. The annual subsidy for off-street "free" parking is roughly the size of our national defense budget.

6. Jaime Lerner is amazing.

7. Detroit is in the process of rising from the ashes of the domestic automobile industry by shrinking its city boundaries and is fast becoming the first "green" city in the country.

8. Top Dog's Louisiana Hot Links are one amazing cure-all.

9. Urban planning is infinitely easier and so much more complex than I ever could have expected.

10. I can fucking do this.

The next steps for me now are to find an internship, figure out a personal statement, write my old professors for some letters of recommendation, read about 20 books, take the GRE in October and apply for Berkeley and PSU (and possibly UCLA) come December! Wish me luck!!!

My 3 Favorite City Planning Acronyms So Far. . .

1. LULU (Locally Unwanted Land Uses)

2. CCR (Conditions, Covenants and Restrictions)

3. iCET (Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation)

I can't go on, I'll go on.

Image taken from the amazing Tsunehisa Kimura's

Visual Scandals By Photo Montage.

(Psst. . . click on it for maximum awesome.)

Two Solutions to the Same Problem

How I'm Livin. . .

Hello Nackebuhsers, it's been a long time. Rest assured, I have been a busy beaver! As some, or many, or all 3 of you know, I've been taking part in UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design's [IN] City Summer Program. I've learned and thought more about climate change, sustainable communities, transportation, land use, social equity, environmental justice, and density, density, density in the past two weeks than I ever have in my entire life up to this point. I've also got a slew of new acronyms under my belt, including CAP, BRT, TOD, VMT, UGB, SOV and MURP (not to be confused with MERP).

To be honest at first I felt that I was in way-ay-ay over my head. This is the graduate student's nightmare: to realize you are the dumbest person in the room. However, after splitting into smaller groups and really getting to know some of the 70-odd other students in the program (who are from places as diverse as Seattle, Boston, Ohio, Montreal, Port-au-Prince, Bogota, and Kuwait City) I'm kinda finding my place and becoming more confident with the material and the challenges it presents. And boy howdy, are there some challenges. . .

One of the highlights of the program thus far was the tour we took of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge last Wednesday. We boated out to the site on a 40 foot yacht (with a full cash bar!) and were treated to a talk by a fella from Caltrans (the state government department managing the new bridge's construction). The day was capped off by a sighting of the ever elusive Bay Bridge Troll!

So yeah, I really don't know as of yet where this program will lead me. Maybe I'll go back to school to get my very own MURP, or maybe I'll find an internship in a local agency or non-profit. Perhaps I'll simply end up a more educated and concerned cheesemonger. Whatever happens I do feel as if suddenly the world is full of attainable possibilities to make it a better place, and coming from me that's a very good thing.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention that my lil band's going on our first tour in just over a month! Opening for the Mummies!!! I'm still kinda in disbelief. . .