CAUPD Presentation

Our visiting China Academy of Urban Planning and Design students (CAUPD) gave a presentation today which provided a great background on China's planning process.

Check after the break for some take-aways.

Here is a quick background on CAUPD. It is a a research institution under the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MHURD) and a national information center for planning studies. It is qualified as a national top-class service provider in the areas of urban planning, engineering design, engineering consulting, tourism planning, engineering surveying for heritage preservation, water-resource assessment for development projects, and architectural design and system integration for intelligent buildings.

Too cute: My parents joined me for a transit-oriented food adventure!!

I got this awesome email from my mother just after I arrived at the Hollywood/Western subway station for the Thai Songkran festival yesterday:

2nd time in 20 years, I utilized the subway to go somewhere!
I met up w/ Sunya at the Hollywood/Western station.


Sent via Apps Phone from Verizon (<--My mother has a better cell phone than I do.)

 And then it had this picture attached:

My folks had a bit of trouble figuring out how to buy their fares. Mind you, they are not regular riders, just the parents of one. Ordinarily, I use a credit card to buy fares, which is why I never knew that a) Metro gives you change in dollar coins and b) you can't use dollar coins to buy fares at the fare machine (they don't fit). My father figured this out the hard way, as he paid with a $10 bill and had eight $1 coins weighing down the pocket of his pants.


Moral of the story: The Tritipeskuls made it to Thai Town, but on my List of Things To Do is to make a How To Buy Train Fare video.

Attention city dwellers

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sicoactiva/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Statistician and politics/policy blogger Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com fame is putting together an analysis of the factors that contribute to livable neighborhoods, and as part of this project he's surveying people who live/have lived in major cities on what their preferences are.  The results will get written up in an article in New York Magazine.

Basically, you rate a number of different factors based on how important they are to you in choosing where to live, and specify how much of a premium you'd be willing to pay to live in a dense, walkable, livable neighborhood as opposed to just an average one.  The survey also has some demographic questions so your preferences can be broken down by age, income, etc.  The whole thing only takes about 5-10 minutes.

Something gives me the feeling that a few planners might be interested to share their thoughts on the subject.  Click here to see Silver's announcement of the project on 538, along with a link to the survey itself.

UPDATE: The survey has closed.  Guess he didn't want too massive a pile of data to sort through.

SPA PROM 4/17

Black + White, and SPA all over!

Prom is just around the corner.

Save the Date

SATURDAY, APRIL 17th

9 p.m. - 2 a.m

V Lounge

Cash Bar. VIP Area.

Dress Code Enforced (Black + White)

2020 Wilshire Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90403-5608
(310) 829-1933

See you there!!

Urban Planning Coed Softball Intramural Team

Hi!  Niall and I are organizing a Intramural Coed Softball team this quarter.  

Whether you have skills or not, please come out.  We are looking to have fun and hopefully win too.  :)

We need at least 10 players of which 4 need to be ladies.  We can have a maximum of 20 players in total.  We won't start playing until the week of April 18th.  The cost of forming the team is $40.  I will try and see if I can cover this out of the UP social fund, if not, we will each need to chip in.

I am not sure what nights we would be playing or how often (I doubt more than once a week), but I will let you know as soon as I do.  

We need to provide are own gloves and bats.  If you have a softball bat, let me know.  If you don't have a glove, don't worry, we will find a way to get you one, even if that means borrowing from the other team

Please let me know if you are interested so I can form the team.  I won't form the team until I know that we have at least 10 people interested of which 4 are girls.

Jacob

Permaculture, anyone?

The 1st lecture is this Sat. April 3. Larry's classes have everyone from mayors to developers to teachers as students. If anyone's interested, I might be able to get us in free for part of the day. Or possibly we could arrange for Larry Santoyo to come speak on campus? Let me know if there's interest. -Marta

From the website for the next Permaculture Design Course taught by Larry Santoyo.
"A Certificate Course for Design Professionals, Land Managers & Homeowners
• ReDesign with Nature
• Water Harvesting & Conservation
• Natural Building & Property Development
• Urban Food Forestry
• Re-Localizing Food Production
• Economics of a Sustainable Society
Using an ecosystems design approach, this course will teach you the possibilities of the practical and the profound. It will introduce you to the people and resources that will help you create a new ecosystem, one that goes beyond your home and garden and all the way out into your community."

Take the Census so we'll know how many buses we need

3/26/2010: A Census advertising billboard near USC: If we don't know how many people we have, how do we know how many buses we need?

--Sirinya MA '09

Pictures from today's LA Marathon...a ped planner's dream and a traffic engineer's biggest nightmare

Juan and I walked over to Mile 26 to cheer on the first group of runners to finish the 25th annual Los Angeles Marathon, which ended about a mile from our apartment at the Santa Monica Pier.

The event was remarkable for several reasons.

This was truly an event for people, who had to walk their bikes through the finish line area.

Dispatch from LA Street Summit

Pictures!

Alexis Lantz MA '10 arrived by bike, in a dress and high heels. I want to be just like her.

Sirinya's Live Blog "Changing Lanes: Bold Ideas to Solve LA's Traffic Problems", part of The Rosenfield Forums

Program for today's event; Picture is thanks to Juan's Nexus One.

Sirinya here live-blogging from "Changing Lanes", the second Rosenfield Forum (a UCLA event), which has brought together transportation scholars and policy leaders to talk about solutions to Los Angeles's transportation problems.


NOTE: This will be fully updated by Monday. For now, these are my notes. Enjoy!!!

Leaders in Sustainability

Perhaps you're still thinking about what classes to take next quarter... 

While this is a reminder to many Bruin Planners, the Leaders in Sustainability (LIS) certificate program provides a practical way to connect planning theory and methodology to broader topics related to sustainability.  The program also provides a forum for graduate students from various academic disciplines to study issues related to sustainability and derive solutions together.  It’s a great way to meet students interested in environmental, social and/or economic sustainability.  The core course for the class is primarily an interactive lecture series where UCLA professors discuss their research/work related to sustainability and students dissect the issues from varying viewpoints.  The core class will be offered again in Winter 2011.

Aside from the core course, you need to take three classes related to sustainability to earn the LIS certificate.  Two of those courses must be from a class outside of your home department.   The Institute of the Environment site lists some LIS-eligible courses, but here’s a sample of a few highly recommended courses next quarter:

 Dr. Jackson’s Public Health & the Built Environment class highlights the connection between Planning and Public Health.  Walker Wells & Ted Bardacke are teaching Green Building which provides an overview of LEED and other green rating systems.  Professor Allen is teaching Industrial Ecology through Anderson (management) and the class will cover closed loop systems and life cycle analysis.

The requirements for the LIS program changed slightly since last academic year.  You can find them here.

2^nd year students – if you’ve already taken the LIS core course, the Spring 2010 quarter is your last chance to fulfill the requirement to take sustainability-related courses. Then, stay tuned for announcements in the Spring quarter that announce the LIS culmination.

1^st year students – you still have time to take the core course next year, but you should start taking electives related to sustainability when you have free space in your schedule. 

CD2 releases neat Google Map mashup of repaved streets

View Streets Resurfaced in CD2 - FY 2009-10 in a larger map
Check out Councilmember Paul Krekorian's latest "Gov 2.0" deliverable, thanks to Zach Behrens at LAist: a custom Google Map which shows allll of the streets which have been repaved during FY09-10 and their funding sources (Map of the Day: What Streets Have Been Repaved So Far This Year? - LAist).

The map is embeddable (see above) and you can download the KML file to fiddle with in Google Earth or in ArcView GIS.

A little motivation with demotivation.

Good luck with finals!

Poll: Suspend environmental protection laws to reduce unemployment?

This poll takes less than a minute to complete.

From Green LA Coalition:

"Please take a moment to vote! Thanks in advance for responding, and also for circulating the link to your contacts.

Help us WIN this informal poll on LA Times website about AB32. 
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/03/poll-suspend-environmental-protection-laws-to-reduce-unemployment.html

Please circulate this LA Times poll to AB 32 supporters (the poll is framed subjectively, it seems).
Today appears to be the last day, so if you could take a quick minute to respond, it'll help.
Our side is losing in terms of number of responses at this point, with a strong message being circulated from AB 32 opposition.

Green LA Coalition"

Google adds bike directions!

Here's some good stuff coming from Google. You can now get directions via bicycle. It will route you to avoid hills and clearly shows you how bike friendly the path is. One bad piece of news, it's not available on a mobile phone yet, only the web.

Check out the demonstration video for more info: video

Water Use @ Home