2015

In our Cities in a Global Society course, one of the fundamental themes is cosmopolitanism. I introduced the idea early in the course with the article by Mary Kaldor. Cosmopolitanism is an ancient, Stoic ideal of universal human identity–of being a ‘citizen of the world.’ I give credit to the dissident ancient Greeks who coined […]

One of the peculiar traits of modern nation-states is that they try to collapse together a variety of things into one, politically-effective bundle: 1. The population is reframed as the ‘body politic,’ which Hobbes portrayed as a literal metaphor in 1651. 2. The spatial territory is considered an integral part of the ‘nation.’ Symbolically, the

In my Cities in a Global Society course, I have been pressing the point that we need to rethink organized political power. The classic English/German worldview is that there is a thing called “the state,” which is separate from “the people.” This is effective rhetoric for elections, especially for candidates who want to portray themselves

Hello Urban Design team! I want you to think about what sorts of regulations we want to recommend for this new North Bayshore community. Mountain View’s General Plan 2030 and North Bayshore Precise Plan are great models of clear thinking and writing. But these are general policy documents. They stand in sharp contrast to the

Hello Streetscape Team! Please take this post with a grain of skeptical salt. I want you to push new ideas and innovate. So here I am going to post some strong opinions of my own about streets; but I phrase it that way because I want you to take these ideas seriously, but not as

As you know, I prefer free, open-source software and data. Thus I recommended QGIS rather than ArcGIS, and Blender rather than Rhino, 3DSMAX, or other CAD-derived modeling software. I am sticking with QGIS for this semester, and we may need to arrange some lab sessions so that I can help you learn to use it

Dear students, I have been mulling over how to clarify the tasks for the rest of the semester. The fact the Mountain View is seriously considering a sustainably-based transformation is very exciting. But for the remaining ten weeks, I need to set you some realistic parameters and then check with you about which parts to

Last week I briefly showed you what a first session in Quantum GIS looks like. Now I have revised the data to make it a little easier to start with. To begin, get to a place with a fast internet connection. Then download this 53-megabyte MV_GIS zipped archive. This time, I bundled all the shapefiles

In our studio we will study how to add more housing to Silicon Valley communities by evaluating the Shoreline West neighborhood in Mountain View. This will mean an overall increase in density. On the ground it will also mean more variation in density, including more open-space in some areas, as well as mixed land-uses. Here

Throughout the semester we will find a slew of articles related to sustainable urban development. Here are a few. 1. The Food Justice discussion on Philosophy Talk, Feb 3, 2015. 2. “America’s Infrastructure Is Slowly Falling Apart.” Feb 2, 2015, Vice. We have enjoyed two generations as a “developed” country. But most of our hard