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The Sacramento Urban Design GIS Database kicks into high gear this semester. This research project focuses on gathering contemporary characteristics relating to downtown Sacramento's built environment and its use. It has four stages:

1) collect and evaluate ground floor building façade characteristics,

2) monitor and map human activity,

3) collect and evaluate city block characteristics, and

4) enter data into a GIS to overlay and analyze patterns.

The results can be used to determine where funds and policies should be focused to improve conditions, analyze the relationship between particular urban design characteristics and human activity, and proactively analyze the effect of new developments on the district's livability.

For a pilot project, my students and I will collect a great deal of data concerning the built environment and pedestrian usage this semester. Also, Greg Taylor, the City of Sacramento's Senior Urban Designer, and I will write grants to fund the larger research project.

I’m currently reading…

Understanding the Cultural Landscape by Bret Wallach

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space by Jan Gehl

Recently finished (and recommend)…

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford. Review is coming soon.

Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade. This is an amazing book. Wade, the chief science writer for the New York Times, pulls together dozens of recent scientific studies to provide an aggregated look at human evolution and migration, a journey that began 5 million years ago and continues today. Although it is infused with archaeological evidence, the book predominantly follows the plethora of recent DNA evidence that has sprouted since the mapping of the human genome in 2003. Wade makes the case that we, despite our culture and predilection towards possibilism, continue to genetically evolve. Our new knowledge of our past provides evidence that--in time--will rewrite geography textbooks. Here are a few of the highlights: 1) A small group of modern humans, maybe as few as 150, left Africa by boat crossing at the Gate of Grief at the southern end of the Red Sea. 2) We had a fully articulate modern language before migrating from Africa. 3) The mixing of modern humans and Neanderthals now seems unlikely since there is no DNA evidence. 4) He also provides effective evidence to support the reality of race. This last statement, the most controversial, is also the most important for his book's underlying thesis--that groups of people settled different corners of this world, and the geographic conditions of those places along with the resident's socio-cultural baggage (also conditioned by the local geography) changed them genetically. Through natural selection, they evolved independently of others living in different environments. His thesis is that we continue to evolve, and its implication for geography is that the environment still matters.