Thoughts about next steps... A delayed post

It appears that this post was "remaindered" in the Drafts bin... I meant to post it last week... but alas... Here it is, albeit a tad late.
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I have been thinking about some of the questions Nancy and Susan raised in class this past week. As I understood it, they were asking what it is in research that is compelling to me and to Shaun - at least that is how I remember it.

And it is hard for me to remember not being interested in research. As a kid growing up in NYC, I hung out in cafes and in Washington Square Park and I watched people from the time I was pretty little. I still do it whether I am in a movie theater or a classroom. And I am pretty good at it.That may sound funny, but it is a skill just like anything else. You have to know where to sit, and what to watch for, and when. And that is at the base of the research I do. It is like the other skills that people have that seem natural to them-- Sara's gift with plants, and Ted's knowledge of wooden boats, and Colin's connection to sports. Some of this is taught skills; but some of it has always felt natural. It likely started somewhere deep in our past life.

So here's what I want to understand in the coming weeks... how do you know what you know?

This question underlies a branch of philosophy called epistemology. How do you learn? How do you come to believe something? And how do you make the case for others who may be clients, students, or colleagues who don't know what you know? Because that is what research is based in. Knowing something and then trying to teach someone else what you know.

I need to have personal experience with something to believe it. Others can be convinced by statistical data. And some people believe what they believe because it is in the Bible, or because someone they trusted told them that something was true.

We talked about Lakoff on Thursday and the nature of framing. Do you use the same approaches to convince a friend, that you use to convince a colleague? Or a client? There are frames at the base of these differences, and we will discuss some of the classic research frames for the work you will be doing in your professional career.
These include:

• What is the nature of "place"?  Do we all look at a place in the same way? Can we examine what kind of different ways of seeing place there are?
• Who are our users? Are they described only in terms of demographics? Can you think of other ways to describe the users of the places you design? Who are the non-users? Are these groups mutually exclusive?
• And how does one relate to the other?  How does the Landscape Architect's "frame" overlap or differ from the Architect's frame?

It is basically about research and knowledge. How do you know what you know? We'll talk about some of the classical research frames:

• What kinds of research approaches are there? When do we apply them?
• How does what we know help us to frame our questions and how does it make it possible for us to see a certain set of answers and not others?

I want to ask you to think about what we talked about in class last week: how you came to believe in the importance of LA. What was the nature of "evidence" for you, and how is it different for each of us?

That's at the heart of research.

"Environment"! "Consensus"! "Social Justice"! Here come the Socialists!

I am copying and pasting a powerful editorial by a writer I particularly like. His name is Jon Carroll and he writes for the San Francisco Chronicle.  I am guessing that all of you will find this... powerful.

Carroll suggests that the Right wing is working to challenge the recommendations of a UN white paper  devoted to sustainable growth and hence social justice--and to identify policy and planning with sustainability as its goal, as anti-American, and as undermining our value for individual rights.  I encourage you to imagine how the work you do as professionals can and must take on efforts such as these, to derail momentum toward a more sustainable world. I went to a New Urbanism conference a few months ago in which the plenary speaker was describing the efforts of the Right to derail sustainable planning and appropriate growth. He noted the  disabling of an Obama-intitated program that brought together HUD, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy to do collaborative planning focused on Smart Growth. Inter-agency planning is rare in Washington.  Here's another expression of the efforts to constrain sustainable planning.

This is new to me, but I think that it is worth disseminating this in toto...Here it is:

Inside the nefarious Agenda 21

Jon Carroll

Friday, February 17, 2012

jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.
Have y'all heard about Agenda 21, the latest threat to our freedoms? It's a real thing and a growing movement, particularly in the West. Not in coastal California so much - we're west of the West - but in Colorado, Nevada, Utah, states like that. In some places, it's a big deal.

Agenda 21 is a 20-year-old white paper issued by the United Nations designed to encourage sustainable growth. Now it has become, in the eyes of some right-wing ideologues, a blueprint for taking American liberties away. Tom DeWeese, one of the guiding spirits behind End Agenda 21, or "Agenders," once wrote:
"Government will control how hot your shower may be, how much air conditioning or heat you may use. ... The policy of Agenda 21 comes in many names, such as Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, historic preservation ... and comprehensive planning."

And all the time I thought those were good things. Turns out they were a plot to make me take cold showers. Those bastards.

I learned about the phenomenon of Agenda 21 from a very good article by Jonathan Thompson in the current issue of the invaluable High Country News, from which much of this column is taken. Thompson traces the popularity of End Agenda 21 to a 17-minute Glenn Beck diatribe last year. Later that same year, Newt Gingrich vowed to cut funding for "any kind of activity for United Nations Agenda 21."

There had been glimmerings before. A Tea Party-backed gubernatorial candidate in 2010 in Colorado announced that Denver's bike-sharing program was part of the U.N. plot. That's the kind of looniness we're dealing with. I had thought at least that the United Nations had shaken off the world-domination thing long ago, based partly on its inability to dominate anything.

HCN even provided a handy list of words that act as dog whistles for the Agenders out there. They include: "Environment, Consensus, Affordable Housing, Protect, Social Justice, Watershed, Traffic Calming, Endangered Species, Invasive Species, Regional, Vision and Historic Preservation." All of these are indicators that secret U.N. agents are ready to make your town an international hellhole.

It's easy to make fun of these people now, but the consequences of their belief systems and their activism make them more dangerous than they seem. Thompson recounts the story of a long-range plan for La Plata County in Colorado (it's where Durango is located) and the county planning commission that shepherded it through.

It was two years in the making, took $750,000 to produce, and engendered a whopping 137 public meetings. And in the end, there was no report. Agenders have made it their mission to sabotage planning meetings, all to stop the United Nations breaking this country on the wheel of endangered species.

Or something.

This idea is that society acting for the common good is a threat to individual liberties. Even if a majority of people support the ideas. Even if the ideas are objectively good, like lowered air pollution. This is cussedness raised to a political art form and provided with its own bogeyman to strike fear into the hearts of the naive.

The United Nations is going to make you keep fringe-toed lizards in your back bedroom, dammit. Unless we stop them now, we'll be riding in hybrids and living in planned communities - because the United Nations wants it that way. As one La Plata activist said, "Someone who owns hundreds of acres in this county doesn't want someone living in the city who rides a solar-powered bicycle to tell them what to do."

We have met the enemy, and he is riding a bicycle...

 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/17/DDHO1N828V.DTL

This article appeared on page E - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Depessing but true...

Here is a link to a Wall Street Journal article saying that not only are cover letters passe as application tools, but so are resumes. Now we are seeing companies rely on electronic media like Twitter, Linked In and (ta da!) your blogs for the jobs you are applying for... It suggests that building your skills in doing this might actually be more than an educational tool!

Here's the link: WSJ Online

WELCOME TO Nora's blog!

This is a blog developed for a class in Social Science Research Methods. I will be posting thoughts on the relationships between the places we live and work, and the manner in which people feel, think and behave in the built environment. I am endlessly fascinated with the potential for design to heal our social rifts, encourage social equity, create beauty and make more sustainable places. Good design can make better communities and better lives. And good design can make a better planet

Research methods can help us understand why and how we can design better - and they give us a chance to hang out and watch people and call it work!

More to come!