Local Ecologist

Note: Edited on February 25, 2007. This photograph was taken in January 2007 at the intersection of 4th Street and Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA. Previous posts of the Signs series: Signs of the times Signs of the season Signs #3: Regulating social space Signs #2: Contested Bay Area house sale Signs #1: Questioning traffic?

  Top Conventional open grid; pedestrian-friendly grid; connected culs-de-sac w/ public spaces Bottom Conventional cul-de-sac; pedestrian connected cul-de-sac My neighborhood, in Berkeley, is a "pedestrian-friendly gridiron" (also known as a walkable neighborhood). The pedestrian-friendly gridiron is one of five street patterns identified by Southworth and Isaacs (Street Patterns and Pedestrian/Bicycle Connectivity in Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities , Southworth and Ben-Joseph, 2003).     Left Conventional open grid Right Pedestrian-friendly grid    If you only consult a street map, like Yahoo, my neighborhood looks like a gridiron. However, if you walk, bike, or drive my neighborhood, you quickly realize the gaps in the grid. These gaps are designed to limit neighborhood auto traffic. Pedestrians and cyclists can move continuously through the neighborhood. Experience it for yourself (or view the Willard/Bateman/LeConte Neighborhood Traffic Calm

A headline in the Feb. 13-15 edition of the Daily Planet ("City reviews planned Section 8 rent hike) and a lucky find at a UC Berkeley library (an old Journal of Architectural Education featuring Richard Plunz' book A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis ) prompted this post. Despite the (provocative) title, this post is not a manifesto on housing. Rather, it is a few photos and a list of books on housing - of the public kind and of the private kind. Left William Houses, public housing, 1938 (source JAE September 1993) Right Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, garden apartments, 1927 (source JAE Sept. 1993) The photographs above were originally published in Plunz (1990). Quotes from the book review written by Tony Schulman: "The combined cost of Harlem River Houses and First Houses, two on New York's best-designed publis housing projects, was less than half the cost of the Triborough Bridge, buil

Note: Edited on February 21, 2007. I am exploring neighborhood landscapes that are citizen-based and designed with ecological intent (for habitat, stormwater management, heat island reduction, &c.). I refer to these landscapes as nature-made sites . The first in the series is the Ivy Narrow Bird Habitat (Preserve) in New Haven, CT. I will also look at the Le Conte Butterfly Habitat project in the Le Conte neighborhood of Berkeley and the coastal prairie plant community project on Ohlone Greenway by the California Habitat Indigenous Artists. (If you have any recommendations, please submit in the comments section.) Left Vacant lot at Ivy Street and Dixwell Avenue, 2001 Right Ivy Narrow Bird Habitat* with perched water table/ pond, 2006 Image source: Urban Resources Initiative Community Greenspace Program In the 1990s, a residential building was demolished at the corner of Ivy Street and Dixwell Avenue, thus creating a vacant lot. The lot is located in the cente

Strawberry Creek It's raining! I must admit: I was beginning to worry about the lack of rain this winter. As part of its water-themed book display, University Press Books (on Bancroft) has posted an EBMUD water ban notice. I don't recall the date of the notice, but in any case, I am glad it's raining. This post features the various ways that rain interacts with Berkeley's environment.

If you are the big tree, we are the small axe, ready to cut you down, well sharp to cut you down - so goes a song line from Bob Marley's "Small Axe." Two recent events remind me of this political song line as well as song lines from Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" (see below) and activist philosophies like "act locally," "the grassroots," "small is beautiful," and "it only takes one ...." 1. On January 29, 2007, Alameda Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller barred UC Berkeley from proceeding with plans to remove a grove of oaks and other trees in order to retrofit and expand its athletic facilities. News stories Save the Memorial Oak Grove Berkeley Daily Planet, Jan. 31 Alameda Times-Star, Jan. 24 Contra Costa Times, Jan. 23 Mercury News, Jan. 23 San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 23 The New York Times, Jan. 23 2. This week, Pacific Steel Casting, located in Berkeley, settled a lawsuit filed by Communities for