A few questions for Andy

Recently SJSU's College of Social Sciences asked me to answer a few questions about my teaching and research. I'd dreaded this assignment for the past few weeks. Having completed it, though, I found it a useful opportunity to reflect on where I am these days. So I figured I'd archive those thoughts here...

1. What research questions currently preoccupy you?

While my research has generally focused on communication and the built environment, studying structural and perceptual flows whose apparently distinct places convey inhabitants to a singular space, I have begun to examine disruptions in those flows. Initially I explored, somewhat optimistically, the production of “locale” in roadside architecture, arresting places whose evocations of home and community provide a nostalgic and therapeutic response to the stresses of contemporary life. More recently, though, I have concentrated on the somewhat more ambivalent rhetoric and performance of seemingly (but almost never actually) abandoned places. Currently I am interested in the uses, aesthetics, and ethics of “ruin-tourism” practiced in places like Detroit, Post-Katrina New Orleans, and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

2. What personal factors contributed to your study of communication and the built environment?  

I recall a conversation with a senior colleague, now retired, in which I outlined some plans for research into the history and design of postwar motels, now often used as long-term apartments, halfway houses, and shooting galleries. Summarizing my plans, I noted how my interest in roadside architecture began during the years when my spouse and I drove between Ohio and Florida to see our families. I was quite surprised when my friend asked, “but didn’t you tell me that you lived in motels for awhile?” I was amazed that I had somehow forgotten that dimension to my personal interest in the built environment. Fleeing an abusive relationship, moved by my mother to the relative safety of a Mom and Pop motel, I grew to appreciate the freedom evoked by roadside architecture – and the fear too. Coming to grips with that continuum of feelings is a personal factor shaping my research that long precedes the academic purposes of my work.

3. What has been most challenging in your research and teaching?

While I bring a scholarly interest in theories and frameworks to the classroom, as well as a humanist belief that study and contemplation are valuable skills whose outcomes may not be “measured” or “assessed” in some contemporary meanings of the words, I recognize that many SJSU students (and some administrators) bring what they perceive to be more practical concerns to our interactions. Many folks struggle with the notion that we should cultivate a keen interest in the world beyond our material ambitions, to read, to travel, and to explore a wide range of topics for the pleasure of doing so, for the opportunities to join the human conversation of values, interpretations, and possibilities, without being forced to account for the energies expended in these endeavors as one would complete a spreadsheet. Of course, addressing this struggle is a challenge worth undertaking.

4. How has your position in SJSU contributed to your research and teaching? 

As an SJSU faculty member, I have sought out opportunities to fund my travels, chances to experience the flows and disruptions of places that have contributed directly to my publications and lectures. Along with traditional college grants and departmental matching funds, I have sometimes needed to negotiate some non-traditional opportunities. For example, when asked to teach a second peer training course during my service as director of the university peer mentor program, I agreed with the proviso that my additional work be compensated with a one-time travel allotment. With those funds I completed a cross-country road trip in 2008 whose outcome included one of my most favorite scholarly articles, “Two roads diverge: Route 66, ‘Route 66,’ and the mediation of American ruin.” Though my research has required some similar appeals over the years, I have found that my university is willing to support my road-tripping and globe-trotting ambitions as long as I advance a productive array of scholarly output.

5. Do you have a hidden teaching talent? 

I have developed a small repertoire of songs that I’ll sometimes share with my students to advance one point or another. For example I love to sing “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” in COMM 149 (Rhetoric and Public Life) when we’re discussing Disney’s corporate vision of American domestic spaces, an ideal future of consumer technology. I also sing “[Get your kicks on] Route 66” in any class that includes a discussion of travel and tourism. My singing is not technically a talent, because I can hardly boast a gifted voice. But my willingness to express myself in song contributes to a memorable learning environment – for good or for ill.

6. What is one book that changed your life (or teaching/research) and why: 

John R. Stilgoe’s Outside Lies Magic is a nearly perfect collection of essays that build to a coherent argument for the need to sharpen our acuity about the human-made world around us. I return to his book often to borrow illustrations about how the built environment consists of layer after layer of patina that can be scraped away through physical or mental means, revealing more than mere history as an intellectual exercise but rather the means to encounter bygone modes of life that shimmer like William Gibson’s semiotic ghosts. Outside Lies Magic encourages readers to become explorers of the “why” of everyday life. One example: Stilgoe says that if you peer into the cabinet under the kitchen sink of an early twentieth century house, you stand a good chance of finding apple green wallpaper – the same color found in that era’s police stations and asylums. Read the book and find out why.

7. What is one website/journal/newspaper (in your field) you follow without fail? 

While I scan the international, national, and regional journals that host the scholarly conversations of my field, I must confess that I almost never read an issue cover to cover. Speaking as a former journalist whose work was measured by its relevance and accessibility, I find far too much of our academic writing is laden with foggy, derivative, and frankly soul-sucking prose. Accordingly I don’t follow publications as much as I read a few authors whose works, which typically appear within and beyond one particular field, demonstrate a balance of intellectual sophistication, practical utility, and aesthetic quality that inspires me to improve my own writing.

8. What is some advice you’d give to newer faculty or students?

I encourage newcomers to balance enthusiasm and dedication with a healthy degree of stoicism. Far too many folks approach their duties with a kind of zealotry that blinds them to the subtleties of why people and things work as they do. People who approach each challenge and each obstacle as a matter of success or failure (or worse, as good or evil) end up being frustrated – and frustrating as co-participants in SJSU life. Successful faculty and students bring zeal to their tasks, yes, but they never lose sight of the fact that the world is far more complex than their desires, and that they are merely one part of a much more complex universe whose workings often defy easy understanding. A little stoicism – not dour acceptance but a deeper reservoir of patience and humility – goes a long way in this life we have chosen.

Vegas All Night

While attending the National Communication Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, I learned that, yes, it is possible to do an all-nighter without gambling or clubbing. Nothing against those activities, of course, but Jenny and I wanted to explore some of Sin City’s other nocturnal delights. Here’s the itinerary:

6:30 p.m., Neon Boneyard: Joined by our pal Chip Hall, we wandered an outdoor museum dedicated to some of Vegas’s glittering, twinkling, glowing marquees that have drawn gamblers and gangsters to the desert for decades. The fee is a bit steep, and entrance requires a reservation, but the trip is essential for anyone who loves classic neon. Though many of the signs no longer function, strategically placed lights produce delightfully eerie shadows on these icons of the past.

8:30 p.m., Zombie Burlesque: Jenny and I had never seen a Vegas show, and I’m a bit amazed that Jenny OK’d this one as our first. The good news is that the “burlesque” was pretty much PG-13. A little skin, some naughty humor, but nothing too raunchy. Best of all, the theme was a goofy send-up of 50s and 60s atomic-age pop culture, a hidden history of America’s hidden zombies next door, and a genuinely sweet message about diversity that rings especially true in an Age of Trump. Oh, and free jello-shots.

10:30 p.m., El Cortez and Fremont Street: Jenny, Chip, and I grabbed a meal at Siegel's 1941, a comfy old school restaurant at El Cortez, one of Vegas’s original mob haunts. Their off-menu prime rib dinner is delectable [well, it's palatable], but this time I went for a wedge salad and some caffeine. Afterward we surveyed the enclosed zaniness of Fremont Street, where you can snap photos with a Tony Montana lookalike, rock out to competing 80s cover bands, and pay dearly to drink from a replica of the Christmas Story leg-lampshade.

1:30 a.m., Fremont Street and Vegas Boulevard: Jenny and I continued our adventures north of the Strip, driving around some of the city’s funkier environs in search of neon signage for a video I've long wanted to produce. At this point, we were both getting sleepy, but neither of us would discuss quitting. We both remember pooping out around this time in an ill-fated Santa Cruz all-nighter we attempted a few years back. Every time I proposed a retry, Jenny’d say, “Nope. This time we’ll wait for a place like Vegas or Paris.” Now that we were here, there was no way we’d give up.


2:30 a.m., Flamingo Wildlife Habitat: We returned to the Strip, racing south on an interstate that had been a traffic-jammed parking lot just a few hours ago. Inside the Flamingo, the “Vegas, Baby!” vibe had begun to sour for a few folks: Woo Girls crying in the bathroom, Bro Boys itching for a fight, couples arguing next to taxi cabs ("But you said you loved me!"), that sort of thing. Jenny and I made our way to the habitat, searching for flamingos and koi. I was a little annoyed that the lights had been switched off, but the sight of fish sleeping in their shadowy pools delighted us nonetheless.

3:30 a.m., Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Gardens: While hard core late-night gamblers (Sorry, I mean “gamers”) plugged away, hoping for their big break, Jenny and I visited one of the Bellagio’s lesser-known destinations. The hotel’s high-end shopping mall offerings were closed, but the gardens remained available - and free! At the Conservatory, we wandered quiet walkways amid gorgeous arrangements of autumn blooms, stared upward at an indoor waterwheel, snapped pictures and - Hey! Did that tree just wink at us? Yeah, the Bellagio’s got an animatronic tree - because, of course it does.

4:30 a.m., Caesars Palace and LINQ: Getting our Third Wind, we toured Caesars Palace, which famously doesn’t include an apostrophe because, “Everyone’s a Caesar here.” Well, OK, but you could put the apostrophe after the second ’s,’ right? Never mind. Anyway we gazed upward at replicas of Italian statues, including a version of Michelangelo’s “David.” At LINQ we found an all-night breakfast at Hash House A Go Go. Jenny ordered Froot Loops, and I got a BLT Bloody Mary - because who doesn’t enjoy cheap vodka, soggy bacon, wilted lettuce, and a side of toast?

5:30 a.m., Luxor and Excalibur: I’d always wanted to visit the inside of the Luxor pyramid, so we drove about a half-mile south to our last stops of the night. The Luxor is suitably mammoth, a vast atrium filled with shops and restaurants and leering advertisements of Criss Angel and Carrot Top. Jenny was hankering to check out Excalibur, so we boarded a moving walkway through the omnitopian continuum and found ourselves in a Dungeons and Dragons fantasy domain that also offers 24-hour Krispy Kreme donuts. I figured my Bloody Mary needed some company, and the price was right.

6:30 a.m., Exit: Riding the travelator back to the Luxor and our parking garage, we noticed that the sun rise had begun to color the clouds in delicate wisps of pink. We wandered past creepy video gaming devices - the ones featuring life-sized and blandly sexy dealers who appear to look around before beckoning you from across the floor (“There’s a seat over here!”) - and exited into the cool morning air. Driving north and then east, the sun now glowed fully fat orange and round, celebrating the new day.

Next All-Nighter? But of course: Paris!

Learning to be less Metro-Bound

Ploshchad Yakuba Kolasa

One of my new pals here in Minsk made an interesting reference to folks who are "Metro-bound" - that is, people who rely on the limited options provided by underground metro stops when learning to navigate the city. On the one hand, the metro is clean, safe, and relatively fast, and learning to master the buses and trams can be a real hassle.

Yet reading Minsk through its metro stops produces an omnitopian dislocation of distinct portals ("my office is here... I live here...") that are surrounded by yawning chasms of nothingness. The city seems to shrink, to fit itself into a continuum of passages that lead to the same constellation. The only way to grasp the city's complex but logical relationship of people and places is to walk the streets, to see how landmarks knit together into a coherent whole. Learning to communicate here requires a similar perspective.

Until now, I've concentrated on discrete words like "spasibo," and even a few phrases, without trying to understand the connective tissues of the Cyrillic alphabet (which spells the word "спасибо") - which has been fine. There's a pleasant rhythm when one learns to respond with "pozhaluysta" when someone says, "thank you." But having no understanding of the alphabet - treating each word like a discrete metro stop - is no longer tenable.

I learned this when I tried to take a train this morning. So far I've felt pretty good about my ability to navigate Minsk. The metro is easy enough, and I finally took a tram last night. Why not buy a train ticket to some nearby city to expand my horizons a bit? At the train station, I managed to sputter out a Latinized version of the town I hoped to see, but I was utterly adrift thereafter. And, as is common around here, the ticket-person spoke absolutely no English (though she found a way to sell me a ticket).

At first I figured I'd spot the number that most likely correlated with a track or car and hope for the best. Yet nothing about my ticket made sense. So I sat down and studied my little scrap of confusion more closely. I've taken trains in Western Europe and Asia, but could not make sense of this thing. Is that a ticket number? A track number? A car number? Is this one way or a round-trip? Hell, what city was I visiting anyway?

I put the ticket in my wallet and walked back to my apartment. I played around with some websites promising to explain the rules and rituals of Belarusian rail-travel. Then I decided that my afternoon would be better spent starting to work my way through Cyrillic. So far I've learned to be grateful for letters like "K" and "M" and "T" that sound the same in both languages. And I'm learning to tell the difference between "б" and "в." And tomorrow I hope to get my head around "э," "ю," and "я."

No, I won't "learn" Russian (at least not anytime soon). But I want to develop a more coherent understanding of how things work - and that includes paying closer attention to the language. Not just a few phrases but a more general grasp of how characters and words fit together. Afterward I will return to the train station and figure out where I want to go - and how I'm going to get there. With some time and patience, I plan to be less Metro-bound.

M'origami Urbanism - FedEx

Check out this new FedEx spot called "Growing Business." To my way of seeing, it's an example of Origami Urbanism, a topic I tackled as a chapter in Communicative Cities in the 21st Century: The Urban Communication Reader III. There I wrote, "This is the promise of the communicative city: a tangled web of human interaction that we shape and reshape, employing tools of mutability to edit public life into a private performance. Reading our cities as manifestations of origami urbanism, we come closer to completing the modern project by finally becoming its authors."

Oh, and here are two additional fun details. First, I've just learned that a fellow named Martin J. Murray uses the term "origami urbanism" in his 2011 book City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg. I haven't had a chance to review this text yet, but I hope to do so in the near future. Second, the dude speaking Chinese is Jason Rowland, a pal from my college forensics days!

Shameless Plug: The Placeless City

I'm delighted to announce the publication of my new book, Die Ortlose Stadt Oder: Die Virtualisierung Des Urbanen (The Placeless City: The Virtualization of the Urban).

Co-authored with Alain Bourdin (Université Paris VIII) and Frank Eckardt (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar), The Placeless City examines ways in which new information and communication technologies have transformed modern notions of urbanity.

This project emerged from a lunch conversation in 2012 during the “Media of the Metapolis” conference in Weimar, where Alain and I had been invited to speak on our relative approaches toward urban life. And now, thanks to Frank's expert negotiation of the German publishing world, we can share the results of that conversation with a larger community!

Publisher's link: http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-2746-6/die-ortlose-stadt

Be There Now

Since I occasionally quote Ram Dass's phrase "Be Here Now," I was amused - though a bit disheartened - to spot this variant on a poster for a San Jose bike-share rack: "Be There Now." The change is subtle but important.

Shameless Plug: Origami Urbanism

I'm pleased to announce that my latest essay, "Origami Urbanism amid the Flat City: An Omnitopian Analysis of Commercials Depicting Mutability in Urban Life," has been published in Communicative Cities in the 21st Century: The Urban Communication Reader III (Peter Lang).

Here's the abstract: "This chapter analyzes a genre of television commercials recognizable for their invocation of origami urbanism, a process through which viewers are trained to imagine themselves as producers, not mere consumers, of their circumstances by their idealized interactions with editable urban environments. Origami urbanism reflects a broader reification of the modern project, epitomized initially by the Haussmannization of the medieval world into the Victorian flat city and perfected in the 20th century through that era's world's fairs and international expositions, and subsequently through more subtle enclosures of ideology and human interaction, which the author labels omnitopia. Four components of the omnitopian enclave, a structural and perceptual enclave whose apparently distinct locales convey inhabitants to a singular place, are relatively well defined: dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, and mobility. However a fifth, mutability, requires further explication. This chapter, therefore, examines origami urbanism in order to provide a more nuanced analysis of mutability through the analysis of two dyads: thought/action, in which the internal mind appears to act upon the external world, and private/public, by which one may occupy that world with one's solitary concerns. Reading communicative cities as increasingly enclavic, the chapter argues that the modern project is no longer authored in an institutional sense, but is instead reinforced through individual tactics of resistance that affirm our collective alienation from agency and each other."

Want a PDF? Let me know!

I Forgot My Phone

In his book Outside Lies Magic, John Stilgoe notes that many folks growing up in 19th century-America cultivated greater visual acuity than we do today. They actually developed and practiced the art of looking, discerning hues and shades both for the pleasure of aesthetic refinement and for the practicalities of daily life. Stilgoe offers a largely class-bound analysis, summoning notions of chromatics lectures offered during an afternoon tea. Yet he also calls forth images of farmers and drovers who read the clouds with wary appraisal, searching for storm-sign.

In our more media-saturated age, we seldom attune ourselves to the nuances of nature, choosing instead to distill the world into a stock of abstractions. We might adjust our flatscreen controls to "vivid" and crank the volume to "11," but only because our expectations overwhelm the subtle gradations of things. Presence, the experience of "being there," is harder and harder to recognize, or eventually to miss.

Charlene deGuzman knows something about this. Her video expresses the frustration I have felt in gatherings large and small when friends edit our interactions to check messages, to post comments, or maybe just to find something more interesting than the conversations that bind us. Of course I found myself doing the very same thing last night at home with my family, checking my phone while my daughter was sharing the news of her week. I stopped; I don't know if she noticed.

Hotel Bar as Omnitopia

In his Business Week essay "The Seductive Allure of the Hotel Bar," Geoff Dyer offers a useful distinction between a hotel bar and a bar bar. The latter is prototyped by one's neighborhood hangout, a locale possessing a unique time, place, and character. The hotel bar, in contrast, offers omnitopian qualities that warrant a certain degree of appreciation. After all, "the essence of the hotel bar is that it doesn’t matter which one you are in -- or where."

Initially Dyer notes that the hotel bar functions as an enclave, one that may offer a commanding view of the city one never comes to know, or at least a bunker to protect a similar brand of indifference. Thereafter he describes the appeal of the hotel bar's ephemerality: "The clientele of the hotel bar is transitory. But everyone likes to feel at home in a city they are visiting, so the hotel bar becomes their local for a couple of nights."

To this free-zone drift strangers, Dyer explains, folks more open to peak experiences because they are far from home yet near their rooms. The essay concludes with commentary on the hotel bar's gift of anonymity and concomitant potential of romantic intrigue, a pleasure difficult to find in a place "where everybody knows your name."

My favorite part of this piece is Dyer's account of the hotel bar's freedom from local restrictions (particularly those in the United Kingdom):

"In the late 1970s, I experienced the full oppressive weight of the licensing laws: the dread certainty that however good a time you were having it had to come to an end at 11:00 prompt—unless you were a guest in a hotel. This gave hotel bars, even those in England, the exotic attraction of abroad. To drink in a hotel bar was to be permitted to live like an outlaw, to be granted immunity. A hotel bar was a place from which you could not be extradited and sent back to the restricted world of pub opening hours… If pub life is defined by the hated call of 'Time,' hotel bars are places where there is no time."

This piece, certainly not intended as an exegesis on a scholarly conceit like omnitopia, nonetheless serves up an example of the kind of prose that I'd like to practice more often.

Read the essay: The Seductive Allure of the Hotel Bar: http://buswk.co/17J17VF

Omnitopia in Berlin!

Bauhaus-Universität Weimar doctoral candidate Paula Marie Hildebrandt and performance artist Nathalie Fari mounted a series of performances in May where they demonstrated the means of transforming places into omnitopia. Here's how they described their project:

"made in omnitopia is not a mere critique of a coffee shop vignette or the increasing commodification, privatization and uniformity of public space. It is an investigation of our own attitudes and the conditions of social behaviour, codes of communication, postures and positions. We treat the city a site for performative interventions by detourning existing ordinary situations or spaces."

While I was unable to visit with them personally, we did share a swell Skype conversation, and afterward they were kind enough to send me some postcards from the event. I was impressed with the breadth and depth of their theoretical work. Moreover I was amazed at the ways Paula and Nathalie drew from my meager musings to produce something live and meaningful in Berlin. 

I hope our paths cross again soon!

Learn more

Month of Performance Art

K67_Urban Router's observations

Another Terminal Dweller

Describing the strange journey of surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, now supposedly holed up in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, Washington Post social media reporter Caitlin Dewey describes those omnitopian corridors that connect hotel lobbies to airport terminals without seeming to touch the world outside.

This article describes "the legal limbo between the arrival gate and customs" encountered by some refugees, activists, and other stateless persons, noting the case of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who fled Iran with plans to settle in the UK but ended up living for 18 years in Charles de Gaulle Airport (a story transmogrified by Steven Spielberg into the 2004 movie The Terminal).

Feel-good summer stories aside, Dewey reminds readers that, "the magical-seeming lawlessness of the transit zone can cut both ways: For the political figures that find themselves there, it’s both a sanctuary and a prison."

Read the full piece: Here’s what happens to asylum-seekers who stay in airport limbo indefinitely

Communication Studies Questionnaire

Recently I was asked by some students at a nearby college to answer a survey about my experiences in the field of communication studies. Here's the result:

1. How did you get interested in studying rhetoric? 

Participation in college forensics inspired my love of rhetoric, especially when I learned to deliver a type of speech called rhetorical criticism (also known as communication analysis). Part of the appeal of this event was the chance to write and present a piece of original scholarship about contemporary communication. One year I analyzed a speech presented by Boris Yeltsin before the U.S. Congress; another year I tried to make sense out of the rhetoric of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosovic. In these speeches, I began to read published research in the field of communication studies in order to apply methods of analysis to topics that fascinated me. I really enjoyed the opportunity to solve the rhetorical criticism puzzle while competing with some of the smartest folks in the country. When I discovered that some college professors can dedicate their professional lives to solving these puzzles - getting paid to do so! - I was hooked.

2. What are you currently working on?

Having wrapped up a multiyear project of essays and a book built around the omnitopian framework, I'm just now thinking about the next five to ten years. I plan to build a research project around a new topic that reflects some of my current interests. This project might focus on gamification, studying ways to improve teaching and learning by applying insights from "sandbox style" video games. On the other hand, this project might expand on some in-progress research on world's fairs to focus on a broader intersection of architecture, mobility, rhetoric, and resistance. This work would include essays on augmented reality and street art. Of course I've also co-written an essay about rhetoric in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), following a research trip to that country last year. We've already submitted that essay to a journal for review. Depending on the response, DPRK research might become an increasingly central part of my scholarly profile.

3. What got you interested in researching omnitopia?

A number of experiences and conversations got me interested in omnitopia (a mashup of Latin and Greek roots that I've used but do not claim to "own"), but mostly the topic emerged from conversations during family road trips. Driving thousands of miles along interstate highways, we'd observe certain qualities to airports, shopping malls, theme restaurants, and casinos, and we noticed that these environments inspired different feelings within us, different forms of interaction. As is my practice, I found myself theorizing about the places we visited, positing ideas and concepts to make sense of the "placeless" vibe that both troubled and intrigued me. Jenny and Vienna, my patient and thoughtful companions during these lengthy sojourns, asked questions and pointed out errors in my thinking. Gradually I formed a framework that seemed to make sense. Back on campus, I found ways to build lessons and even an entire course around the questions I was seeking to answer. There I could count on students to pose more questions offer more challenges to my still inchoate ideas. By the time I published a few essays on the topic, it was clear that I'd be living in omnitopia for a long while.

4. Who was your faculty advisor in graduate school and what did they teach you?

My grad school advisor was Roger Aden, a professor at Ohio University specializing in rhetoric, popular culture, and a wide range of topics that include fandom and spatial practices. Among his principle lessons was a reminder that I should strive for simplicity and clarity in my planning, writing, and speaking. It's relatively easy to build a byzantine structure of thought and attempt to bamboozle readers with a dense fog of words. It's a much finer thing (and a much more rigorous challenge) to communicate plainly and directly. I continue to struggle with that goal, and I thank Roger for instilling its value in my life. I would merely add here that many women and men guided me through those years. Roger played a key role as my advisor, but he'd be the first to insist that my training was a team effort. [Additional note: My dissertation committee included Roger Aden (chair), Judith Yaross Lee, Raymie McKerrow, Tim Simpson, and Julie White.]

5. What do you fine most fascinating about studying communication?

The most fascinating thing about studying communication is always the most personal thing, the fact that you can follow your bliss and concentrate on any aspect of life that involves human sense-making. Folks in this field study a vast array of topics, each one drawn from some aspect of their life stories. Our goal is always to useful outcomes, not simply to gaze at our own navels. Yet I can think of few other professions where folks enjoy such freedom to explore ideas and follow them wherever they may lead.

6. What is the best piece of advice you can give a transfer student to your program? 

I fear that any advice I'd offer will be generic, given that the best guidance comes from one person speaking to another person's unique concerns and talents. Nonetheless I'll offer one tip that would apply to most transfer students: Get to know the faculty. Read their published works, attend their colloquia, and chat with them outside of class. Your education will include access to books and articles, syllabi and assignments, but there is no better resource than a professor who knows you. Such a person can direct you toward internships, travel opportunities, and other forms of professional development. Of course you must take the first step by learning about various faculty members' strengths and interests. Show a genuine interest and think about the relationship you seek to build - don't just fixate on what you want - and you'll have a chance to enter a collaboration that can transform your life. Some of my best friends are professors who instructed me at all levels of my schooling. Allow yourself such a meaningful gift by getting to know the folks who've dedicated much of their lives to teaching you.

The Image of the City

Yesterday I reread Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City. The book, published in 1960, is dated by a number of anachronistic terms, the masculine-gendered pronoun usage, and its obvious focus on white, middle class folks (and, of course, the anxious feeling that one is grooving on Sean Connery's version of James Bond when everyone else is buzzing about the Daniel Craig model). Add the obligation to plod through numbingly detailed analyses of three U.S. cities (Boston, Jersey City, NJ, and L.A.), peering through thick layers of history to imagine then-contemporary images urban life, and you've got much potential for frustration.

Even so, this is a remarkable book, one whose precepts, elementary as they may appear to today's readers, offers useful insights well beyond the realm of urban planning. Indeed, I found myself connecting The Image of the City to a number of ongoing personal and professional projects: improving the flow and "legibility" of my classroom Prezis, exploring "navigation" as an analogy for writing/teaching/learning, and considering a range of broader community-building opportunities. Here are some of my favorite quotations.

The Image as Communication Artifact/Process - Notes on social change and pedagogy 

Definition of the image: "the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual" (p. 4).

Among its several benefits (listed on page 4), a good image "can furnish the raw material for the symbols and collective memories of group communication" (p. 4).

Social change: "A frequent problem is the sensitive reshaping of an already existing environment: discovering and preserving its strong images, solving its perceptual difficulties, and, above all, drawing out the structure and identity latent in the confusion… It will probably be more difficult to gain an understanding of the problem and to develop the necessary design skill than it will be to obtain the necessary powers, once the objective is clear" (p. 115, 117).

Pedagogy: "The final objective of such a plan is not the physical shape itself but the quality of an image in the mind. Thus it will be equally useful to improve this image by training the observer, by teaching [him or her] to look at [the] city, to observe its manifold forms and how they mesh with on another… Such education might be used, not only to develop the city image, but to reorient after some disturbing change" (p. 117, emphasis in original).

"In the development of the image, education in seeing will be quite as important as the reshaping of what is seen" (p. 120).

The role of agency and perspective in image production and analysis [more links to pedagogy here]

"The observer ... should play an active role in perceiving the world and have a creative part in developing [the] image. [He or she] should have the power to change that image to fit changing needs. An environment which is ordered in precise and final detail may inhibit new patterns of activity… What we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, capable of continuous further development" (p. 6).

On the frustration of fruitless journeys [unnamed subject reflecting on Los Angeles]: "It's as if you were going somewhere for a long time, and when you got there you discovered there was nothing there, after all" (p. 41).

"The image of a given physical reality may occasionally shift its type with different circumstances of viewing. Thus an expressway may be a path for the driver, [an] edge for the pedestrian" (p. 48, emphasis added).

"The image itself [is] not a precise, miniaturized model of reality, reduced in scale and consistently abstracted. As purposive simplification, it [is] made by reducing, eliminating, or even adding elements to reality, by fusion and distortion, by relating and structuring its parts. It [is] sufficient, perhaps better, for its purpose if rearranged, distorted, 'illogical.' It [resembles] that famous cartoon of the New Yorker's view of the United States" (p. 87).

"If the environment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then the citizen can inform it with [his/her] own meanings and connections. Then it will become a true place, remarkable and unmistakable" (p. 92, emphasis in original).

"The city is not built for one person, but for great numbers of people, of widely varying backgrounds, temperaments, occupations, and class… The designer must therefore create a city which is as richly provided with paths, edges, landmarks, nodes, and districts as possible, a city which makes use of not just one or two form qualities, but of all of them. If so, different observers will all find perceptual material which is congenial to their own particular way of looking at the world" (pp. 110-111).

"It is important to maintain some great common forms: strong nodes, key paths, or widespread regional homogeneities. But within this larger framework, there should be a certain plasticity, a richness of possible structures and clues, so that the individual observer can construct [his/her] own image: communicable, safe, and sufficient, but also supple and integrated with [his/her] own needs" (p. 111).

Potentially important link to Walter Benjamin/Susan Buck-Morss/Carlos Gallego [and Michael Calvin McGee?]: "We need an environment which is not simply well organized, but poetic and symbolic as well… By appearing as a remarkable and well-knit place, the city could provide a ground for the clustering and organization of these [personal] meanings and associations. Such a sense of place in itself enhances every human activity that occurs there, and encourages the deposit of a memory trace" (p. 119, emphasis in original, bolding added).

The method of image analysis

Five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. (p. 46).

• A note about edges: "An edge may be more than simply a dominant barrier if some visual or motion penetration is allowed through it - if it is, as it were, structured to some depth with the regions on either side. It then becomes a seam rather than a barrier, a line of exchange along which two areas are sown together" (p. 100).

• A note about nodes: "Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city in which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling" (p 47). Example: "The subway stations, strung along their invisible path systems, are strategic junction nodes" (p. 74).

• A note about landmarks: "A landmark is not necessarily a large object; it may be a doorknob as well as a dome" (p. 101).

• A note about the potential for regionalization: "A spatial region would be distinguished from a spatial node (a square) because it could not be scanned quickly. . It could only be experienced, as a patterned play of spatial changes, by a rather protracted journey through it. Perhaps the processional courts of Peking, or the canal spaces of Amsterdam, have this quality. Presumably they evoke an image of great power" (p. 105).

Two types of image construction: hierarchical and continuous organization

Hierarchical: "This organization [has] the quality of a static map. Connection [is] made by moving up to the necessary bridging generality, and back down the desired particular" (p. 89)

Continuous organization: "The image [is] put together in a more dynamic way, parts being interconnected by a sequence over time… and pictured as if seen by a motion picture camera" (p. 89).

Beyond hierarchical and continuous organization: "Intuitively, one could imagine that there might be a way of creating a whole pattern, a pattern that would only gradually be sensed and developed by sequential experiences, reversed and interrupted as they might be. Although felt as a whole, it would not need to be a highly unified pattern with a single center or an isolating boundary. The principal quality might be sequential continuity in which each part flows from the next -- a sense of interconnectedness at any level or in any direction. There would be particular zones that for any one individual might be more intensely felt or organized, but the region would be continuous, mentally traversible in any order. This possibility is a highly speculative one: no satisfactory concrete examples come to mind" (p. 115).

Good places [whether in cities, in teaching, or in other environments]

The value of the panoramic view: "There [is] an emotional delight arising from a broad view… Would it be possible, in our cities, to make this panoramic experience a more common one, for the thousands who pass every day? A broad view will sometimes expose chaos, or express characterless loneliness, but a well-managed panorama seems to be a staple of urban enjoyment" (p. 44)

A good street often "acts ambiguously either as linear node, edge, or path for various people at various times" (p. 65).

"Where the journey contains such a distinct series of distinct events, a reach and passing of one sub-goal after another, the trip itself takes on meaning and becomes an experience in its own right" (p. 97).

Effective nodes: "If a break in transportation or a decision point on a path can be made to coincide with the node, the node will receive even more attention" (p. 102)

Summary clues for urban design: singularity, form simplicity, continuity, dominance, clarity of joint, directional differentiation, visual scope, motion awareness, time series, names and meanings" (pp. 105-108).

A note about time series: "Here what would be imaged would be the developing pattern of elements, rather than the elements themselves - just as we remember melodies, not notes" (p. 107).

"If an environment has a strong visible framework and highly characteristic parts, then exploration of new sectors is both easier and more inviting" (p. 110).

Growth of WalMart

I never get tired of these. It's a map depicting the growth of Walmart. I wonder about that time before the chain's current ubiquity, when southerners would say, "Gosh, I love my local Wal-Mart [back when the brand was spelled differently]; I just wish I could find a store out west!"

Check it out [Thanks, Buzzfeed!]: http://bit.ly/NMh89P

[Oh, and be sure to try that "Rubbable Gif." I admit it: This is the first time I've ever seen that tech!"]

Omnitopia as Urban Epistemology

Preparing for my Weimar presentation, I found myself bumping up against the idea of "urban epistemology," wondering is contemporary knowledge doesn't merely arise in the city but also through the city. Naturally it didn't take me long to then wonder what an omnitopian urban epistemology might be.

Generally I approach omnitopia from a critical perspective (not as a "critical scholar," of course - though that's a slightly different issue). At the same time I find pleasure and relevance to the omnitopian performance.

I therefore wonder: Can the same principles that produce a structural and perceptual enclave whose apparently distinct locales convey inhabitants to a singular place convey us also to some truth about the world? To explore this idea, I offer these notes:

1. Omnitopia is not a fact; it is a framework. Its value lies less in what it is than what it reveals.

2. We might imagine omnitopia as a sort of urban epistemology: a way of knowing that yields potentially useful insights.

3. Omnitopia-as-urban-epistemology does not promise a grand narrative; there is no one-size-fits-all producer of universal meaning.

4. Omnitopia-as-urban-epistemology instead offers a way of seeing - a layer of augmented reality that highlights some phenomena (while admittedly obscuring others).

5. From this perspective [and employing the framework that appears in my book City Ubiquitous] an omnitopian urban epistemology would reflect five principles:

Dislocation: Knowledge should be unfixed from its authors and origins; it should be easily shared. To borrow from Stewart Brand: "Information wants to be free." This does not suppose that we abandon a literal marketplace of ideas any more than we should abandon our obligations to act ethically. Yet when knowledge is easily shared, (freed, as it were, from all but the most necessary constraints) meaningful insight can grow. In contrast, knowledge without broad access (illustrated but not limited by the principle of peer review) may possess only a passing similarity to anything that resembles truth.

Conflation: Knowledge should value synthesis over analysis. To be sure, one may dwell deeply in the particulars of the world, just as one grows attached to a particular cafe or pub or diner. Yet when the production of knowledge works simply to strip away extraneous elements from a supposedly elemental truth, the outcome almost invariably produces little more than the sum of one's limitations. Expanding our intellectual maps, connecting seemingly disparate nodes, need not turn us into dilettantes. [And even if we face such scorn, we might prefer that pejorative to the risk of becoming pedants.]

Fragmentation: Knowledge frequently arises when apparently complete narratives are breached, broken, and cut against the grain. As an urban phenomenon and a necessary counterpoint to conflation, fragmentation often reveals itself as the destruction of communities who have been split by broad boulevards or managed as imperial categories. At the same time, individuals and groups possess an emancipatory tool when they seize that same power, acting to fragment otherwise overwhelming urban narratives. Truth tends to form in the cracks of previously impenetrable facades.

Mobility: Knowledge accrues less in stasis than in motion. Its truth is best measured when subject to the jostles and jolts of transmission. As such, knowledge can hardly be delineated from communication. Indeed, it can't exist without discourse. From another perspective, consider the knowledge of the metro, and compare its insights to the knowledge of the easy chair. From that latter position, one may easily reflect and refine on what is known. Yet the process of moving from place to place enables a cascade of momentary, partial (and, yes, sometimes distracting) utterances. Signs, sounds, objects: each provoke new connections. Knowledge that results from such mobility brings us closer to understanding.

Mutability: Knowledge must be twisted from its comforting alignments to be useful. Again we learn from the city. The planner's perspective may allow for coming and going, to-ing and fro-ing, but the purpose of most design is to fix meaning upon place. Few visionaries of the urban milieu genuinely build change into their plans. Growth, repair, renewal, yes. But change that may transform one place into another? Such is rare. At the same time, the power to produce an illusion of mutability is a frequent component of most efforts at command and control. This is the projection of "nimble force," of "rapid deployment," of "shock and awe." Such mutability must be practiced by anyone who would seek to know the world and to challenge its would-be authors. This is the stolen moment of the impromptu concert, the flash mob, the unscripted conversation. In these moments, knowledge takes root and may grow wild.

Wandering the Parisian Arcade

Preparing for my Weimar talk I came across Émile Zola's description [in his 1880 Nana] of the Passage des Panoramas in Paris. Hard to explain why, but this "passage" strikes me as being especially lovely

A shower had just driven a crowd of people into the Passage. There was quite a mob, and it was a slow and difficult task to pass along between the shops on either side. Beneath the glass roof, brightened by the reflection, there was a most fierce illumination, consisting of an endless string of lights white globes, red and blue lamps, rows of flaring gas-jets, and monstrous watches and fans formed of flames of fire burning without any protection whatsoever; and the medley of colours in the various shop windows the gold of the jewellers, the crystal vases of the confectioners, the pale silks of the milliners blazed behind the spotless plate-glass, in the strong light cast by the reflectors; whilst among the chaos of gaudily painted signs, an enormous red glove in the distance looked like a bleeding hand, cut off and fixed to a yellow cuff.  

Count Muffat had strolled leisurely as far as the Boulevard. He cast a glance on the pavement, then slowly retraced his footsteps, keeping close to the shops. A damp and warm air filled the narrow thoroughfare with a kind of luminous vapour. Along the flagstones, wet from the drippings of umbrellas, footsteps reverberated continuously, without the sound of a single voice. The passers-by, elbowing the count at each turn, gazed at his impassive face, rendered paler than usual by the glare of the gas. So, to escape from their curiosity, he went and stood in front of a stationer's shop, where he inspected, apparently with profound attention, a display of glass paper-weights, containing coloured representations of landscapes and flowers. 

But in reality he saw nothing. 

Bonus! I took some pictures of the Passage des Panoramas last year.

Google Glasses

Photo by Sebastian Thrun

I had an "aha" moment when I saw this picture and read Annalee Newitz's accompanying story. It's just a kid being swung around by his dad, right? Yeah, but there's more. Because the dad took this picture using his Google glasses, that much-hyped (and sometimes mocked) Next-New-Thing in Augmented Reality. Imagine being able to record everything you see from your glasses. Cool, huh? Yep. And it's coming.

Read more: (IO9) "Could this photograph change the future?"

Mind the Map

Image from BBC: http://bbc.in/LKjReu

Humans Invent recently posted an interesting piece on a London Transport Museum exhibition called "Mind the Map," which examines evolving depictions of the Tube. The article explains how Harry Beck's 1933 design represents a transformation in the portrayal of the Underground from a geographic to diagrammatic style. Turns out, this seemingly sensible approach was considered quite revolutionary back then.

Responding to those critics who complain that diagrammatic maps are misleading, London Transport Museum curator Claire Dobbin explains, "A good map caters specifically for its usage, in the best possible way…. Beck’s diagrammatic map embodied the very essence of modern functionalism that underpinned the Underground’s design philosophy."

While appreciating this insight on how London's Underground map conveys a modernist sensibility, I am fascinated by how this article illustrates a nuance about omnitopia that is often lost is discussions about the topic. Reflecting on omnitopia, many folks say, "Oh, yeah. You mean homogeneity," when, in fact, omnitopia contains many heterogeneous elements.

Consider how London's Underground map connects to perception rather than particulars: "Other cities across the world have been inspired by Beck’s design, most notably Sydney whose map, despite the overall course the lines take, looks almost identical to the London one." Yet no one would confuse London for Sydney.

The maps we use may be omnitopian, yet our locations remain precisely local.

Read more: Breaking the rules: Harry Beck and the London tube map

Las Vegas Growth Video

Check out NASA's amazing time-lapse video illustrating the growth of Las Vegas over nearly 40 years.

Morozov's "Death of the Cyberflaneur"

Evgeny Morozov's article, The Death of the Cyberflâneur (NYT, Feb 4, 2012) conveys a greatest-hits version of some my personal passions: urban design, modern art, retro-futurism, and a critique of the contemporary public sphere. Heck, there's Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day" right at the top! Before I finished reading the piece, I'd already shared it on Facebook. And that, the author says, is the problem.

Launching with a brief description of flânerie, Morozov argues that while today's social networking aggregations fill our screens with countless threads of endless content, they squash the pleasure of wandering through the web's funkier outskirts - and of being present where we are. One source of particular concern: frictionless sharing, that seamless transformation of impulse to flow that anesthetizes conscious engagement:

"This is the very stance that is killing cyberflânerie: the whole point of the flâneur’s wanderings is that he does not know what he cares about. As the German writer Franz Hessel, an occasional collaborator with Walter Benjamin, put it, “in order to engage in flânerie, one must not have anything too definite in mind.” Compared with Facebook’s highly deterministic universe, even Microsoft’s unimaginative slogan from the 1990s — “Where do you want to go today?” — sounds excitingly subversive. Who asks that silly question in the age of Facebook?"

I get the idea, but only to a point. While I appreciate the article's clever allusions, I don't share Morozov's nostalgia for 90s-era modem-screech. Yes, those lengthy periods of waiting for a page to download produced a Yoda-like sense of where-I-was-and-what-I-was-doing [Do you remember your first time?], I don't recall enjoying that moment at all. Nor do I agree that we are bounded into vacuum-sealed mediocracy by our increasingly efficient search tools. Indeed, I found this essay through precisely the kind of flânerie that Morozov celebrates, using Zite to wander electronic boulevards of chance and serendipity.

Even so I agree with broader claim of this piece, that we are less inclined to wander these days, less able to enjoy the pleasures of getting lost in the labyrinth. In my own meanderings through various omnitopian portals, I find this phenomenon less a cause than an effect. Our fear of ambiguity leads us to seek the blandly familiar. And this fear is borne, I think, in something more substantial than the transformation of our tools.

Forgoing further contemplation along those lines [this is a blog-post; the blog is the book], I still think that Morozov makes a reasonable point. We do not "surf" the web, and few of us care to become cyberspace pilots. We prefer the simulacrum of the world to the real thing, customizing it into our own cocoons, mirrors of our preferences and our delusions, as we passively receive the flow. And from time to time we click "like" as a wave (or a courtesy), knowing that our ripples do not run too deeply.

What would our lives be like if we expected more?