J. Robert (Bob) Wainner

The environment wasn’t all that good for a lot of the “previous generation,” either depending on where they found themselves at what point, etc. But be careful about the leap…wouldn’t the golf course design work keep feeding your search and count as experience in pursuit of a license? Even at partial credit? Try to be sure any other bridge…[Read more]

There is another number which I think is called the “Labor Participation Rate” – the number of people working divided by the number who presumably could be working. That’s been declining for several years. But it matches better how the layman would view the economy. “Is everyone working that wants to”. Another one is the “Employment to Population…[Read more]

I think what I’m seeing is more a grief over the bad all over state of things. Schools of LA can’t very well say to students “Note, this is going to be sparse on results” or they couldn’t justify continuing to offer courses. They might need to ask themselves if there are some changes they can make or ask alumni how to best prepare students for a…[Read more]

Basically I share the same concern. Yet maybe the title & training mixup of LA’s with allied professions could be part of the problem. We have tried to define subcategories in a big area of landscape design, with horticulture, LA, land planning etc. splintering a bunch of people concerned with the same thing. Yes, some are interested in learning…[Read more]

There is another trend….I don’t want to say “ominous” but certainly a challenge, and that is inside 4 year (and even 2 year) horticulture programs. “Way back” when I was starting out, horticulture and LA had a kind of solid dividing line, with more botanical science and maintenance business focus inside horticulture and more history, art, and…[Read more]

This brings to mind the “cloud through the twin towers” debate going on about the design of a proposed building in S. Korea that seems to some people to resemble the 9/11 tragedy. The architects claim it is unintended. There are other articles than this link which show the connection area with lots of gardens, which I guess lets me ties it into an…[Read more]

I agree we would be yoked to the general planning/architecture area’s current and near-future fate, but I don’t know the best forecast for what that is. Reading the link however, I couldn’t help but notice music therapy being in such bad shape, when not long ago I had been on art therapy discussions (interested due to a relative in that field) and…[Read more]

Not directly any help on the main question but LA was not in the top troubled fields listed in this article (maybe we’re too small to be visible?):
http://www.classesandcareers.com/advisor/the-10-worst-college-majors/

You can check people’s profiles for more, but I’m in North Carolina. Good luck with the idea. It has a lot of realms to explore. I can’t find something I read recently about these but maybe the link below will help on the ancient towers. They have found a metal box somewhere with a depiction of such a tower with birds on the top that helped…[Read more]

As I was thinking more about this and how the “process” and the “memorialization” are completely split in the developed world, I doubt it is altogether culture and religion, although burials are more accepted than the dead exposed to birds on towers… One side of it is the issue of familiarity to the European west (I think even the waiting for…[Read more]

I’m not sure we have “crematorial grounds” other than in-grade placement of plaques for the deceased (some areas of those also show up in the gardens). Do you mean the crematorium site itself? I think that is usually remote from the burial or memorial walls -and by the way the columbaria (better plural spelling) can be in secular cemeteries as…[Read more]

Walter Hood Assoc. presented some slides of his work that included a street upgrade in a talk I attended last month. I think he said it was Powell Street in San Francisco. In a quick look I couldn’t find any photos on the web but maybe that office could help you. I don’t know if you would say it was “resort” looking but he said they tried for a…[Read more]

Meanwhile, something that might explain (partly) why the various sides in discussions live in such different universes that they think the opposing thought realms are “mentally ill” or “uneducated.” (I’ve run into this a lot on the web or in interviews, sometimes veiled and sometimes…[Read more]

I’ve seen that issue listed as one of the named grievances/government failures (to protect jobs)… but since there’s a range of interests in the protests and no single platform, there’s no telling how prevalent it is. Surely agricultural work could be monitored differently if we need to be hospitable – it has different rules on other employment issues.

I’m no clear if you are disturbed with the legislators or the protestors who think they can’t find jobs or both.
 
Temporary agriculture work is horrifically rough but I’m surprised it would get garbled into the immigration influx, as it should be another subject that has gone on for generations…. in the east along a “corridor” of crops that…[Read more]

In some ways, but I noticed no mention of how immigration, new technology, and globalization have hurt employment….and how would we make banks loan out money faster if businesses aren’t ready to expand and hire?

I thought Mexico City was prone to underground rivers and earth tremors, but look at what some group is proposing down there: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048395/Earth-scraper-Architects-design-65-storey-building-300-metres-ground.html

Friends I know in academia and a planning dept. who were employed at the start of the recession have remained employed but my own former position (frozen after I retired, then later eliminated) still doesn’t exist. Another person I keep up with who had a planning background (but who had moved into private consulting mixed with being a real estate…[Read more]

I couldn’t get the “gallery” of photos to work on the website given earlier, but if you go to the “team” tag, they did have a landscape architectural firm involved (Pat already noted that), and a scrolling group of comments indicates there were benchmarks for its development and it wasn’t a hasty process. I’m curious that the renderings show it…[Read more]

BLA’s from a good program will have no shortage of theory or history. But I’ve seen schools offer MLA’s to students without prior design backgrounds and there couldn’t have been enough time in the program to make up for all the studio work they never experienced; the MLA just listed the same courses and descriptions that a BLA would have taken in…[Read more]