[Leslie B Wagle]

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/

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 archeologists decide a series of circular walls had to be such a place, rather than a “town” as previously thought. Of course, native Americans also did something like this with temporary structures.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhma

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 awhile and re-placing bones into a box practiced by ancient Jews is not done any longer). But the added factor operating to prevent open cremations could be clean air or even general pollution standards. I know that in a city government where I worked, people in charge of the watershed were very concerned about some report of ashes being scattered on one of their lakes (even though I presume fishermen could throw back fish).

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 well as church grounds, at least in the U.S. (The funeral home does the actual cremation and gives the ashes to the relatives to handle in some way). So you would be looking at either another society for comparison or else how to landscape the funeral home 🙂  And of course some people just keep the ash urn on a shelf inside their house, or scatter the ashes. But even in the latter case, there is some chance they would want a “place” to contemplate in. Sorry if I misunderstood the question.

 

 

[Leslie B Wagle]

I’m not sure how relevant this would be if you want to focus on Eastern traditions, but even a comparison between Eastern and Western might make a thesis proposal (ie. a quest for how emerging and future are adapting). Just Google columbarium and you’ll get information on contemporary solutions being built for ashes vs. the typical ground cemetery. Some of the walls are interior to structures, but many become the features of what (in Jewish and Christian congregations) are being called church prayer, memory and reflection gardens. Also thru Google sometimes you get the “policies” stated – like how to apply, how a committee in charge operates. etc. even if they don’t show you a photo of the garden.

I got interested in the general topic of church gardens several years ago and took photos all over my region (not the whole state though) and made a website to show the photos. I had intended to sketch plans to attach to them but it got overwhelming. Anyway, quite a few have or feature columbariums if you dig through the “gallery” of shots….and of course I couldn’t resist giving some of my general LA opinions in a little text near the top opening to the photos.

 

www.mindspring.com/~lesmuskey8/PCGardens/PCGcover.html

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 decorative but urban treatment…kind of had a sleek look with modern folded metal in the seating, bike stands, etc.

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 blatant):
http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

[Leslie B Wagle]

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.

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 ripen with the well known plant hardiness zones. But the large number of newly visible (since I moved to NC) people I see everywhere in urban areas sure don’t do farm work, so they must be doing something else. Not that the argument we will need to have future consumers as made previously isn’t relevant with our declining birth rate, etc. but I don’t think farm workers settle and commute from urban areas to the fields. This is new, and is supported by a host of businesses wanting cheap labor and knowing nobody is going to do anything about it, or even dare to ask awkward questions. 

 

A church near our Mall is holding 2-hr. once a week “homework helpers” sessions for neighborhood children that I’ve been working with. They are cute, darling, well-behaved but it turns out, 100% hispanic…which means, in the stages of becoming bilingual. The organizers thought we were helping by enabling the mothers to enroll in a special GED course hosted by a local community college, but they haven’t even singed up for that, as it turns out. To their credit, they don’t drop off the kids and go shop; they sit around the edge of the big room while we help with the homework. So they know the kids are being well cared for. But they don’t have enough command of English to possibly enroll in the adult part of it, and I’m wondering how this whole thing is going to turn out. 1/2 successful I guess. It’s clear the moms couldn’t help with the homework and the kids would suffer. A little off subject, but just sayin’, the population arrives at this from the nearby apartments, and unlike the earlier migrants who followed predictable crops, we’re dealing with an influx of unpredictable scope for a long time to come and with nobody having any grasp of limits on how much of it we can service.

As for the small business loans, that’s truly sad – it’s an overreaction to the days of “subprime” and added fear of not being capitalized enough, while closures of smaller institutions is still going on, just not getting a lot of news coverage.

 

[Leslie B Wagle]

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?

[Leslie B Wagle]

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

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 broker, then found a part time job writing proposals for a transportation planning firm) ….is now is seeking something else and so far no luck. Independent LA’s I know of are pretty quiet/not sharing. They may be skimming by on far less work than a few years ago, but I don’t have enough of a sample group to conclude any broad trends.

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 should mature with both trees and people, yet the article critic thought neither were showing up so far. But it does look like the main thrust was environmental education. It probably never would have looked like a lush place but still, if it’s perceived as an inhospitable place, it’s not going to do much for education either. Not only would we need to understand the background better, but if perhaps whether the authorities intended for other facilities to serve recreational needs in a bigger ‘web’ of places they manage. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a limited maintenance budget came into the picture.

[Leslie B Wagle]

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 the last 2 years, with higher numbers. It almost seemed designed for marketing to career changers with the lure of getting more for the bucks and I can understand the appeal but it involves a hazard.

 

Nobody relishes paying for a re-tour of college to get what is mostly retraining…but, if you contemplate any great leap the issue is the same. You’re talking about what you want to do with the rest of your life, and the confidence of knowing you have a thorough grounding is hard to overestimate. You don’t want to run the risk of just getting a few lectures on some facet of design compared to others who were given a whole semester in a BLA program.

 

I’ve overheard the opinion more than once that “all landscape architects don’t need to know how to do a grading plan (substitute other skills).” Well, aiming for greater things is fine as long as you CAN do what other depth-trained people do, but the general public would assume an MLA holder is at least as knowledgeable and if you aren’t, (ie. your program was fast track with a “writing thesis” emphasis)…that’s going to show up in a studio context. This is not such a hazard for people who enter from allied undergrad majors. But if you are transferring from an unrelated field, and want to design, you need to look carefully into whether a program is responsible enough to insist on remedial work and provide it if needed to give you a solid base.

[Leslie B Wagle]

Here is a small short one I ran across, although not in the same category as a church.

http://www.gardendesign.com/designer/perks-hiring-professional-designer

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