Susan Dieterlen
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Unraveling Urban Life and Space

New Study: Greenspace and Stress

8/29/2017

 
I'm pleased to announce I have a new study out this week, co-authored with former student Meghan Hazer and two Upstate Medical University faculty, Margaret Formica and Chris Morley. "The relationship between self-reported exposure to greenspace and human stress in Baltimore, MD," presents an investigation of the reduction of stress associated with spending time in or looking at green spaces. The article is available now online and will be out in print in an upcoming issue of Landscape and Urban Planning. As a journal article, it will be behind a paywall soon - but until October 13, it is available open access (that's free full text!) at this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Vbv0cUG56y~D

The world in 2050 #ehi16

10/24/2016

 
About twenty minutes ago, "The World in 2050: Creating/Imagining Just Climate Futures" opened. This is a totally online conference about, well, visions of just climate futures - how we might all live better lives in a warmer world. I tell you about this because:
  1. If you follow this blog and/or my work, this is right up your alley, BUT it's a little different perspective on that alley, because this conference is primarily scholars from the humanities, not our usual architecture/landscape architecture/planning/environmental science crowd. Fresh insights guaranteed; just what you need on a Monday.
  2. I'm presenting a new talk about a proposed course and the promise of interdisciplinary experiential learning, "Storefronts for Good: Local Action through Coursework." in Panel 13: Who Will Teach the Teachers? This marks my maiden voyage into online videos (so be kind), because...
  3. This is a new kind of conference, totally online, almost totally carbon-neutral. As the conference organizers note, typical conferences have a big carbon footprint, especially due to all the travel involved. My own observation? The expense and time required by typical conferences exerts a substantial selection effect on who participates. This one is different and worth checking out for that reason alone. The good people at UCSB have provided guidance for anyone wanting to organize an online conference themselves. And also:
  4. It's free, but you do have to register to participate in the discussions. And you should participate in the discussions, because that's kind of the point. Online discussion makes this conference exist.

Talks remain up and discussions active from now until Nov. 14. Keynotes (also available to you without charge!) by this fantastic lineup: Bill McKibben, Patrick Bond, Erik Assadourian, Margaret Klein Salamon, and Wen Stephenson. 

​Take a look - hope to see you there!









Studio|Next: Final Poster Session on Energy in the Landscape

5/3/2016

 
Snacks, drinks, intriguing new ideas about how to accomplish REV's goals on actual pieces of land in Syracuse, free parking - how could you refuse? See you there-
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Save the Date: 5.5.16 Studio|Next Poster Session

4/26/2016

 
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​Final poster session, featuring student designs for Energy in the Landscape, bringing REV4NY’s goals to Syracuse’s urban spaces.

5.5.16, 4-6 pm. Syracuse Center of Excellence. 

If you're reading this, you're welcome to come: past students, well-wishers, community collaborators. 

Come for 15 minutes, come for two hours. This isn't a critique. #redesigningdesign

​Hope to see you there!

Studio|Next: Final Project: Energy in the Landscape, Part I

3/4/2016

 
“[New York State’s] energy plan's goals for 2030 are a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector compared with 1990 levels, a 50 percent share of electric power from renewable sources and a 23 percent reduction in energy use by buildings.”
- from “Power projects fire up N.Y.'s 'Reforming the Energy Vision'” http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060030769

The need to address climate change and national security by transitioning to clean energy is central to current efforts at the international, national, and state levels. Our main project this semester engages with NYS’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) initiative and energy community collaborators to identify opportunities to meet REV's goals within central Syracuse, developing a research-based framework for selection of appropriate sites for the implementation of these opportunities. Each student will then refine one of his/her concepts to a design development level, on a site selected using the framework.
Plans like REV are often composed of goals that are too large, too abstract, or too vague to direct individual projects, while the clean energy industry is dominated by technical detail, frequently at the scale of electrical circuits. In this project, we explore the middle ground, uniting broad goals with practicalities through urban design. In this era of great reluctance to invest in large public projects, tying small, implementable designs to overarching goals becomes an essential skill to enable change, one step at a time. In the process we will apply design thinking to one of the most urgent issues of our time.
How can design in urban environments capitalize on the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy to improve life for all residents?
 
This project will proceed in two phases: the development of a logic for selecting sites and application of that logic to the city of Syracuse, followed by designs for selected sites within the city.
Products for Phase I should:
  • As a class: Determine what's most relevant to Syracuse from designated REV resources.
  • Spatially represent (eg: map of the city and keyed points) land use type or parts of the city for which these goals are most relevant or best suited.
  • Illustrate connections or ideas and connection between goals and city parts using sketches and diagrams.
  • Identify highest priority goals/city parts - what's the most urgent? What's an ideal pilot project? What parts will be easier after other parts have paved the way or focused public support?
  • Provide selection criteria for sites for most urgent goals/city parts.
  • Represent all sites within city of Syracuse (not metro area) selected with your criteria
  • Select three of these sites for your own design, and represent initial ideas for the design (sketches, precedents, etc.)…continued in Phase II.
Project schedule:
Tu 3.1              Guest lecture in CoE 508: Micah Kotch, NYSERDA. Class discussion and directed group work at CoE.
Tu 3.8              1:00-2:00 Guest lecture in CoE 203: Richard Yancy (BEEx) (short class meeting)
                        6:00-7:00 “Disruption and Design Thinking” lecture by Susan, Slocum Auditorium
3.14/3.16       Spring Break – no class meetings.
Tu 3.29            1:00-2:00 Guest lecture in CoE 203: Aseem Inam (TRUlab) (short class meeting)           
Th 4.1              No formal class meeting - no studio deadlines week.
Tu 4.5              NY Power Dialog: Digital sketchbook discussion of work in progress (details TBA)
Th 4.6              Upload pdf of sketchbook work to class folder
…to be continued on Part II brief…
 
Deliverables:
Digital sketchbook representation of your work to date for discussion on 4.5. “Digital sketchbook” means:
  • Images are intended to be viewed on laptop screen, tablet, or other device as native format (not as hard-to-see reductions)
  • Images are viewed individually, not as a unified composition (eg: on a board)
  • In-progress work is *encouraged* over final presentation drawings.
 
Audience will be primarily professionals from other fields and students from outside Architecture.
Your digital sketchbook images must support discussion of your work-in-progress with this audience.
Digital sketchbook images must *also* be suitable for sharing via web or social media (eg: be able to stand alone with limited additional text narrative).
 
 
Evaluation Criteria:
  • All elements listed above under “Deliverables” present.
  • All elements listed above under “Products for Phase I should” present.
  • Deliverables exhibit a clear logical connection between components and steps.
  • Deliverables communicate well and at an appropriate level of detail to a professional but non-design audience.
  • Deliverables demonstrate good graphic representation and craft.
  • Online posts made as directed and final pdfs uploaded to course folder.
 
 
Copyright © 2016  Susan Dieterlen

Poster session on campus this Thursday!

2/22/2016

 
Come join us if you can - for an hour or a few minutes. Work on display will be for the System Restart project, for which I previously posted the briefs. 
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Studio|Next Project 2: System Restart, Part II

2/11/2016

 
​Cities are systems, systems within systems. Government, infrastructure, food, healthcare, education, taxes, ecosystems - these are just a few examples. We live in a time characterized by dysfunction and lack of investment (#neglect) in many of these systems. Some of these are spectacular – levee failure – to mundane - a crack in the sidewalk. As we’ve seen in #Flintwatercrisis, catastrophes happen when multiple system failures align in the same space.
Understanding the systems operating within cities lets us understand cities and how to accomplish tasks (change, built work, permit approval) within them far better. In this project the systems of the city become more visible to us through the places where they break down. We reframe these places as opportunities for design.
 
How can design utilize dysfunctional urban systems to create more just, healthy, and sustainable environments?
 
Project site: Chosen by individual student for his/her Part II design. Choose a site that:
  • Is within the city of Syracuse.
  • Includes one or more points of failure in your selected system from Part I
  • Is 0.25-1.0 acre in size (that’s about ¼ of Shaw Quad)
  • Demonstrates a clear rationale for your site choice (eg: the most influential, the most visible, the most typical…)
  • I approve.
What to do:
  • Choose any system from among those presented on 2.11.16 as part of System Restart Part I. You *do not have to use the same system for Part II that you used for Part I!*
  • Use the information from Part I as the foundation for your Part II design, and to inform your design process. Sharing of information and graphics from Part I between students is strongly encouraged! But all work you turn in must be your own (eg: do your own drawings).
Site functions (program): Part II designs must:
  • Include a clear connection to an existing urban system within Syracuse, as explored in Part I.
  • Include a clear rationale for site choice based on existing conditions.
  • Mitigate (lessen the impact of) the system’s dysfunction.
  • Improve the system’s function, at least in a minor way.
  • Improve the city or a part of it (even if small) as a place for all residents.
  • Be primarily sitework (not buildings). Designs may include one or more structures as well.
  • Provide a single cohesive design that includes sitework and any included structures (ie not a design solely for a structure or building).
 
 
Project schedule:
Th 2.11            Part I in-class presentation, posts to social media/your online portfolio, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams (+other hashtags at your discretion)
Part II project brief posted via @susandieterlen and on City Wild (blog)
Tu 2.16 &        No formal class meeting-
Th 2.18            no studio deadlines week. Email me with questions or to meet by appointment.
Tu 2.23            80% complete; Regular studio meeting
Th 2.25            Poster Session with Syracuse I-Team (location and details TBA)
M 2.29            5:00 p.m.: Parts I and II due in pdf to class Google drive folder. Please submit your Part I work as completed for 2.11.16, even if you used a different system for Part II.
                        Post final boards to social media/your online portfolio, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams.
 
Deliverables:
Pdf of final boards uploaded to course website, AND
For poster session: 2 – 24”x 36” boards in hardcopy, unmounted, oriented horizontally (eg: 36” wide). Also include a separate paragraph explaining your design intent (300 words or less) – details about how to submit this paragraph will be forthcoming.
Boards should include:
 
  • Plan/perspective/section(s) presenting your design for your selected (and approved) site. Include at least one drawing showing *all* of your design, such as a plan or a bird’s eye perspective.
  • More detailed drawings (sections/perspectives/enlargement plans – your choice) to aid in communicating your design to a non-design audience.
  • Supporting infographics to communicate connection to existing conditions of your chosen system within Syracuse, and rationale for your choice of site within system.
  • Context map, aerial photo or other graphic locating your chosen site within your chosen urban system, and that system within the city of Syracuse.
 
Designs should be realistic in terms of scale and relationships of site elements, with materials specified for key elements.
 
Evaluation Criteria:
  • All elements listed above under “Deliverables” present.
  • Design provides elements listed under “Site Functions,” above.
  • Design safeguards public health, safety, and welfare.
  • Deliverables communicate well and at an appropriate level of detail to a professional but non-design audience (eg: the I-team).
  • Deliverables demonstrate good graphic representation and craft.
  • Online posts made as directed above and final pdfs uploaded to course folder.
 
 
Copyright © 2016  Susan Dieterlen

Studio|Next Project 2: System Restart

2/2/2016

 
Cities are systems, systems within systems. Government, infrastructure, food, healthcare, education, taxes, ecosystems - these are just a few examples. We live in a time characterized by dysfunction and lack of investment (#neglect) in many of these systems. Some of these are spectacular - the levees failing in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina - while others are mundane - a crack in the sidewalk.
​

Understanding the systems operating within cities lets us understand functioning cities and how to accomplish tasks (change, built work, permit approval) within them far better. In this project the systems of the city become more visible to us through the places where they break down.
 
What design opportunities are created by dysfunctional urban systems?
 
Project site: The city of Syracuse. Some systems may include areas beyond the city or even its suburbs (eg: watersheds).
What to do:
  • Brainstorm as a class the systems of the city - social, economic, ecological, physical (infrastructure) - natural or constructed. Which of these are functioning and which are not?
  • Choose a system or related group of systems to investigate from the list.
  • Educate yourself about your chosen system in Syracuse: how it functions, what's involved in it, why it matters to a functioning city. How is it supposed to work? How do you know it's working well or measure success (#data)?
  • Identify failure within the system. What does failure look like? How do you know it's occurred (the opposite of measuring success; #data)? What are examples? Real-life case studies or profiles of failures? These could include maps of local failures or depictions of examples from other places.
  • Add space into the process: where are these failures located? How do they relate spatially to the rest of the system? What do you learn about the system and its failures by looking at it spatially?
  • Learn/hypothesize about causes of dysfunction in the system. Failing urban systems typically have multiple causes, which makes them complicated to fix (#wickedproblem). One way to think about causes is as pre-existing conditions, which set the scene (#neglect), and as “last straw” events, which provide the last step needed for failure to appear.
  • What other site analysis information is missing from your dossier? Track it down and find it.
 
 

 
Project schedule:
M 2.01             Project brief posted via @susandieterlen and on City Wild (blog)
Tu 2.02            Guest lecture by Syracuse I-Team’s Andy Maxwell and Sam Edelstein (CoE 508); go over project brief; begin Part I
Tu 2.09            Flint water crisis panel (Room 203, Syracuse Center of Excellence; noon-1:00)
Th 2.11            Part I finished; in-class presentation, posts to social media, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams (+other hashtags at your discretion) Part II begins (see separate project brief)
Th 2.25            Poster Session with Syracuse I-Team (location TBA)
M 2.29            5:00 p.m.: Parts I and II due in pdf to class Google drive folder.
Tu 3.01            Post final boards to social media, tagged with @samedelstein and @Andrew_Maxwell, #iteams
 
Deliverables:
1 – 24”x36” board (digital) OR equivalent in Prezi including:
  • Explanation and illustration of your chosen system
  • Infographics (Venn diagrams, timelines, flow charts…) as appropriate
  • Map of Syracuse and/or parts of the city as appropriate
 
Evaluation Criteria:
  • Product clearly communicates chosen system, and locates it in space within Syracuse.
  • System’s function or lack thereof is evaluated, with support for evaluation of success or failure.
  • Product identifies at least 3 specific failures in the system, and locates them in space.
  • Causes of system dysfunction are provided (OK if speculative, but provide evidence).
  • Product enables a classmate to start on Part II (identifying opportunities and sites)
  • Deliverables communicate well and at an appropriate level of detail (including how design resists and incorporates entropic process).
  • Deliverables demonstrate good graphic representation and craft.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2016  Susan Dieterlen

Studio|Next Project 1: Disintegration

1/22/2016

 
All things tend toward disorder, including built work.

In the end, everything falls apart. Nowhere is this more apparent than in built work in outdoor environments, where weaknesses in construction methods and materials, the extremes of nature, and the creative destructiveness of people all begin to break down structures from the moment of installation. Good design and careful attention to construction detail can delay the inevitable; knowledge is power in this effort. Here we learn more about entropy (aka chaos, disorganization, randomness) in sitework and small structures.

What if entropy was not the enemy, but the inspiration?


Project site:
Campus bus stops, on Connective Corridor and South Campus routes. Each student will choose one (1) of the stops. I recommend one of these, but will entertain suggestions for other stops:
  • SU College Place bus stop
  • Manley Field house bus stop
  • Skytop parking lot bus stop
 
Site functions (program):
  • Be a good bus stop: provide seating, shelter, and visibility to both bus riders and bus drivers. Also must allow the bus to stop safely.
  • Integrates structures with site (landscape) to meet these functions.
  • Enrich quality of life: be beautiful, striking or otherwise intriguing to riders and passers-by.
  • Resist and enlist one entropic process selected from the list below: design what should endure to resist your chosen process, and enlist that process to gracefully transform what should fall apart.

Project schedule:

F 1.22.16     Project brief posted via @susandieterlen and on City Wild (blog)
Tu 1.26         Short presentation by Susan; peer group discussion on processes and initial sketches.
Th 1.28         80% done at 1:00; Peer group discussions/desk crits. Class decides how to share final products.
M 2.1.16      Project due in pdf to class Google drive folder. PLEASE PUT YOUR LAST NAME IN THE FILENAME. Final products will be shared with class via TBA digital means.
 
Deliverables:
2 or 3 - boards in 11”x17” including:
  • Explanation of your chosen entropic process and its impact on your design (infographics, strategies to resist or incorporate the process, precedents, etc.)
  • Plan/perspective/section(s) presenting your design for one (1) bus stop.
  • Design development-level detail: materials identified, indication of earthwork (ie shaping of ground plan).
  • Schematic construction details for one or more major elements.
 
Evaluation Criteria:
  • Design serves function well, including public health, safety, and welfare concerns.
  • Design enhances aesthetic appeal, identity and/or sense of place of site.
  • Design features one (1) chosen process from the list below, with parts designed to resist the process and others meant to be transformed by it.
  • Project includes design development–level work as described above, and at least one schematic construction detail.
  • Deliverables communicate well and at an appropriate level of detail (including how design resists and incorporates entropic process).
  • Deliverables demonstrate good graphic representation and craft.
 
Processes that destroy sitework
  1. Corrosion-Oxidation
  2. Salt
  3. Erosion
  4. Freeze/Thaw
  5. Wind
  6. Photodegradation
  7. Uncontrolled ruderal/successional vegetation  
  8. Insect activity
  9. Mammal or bird activity
  10. Acid rain
  11. Plant diseases (Dutch Elm, Emerald Ash Borer, etc)
  12. Vandalism
  13. Overuse – wear and tear
  14. Fire
  15. Flood
  16. Heat
  17. Accumulation of debris
  18. Rot/decay
  19. Air pollution
  20. Structural overload
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2016  Susan Dieterlen

Neglect: Covert Sculptor and Next Big Thing

1/21/2016

 
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"America's G.P.A.: D+. Estimated investment needed by 2020: $3.6 trillion."

No one’s surprised by that quote, right? We hear this at least once every four years, when the American Society of Civil Engineers releases its report card. The news is always bad, because guess what? We still didn’t do anything to rebuild, replace, or make redundant all those rickety bridges and crumbling dams. 
I regularly drive under an interstate overpass near my house (that’s Route 80 in Tully, for you local folk). It’s best not to look to closely at it, the rusted steel and crumbling concrete. When the traffic light stops me under those tons of decay, I look up and think, “how did we get here?”

Well, you know how we got here. To oversimplify (because this is a blog post, not the book), we, as a country, used to invest massive amounts in public infrastructure, and now we, as a country, do this no longer. This means not only do we not build new or replace or even maintain old, but it means that we have a large number of structures that are all reaching the end of their lifespan at once. It’s a bit like if you buy all your socks at once, they all wear out at once. If you bought one pair of socks every few months, you’d always have socks in various states of repair: some new, some wearing out, some in between. Because we’ve coasted for a long time on the infrastructure investments of the past, we now have a lot of it wearing out at once, and as all those bridges and dams and roads have aged, we’ve changed into a country that doesn’t really do huge public projects any more. This lack of investment dovetails with other urban problems, creating terrible multiplier effects like Flint's water supply crisis.


The city where I work, Syracuse, New York, had on average more than one water main break EVERY DAY in 2015.  But Syracuse is nowhere near unique in its infrastructural woes. Our failing infrastructure is one fruit borne of our politics over the last few decades, the inescapable sum of gridlock and budget cuts and starving the beast. I have my politics and you have yours, but we share the broken water main (although those of us with the wherewithal to live in the suburbs or exurbs don’t have nearly the share of broken water mains as those in the city, but that’s another post). 

I propose we acknowledge our nation’s epidemic of failing infrastructure as a typical, if not universal, condition of urban design projects. Expect the pipes to break or be clogged, the combined sewers to overflow, the pavement to crack, the streets to flood. This makes the actual condition of failing urban systems part of the landscape, not as we think they should be or wish they were. They aren’t swept under the rug of inhibitions, but instead can be viewed objectively and incorporated into the catalog of opportunities and constraints that designers make at the beginning of a project. Like every other site condition, those failing systems can provide constraints…

…and opportunities.

Wait - really? Could failing systems in urban infrastructure create design opportunities? Could those opportunities include ways not only to fix or mitigate the failure, but also advance toward cities as more sustainable, healthy, and just places?

Consider this: failing infrastructure, public systems, and neglect of all forms is already a major shaper of our cities. The whole idea of urban wilds is based on neglect, the shaping force of lack of intention, what happens while we’re looking the other way. Disinvestment is neglect. Fraying social fabric is neglect. Less directly, all the myriad compromises required by years of tighter and tighter budgets, of doing more with less, are neglect of a sort, because something (or someone) always loses that compromise.  Choices must be made, and the expendable things become neglected. We choose sidewalks over mowing, roads over sidewalks, highways over side streets, and everything over public transportation. 

Neglect shapes the city through lack of intention.  We don’t mean for it to happen, but it does, and when we’re consistent in what aspects or places we overlook, neglect becomes their primary shaper. 

How does neglect present itself in our cities, how is it shaping our cities, and most especially, how does it or could it make those cities better places for people?

Let’s find out.



WHAT DO I DO FOR CLASS? 
  • Read this post and click on all the links within it. 
  • Read the articles; review (that means look through, but don’t read every word) the websites.
  • Think about what you agree with, what you disagree with, and what doesn’t make sense to you. 
  • Come to class prepared to talk to your classmates about it.
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    Assorted drafts, previews, and outtakes from the book I'm currently writing about the impact of vegetation and neglect on urban life. I also take other thoughts for a test drive here, including nascent design and research ideas.

    City Wild carries on the discussions and spirit of my 2011-2014 class, City Wild Seminar. This began as a forum for websites, articles, and other intriguing stuff sent to me (Susan Dieterlen) by current and former students, colleagues, and other well-wishers.  

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