Professor Jennifer McStotts’ Blog

On the current and local events front: “Midtown” Unveiled; project aims to spur transformation of Upper King Street.

The Midtown project will be presented to the Charleston Board of Architectural Review in a special meeting at 4:30 p.m. March 3 in the fourth-floor meeting room at 75 Calhoun St. I know it’s Spring Break, but maybe I’ll see some of you there. (For more information, you can see a city planning document with some great graphics at http://www.charleston.net/midtown/.)

For my urban planning students - does anything about this project make you think of Jane Jacobs? Robert Moses? Cataclysmic money even?

Tags: Charleston

Well, not all of it.
Intro and Senior Seminar students - your projects are graded, posted, and should be available for you to download. If you have questions, I have office hours today and next Thursday 10:30-12.
Urban Planning students - they’re coming! Expect them next Wednesday or Friday.

On another note, the podcast interpretation site I was recommending in Sr. Sem is SoundAboutPhilly.com - not SoundS.

Best - Prof. McStotts

Hello again!
Today is the day for new experiments. I’ve put some slides into a show for you to view and think on Boston (as we discussed in intro on Friday). For those in Urban Planning and other visitors, I hope this is an interesting series of maps for you to look at. The context of our discussion was the birth of the preservation movement in Boston, including the effects of the fire (1872) and the concepts of visual values, cityscape, and vista.
I’ll be posting more slide shows in the future if this works well!

[slideshare id=105585&doc=boston-maps1593&w=425]
The full sized version is here - http://www.slideshare.net/jcmcstotts/boston-maps.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

Tags: slideshow

As always, it just takes one student asking a good question to get me thinking. A recent senior seminar student asked for more information about an offhand description of violence against the “Cenotaph at Whitehall.” In class, I said I believed that cenotaphs were generally funerary monuments, which turns out to not be the best description. A cenotaph is actually an “empty grave” - a monument or memorial - and the Cenotaph at Whitehall is a British memorial associated with Remembrance Day and therefore Armistice Day. There are some nice explanations of cenotaphs online, and this is the official site of Whitehall.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/remembrance/history/cenotaph.shtml
It’s worth noting that the vandalism Peter Howard was referring to was likely from the attacks in 2000 in the “anti-capitalist” protests in Whitehall.
Have a great labor day weekend - stay dry!

If the time stamp on this blog doesn’t convince you I’m dedicated to my job, I don’t know what will!
After the very interesting thesis pitch session I attended this afternoon, I had a faculty meeting and two club meetings to attend. I had also skipped lunch, so dinner was a must, and I had a letter to write for a dear student… actually, an alum. So, needless to say, I was able to post the promised files for my Intro to HP class but not for Urban. I imagine I should be able to get those online before noon on Friday with my wonderful TA’s help.
In the meantime, this post will have to do. But you can expect web and blog posting - with actually substance! - tomorrow.
Hope the second week of class has been good for you!

Edit: There’s no time stamp! Just a date? Will you take my word that it’s 2:10 a.m.?
PS Almost forgot. I did post some new links around my website and WebCT for those two classes and for my seniors, so check them out!