Diffusion

I haven't been doing much in the way of interesting geography, except for preparation for some really awesome research and perfection of my poster for the California Geograhical Society's conference at the end of this month.

I've been ill over and over again this month with various viruses and considered blogging on the diffusion of viral infections. Diffusion in itself is an interesting concept to ponder. There are different types of diffusion. Hierarchical diffusion is where something spreads from the top down. If the emperor says his new clothes are the new fashion, then this fashion will spread downward from there. First those who can afford the faux clothes, then those who purchase the lower quality faux clothes at Walmart or used faux clothes at thrift stores. Or for a better example, If a president says that all t.v. stations must deliver their signal digitally, then everybody gets the new fashionable digital t.v.'s or one of those nifty digital converter boxes like I have.

Another form of diffusion occurs when one culture meets with another culture and the ideas spread throughout the population. There are numerous examples of this in American food and clothing. Further, diffusion can occur when a new innovation comes on the scene, such as tractors or electric cars. First people near the innovation get their hands on them, they are all excited about their new purchase and tell others, and others purchase them too. Of course the internet has changed how this diffusion works so it is not always spatially diffused but rather diffused over the internet.

And of course there is contagious diffusion such as I am experiencing right now. My husband has a fever, I spend a lot of time near him so I get a fever. Next thing I know my sister in Georgia and my daughter in Southern California have the same fever because it has diffused across the nation. That's contagious diffusion, and frankly I'm tired of it.

A project I worked on once for a geograpahy class dealt with music around the world. It was interesting to look at how music like jazz was influenced by people from around the world who were localized in the U.S. but then the music spread back outwards and people from around the world were bringing jazz home and adapting it to their local music. Now, with the internet, anybody can hear any kind of music any time and the spread is impressive. I can't get enough of it really.

Here, for your enjoyment is a great example of the internet's speedy diffusion of music. The first video is from Romanian Gypsies and has modern music mixed into traditional music. The second one, which is quite sad, is from Spanish Gypsies and much more traditional. Both are wonderful.

Cosumnes River Preserve

This week My husband and I took one of our daughters to the Cosumnes River Preserve. It was a beautiful day with big puffy clouds, green grass and trees beginning to decorate themselves in spring green baby leaves. My affection for the preserve is equal to my affection for downtown Sacramento. If I can't have the somewhat busy city experience I opt for the complete nature experience. So, you may ask, what's so special about the Cosumnes River Preserve? Let me start with the river itself.

Cosumnes river works its way down from the Sierra Nevada, somewhere south of Lake Tahoe (Finding it's source on Google Earth proved a challenge). It flows approximately 80 miles and drains into the Mukolumne River before its water is dumped into the delta and either shipped to Southern California, returned to the Pacific Ocean or retrieved to provide for some local water need. The amazing thing about the Cosumnes River is that is has no dams or levees containing it. It may have some levees set way back, but it is not restricted from flooding its banks and acting as rivers were meant to act. Cosumnes Preserve is a great place to discover what rivers are supposed to do. Although I suspect that the preserve gets a little help with the process, normally rivers overflow their banks and drops sediments on its floodplain producing rich valley soils any farmer would be willing to pay high prices for.

The preserve is made up of meadows, riparian woodlands and expansive wetlands providing home for a myriad of birds and other wildlife. The trail, which begins with a tour of the visitor center, winds and loops through all three types of habitat. Apparently if you time your visit right, you can see the magnificent sandhill cranes, but I have yet to achieve that timing. However I did see egrets, Canada geese, rufous-sided towhee, the ever present red winged black birds, coots, and quite possibly a few ibis. There were also plenty of smaller birds such as warblers and sparrows. One little bird kept itself well hidden in the reeds but sang the boldest song to us as we walked along, only quieting when we were directly next to it, and then if we stood still long enough it would begin to sing again. I think all of the birds were rejoicing in the greenness of creation during this wonderfully wet spring.

It was especially nice to explore these trails with my eleven year old daughter. She delights in walking quietly along seeing and hearing whatever she can. Adding to that her imagination is beautiful and there were plenty of magical places and sights such as fairy woods and troll noses. She brings back for me the delightful memories of childhood, when woods were magical and it would be no surprise to see an elf or fairy moving through the lush grasses and between oak trees. Science is wonderful and everything I learn makes me love nature and its creator even more, but it is a lovely feeling to look at droplets of water and flower petals and think of how a fairy might use them to make a gown for a hidden ball. Emma seemed to truly enjoy exploring the preserve and even contributed her own bird songs as well as a few cases of the hiccups, which I expected might convince other visitors of a new creature in the area.

I highly recommend Sacramentans visit the Cosumnes Preserve. It's a short drive south of Elk Grove and worth the drive. And when your done you can drive straight up Franklin Boulevard and observe the changes from rural to urban land uses if you like.

Taking advantage of the times; one cities success story

Catholic Church in Livermore, California

Yesterday I drove six teenagers to Livermore where they participated in a drum line competition. I've done this before. Last year they performed at Livermore High School and I got to spend some time walking around their town center. It is laid out on a small grid and features a highly pedestrian friendly main street.

Livermore is located approximately 15 miles directly east Hayward, and about 20 miles directly west of Tracy, just below Mount Diablo (another wonderful place to visit).

Last year I enjoyed the luxury of shopping for birthday presents in an independent toy store, eating delicious Mexican food in an independently owned Mexican restaurant and doing my homework in my car. I was not fully aware of the size of the town but was impressed by the successful renewal of an old main street into a vibrant and very busy tourist/shopping district and the pleasant quite neighborhood of old houses int he surrounding grid.

This year they competed at Grenada High School, a newer campus on the west side of the town. The campus was surrounded by suburban developments and it wasn't really clear what, if anything was in walking distance to the school. So when lunchtime rolled around, or should I say, when I finally got the chance to get some lunch after rolling around back drops, I opted to drive around until I found a place to eat. It wasn't too long until I spotted a large Safeway and it's variety of parking lot eateries and shops. Fortunately for me there was an 'Una Mas' Mexican restaurant, which, if your going to eat at a franchise, is a great choice. After good lunch of enchiladas I decided I had enough time t0 drive around and find out just what made Livermore tick. Was it a bedroom community for San Jose or San Francisco, was it thriving on the success of the silicon valley or did it have something of its own to maintain growth?

Last years pedestrian explorations led me to a museum where I learned that William Mendenhall established the town amongst vineyards and ranches because he knew the railroad was coming through and, intelligent man that he must have been, figured that if the people of Livermore valley had a town the railroad would probably put a stop in it. He was right, and the town became a successful agricultural center.

I went into this years auto explorations expecting to find evidence of a small town turned into a bedroom community for commuters from the Bay Area and the Silicon Valley. The west side of town gave some indication of this because it morphed abruptly from the old original town to new developments including the Safeway, Una Mas and typical taupe colored suburbs of fairly recent origin. However exploration to the east side of downtown Livermore revealed a completely different picture. Development seemed to stretch out with houses from every decade of the 20th century and there seemed no abrupt 1980s or 1990s change at any point. In fact there was a good amount of development from the 1950s through the 1970s. The timing of the development did not add up in my mind with timing of the Silicon Valley explosion.

I didn't have time to go to deep because I had to get back to the high school to roll props into a gymnasium and watch a bunch of amazing West Campus High School students act out a Winter Survival story with drums and drama. So today I spent some time researching Livermore on the Internet and discovered that Livermore, for a second time, became a success story of its own.

At one time the valley was home to a surplus naval base (1). After WWII the Cold War changed our tactics from real wartime to research and development in the military sector. The naval base was converted to a research facility in 1953 called The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. They are apparently quite famous and develop military technology still today. In 1956 Livermore gained another lab called Sandia National Laboratory, which also conducts military research.

Once I learned of these two laboratories the development patterns made sense. So my next question became, what then, are the demographics of the area? Is it still a fairly self sufficient town or has it been overtaken by commuters from the aforementioned areas? Here's what census data tells me.

As of the 2000 census Livermore had a population of approximately 73,000. Nothing surprising there. The racial demographics show that at that time over 60,000 of those people were white. 35,000+ were employed with a median household income of over 75,000 a year (which is pretty impressive). Most notably is that approximately 1/3 of the working population has a commuting time of less than 20 minutes.. That means that at least that many people are working fairly locally rather than commuting all the way to San Jose or San Francisco. So while I'm sure there are a good many people commuting to other locations to work, I'm also pretty sure that Livermore is not the bedroom community I expected it to be. Instead, it is an established city which was established and grew by means of its own ingenuity and the government's infusion of research money.

Oak Park

I know I haven't posted for quite a while, but I have been completely immersed in the process of fixing up my kitchen. Initially I was just going to paint it, but it took over my life.

But that's not really what I want to write about. I'd rather write about some place besides my house.

I spend a lot of time in Oak Park, and it is definitely an interesting place. Many people feel it is a place to be avoided, but I like Oak Park.

Oak Park sits to the south-east of downtown Sacramento. It was Sacramento's first suburb, developed in the late 1800s for middle income working families. The developers came up with the brilliant money making idea that if they parceled the land off into smaller lots rather than large estates, they could make a lot more money. They also were smart enough to bring a streetcar from downtown Sacramento to their new neighborhood, which really gave the development a kickstart. The plan was pretty successful and many of the old homes still stand.

An amusement park stood south of Broadway and the State Fair was just east of Oak Park. The Amusement park was called Joyland and was a big hit for a while. Unfortunately it dissapeared in the early years of the 20th century, otherwise there would be a different story to tell.

Eventually Oak Park declined as residents moved out with the momentum of suburban sprawl. Oak Park began to fill up with residents who weren't able to afford the newer more popular homes. It wasn't long until the original suburb gained a stigma of being the place where people don't want to be from and where walking alone at night is considered unwise.

I don't mind be associated with it though. Every morning I drop my kids off in Oak Park because it is the location of one of the best charter schools in Sacramento. I love telling people that I don't want my kids in the schools in South Sacramento so I send them to school in Oak Park. They look at me like I'm crazy...maybe I am.

In fact, at 7:45 most weekday mornings you can find me wearing a bright orange vest and holding a sign up telling cars to slow down as they pull onto the campus or to stop for kids crossing the street. I feel like I'm a part of something really wonderful on these mornings. Moms and dads walk their children to school and I get to tell them to have a great day, or stay warm, I guess I'm the first person to say hello to them as the come to school! Once in a while an interesting character walks by and chats for a minute, and every morning a little girl peeks out her upstairs window from across the street and watches everyone coming and going. She waves at me most mornings, although sometimes she hides behind the curtain. These are the activities Jane Jacobs talks about when she discusses healthy neighborhoods where someone is always keeping an eye on things. I like thinking I'm one of those people in the community she talks about in her chapter on the sidewalk dance. But if you come by, don't let me catch you speeding into the school campus though, because I'll wave my sign at you sternly and give you that 'slow down' look I've been working on.

There is a new coffee shop in Oak Park too. It's called "Old Soul" and they serve amazingly good food. Starbucks recently pulled out of the area to cut costs and fortunatley Old Soul filled the coffee void. It is already a popular place. Just this week I think I saw a major Sacramento architect eating there. The funny thing is, I don't know how many people from the local community eat there, and how many people come in from other areas. The few times I've been there the customers don't match the demographics of the area all that well. It would be nice to see more jobs and shops that supply the local community, but at least they're bringing outside money into the community, which is good.

I think what I like about Oak Park the most is that its alive, unlike my neighborhood. In Oak Park, there are always people out and about, and everything is fairly easy to walk too. ON the other hand, where I live very few people actually get out and walk. If you want to go somewhere it's much safer and easier to drive your car. I try walking places, but it's not a pleasant experience in any way, nor does it feel safe. There might be an equal amount of hoodlums in each neighborhood, but somehow, when you have so many more people out and walking around, hoodlums don't seem as scary. When a hoodlum drives up next to you and asks if you want a ride, and there is no one around, it's pretty terrifying. Better to live in a walkable area than in an vacuous auto-oriented neighborhood.

So Oak Park gets my vote for a "not as bad as people say" place.

weather

I did it.... this morning I walked to my internship without my coat. This past weekend I even experienced the unpleasant sensation of sweating, but that's because I was in Southern California. I woke up Friday and Saturday morning in a desert and saw young people running around in shorts...very weird for February. I drove a moving van through Los Angles and was uncomfortably warm, which of course is not necessarily very hot, its just that I like cool weather. By the time I got over the Tehachapi Mountains and got into Bakersfield I was chilly and everyone else was in jackets. Then yesterday I opened all of my windows because it was so pleasant outside here in Northern California.

California always gets warmer quickly in February, hopefully not too quickly though. In 1983 we had a pretty good snow pack in the mountains and February brought with it the Pineapple Express which not only dumped more rain on us, but brought warm temperatures that melted the heavy snow pack and nearly topped the Folsom Dam with water. My dad had us packing to leave in case the creek flooded, but we lived on a hill, so we ended up fine.

The key is that the Folsom Lake Reservoir isn't allowed to fill past a certain point until April so if the snow pack is melted before April it can't all be saved. Of course this year the lake may be so low, it has plenty of space before it is considered too full for this time of year. What we need is more snow.

This could be the time for some genius to invent a way to move snow pack from where it is too much to where it is needed. It would appear that much of the U.S. is getting more than their fair share of snow lately. My sister lives in Georgia and sent me beautiful pictures of her yard, which I have shared above and will remove if she so requests. I found a fabulous feature on the NOAA website that will give you a seasonal animation of snow pack conditions in the U.S. and all I have to say is; "Why not Sacramento?" If the rest of the nation can have some.....

But then we live in a Mediterranean climate, remember, and that means we get wet winters and dry summers, and very, very little snow in a rare year.

So, those of you who are buried in snow, or shivering cold under dreary skies. Take heart, here in Sacramento we reached a high of 67 today, the plum trees are in full bloom, the bees are buzzing and coats are being left at home. Of course it might rain all weekend, so we aren't done yet, thank goodness.

Train Journey

Well, here I am 12 hours into my train trip, and I have few complaints so far. The morning wasn’t too bad. My wonderful husband dropped me off at 6:20 or so. The sun wasn’t up yet, which made for a great view of the sunrise as I traveled between Sacramento and Davis. The first thing I noticed with the rising sun, was that the Yolo Bypass had water in it; a sign of better times water-wise. When the river reaches a 27.5 feet deep and rising, weirs are opened up north of West Sacramento, or farther upstream near the confluence of the Feather River and Sacramento River. The water is allowed to flow into the bypass, which moves excess water away from the delta towns and dumps it back in the river downstream from the cities. The Yolo bypass is rather long and wide and can carry water from the Sacramento River, Feather River the Yuba river and couple more. In a really wet year, it looks like a giant waterway, but this year the tops of grasses and shrubs were sticking out of the water, giving evidence to only a moderate amount of water. In fact, I believe we are at normal this year, which isn’t enough to make up for the past two years, in which the bypass was left empty. Still, normal is better than below normal. Bypasses were one of many ways to keep places like Downtown Sacramento from flooding in the winter. Levees and raising the whole downtown area (which wasn’t as big back then) about 12 to 14 feet were other ways of dealing with the flooding.

By the time the train pulled into the Davis station the sun was up and lights were on in some of the houses. I have never seen the side of Davis I saw today. Usually when passing through Davis I am on the freeway and the university is the visible identifier for the town. While the actual train station looks pretty decent I was looking out the south-east side of the train and had the view of a rural fringe with a mobile home park. The buildings in the park closest to the train looked more like migrant worker quarters than mobile homes. Since Davis is a college town and got its start as an agricultural center, I wonder if the quarters were left and the rest of the plot of land turned into a mobile home. Who knew that such a town as Davis would have a park like that? We must have been moving generally south-west because we did eventually pass the university and followed highway 50 for a while.
The thing about riding the train is that you don’t get really good views of most towns. I did see a few old main streets briefly, but lets face it, railroads foster industrial land uses, and that is what you see the most of. I say that and look up from my laptop to note that we are stopping in Oxnard and at least at this point, it is not industrial, but then its pretty dark too, there may be industrial uses near by. All I can see for now is a used car dealership and a tall building that says “A IO ZER.” (I think some of its letters are out.) As we pull out though, sure enough here come the industrial uses. Steam billowing out from stacks, billboards, trucks, loading docs, etc. I have seen some interesting industrial areas though, my favorite being a bunch of old metal buildings almost completely covered with colorful graffiti. At least it wasn’t a boring new building. Oakland was interesting because there were a lot of industrial looking new buildings that were actually lofts, right up against the tracks. I could see into people’s loft homes, what a treat. I guess it’s a cool thing to own a loft apartment that looks like it used to be a factory, even if it never was. That said, I do think its kind of cool to turn old factories into loft apartments, its just silly to build apartments that look like old lofts. It’s like taking the coolness and uniqueness and making it every day, cheap and mundane.
There were plenty of other interesting sights on the trip. The train goes through the Salinas Valley. This valley, fed by one water source, the Salinas River, is sometimes referred to as the Salad Bowl of California, and no wonder. As we traveled through I saw artichoke plants, lettuce, carrots, and plenty of other wonderful vegetables. The soils look dark and rich from the train, but that could be loads of fertilizer mixed into them. At any rate, this is an ideal spot to grow all of the really healthy vegetables that require more care than say, tomatoes or sunflowers. The valley’s south end is open to the sea where the Salinas River dumps whatever is left of itself into that great Pacific Ocean, where most rivers originating in California aspire to flow. This ocean access and the coastal ranges on either side of it produce a climate that is much more suitable for these types of vegetables than the great Sacramento Valley.
Once the train began to move out of the valley and back up into the southern end of the mountains, land use changed to ranching and oil drilling. Here is a mixed use plan outside of any urban boundaries. The cows wander among oil derricks and power plants happily eating their grass (at least for this time of year), and all the while the oil derricks are bobbing up and down like monstrous creatures drinking up fuel from the depths beneath the hills and valleys.
It’s been a nice train trip so far, I listened to conversations around me, about being in the Marines, why people go to church and why the sweet older Asian woman should give up her seat for twenty dollars so the restless youth can plug his cell phone in (a conversation that the conductor quickly put an end to thank goodness.)
I sat in the observation car, as I am now and met a wonderful woman named Rita who got on at Davis and is going as far as I am. We had wonderful conversations off and on for the whole trip. At dinner I sat with Rita and Bonnie and Tim, a couple of school nurses going to a school nurse convention. One of the best things about train trip is that you get to meet new people, and they are generally all very nice. In fact we all agreed over our luxurious diner dinner that trains are pretty much the safest and most enjoyable way to travel.
Between visits to the lounge car and dining car I’ve read so much Jane Jacob’s that I could tell you all about how to combat the decline of healthy diverse city communities, and what to do about those darn boundaries that kill the life of the surrounding city. But Maybe I’ll talk about that all later when I find some boundaries or declining diversity in Sacramento.
For now, the train trip was wonderful, the people were wonderful and the views were mostly wonderful.

Distance and Time

A very significant topic in geography, is distance, of course. How far is one thing from another and how long will it take to get there.

When considering where to go to a store, how far are you willing to travel, or how much time are you willing to spend getting there? Let's say you need a gallon of milk for breakfast. How many miles will you drive to get the milk? Now, let's say you can only drink milk from free range cows not treated with hormones, and you prefer it not to be ultra pasteurized...Now how many miles will you go? The more specialized the product, the farther you will go to get it. Or you just don't worry about specialized products and take whatever is available where you live. Retail and other companies take this all into consideration when deciding where to locate their service. The area is referred to as a service area. A natural foods store, or car dealership is going to have a much larger service area than a grocery store or gas station, and a fancy restaurant is going to have a much larger service area than a fast food restaurant. People are much more willing to travel more than ten miles to eat at a fine dining establishment, but nobody would consider going that far just to get a cheap hamburger.

How long a journey takes is very important. 150 years ago, few people traveled from Sacramento to California for the fun of it, or for very many other reasons. That would take way too long. Eventually trains shortened the time for travel around most of the country, changing the way people viewed traveling. No longer would travelers endure dusty trails (or muddy ones), but they could sit semi-comfortably in train cars and watch the world go by. Then came automobiles, which made Americans feel independent and travelers sped from here to there as distances seemed shorter than ever. Finally the airplane arrived on the travel scene. Now anyone with money can go to Hawaii in a day, forget the long, exhausting and time consuming ship, it takes less than 24 hours now. Europe in two days? that would have been a miracle at one time in our history. Moreover, if you buy flowers and chocolate for your special person this valentines day (I'm not dropping any hints here), consider that the flowers may have been picked and rushed to your city from as far away as Ecuador.

Now California is laying out plans for a high speed rail to take travelers from Sacramento to San Diego in a matter of hours. Whether we should be spending money on such a luxury right now is questionable, and I'm not the person to answer such questions. However It is interesting to consider how quickly one could travel from Sacramento to San Diego eventually. For now though, I will be traveling to San Diego County by train tomorrow. It will take me about 16 hours, which I don't mind. For twice as much money I could have made it by plane in less than 2 hours, but what's the fun in that? Maybe my next post will tell a different story on how much I mind long train trips.

Jobs and Homes

Today I went to a job fair, it was a clear indication of where our economy is right now. Lots of unemployed people waiting in lines to apply for a small number of jobs. In the list of jobs I noted journalism as an option but when I inquired at the information table as to where the journalism job booth was, I was directed to the army table. Right....forty year old grandma joins the army to become a journalist. Basically I stood in lines for almost an hour only to be given advice on how to get a job with the state. The man at the table, who I originally thought was with the state asked me what I do. I looked at him, completely irritated on the inside, and mildly so on the outside and said "Geography", at which point he stared for a moment and then suggested I slip in as a student assistant. Your know there's a problem when hundreds of people show up for a job fair that only as about eight real job vendors attending.
Needless to say, I didn't get a job, or even the prospect of a job.

At least I have a home. Today I saw a man carrying a sign in the rain saying "Where am I supposed to live?" I'm not quite sure what his purpose was, but I suspect it was to draw attention to the problem of shutting down housing for the poor such as SROs (which stands for single room occupancy, generally old motels converted to apartments) in order to turn the old buildings into luxury hotels. I recently wrote a paper for school and in it I discussed the need to keep the SROs open and running for the poor, but then to bring housing into the city for low and middle income families as well as high income families and singles or DINKS. I don't think any city can be completely vital without a mix of incomes, ages, family sizes and every other possible mix you can think of. Sure there can be art districts, business districts etc, but if you don't have a good mix of income levels and ages nothing can thrive. It is very important to keep the homes for the poorest of our communities, and make sure they are good places to live, because they have a right to a safe home just as well as the rest of us. And if we mix things up enough, areas would be safer because all most people really want is a safe place to live, and we're all more safe in the company of others than isolated and segmented into our little corners. But perhaps I'm ranting a little bit tonight.

More Water

The other day a friend of mine attempted to drive across a field that he thought looked dry and he ended up stuck. Eventually a truck with a wench had to be brought over to pull him out of the field. My point being....Things are really wet outside.

Unfortunately, even with all of this water renewing ponds, vernal pools, swales, marshes and wetlands, the sum total is not yet enough to pull California out of its current drought. Californians have become good at storing, transfering, using, and even, sometimes.... conserving water.

Initially, storage was planned before we were very good at storing water for ourselves. The Sierra Nevadas store water in the form of snow, and in a good year that snow doesn't melt completely until May or June. This is the storage system we can expect to see reduced over time as temperatures warm and less moisture is dumped as snow pack. Fortunately, as of January 29th, the water content of the snow pack is 115% of normal.

Groundwater is another natural storage system we depend on. And this is the storage that has been on my mind lately. So I did some studying.

Florin, where I live, used to have a water table (which is depth of the surface of groundwater below the land surface) at about eight feet. Since it was so close to the surface, all that was necessary to draw it up was a good windmill. Florin was the strawberry capital back then and the landscape was dotted with windmills bringing up groundwater for irrigation. Some said it reminded them of Holland. (see above picture)

Well, things have changed. According to the USGS website, the water table is about 80 feet below the surface. Before the drought we've endured, it was around 70 feet. We have a very bad habit of using more than our fair share of resources.

Now we have complimented these natural storage reservoirs with some man made reservoirs, mainly damns. California can store around 9 million acre feet (MAF)of water in its reservoirs alone. An acre foot is the amount of water it would take to fill an acre of land one foot deep. That isn't counting the natural lakes which also store water.

The problem in California is that we get most of our precipitation in the winter and use most of our water in the summer (mainly for crop irrigation) and most of our precipitation in Northern California, while we use most of it in Southern California.

If climate shapes up the way its expected to, with warmer temperatures and thus less snow, we are going to have to find some ways to use less water in the summer.

Here is a link to interesting water information.

Hidden Buildings and Water.

The two topics are not related, except that I've heard the building leaks when it rains, and understandably too.

To begin with: Yesterday I said there were rumors of a building under a plaza, well...

Just when you think you've seen every part of a street you realize something has been there all along that you never noticed. Today was one of those days. I was walking back to my car and I looked to my left at the same old weird pointless Ivy growing on a rise with steps that led to nowhere very interesting looking and I thought..."Wait a minute, is this that hidden building?" Sure enough, I found the building. It was a bit of a disspointment on the one hand, because any thing interesting enough to draw you to the plaza is hidden from the sidewalk view, and the building itself looks rather dull and drab. But still, I explored it, and it wasn't too bad. Maybe it would have been better in the sunshine, rather than a cloudy day. Much of the roof looks like an empty lot but about a third of it is made into a plaza. The plaza even has trees, which is probably where the roof leaks.
As far as I can tell, the building itself is only one, or negative one story tall. Anyway, it's kind of an interesting way to use urban space.


On to water...
Today it is raining and hooray for that! A while back I was in Georgia visiting my sister and I was discussing Georgia's climate with her friends at a park. I was amazed at how green everything was in July since here in California July is fire season and all grass is a beautiful yellow. When I explained that California has a Mediterranean climate they said "Well that's a nice way of putting it!" They were all pretty sure I live in a desert. I wasn't really offended or anything, but I just thought I'd explain things a bit. If you live in Georgia where it rains all year you live in a "subtropical humid climate," labeled Cfa, Cfb or Cfc in the Koppen-based climate classification system. California, on the other hand is a Csa, Csb climate, known as Mediterranean or "subtropical dry summer." It rains a lot here and we are far from a desert climate, it just doesn't rain in the summer usually. Deserts are almost always dry, Sacramento is anything but dry, in fact early on the valley was referred to as an inland sea in the winter due to how much water collected in the valley. Here is what I mean....rrgh, I can't find the picture. (Somewhere I have a fantastic picture of the wetland preserve west of Sacramento.) Suffice to say, the most dangerous natural hazard Sacramento faces is flooding....mainly this time of year.

However come July and August, I'm sure that I'll feel like it is a desert and if it weren't for the luxurious valley oaks along emptied creek beds I might actually begin to wonder.

Anyway, enjoy the rain while it lasts if you're in Sacramento or any other part of the Great Sacramento Valley, because eventually, the movement of our planet around the sun is going to change the angle of the sunlight and shift those high pressure systems northward blocking off all sources of rain. It's gonna get dry and hot again. But I refuse to think about that anymore. Let it rain!!!!!

Over the top on Urban Geography

Today I heard that someone wanted to know how anyone could be so enthusiastic about urban geography. My first reaction was "Are you kidding?" But to be fair, not everybody shares my fascination with the city. On the other hand, maybe I can give a glimpse of what I see....

To begin with, there is the big picture. Imagine driving on a long road trip across a broad flat plain, or large valley in my case. Eventually the skyline of a city rises on the horizon like an island of cement and lights.
In my family we have a contest to see who can spot Sacramento first as we drive home from long trips. (This helps with the "are we almost home?" question.)
Each city has a unique skyline and it's own signature buildings. Sacramento's has grown quite a bit in the past two decades. It isn't very big, but it reaches up with its own unique shape that tells the driver, "You are almost to Sacramento." It is a landmark in an otherwise unending corridor of agriculture and small towns. At night viewers can identify it by a building with a blue light that extends all the way up one side, kind of like a giant light-saber.

Move in a little closer and find the shape of the streets. Each city grew according to it's own location. Sacramento has a small Business District made up mostly of government buildings and bank buildings. The high rises rapidly give way to smaller buildings and then residential semi-suburbs built mostly in the early 1900s. Recently two buildings were built on either side of Capital avenue that frame the capital nicely. Each one comes to a point at the top, framing the capital building and directing the viewers gaze toward it. Cities which grow up slowly have a fantastic mix of building ages and designs. I love streetscapes in San Francisco and Sacramento. When I walk from the edge of the city toward the Center I love watching each building come into view and noticing its shape and surroundings.

Go even closer and things get more interesting. That's when you see the people, the details and the little surprises. Last year I read a book called "The Spaces Between Buildings" by Larry Ford. He talked about everything but the inside of the building including facades, driveways, alleys staircases, windows etc. That's one of my favorite things about cities; those spaces, or nooks and crannies as one professor put it. Just this morning I noticed a new area near the capital. I walked up 10th street and at 10th and L there is a building with a garden plaza below the ground level. I noticed the tops of small trees sticking up next to the sidewalk and peeked down to find a small patio type space surrounding the building below the sidewalk. One of these days I'm going to figure out how to get down there and take a closer look. (I'll post a picture when I do.) There are so many interesting little places like that, I even hear that there is a whole building below a plaza, which I will definitely have to find.

The people are a wonderful part of the city as well. I tend to notice every person I walk by, and I try, quite intentionally to get people to smile as they walk past. You'd be amazed at how many people who look like they should be happy avoid eye contact or just won't smile, and how many apparently down and out people light up when someone says 'good morning' and smiles at them. All kinds of people come downtown for all kinds of reasons and I love seeing them. I think Jane Jacobs does a good job when she talks about the people on the city street, but this is a topic for another day.

Buildings from this close up perspective are pretty cool too, but that topic is also being saved for another day. I can't tell you how many buildings I want to share. Sometimes I drive around with my kids just to show them all of the cool buildings I've found. (OK, maybe I'm a little over the top, but I did warn you under the name of my blog.)

Go to a city and just start trying to notice things. Go when you have spare time. Look up, look down and look all around you. Look at people, look at architecture, look at streetscapes. Just enjoy it, soak it all in. Maybe even stroll down an alley or two. You might like it.

Just go to a city and notice things.

And, by the way, I am just as enthusiastic about other facets of geography. I am just starting with the city.

Shopping Malls

Shopping malls are not my favorite, however I have been walking through Downtown Sacramento's Westfield Plaza quite often lately. I often park my car in the garage below the mall and get my ticket validated with a cup of coffee or tea.

Malls are tricky places, and by that I mean they convince you that they are something more than they are and lull you into staying a while. For example, they are privately owned companies, but they feel quite public. When is the last time you wandered throughout a bank building and 'window shopped'. Banks are private, we go to them to do business and then leave. We go to malls sometimes just to enjoy the experience, meet a friend, or have lunch; all uses which are associated with public spaces. However, try handing out controversial fliers at a mall, or staging a rally as one might on the city street and you will likely soon find out that there are business people who can and will ask you to cease and desist.

They are even more tricky in that they lull you into a fantasy world, where realities such as budgets and stress don't exist. Jon Goss in his article The "Magic of the Mall" talks about the mall developer's strategy to "assuage...collective guilt over conspicuous consumption by designing into the retail built environment the means for a fantasized dissociation from the act of shopping." This is what I experience in the morning as I purchase my coffee and stroll through the mall...except I'm not really shopping because nothing is open yet.

I find the experience really quite enjoyable when the shops are closed. Window cleaners are sometimes busy preparing the shop fronts for the day, business people are coming in and out of coffee shops, and occasionally people meander by mumbling unquoteable things as they go. Of course all of this does sound like normal morning street life, but all the while a sound system is playing music from the forties and half of the store fronts look more like they are out of a movie set than reality. The effect ends up being that I feel like I'm wandering through an old movie and any minute I'm going to spot my husband wearing a fedora and trench coat, leaning on a long black umbrella waiting to sweep me off my feet. That is what malls do, they make you forget that you need to save money for your car payment, they ease the guilt that your buying a fancy red dress that you really don't need. But then again you do need that dress because maybe Cary Grant is about to sweep you off your feet and take you out to dinner. Who wouldn't want to spend a few hours hanging out in an old movie, as long as it isn't "The Birds" by Alfred Hitchcock.

Whatever fantasy a mall portrays (Think of Horton Plaza in San Diego), it quickly vanishes as you walk out onto the street.

It is a very abrupt transition as I leave the mall and step out onto J Street where cars are backed up, sirens may be blaring and plenty of people are heading into their offices for a day of harsh reality. I like the city better than the mall though. Who needs a sound track and fantasy when you can hear real people, look at real buildings and move forward in the reality of life.

Getting Started

It is strange to have spent seven years in college and then to suddenly find myself wondering what to do with myself while I wait to begin graduate school. And so here I am blogging, if for no other reason than to avoid forgetting everything I learned in college by writing about it for others to enjoy.

I used to tell people I was a geography student. Now I have graduated and I guess that means I am a real geographer. Most people hear that I am studying geography and ask me questions like, "What's the capital of Uzbekistan?" (Tashkent, but that's because I keep a large world map on the wall next to my computer. I couldn't have said that at a bus stop.) But really, geography is so much more than knowing where places are and the countries and capitals. Geographers like to know things like why the city is where it is, how it effects a community to live at sea level(especially nowadays), why scrap metal is shipped overseas only to be returned to a port as recycled metal, and so on. Basically, geography is the study of places, people, interactions.....well, the whole world. That's why I love it.

I live in a city halfway between mountains and the ocean, and I spend a lot of time walking in that city. I am currently looking at the suburban area known as the urban-rural fringe, which is pretty self explanatory. These are just a few things I will be posting on. Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I do.