It seems that about 1/3 of Detroit has gone to seed. In the past fifty years, since they heyday of Motown, the population has dropped from 2 million, to less than a million. An article in the blog City Farmer discusses current serious interest in converting vacant land to urban farms. Another blog, Politics in the Zeros, also posted an article on this subject recently.
Here in Amsterdam, an astonishing film was shown at Arcam last week. Made In Detroit by Dutch documentary filmmakers Masha & Manfred Poppenk is about Ferguson Academy for for Young Women in Detroit, an alternative high school which teaches young teen mothers to farm on the schools own grounds, less than three kilometers from the city center. The farm includes an orchard, dairy, and bee hives, as well as organically grown crops which they sell at Detroit’s Eastern Market. It is a beautiful and thoughtfully made film. (Update: since posting a few hours ago, the film has been blocked pending right, permissions, etc…. hopefully it will be made available again soon.)
This-Two Year Old is a Better Geographer than You (in the All Points Blog) caught my attention, just too cute to pass up. The 2007 YouTube videowas originally a response to the Miss Teen USA South Carolina answers a question. (See Sept 2007 post Sniggering). Apparently Lilly was later on Oprah, and Jay Leno. The video has been viewed over 4 million times. Maybe it would be nice if more parents played map games like this with their kids. 
Or you could buy these plates and teach them that there are just eight countries in Europe. (The makers might have at least made a toothpick dish out the Netherlands.)
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Lund, Sweden was founded sometime between 990 and 1020, and is filled with treasures for visitors today. According to the Wikipedia, it is applying to be a “European Capital of Culture” in 2014, when a Swedish city again has a turn to hold this honor. Lund University has over 40,000 students (though many live in other places). We have just learned that the University offers an online Masters in GIS, free of charge. (How can this be??) We will investigate further.
Other interesting sights near Lund included the new western harbor area in Malmo, Vastra Hamnen, and another new “model development”, Jakriborg. My collage is from Google Earth, including the 3D rendering of Santiago Calitrava’s twisting torso. One surprise after the next.
A wonderful mashup from the Dutch TV station, VPRO, seems to be ground-breaking in its creative use of Google Maps, historical information, and a timeline. This website, In Europa, is part of the promotion of a grand TV series about 20th century Europe, based on the so-named book by Geert Mak. If only the website were in English! (But of course it will be eventually, one would think, as the book has already been translated into German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Polish and Turkish.) Editors are still hard at work to keep ahead of the viewing schedule, every Sunday from now until, well, 35-episodes later. At IDFA, six episodes were shown, an intro, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1929, and 1942. According to marketing folks, there is interest from PBS in the States. The Google Maps interface was designed by Gerard van Enk, of Million Pieces. He discusses development considerations for the site here, in Dutch. On the site, visitors are encouraged to send their own clips and sound-bytes (maybe heralding a new era of collaborative map-based historical research, wiki-style?)
Just curious about that statistic of 1/5th of Americans not being able to locatae the US on a world map, I browsed around and couldn’t find that number, but did find the 2006 National Geographic - Rober Survey of Geographic Literacy. Though the number of American children not able to locate the US on a world map is lower (6%) than the beauty pageant question, according to this survey global awareness is pitiful. The conclusion: “Most young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 demonstrate a limited understanding of the world, and they place insufficient importance on the basic geographic skills that might enhance their knowledge. ” Maybe Miss SC runner-up-nr-4 inadvertently did the world a huge favor by turning this into a hot topic!
My introduction to GIS was at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. UWM is home to the world-class American Geographical Society Library, as well as an excellent cartography and GIS Labrotory (Cartlab) run by talented cartographer Donna Genzmer. SARUP (school of architecture and urban planning) offers a graduate certificate in Urban GIS.
Visited Unigis at the Vrij Universiteit and learned about the excellent GIS program there, certificate and Masters Degree possibilities. They do field trips too! Photo(s) are from a 2006 visit to the RWS control center, embedded in zipped KML file.
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It seems that about 1/3 of Detroit has gone to seed. In the past fifty years, since they heyday of Motown, the population has dropped from 2 million, to less than a million. An article in the blog City Farmer discusses current serious interest in converting vacant land to urban farms. Another blog, Politics in the Zeros, also posted an article on this subject recently. 
Here in Amsterdam, an astonishing film was shown at Arcam last week. Made In Detroit by Dutch documentary filmmakers Masha & Manfred Poppenk is about Ferguson Academy for for Young Women in Detroit, an alternative high school which teaches young teen mothers to farm on the schools own grounds, less than three kilometers from the city center. The farm includes an orchard, dairy, and bee hives, as well as organically grown crops which they sell at Detroit’s Eastern Market. It is a beautiful and thoughtfully made film. (Update: since posting a few hours ago, the film has been blocked pending right, permissions, etc…. hopefully it will be made available again soon.)
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