Higher Ed Moving Online and the Campus Environs?

Reports about this Stanford artificial intelligence course getting 160K enrollees may offer an insight into the future of higher education — especially if universities can begin charging for this enrollment to bring in extra revenue, without paying for the physical space these additional students might occupy on a campus.  This, however, brings up interesting questions about the role of the campus and the importance of the classroom in the pedagogical experience. What is the role of the classroom in the teaching profession and what are the intangible benefits?  What shape should built space on the college campuses take?  In 20 years will campus simply be focused residential / social communities that can, in the words of former UC Berkeley, Chancellor Clark Kerr, “provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.”? If the Stanford course is any indication, it is unfortunate that faculty will likely not need that parking because they can teach from home in their pajamas.

Moon Colonization an Important Issue? Really?

Great discourse on an important subjuct by robertreich that ends up loosely tied to city planning on the moon of all places:

Newt’s latest idea, for example – to colonize the moon – is typically whacky.

As Reich reminds us, American citizens should not be so flippant as to simply assume a Newt nomination equates to an Obama victory.  Our social and economic future is not something to gamble with — especially with weird speculation about moon colonization.

Source: robertreich

Sea Ranch a ‘Beautiful Example of Environmental Architecture’

” the totality of The Sea Ranch offers an example of an environmentally sensitive development and place that is also sublimely beautiful…”

I find this quote by Sarah Williams Goldhagen in the New Republic to be very provocative and am wondering how she objectively supports such a strong claim.  Her article mentions nothing about sustainability — For example, the embedded water / energy use, lack of transportation services, loss of valuable agricultural land and lack of affordability / equity espoused by the development.  It would seam to me that at best The Sea Ranch was an experiment in design with environmental aspirations.  It may have aesthetic merit but many environmental factors went unheeded and in the ethos of ‘sustainable design’ the simple act of putting 2,000 homes on a greenfield site within feet of a pristine coast would render the aspirations unsuccessful.

Source: tnr.com