Working with Google My Maps

View Cornell Planning Students' Cayuga Heights Map in a larger map


This is a map I have been working on for a planning project in Cayuga Heights, NY. The concept is that community members will be able to easily add information about how they experience their neighborhood and that information can be shared with the people planning the future of the village.

The tools are incredibly simple but also very limited. It currently requires a Google ID to be one of the editors, and it can't be embedded in a page in an editable format. You are welcome to click on the map above, which will take you to the Google My Maps page, once you log in to Google you can edit the map adding points, lines and shapes. Once a feature is added, you can place pictures, video and text into the pop up comments box via HTML. Feel free to give it a try, but please don't delete anything someone else added, once it's gone it's gone!

House Trucks

Over Christmas I spent some time chatting with (and possibly infecting with a very contagious cold) a friend of my Grandma's who built his own tiny house off the grid out in the Olympic Rainforest. When I mentioned that my wife thinks I'm crazy because (among other things) I want to build and live in a House Truck he didn't know what I was talking about, so... I figure if someone cool enough to build their own house doesn't know about this phenomenon, I should spread it around a little more.

A house truck is basically a house hand built by the owner on the frame of a truck. The concept, like that of the RV, stems from gypsy carts.

What I love about the house truck concept is that it is compact, handmade and allows you to stick it to the man, 3 of my favorite attributes in all things. I love the idea of housing that is owned but would not require a mortgage. Specifically, because of it's portability it enables home ownership in our transient society. The realities of today's economy dictate that most people move much more frequently than they used to. It would be silly for me to buy a house tied to land considering that I've lived in 4 cities and 2 states in the last 3 years and will probably be moving again soon.
What I would love to see is the growth of parks in dense urban areas devoted to this kind of mobile take on the culture of ownership. I know that we already have mobile home parks and that they are frequently rundown places of last resort and that they are quickly disappearing and being converted into condos, however I think there is still promise in this concept waiting to be taken beyond the stereotypes. In order to bring about my vision the parks would have to be impeccably branded, focused on sustainability. The model to copy here is the dense groupings of cottage homes that are already popping up in cities like Seattle, when zoning allows. If done right I think this alternative housing mode could out-do house boats as a way to own a funky, but high quality home that you can take somewhere else when you need to move. For an historical example of the promise mobile home parks were supposed to provide see the great Elvis and Seattle movie "It Happened at the World's Fair." Elvis's character lives in and wanders through a utopian mobile home park singing.

Current ideas headed in this direction are Tumbleweed homes and the miniHome. Both of these concepts are trailers, which may make more sense than having the truck built into a permanent home that won't move too frequently, but I still like the edginess of the truck concept. Having the truck built in also allows guerrilla style urban camping until my dream people's parks come into existence. Now to convince the wife that this is a sane way to live with 2 babies... although, it has been done.

Beginnings

This blog is about one of my favorite people, me! I plan on using it to share my thoughts which will probably include interesting websites on DIY culture, sustainable building, urban planning, slow food, interesting books and I'm sure my personal and family escapades will slip in here too. When I become interested in something, I have to learn everything I can about it, immediately. This malady often includes ensuing sleepless nights, shirking of responsibilities, familial estrangement, etc. I am particularly obsessive when it comes to small subcultures which I find incredibly interesting from scooter culture to DIY culture, coHousing to House Trucks; if it's off the beaten path and has a grass roots or hands-on aspect I'm all about it. Hopefully you will find these digressions either interesting or ridiculous/humorous.