June 6, 2009: Quick post from U.S. News and World Report about careers in urban planning and a link to an Urban and Regional Planning guide from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning…
As I work on this 4th installment of my review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, I realized I’m doing more then reviewing Jared Diamond’s book…instead I am annotating it.
Perhaps as a subject for another post, what I have done in these last four entries is added pictures, maps, charts, video, statistics and linked to news stories that are all part of the topics Jared wrote about. Through these entries, at least for myself, his book has become more interactive, more tangible then words on a page, and a more valuable resource in understanding the system dynamics which make our societies function on a broader scale…and helped to bring an understanding of just how fragile those systems can be if not managed properly.
Books should be able to do this.
In today’s world I should be able to take an E-Book, highlight passages an phrases I think are important, link keywords to definitions and further information on Wikipedia, attach videos of Jared further explaining his theories and research to portions of his text, display graphs and diagrams that I can update as new information becomes available, or play the audio book as I read along should I desire to do so. Books need to become as adaptable as societies must be to remain sustainable in ever changing environments.
But like I said, we can discuss that after were finished with this 4th entry about Collapse.
In part 3 of our review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared turns his focus toward the largest population on the planet, the Chinese, and discusses the trends involved with a maturing urban development process and a rather interesting way the country deals with other nations garbage.
In part 2 of the notes from Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond, and his well manicured beard, presents to the reader an example solution to resource depletion through Japan’s system of forest management and regulation on the usage of timber.
It is a great example of leadership recognizing how unregulated development and the mis-allocation of resources could lead an entire nation into a fight for its possible survival.