š, Iām Josh.
This website serves as scratch pad for my ideas and words.
I value coherence, meaningfulness, compassion, and kindness.
Overall, I care a lot about ācitiesā, the built urban form, transportation networks, and how issues of ethics play out in these domains. š¬
America is full of this:
I desire to nudge the ecosytem towards producing more of this:
Pretty much all forms of human flourishing go up, and many forms of human suffering become less, when the landscape looks more like the former, above.
Additionally, consider not just a block or a store-front, but what would be directly opposite that block:
The cost per square meter
and value per square meter
of these two competing visions are quite different.
Iām currently working on nudging this ecosystem in a variety of ways, and always interested in increasing my impact. Feel free to email me.
Overall, I aim to combine/embody the influences of several distinctive persons, like Alain and Marie-Agnes Bertaud1, Christopher Alexander2, and other distinguished individuals, and figure out some small, practical ādetails of the urban environmentā.
Footnotes #
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Marie-Agnes, and her partner-in-crime co-author Alain Bertaud wrote this book and this paper. He and Marie-Agnes are the subjects of this podcast. IYKYK.Ā ↩
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Christopher Alexander basically formalized the concept of
design patterns
, in both architecture AND computer science!!! He reminds me of Claude Shannon.Design patterns, as he conceived of them, are at the core of the object-oriented software development I use most days (Ruby/Rails), and design patterns are at the core of his contribution to architecture and physical spaces. I had known Christopher Alexander for years as the author of A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, and had always tried to channel the same ideas when working on software projects.
Only in the last year did I learn of his influence in computer science. He passed away in late 2022, and this eulogy is perhaps the best introduction to this incredible person.Ā ↩