My First Blog

My First Blog

By: Christopher Harpstrite    

        So…this is my first blog entry since, well, ever. I have never written my own blog before, although I read blogs all the time. I have been curious about doing this for awhile now so I guess this is my opportunity. I have thought about what I will write about, there are so many things: my wife, my dog, my house hunting excursion my wife and I are currently on, but I didn’t think many people would be interested in that. So instead my plan for this blog is to be a venting place for my thesis research and design. While we are just beginning this journey now, I feel like later on in the semester it will be a great spot for me to keep my committee members updated on what I am working on, and also a great way to get feedback and suggestions from anybody who reads this.

        To start this out I guess you will actually need to know what my thesis is going to be. And actually, I don’t really know for sure….yet. However I do have some ideas brewing and I will talk about one in particular. For Professor Anz’s Research Methods class we had to come up with a one page abstract over what we wanted out thesis to be. Everyone, including me, started scrambling to find out what we wanted to do. We all thought we had plenty of time to think about what we wanted to spend the next ten months of our lives researching, designing, and completely spazzing out over. But this isn’t Anz’s first time around the block, what he did was get us all thinking now, so that he didn’t spring this on us halfway through the semester and people just pick a thesis that they ended up hating.

        I ended up writing my abstract on a thing called “Transit Oriented Development” or TOD. This is a method of providing higher-density mixed use development within walking distance (up to ½ mile) of transit stations. This has become more of a popular thing in recent years because of the ever growing problem of urban sprawl. Essentially what TOD accomplishes is:

·         Increasing the efficiency of locations, so that people can walk or bike to take transit

·         Minimizing traffic by boosting the ridership of public transportation

·         Providing a mix of housing, shopping, and transportation choices

·         Provide value to new and existing residents by generating revenue for both the public and private sectors

·         Creating a sense of space

Now that everyone knows what transit development is I can tell you my proposed location. But, instead of spoiling the surprise, I will go ahead and wait until my next post. This will give everyone enough time to read this and do their own research on TOD… just kidding. But I do look forward to doing this blog over the next year, and I hope everyone enjoys reading it. Until next time…