Author Archives: Jocelyn Hittle

The New Partners for Smart Growth conference is winding down.  It’s been great to be with a multi-disciplinary group of practitioners, hearing about how public health, conservation, disability access, historic preservation, and other disciplines can all come together into one concept for creating more livable, sustainable communities. Many of the sessions are focusing on rural [...]

A new study by Nielson indicates that people are spending an increasing amount of their online time using social media and games, with social media overtaking email via a 43% rise in time spent compared to a year ago.  These dramatic changes mean the ways that we communicate are evolving rapidly, and that decision-making processes [...]

If China has a gigantic traffic problem, the country also has a gigantic solution: huge elevated buses that traffic can drive under. These are apparently already under construction, and they are mind boggling.  Whether because China’s traffic is so much worse or their willingness to experiment so much greater than their US counterparts, Chinese planners [...]

More potentially useful new technology has been covered by New Scientist’s reporters at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics and animation conference in Los Angeles. In my post last week, I highlighted a multitouch 3D table, and this week it’s a zooming Pixar inspired table lamp.  The lamp recognizes its position over the table and zooms into [...]

Some new research in psychology has some implications for those of us who work to make sure that people understand the decisions they are making, and that we move toward (if we can’t actually reach) consensus in these decisions. The research, summarized by Discovery News and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, indicates that learning that the majority disagrees with you after you have made up your mind, actually makes you stick to your opinion even more (the idea of rooting for the underdog, or thinking that you’ve understood something that everyone else doesn’t).