Maps, Stats & Spreadsheets, oh my
A third of the way through the winter quarter already!
So this quarter I’m taking Quantitative Analysis in Urban Planning II, Real Estate Development & Finance, Intro to Physical Planning, and Graphics & Urban Information. It kind of feels like a lot already but I think they balance each other out well. It’s nice to be in design studio classes again and making things. These are a few of the things I’ve been up to so far.
Graphics & Urban Information
I like drawing tiny buildings. They’re so cute :) We’re going to be moving into SketchUp later, but just working on the hand drawing for now. I find this class to be the most relaxing of the 4 because I haven’t drawn much in a long time so it’s sort of satisfying to have a pencil again.
Intro to Physical Planning
It’s also nice making pretty maps. I’m studying this section of West Hollywood this quarter. Visiting a bunch, taking pics and making notes, etc. I’m going to be very intimately familiar with this street at the end of 10 weeks.
Quant II (Stats)
We’re learning how to use Stata. Despite sounding kind of intimidating, it’s sort of neat how relatively easy it is to use. But UX wise, I wonder what a more beginner-friendly version would look like. There’s definitely room for improvement on the UI side. Also, Data analysis is so much more interesting applied to information that’s personally meaningful. In this case, we analyzed the results from a class survey.
Real Estate Development & Finance
And last but not least, we’re getting deep into the spreadsheets for Real Estate. Right now we’re just learning about some of the basic finance stuff.
For the second half of the class, we’re going to be proposing a pretend development as a group project which I think will be fascinating. One of my favorite games was SimTower. This kind of feels like that but a little more nuanced. Part of the initial market study includes an inventory of the local competition. Visiting open houses, looking up listings, etc. I think it’s kind of funny because those are things I compulsively do for fun already, and I found a class where I’m supposed to do it as part of my homework.
Keeping up
I’m trying to keep the in-progress documentation a little more regular during the quarter, but it’s a bit tough when I already feel kind of behind with the homework workload. I’m also going to be out of town this weekend for a conference (in Hawaii!) so extra stressed about getting things wrapped up. I’ll share more about that trip after the conference!
