It also means I can offer an email subscription to my blog.

First and most importantly, last December, Libby and I got engaged. Longtime readers will know her from her occasional cameos among the wonkyness, or of course from real life! When we met at Michigan, we bonded over a shared interest in upside-down maps, and I was astonished to discover she had already read Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities — in high school! To top it off, today she’s also an even more avid reader of Planning magazine than I am. Clearly, this was meant to be. Currently she is a law student at Harvard, and this summer worked as a legal intern for the ACLU of Michigan, among other things defending freedom of speech. Needless to say I’m extremely excited, and we’re already working on planning a wedding for August 2010 in her hometown of Lapeer, Michigan. I’m incredibly lucky to have found such a wonderful partner.

Second, today will mark my last day at the Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which will be just a few weeks shy from my one-year anniversary there. Working at MAPC has been a fascinating experience, and allowed me to learn about the Boston region through planning data and mapping. Most of all, it let me work with and learn from a dynamic group of professionals, especially my data services colleagues: Holly St. Clair, Tim Reardon, Susan Brunton, and Mariana Arcaya.

I’m leaving to start the PhD program at the M.I.T. Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where I was accepted to the Urban Information Systems program group. I hope to advance my work researching the application of Internet tools to the planning process. DUSP is the largest planning program in the country, and well suited to my interests, so I’m looking forward to beginning my studies there in September.

• An Interactive GIS Tool: “Get an overview and online demonstration of Local Decision Maker, a GIS-based decision support system for comprehensive planning developed by Purdue University”
• Automated Land and Zoning Management: ‘See how planners … are using an automated system that manages land-use and zoning cases and provides access to numerous other data layers that can be seamlessly imported to provide additional decision support.”
• Using Motion and Touch Sensitive Applications: “This session provides live demonstrations of several motion-sensitive, touch-sensitive, and location-aware tools that can make the public participation side of planning more interesting and interactive.”
• Does Citizen Participation Matter?: “This session helps planners learn the differences so they can advise others about what citizen participation model fits the case at hand.”
• The 10 Best Free Web Applications: “Explore the leading Free Web 2.0 technologies that can be used immediately and freely to support planning.”
• Hiawatha Light Rail Line: “This session focuses on the technical and political factors that shaped the plan for the Hiawatha Light Rail and Central Corridor Transit Line, including the plan’s implementation and performance.”
• Community Indicators: “Learn to create a vibrant steering committee [that can] serve as the community touchstone for data prioritization and analysis of key comprehensive planning elements such as transportation, health, and housing.”

In addition to the sessions I’ll be attending some of the happy hours and receptions, including the Next American City reception on Monday 4/27 at 7:30 p.m. in the lobby of the Hotel Ivy.

What sessions are you attending?

I’ve compared the two week period from before the switch with two weeks since. In terms of visits, traffic stayed constant. Since it takes time to build readership and my topic and frequency stayed about the same, I’d imagine this kind of change would take longer to appear. Other measures show some interesting results. First, the “bounce rate,” or the percentage of visitors who visit only one page on the website before leaving, declined from 70.4% to 63.61%. This decrease is very consistent, and after the change every day except three was below the previous average. The decline from the previous month’s average was about 9% This means more visitors are reading more on the site. The number of comments has also increased. The average number of comments on the 8 posts previous to the new design was 2.9 per post, and on the 8 since it was 4.6 per post.

Society for City and Regional Planning History Conference
October 25-28 – Portland, Maine ($150 for students)

Washington, D.C. Historical Studies Conference
Nov. 1-3 – Carnegie Library, Washington, D.C. (free)

American Historical Association Annual Meeting
Jan. 3-6, 2008 – Woodley Park, Washington, D.C. ($75 for students)