It's not Sophia Antipolis...

Sophia Antipolis from the air.

Today I will be lecturing on business park design. Are you bored yet? Good, we agree. It's awful. It's worse than awful. It's soul-destroying.

Bad architecture, miles of parking lots, sterile landscaping. No place at all with a human soul, and no place for a human soul. Generally no place to walk, or do anything other than get in your car and drive away. Fast. Ooops, there was a pedestrian trying to cross this six-lane road (with a walk light)? Sorry about that fright I gave you, but would you just get out of my way because I'm in a hurry to escape this hell-hole.

Is there such a thing as a well-designed business park? I'm just going to try to imagine one. First, there will be trees. Lots and lots of trees. Enough to hide or at least soften all that stark architecture. There will be sidewalks. But not just next to those busy streets. There will be green spaces between the buildings--no back-to-back parking lots. In those green spaces we'll put sidewalks and meandering paths, over and around some nice variable landscape, with a pond or two if it's feasible, or fountains. Around those green spaces, on the bottom floors of some of the office buildings, we'll put the common facilities like cafes, delis, postal centers, maybe some small-scale office-related businesses like office supply stores, commercial mail outlets, print and copy facilities, a banking kiosk, a child care center. And, oh yes, a fitness center. One of those outdoor fitness courses would be nice, too.

Now are you beginning to get the picture? When I take my lunch break, I can walk out and get lunch, mail a letter, deposit a check or get cash, buy some copy toner, check on my toddler in the child care center who I saw throwing a tantrum on the webcam. I can take a stroll or go for a run, maybe do a few pushups or pullups along the way. I can spend my lunch break in the gym if I like, or pop in before or after work for a quick workout without having to plug the drive into my schedule.

There will be no cars in sight in this greenspace. So where will all the cars go? Isn't it obvious? Under the greenspace. There will be popouts here and there, and next to the office buildings, of course, as well as direct entries to buildings underground. Good for both hot summer and cold winter weather. No getting into a car heated to 120F and burning your hands on the steering wheel, or scraping ice and snow off the windshield while your good shoes get ruined.

Maybe there's a business park like this already out there, but I haven't seen it. Well, maybe Sophia Antipolis on the French Riviera. Office buildings hidden in pine trees meander over the low coastal mountains, with a view of the Alps on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. But we don't all have that kind of stunning landscape to work with, and generally don't put our business parks there when we do. You could build a version of my office park almost anywhere. So why aren't there any?

Write something, count something

It's the last day of 2009, and my New Year's Resolution for the next year is to pick up on the advice of Atul Gawande in the last chapter of his book "Better" and 1) "write something" (because even modest contributions add to the collective knowledge) and 2) "count something" (because you never know when you just might notice something significant). These are just two of his five recommendations, but they're the ones that appealed to me. I'm not sure what it is I'm going to write or count, but I figure if I just start writing, the thing I should count will come to me.

My days are defined by sunrises and sunsets. Everyone's are, but unlike a lot of people, I actually notice them. That's because I'm very often on a train, gliding along the Southern California coast on my way to or from work. I can mark the time of year by where the sun rises or sets along that slice of horizon. At the moment, we've passed the year's midnight and the days are just barely starting to get longer, but it's still dark when I leave the house for the station (5:25 am--trains require precise morning timing).

This morning a huge full moon hung over Mission Valley as we descended to the river valley on the way to the train station. The last full moon of the year, and a "blue moon"--that's the second full moon for the month, although I learned yesterday that a "blue moon" originally meant the extra full moon for the year (not the month) that we occasionally get to compensate for our 365-day year being slightly out of whack with the earth's rotations.

The sun rose behind us as we crossed the slough between Torrey Pines and the south Del Mar cliffs. Minor resolution: I will learn the name of this slough, and all the others we cross on the way. The sloughs or lagoons or wetlands are a defining feature of this stretch of coast. There are seven of them (I've already counted them) between San Diego and Oceanside. (Minor resolution: I will learn the names of all of them.*) I could call this first one the "Slough of Despond," but that wouldn't be quite right, since it always cheers me when we cross it and head straight for the open ocean and then make the breathtaking turn at the last minute north along the cliffs.

The slough was full, the tide high along the cliffs. No beach at all, the waves choppy and steely blue. No surfers this morning, which is unusual. Even in the worst conditions, there's usually at least a couple of hardy souls lying on their surfboards drifting and bobbing with the kelp. One almost-stranded walker at the base of the cliffs on the north end, the water washing up around his boots. No air-surfing pelicans; they like the waves perfectly formed, the way the surfers do. (I saw 8 of them, flying in perfect fighter-pilot formation, on the return trip, when the waves had settled into long rolling blue green fields with white crests and the surfers were back out.) I didn't pay much attention to the birds floating or pecking around in the sloughs today.

So far what can I count? Sunrises and sunsets (1 of each per day until you run through your allotment), full moons (1, rarely 2, per month), people standing on the platform and riding the train (not many today, as it's New Year's Eve, and I think the transit department already counts them anyway), surfers, beach walkers, birds in the slough, surfing pelicans. There's a clue here somewhere. Or is there? Maybe it's something I haven't noticed yet.

* The lagoon at Torrey Pines is Los Penasquitos. The others, marching north, are San Dieguito, San Elijo, Batiquitos, Agua Hedionda, Buena Vista and San Luis Rey. The Santa Margarita river valley also ends in a wetland at the sea on Camp Pendleton, north of Oceanside. If I didn't already live here, I think I'd move here just for the romance of those names.