Monday Mailing
Year 25 • Issue 01
10 September 2018 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 1.
Quote of the Week: “The real work of planetsaving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous." --Wendell Berry Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon has the only double-sided state flag in the US. On one side is the state’s insignia and on the other is a beaver, the state animal
This Data Shows Who Grabs the Mic at Public Planning Meetings Dynamic Planning for Affordability Travel Oregon 101 The Other Side of “Broken Windows” Creative Placemaking on Vacant Properties: Lessons Learned from Four Cities What Does Incrementalism Actually Mean? Streets as Places Toolkit As the West Burns, A Town Fields Its Own Armature Firefighters Great Willamette River Clean-Up Webinar-Pedestrians Are People Too: The Criminalization of Walking. Wednesday, September 12th @ 11am HEAL Cities Campaign This Data Shows Who Grabs the Mic at Public Planning Meetings Andrew DeFranza has seen it countless times: An affordable housing project proposed in a mostly white, well-off community goes before the zoning board or the planning commission. A vocal minority of homeowners, themselves mostly white and well off, show up to oppose it. The project is killed, shrunk or delayed by litigation for years. “We hear a lot of, ‘I’m in support of affordable housing, just not here,’” says DeFranza, who’s the executive director of Harborlight Community Partners, a community development corporation in southern Essex County in Greater Boston. He wasn’t surprised to hear the findings in “Racial Disparities in Housing Politics: Evidence from Administrative Data,” a new paper by Boston University researchers. As the Boston Globe reported last week, the study of public meetings in nearly 100 Greater Boston cities showed that white people accounted for 95 percent of participants. In the same area, white people make up 80 percent of the population. Using an analysis of last names and geographic data from public meetings, the researchers concluded that “whites overwhelmingly dominate zoning and planning board meetings.” (Details on how the BU researchers determined the race of participants are in the “Estimating Race” section of the paper.) To access the full story, click here.
2. Dynamic Planning for Affordability My recent column, "Affordability Trade-offs," advocated a broad definition of affordability that considers middle- as well as low-income households, transportation as well as housing costs, plus future as well as current cost impacts. A subsequent column, "How Filtering Increases Housing Affordability," described how building more middle-priced housing tends to increase affordability through filtering, as some lower-priced housing occupants move into more expensive units, and over time as the new houses depreciate and become cheaper. This column describes how to our planning practices to support affordable and inclusive infill development.
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An old friend once described an incident in an urban neighborhood ladies tea party during the late 1970s. By then, the area was well integrated, so the group was mixed-race, but one confused elderly woman observed proudly, “Well, we sure kept the Blacks out of here, didn’t we!” She evidently assumed that everybody else there shared her preferences for an exclusive neighborhood. To access the full story, click here. 3. Travel Oregon 101 What is Travel Oregon 101? This FREE seminar offers an overview of Oregon’s travel and tourism industry, designed to help visitor-related organizations and businesses take advantage of the many opportunities offered by Travel Oregon. Find out how to partner with other industry members around the state to maximize your exposure to visitors. Every attendee receives a resource packet brimming with information and contacts for future reference. WHO SHOULD ATTEND TRAVEL OREGON 101? • Convention & visitor bureaus and chambers of commerce staff (DMOs) • Owners/managers of lodging properties, restaurants and visitor attractions • Organizations producing events that attract visitors • Economic development staff of government agencies at all levels • Tour operators, visitor services of all types • Staff of heritage organizations, museums and interpretive centers WHAT WILL YOU LEARN? • How to get looped into the tourism industry’s communication system (at the local, regional, statewide, national and international levels) • How to let Travel Oregon know you’re out there and ready for visitors • Programs and services Travel Oregon offers that help businesses, organizations and communities draw more visitors Upcoming Seminars in Portland (9/30), Waldport (10/9), Pendleton (11/15) and McMinnville (12/3). For more information and registration, click here. 4. The Other Side of “Broken Windows" In the nineteenth century, British researchers began studying the variation in crime rates between and within cities. Some of these studies offered relatively simple accounts of the variance, in which concentrated poverty led to higher crime. Others went further, asking what explained the disparities in crime rates among poor neighborhoods. Most of this work “offered theories,” the University of Pennsylvania criminologist John MacDonald wrote in a recent paper, “but did not attempt to provide guidance on how to curb crime.” He compared this tradition, unfavorably, with the work of British health scholars, most notably John Snow, whose research on cholera “noted the importance of the spatial environment,” and who “suggested the separation of sewers and drinking water wells to prevent water-borne diseases.” Of course, social scientists have long influenced crime policies. Consider the “broken windows” theory, which the Harvard political scientist James Q. Wilson and the Rutgers criminologist George Kelling introduced, in a piece in The Atlantic, in 1982. According to Wilson and Kelling, criminals perceive broken windows and other forms of disorder as signs of weak social control; in turn, they assume that crimes committed there are unlikely to be checked. “Though it is not inevitable,” Wilson and Kelling argue, “it is more likely that here, rather than in places where people are confident they Page 2 of 4
can regulate public behavior by informal controls, drugs will change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and cars will be stripped.” To access the full story, click here. 5. Creative Placemaking on Vacant Properties: Lessons Learned from Four Cities What would you think if you saw an abandoned house painted entirely gold? Or stumbled upon performance art, led by young people, on a long-vacant lot? Incorporating the arts into place-based community development can spark fresh interest in vacant property. At the same time, creative placemaking, as a community-centered process, is a powerful tool to support equitable revitalization. This Center for Community Progress report offers practical guidance for communities curious about how to leverage the power of creative placemaking to transform vacant properties. It includes a creative placemaking primer and key takeaways based on work conducted over the course of two years. It also explores emerging practices in four communities: Kalamazoo, Michigan; Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania; Newburgh, New York; and Macon, Georgia. To access this free resource, click here. 6. What Does Incrementalism Actually Mean? Strong Towns talks a lot about incremental change as opposed to sudden change. But what exactly does it mean? Let's explore a few different forms that incrementalism can take, accompanied by hand drawn diagrams. To access the full story, click here. 7. Streets as Places Toolkit Like few other places, streets are a public stage where life unfolds. From town parades and trick-ortreating, to markets and public gatherings, they’re where we celebrate and come together with our neighbors. They’re where we bump into friends, and one of the few places where we routinely encounter people who are different from ourselves. They’re where people have gathered to protest injustice for centuries. That’s why Project for Public Spaces has advocated for the idea that streets are more than just a means of mobility. Streets themselves are critical public spaces that can lend richness to the social, civic, and economic fabric of our communities. To access the toolkit, click here. 8. As the West Burns, A Town Fields Its Own Armature Firefighters On the first day of August, hot winds whipped across the foothills east of Oregon’s Mount Hood. The South Valley Fire, which started around 1:30 p.m., exploded to hundreds of acres in a few hours and thousands by nightfall. Pine trees lit up like torches. Sagebrush exploded in towers of flame dozens of feet high. Wind pushed the flames through dry wheat and pastureland in a long cresting wave. As the fire bore down on houses, shops and ranches, locals scrambled to the scene. Some brought plows and tractors to bury dry vegetation and create firebreaks in front of buildings, or carried hoses and water to douse the flames. Others loaded up animals in trailers to save them as the fire crept closer. To access the full story, click here.
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9. Great Willamette River Clean Up This year, on October 6th, volunteers from across Oregon will be cleaning up sites along the Willamette River from Oakridge to Portland. To find your local event, click here. 10. Webinar-Pedestrians Are People Too: The Criminalization of Walking. Wednesday, September 12th @ 11am Walking is the original form of transportation and yet too often it is forgotten in planning, promotion, and protection. Equally concerning is the increased messaging around victim-blaming, distracted walking legislation, and other moves to criminalize walking. This webinar will explore the criminalization in walking and the responsibility we all have in supporting a culture of safe and accessible walkability. This webinar assumes a basic knowledge of issues related to walking and walkable communities. Attendees of this webinar will: • • •
Learn how policies such as jaywalking are used to discourage walking and target individuals of color Hear how the increase of victim-blaming and distracted walking narratives plays a role in protecting the auto-centric culture of the US Be inspired to take action against messaging, policies, and programs that criminalize walking and public spaces
To register for this webinar, click here. 11. HEAL Cities Campaign The HEAL Cities Campaign for the Northwest is an initiative of the Oregon Public Health Institute, in partnership of the League of Oregon Cities and Kaiser Permanente. Currently, 39 cities across the state have adopted policies and systems that promote access to healthy, affordable foods, convenient access to opportunities for physical activity and recreation, and workplace wellness for municipal employees. These policies set the framework for healthy, prosperous communities where people live, work, and play. For more information about the HEAL Cities Campaign, click here.
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