Monday Mailing 100818

Monday Mailing

Year 25 • Issue 05

08 October 2018 1. Art of The Rural 2. A New Path to Code Reform 3. Webinar: The Divided City: Rising Inequality in America’s Older Cities, Thursday, 10/25 @ 12pm 4. Webinar: Preemption, Public Health, and Equity: The Search for Local Solutions, Tuesday, 10/16 @ 11am 5. Win-Win Solutions for Climate Protection and Health 6. DSIRE – Database of State Incentives for Renewable and Efficiency 7. Why the Housing Industry Should Fear Amazon 8. The Inertia of Lines on Paper 9. Everyone Agrees the Country Needs New Farmers. Trouble Is, They Can’t Afford Land 10. Oregon Wild Wednesday: Oregon Dunes, Wednesday, 10/10 @ 6pm 11. TGM Guide – Funding Biking and Walking Improvements 1. Art of The Rural As a digital platform, Art of the Rural elevates the rural arts field by facilitating rural-urban dialogue and cross-sector exchange. On the ground, we cultivate an organic manifestation of the digital mapping process by engaging the field in conversation, encouraging partnerships, while also activating participation in rural cultural policy and programming.

For more information, click here.

Quote of the Week: “Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.” ~John Ray

Oregon Fast Fact #8: The world's oldest shoes, 9,000-year-old sandals made of sagebrush and bark, were found at Fort Rock Cave in central Oregon in 1938.

2. A New Path to Code Reform The Project for Code Reform is one of the most important efforts we’ve had the privilege of contributing to in the last decade. We’ve spent most of our professional efforts crafting Form-Based Codes (FBC) for local governments, and while we still feel that is the zoning gold standard for placemaking, we realize FBCs are not accessible to many communities across North America for reasons of capacity— either staff or political. Increasingly, local governments want to align their zoning regulations with their goals for placemaking, incremental development, livability, and economic success. They realize conventional suburban standards have completely failed to solve for these issues; however, there are often gaps in political support, staff capacity, and budget to hire consultants for a major rewrite of their ordinances.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Webinar: The Divided City: Rising Inequality in America’s Older Cities, Thursday, 10/25 @ 12pm Light rail lines in Detroit, $5000/month apartments in St. Louis, and million-dollar condos in Center City Philadelphia. The cities are back…or are they? Yes, the urban revival is real, but at the same time, in these same cities, hundreds of neighborhoods are losing ground, families becoming poorer, and communities growing increasingly blighted. In this webinar, Alan Mallach, Community Progress senior Page 1 of 4

fellow and author of the important new book, The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America, will discuss what’s really going on in America’s older cities. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the forces that are driving their revival and why that revival is so uneven, why it is not reaching so many of these cities’ people and neighborhoods, and why it is actually making our cities more polarized and more segregated places. Ultimately, participants will gain a better understanding of what can be done, and why change needs to happen at the local level, city by city, by building from the ground up.

If you have any questions about registering, please contact Christina Carter at ccarter@communityprogress.net.

To register for this webinar, click here.

4. Webinar: Preemption, Public Health, and Equity: The Search for Local Solutions, Tuesday, 10/16 @ 11am Welcome to Preemption, Public Health, and Equity: The Search for Local Solutions, a bonus training in our Building Healthy, Equitable Communities Series. We invite you to join us for this webinar, in which we'll explore the effects of states' placing limits on local government power and how preemption both hinders and advances health equity. The discussion will touch on • • • •

The history of preemption and public health Current trends in preemption across the country Why preemption is an equity issue Resources that support efforts to preserve local democracy

This webinar will feature two exciting guest speakers: Kim Haddow of the Local Solutions Support Center will speak about current trends in state interference around the country. Miya Saika Chen of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF) will discuss PWF's research on connections between preemption and race. We will also answer your questions in real time!

To register for this webinar, click here.

5. Win-Win Solutions for Climate Protection and Health Conventional planning tends to be reductionist—individual problems are assigned to organizations or professions with narrowly-defined responsibilities. For example, transportation agencies are responsible for reducing traffic congestion and accidents; public health agencies are responsible for increasing public fitness and health; environmental agencies are responsible for reducing pollution; and social service agencies are responsible for improving opportunities for disadvantaged groups.

This simplifies the planning process but can result in these organizations rationally implementing solutions to the problems within their scope that exacerbate other problems facing society. It also tends to undervalue solutions that provide dispersed benefits.

More comprehensive analysis considers multiple planning goals, and so it helps to identify win-win strategies, which are policy and programs that provide multiple benefits, such as congestion reduction strategies that also help improve public fitness, reduce pollution, and improve mobility options for non-drivers. These are often referred to co-benefits. Because they help achieve multiple goals they create opportunities for multi-stakeholder coalitions, for example, a partnership between transportation, environmental, health, and social service agencies to support policies that create more compact and multimodal communities.

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Win-win solutions can help solve our most intractable problems. Last week I spoke at the Global Climate and Health Forum in San Francisco, part of the Global Climate Action Summit. This was an amazing event that included presentations by world health and environmental leaders. My presentation discussed win-win strategies that reduce climate emissions and help achieve other health objectives, including reduced local pollution, increased physical activity and fitness, reduced traffic accidents, increase affordability and improve mobility for non-drivers. I was pleased to see that the Forum's Call to Action recommendations includes many of these ideas, such as more planning for active transportation.

To access the full story, click here.

6. DSIRE – Database of State Incentives for Renewable and Efficiency DSIRE is the most comprehensive source of information on incentives and policies that support renewables and energy efficiency in the United States. Established in 1995, DSIRE is currently operated by the N.C. Solar Center at N.C. State University, with support from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Inc. DSIRE is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

For more information, click here.

7. Why the Housing Industry Should Fear Amazon For an e-commerce giant, Amazon has sprawling roots in commercial real estate, with its massive warehouses, Whole Foods footprint and splashy cashierless and 4-Star stores.

Now, Amazon (AMZN) is making its foray into residential real estate. Last week, the Alexa Fund, which invests in companies harnessing voice technology, participated in a $6.7 million round of funding to back Plant Prefab, a Southern California-based smart home builder.

There’s an obvious synergy between the future of home building and Amazon’s vision for the world.

The behemoth just announced a whole suite of new Alexa-enabled devices, ranging from a microwave to smart plugs. And the Alexa Fund acquired video home security device Ring for $1 billion earlier this year. Given Amazon has 62% of the voice assistant market and most of Alexa usage happens inside the home — whether cooking, listening to music or the news, the e-commerce giant is looking to get involved in the first steps of real estate development.

To access the full story, click here.

8. The Inertia of Lines on Paper When Congress was assembling what would become the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, lawmakers and their aides would sit down with transportation planners and, with nothing more sophisticated than a coarse map and an ink pen, decide the fate of entire neighborhoods.

If you’ve ever seen a Google Map without the satellite view turned on—just a bare collection of roads and streets—then you’ve experienced a map with more sophistication than what these policymakers worked with. With limited planning and even less insight as to what was happening on the ground, on these simple maps they drew lines that engineers and transportation planners would spend billions to reshape.

To access the full story, click here.

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9. Everyone Agrees the Country Needs New Farmers. Trouble Is, They Can’t Afford Land Since 2012, Virginia Moore and Rebecca Martello have farmed a tiny plot of land, just 1/16th of an acre, 45 minutes from their home in Bremerton, Washington. That worked out for the first five years, when the couple grew only enough to eat themselves. But this season they sold 10 shares in a 16-week CSA branded as Sun Dog Farm—a small step forward that quickly maxed out their cozy plot. Now, with every available inch already planted, their dream of becoming full-time farmers is on hold.

“We can’t expand, can’t go into markets, can’t serve more people,” says Moore. So the pair will continue to work elsewhere—Moore full-time as a mental health clinician, Martello part-time as a dental assistant—until they can find more land. The tiny plot they do have is owned by Martello’s parents. But the hunt for acreage of their own has so far been unsuccessful.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Oregon Wild Wednesday: Oregon Dunes, Wednesday, 10/10 @ 6pm Dina Pavlis, photographer, dunes enthusiast, and author of “Secrets of the Oregon Dunes”, will present at this Oregon Wild Wednesday event in Eugene.

Spanning more than 40 miles, the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area is the longest expanse of coastal sand dunes in the United States. Stretching from Florence to Coos Bay, the Oregon Dunes attract more than 1 million visitors each year and is recognized for its unique habitat for many plants and animals amid the temperate rainforests of the Oregon Coast range. Learn about this unique environment, why it is vanishing, and how stakeholders and volunteers are partnering with the US Forest Service to save this exceptional landscape.

Beer and other beverages are available for purchase at the event at Claim 52 Brewing's taproom.

Some limited snacks are available. Doors open at 6pm, and the presentation begins at 6:30pm. Free and open to all ages.

For more information about this event, click here.

11. TGM Guide – Funding Biking and Walking Improvements This eight-page guide reviews over 40 ways to fund improvements to walking and biking. The publication covers local options, state funds, federal funding, and private options, including some examples of how Oregon communities are finding the monies needed to make their communities easier for people to walk and bike in.

To access the guide, click here.

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