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Monday Mailing

Year 24 • Issue 11 27 November 2017 1. This City Found a Way to Get Everyone Involved in Urban Planning 2. Those Who Shop Local to be Rewarded 3. A Growing Number of Young Americans Are Leaving Desk Jobs to Farm 4. Burned-Out Americans Are Helping Wellness Tourism Flourish 5. TED Talk Playlist: What Your Data Reveals About You 6. How Jacobs and Alexander Unlock 21st Century Problems 7. Where Does It Hurt? Using Telehealth to Improve Community Broadband 8. Why Understanding These Four Types of Mistakes Can Help Us Learn 9. Funding Opportunity: National Trails System Information, Corridor Protection, and Training 10. County Vets Energy Plan, Eyes STR Rules 11. Why Parking Minimums Almost Destroyed My Hometown and How We Repealed Them 1. This City Found a Way to Get Everyone Involved in Urban Planning When Monica Palmquist moved to Cortez, Colorado, in 2010, she was shocked to find that the Hispanic population in a town with a Spanish name had almost no presence in the community’s civic life. Born in Mexico, Palmquist had spent most of her life in the United States, in cities where the Hispanic community was visible and active. In Cortez, where she worked as a community organizer, they were rarely ever seen.

Quote of the Week: “We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Oregon Fast Fact Some of the earliest rhinoceros fossils in the world were found in the John Day fossil beds.

“We were called ‘The Invisible Community,’” Palmquist says. “We don’t get ourselves into trouble. We don’t make noise.” Palmquist had taken it upon herself to go door to door to organize the Hispanic community, and the doors literally did not open. The community has a long history of distrusting public officials, and Palmquist’s status as a fellow Mexican American did not outweigh the perception that she was an outsider.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Those Who Shop Local to be Rewarded ONTARIO — Small Business Saturday is the small business answer to Black Friday, the traditional major shopping day which happens the day after Thanksgiving.

Revitalize Ontario, the organization focused on improving economic activity in downtown stores, is starting its own small business promotion on Friday — a day earlier than the nationwide movement — in hopes of drawing Friday shoppers into their establishments.

On Friday and Saturday, people going into one of at least 17 participating downtown businesses will be able to receive a passport, to be stamped or marked at each business visited, said Kayla Kirksey, economic development coordinator for Revitalize Ontario.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. A Growing Number of Young Americans Are Leaving Desk Jobs to Farm Liz Whitehurst dabbled in several careers before she ended up here, crating fistfuls of fresh-cut arugula in the early-November chill.

The hours were better at her nonprofit jobs. So were the benefits. But two years ago, the 32-year-old Whitehurst — who graduated from a liberal arts college and grew up in the Chicago suburbs — abandoned Washington for this three-acre farm in Upper Marlboro, Md. She joined a growing movement of highly educated, ex-urban, first-time farmers who are capitalizing on booming consumer demand for local and sustainable foods and who, experts say, could have a broad impact on the food system.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Burned-Out Americans Are Helping Wellness Tourism Flourish “People are burning out a lot faster these days at work,” says Melissa Bruno, founder of Invigorate Travel.

Bruno calls herself a “lifestyle travel consultant,” not a travel agent. She sees herself as someone who not only books travel for you, but also offers you a way to change your lifestyle. Bruno sends groups to exotic locales like Bali and Peru for customized hiking trips and yoga immersions. She calls her getaways “transformative experiences.”

“People need an outlet and it has to be a little different than what it normally has been,” she says.

Citing the traditional beach vacation of Mai Tais, suntans, and lazing around on a hammock, she says, “People aren’t satisfied with that anymore—at least not for the younger people. The millennials want more. And they’re willing to spend the money.”

To access the full story, click here.

5. TED Talk Playlist: What Your Data Reveals About You Does what you share online reveal more than you think? Discover what your personal data says about you with these insightful talks.

To access the playlist, click here.

6. How Jacobs and Alexander Unlock 21st Century Problems I realized soon after I delved into Cities Alive that I was reading an important analysis for urbanism— now and in the coming decades. Those in the land-use planning and development business know the stories of urban renewal damage, the failure of modern urban projects like Pruitt-Igoe, and the consequences of suburban sprawl. Most are familiar with Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, both of which have been influential in urban planning, architecture, and other fields.

But something was going on at a deeper level that underlay the dysfunction Jacobs and Alexander fought from the 1960s onward. Cities Alive by Michael Mehaffy examines Jacobs and Alexander together to get at the root philosophical problems that created erroneous thinking in city building in the 20th Century, continuing to the present day.

To access the full story, click here.

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7. Where Does It Hurt? Using Telehealth to Improve Community Broadband The high rate of rural hospital closures is one factor driving the increasing interest in telemedicine, which uses high speed internet services to connect patients with healthcare providers.

What some may not understand is that the push for telehealth may very well be the secret to advancing broadband itself in underserved communities, both rural and urban.

Understanding Telehealth Telehealth is not a specific service but a variety of technologies and tactics to deliver virtual medical care, wellness, health awareness, and education in a holistic manner. Broadband is a major part of that delivery mechanism. Telemedicine is using intranet or Internet networks to diagnose, administer, initiate, assist, monitor, intervene, or report a medical condition or procedure.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Why Understanding These Four Types of Mistakes Can Help Us Learn We can deepen our own and our students’ understanding of mistakes, which are not all created equal, and are not always desirable. After all, our ability to manage and learn from mistakes is not fixed. We can improve it.

Here are two quotes about mistakes that I like and use, but that can also lead to confusion if we don’t further clarify what we mean: “A life spent making mistakes is not only most honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing” – George Bernard Shaw “It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose which it truly has.” – Maria Montessori These constructive quotes communicate that mistakes are desirable, which is a positive message and part of what we want students to learn. An appreciation of mistakes helps us overcome our fear of making them, enabling us to take risks. But we also want students to understand what kinds of mistakes are most useful and how to most learn from them.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Funding Opportunity: National Trails System Information, Corridor Protection, and Training The purpose of the proposed Cooperative Agreement is to assist the Recipient in providing National Trails System Information, Corridor Protection, and Training to build capacity to better administer, manage, and sustain National Trails. The primary focus is to support National Scenic Trails and National Historic Trails.

To learn more and apply, click here.

10. County Vets Energy Plan, Eyes STR Rules Hood River County Board of Commissioners on Monday took a first glimpse at an energy plan on the table for five local government boards’ consideration.

John Roberts, County Community Development director, and Marla Harvey, county energy and sustainability coordinator, gave an overview of the plan.

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“It’s a blueprint to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and increase economic benefits related to energy use in Hood River County while improving community resilience and energy independence,” Harvey told the board.

The non-binding advisory document lays out goals and objectives for local governments. A quartet of other panels will join the county in reviewing the plan over the next month: the cities and ports of Hood River and Cascade Locks.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Why Parking Minimums Almost Destroyed My Hometown and How We Repealed Them I never thought about parking minimums until my favorite pizza place was getting knocked down. A local bank was building a new three-story headquarters across the street and the city of Sandpoint, Idaho’s parking laws required that the bank either provide around 200 additional parking spaces around their new building or pay $10,000 per space in lieu of providing them.

Weighing the options, it was actually cheaper for the bank to purchase the surrounding properties, kick out the existing businesses, knock down the structures, and build parking. So the small pizza stand with the best slices in town closed and was removed.

But that only accounted for a small portion of the parking the bank required. To satisfy the city’s parking requirements, they were eyeing Monarch Mountain Coffee, a community gathering place next door to the new parking lot that was the former home of the pizza stand. Knocking down the local coffee shop, though, would still fall short of the city’s parking requirements and the bank would further have to acquire and demolish multiple other neighboring buildings that were currently used for housing and other small businesses.

To access the full story, click here.

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