Monday Mailing
Year 22 • Issue 13 14 December 2015 1. Seaside Students Set Sights On Establishing CERT Club 2. Tillamook County Roads Suffer Major Flood Damage As Thunderstorms, High Surf Roll In 3. Treeing The Competition 4. Urban Planning without Social Equity Is like Playing Chess without The Queen 5. $140 Billion Reasons Your City Park Is Just Like Disneyland 6. The Cleanest Cities? It’s Not So Simple 7. How Finland's Exciting Basic Income Experiment Will Work—And What We Can Learn From It 8. The GMO Dark Act Cannot Survive the Light 9. We Want More Walkable Neighborhoods -- but Can Our Communities Deliver?'Rural America at a Glance': Tough News 10. 'Montréal Urban Ecology Centre Releases New Placemaking Tool 11. Why Manning Up Is the Worst Thing to Do 1. Seaside Students Set Sights On Establishing CERT Club Seniors Caitlynn Howe and Silvia Avila are spearheading an effort to establish a teen Community Emergency Response Team club at Seaside High School and make the outreach program more prevalent in the Seaside community. With the help of Bijan Fayyaz, Clatsop County’s emergency services coordinator, Howe and Avila believe a CERT club could help incorporate more authentic training into tsunami drills, equip the school with the adequate quality and quantity of emergency equipment and work with other teen CERT groups in the area.
Quote of the Week: “Your body will honor you with wellness if you honor it with awareness.” ~Anonymous
Oregon Fast Fact: A coin toss decided the name of Portland in 1845. The losing name was Boston.
“We feel that making a club would create a footprint to make CERT a permanent part of the school and eventually have it become as big of an extracurricular as any other club,” Fayyaz said. To access the full story, click here. 2. Tillamook County Roads Suffer Major Flood Damage As Thunderstorms, High Surf Roll In Getting around Tillamook County was at least a little easier Thursday as floodwaters receded, allowing for the reopening of U.S. 101, county officials said. The highway remains closed, however, farther north at the small town of Wheeler and will remain so through the weekend, officials said Thursday afternoon. And other detours that usually allow residents and visitors to get around flood zones -- such as the Miami Foley Road at Garibaldi, and Oregon 53 in the Coast Range connecting motorists to U.S. 26 -- remain closed. To access the full story, click here.
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3. Treeing The Competition Oregon, especially the foothill regions of the state’s Cascade and Coast ranges, is surpassed by none when it comes to delivering one salient symbol of the holiday season: Christmas trees. No other state comes close, and no trees travel farther than those shipped out of Oregon, which is well over 90 percent of all Christmas trees harvested here. The Oregon Department of Agriculture reported last month that “up to 7 million Oregon Christmas trees will be harvested and sold locally, nationally and internationally.” Department spokesman Bruce Pokarney said the 2014 production value of Oregon’s Christmas trees tallied about $103,777,000, ranking it No. 12 among Oregon agriculture commodities in terms of value of production. To access the full story, click here. 4. Urban Planning without Social Equity Is like Playing Chess without The Queen With rising inequality, a looming climate change crisis, and persistent state of housing unaffordability being the defining issues in the growth of American cities in the twenty-first century, it is time for urban planners to take social policy seriously. Too often, social policy is relegated to a specialized role for advocacy planners, at other times ignored completely for being too political, and often times dismissed as “creeping socialism” that is inappropriate in land-use planning. This prompted planning legend Norman Krumholtz to call the profession “timid,” not as much to reflect on the work ethics of rank-and-file planners, but the leadership of those in power, who do not allow planning to pursue equity objectives. The most powerful piece on the planning chess-board is unavailable to most urban planners. A myth that discourages planners is that social policy is antithetical to American politics. From the common sense approach of Thomas Paine in providing a basic income for seniors and disabled, to protecting mothers and soldiers in the early twentieth century, to more recent approaches on poverty, pollution, retirement, and healthcare, successful U.S. social policy is informed by pragmatism, inclusion and innovation. To access the full story, click here. 5. $140 Billion Reasons Your City Park Is Just Like Disneyland City parks: They’re good for public health, air quality and property values. According to a new study commissioned by the National Recreation and Parks Association they’re good for business too, generating almost $140 billion in economic activity in 2013. That number — or, rather, the fact that it exists — shouldn’t be surprising. If the municipal parks of St. Louis and Atlanta happened to be privately run bowling alleys or miniature golf courses, their economic weight would already be part of the public record. But unlike amusement parks and their “attractions industry” ilk, city and regional parks aren’t usually measured by the jobs they create or goods they consume. With “The Economic Impact of Local Parks,” the NRPA hopes to change that, reminding readers that the leafy gathering spots aren’t just public amenities but GDP-boosting businesses. To access the full story, click here.
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6. The Cleanest Cities? It’s Not So Simple Some cities consume energy with admirable efficiency. Others are more profligate. Gauging which is which involves more than just reading a meter. And it depends who’s doing the judging. Various lists of winners and sinners tend to contain the same names. The usual winners include wealthy, white-collar American cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, and Nordic ones like Copenhagen and Oslo. The two European capitals held prominent positions within the region on the Siemens Green City index, a compilation of cities lauded for using innovative methods to minimize their impact on the environment. Singapore and, perhaps surprisingly, the Brazilian city of Curitiba were the leaders for Asia and Latin America. San Francisco and Seattle, along with New York and Los Angeles, ranked among the top 10 in a 2008 Brookings Institution study of the 100 largest American cities with the lowest carbon emissions per resident. Seattle was the only one of these four cities that did not also finish in the top 10 in the latest annual ranking of energy efficiency compiled by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. To access the full story, click here. 7. How Finland's Exciting Basic Income Experiment Will Work—And What We Can Learn From It Could Finland become the first country in the world to introduce a universal basic income? It's quite possible: The Finnish government likes the concept, and it's putting serious resources behind a national experiment. Starting in 2017, up to 100,000 Finns could get up to 1,000 euros a month, in lieu of other benefits. These lucky souls won't have to work. They won't have to prove they're in poverty to get the money. For two years, they'll get a fixed amount to do with what they will. The idea of giving away public money, no strings attached, sounds crazy at first. But basic income has been attracting a lot of interest of late. Cities in the Netherlands and Canada are planning pilots. Politicians from Spain to Greece have announced their support. And, here in the U.S., the concept has drawn fans from across the political spectrum, and particularly in Silicon Valley. Basic income is seen as a way of putting a floor under the poorest, and minimizing inefficiencies in current welfare systems. Finland's government is interested for three reasons, according to Olli Kangas, who's designing the research experiment. To access the full story, click here. 8. The GMO Dark Act Cannot Survive the Light An ardent attempt is afoot on Capitol Hill to prevent states from requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods – made especially urgent by the fact that Vermont’s labeling bill is set to take effect July 1st. Although proponents of these foods scored a major victory in July when they induced the House of Representatives to pass a bill (HR 1599) that would ban such state-enacted legislation, a version of that bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate; and because of the intense focus on crafting and passing crucial legislation that will provide necessary funding to keep the federal government functioning, none is likely to be during this session. Accordingly, biotech advocates are Page 3 of 5
endeavoring to get key provisions of HR 1599 attached as a rider to the must-pass appropriations bill – and sneak them into law without meaningful scrutiny and debate. But this attempt could be quickly foiled by one simple occurrence: the dissemination of a few essential facts. Moreover, if these facts had been widely known in July, HR 1599 could not have even made it through the House. That’s because the bill has always relied on disinformation – and could not survive an open airing of the truth. To access the full story, click here. 9. We Want More Walkable Neighborhoods -- but Can Our Communities Deliver? "The most requested neighborhood characteristic of all buyers is walkability," real estate broker Andrea Evers recently told a reporter for The Washington Post. But, in an article written by the Post's Michele Lerner, Evers went on to say that "very few areas" in the greater DC market meet the desired criterion, particularly if the prospective buyer wants to be within walking distance of a Metro transit station. And that, in a nutshell, is the good and bad news of walkability. Let's elaborate on the good part: More and more of us want to be within safe and comfortable walking distance of the destinations that meet our everyday needs, such as shops, places to eat, services, parks, and good transportation options that can take us downtown and to jobs and other places we want to go. It's the hottest trend in real estate, sought by buyers and renters alike. The demand is increasing In fact, demand for walkable neighborhoods is only going to increase, as more and more members of the millennial generation, the largest generation in American history, enter the home-seeking market. Millennials prefer urban amenities more than their predecessors: 50 percent consider it "very important" to be within an easy walk of places "such as shops, cafes and restaurants," according to the results of a nationwide survey released earlier this year by the National Association of Realtors and Portland State University. Among baby boomers, the portion considering walkability to be very important is 38 percent. To access the full story, click here. 10. 'Montréal Urban Ecology Centre Releases New Placemaking Tool A community-led approach is key to the success of any placemaking project. Project for Public Spaces believes this so strongly that the very first tenet listed in our 11 principles for creating great public spaces is: “The community is the expert.” So how does this community process actually work? Engaging with this issue at length, the Montréal Urban Ecology Centre (MUEC) has published a useful guide, called Participatory Urban Planning: Planning the city with and for its citizens, which was produced with support from Québec en Forme and the Public Health Agency of Canada. Today marks the release of the guide’s English translation, following the French language version that was launched this summer. Drawing on the work of PPS, and including other leading experts in the field such as Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl, the text offers a thorough yet digestible outline of the participatory planning process, as well as practical advice for communities looking to activate these projects and processes for themselves. Participatory Urban Planning does not take the idea of community-led development for granted, and there is an entire section dedicated to highlighting its value in “provid[ing] undeniable advantages Page 4 of 5
when compared to conventional processes managed solely by professionals. Since citizens are in the neighbourhood every day, they can provide observations and knowledge that are different from experts, thereby enriching the analysis.” To access the full story (and toolkit), click here. 11. Why Manning Up Is the Worst Thing to Do The traditional rules about how to be a “real man” in America are breaking down. Economic upheaval has shifted wage earning from men to their wives or partners. The rise of men as primary caregivers of their children is challenging our most fundamental assumptions about gender. The gay rights and trans rights movements are creating expansive new definitions of masculinity. Millennials are leading a much broader acceptance of diversity. This generation is witness to a collision between traditional masculinity and a new wave, one that values intimacy, caregiving, and nurturing. But many of us have spent our lives under immense pressure to stifle emotional expression of any kind. And we’re learning there’s a cost: Men are suffering higher rates of life-threatening disease, depression, and death. Simply put, the suppression of emotional expression in men is damaging their health and well-being. To access the full story, click here.
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