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Monday Mailing

Year 24 • Issue 15 08 January 2018 1.

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Fractured West Internship Program Launches in Gorge Pockets of Rural America at Risk of Being Undercounted in Census Canyon Conversations: Downtown Stayton Has a ‘Hearty’ February in Store Why Food Movements Are Unstoppable How ‘Not in My Backyard’ Became ‘Not in My Neighborhood’ (Re)Building Downtown When Historic Preservation Clashes with Housing Affordability Your Entire City Is an Instagram Playground Now Navigation Apps Are Turning Quiet Neighborhoods into Traffic Nightmares Hurricanes, Wildfires Made 2017 The Most Costly U.S. Disaster Year on Record

1. Fractured West My hometown, Portland, Oregon, voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the Democratic Party lost almost everywhere else in the state, including in every county east of the Cascade Mountains.

Except for in Vermont and Massachusetts, the same urban/rural divide in American politics exists around the country. A county-by-county map of the election looks like a Clinton archipelago in a vast Trump ocean.

Quote of the Week: “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything” ~Michael J. Fox Oregon Fast Fact: The hazelnut is Oregon's official state nut. Oregon is the only state that has an official state nut.

Lots of journalists have ventured into the rust belt to find out why so many working-class voters abandoned the Democrats for Donald Trump, but hardly anyone is asking why blue-collar voters in the rural West have been going the same way for years. Perhaps many people think that they already know. In his 2004 book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, journalist Thomas Frank argued that the Republican Party wins in his home state by pushing a culturally conservative platform to manipulate rural blue-collar folks to vote against their economic interests and for the party of big business and the wealthy instead of the party of labor unions and government assistance.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Internship Program Launches in Gorge Gorge employers were regularly saying they had trouble filling wellpaying, good-benefit jobs, even though they didn’t even require a college education.

Meanwhile, area high school kids were taking classes that made them ideal candidates for those jobs, but were still missing out on these employment opportunities.

Enter Gorge Works, a new program through the Port of The Dalles that offers paid summer internships and apprenticeship opportunities.

It began taking applications for internships in mid-December, and the application period closes Jan. 31.

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There are 13 internships available, and the roughly nine-week apprenticeships will start mid-June.

The application is online at gorgeworks.com.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Pockets of Rural America at Risk of Being Undercounted in Census Rural communities with high levels of poverty and lack of access to internet could be undercounted in the 2020 U. S. Census, according to a report.

Researchers at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire have identified numerous steps the Census Bureau can take to improving census collection in rural areas.

“It is important that rural scholars, rural leaders, and rural advocates monitor Census Bureau funding and Census planning over the next two years to make sure there are adequate resources for a complete and accurate count of all rural residents in the next U.S. decennial Census,” wrote demographer William O’Hare.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Canyon Conversations: Downtown Stayton Has a ‘Hearty’ February in Store With the passing of another yuletide and New Year, early 2018 sets in with a string of more moderately celebrated holidays as MLK Day, President’s Day and Valentines Day, each await us in the coming weeks and months.

Friends of Old Town Stayton plan to celebrate the latter occasion with a hearty adornment of street lamps.

Friends Program Coordinator Isaac Kort-Meade notified us in advance of Canyon Conversations on the Wednesday following Christmas at Moxieberry in downtown Stayton, sharing plans for this year’s “Walk of Hearts,” which he described as "a wildly successful event last Valentine’s Day." To access the full story, click here.

5. Why Food Movements Are Unstoppable Jonathan Latham has written an enthusiastic little piece explaining why food movements are unstoppable. As if that’s not a liberating thought, he adds that food qualifies as a liberation movement.

I’ll toast to that!

I encourage you to read Latham’s piece here. I also want to throw in my own two cents worth.

Latham writes for people hungry for food policy that can change the world for the better.

To access the full story, click here.

6. How ‘Not in My Backyard’ Became ‘Not in My Neighborhood’ In Seattle, the neighbors don’t want apartments for formerly homeless seniors nearby. In Los Angeles, they don’t want more high-rises. In San Jose, Calif., they don’t want tiny homes. In Phoenix, they don’t want design that’s not midcentury modern.

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Homeowners in each of these places share a common conviction: that owning a parcel of land gives them a right to shape the world beyond its boundaries.

The roots of this idea are as old as nuisance laws that have tried to limit how one property owner can harm another. Over the decades, though, homeowners have expanded their claim on the world beyond their lot lines. This means they look out for schools and streets in ways that are vital to American communities. But increasingly it also means the senior affordable housing, the high-rises and the tiny homes — also arguably vital to the larger community — are never built.

To access the full story, click here.

7. (Re)Building Downtown Downtowns, Main Streets, and city centers across the country are witnessing a renaissance. As more Americans chose the convenience and connectivity of walkable neighborhoods, communities are seeing new businesses, restaurants, and shops open in areas that were formerly vacant or economically distressed.

This movement presents an economic opportunity for communities. Creating a vibrant, walkable neighborhood can help attract and retain talented people and the companies that want to hire them.

It can expand economic opportunity within your community, and create a culture of engagement. It can help your region grow without compromising open land or working farms. It can also make your town or city stand out within your region as a destination to shop, dine, visit, move to, or invest. It’s a chance to celebrate your community’s diverse history, create new opportunities for long-time neighborhood residents, and to achieve the triple-bottom line of a more equitable community, stronger economy, and protected environment.

If your town or city already has a Main Street or neighborhood business district waiting for reinvestment, fantastic. You have great context for the strategies outlined in this guidebook. If your community does not have this kind of place, don’t despair. These strategies can also be applied to places like suburban shopping centers, former industrial parks, or other underused places with the potential for redevelopment. Each is an opportunity to create a long-term, resilient, economic asset for your community.

(Re)Building Downtown: A Guidebook for Revitalization is a resource for local elected officials who want to re-invigorate and strengthen neighborhood centers of economy, culture, and history through a smart growth approach to development.

For more information, click here.

8. When Historic Preservation Clashes with Housing Affordability Every city wrestles with the tension between preservation and evolution, the tricky balance between saving great old buildings and not freezing neighborhoods in amber. The tension is especially acute in any metro area that lacks enough homes for all the people who want to live there. Historic preservation, when it interferes with homebuilding, can worsen a city’s shortage of homes, driving up rents and pushing out low-income residents.

Case in point: last year a Seattle historic preservation board rejected a proposed 200-unit apartment building because it was taller than the nearby historic buildings—even though local zoning allowed

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that height. So the site remained a parking garage, and Seattle lost 200 new homes adjacent to the region’s biggest transit hub.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Your Entire City Is an Instagram Playground Now A few years ago, back when Tilda Swinton was taking naps at the Museum of Modern Art and every place was racing to build a Rain Room, it seemed as though museums had a problem. An infection.

A social contagion. Cutting-edge institutions known for making tastes had turned to chasing trends—or rather, likes and faves.

Now the galleries have been upended by a bigger social platform: cities themselves. Nobody needs institutions to deliver Instagram-ready social tableaus now that mayors, developers, and entrepreneurs have gotten in on the game. If the decade is drawing to a close with a revival of fascism and a decline in crucial societal norms, you wouldn’t know it from glancing around any downtown in America. Cities have never looked more twee.

Maybe the rise of the #GrammableCity was inevitable. Below, CityLab staffers have compiled a guide to all the ways that cities have hijacked your Insta feed.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Navigation Apps Are Turning Quiet Neighborhoods into Traffic Nightmares LEONIA, N.J. — It is bumper to bumper as far as the eye can see, the kind of soul-sucking traffic jam that afflicts highways the way bad food afflicts rest stops.

Suddenly, a path to hope presents itself: An alternate route, your smartphone suggests, can save time.

Next thing you know, you’re headed down an exit ramp, blithely following directions into the residential streets of some unsuspecting town, along with a slew of other frustrated motorists.

Scenes like this are playing out across the country, not just in traffic-choked regions of the Northeast.

But one town has had enough.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Hurricanes, Wildfires Made 2017 The Most Costly U.S. Disaster Year on Record Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria combined with devastating Western wildfires and other natural catastrophes to make 2017 the most expensive year on record for disasters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Monday.

The disasters caused $306 billion in total damage in 2017, with 16 separate events that caused more than $1 billion in damage each. The bulk of the damage, at $265 billion, came from hurricanes in particular.

“2017 was a historic year for billion-dollar weather and climate disasters,” said Adam Smith, an economist for NOAA, on a media call with reporters.

To access the full story, click here.

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