Monday Mailing Quote of the Week: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” ~Anais Nin
Oregon Fast Fact: In 1905 the largest long cabin in the world was built in Portland to honor the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Year 24 • Issue 16 22 January 2018 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Fear of the Federal Government in the Ranchlands of Oregon How Urban Planners Can Connect More People to Opportunity Event: 2018 Mid-Valley Food Summit - February 2, 2018 Western Renewable Energy Just Keeps Getting Cheaper Decision Expected Soon on Fate of Sage Grouse Plan Sea-Level Rise Exposure Inventory for Oregon's Estuaries Webinar: Strategic Investment to Shape and Incentivize Development January 24 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST Seven Trends That Augur The Future Of Urban Design Creative Discovery on the Maker Trail in Enid, Oklahoma Resource: Streets as Places Toolkit Colorado Divide
1. Fear of the Federal Government in the Ranchlands of Oregon I took the eastern route from Idaho, on a day of freezing rain, over the Strawberry Mountains, into the broad John Day River Basin, in Oregon. I was used to empty places. Most of my childhood was spent in this region of eastern Oregon, in remote areas of the sagebrush desert or in the volcanic mountains with their jagged peaks and oldgrowth forests. My family moved away just before I entered high school, and I never returned; I’ve felt in romantic exile ever since. This part of America that had once belonged to my childhood became the spotlight of national news in the winter of 2016, when the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — an old childhood haunt — became the scene of a cowboy takeover. The takeover began as a protest in the town of Burns after two ranchers were sentenced to prison for arsons on federal land. The ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, caught the attention of the Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy, who thought the punishment unfair. Bundy and a crowd of nearly 300 marchers paraded through Burns, and a splinter group eventually took over the Malheur headquarters. For 41 days, they refused to leave, protesting federal ownership of public lands, which they considered unlawful and abusive. I didn’t understand what had happened since I left, why so many people seemed so disillusioned and angry. To access the full story, click here. 2. How Urban Planners Can Connect More People to Opportunity We certainly live in a metropolitan moment. Across the planet, including the United States, the urban share of the population continues to grow. With growing populations also comes more opportunities: new jobs, new schools, new health care facilities, and new sources of entertainment. Yet to keep metropolitan economies functioning while creating a platform for shared prosperity, transportation and land use planners must find new ways to connect people to all those opportunities. We now know that our current models won’t build us to where we want to go; more highway lanes just induce additional driving demand, bringing even more congestion in their wake. Even worse, the current model Page 1 of 4
tends to prioritize high vehicle speeds at the expense of bicycle and pedestrian safety. Instead, more people within the governance and planning communities have begun to subscribe to the concept of building around accessibility, or the ease of reaching destinations. If the current model focuses on speed, the accessibility model looks at land use and infrastructure from a more holistic economic perspective: Are we optimizing connections between people and places? To access the full story, click here. 3. Event: 2018 Mid-Valley Food Summit - February 2, 2018 Farmers, food processors, gardeners, volunteers and all who eat: don’t miss out on our annual Food Summit. Our Willamette Valley is a bountiful agricultural center and this event will give you an opportunity learn more about regional farm and food issues. Join us at Putnam University Center on the campus of Willamette University to engage in the exciting collaborative plans to improve the Mid-Willamette Valley food system with a focus on infrastructure and access to healthy food. To register for this event, click here. 4. Western Renewable Energy Just Keeps Getting Cheaper Wind and solar projects in the western U.S. have reached price levels that few would have predicted even a few years ago. For those that have read our blogs before, you might be thinking that we’ve said that before, and, well, we have. But the prices keep falling, breaking records time and time again. These prices should have every policymaker, utility, and energy investor in the region reconsidering their thinking about how much renewable energy to purchase, and when. The short answer: as much as you can get, and now. To access the full story, click here. 5. Decision Expected Soon on Fate of Sage Grouse Plan PORTLAND, Ore. – The Interior Department is expected to announce its decision soon on the fate of the sage grouse conservation plan, which spans Oregon and 10 other western states. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says his agency is re-examining the plan to see if it hinders energy development, meaning sage grouse habitat could be opened up to more drilling and mining. Jack Connelly is a former wildlife biologist who worked for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game for nearly three decades. He and 16 other scientists sent a letter to Zinke in October expressing concern that the voices of scientists and wildlife managers weren't being heard on this decision. "If policymakers and agency leadership want to seriously address sage grouse conservation, they have got to embrace the science, and the scientists and the habitat managers and so forth, and bring them in and listen to their advice,” he stresses. “And that's simply not being done." To access the full story, click here. 6. Sea-Level Rise Exposure Inventory for Oregon's Estuaries Julie Sepanik joined the Department of Land Conservation and Development and the Oregon Coastal Management Program as a NOAA Coastal Management Fellow in September, 2015, focused on community resiliency to sea-level rise. In 2010, the "Oregon Climate Change Adaptation Framework" had identified sea-level rise as an expected climate risk for Oregon with far ranging Page 2 of 4
effects, including habitat disruption, destruction of roads and urban landscapes, impacts on the state's economy, and threats to public health and safety. Responding to these needs, Sepanik created a sea-level rise exposure inventory. The exposure inventory fills a data gap for local partners working on climate adaptation planning and related coastal resilience issues. By identifying the assets and geographies most likely to be impacted by sealevel rise in Oregon's estuaries, the inventory prioritizes areas to focus resources. The project area included 21 Oregon estuaries and the surrounding low-lying shorelands. To access the full story, click here. 7. Webinar: Strategic Investment to Shape and Incentivize Development - January 24 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST Does Your Vision Pencil Out? Local leaders throughout the country envision making their community more livable, with walkable neighborhoods and vibrant downtowns. Making this vision a reality takes many partners—from the public sector to private developers—and an alignment of policy and capital. In this two-part series, Alex Joyce will provide a developer's perspective on how land use policies impact development, and how communities can support vision with market realities. In part one, we looked at the influence of land use policies on development costs, and how this shapes project type and design. We looked ‘under the hood’ to show how some land use code requirements create barriers to good development. (Register for Part One here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7195305634439070211) To register for this webinar, click here. 8. Seven Trends That Augur The Future Of Urban Design Cities are, and always have been, an evolving organism. However, today’s social, environmental, and technological forces are making the evolution more volatile and uncertain. Income inequality is skewing the demographics of cities and suburbs. Climate change is sounding the alarm for more resilient design. Silicon Valley is disrupting, for lack of a better word, everything. As Co.Design looks back on architecture and urban design headlines from 2017, these seven themes emerged and will augur the future of our built environments. To access the full story, click here. 9. Creative Discovery on the Maker Trail in Enid, Oklahoma Learning through discovery gives us the problem-solving experience necessary to be creative and innovative thinkers. The maker movement, including makerspaces and Maker Faires, involves independent inventors, designers, artisans and tinkerers creating and sharing. Inspired by the maker concept, Main Street Enid created a Maker Trail with opportunities to explore, create, and discover at various “maker stations” around downtown Enid at our First Friday and Oktoberfest event in October 2017. A “trail” of maker activities called back to the historic Chisholm Trail (aka “world’s greatest cattle trail”) that went through downtown Enid 150 years ago, and created the opportunity to lead attendees off the beaten path of the main square to shopping, dining, and arts and entertainment locations many hadn’t noticed before. To access the full story, click here. Page 3 of 4
10. Resource: 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. What is Streets as Places? Donald Appleyard may have said it best: "Streets have been the places where children first learned about the world, where neighbors met, the social centers of towns and cities, the rallying points for revolts, the scenes of repression." Streets showcase the lives of our communities, and being exposed to the good and bad of the world on our streets can make us more compassionate, empathetic, and connected citizens. To access this resource, click here. 11. Colorado Divide From the Eastern Plains to isolated mountain towns, from the Western Slope to the upper northeast hard by Nebraska, it’s often said there are two Colorados. There is the Denver metropolis and, with it, the string of cities along the Front Range corridor. And then there is rural Colorado. In the Colorado Divide, The Denver Post examines many of the issues that cast rural Coloradans in contrast with their urban cousins, and it explores the values and norms that shape responses to the challenges they face. To access the full story, click here.
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