Monday Mailing
Year 24 • Issue 17 29 January 2018 1. Ten Strategies For Transforming Cities and Public Spaces Through Placemaking 2. Free E-Book: Energizing Entrepreneurs: Charting a Course for Rural Communities. 3. Making Space for Culture: How Cities Can Preserve Their Valued (and Valuable) Cultural Assets 4. This Urban Design Tool Helps Planners Understand The Entire Street Network 5. This Could Be America's First Solar-Powered Town 6. Ask These 9 Questions Before Every Meeting To Avoid Wasting Time 7. Webinar: From the Ground Up - Built Environment Strategies and Support for Walkable Communities. Tue, Feb 27, 2018 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PST 8. Grants Available for Historic Properties and Archeological Projects 9. When Atlantic Salmon Escape in The Pacific, Who Cleans Up? 10. Webinar: Telling Your Community Story: Strengthening Economies through Place Branding. Wed, Feb 7, 2018 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST 11. Q&A: What Are The Chances Of Offshore Oil And Gas Drilling In The Northwest? 1. Ten Strategies For Transforming Cities and Public Spaces Through Placemaking Building inclusive, healthy, functional, and productive cities is perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity today, and there are no easy solutions. A key part of the puzzle, though, lies right at the heart of the world’s urban areas: its public spaces. Here are ten ways you can help strengthen the social fabric of your community and jump-start economic development by creating and sustaining healthy public spaces. Quote of the Week: “We build the road and the road builds us.” ~a Sri Lankan Saying Oregon Fast Fact: The Oregon Legislature designated the Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium) as the Oregon state flower by resolution in 1899.
IMPROVE STREETS AS PLACES Placemaking is based on a simple principle: if you plan cities for cars and traffic, you will get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you will get people and places. More traffic and greater road capacity are not the inevitable results of growth. They are products of very deliberate choices made to shape our communities to accommodate the private automobile. We have the ability to make different choices — starting with the decision to design our streets as comfortable and safe places for everyone — for pedestrians and bicyclists as well as drivers. To access the full story, click here. 2. Free E-Book: Energizing Entrepreneurs: Charting a Course for Rural Communities. In our first book, Energizing Entrepreneurs: Charting a Course for Rural Communities, we made the case for entrepreneurship development and provided a roadmap for communities interested in getting started.
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Since then, we've honed our approach and built out our tools and resources to help communities of all sizes create a supportive ecosystem for their entrepreneurs to increase impact. Throughout this book you'll find links to e2 University, an online platform for sharing our work and tools. Is the book for you? If you fit within one of these categories, the answer is yes! 1. You've never invested in economic development--you'll learn why you must take control of your community's economic future and get concrete ideas for doing it. 2. You're looking for alternatives to conventional economic development approaches--you'll find inspiration in a proven framework. 3. You've practiced entrepreneur-focused economic development with limited success--you'll find a systems approach that will help you achieve greater prosperity. To access a free copy of this e-book, click here. 3. Making Space for Culture: How Cities Can Preserve Their Valued (and Valuable) Cultural Assets In 2013, Maggie Lea—owner of one of Austin’s most beloved local bars and music venues, Cheer Up Charlie’s—found out she was being evicted. When Lea and co-owner Tamara Hoover started the venue as a food truck in 2010, East 6th street was a deserted area with little nightlife to speak of. In the three years since opening, Cheer Up evolved into an LGBT-friendly outpost for East Austin’s creative class with multicolored murals and lights, a menu featuring affordable, unconventional cocktails, and nightly live music shows, with profits going into improving the space. In that same time, East 6th transformed into one of the city’s most popular nighttime destinations with a host of new honky-tonks, restaurants and dive bars. When Lea and Hoover asked why they were being asked to leave their space, their landlord said he had realized how well the business was doing based on their alcohol sales tax records, and that he would be opening his own bar there, based on the same aesthetic and concept that Cheer Up Charlie’s had. To access the full story, click here. 4. This Urban Design Tool Helps Planners Understand The Entire Street Network For planners and transportation officials, the road to transit improvements often hits speed bumps when it comes to data sharing and visualizations. A new online tool wants to solve those misunderstandings with a shared platform that makes improving the streetscape easier and more efficient. Remix, an San Francisco-based startup that designed a route-planning tool used by hundreds of city transit agencies, is developing a new program to help cities improve and redesign their streets. In an announcement this morning, the company unveiled its latest product prototype, developed with insight from the National Association of City Transit Officials (NACTO). To access the full story, click here. 5. This Could Be America's First Solar-Powered Town A new solar-powered town in Florida has already built a restaurant, a school and a community gathering space. Now in 2018, Babcock Ranch is adding something even more important: residents. Page 2 of 5
Below Tampa and Orlando, about half an hour northeast from the tourist attractions of Fort Myers, Babcock Ranch is built on and 18,000-acre expanse and hopes to have 19,500 homes and 50,000 residents within 20 to 25 years. Its first residents moved in January 4th. While building a town is a multi-faceted project that no one person could accomplish, Babcock Ranch is the brainchild of one man: Syd Kitson, a Florida developer. "In 2005," the town's website states, Kitson "set out to prove that smart growth and preservation could work hand in hand." To access the full story, click here. 6. Ask These 9 Questions Before Every Meeting To Avoid Wasting Time Many activities suck up a lot of our time at work. And no activity feels more like a time suck than pointless meetings. Of course, not all meetings are a waste of time. If done right, a meeting can solve problems or convey information without an endless Slack thread. The key is preparation, and asking yourself the right questions. Before you get your team together for another pointless meeting, ask the following questions to ensure that it’ll be the most productive use of everyone’s time. To access the full story, click here. 7. Webinar: From the Ground Up - Built Environment Strategies and Support for Walkable Communities. Tue, Feb 27, 2018 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PST The purpose of this webinar is to discuss how built environment strategies such as land development plans, policies, and zoning code reforms can support walkable communities ---and the importance of collaboration between planners, transportation and public health practitioners. Join us on February 27th, 2018 at 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific for the webinar, "From the Ground Up: Built Environment Strategies and Support for Walkable Communities." By the end of the webinar, attendees will be able to: Understand the evidence-based built environment strategies that improve physical activity Become familiar with the recently completed CDC-funded resources from the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago Be able to Illustrate the association between zoning elements and walking Be informed about the American Public Health Association collaborative activities with other agencies to promote walking and walkability as a way to improve public health Learn how state and local health departments can facilitate effective collaboration with planning, transportation and others to ensure activity-friendly policies and practices - including zoning code reform and land development plans To register for this webinar, click here. 8. Grants Available for Historic Properties and Archeological Projects The State Historic Preservation Office is offering grants for work on historic properties and for archaeology projects. The annual grants fund up to $20,000 in matching funds for preservation projects. The Preserving Oregon Grants fund preservation of historic buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Work may include non-maintenance preservation like window repair, roof work, foundation projects, and plumbing and electrical needs. Recently funded projects include Page 3 of 5
preservation of the IOOF cabins at Paulina Lake, the Floed-Lane House in Roseburg, and Gaiety Hollow in Salem. The program also funds significant work contributing toward identifying, preserving and interpreting archaeological sites. Archaeology projects were funded in Douglas and Lincoln Counties and along the coast. The Diamonds in the Rough Grants help restore or reconstruct the facades of buildings that have been heavily altered over the years. These grant return buildings to their historic appearance and potentially qualify them for historic register designation (local or national). Façade projects in Astoria, Baker City, Burns and Cave Junction were funded in the last cycle. Preservation office staff is happy to talk with applicants about potential grant projects, review applications and assist with the online grant system. Free grant workshops on project planning and grant writing and using the online grant application will be available. Workshops will be in Salem on March 8 and 13. Webinar workshops will be available on March 15 and 22. To learn more about the grants and workshops visit www.oregonheritage.org or contact Kuri Gill at Kuri.Gill@oregon.gov or 503-986-0685. 9. When Atlantic Salmon Escape in The Pacific, Who Cleans Up? One day late last August, a netted enclosure near Washington’s Cypress Island collapsed, releasing tens of thousands of non-native Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound. Coastal tribes and state officials were not informed about Cooke Aquaculture’s spill, the cause of which is still under investigation, for several days. But once alerted, coastal tribes, including the Swinomish, Samish and Lummi, asked licensed tribal fishermen to capture the non-native species, which they feared could imperil native salmon. The Lummi Nation was most responsive to the spill; it declared a state of emergency and caught more than 43,500 of an estimated 160,000 escapees, selling them back to Cooke, which disposed of them. Some caught upwards of 7,000 pounds per day on their boats. “If it were sockeye, a fisherman would have died and went to heaven, it was that much fish,” Timothy Ballew II, former Lummi Nation chairman, recalled recently at the tribal government offices near Bellingham, Washington. The Atlantic salmon, however, were not welcome: “We don’t allow Atlantic in our building.” To access the full story, click here. 10. Webinar: Telling Your Community Story: Strengthening Economies through Place Branding. Wed, Feb 7, 2018 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST Many smaller and rural communities across the country that have historically been reliant on one economic industry are pursuing innovative economic diversification and community revitalization strategies. Through the lens of coal country, we will continue to explore this topic, as many traditionally coal-reliant communities seek to build stronger, more resilient local and regional economies. Join this educational webinar for a deep dive into the value of place and community branding as a powerful tool in stimulating both economic development and community pride and identity. Attendees will hear from community branding subject-matter experts, in addition to local and regional implementation examples place branding & digital storytelling, including social media and community videos. To register for this webinar, click here.
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11. Q&A: What Are The Chances Of Offshore Oil And Gas Drilling In The Northwest? Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced plans to reopen the West Coast to offshore oil and gas leasing. It’s a dramatic reversal of Obama-era policies that blocked offshore drilling, and it’s drawn fierce opposition from all three West Coast governors. The plans offer up a chance to drill for oil and gas off the coasts of Oregon and Washington for the first time in more than 50 years. But with strong opposition and unproven oil and gas reserves, it’s unclear whether anyone will take that chance. To access the full story, click here.
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