Monday Mailing
Year 24 • Issue 19 12 February 2018 1. Talent to Unveil Electric Car Chargers 2. Walkable Cities Reduce Blood Pressure and Hypertension Risk, Study Finds 3. Pedestrians First: A New Tool for Walkable Cities 4. Tribes Create Their Own Food Laws to Stop USDA From Killing Native Food Economies 5. Fight Over Household Wells Highlights Rural Growing Pains 6. Guide to Planning for Historic Resources 7. Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Launches a Platform for Making The City of Tomorrow 8. LOC Select Bill Summaries 9. The Problem with 'Transit Gaps' 10. 2018 Pre-Application for TGM Planning Grants 11. Infinite Earth Academy 1. Talent to Unveil Electric Car Chargers The city of Talent has jumped into the age of the electric car and will unveil two new chargers in front of its freshly solarized Community Center in an educational forum at 6 p.m. Thursday.
Quote of the Week: "The next time your mind wanders, follow it around for a while." ~Jessica Masterson Oregon Fast Fact: There are nine lighthouses standing along the coastline. Five are still being used; the others are designated historic monuments.
In a celebration and talk called “Electric Vehicles, the New Generation,” Rogue Climate Talent will host James Stevens, president of Southern Oregon Hybrid-Electric Vehicles Association, who will note the convenience of a local Level 2 charge, Talent’s first, with a caution that the technology is evolving fast and more juice may be needed. “The city has a new, very green community center, very energy efficient, and it made sense to have EV chargers as part of the green theme,” said Cynthia Care of Rogue Climate Talent and Together For Talent. She is an organizer of the event. “I hope it will be a draw for Talent and that it will encourage people to eat in local restaurants and downtown amenities.” To access the full story, click here. 2. Walkable Cities Reduce Blood Pressure and Hypertension Risk, Study Finds The largest-ever study of the link between city walkability and blood pressure has been held up as evidence of the “intangible value of urban design” in improving long-term health outcomes, say researchers. The study of around 430,000 people aged between 38 and 73 and living in 22 UK cities found significant associations between the increased walkability of a neighborhood, lower blood pressure and reduced hypertension risk among its residents.
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The outcomes remained consistent even after adjustments for socio-demographic, lifestyle and physical environment variables, though the protective effects were particularly pronounced among participants aged between 50 and 60, women, and those residing in higher density and deprived neighbourhoods. The paper was published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health this week. With hypertension a major risk factor for chronic and particularly cardiovascular diseases, researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University said the findings demonstrated the need for public health interventions to factor in urban design. To access the full story, click here. 3. Pedestrians First: A New Tool for Walkable Cities With the urban share of the world’s population expected to increase to 70 percent by 2050, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy is introducing a new tool to help governments, city planners, NGOs, and developers make cities more equitable, healthy, safe, and vibrant. The simple solution? Walkability. The new tool, Pedestrians First: Tools for a Walkable City will facilitate the understanding and the measurement of the features that promote walkability in urban environments around the world at multiple levels. With a better global understanding of walkability, and more consistent and frequent measurement of the walkability of urban environments, decision-makers will be empowered to enact policies that create more walkable urban areas. “Cities around the world are recognizing how essential walkability is for the access and health of their citizens, and the economic growth of their cities,” Says Joe Chestnut, Research Associate at ITDP and the author of Pedestrians First, “but walkability is not just a sidewalk, it’s a whole system of design and infrastructure. This tool lays out the basics, with checklists, examples, and policy recommendations to create an enjoyable walking environment in any city.” Using the framework developed by ITDP for their TOD Standard, Pedestrians First breaks down eleven indicators for measuring walkability, with each indicator and their measurement methods discussed in detail. To access the full story and tool, click here. 4. Tribes Create Their Own Food Laws to Stop USDA From Killing Native Food Economies SALT RIVER PIMA-MARICOPA INDIAN COMMUNITY, Ariz. – Jacob Butler eyed a lemon tree—its bright yellow fruit nestled among thick green leaves and set against the blue Arizona sky— then checked on the tiny pomegranates and grapes in the garden as a black-striped lizard darted into the shade of a mesquite tree. In the distance, downtown Phoenix glittered under the rising sun. “We try to grow what’s been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” says Butler, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community garden coordinator, as he surveyed the land and the plants growing on it. “For the past 13 years we’ve been doing this, so it’s in the minds of the people now.” To access the full story, click here. 5. Fight Over Household Wells Highlights Rural Growing Pains In 2016, a Washington Supreme Court ruling put the brakes on rural homebuilding in several areas across the state. The so-called Hirst decision required counties to prove that new household wells wouldn’t drain needed water from nearby streams before they issued building permits. But last Page 2 of 4
month, state legislators, under pressure from landowners and building and realtors’ associations, passed a bill that, with some caveats, allows new wells. The challenge of balancing rural growth with the needs of other water users and the environment extends far beyond Washington state. How it plays out here and across the region will determine how many more people can join the ranks of the millions of rural Westerners who rely on domestic water wells. In Washington, such wells account for only about 1 percent of the water consumed statewide during the summer, but depending on their location, their impacts can loom much larger. In Spokane County, for example, the Washington Department of Ecology attributes more than 11 percent of summertime water use to domestic wells. But even though domestic wells are a major part of the state’s water system — and, in some places, can draw down nearby creeks — they aren’t regulated as strictly as they could be. To access the full story, click here. 6. Guide to Planning for Historic Resources The Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development and the State Historic Preservation Office of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department have prepared a guide to assist those using the new rule: “Planning for Historic Preservation in Oregon: A Guide to the Administrative Rule for Protecting Historic Resources under Statewide Planning Goal 5.” The guide’s primary audience is local-government planners and members of city and county historic preservation and planning commissions, but the authors hope others find value in it as well. To access the guide, click here. 7. Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Launches a Platform for Making The City of Tomorrow In October of last year, Alphabet, Google's parent company announced it was taking its datahoovering powers out of purely digital realm and into 3-D space. Sidewalk Labs, its urban innovation venture, officially launched a partnership with the city of Toronto, where it would experiment in improving—nay, optimizing—city streets by observing and measuring how people live. “This is not some random activity from our perspective,” Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt said at the time. “This is the culmination, from our side, of almost 10 years of thinking about how technology can improve people’s lives.” To access the full story, click here. 8. LOC Select Bill Summaries Throughout the 2018 session, LOC will make bills relevant to cities will be available in one easy to search location. Summaries and status updates are included weekly to keep cities current on legislation affecting local governments during the session. Bills are categorized by city concern using the League’s standing and issue committee titles. This summary provides a hyperlink directly to the bill’s language and additional information, located under the bill number, as it becomes available. This includes, but is not limited to, staff measure summaries, testimony, sponsor(s) and amendments. In addition, users can view a summary of the bill, see which lobbyist is assigned to it, and get a current status report. To access LOC’s list of bill summaries, click here.
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9. The Problem with 'Transit Gaps' The Chicago-based nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology recently unveiled its AllTransit Gap Finder—an online mapping tool designed to point out areas with “inadequate” transit service. It’s a good effort, and it’s certainly good that we have more tools for understanding transit demand. But the concept of “transit gaps” (or even worse, “transit deserts”) is less enlightening than it seems, for two reasons. First, it ignores the cost of providing transit, which has to be considered when actually doing anything about a transit gap. Second, it presents values, goals, and priorities as though they could be deduced purely from the data, which is never true. A transit gap is some kind of difference between transit service and transit need or demand. But need and demand are different things. A need means that there are people whose lives would be better if they had transit. A demand is an indication that transit service, if it were provided, would achieve high ridership. To access the full story, click here. 10. 2018 Pre-Application for TGM Planning Grants The 2018 Pre-Application for TGM Planning Grants is now available! Pre-applicants are asked to submit a short paragraph describing the local issue and desired outcome. A TGM staff member will contact each pre-applicant to discuss project ideas and assist with submitting a qualifying grant project application or request for other TGM Community Assistance service. The formal preapplication period ends March 9, 2018, but pre-applications may be submitted at any time. The 2018 TGM Grant application period will open in April and close in June. For more information, click here. 11. Infinite Earth Academy Infinite Earth Academy is an idea sharing, training, mentoring, networking, and movement building platform. We believe the path to a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future is through radical innovation at the local level and rapidly spreading the best ideas, strategies, and tools. Local and regional leaders are already making great progress in addressing the pressing environmental, economic, and social challenges of our time, but we need to more rapidly spread the best ideas and dramatically increase sustainability, resiliency, and equity in communities across the United States. Our mission is to support visionary local leaders through idea sharing, training, mentoring, and most importantly by creating a support network and building a movement. To access the Infinite Earth Academy site, click here.
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