Monday Mailing Quote of the Week: “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better best” ~St. Jerome
Oregon Fast Fact: Throughout a year, on average, Timberline Lodge receives about 540 inches of snow. The average peak snowpack in a year is typically over 150 inches, with variation. Some years have had well over 240 inches packed, while others have had less than 100 inches of snowpack.
Year 24 • Issue 29 30 April 2018
1. Public Space Arms Race 2. When Solving Problems, Think About What You Could Do, Not What You Should Do 3. 10 Tips for Recruiting & Retaining Volunteers 4. Oregon Regulators Challenge County’s Rural Housing Zone 5. Travel Oregon Competitive Grants Program 6. Webinar: Documenting and Modeling Community Recovery - May 3rd, 8am-10am 7. Webinar: From 8 to 80: Creating Livable Communities for All Ages – May 9th, 11am-12pm 8. Eyes from the Street: The Neighbourhood Fabric that Matters 9. As Oregon Midterms Approach, Divided Sides Dig In 10. Gerontopoly: Homeownership, Wealth, And Age 11. Smart Growth Action Grant 1. Public Space Arms Race The promise of public space — and by extension, of the city in which it thrives — is that it is open to all. Strangers meet, learn from each other, and encounter one another as equals. But what if people don’t want to mix? Indeed, in Frederick Law Olmsted’s day, Central Park, that most democratic design, featured all sorts of devices to privilege refined over rowdy behavior. Prohibitions on active sports and alcohol favored the class of people (middle) who didn’t find these things fun. And if it’s hard for everyone to get along in public space, imagine the neighborhoods they call home. Forcing “the mingling of people who are not yet ready to mingle, and don’t want to mingle” was not going to work, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. told a meeting of city planners one hundred years ago. Have we gotten any better at living together? To access the full story, click here. 2. When Solving Problems, Think About What You Could Do, Not What You Should Do On a Saturday night in Modena, a picturesque city in one of the most wellknown culinary regions of Italy, a couple and their two young sons dined at the three-Michelin star restaurant Osteria Francescana. The father ordered for the family “Tradition in Evolution,” a tasting menu with 10 of the restaurant’s most popular dishes. One of them, “snails under the earth,” is served as a soup. Snails are covered by an “earth” of coffee, nuts, and black truffle, and “hidden” under a cream made with raw potato and a garlic foam. As maître d’ Giuseppe Palmieri took the order, he noticed a slightly desperate look on the boys’ faces. Palmieri turned to the younger boy and asked, “What would you like to have?” He answered: “Pizza!” To access the full story, click here. 3. 10 Tips for Recruiting & Retaining Volunteers Volunteers are an essential element of Community Heart & Soul® and key to making sure any project is resident-driven. Here Autumn Vogel, Project Coordinator for My Meadville, a Community Heart & Soul project in Page 1 of 4
Meadville, Pennsylvania, offers practical tips you can use right now to get volunteers on board and keep them involved. Tip #1: Listen! It’s hugely important to hear your volunteers. Learn about them and listen with curiosity when they talk about themselves. They may unveil—if you’re listening—important connections, limitations, or self-interest. Appeal to people’s self-interest. Folks are more likely to get involved and commit when an initiative has immediate relevance to their lives. For example, Jack shared that he was interested in getting involved in leadership positions in the city. I invited him to a My Meadville Leadership Team meeting. Similarly, Marissa (his girlfriend) expressed in her interview that she wanted to meet new people and get involved. My Meadville was more than capable of making that happen for her. Now, Mar and Jack are two of our most dedicated Leadership Team members. To access the full story, click here. 4. Oregon Regulators Challenge County’s Rural Housing Zone Oregon regulators are challenging a plan to allow more rural housing on farmland and forestland in Douglas County that was approved last month. In March, Douglas County decided to open about 22,500 acres to the development of 20-acre homes sites on properties that it had found were of marginal value for agriculture and forestry. Two Oregon agencies — the Department of Land Conservation and Development and the Department of Fish and Wildlife — have now objected to that amendment of the county’s comprehensive plan before the state’s Land Use Board of Appeals. To access the full story, click here. 5. Travel Oregon Competitive Grants Program The Travel Oregon Competitive Grants Program awards eligible applicants for projects that contribute to the development and improvement of local communities throughout the state. These projects support Travel Oregon’s mission of ‘a better life for Oregonians through strong, sustainable local economies.’ To be eligible for funding, projects must be for tourism purposes and demonstrate a direct tie to the mission of Travel Oregon. Travel Oregon’s 2018-2020 Competitive Medium Grants program is accepting applications until 5 p.m. on June 6, 2018. Learn more by reading the 2018-2020 Competitive Medium Grants Guidelines and by visiting the Grants Application Documents page. For more information, click here. 6. Webinar: Documenting and Modeling Community Recovery - May 3rd, 8am-10am This webinar will focus on how research at the Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning—a National Institute of Standards and Technology Center of Excellence—is working to improve models of community recovery. Topics will include integrating engineering and social science data, considering interdisciplinary knowledge for risk-informed decision making, and learning how to optimize social and economic systems at the community level before a disaster hits. To access the webinar (hosted live on YouTube), click here.
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7. Webinar: From 8 to 80: Creating Livable Communities for All Ages – May 9th, 11am-12pm Walkable communities are only truly walkable when they are able to be enjoyed and accessed by members of all ages. Learn how communities of all shapes and sizes are making sure they are livable for people of all ages and abilities. This webinar is intended for advocates just getting started on the walking path as well as anyone interested in learning more about this topic. To register for this webinar, click here. 8. Eyes from the Street: The Neighbourhood Fabric that Matters I live in an ideal Jacobsian neighbourhood: Centertown, Ottawa. It posts the second highest density among city districts, the widest mix of land uses, and an unmatched range of incomes and ethnic backgrounds. It is laid out on a grid and includes buildings that span the entire gamut of types, functions, forms, and history; no other ward in this city is as diverse. Yet, something essential is missing from the anticipated outcomes of an urban fabric such as this—security. Here we seek to find out why. This district has at least three east-west and four north-south "main street" arteries, where small businesses thrive, professional services are offered, and numerous people live above shops, just as in Jane Jacobs’ actual Manhattan neighborhoods. Invariably, these streets buzz with activity all day. Routine destinations are within a ten- to 20-minute walk. Everything that the "eyes on the street" neighbourhood model recommends is present. As theory has it, improved security should be a natural, expected outcome. To access the full story, click here. 9. As Oregon Midterms Approach, Divided Sides Dig In Dana Loesch paced the carpeted stage under the fluorescent lights of a Holiday Inn one February afternoon in Portland, Oregon. A 39-year-old radio commentator and National Rifle Association spokesperson, Loesch bills herself as a conservative with “punk-rock irreverence.” A crowd of her fans, some older in windbreakers and MAGA hats mixed with some younger people, nibbled cold cuts from paper plates and drank watery coffee as they waited eagerly to see — in real life — the host of the Dana Show: The Conservative Alternative. Loesch, who lives in Texas, was the keynote speaker at the Freedom Rally, a gathering of Oregon conservatives. She dove into national issues, from “the culture fight” to the special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. She railed against “coastal elites” and made fun of the low number of protesters outside, saying she had expected more from Portland. “Weren’t there violent protests here in Oregon, just a year ago?” she asked. “Yeah,” the crowd rumbled back. She mocked the concerns of the left, saying people should use whichever bathroom matched “what God gave them.” Throughout, Loesch and other speakers referred to a vague threat, an unspoken but clearly understood “they” or “them” that needed to be faced. “They always diminish anything with which they disagree,” Loesch said into the microphone, pacing in her heeled black boots. “That it’s racist, it’s bigoted, it’s violent, something to avoid addressing the substance of the point being made.” To access the full story, click here.
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10. Gerontopoly: Homeownership, Wealth, And Age Is the “dream” of homeownership really just a massive, intergenerational wealth transfer? Recently, that’s just how it has worked out. The takeaways: • Homeownership is a gerontopoly. Most housing wealth is held by older Americans. • Inequality in the US is increasingly intergenerational. The old get richer and the young get poorer. • Most of the growth in intergenerational equality is fueled by home ownership. More older Americans own homes, own more valuable homes, and owe less debt on these homes. • Homeownership isn’t making younger generations wealthier. Rising real home prices effect a transfer of wealth from younger generations to older ones. Housing and wealth inequality The growth in inequality in the US has been much studied. Over the past several decades, the distribution of income in has become much more skewed, with nearly all of the increases in real income accruing to the highest income households. Not only has income become more unequally distributed, so too has wealth. To access the full story, click here. 11. Smart Growth Action Grant The National Association of Realtors offers a Smart Growth Action Grant that supports a range of land-use and transportation-related activities. These activities must support Realtor engagement in land-use and/or transportation-related community issues with the primary goal of affecting public policies that support development and meets one or more of 10 Smart Growth principles. Applications accepted until October 15. For more information, click here.
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