Monday Mailing 091619

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 2 16 September 2019 1. How to Build a New Park So Its Neighbors Benefit 2. PG&E Agrees To Pay $11 Billion Insurance Settlement Over California Wildfires 3. Collaborate Smarter, Not Harder 4. Untreated Hearing Loss Linked To Loneliness And Isolation For Seniors 5. A Beginner’s Guide To The Debate Over Nuclear Power And Climate Change (Michael Hoch) 6. Is Your Takeout Lunch Bowl Covered In Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’?

7. The Forest Farms Still Stand: Indonesia’s Krui Forest Farmers Persist in the Face of Capitalism’s Relentless Squeeze 8. Don't Move People Out of Distressed Places. Instead, Revitalize Them 9. Why Americans Stopped Volunteering 10. WEBINAR - Using Scenarios for Effective Planning

1. How to Build a New Park So Its Neighbors Benefit

Quote of the Week:

Each of us has a voice. It is more than our personal expression in the world, it is our offering of truth born out of authentic experience.

- Terry Tempest Williams

Oregon Fast Fact #37

The Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area is a spectacular river canyon cutting the only sea-level route through the Cascade Mountain Range.

The Los Angeles River only intermittently resembles an actual river, even though that’s what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entombed in concrete in the 1930s. Since then, its 51-mile course has been a trickling flood channel, the scene of countless movie car chases, and a punchline about how artificial L.A. can seem.

Now the river is coming back to life. A massive restoration scheme will peel away its hard gray sheath to create a living riverbank along an 11-mile stretch, flanked by walking and biking trails, cafes and river-centric activities, and lots of green space. L.A. is very much on course to build its answer to New York City’s High Line.

But that is a loaded comparison in urban redevelopment. The transformation of a disused elevated-rail segment into one of Manhattan’s most magnetic tourist destinations—and the blueprint for “adaptive reuse” infrastructure projects around the globe—has become a lofty symbol of the ills of gentrification. Although the once-industrial neighborhood of Chelsea was already shifting to higher rents and upscale amenities when the High Line first opened, the elegant “linear park” supercharged those changes, with new upscale developments generating $1 billion in tax revenue in the area, and alienating residents of nearby public housing.

Sure enough, cities that have followed the High Line’s example are grappling with the effects of gentrification. In Los Angeles, the promise of a revitalized river has put neighborhoods such as Elysian Valley—a diverse, historically working-class community—in the real estate spotlight. The median price of a house there jumped by more than 17 percent between 2017 and 2018, more than twice the Page 1 of 6

countywide rate. In Chicago, property values in the relatively affordable, Latino neighborhoods traversed by a rail-to-trail project known as “the 606” nearly doubled in three years after its groundbreaking in 2013. In Atlanta, the BeltLine has been beset by criticisms that project leaders haven’t paid adequate attention to skyrocketing property values along the 22-mile rail corridor-turned-walking loop.

To access the full story, click here.

2. PG&E Agrees To Pay $11 Billion Insurance Settlement Over California Wildfires

Utility giant PG&E has agreed to a second large settlement over devastating Northern California wildfires, saying it will pay $11 billion to resolve most insurance claims from the wine country fires in 2017 and massive Camp Fire in 2018.

"These claims are based on payments made by insurance companies to individuals and businesses with insurance coverage for wildfire damages" in those catastrophic blazes, PG&E said in announcing the deal.

The settlement will require the approval of a bankruptcy court, as PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January and recently entered into a Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

While the $11 billion sum is large, it's far smaller than the roughly $20 billion that the insurance companies had initially wanted, after paying out billions to California wildfire victims.

In a statement about the outcome, the insurance companies — which banded together as the Ad Hoc Subrogation Group — said that while their initial claim wasn't fulfilled, "we hope that this compromise will pave the way for a plan of reorganization that allows PG&E to fairly compensate all victims and emerge from Chapter 11 by the June 2020 legislative deadline."

To access the full story, click here.

3. Collaborate Smarter, Not Harder

No question, in a competitive global landscape, collaboration allows companies to serve exacting clients more seamlessly, respond more quickly to changing environments, and innovate more rapidly. But when an organization tries to boost collaboration by adopting a new formal structure, technology, or way of working, it often adds a steady stream of time- and energyconsuming interactions to an already relentless workload, diminishing instead of improving performance.

Think about the consequences at an individual level: It’s not unusual to feel as if we are just starting our work at 5 p.m., after the daily battery of demands has finally quieted down. Thanks to the plethora of technologies that keep us connected, increasingly integrated global operations, and the need for a multidisciplinary approach to deploying complex products and services, the problem has snowballed over the past decade, with collaborative time demands rising more than 50%. Most knowledge workers and leaders spend 85% or more of their time on email, in meetings, and on the phone. Employees struggle with increases in email volume, the proliferation of new collaborative tools, and expectations of fast replies to messages — with Page 2 of 6

deleterious effects on their quality of work and efficiency. Research tells us that simple distractions like checking a text message fragments our attention more than we realize, and more consuming distractions — such as answering an email — can cost us more than 20 minutes to fully regain our focus.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Untreated Hearing Loss Linked To Loneliness And Isolation For Seniors

When Anne Madison could no longer hear her microwave beep, she assumed that her appliance needed repair. In fact, the machine worked well, but her confusion foreshadowed a frustrating struggle: a long and lonely battle with hearing loss.

Madison didn't bother going to a doctor after the microwave incident. She knew that hearing aids were so expensive that she could never afford them. So she decided to deal with the hassles of hearing impairment on her own and "just kind of pulled up my socks."

Before long, her world began to shrivel. She stopped going to church, since she could no longer hear the sermons. She abandoned the lectures that she used to frequent, as well as the political rallies that she had always loved. Communicating with her adult sons became an ordeal, filled with endless requests that they repeat themselves, or speak louder.

And when she moved to a Baltimore housing development in 2013, she got a reputation for being standoffish, with neighbors incorrectly assuming that she was ignoring them when she had no idea they even had spoken to her.

"You sit in your apartment and turn up your TV louder and louder," says Madison, 68, describing hearing loss as having someone suddenly drop a bell over you. "You're cut off. It's a horrible way to be."

To access the full story, click here.

5. A Beginner’s Guide To The Debate Over Nuclear Power And Climate Change

One of the more vexing and heated debates in climate policy has to do with the role of nuclear power in decarbonization. Is it helpful or not? Necessary or not?

Almost every Democratic candidate was asked the question during the CNN climate forum on Wednesday. There was seemingly little consensus, with answers ranging from the techboosterism of Andrew Yang and Cory Booker to the skepticism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

“What’s the deal with nuclear power?” is consistently the most common question I receive. So, for those joining this conversation concerned about climate change but uncertain of the correct take on nuclear, this post is an introduction.

One thing I hope to convey is that “pro-nuclear” and “anti-nuclear” are not considered policy positions. They are identities, ways of signaling membership in a tribe. You sign up for one team and then scold the other team on social media (you will have lots of company).

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If you approach nuclear power as a policy question, on the merits, you will find that, like most things, it’s complicated; there are multiple, overlapping issues involved, and the answers cannot be captured in a single binary.

A side note: Nuclear obviously has a long and contentious history in the US. The fight against nuclear power, bound up with the nuclear-freeze movement, was arguably the seed of the US environmental movement. Until relatively recently, being an environmentalist in the US more or less meant being hostile to nuclear power. But as climate change has become a bigger concern, it has become clear that the environmentalist lens on nuclear and the climate-hawk lens on nuclear are different and can lead to different conclusions.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Is Your Takeout Lunch Bowl Covered In Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’?

For years, disposable bowls have been a stalwart ally of the fast-casual restaurant. Beige, earthy-looking and made from molded plant fibers, these receptacles appear less wasteful than single-use plastic, lending an aura of social responsibility to the eateries that use them. Some varieties are even certified compostable, which means they’re guaranteed to break down in commercial composting facilities, if not the backyard leaf pile. And while only a few chains actually run composting programs, these bowls still feel lighter-touch somehow – even when they’re simply shipped to the landfill. They suggest a higher-minded way of eating, one based on a form of packaging that’s almost as ephemeral as our encounters with it.

But fast-casual bowls have a troubling secret: virtually all of them contain worrisome chemicals that never biodegrade, polluting soil, water and our bodies in the process. The truth is that, though you might only handle your salad bowl for five minutes, traces of it will stick around in the environment for ever.

That was the central finding of an investigative feature I published last week in the New Food Economy, a non-profit newsroom covering the forces shaping American food, where I’m deputy editor. I spent months interviewing more than a dozen scientists, food service industry experts, packaging professionals and waste management leaders. Everyone I spoke to said the same thing: the familiar bowls all contain PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a broad class of “forever chemicals” that persist indefinitely and have been linked to troubling health effects.

To access the full story, click here.

7. The Forest Farms Still Stand: Indonesia’s Krui Forest Farmers Persist in the Face of Capitalism’s Relentless Squeeze

One January morning in the middle of Indonesia’s rainy season I joined a few activist-ecologist friends for an eight hour drive across the center of Sumatra to Krui, an expanse of forest farms in the foothills of the Bukit Barisan mountains. I wanted to learn more about how the agriculturalists living there cultivate their forest farms—human planted stands of valuable tree crops planted in a way that resembles a forest. Over the years Krui’s agriculturalists have gained attention for the ways that they avoid industrial development’s degradation of the land and nurture many forms of life. Krui’s forest farms are a form of agroecological farming that Page 4 of 6

supports local watersheds, biodiversity, and global climate cycles. I figure I should see Krui for myself, and wonder what is going with the forest farms now, since the last reports about them were written a decade ago.

We spend the first hours of our long day in the car in Sumatra’s coastal plain, watching green lines of oil palms pan across the car windows. Heading east, the one-lane highway climbs up into the foothills, leaving the oil palm plantations behind. Nearing Krui a caravan of four-wheel drive SUVs with tinted windows passes us, heading back out for the nearby gritty port city Lampung.

One of my buddies turns to me, “See? Krui’s forests go into the sawmills and the SUVs come out.”

The comment is this activist’s way of telling me that the pressures are strong here in Krui for agriculturalists to sell their land and their remarkable Krui working forests that grow on it. Palm oil plantation developers and timber merchants will pay cash for both the land and the timber.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Don't Move People Out of Distressed Places. Instead, Revitalize Them America’s growing geographic divide is causing experts and policy-makers to revisit one of the most fundamental policy questions: When it comes to healing distressed places, should we favor people-based policies that essentially help residents relocate to more vibrant areas, or should we favor place-based policies that focus on rebuilding the economies of distressed places and creating new and better jobs for people where they already live?

Economists have long come down on the side of people-oriented policies that essentially bring people to jobs.

The pioneering research by Raj Chetty and his collaborators, which documents the often substantial differences in economic opportunity that come from being born in particular places, suggests there is much to be gained from helping families, especially those with young children, move from distressed places with limited opportunity to more vibrant ones with better schools, amenities, job markets, and public services. University of California, Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti has documented the costs of land-use restrictions that drive up the cost of housing and hinder workers in distressed areas from moving to more dynamic coastal superstar cities and tech hubs.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Why Americans Stopped Volunteering

In the years following September 11, 2001, Americans made efforts to redefine the date of the nation’s most deadly terror attack as a day of national service and charitable giving. In 2009, the federal government officially designated 9/11 as the National Day of Service and Remembrance, encouraging the public to honor the victims by doing good in their communities. A decade later, a coalition of national service organizations led by MyGoodDeed, the nonprofit that advocated for the federal recognition, claims that more than 30 million Americans participate in some way each year, making the holiday the biggest event on America’s charitable calendar.

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This annual spike in do-gooding was mirrored by a broader surge of post-9/11 civic service. The country’s overall volunteer rate reached 28.8 percent in 2003, according to a 2018 analysis of Census Bureau data by the Do Good Institute at University of Maryland. That was the highest rate the researchers recorded in the last two decades, and it remained at that level for three straight years.

But today, fewer Americans are volunteering their time and money on a regular basis, according to the report. The national volunteer rate has not surpassed 28.8 percent since 2005, and in 2015, it dipped to its lowest, at 24.9 percent.

To access the full story, click here.

10. WEBINAR - Using Scenarios for Effective Planning (Wednesday, September 18, 2019

from 10am to 11a:30m PDT)

When is it worth using a scenario planning approach? What kinds of approaches work best for what situations? When is it worthwhile using what kinds of software tools?

Join the Smart Growth Network at 1 p.m. Eastern, September 18, for a webinar featuring one of the field’s leading scenario planners, Uri Avin, FAICP. Avin, a Research Professor at the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland, has more than 40 years of experience developing plans across the U.S. for cities, counties, regions and states, recognized through 10 national and 20 state awards for excellence.

Of these, about 18 are explicitly scenario-based.

He has co-developed several scenario sketch planning tools and has applied many such tools in his work. He will walk through these approaches and explain how these tools can be used on a variety of planning projects.

Participants of the live webinar are eligible for 1.5 AICP CM credits.

To register for the webinar, click here.

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