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Monday Mailing

Year 22 • Issue 34 16 May 2016 1. City Debuts New ‘Tuff Curb’ To Create Physical Separation For Bikeways 2. Colorado City Pushes Hard for Liquefied Natural Gas Terminal in Oregon 3. Oregon Sets $10.6B Tourism Record As International Attention Grows 4. Want Economic Growth? Try Urban Density 5. The Weeds: The Land Value Tax, Explained (Out Loud) 6. Seattle Bus Stops Now Feature Rain-Activated Sea Creatures 7. China May Shelve Plans to Build Dams on Its Last Wild River 8. The Zen of Charrettes: Transforming Conflict into Co-action 9. Speak Your Piece: Why Big Media Don’t Understand Middle America 10. An Economic Defense of Old Buildings 11. Beyond Pesticides – Videos to Promote Health Communities 1. City Debuts New ‘Tuff Curb’ To Create Physical Separation For Bikeways Hallelujah! At long last the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation is using an actual curb to separate bike-only lanes from standard vehicle lanes.

Quote of the Week: "Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better." ~Martin Luther King Jr.

For years PBOT has struggled to figure out how to cheaply and quickly add physical separation. They’ve tried using plastic wands but those rarely last more than a few days before they’re hit and ripped out by people who can’t control their cars. PBOT’s most recent attempt to help separate the bike lane from encroachment by motor vehicle operators came in the form of “rumble bars.” Those failed too.

With budgets not willing to spend money required for raised cycle tracks (like the ones on SW Moody Avenue or NE Cully Blvd), finding a quicker-and-cheaper method is really important. We will not reach our transportation, climate, and planning goals unless we create more physically-separated bikeways. It’s a must.

To access the full story, click here.

Oregon Fast Fact: At 11,239 feet Mount Hood stands as the tallest peak in Oregon. Mount Hood is a dormant volcano.

2. Colorado City Pushes Hard for Liquefied Natural Gas Terminal in Oregon GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Why would business leaders in this far western Colorado city of 60,000, nearly 1,200 miles from the Pacific Ocean, travel to Calgary, Alberta, to push for a port facility in Oregon to improve shipping to Japan? Three words: Liquefied natural gas.

With prices stuck at 1990s levels and storage overflowing with cheap and domestically abundant natural gas (thanks to fracking and directional-drilling technology), energy companies and the communities that rely on them are increasingly eying overseas markets, where prices are higher and demand for American gas is growing.

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Several years ago, prompted by a Colorado Mesa University and Grand Junction Economic Partnership study, a group of 18 community and business leaders from Grand Junction traveled to Calgary to meet with the Canadian company Veresen and offer full support for its proposed Jordan Cove LNG project in Coos Bay, Oregon.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Oregon Sets $10.6B Tourism Record As International Attention Grows Two years ago, Travel Oregon launched its "Seven Wonders of Oregon" advertising campaign. The state's tourism promotion group said it was so successful that they extended it for a second year.

This year, riding on that success — and record-breaking numbers in terms of visitor spending — Travel Oregon decided to do something else with the campaign: scrap it.

"It was so successful that we changed it entirely and came out with an entirely new campaign this spring," said Travel Oregon CEO Todd Davidson, with a bit of humor in his tone.

The Seven Wonders campaign, which highlighted places around Oregon like Mt. Hood, the Columbia Gorge and the Oregon Coast, actually lives on at the Travel Oregon website and ties into the tourism commission's other marketing efforts. But Davidson said copycat marketing in other locales had begun to cloud the air a bit, so Travel Oregon brought on ad firm Wieden + Kennedy to come up with the new "We Like It Here" campaign, which launched earlier this spring.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Want Economic Growth? Try Urban Density Here's a big economic and political thesis: The U.S. has run out of frontiers, both literal and figurative. At first, growth was fueled by expansion into the West, use of natural resources and the build-out of national infrastructure. In the early- and mid-20th century, an unprecedented explosion of new technologies -- electricity, automobiles, airplanes and others -- opened up the suburbs, which acted like a new frontier. More recently, the Internet and globalization, especially China, were frontiers that gave the economy yet more room to expand.

But these growth opportunities may now be running out. Information technology is improving our lives by giving us more fun things to do with our leisure time, but it isn't providing the kind of productivity boost gained from previous technological revolutions. And the heyday of expansion into China may be over, given that country’s economic slowdown, its decreasing openness to Western companies and the broader slump in world trade.

So where is the next frontier? It’s possible that -- at least until the next technological revolution or wave of globalization -- there just isn’t one on the immediate horizon. If that’s the case, maybe the U.S. should shift from extensive growth to intensive growth.

To access the full story, click here.

5. The Weeds: The Land Value Tax, Explained (Out Loud) One reason our tax system sucks is that it tends to punish exactly the kind of behavior we should be trying to reward.

Income taxes discourage workers from earning money. Investment taxes discourage innovation and savings. Property taxes discourage homeowners from building cool stuff.

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But there's at least one great idea that doesn't appear to have any of these problems: the land value tax.

With a land value tax, the government would instead be raising money based on the size of land.

That doesn't discourage anything we like: Land itself isn't helping the economy, you can't hide it in offshore accounts, and it's often a form of inherited wealth.

Many economists love the land value tax. Right now, it’s mostly theoretical — only a few towns have passed one, and it's a political non-starter at the federal level — but municipalities could implement it tomorrow in gradual but transformative ways.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Seattle Bus Stops Now Feature Rain-Activated Sea Creatures Commuters in Seattle are in for unexpected pelagic encounters should they visit certain bus stops.

When it rains, ghostly sea creatures now appear on the sidewalk, beckoning them aboard with pincers and large, looping tentacles.Portland is not only discontinuing its investments in Walmart, but has set up a committee to advise it on making socially responsible investments in the future. The committee will address issues like abusive labor practices, corruption, and health concerns, among other things.

Are these advertisements for a bus service that plunges right into the frigid Puget Sound? Well, no.

They’re public artworks meant to celebrate the RapidRide C Line, which due to a public vote got the funds for a recent extension.

For the ephemeral installations, the city collaborated with Rainworks, a local start-up behind an invisible coating that materializes only when wet (which, in Seattle, is quite often). Here’s a camouflaged hopscotch court in West Seattle, for example To access the full story, click here.

7. China May Shelve Plans to Build Dams on Its Last Wild River LIUKU, China—On a roadside next to the Nu River, Xiong Xiangnan is trying to sell fish to tourists. He doesn’t look like a traditional fisherman. Xiong sports a pompadour and wears a brown jacket, jeans, and white Crocs, with a money purse slung across one shoulder. As several of his friends stand around smoking, Xiong makes his pitch.

The fish were very hard to catch, he says. The nets must be set at night and checked early in the morning. That’s why he’s charging 240 yuan—about $37—for the biggest trophy in his buckets.

Behind Xiong, the Nu River flows freely, bumbling with rapids, swirling with eddies. Some of this water has spilled down from glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, filling a channel that snakes 1,700 miles (2,736 kilometers) through China, then Myanmar and Thailand, before spilling into the Andaman Sea. To access the full story, click here.

8. The Zen of Charrettes: Transforming Conflict into Co-action This is the first in a four-part series on The Zen of Charrettes.

It is not unusual for a charrette to agitate concerns and misunderstandings. Designers recognize that innovative solutions are often fueled by what may appear, at first glance, to be confusion, conflict or Page 3 of 5

chaos. Placing value on inclusion and listening is the first step toward recognizing when conflict actually represents an opportunity.

The NCI Charrette System™ uses a process for engaging stakeholders before a charrette begins, to establish trusting relationships and greater understanding about the purpose and process of a project.

One of the goals of an opening night public meeting is to bring any remaining differences to the surface, so that that they can be addressed in the ensuing days of the charrette.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Speak Your Piece: Why Big Media Don’t Understand Middle America To their everlasting discredit, most of the MSM Big Feet, which is what the late journalist Richard Ben Cramer labeled the self-important, pontificating political reporters and pundits who dominate our press, got it all wrong about Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

That is no small thing when you consider those two are the big stories this campaign season. It’s like a weatherman missing a Category Five hurricane. Of course, if a weatherman had blown that call, he probably would be fired. With pundits, getting it wrong never seems to matter.

To their credit, a few of those Big Feet have fessed up to their errors. New York Times columnist David Brooks, one of the most contrite, admitted that he realized he had been living in a bubble and had to get out in the country a bit more – “change the way I do my job,” is how he put it — to understand the American psyche.

To access the full story, click here.

10. An Economic Defense of Old Buildings Jane Jacobs, a woman akin to the patron saint of urban planners, first argued 50 years ago that healthy neighborhoods need old buildings. Aging, creaky, faded, "charming" buildings. Retired couples and young families need the cheap rent they promise. Small businesses need the cramped offices they contain. Streets need the diversity created not just when different people coexist, but when buildings of varying vintage do, too.

"Cities need old buildings so badly," Jacobs wrote in her classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," "it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.”

Ever since, this idea -- based on the intuition of a woman who was surveying her own New York Greenwich Village neighborhood -- has been received wisdom among planners and urban theorists.

But what happens when we look at the data?

To access the full story, click here.

11. Beyond Pesticides – Videos to Promote Health Communities Beyond Pesticides is pleased to announce that videos are now available from Cultivating Community and Environmental Health: Models for sustainable and organic strategies to protect ecosystems, pollinators and waterways, the 34th National Pesticide Forum!

The videos cover the range of topics that were discussed at the Forum and include keynote speeches, panel discussions, and workshops. This year’s forum focused on the adoption of policies to protect human health and the environment, and organic land and building management strategies. Beyond Pesticides encourages activists, community leaders, scientists, and policy makers to attend its annual Page 4 of 5

National Pesticide Forum in person to get together, share information, and strategize create communities that are healthy and free of toxic pesticides. For those who are unable to attend in person, these videos expand the incredible knowledge of the experts to the broader public to help inspire and inform community action.

Watch the videos here. You can access the playlist, which includes all of the available videos of the 2016 forum, as well as previous years, on Beyond Pesticides’ YouTube page.

For more information, click here.

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