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Monday Mailing

Year 22 • Issue 36 06 June 2016 1. Webinar: Why Walking and Walkability?

2. NOAA: A Hot Summer is Forthcoming 3. Another Oregon Standoff? Sheriff Warns Lawmakers Over Owyhee Canyonlands Plan 4. Stone Age Cities: What Modern Urbanites Could Learn From Paleolithic Humans 5. Groups Protest BLM Plan 6. Parking vs. People 7. Neighbors Oppose Rural College 8. Welfare Utopia 9. Find Earthquake Hazard At Your House With New OSU Tool 10. Applications Now Open For The Oregon Heritage Preservation Scholarship 11. Pittsburgh Tries to Eat Its Way Through a Savage Weed 1. Webinar: Why Walking and Walkability?

Join America’s best-known Walking Champion, Mark Fenton, for an inspiring presentation on why walking and walkability matter in this America Walks webinar. He will lay out actions and strategies that enable everyone to contribute to making our communities more walkable and increasing walking as a practice. June 16 from 2-3 p.m. EST. To register for this webinar, click here.

2. NOAA: A Hot Summer is Forthcoming Most of continental U.S. will have above average summer temperatures

Quote of the Week: “If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

-Albert Einstein Oregon Fast Fact: The Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area is a spectacular river canyon cutting the only sea-level route through the Cascade Mountain Range.

Above average temperatures are expected to hit the vast majority of the continental United States this summer, according to a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The Climate Prediction Center of the NOAA just published its latest outlook for the continental U.S., Hawaii and Alaska. According to the outlook, the two regions within the lower 48 that have the greatest odds to get hit with the warmest temperatures (compared to historical averages) are the West and the Northeast.

The entire West Coast — Washington, Oregon, and California — has high odds to experience summer temperatures that are significantly above average, as does the far Northeast — Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Another Oregon Standoff? Sheriff Warns Lawmakers Over Owyhee Canyonlands Plan SALEM — Sparks flew Monday during a hearing attended by ranchers and environmentalists in the state Capitol on a proposal to turn 2.5 million acres

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of canyonlands and desert in southeastern Oregon into a federally protected monument.

Cattlemen said their livelihoods could be threatened.

Malheur County Sheriff Brian Wolfe told a panel of state lawmakers that he was worried armed outsiders would exploit the situation, with families in the remote area having been involved in cattle business for generations and being suspicious of the federal government and what restrictions it might impose.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Stone Age Cities: What Modern Urbanites Could Learn From Paleolithic Humans The city is not our natural habitat. For the last three million years, we evolved as hunter-gatherers, living in small tribal societies, breathing fresh air, drinking fresh water and eating fresh foods. But more than half of us now live in cities. Culturally, our society is transforming, but anatomically, our genetic evolution is slower: we remain much as we were even before large-scale farming was adopted 5,000–10,000 years ago.

However “civilised” we may now consider ourselves to be, biologically we are much closer to our stone age ancestors. There is a major mismatch between our modern urbanised world and our “paleolithic genome”, the genetic material encoded in our DNA, which supports an ancient huntergatherer lifestyle.

Put simply, urbanisation – which began with the advent of farming – is bad for us. Studies of skeletal remains in cemetery sites show that when the Romans introduced town life to Britain 2,000 years ago, they also introduced us to scurvy, rickets, osteomalacia, Reiter’s syndrome, gout, ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, septic arthritis, tuberculosis, osteitis, poliomyelitis and leprosy. And today, the most common causes of death in half of our urban populations are obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure and various cancers. It is a sobering thought that all these conditions are rare or non-existent in non-urban societies, such as the tribal communities in Kitava, Papua New Guinea.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Groups Protest BLM Plan More than half of the forests that once covered the Earth are gone, and each year, more disappear.

Though many are aware of deforestation in South America, far fewer realize that it is happening right here in Oregon.

The Bureau of Land Management posted an official protest period of April 16 to May 16, as required, after releasing its new Western Oregon Management Plan, a document of more than 2,000 pages. The BLM's new plan would remove protection of mature and old-growth forests and increase logging by 37 percent, allowing clearcutting closer to streams. More than 1.8 million Oregonians depend on water from BLM land. The proposed plan eliminates the previous water quality standards and habitat provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Parking vs. People There is no shortage of lists, rankings, and research of various data points for cities. I find these helpful, but are generally better when you start combining some of these data points to tell a bigger, Page 2 of 5

more complex story. For example, City Observatory created the Storefront Index, which is a map and ranking of the density of storefront businesses. This seems like a simple, straight-forward data set, but within it is couched much more revealing information: what does it take for storefront businesses to be there in the first place? That usually says something about street networks and population density. Storefronts are a proxy for the more complex, emergent behavior and nature of cities. This study is a snapshot in time of the four-dimensional nature of cities.

Similarly, Collier’s International keeps annual surveys of average monthly costs in Central Business Districts around the country. One can intuitively surmise that the cost of parking is broadly determined by demand in relation to supply and that places with high demand likely are the most successful CBDs. But, that is intuition. Does data back that up?

To access the full story, click here.

7. Neighbors Oppose Rural College Local residents and a Southern Oregon University associate professor have voiced opposition to a college campus proposed off Buckhorn Springs Road south of Ashland.

“We think it destroys our area,” said Ed Hillard, a 70-year-old resident who lives a few miles from the proposed college. “Besides the fact that we think it would ruin the area, it breaks zoning laws and sets statewide precedent for Oregon’s urban growth boundary laws.”

Rod and Brooks Newton, who run Hidden Springs Wellness Center in Ashland, have proposed building a 500-student and staff campus with 78 residences, classrooms, laboratories, an amphitheater, lecture halls, a restaurant, a deli, a small campus store and other buildings.

The campus, which would be dedicated to teaching farming techniques, wildlife habitat restoration and offer other courses on improving the environment, would be clustered on 21 acres of an 80-acre parcel at 800 Buckhorn Springs Road.

The Newtons, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday, are currently revising their application with Jackson County and have asked for a delay in holding a public hearing, according to the planning department.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Welfare Utopia SALEM, Oregon—In much of the country, poor people are finding that there are fewer and fewer government benefits available to help them stay afloat. But here in this progressive corner of the Northwest, the poor can access an extensive system of state-sponsored supports and services.

In Oregon, a higher share of poor families is on welfare (now called TANF, or Temporary Aid to Needy Families) than in most states. The state has some of the highest food-stamp uptake in the country. It subsidizes childcare for working parents, asking the poorest of them to contribute as little as $27 a month. It helps people get off of welfare by linking them to employment and paying their wages for up to six months, and then allows them to continue to receive food stamps as they transition to higher wages. Families can be on welfare for up to 60 months, as opposed to 24 months in many other states, and once the parents are cut off due to time limits, their children can still continue to receive aid.

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“I think there’s a certain culture here in Oregon: We think there’s a role for government in the lives of working people,” former governor Ted Kulongoski, who went on food stamps when he was in office to raise awareness for the program, told me.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Find Earthquake Hazard At Your House With New OSU Tool Oregon State University launched a tool to help engineers, planners and geologists evaluate earthquake hazards in Oregon — just in case the 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes from the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

O-Help (short for Oregon Hazard Explorer for Lifelines Program) assesses factors, such as severe ground shaking, landslides, liquefaction and potential tsunami inundation lines, on a scale of "very low" to "very high."

Just type in a location in the search bar at the top right and wait for the assessment to pop up (you may have to wait a couple of minutes). The user manual said O-HELP should serve as a "starting point" for experts in understanding certain areas and buildings. It shouldn't be incorporated in building plans without verification. The tool can be set to magnitudes between 8.1 and 9.0 on the Richter scale.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Applications Now Open For The Oregon Heritage Preservation Scholarship The Oregon Heritage Preservation Scholarship provides financial assistance for Oregon residents to attend a preservation-related conference, workshop, or training in the United States between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017. Eligible travel expenses include registration fees, transportation, lodging and meals.

Scholarships will be offered to those actively involved in local preservation efforts and who demonstrate how attendance at a preservation-related conference, workshop, or training will help meet the preservation needs of their local community.

Scholarships are competitive and offered twice per year. The first round deadline is June 10 and is available for those to attend trainings between July 1 and Dec. 31. The second round deadline is Dec. 5 and is available for those to attend trainings between Jan. 1, 2017 and June 30, 2017.

For more information and the application, visit www.oregon.gov/oprd/HCD/FINASST/Pages/Scholarships.aspx or contact Katie Henry at katie.henry@oregon.gov or (503) 986-0671.

11. Pittsburgh Tries to Eat Its Way Through a Savage Weed PITTSBURGH—During lunch at Six Penn Kitchen, a fancy downtown restaurant, diner Scott Michael put a forkful of sauteed green shoots into his mouth and chewed. “Crunchy, sour, green,” he said. “I do like it a lot.”

He was eating Japanese knotweed, a savagely invasive plant that thrives on riverbanks and vacant lots, both of which Pittsburgh has in great abundance. Tougher to eradicate than coal dust, knotweed can grow 6 feet a month in the spring, stand 13 feet tall when full-grown and stretch its roots 15 feet.

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It even grows through asphalt and concrete, shading out other plants until entire landscapes are knotweed only.

Pittsburgh and many areas around it have so much knotweed that businesses are turning it into beer, paper, kimchi, tinctures, ice pops and honey. At least a half-dozen upscale restaurants have served knotweed, which has the texture of asparagus and tastes like rhubarb. The plant’s reputation as a menace only enhances its appeal.

To access the full story, click here.

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