Tuesday Mailing
Year 22 • Issue 37 13 June 2016 1. Planning for the Future: How Do We Evaluate Impacts in a World of Uncertainty? 2. Webinar: From Buses to Bikeshare: How Integrated Mobility Can Have Big Impacts in Small Communities 3. Cities Are Not as Big a Deal as You Think 4. Free eBook: Storytelling for Nonprofits 5. A Summer Roadtrip: Southeast Oregon 6. The 3 Types Of "No" You Need To Master In Your Career 7. Download a Free Guide on Engaging Small Businesses in Disaster Preparedness 8. Wooden Jewel Box on the Southern Coast 9. Rural Shows Net Gain In Jobs Over Last Year 10. New Oregon Farm Link Goes Live! 11. Learning Virtue Through Public Transit 1. Planning for the Future: How Do We Evaluate Impacts in a World of Uncertainty? Future transportation projects and services may have far different impacts than is currently the case, and planners may be challenged both by estimating novel forms of impact and overcoming the prevailing perceptions amongst professionals, policy makers, and the public.
Quote of the Week: “Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you, to leave this world better than when you found it. ~Wilfred Peterson Oregon Fast Fact: The Oregon Trail is the longest of the overland routes used in the westward expansion of the United States.
I've long been intrigued with varying levels of effort and accuracy in assessing the longer-range implications of transportation policy and investment decisions. It is common to assess impacts 25 or 30 years in the future. For capital intensive projects, this comparison point design year often occurs when the investment is perhaps 15 years old (as it takes 10- to 15-plus years to implement many long-range plan projects) and perhaps halfway through the life of the asset being studied. As we are now entering a time period with an even greater pace of change, it is becoming increasingly difficult to assess both the market acceptance of an investment as well as its performance and impacts. To access the full story, click here. 2. Webinar: From Buses to Bikeshare: How Integrated Mobility Can Have Big Impacts in Small Communities Join Jason Miller Executive Director and Kaz Thea Bike-Ped Coordinator of Mountain Rides while they walk you through a case study of how a traditional transportation agency is transforming itself in a small town to produce big wins in active, multi-modal regional transportation planning and implementation. Through partnerships, leveraging funds and innovative design real improvements in integrated mobility can be achieved. This webinar will be hosted on Wed, Jun 29, 2016 from 11:00 AM 12:00 PM PDT. To register for this webinar, click here.
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3. Cities Are Not as Big a Deal as You Think Last month, the journal Science published a special issue examining the challenges and opportunities of an urbanizing world. Titled “Urban Planet” and featuring an image of clouds wafting across skyscrapers in Dubai, the issue opened with an eye-catching statistic: “More than half of the world’s people now live in cities.” Of course, that number would be even more impressive if it were actually true. “We don’t have 50 percent of the world living in cities,” says Karen Seto, a geographer at Yale University who studies urbanization trends. “A lot of these people are living in towns and small centers.” In other words, their surroundings are more urban than a rural village, but a far cry from Dubai. To access the full story, click here. 4. Free eBook: Storytelling for Nonprofits Storytelling is the single most powerful communications tool you have available. Stories make your nonprofit's work relatable, tangible, and touching. Download the Storytelling for Nonprofits eBook and learn how to build the elements of the story, how to craft stories for different mediums, and how to use emotion and a sense of urgency to get donors to give and give now. To access your free copy, click here. 5. A Summer Roadtrip: Southeast Oregon Situated in the southeast corner of the state, the Steens Mountain Wilderness Area encompasses more than 170,000 acres of some of the wildest, most remote land in Oregon. Here summer means open roads, friendly communities, endless sunny skies, and adventures around every curve. The perfect conditions for an epic summer road trip. The easiest way to explore this vast area is to jump on the High Desert Discovery Scenic Byway, which connects Burns to Fields via OR 205. To access the full story, click here, click here. 6. The 3 Types Of "No" You Need To Master In Your Career There’s a reason why "no" is one of first words we learn to say. Life never fails to throw us offers and opportunities that are worth turning down. As we grow up, it’s no longer the suggestion that we finish our broccoli that we're most hard-pressed to reject—it’s the requests to do more work and the dubious job offers that we have to find ways of declining politely. Hence the raft of advice out there for professionals looking for graceful ways to bow out of everything from hiring processes and time-consuming assignments to helping coworkers and "voluntary" extracurriculars. But while much of that advice is sound, you don't actually need a separate strategy for every one of these situations in your career; toting around a mental encyclopedia of "noes" to whip out for each new occasion just isn't practical. Instead, you just have to master these three types of "no," then choose which one to deploy depending on the context and the strength (or weakness) of your interest. To access the full story, click here.
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7. Download a Free Guide on Engaging Small Businesses in Disaster Preparedness The International Economic Development Council (IEDC) released a user-friendly guide for business support organizations with practical tips on engaging small businesses in disaster preparedness. The intended audience for this resource includes local chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, small business development centers, SCORE offices, community colleges, business schools, community development financial institutions, local banks, and nonprofits that serve small businesses. Developed with input from continuity professionals, the information from this guide can be referenced when creating workshops or writing articles for company newsletters and e-blasts. Highlights from the guide include:
Why community and business organizations should engage small businesses in continuity exercises; The top ten ways to engage small businesses in preparedness activities; A case study on ‘A Day without Business’ Workshop in Tulsa, OK; Resources for Crisis preparedness.
To access your free copy, click here. 8. Wooden Jewel Box on the Southern Coast Placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2015, and named one of Oregon’s Most Endangered Places that same year, the 1896 Lindberg House in Port Orford is a stunning example of the Queen Anne style and shingle-siding craftsmanship. The house was designed and built by John Peter Lindberg between 1892 and 1896, and features several distinctive characteristics of the Queen Anne style. Most noticeably there are off-set cross gables, carved decorative wood features, and a corner tower. The artistry shown by Mr. Lindberg in his shingle work is outstanding, incorporating at least three different shapes into his patterns. The stunning shingle work is original to the home, with some maintenance and replacement work having been done very well to maintain the character of the original detailing. To access the full story, click here. 9. Rural Shows Net Gain In Jobs Over Last Year Though rural areas and small cities have more jobs than they did at this time last year, the rate of growth remains slower than in urban areas. From April 2015 to April 2016, a third of rural counties saw a net decline in the number of jobs. More than nine out of 90 new jobs created in the last year were in the nation’s metropolitan counties, according to new data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment rates dropped in rural as well as urban America. But there is a trend toward a concentration of new jobs in urban counties. Only 7 percent of new jobs since April 2015 were located in rural counties or in micropolitan counties, those with towns between 10,000 and 50,000 people. To access the full story, click here.
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10. New Oregon Farm Link Goes Live! Friends of Family Farmers is dedicated to helping Oregon grow the next generation of family farmers. To that end, FoFF recently launched Oregon Farm Link, an online hub that connects beginning farmers and ranchers with land holders. In addition to hosting land holder and land seeker listings, Oregon Farm Link serves as a portal for those interested in getting involved in agriculture, with a board of job listings and a comprehensive resource library designed to assist farmers of all experiences. Since its launch in late May, Oregon Farm Link has been joined by more than 25 new land holders and land seekers. List your land, find land, post a job, look for a job, and find links for additional resource at FoFF's new Oregon Farm Link. Want to learn more? Contact us with questions at farmlink@friendsoffamilyfarmers.org or 503-581-7124. 11. Learning Virtue Through Public Transit I take public transit to learn virtue. That is not the only reason, but, in truth, it is one of the main ones. If you are already criticizing this as a privileged assertion, please stick with me. Sharing bus seats with strangers thrusts me into a form of the public square, which can be uncomfortable and ripe for opportunity all at the same time as I encounter a diversity of people. It strips me of my (perceived) independence. It forces me to rely on and trust other people and others’ schedules in order to get to my destination. It is humbling. Virtue is not usually one of the benefits touted by supporters of public transit, yet it can be a valuable outcome of the system. I believe public transit has the capacity to shape me for good as a person, not just my physical environment and local economy. To access the full story, click here.
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