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Tuesday Mailing

Year 24 • Issue 37 02 July 2018 1.

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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.

Dollar Stores Are Thriving – But Are They Ripping Off Poor People?

3 Steps to Make GIS Part of a Successful Smart City When Public Transportation Leads to Gentrification Black Families Were Pushed Out of Portland. Can This Program Help More Return?

Free eBook: Storytelling for Nonprofits Community Solar is Coming to Oregon Portland Homeless Accounted for Majority of Police Arrests in 2017, Analysis Finds Download a Free Guide on Engaging Small Businesses in Disaster Preparedness The Ancient Roots of New Urbanism Tillamook Creamery Partners with Locals to Tackle Area Housing Shortage An Oregon County Closed All its Public Libraries. These Rural, DIY Book Lovers Revived Them

1. Dollar Stores Are Thriving – But Are They Ripping Off Poor People?

While online retailers have transformed the landscape of American commerce, the largest three dollar-store chains are prospering offline, opening more than 1,800 stores last year.

The cost of a trip can be so negligible – the average customer drops $29 a month – and dollar stores have grown so ubiquitous, that it’s hard to countenance what economists confirm: visitors to dollar stores are often paying more than well-off consumers who shop elsewhere.

To access the full story, click here.

2. 3 Steps to Make GIS Part of a Successful Smart City There’s a revolution in civic innovation taking place in most major cities around the world. One by one, cities are realizing the need to provide easy access to open spatial data and interactive map apps for partner agencies and local governments. Many cities already have location intelligence systems through geographic information system (GIS) software, and have for decades; however, many municipal government agencies still do not have the capacity to collect and maintain their own GIS data or to serve this information up to others.

Allowing people from government workers to constituents to explore information on their own frees up workers and provides data and resources within their daily workflows. Citizens can also access apps to be better informed about services and activities dealing with property, business, transportation, taxation, recreation and more.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. When Public Transportation Leads to Gentrification There once was a time in America when people of means weren’t keen on the idea of living right next to a rail station. Real estate developers, as a general matter, didn’t throw lots of capital into these communities, many of which quite literally defined the proverbial “other side of the tracks.”

Things have changed. Transit-oriented development, once little more than a jargony buzz phrase uttered by urban planners and public transportation advocates, is transforming cities and suburbs all across the country as the market for housing near transit hubs continues to explode.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Black Families Were Pushed Out of Portland. Can This Program Help More Return?

In Portland, Oregon, a program called Right to Return aims to atone for the repeated displacement of thousands of African-American families from the city. Amna Nawaz and producer Mike Fritz explore how it’s all playing out, as part of our series Chasing the Dream.

To access this edition of PBS Newshour, click here.

5. 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.

6. Community Solar is Coming to Oregon I found myself recently driving along the wheat fields of Klamath County, taking in Mount McLoughlin as the sun beamed down the valley, and was struck by the opportunities surrounding me. New irrigation technologies are providing water and energy savings for local farmers. An abundance of solar and geothermal resources in southern Oregon means new energy generation. And advancements in battery storage can bring grid resilience and increased safety in a natural disaster.

We are on the brink of an energy revolution. That may sound like hyperbole, but, in fact, the signs are all around us. Emerging technologies, innovative finance models, and a focus on affordability and accessibility have fueled a new wave of advancements. Sustainable Northwest is serving as a leading voice in this rapidly changing space to ensure all Oregonians can benefit from a clean energy economy.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Portland Homeless Accounted for Majority of Police Arrests in 2017, Analysis Finds One in every two arrests made by the Portland Police Bureau last year was of a homeless person, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.

The number of arrests is dramatically disproportionate to Portland's homeless population. People experiencing homelessness represent a tiny fraction of the city's overall population -- well below 3 percent even using the biggest estimates.

To access the full story, click here.

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8. 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.

9. The Ancient Roots of New Urbanism One purpose of my Planetizen blog is to promote urban anthropology—the cross-cultural and deep time study of variation in ways of being and building—as a source of principles and practices for guiding contemporary urban planning and design. By "deep time" I mean the 6,000-year history of city building that stretches beyond classical Athens and Rome back to ancient Mesopotamia. It includes urban histories that have been largely ignored by Western scholars, for example, the histories of indigenous Africa and the Americas. This deep history can only be known through archaeological inquiry, because its written texts either don't exist or haven't yet been translated.

The ancient Mayan civilization of lowland Mexico and Central America is a particularly rich area of archaeological study. Scholars are discovering lots of variation in the physical composition of Mayan cities. This physical variation implies variation in political governance and ways of living. Even wellknown Maya cities that have long been tourist destinations are yielding new insights. For example, archaeological work at the great capital of Tikal in Guatemala is showing how its elevated central precinct and well-plastered pyramids channeled water to central reservoirs and served the cause of agricultural sustainability. Outside the Maya heartland, research on the singularly impressive and influential metropolis of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico has produced an unexpected finding that political governance of this highly-ordered and complex polity was more collective than autocratic.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Tillamook Creamery Partners with Locals to Tackle Area Housing Shortage Lilliana Ortega, 22, turned down several opportunities close to her home in College Station, Texas, in order to accept a paid internship at the Tillamook Creamery in Tillamook County.

Back in March 2017, the Texas A&M University junior had three months to set up a place to stay in the coastal dairy farming region. She would be there all summer, working on research and development for the creamery. She scanned Craigslist and online ads, and called local churches as the company had suggested. For two months, it was one dead end after another.

To access the full story, click here.

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11. An Oregon County Closed All its Public Libraries. These Rural, DIY Book Lovers Revived Them RIDDLE — A year ago, Douglas County’s public library branches began to close, one by one, after residents voted down a tax initiative to keep them open as money, and services, dried up in this timberdependent region.

The news made headlines. People pondered how a community of loggers and agricultural workers could forego an institution considered by many to be as fundamental to American life as schools and paved roads.

But since then, one by one, library lovers from here to Reedsport have fought, wrangled and inspired to launch a grass-roots effort to help re-open the doors. Small but growing armies of volunteers have worked to rebuild collection catalogs, staff reference desks and run summer reading programs for kids.

To access the full story, click here.

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