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Monday Mailing

Year 22 • Issue 38 27 June 2016 1. Free Webinar - From Buses to Bikeshare: How Integrated Mobility Can Have Big Impacts in Small Communities 2. Has Portland Lost its Way? 3. Wrestling With Multi-Family Housing 4. Agritourism: If You Grow It, They Will Come 5. Climate Scientists Predict More Blazing Heat, Drought, Fires and Scores of Dead Trees in the West 6. Drought Be Damned: Has the 20th-Century Promise of America’s Dams Run Its Course?

7. “YIMBY” Movement Heats Up in Boulder 8. Portland loses 'Smart City Challenge' to Columbus, Ohio 9. Stop Trying To Solve Hunger With Corporate Food Waste 10. The Places in the U.S. Where Income Inequality Is Off The Charts 11. A Clever Canopy Brings Solar Power to Brooklyn at Long Last 1. Free Webinar - From Buses to Bikeshare: How Integrated Mobility Can Have Big Impacts in Small Communities Wed, Jun 29, 2016 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT 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.

To register for this webinar, click here.

Quote of the Week: “Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid.” ~Franklin P. Jones Oregon Fast Fact: The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest is one of the largest longterm ecological research sites in the United States.

2. Has Portland Lost its Way? A few weeks ago, Portland residents got some unsurprising news: the city's housing prices are officially rising faster than anywhere else in the nation. Data released from the S&P Dow Jones Indices put Portland on top at an 11.8 percent increase, year over year.

For several years already, the Portland real estate market has been increasing supply to meet the growing demand, with a surge of construction in new homes and, especially, apartments. In the past year, over 20,000 new units have been built, and the feverish pace of building is accelerating. "Clearly the supply is on the way to ameliorate this issue," local housing economist Jerry Johnson told the BikePortland newsletter. "Eventually the market always overbuilds itself."

To access the full story, click here.

3. Wrestling With Multi-Family Housing City of Sisters planners and developer Hayden Homes are trying to determine the future of a portion of Hayden's housing development at the west end of town.

The public hearing regarding Hayden Homes' request for a Page 1 of 4

modification to their 2005 Master Plan of Village at Cold Springs was continued until Wednesday, June 29 at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.

At their meeting last Thursday, the Sisters Planning Commission considered Hayden's request to withdraw the developed western portion of Village at Cold Springs from the remaining undeveloped 18.37 acres of the development.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Agritourism: If You Grow It, They Will Come Umatilla and Morrow counties are home to a sweeping variety of agriculture, from rolling wheat fields to colorful orchards and rugged cattle ranches.

State tourism officials say those same farms could become a major selling point for visitors wanting to see (and taste) the authentic Oregon experience.

Travel Oregon, along with the Eastern Oregon Visitors Association and Northeast Oregon Economic Development District, hosted a pair of workshops Tuesday and Wednesday to teach farmers ways they can attract tourists while sustaining their normal operations.

The melding of agriculture and tourism, or “agritourism,” is not a new concept. Activities can include things like U-pick fields, farm stands and horseback riding. Alexa Carey, destination development specialist for Travel Oregon, said the industry as a whole has been developing for decades.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Climate Scientists Predict More Blazing Heat, Drought, Fires and Scores of Dead Trees in the West The burning sensation in the southwestern United States was diagnosed by climate scientists more than a year ago.

As California broiled in high temperatures and drought last year, academic institutions across the country released study after study that suggested rising temperatures and less moisture were part of a new normal for the state. One study by NASA predicted in February that the Southwest can expect to endure a 30-year megadrought starting as early as 2050. In early March, a study from Stanford University said California could face a drought every other year based on a 30-year trend of higherthan-normal temperatures and dwindling rainfall.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Drought Be Damned: Has the 20th-Century Promise of America’s Dams Run Its Course?

Wedged between Arizona and Utah, less than 20 miles up river from the Grand Canyon, a soaring concrete wall nearly the height of two football fields blocks the flow of the Colorado River. There, at Glen Canyon Dam, the river is turned back on itself, drowning more than 200 miles of plasma-red gorges and replacing the Colorado’s free-spirited rapids with an immense lake of flat, still water called Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reserve.

When Glen Canyon Dam was built — in the middle of the last century — giant dams were championed as a silver bullet promising to elevate the American West above its greatest handicap — a perennial shortage of water. These monolithic wonders of engineering would bring wild rivers to

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heel; produce cheap, clean power; and stockpile water necessary to grow a thriving economy in the middle of the desert. And because they were often remotely located they were rarely questioned.

To access the full story, click here.

7. “YIMBY” Movement Heats Up in Boulder Back in the old days, urban real estate development followed a familiar pattern. A market opportunity would attract developers, developers would lobby governments to approve their projects, and resident groups would register their concerns. Somewhere in this essentially adversarial system, the dual forces of capitalism and democracy would arrive at a suitable amount of housing in suitable places.

Enter the NIMBYs. As housing shortages in major cities, primarily those on the coasts, have grown increasingly severe, many cities have been reluctant to approve new housing — despite market pressures — in part due to opposition from local homeowners and, in some cases, even from renters. More of an attitude than a movement, the “Not in My Backyard” ethic has gone from opposing intrusive infrastructure projects (like the Lower Manhattan Expressway in the 1960s) to opposing developments that could provide basic shelter in today’s booming U.S. cities.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Portland loses 'Smart City Challenge' to Columbus, Ohio Portland's hopes of winning $40 million to help build a high-tech street grid were dashed Tuesday after the U.S. Department of Transportation chose Columbus, Ohio, as the winner of its "Smart City Challenge" grant.

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, released a statement congratulating Columbus on its win. The federal transportation department has not yet formally announced a winner.

Portland was among seven finalists, including Denver and San Francisco, vying for the grant money.

The federal cash is expected to come with an additional $10 million from Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. Portland had been named a finalist in March.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Stop Trying To Solve Hunger With Corporate Food Waste It seems like a marriage made in heaven. Eliminate the vast amount of food waste in our society by giving it to the poor and hungry. No more hunger. No more waste. At least that's what advocates for food-waste-to-the-poor schemes will have us believe. Here at home, MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau's private member's bill, C-231, Fight Against Food Waste Act, will continue being debated in the House of Commons in the coming weeks.

But this is a relationship doomed before it even begins. That's because this bill and other initiatives like it fail to address the real root causes of hunger and food waste. In fact, by conflating and confusing these issues, it makes it harder to develop meaningful and effective strategies to address both of these growing problems.

To access the full story, click here.

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10. The Places in the U.S. Where Income Inequality Is Off The Charts The gap between the richest 1% of the United States and the rest has received a lot of attention on the campaign trail, particularly from Sen. Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. And rightly so: In 2013, the 1% made 25 times as much as the bottom 99%. But these statistics don't tell the whole story of income inequality. When you look at a more local level, the gaps in fact are much wider.

In New York, Connecticut, and Wyoming, the 1% made 40 times as much as the rest in 2013, according to new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington D.C. think-tank that often covers inequality issues. The 1%-versus-the-rest gap was greater than the national average in 165 of 3,064 counties, and 54 of 916 metropolitan areas. In the Jackson metro area of Wyoming and Idaho, the ratio was a staggering 213-times in 2013, making it the most unequal area of the country.

(Teton County, in the Jackson metro, was the most unequal county.)

To access the full story, click here.

11. A Clever Canopy Brings Solar Power to Brooklyn at Long Last Going solar in New York is a hassle. Despite interest from residents and incentives that can cut the cost of a residential install by 75 percent, the city has been slow to adopt the technology—especially compared to the far reaches of Long Island.

Blame architecture, says T.R. Ludwig, co-founder of Brooklyn SolarWorks, a startup trying to bring solar panels to Big Apple rooftops. The market is vibrant, he says, but limited to pitch-roof, suburban-style homes. The brick and brownstone homes of Brooklyn and Manhattan tend to have flat roofs rife with obstacles like skylights, hatches, and HVAC systems. What’s more, city code requires a cleared pathway at least 6 feet wide and 9 feet high. It doesn’t help that panels on flat roofs are more susceptible to shading and tougher to position for optimal efficiency, which Ludwig says is a 33 degree pitch and pointed due south.

To access the full story, click here.

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