Monday Mailing
Year 24 • Issue 38 09 July 2018 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
A Rural City's Aggressive Push for More Housing 20 Things Every City Can Do to Boost the Quality of Public Life What Unites and Divides Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities Rural Futures Podcast A Beginner’s Guide to Economic Gardening Sometimes You Need to Move Anyone Can Use Uber’s New Map-Making Tool Documents Show Value of Recreation at Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument 9. How Tech Companies Conquered America’s Cities 10. The Aspen Institute - Rural by Choice 11. Webinar: Trending Topics in Farm to School - Farm to ECE: Indigenous Foods in Early Care and Education Settings – August 2nd @11am PST
1. A Rural City's Aggressive Push for More Housing High construction costs and low property values often discourage contractors from building in these areas. The lack of new housing means rural communities miss out on valuable property taxes that could be used to provide many of the amenities enjoyed by urban residents. In the small eastern Oregon city of John Day, government officials have a plan to reverse this trend by offering generous financial incentives for new home construction and remodels. 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.
To access the full story, click here. 2. 20 Things Every City Can Do to Boost the Quality of Public Life Urbanists have a new playbook: The Assembly Civic Design Guidelines, a new set of recommendations for the public realm published by the Center for Active Design (CfAD)—a nonprofit that promotes design solutions for improving public health—and the Knight Foundation. The CfAD’s recommendations might seem like old hat: plant trees, improve public transit, build more bike lanes. However, the report positions them as means to a specific end: a robust public life, which the organization defines as inspiring greater trust, participation, stewardship, and informed local voting. Plus, it has years of original research to back up the suggestions. To access the full story, click here. 3.
What Unites and Divides Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities Large demographic shifts are reshaping America. The country is growing in numbers, it’s becoming more racially and ethnically diverse and the population is aging. But according to a new analysis by Pew Page 1 of 3
Research Center, these trends are playing out differently across community types. Urban areas are at the leading edge of racial and ethnic change, with nonwhites now a clear majority of the population in urban counties while solid majorities in suburban and rural areas are white. Urban and suburban counties are gaining population due to an influx of immigrants in both types of counties, as well as domestic migration into suburban areas. In contrast, rural counties have made only minimal gains since 2000 as the number of people leaving for urban or suburban areas has outpaced the number moving in. And while the population is graying in all three types of communities, this is happening more rapidly in the suburbs than in urban and rural counties. To access the full story, click here. 4. Rural Futures Podcast As our high-tech, globalized world continues to collide with the values, principles and ethics of humanity, the Rural Futures Institute at the University of Nebraska is breaking into the currently polarizing narratives of the rural-urban divide, technology development and the future of work through its weekly podcast, “Rural Futures with Dr. Connie.” Exploring the intersections of technology and what it means to be human, this podcast is for achievers to expand their perspective for social justice, economic growth and leadership through the lenses of exponential change, disruptive leadership and the evolution of humanity. Guests include futurists, business innovators and researchers who are smashing barriers for the sake of a thriving rural-urban future. To access the Rural Futures Podcast, click here. 5. A Beginner’s Guide to Economic Gardening This “Beginner’s Guide” is a free online course for program administrators (PAs) or others who are thinking about contracting an Economic Gardening® network in their state or region. It introduces new or potential administrators to the basics of Economic Gardening, along with their role and responsibilities. For more information about this free online course, click here. 6. Sometimes You Need to Move I grew up on the farm that was homesteaded by my great-great grandparents. When I was a kid, we tore down and replaced the house they had built, and that others had subsequently added on to. The saying “if those walls could only speak,” has extra meaning for me, because we found many things within those walls—old newspapers, letters, trinkets long forgotten. My parents still live there. In fourth and fifth grade, I attended Lowell Elementary. This is the grade school my mother attended, as well as the one my grandmother attended. Fridays during lunch I would walk to my grandmother’s house for pizza and Norwegian cookies. It was with great pride that I sent both of my kids to this same school. Many Fridays I would go there and have lunch with my kids, thinking of my grandmother. To access the full story, click here. 7. Anyone Can Use Uber’s New Map-Making Tool Back Fifteen million people take Uber rides every day, and they generate a lot of data.
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In fact, two years ago Uber began building its own mapping tool to process all of it. Called Kepler.gl, the software maps location data and runs entirely in your web browser, processing up to a million data points to create beautiful map-based visualizations. Uber recently made Kepler.gl open source and available to the public, and now other companies–like Mapbox, Airbnb, Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, and scooter company Limebike–are all using it to work with their own data. To access the full story, click here. 8. Documents Show Value of Recreation at Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument Recreation in an untamed part of Southern Oregon generated far more economic benefit than grazing and logging put together. Yet it’s difficult to say how changing the boundaries of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument might alter that mix. That’s because of the way the Trump administration heavily redacted documents it recently released. They were made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from OPB, EarthFix and other parties about the controversy-shrouded Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. To access the full story, click here. 9. How Tech Companies Conquered America’s Cities I’m not saying America’s cities are turning into dystopian technocapitalist hellscapes in which corporations operate every essential service and pull every civic string. But let’s take a tour of recent news from the metropolises. To access the full story, click here. 10. The Aspen Institute - Rural by Choice Despite decades of economic decline and brain drain for many rural communities, some young American adults are choosing to stay in their rural communities, to return home if they’ve left, or to make a new home away from the big cities. Hear the stories of three of them, and discover why they’ve made this choice, the opportunities and challenges they are facing, and what efforts are they making to improve their communities’ futures. Speakers: James Fallows, Whitney Kimball Coe, Tim Lampkin, Brian Depew To access the Rural by Choice video, click here. 11. Webinar: Trending Topics in Farm to School - Farm to ECE: Indigenous Foods in Early Care and Education Settings – August 2nd @11am PST Incorporating indigenous foods into education and meals in early care and education (ECE) settings offers many benefits, including increasing children’s knowledge of tribal history and food ways and strengthening cultural, spiritual, and social connections in the community. However, ensuring indigenous foods are procured, prepared, and served in ways that align with state licensing and Child and Adult Care Food Program regulations can be challenging. Join this webinar to hear from speakers from the National Farm to School Network, the Institute for Agriculture Trade and Policy, and the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association and to learn about innovative practices and resources that help overcome these challenges and support the inclusion of indigenous foods in ECE settings and in CACFP. This webinar will be recorded and archived for future viewing. To register for this webinar, click here. Page 3 of 3