Monday Mailing 092319

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 3 23 September 2019 1.

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Pendleton Round-Up Showcases The Other Side Of Oregon (Michael Hoch) Rising Generation Asserts Itself On Climate Change New Paper Details the Dramatic Decline of Low-Cost Rentals Do You Live In A ‘Soft City’? Here’s Why You Probably Want To Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Shuts Down DSL, the Slowest Technology, Remains the One Most Available in Rural What Happens When We Share A Meal Healthy Soil Can Combat Climate Change from the Ground Up An Indigenous Way Of Life For These California Tribes Breaks State Laws WEBINAR - Suburbs for Everyone: How to Rethink, Redesign and Redevelop the ‘Burbs to Be More Affordable and Livable

1. Pendleton Round-Up Showcases The Other Side Of Oregon

Ask the average non-Oregonian what the state is known for, and they’re unlikely to mention cowboys.

To much of the country, we’re better known for rain, hipsters and protests.

Quote of the Week:

"All things share the same breath -- the beast, the tree, the man. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports." - Chief Seattle

Oregon Fast Fact #24

The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest is one of the largest long-term ecological research sites in the United States.

But most Oregonians know better. Get out of the state’s Interstate 5 corridor, and you’ll quickly fall into the urban-rural divide. On one side: that rain, those hipsters, those protests. On the other? High desert, cowboys and the legendary Pendleton Round-Up rodeo.

In some ways, the rodeo emphasizes just how big that divide is.

You’ll find people who travel from town to town, making their living bullriding or barrel racing. Native American tribal members spend the week living in a tepee village just outside the rodeo grounds and perform dances in full regalia. On Main Street, you’ll find a sea of Stetsons — all scenes you’re not likely to find on this scale anywhere else in the state.

Yet the rodeo also seems to have a pull that overcomes the distance between urban and rural Oregon, drawing many Portlanders to the event each year.

Pete Krebs, a Portland musician, has attended Round-Up several times and has been performing in Pendleton for years. He said the feeling of the “Old West” has its appeal, but the Round-Up offers more than just a peek into the past.

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“It has such a strong identity of cowboys and the American West — and what I’ve discovered is that there’s a real deep, diverse undercurrent,” said Krebs. “It’s not monolithic at all.”

Pat Reay, the Round-Up’s publicity director, said Round-Up directors have worked to make the event appeal to an evolving audience.

“Even urban folks realize it’s not all skyscrapers and pavement,” he said. “There’s farms, cattle.

Like with any event, we’ve got to adapt. A hundred years ago, it was all rodeo fans. Now it’s a community event. I think with any community event, we’ve got to tell the right story — why is the event something people come from all over the country, or the world, to watch?”

To access the full story, click here.

2. Rising Generation Asserts Itself On Climate Change

Spurred by what they see as a sluggish, ineffectual response to the existential threat of global warming, student activists from around the world are skipping school Friday, for what organizers call a Global Climate Strike.

The young activists are protesting as the U.N. prepares to hold its Climate Action Summit on Monday in New York City.

The strike's figurehead is 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who traveled from Sweden to New York on an emissions-free sailboat. A little over a year ago, Thunberg began her school strike for the climate by herself, outside the Swedish Parliament.

Support for a school climate strike has since spread across the globe. In the past year, Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian lawmakers. She's also met with Pope Francis and lawmakers in several countries.

"We are currently on track for a world that could displace billions of people from their homes," Thunberg warned this week as she accepted Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award. She ended her acceptance speech with a call to action: "See you on the streets!"

In New York City, thousands of students are expected to fill the streets alongside Thunberg because, as the city's school district announced on Twitter, it is giving strikers excused absences.

In Oregon, Portland Public Schools is doing the same.

To access the full story, click here.

3. New Paper Details the Dramatic Decline of Low-Cost Rentals

A significant decline in low-cost rental units over the past three decades has exacerbated housing affordability pressures faced by low-income renters, according to a new working paper I co-authored with Elizabeth La Jeunesse, Daniel McCue, and Jonathan Spader.

Although the overall rental stock grew by 10.9 million units between 1990 and 2017, the number of units renting for less than $600 per month (in constant 2017 dollars) fell by nearly 4.0 million (Figure 1). The data also show that this decline was concentrated in the last five years.

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After falling modestly in the 1990s and early 2000s, the stock of low-cost units rose in the aftermath of the recession. Since 2012, however, the number of units renting for under $600 has fallen sharply, accounting for a large share of the decline in low-cost units over the long run.

In the paper, we used US Census Bureau data—both Decennial Censuses and 1-Year American Community Surveys—to document the long-run decrease in low-cost rentals, discuss the geographic distribution of these declines, and explore the connections between the loss of lowcost units and the increased number of cost-burdened low-income renters.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Do You Live In A ‘Soft City’? Here’s Why You Probably Want To

Imagine yourself sitting in your home. What’s right outside your front door, and what’s within a 10-minute walk of it? Can you make it to a grocery store or a café on foot, or do you have to drive? Is there a shared space nearby, a park or a patio, where you can mingle with the people who live around you? Do you often see people out and about, or do your neighbors mostly stay inside? What about the street: Is it filled with only cars, or do you see people biking and taking transit? Do you feel safe walking on the sidewalk that lines your front door (if there even is a sidewalk)? Are there places to sit along it?

This list could go on much longer. It’s just a sample of the kinds of questions that preoccupy David Sim, creative director and partner at Gehl. Based in Copenhagen, Gehl has long pioneered the idea of human-centered urban design. Rather than thinking about cities as a collection of buildings and impressive developments, designers like Sim thinks about them as a series of relationships: between people and place, people and planet, and people and other people. “The starting point is not a big, architectural urban idea—it’s about being a little human being, and how can you connect that human being to as many experiences as possible,” he says.

Good cities, from Sim’s perspective, are ones that make these connections possible. They can look different and exist in different contexts, but they share an overarching and essential quality, which Sim calls “softness”—a stark contrast to the rhetoric of “grind” and “harshness” that’s often applied to urban life.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Shuts Down

Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania stopped producing electricity at noon on Friday, part of Exelon Corp.'s plan to close and decommission the plant over the next 60 years.

The closure comes 40 years after the partial meltdown of the plant's reactor No. 2 — the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident — left the plant with only one working reactor.

Tens of thousands evacuated amid uncertainty about the accident. Some radiation was released, but officials said it was within acceptable levels. Yet many who live in the area are convinced that their health problems in later years were related to the accident.

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The event ushered in a new era of nuclear regulations, while also ending an era of growth in the U.S. commercial nuclear sector. Since the accident, no commercial reactors have been built in the U.S. Exelon officials said some of the plant's approximately 675 employees will keep working at the plant to move the nuclear fuel as it cools.

Most will stay around until the end of the month, enough time to move fuel out of the reactor and into a massive vat of water called a spent fuel pool.

After that, staffing will be reduced to 300 employees, who will move the fuel to concrete and stainless steel "dry casks."

To access the full story, click here.

6. DSL, the Slowest Technology, Remains the One Most Available in Rural While the official Federal communications commission statistic that 21.3 million people lacked access to broadband service of at least 25 megabits per second down and 3 megabits per second up (25/3 for short) is well-known, less recognized is the fact that of these, 4.8 million people or 2.2 million housing units had access to no providers (gray areas). Almost 70 percent or 1.5 million of these housing units were in rural areas.

These are some key findings of a new report published by the Purdue Center for Regional Development that looked not only at access but also quality of service (measured by the median advertised speeds reported) as well as competition among providers.

A sizeable digital divide persists between urban and rural: consider that the share of rural housing units with no access to 25/3 was 20 times larger than the share of urban housing units (26.9 versus 1.4 percent). When it comes to symmetrical 25/25 speeds, the share of rural housing units with no access more than doubles from 26.9 to 64.7 percent.

Symmetrical speeds, where the connection has the same download and upload speed, are critical nowadays given that more and more businesses and homes not only consume (download) but also produce (upload).

To access the full story, click here.

7. What Happens When We Share A Meal

One of the most shameful places in my life is the driver’s-side nook of my car, where I stash the evidence of too many meals eaten alone. There, you might find empty potato-chip bags, Kind bar wrappers, and the waxed paper that once held a McDonalds Egg White Delight McMuffin — okay, okay, and also the sleeve for the hash browns (the best).

We are both beneficiaries and victims of the transformation of how we eat in modern America.

Feeding ourselves is cheaper and more convenient than ever. Yet because of our unjust food system, good eating is largely the province of those with plenty of money. Food is commodified and decontextualized. Even the finest meals — even those meals that seek to honor where our Page 4 of 6

food comes from, as with the commercialization and fetishization of the phrase “farm-to-table” — have become performance.

All this takes us further than ever from the roots of the original restaurant, the story of which is contained in the word itself. The English word “restaurant” comes from the French “restaurer,” which means “to restore.” In 1765, a Parisian by the name of Boulanger began selling bouillons restaurants — literally, “restoring broths” — to aid both body and spirit. (Selling bone broths is yet another non-innovative thing innovated by the American hipster.)

I wonder what might happen if more of us rediscovered food as a means of emotional and spiritual restoration. What if we understood meals as not only vehicles of personal pleasure and physical sustenance but also spaces for relational reconnection? What if we reset every table as a restaurant in the original sense of the word?

To access the full story, click here.

8. Healthy Soil Can Combat Climate Change from the Ground Up Five months after devastating spring flooding across the Midwest, farms along the Missouri River remain under water. This summer, severe drought has hit patches of Texas and Oklahoma.

Areas of the West and Southeast are abnormally dry.

As floods and droughts become more common, farmers, scientists and conservationists are looking for ways to resist. One solution to combating the changing climate starts in the ground.

A growing number of states across the country are proposing policies to encourage building healthier agricultural soil, a costly investment for many growers, but one that research shows can benefit farmers and the environment.

Just this year, at least 10 states have introduced new soil management policies that call for further research or data collection, or offer tax exemptions, technical assistance or even grant money to, among other actions, plant cover crops, diversify crop rotations and reduce tillage that can tear apart beneficial fungi.

Between 2015 and 2018, states debated 166 bills related to soil health, according to an April 2019 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“When soil is healthy, it can hold a lot more water and drain better, but it also can be part of the climate solution,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, a senior analyst with the nonprofit.

To access the full story, click here.

9. An Indigenous Way Of Life For These California Tribes Breaks State Laws

Hillary Renick hikes down scree and rocks worn smooth by waves to reach the sandy beach below. The morning fog has receded, but the sky is still gray along the Mendocino County coastline as Renick scrambles up, down, and around Pomo village and nearby sites, where her people harvest traditional foods and collect materials for regalia, such as shells. “The rocky inlets are where the abalone hang out,” says Renick.

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Renick, a citizen of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, and her crew of self-described “guerrilla gatherers,” are scouting Glass Beach in Fort Bragg for abalone, seaweed and shells they use for food, regalia and ceremonies. “We like to say we’re badass Indian women gathering under cover of darkness, crawling under fences, over rocks, around no trespassing signs, and through the mud to provide for funerals, feasts and celebrations,” Renick says – although men are also part of the group.

Renick and her friends and family routinely defy California laws and natural-resource management regulations they say obstruct their right to maintain these traditional practices.

The stakes are high: Indigenous peoples risk jail time, tens of thousands of dollars in fines and the lifetime loss of state hunting and fishing privileges for doing what they’ve always done in this area. But they say the possibility of losing this connection to the land outweighs the legal risks.

In June 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom issued an apology to the more than 155 Indigenous tribes in the state for decades of genocide, oppression, neglect – wrongs that included suppression of traditional subsistence rights. But the state still regulates fishing, hunting and gathering. Decade after decade, tribes in California have had to find ways to maintain their traditional ways of life in a state that has made this challenging – or even illegal.

For millennia, Pomo, Coast Yuki, Sinkyone, Yurok and other Northern California tribes have sustainably harvested mollusks, surf fish, seaweed, shells and medicines in the summer, as well as acorns and other inland foods, Renick says. She explains that each summer, after her Pomo band gathered their first harvest, neighboring tribes, and even tribes as far away as Pit River – on the east side of the Sacramento Valley – were invited to harvest. “When they were done, we sent runners [to] Pit River and invited them to gather,” says Renick.

To access the full story, click here.

10. WEBINAR - Suburbs for Everyone: How to Rethink, Redesign and Redevelop the

‘Burbs to Be More Affordable and Livable (Friday, September 27, 2019 from 10am to 11a:30m PDT)

The suburbs are ground zero for many challenges facing communities, from social and economic equity to climate change. The suburbs also hold a lot of promise, but only if we can reimagine them.

Join the Smart Growth Network and the Congress for the New Urbanism at 1 p.m. Eastern, September 27 for a webinar identifying keys to making suburbs more affordable, walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly, adding up to a more sustainable future for our regions.

Panelists include June Williamson, Chair of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York, and Dan Reed, a planner at Toole Design.

Participants of the live webinar are eligible for 1.5 AICP CM and 1.5 CNU-A credits. Register via the link below.

To register for the webinar, click here.

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