HUD Sustainable Communities Updates

Last Monday, April 23, COC Associate Planner and Community Engagement Specialist Ellen Wyoming took part in a call-in conference hosted by HUD about future sustainable communities grants. We were referred to investigate the sustainable communities clearinghouse best practices – which are modeled on an external website at sustainable cities institute.

From the link below you can select the criteria for the type of project you are looking at and then read about the best practices they have for each particular type of project. It’s quite comprehensive.

http://www.sustainablecitiesinstitute.org/search;jsessionid=A2A093913A64F48532671719A121DF37?query=best+practices

On Tuesday, April 24, HUD’s Director for Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC), Shelley Poticha, hosted a Twitter Town Hall to discuss the impact of their Sustainable Community Grants program. COC Climate Economy graduate intern Derek Dauphin covered the event. Some key responses to the inbound Tweets follow.

How do sustainable communities benefit people?

(1) They save money by using less energy and water but also by bringing home and work closer together, reducing the costs of transportation, (2) Overall quality of life is better with people spending more time with their families and less time stuck in traffic, and (3) Better health from walking and living in a less polluted place.

How can sustainable communities result in more jobs?

Sustainable Community grant recipients are looking at what growth sectors they can attract and how. Memphis’s sustainability strategies have created 3,500 jobs locally and now the program is moving to the regional level. Austin has created a number of mixed-use developments that have been very successful in attracting businesses including Apple’s new campus. Businesses look for places where talented people want to be for more than 1-2 years. This means great schools, access to nature, neighborhoods that people want to live in and that provide easy access to work – all hallmarks of sustainable communities.

More information

http://www.hud.gov/sustainability

http://www.sustainablecommunities.gov

Economically, we are what we eat

We currently import at least 90 percent our food from outside the Portland region, about $4.7 billion a year with related inputs included. We could increase our regional wealth by between $470 million and $940 million annually if we shifted between 10 and 20 percent of our purchases from imported to local foods.

Through his compelling article, Economically, we are what we eat, Bob Wise addresses those facts and examines the challenges of providing local foods in Oregon.  He asks, if we are sitting in the midst of one of the world’s most food-abundant places, why is it so difficult to buy food grown here?  The answer is that we import most of the food we eat.  Bob considers ways to reverse this significant “leakage” dynamic. He proposes strategic solutions to findings from several recent research projects conducted by COC and regional partners that attempt to answer these questions:  how we can support expanded agriculture to accommodate import substitution, what it would take to increase demand and supply of local food, how to help farmers keep a greater share of the food dollar and stay in business, and how we can increase our human and social capital to support the food economy.

The blog is the second in a series of six articles on import substitution on the Sustainable Business Oregon website.

Citizen Leaders Learn Meeting Skills

How do we make sure our meetings start and end on time?  How do we deal with people who run on and on and don’t know when to stop talking?  What are simple rules of order we can apply to neighborhood meetings?  Do you have hints about how to handle controversial issues?

These and many other matters were the subject of a recent workshop for about 50 Clackamas County citizen leaders conducted by Elaine Cogan and Steve Faust.  The format was similar to training sessions Elaine has conducted for planning commissioners and city council members throughout the region and beyond.  “There is a hunger for this kind of information,” Elaine observed.  “Citizen leaders devote hundreds of hours to their communities but often do not have the basic information that will enable them to realize even more satisfactory results.”

Upon reviewing the evaluation sheets filled out by participants after the workshop, Barbara Smolak, Citizen Involvement, Public and Government Affairs for Clackamas County, said that most rated the session either “very good” or “excellent.”

Food Night Discussion at COC

Bob Wise recently hosted leaders in the regional food movement to a night of sharing progress on all fronts to advance the vision of a Metropolitan Foodshed for the Portland Region.  He shared work on localizing food spending that is summarized in a recent article in Sustainable Business Oregon.  See for the full story:  http://www.sustainablebusinessoregon.com/columns/2012/04/economically-we-are-what-we-eat.html.  We were joined by Stanford University researcher Therese Costello who discussed the importance of organizations that make small farmers more efficient and provide market access.  Ellen Wyoming also presented on the award-winning Mercado project work she is doing with the Hacienda CDC to create a Latino-themed public market in Portland.  The strong Food Night attendance and positive energy demonstrated that there we are in the midst of the birth of a local healthy food movement.  A summary of the meeting is here.