If the posters lining the wall showed how visionary the Sustainable City Year model can be, the Salem city officials attending the May 20 reception testified how practical it can be as well. The reception recapped the work of the second Sustainable City Year, now drawing to a close.

Sustainable City Year is a program of the Sustainable Cities Initiative, one of three OTREC initiatives. In the program, 500 students on two campuses worked on 16 projects to help Salem meet sustainability goals.

Although work continues in Salem and at the University of Oregon and Portland State University, May 20 was an opportunity to thank the participants and punctuate a second successfully year, following the inaugural efforts in Gresham, Ore. Next year’s Sustainable City Year will focus on Springfield, Ore.

Linda Norris, Salem’s city manager, couldn’t say enough about the contributions the program made to her city. Students in 29 classes on the two campuses put in 80,000 hours of time. Sustainable City Year’s choosing Salem was like magic, Norris said.

The students didn’t just treat their work as a hypothetical problem to solve; they poured themselves into the projects and the goals behind them. “When we heard how seriously they were taking this, and how much they cared about this community, it really did give me goose bumps,” Norris said.

Salem did not have money to get many of the projects started without Sustainable City Year, Norris said. But now that...

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Think people who live in suburban developments don't walk and bike? They do, particularly if the development is well-connected. University of Oregon assistant professor Nico Larco has shown this with his OTREC projects.

He explains some of the work himself in this video.

The Spring 2009 issue of OTREC's newsletter is now available, with news from students and faculty on all four OTREC campuses. The feature article examines UO Professor Nico Larco's work on "sustainable suburbs." Also included: highlights of recently completed research reports, an interview with OSU's Jason Ideker, and updates from our student groups. Do you know what OIT is doing with the National Park Service? Did you hear how PSUís Miller Grant is addressing sustainable transportation? Are you aware of the conferences and training opportunities that will be nearby this summer? Spend your next break with the OTREC Newsletter! Please email us if you would like a hard copy or to receive email notification of future issues.

The USDOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) released their March 2009 UTC Spotlight, featuring OTREC Livability related research, mostly focused on projects at the University of Oregon led by Marc Schlossberg, Nico Larco and Yizhao Yang. New Secretary of Transportation LaHood has specifically mentioned livability as one of his priorities so this is a very timely publication. OTREC looks forward to continuing to address critical transportation needs in sync with national priorities.

The Sustainable Endowments Institute has chosen to honor the University of Oregon’s OTREC supported designBridge program as a Champion of Sustainability in Communities. UO’s designBridge program, a student-run organization that offers environmentally friendly, community-based design-build services to the local area, was named as one of four honorable mentions. designBridge utilizes resources from the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts, other campus departments and Eugene/Springfield community businesses to work on a variety of service projects, including a seedling greenhouse for Northwest Youth Corps and a bike shelter for Edison Elementary School in Eugene. Assistant Professor of Architecture Nico Larco currently supervises students Drew Hastings (project manager), Nick Wallace, Kent Wu, Truc Bui and Vito Cerelli on the project. Last fall students Patrick Hannah (project manager), J. Ho Lee, Kelley Stewart, Lucas Gray and Paul McBride worked on the designBridge project.

Dr. Larco (left) is pictured standing in a renewed and re-invigorated bicycle parking area at Edison Elementary school in Eugene. designBridge worked with kids, parents, and school administrators to completely re-design this area over the course of the last year. So far this year, bike ridership has doubled and the kids and parents are loving the design work that Nico’s students have done.

OTREC co-sponsored and faculty were active participants in the Transportation Research Board’s 11th National Conference on Transportation Planning for Small and Medium-Sized Communities, held in Portland September 17-19, 2008 under the auspices of TRB Committee ADA30, Transportation Planning for Small and Medium Sized Communities. OTREC Advisory Board member Tom Schwetz was the conference chair. Also, Prof. Yizhao Yang, University of Oregon, presented Where to Live and How to Get to School: Connecting Residential Location Choice and School Travel; Prof. Marc Schlossberg, University of Oregon, presented Livable Communities, Public Involvement, & Participatory GIS: Computer Assessment Tools for Local Area Analysis; and Prof. Nico Larco, University of Oregon presented Fringe Density: Planning Tips for Overlooked Density in Suburbia. Also Prof. Bertini had the honor to introduce the conference keynote speaker, Sharon Wood Wortman.

Faculty from all four OTREC partner campuses participated in the 2008 Northwest Transportation Conference at Oregon State University February 5-7. Under the theme of "Making the Most of What We Have: Innovations for the 21st Century," faculty served as session moderators and as roundtable members for a variety of topics. Portland State University attendees included Jennifer Dill, Peter Dusicka, Miguel Figliozzi, Hau Hagedorn, Chris Monsere, Tony Rufolo, Kristin Tufte and Brent Zenobia. University of Oregon faculty attending were Nico Larco, Marc Schlossberg and Yizhao Yang. Faculty from Oregon State University included Karen Dixon, Chris Higgins, Starr McMullen, Todd Scholz, Michael Scott and Lei Zhang. OTREC Associate Director Roger Lindgren from the Oregon Institute of Technology also attended. More information about the conference and program sessions: NWTC.

The video begins at 1:55.

Abstract: This year, the Sustainable City Year (SCY) program is working with the City of Salem (Oregon, USA) and is directing 25 faculty, 28 courses, 10 disciplines, and about 80,000 hours of student and faculty effort toward the city's sustainability related projects and priorities.  The talk will discuss SCY’s program structure, numerous transportation related projects, and tangible outcomes. 

In this model of education, students get hands on experience in working with city officials while city officials and citizens get a range of new ideas from the next generation of thinkers and practitioners.  This model is, at the same time, a fairly radical re-conceptualization of transportation education as well as a somewhat simple approach to incorporate.