The UO Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) has launched a two-year research initiative called "Framing Livability.” The project is partnering with the City of Portland, Portland Metro, Transportation for America, and the Natural Resources Defense Council on two grants from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities.  The project seeks to answer how sustainability-focused community development efforts can best be communicated to gain public support.

On Halloween night, two University of Oregon students went door-to-door in the Friendly Neighborhood to engage neighbors and gather design ideas for a class initiative that would renovate a nearby intersection.

A lecture Professor Marc Schlossberg gave during his Fulbright year at Technion Israel Institute of Technology was highlighted on the school’s home page recently. Schlossberg spoke about the Sustainable City Year Program (SCYP), which he and UO colleague Associate Professor Nico Larco founded at UO and which Technion has adopted under the name The Urban Laboratory.  It’s the first such project at an Israeli university.

“Multi-way boulevard” may sound like a free-for-all, but for students in Rob Ribe’s Land Planning and Design studio this fall, it’s an extraordinary opportunity to fix an accelerating problem.

A problem involving too many cars and trucks in a four-mile section of US Highway 97 through Redmond, Oregon. A problem of maintaining access to businesses and reducing accidents.

Cascade Business News features the Sustainable Cities Year Program in Redmond in its current issue, noting that students are already preparing their midterm presentations. “Eight classes [of students are] working on six projects during the fall term. Then we will have a similar amount of projects for the winter term and for the spring term,” Heather Richards, Redmond’s director of community development, told Cascade Business News writer David Clewett in the November 3 story.

The University of Oregon’s Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) AmeriCorps Program has won the Oregon Main Street Leadership Award, only the second time the agency has conferred the distinction.

The leadership award recognizes individuals and organizations offering creative approaches to downtown revitalization through strong leadership that results in significant, long-term contributions.

The 2015-16 Sustainable Cities Year Program (SCYP) with the City of Redmond officially kicked off with a gala celebration at the UO’s Ford Alumni Center October 1. During the yearlong partnership between UO and Redmond, hundreds of students and faculty members will pour 50,000 hours of work into applied projects with sustainability-focused solutions. 

A new report on the condition and needs of Oregon’s historic theaters reveals them as potentially significant economic engines as well as cultural touchstones in communities small and large. But they’re challenged by deferred maintenance and other financial and organizational needs, for which the report provides specific recommendations.

Graduate students in the UO Community Planning Workshop, a program of the Community Service Center, have produced a 14-minute video about the preservation challenges faced by many of Oregon’s 120 historic theaters.

The magazine 1859 features the University of Oregon’s SCYP program in the magazine’s July|August 2015 issue. Writer Felisa Rogers explains how SCYP got its start and notes its many successes in its six-year tenure. “What sets SCYP apart is the scope and cohesiveness of the project,” she writes in the six-page feature story. SCYP—which partners UO students with an Oregon municipality needing assistance reaching sustainability project goals—not only helps both cities and students move projects forward, but it also has boosted city employees’ enthusiasm for their jobs, Rogers notes.