University of Oregon Sustainable City Year

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/10380

The Sustainable City Year program is a partnership of a cross-disciplinary group of faculty and students with one city in Oregon each year. Coursework in disciplines including design, planning, arts, ecology, journalism, engineering, business, and public policy focus on assisting that city with its sustainability-oriented goals and projects. The Sustainable City Year faculty and students work with city staff and other partners, through a variety of studio projects and service learning courses, to 1) provide students with a real world project to investigate; 2) apply their training; and 3) help a local city transition to a more sustainable and livable future.

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Browsing University of Oregon Sustainable City Year by Content Type "Book"

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    Development Opportunities in Downtown Springfield
    (University of Oregon, 2018) Chilingerian, Jenna; Margerum, Richard; Parker, Robert
    Downtown Springfield’s revitalization has begun. Over the last 15 years, city leaders and advocates have facilitated many improvements and additions within the downtown area. These new developments help downtown feel active and vibrant. City leaders hope to continue this work in the years to come, creating a well-connected city that serves its residents and businesses.
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    Future-Proofing Comprehensive Plans in Eugene and Gresham
    (University of Oregon, 2019) Kohnke, Jennifer; Lewis, Rebecca
    As part of the Sustainable City Year Program, students in Rebecca Lewis’s Growth Management course were asked to assess the comprehensive plans of the cities of Eugene and Gresham, Oregon. Students sought to determine each city’s readiness for the deployment of new mobility services and autonomous vehicle and the continued growth of e-commerce deliveries, along with accompanied changes to warehousing and brick-and-mortar retail. Students analyzed city comprehensive plans, focusing on the cities’ commercial and residential land use patterns. Each group compiled written reports detailing their research, analysis, and findings. In the reports, students noted positive steps that the cities are taking to create pathways for these new technologies and provided recommendations for areas of improvement. In addition to the reports, the teams presented their findings to representatives from both cities. Students were divided into four different teams to analyze the comprehensive plans. Two teams each assessed the comprehensive plans of the cities of Eugene and Gresham. For each city, one group focused on the topic of new mobility and the other analyzed e-commerce. The class evaluated the two cities’ comprehensive plans through initial independent research on e-commerce and new mobility. Students also looked at case studies of other cities and steps they are taking to address the issues. Then, students reviewed Envision Eugene Comprehensive Plan and Gresham Comprehensive Plan for policies and regulations that were conducive to allowing new mobility technologies within their city limits.
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    New Mobility Case Study
    (University of Oregon, 2018) Cohen, Rachel; Skov, Joshua
    The city of Eugene is interested in learning how its residents might benefit from technology-enabled ‘new mobility’ solutions to differently meet their transportation needs. Student teams analyzed how members of a fictional or real household in Eugene could reduce their reliance on single-occupancy vehicles in daily commutes, local and regional trips, and infrequent travel destinations. For this project, new mobility is defined as a transportation mode that is: • enabled by new technologies, including electric and autonomous vehicles, or; • enabled by new business models or social trends, sometimes referred to as shared-use mobility (a categorization that typically includes bikesharing, carsharing, e-scooters, ridehailing, and even transit at various scales). The implications of shifting a household’s transportation habits created tradeoffs between competing priorities of cost, time, flexibility, and sustainability. In order to understand the financial implications, students were asked to analyze the full—and often overlooked—costs of vehicle ownership. Upon completing this analysis, many teams found significant savings opportunities in adopting active transportation and shared-use mobility. Beyond financial cost, teams discovered opportunities, trade-offs, and barriers to adoption. Teams found that households best served by existing new mobility solutions lived closest to the city center. Feasibility was often complicated by demographic factors including income, age, and occupation. Cultural norms and attitudes toward car ownership played a role in whether households shifted their behavior, both for fictional household members and for the authors. Where currently available options were not feasible, students identified modes in other markets that might benefit Eugene residents. Students also examined emerging and future technologies not currently in existence. While feasibility varied widely based on currently available modes, the city of Eugene can foster a transition to new mobility through partnerships that support multimodal first- and last-mile solutions. The City can also work to educate residents by using tools and messaging to improving awareness, perception, and trust in new mobility options.
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    Passive Heating Strategies for Disaster Relief Planning
    (University of Oregon, 2019) Naganuma, Lindsey; Rempel, Alexandra
    Three student groups collaborated with city of Dunes City city council and staff to develop passive heating strategies to achieve winter sustainability after the predicted 9.0 magnitude earthquake and accompanying tsunami that will occur just off the Oregon coast. Students investigated ways to create a shelter outside of the tsunami inundation zone for people to seek refuge after a disaster. The Dunes City city council believes they may be without assistance for an extended time period due to their distance from major highways. It is unknown how much infrastructure will be destroyed in the earthquake so the council assumes that assistance will reach them much later than nearby Florence, Oregon. The class visited Dunes City and met Jamie Mills, Dunes City city administrator. During the visit the students learned how Dunes City was already preparing for the earthquake and tsunami. City staff have determined that city hall will be their health center during a disaster and picked out select plots of land where they hope to build relief shelters. Mills also facilitated a visit to both sites. The first site was very sandy and far away from city hall. City staff expressed their concerns about resilience of the structures and the potentially difficult path for citizens travelling to this location. The second site that was a short walk from city hall on a dirt road. The ground on this site was a combination of dirt and sand making it more ideal for disaster relief shelters. At the second site the students performed a site analysis. After the site visit, the student groups discussed their findings as a class and began deciding how relief shelters could be built. Students adhered to the City’s assumptions and goals, including: • Assume post-disaster conditions (e.g. destroyed infrastructure, debris, etc.) • Lack of resources (e.g. food, shelter, medicine, etc.) for at least a month • Lack of services (e.g. electricity, heat, water, etc.) for at least a month • Create shelters large enough to house the citizens of Dunes City and potential tourists (about 50 people) Afterwards, the student groups decided how they would achieve the aforementioned goals through different contextual considerations as well as experimentation with software: Climate Consultant 6.0, EnergyPlus, and Window 7.6. This allowed them to visualize design options for disaster relief shelters that could successfully meet specified goals and serve a variety of purposes before and after a disaster. In conclusion, the student groups determined an ideal site orientation of a variation between south and east. Furthermore, the optimal tilt for any possible glazing system is between 40 and 50 degrees. The student groups experiemented with a variety of different shelter functions for before and after the disaster. Combining adaptible functionality and succesful passive heating strategies, the students show the efficiency and effectiveness of capturing solar resources in a mostly overcast Dunes City.
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    Planning for a New Mobility Future
    (University of Oregon, 2019) Crum, Carol; Brown, Anne
    With advances in technology, new forms of mobility are emerging and entering our cities. These new modes are driving the need for plans and policies that direct how they will operate in cities, where they can operate and park, and who can use them. The cities of Eugene and Gresham would like to prepare for these new modes of mobility. Transportation Planning students were tasked with gathering data on current parking and micro-mobility usage and infrastructure, analyzing these data, and issuing recommendations to address new mobility. Students also researched how other U.S. cities are addressing issues such as high parking occupancy, bicycle infrastructure, the emergence of transportation network companies (TNCs) like Lyft and Uber (also known as ride-hailing services), and new forms of micro-mobility such as e-scooters. Taking into consideration research from other U.S. cities and the goals of Eugene and Gresham, students recommended the following policy approaches.
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    Transportation Revenue in the Age of New Mobility
    (University of Oregon, 2018) Stark, Michele; Lewis, Rebecca
    Significant changes in transportation technology will change the way cities collect revenue and fund infrastructure projects. Forward thinking cities like Eugene, Oregon and Gresham, Oregon are already considering what may happen when residents rely on electric cars, autonomous vehicles (AVs), fleets of shared cars, bikes, and e-scooters. Given cities’ current reliance on revenue from gasoline taxes, parking fees and fines, and vehicle registration fees, cities will face a significant decrease in revenue.