Document Actions
OSU EXTENSION URBAN PROGRAMS UPDATE
OSU EXTENSION URBAN PROGRAMS UPDATE -- September 2007
Archives of previous updates at: http://woostercenter.osu.edu/joe/extension-urban-program-updates
INFORMATION FOR URBAN/METRO EXTENSION STAFF
1. Please mark your calendar for our Urban Program Conversation, November 9, 2007 – it will be a chance to share and celebrate our Extension Urban Program successes.
2. Please continue to review the http://urbanprograms.osu.edu website, link it to your site, and offer suggestions for new content. If you have pictures that would fit in, please send them to konen.e@osu.edu
3. The Urban/Metro Advisory Team met August 21st. Watch for news about another round of Seed Mini grants including grants for internships
INFORMATION FOR URBAN PRACTITIONERS
1. The Great Lakes Region
A recent report encourages investment in the restoration of the Great Lakes. The needed investment of $26 billion in ecological restoration will reap economic benefits: Over $50 billion in long-term benefits to the national economy; and between $30 and $50 billion in short term benefits to the regional economy.
This investment is important because it will help the region attract highly trained individuals. The Great Lakes region (Ohio included) must offer “the most attractive infrastructurephysical, cyber, educational, recreational, and cultural. Regions must grow and cultivate these assets in order to retain, let alone attract, talent, entrepreneurs, and companies. All of this takes time and money. Conversely, those areas that fail to invest in infrastructure risk economic decline, losing people and vitality.”
The report, America’s North Coast: A Benefit-Cost Analysis of a Program to Protect and Restore the Great Lakes, September 2007; by Austin, J.C., and others highlights the importance of the Great Lakes region:
- 90 percent of the United States’ and 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water are here.
- The Great Lakes region accounts for almost one-third of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product.
- Over 300 Fortune 1000 companies in the United States are headquartered in the region.
- The Great Lakes region has a concentration of leading research universities and accounts for roughly 40 percent of all undergraduate degrees awarded by U.S. universities.
- At the same time, the Great Lakes faces several challenges highlighted in the report:
- Educational attainment in the region lags behind the rest of the country.
- The region is not attracting immigrants and holding on to its graduates by comparison to other areas.
Download the entire report at: http://www.healthylakes.org/site_upload/upload/America_s_North_Coast_Report_07.pdf
2. Attracting Young Urban Residents
“The immediate challenge for cities is to attract young, college-educated workers who, more than any previous generation, have greater mobility, and they use it, moving to cities with the assets, ethos and opportunities that they seek. In understanding these young, educated workers, cities have their best chance of succeeding in the most competitive economic environment in history.”
Joe Cortwright in Young and Restless in a Knowledge Economy, notes that these youths are:
- the most mobile.
- the most entrepreneurial
- well educated with women in this age group are better educated than men,
- interested in “place” and “are being disproportionately drawn to certain cities, and once in them, they are more likely to choose vibrant, close-in neighborhoods than other Americans.”
The entire report, Young and Restless in a Knowledge Economy, by Joe Cortright, CEOs for Cities, December 2005 can be downloaded at: http://www.ceosforcities.org/rethink/research/files/CEOs_YNR_FINAL.pdf
3. Graduation Rates:
A million students who start ninth grade each year will not earn a diploma four years later. That’s one of every four students. For African American and Latino students, it’s closer to one in three.
Daria Hall of Education Matters writes about the importance of good public policy to improve both graduation rates, the quality of academic achievement, and especially of addressing educational inequalities for minorities. She stresses that schools are not making adequate progress unless they are addressing all these issues. She notes that accurate data is not easy to come by and holding schools to meaningful accountability is not necessarily easy. She stresses that “States must work to identify potential dropouts, build capacity for support and intervention through state and local education agencies as well as through external partners, and develop a proactive agenda for creating new schools where persistent failure has endured for years.”
Her report gives examples of programs and policies that are making a difference.
Find the entire report, Graduation Matters; Improving Accountability for High School Graduation, The Education Trust, 2007, Daria Hall, online at: www.edtrust.org
4. Sustainable urbanism
Sustainable urbanism is planning that facilitates resident adaptation of a more ecologically aware, lower carbon lifestyle according to a UK report from the Prince’s Foundation for the built environment. “In particular, a sustainable layout will enable people to walk to amenities, rather than be forced to use a car.”
Typical 20th century developments separated different activities and social groups into different neighborhoods. Twenty-first century sustainable urbanism “puts dwellings, retail, leisure and commercial uses into much closer, walkable proximity, and supplements this approach with effective public transport connections, in many ways reflecting the urban structure of traditional,, pre-car neighborhoods.” This “mixed use” approach enables self-sustaining and balanced communities to develop. “In economic terms, sustainable developments contain business activities and opportunities capable of providing jobs for many of their inhabitants.”
See more in Valuing Sustainable Urbanism; Measuring & Valuing New Approaches to Residentially Led Mixed Use Growth published in 2007 by the: Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, at: www.princes-foundation.org/files/0707vsuoverview.pdf
Joe Konen, September 2007
Joseph H. KonenExtension Specialist, Urban Programs
OSU Extension Center at Wooster
1680 Madison AvenueWooster, OH 44691-4096
Phone: 330-263-3799 -office
330-202-3555 ext.2969 direct & voice mail
Fax: 330-263-3667
Email: konen.2@osu.edu
Web site: http://urbanprograms.osu.edu
