Community Development

What Does Equity in Smart Growth Really Mean?

Join the Smart Growth Network at 2:30 p.m. Friday, October 23, as Calvin Gladney, President and CEO of Smart Growth America and a national thought leader on equitable and sustainable community revitalization, and Andre Perry of the Brookings Institution and author of Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities meet in a virtual forum to discuss smart growth’s past, present, and future. Gladney and Perry will examine the current state of built environments and the policies that have historically affected the lives of people of color and look to the future to explore the potential for positive change. Follow this link to learn more.

Sourced from: Smart Growth Online

Ohio State Digital Accessibility Skills Training Curricula

Learn to develop accessible digital products through Digital Accessibility Skills Training now available in BuckeyeLearn. Courses include accessibility training for documents, PDFs, presentations, websites, and more. Enhance your accessibility expertise and take a course today. Follow this link to learn more.

Sourced from: IT @ OSU

The University of Chicago Hosts Second Annual Urban October

This month marks the second annual Urban October at the University of Chicago, a monthlong initiative that highlights policy leaders, public officials, and leading researchers from Chicago and around the world who are confronting the most profound challenges facing global cities.

Such urban challenges have only increased in 2020. The basic infrastructure of global cities—including public transportation, densely populated office and residential districts, and overburdened public health systems—have made them especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. Wildfires in California have worsened air quality for millions of residents on the West Coast. A summer of public reckoning on racial justice and policing in major American cities has resulted in mass demonstrations in the streets. Meanwhile, climate change is expected to prompt population shifts in the United States and abroad, widening the gulf between the rich and the poor and accelerating urbanization. Follow this link to read more.

Sourced from: UChicago News

Introducing a Spatial Equity Data Tool

Data-driven decisionmaking in city government has expanded rapidly in recent years, driven by advances in technology and the digitization of many city services. The Urban Institute applauds the growth of data-driven decisionmaking, but they also recognize there are real concerns about the potential for bias in data used to guide public decisions. Left unchecked, unrepresentative data can directly lead to inequitable policy outcomes that harm vulnerable groups.

For example, many public works departments have started using citizen complaint data, like 311 requests, to allocate scarce city resources to perform sidewalk repairs and fix potholes. On the surface, this may seem like a way to make governments more responsive to citizen needs. The problem is that citizen complaint systems are more likely to be used by certain demographic groups, namely white residents, highly educated residents, and high-income residents. Follow this link to learn more.

Sourced from: Data@Urban

Urban October

Urban October is an opportunity for everyone to be part of the conversation about the challenges and opportunities created by the fast rate of change in our cities and towns. Each October, everyone interested in sustainable urbanization from national and local governments to universities, NGOs and communities is encouraged to hold or participate in activities, events, and discussions.

The month began with World Habitat Day on October 5 and will end with World Cities Day on October 31.

This year’s World Habitat Day global observance was held virtually, and was hosted by the city of Surabaya, in Indonesia while other celebrations of World Habitat Day were held round the globe using the theme Housing For All: A Better Urban Future.

World Cities Day 2020 is the seventh global celebration since it was launched on October 31, 2014 in Shanghai, China. The theme is Better City, Better Life and the sub-theme for this year is Valuing our communities and cities, and the Global Observance will be hosted in Nakuru, Kenya.

Today 55% of the world’s population live in cities and towns and the number is growing every day. The United Nation’s Agenda for Sustainable Development, and Sustainable Development Goal 11 “to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable” puts sustainable urbanization at the center of the global agendas for development. Follow this link to learn more.

Sourced from: UN-Habitat

You Can Name Our Blog

We’d like your suggestions for a new name for our urban Extension blog. We will be moving the Extension in the City blog from u.osu.edu over to our website and have an opportunity to name the blog. Each week we add four articles and send them out in the news digest. The blog entries range from happenings in your county to national news impacting your work in urban communities. You are also welcome to submit peer-reviewed articles that you can count as creative works.

If you have an idea for the blog name, please send it to Michelle Gaston.6@osu.edu by October 15.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Federal, State, and Local Budgets – Panel Discussion

The Impact of COVID-19 on Federal, State, and Local Budgets will be the sixth in a series of events on “Cities and Regions in the Post-Coronavirus Era,” initiating community conversations on what lessons we can learn from this crisis to create a more resilient and sustainable world. How much have federal, state, and local budgets been (or will be) impacted by COVID-19 and what will the implications of this impact mean going forward for communities? Did we learn anything from the Great Recession of 2008 that has helped or will help us during this financial crisis? This discussion with be moderated by Harvey Miller, and is taking place on Friday, October 23, 2020 from 12-1 p.m. ET. Follow this link to learn more.

Sourced from: CURA

UN Secretary-General’s Policy Brief on COVID-19 in an Urban World

The UN Secretary-General has launched the UN Comprehensive Response to COVID-19 to save lives, protect societies, recover better. As part of the response, the UN Secretary-General is issuing policy briefs to provide ideas to governments on how to address the consequences of this crisis and COVID-19 in an urbanizing world is part of this series. The Policy Brief describes how cities can manage the pandemic and emerge as the hubs of energy, resilience, and innovation that make them such vibrant and appealing places for many to live. It also looks at how the pandemic has exposed deep inequalities in how people live in cities, and how cities serve their residents, with the most vulnerable suffering the most. Follow this link to learn more.

Sourced from: UN-Habitat