A standing-room-only crowd gathered in the Ford Alumni center earlier this month to celebrate the start of a year-long partnership between the city of Medford and the UO’s Sustainable City Year Program.
The sustainability staff and faculty described upcoming projects with Medford, detailing a bevy of concepts that ranged from emergency preparedness to drafting plans for a new fire station.
The year-long program is part of the Sustainable Cities Initiative, a cross-disciplinary organization at UO that seeks to promote education, service, public outreach and research on the design and development of sustainable cities. During the year-long project, faculty and students work with a community partner through a variety of studio projects and applied learning programs to provide students with a real-world project to investigate, apply their training and provide real service and movement to a local entity ready to transition to a more sustainable and accessible future.
Dozens of University of Oregon faculty members and students attended the kickoff of the Medford partnership, from departments and schools including architecture; planning, public policy and management; geography; journalism; economics; and business. Speakers included School of Architecture and Allied Arts Dean Frances Bronet and UO Interim Senior Vice President and Provost Scott Coltrane.
More than 20 representatives from Medford traveled to Eugene for the event, including City Manager Eric Swanson and Jim Huber, planning director. Jeff Towery, assistant city manager for the previous partner city, Springfield, also attended. Previous participant cities in Oregon include Gresham and Salem, as well.
“This engagement is incredibly worthwhile for students, faculty and the community,” said Marc Schlossberg, cofounder of the sustainability initiative and an associate professor in planning, public policy and management. “We are thrilled to have such a great partner in Medford and overwhelmed by the engagement of faculty across multiple departments at the University of Oregon.”
Working with communities outside of Eugene has been standard practice at the UO for decades. But the scale of engagement with the sustainability project is very different—and universities across the country are beginning to notice.
In addition to the work with Medford this year, the iniatitive is training other universities how to adopt and adapt the year-long project model. After only two years, universities in 12 other states are now implementing adaptation of the UO model.
“The Sustainable City Year Program is not only helping communities throughout Oregon, but it is also changing the landscape of higher education across the country,” said Nico Larco, cofounder of the initiative and associate professor in the Department of Architecture.
- from the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts