Hi all,
Thank you for a great July meeting of the Syracuse Urbanism Collective on Tuesday!
We held a successful and productive joint meeting with the Onondaga County Legislature’s Housing + Transportation Advisory Board to help provide feedback for their in-progress policy proposals! Thank you for listening to draft proposals from and providing questions & comments for the Zoning & Policy Reform, Housing Stability & Equitable Access, and Transportation & Connectivity task forces
We also shared various updates. Community Streets had a successful volunteer effort to paint pedestrian bump outs and install temporary flex posts at multiple intersections on Hawley Ave in the Hawley-Green neighborhood. We’re planning another weekend of street painting Downtown, soon. Stay tuned for more details, and thank you to all of our fantastic volunteers!
Urbanist Book Club wrapped up reading “Life After Cars”. Our next read for August and September is “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource” by Sam Block. If you plan to participate, please try to read/listen up to pg 127/the end of Part II/Chapter 6 for our August book club meeting, and finish the book for our September book club meeting.
The Public Policy team is working hard to write additional policy memos. At our next team meeting, we’ll start to transition into advocacy work!
We’d like to welcome two new board members: Shail Patel as Vice President, and Dylan Buck as Secretary! Thank you to Celeste McDonald for your time as our Secretary. We look forward to your continued involvement with the organization. We will also soon have a new president (talks ongoing), following which I’ll remain on the board as Director of Policy & Design. We are currently conducting interviews for our next treasurer, with multiple candidates for the position.
Please take our membership engagement survey to help us continue what’s working and fix what isn’t within our organization. Every person’s feedback helps immensely, even if you haven’t been a regular participant! http://forms.gle/c4ghpPG4KLu6U7Zm9
For our upcoming general meetings, here are some updates:
- All four remaining general meetings this year will take place at the Central Library’s community room.
- At the September meeting, Josh Wilcox from the city’s Parks Department will kick off a collaborative effort with us to redesign the permanent wayfinding signage along the Onondaga Creekwalk.
- At the October meeting, we’ll have a screening of Blurring the Lines, a documentary by CNY Fair Housing, followed by a Q&A with Alex Lawson of CNY Fair Housing.
- At either the August or November meeting (exact month TBD), the County Planning Department will have a community engagement session with us for Greenways + Blueways.
Upcoming events include:
- Your Voice, Your Op-Ed: Civic Engagement 103: Wednesday, August 5, 5:30pm, Betts Branch Library
- Public Policy Team Meeting: Monday August 10, 6:30-7:30pm, Salt City Market
- Design Team: Wednesday August 12, 6pm, Salt City Market
- Moving People Transportation Coalition: 4pm, Wednesday, August 19 @ CNY Philanthropy Center
- Urbanist Book Club: 6:30, Wednesday, August 19 @ Salt City Market
- General Meeting: 6pm, Tuesday, August 25 @ Central Library Community Room
All events, additional info, and links to RSVP when required are also listed at syracuseurbanism.org/calendarPlease also remember to provide feedback to the following:
- Syracuse Downtown Vision & Strategic Action Plan: https://syracuse-downtown-vision-and-strategic-action-plan-prospecthill.hub.arcgis.com/pages/community-feedback
- Syracuse Comprehensive Plan Virtual Open House: https://www.syr.gov/Departments/NBD/Planning-and-Sustainability/Planning-Initiatives/Comprehensive-Plan
As always, you can reach us at contact@syracuseurbanism.org.
To join, visit syracuseurbanism.org/join.
Regards,
Baxter Hankin
President of the Syracuse Urbanism Collective
