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REGIONAL POLICY AND PLANNING AREA HIGHLIGHTS
- The State and Local Policy Program (SLPP) launched the
national Center for Excellence in Rural Safety with a summer
institute in Duluth, Minnesota. Congress created the center in
July 2005 as part of a broader, multiyear, multimillion-dollar
directive establishing four national centers for surface
transportation excellence in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible,
Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users
(SAFETEA-LU) transportation funding legislation. The center
provides citizen-centered research, training, and outreach
to enhance rural safety and to meet the online and seminar
training needs of rural transportation practitioners and policymakers.
The center will conduct focused research to explore
policy, behavior, and technology approaches to increasing
safety, such as safety-conscious planning, intelligent transportation systems and rural emergency response, human
factors, societal trends, and stakeholder needs analysis.
- In November, Ann Markusen published Crossover: How Artists
Build Careers across Commercial, Nonprofit, and Community
Work. The report documents how artists develop successful
cross-sectoral careers in ways little understood by employers,
funders, and policymakers. Crossover includes in-depth
interviews and data from a web-based survey of Los Angeles and
San Francisco Bay-area musicians, writers, and
performing and visual artists.
- In partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Center
for Transportation Studies, the University’s Metropolitan
Consortium, Mn/DOT, the Metropolitan Council/Metro Transit,
Hennepin County, and other Twin Cities local governments,
faculty members and researchers have initiated a study of
transitways in Minnesota. The research is initially focused
on measuring the economic and travel behavior impacts of
the Hiawatha light rail transit (LRT) corridor in Minneapolis.
Future research will extend to other planned or proposed
rail and bus rapid transit projects.
- Ryan Allen will join the Institute as assistant professor of
community and economic development in August. His Ph.D.
dissertation in urban studies and planning from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is titled “The Use of
Social Capital by Resettled Refugees” and focuses on the
effect of social capital on the economic adaptation of Somali,
Sudanese, and Eastern European refugees in Portland, Maine.
Allen also will work in partnership with the University of
Minnesota Extension Service on community vitality initiatives.
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