:UT Arlington Student Planning Association

Program Overview

The Texas Association of Community Development Corporations’s Lone Star Program provides college and graduate students interested in Community Economic Development (CED) with the opportunity to work for a summer with a Community Development Corporation (CDC) in Texas. Interns work with their host CDC to develop a work plan and implement a wide variety of projects in the community development field. In its fifth year, past Lone Star interns report that the internship provided them with valuable work experience and networking opportunities while contributing to organizations that improve the lives of low income individuals and families in Texas.

Timeframe: 400 hours in 10-12 weeks during the summer of 2007
Stipend: $4,000 for undergraduates, $4,800 for graduate students, plus travel costs to and from the internship site.
Application Host deadline: Friday, January 13, 2007
Application Internship deadline: February 27
Application Internship deadline EXTENDED: now due by Tuesday March 6 @ 9am.

Past CDC hosts include:
— Alamo Area Mutual Housing Association (San Antonio)
— Avenue CDC (Houston)
— PeopleFund (Austin)
— CDC of Brownsville
— El Paso Collaborative
— McAllen Affordable Homes
— Neighborhood Housing Services of Austin

Past Intern Projects include:
— Producing a handbook of green building alternatives for affordable housing developers
— Analyzing a CDC loan portfolio
— Creating a management plan for CDC rental properties
— Identifying sites for housing development
— Helping to implement a homebuyer education program

2007 Lone Star Internship Program HOST SITES:
— Brazos Valley CDC/Affordable Housing Corp. (Bryan TX, Region)
— CDC of Brownsville
— Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corp (Houston)
— Foundation Communities (Austin)
— FUTURO Communities (Uvalde)
— Housing and Community Services (San Antonio)
— Merced Housing Texas (San Antonio)
— Neighborhood Recovery CDC (Houston)
— People Fund (Austin)
— Samaritan House (Fort Worth)
— TACDC (Austin)

For more information, contact Eduardo Magaloni at 512-916-0508 or via email at eduardo AT tacdc DOT org. To download a HOST application, go to www.tacdc.org/2007LoneStarHostApplication.pdf. To download an INTERNSHIP application, go to www.tacdc.org/2007LoneStarInternApplication.doc.

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Application Deadline: February 27, 2007

Students may volunteer their time at the conference and earn back the cost of the early online registration fee. In exchange for eight hours of volunteer service during the conference, APA will reimburse student members the amount of the early online registration fee. Students must be registered for the conference at the time they apply to be a volunteer and must be student members of APA. Student volunteers are reimbursed upon completion of the eight hours of work onsite.

Once your application is reviewed, you will be notified by e–mail as to your acceptance as a volunteer. APA receives more applications than it can use, so register and apply early to improve your changes. Please note, if you are accepted as a volunteer and you register after the early registration deadline, you will be reimbursed only for the early online registration fee, not the greater fee.

More information: http://www.planning.org/2007conference/students.htm#4

E-mail questions to cbieschke AT planning DOT org.

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Arlington, Texas, 16 February 2007

The University of Texas at Arlington Student Planning Association will sponsor a showing of Truth Be Tolled, a recent documentary film critical of the Trans-Texas Corridor project. The film will be shown at 7 pm, Friday, February 23, in Room 115, University Hall, on the University of Texas at Arlington campus. It will be followed at approximately 8:30 pm by a 30-minute open discussion of the film, the project, and associated issues.

The film presents citizen reactions to the initiative and highlights many of the issues that have proven so controversial in the selling of the project by Texas Governor Rick Perry. This showing will come hard on the heels of a pro-Trans-Texas Corridor talk given in Fort Worth at the Women’s Transportation Seminar luncheon by Phil Russell, Director of the Texas Turnpike Authority Division of the Texas Department of Transportation.

The event is free and open to the public. For further information please contact Kent Hurst at klhurst AT uta DOT edu. For directions to University Hall, please visit the UT Arlington Web site at http://www.uta.edu/maps. Free parking is available the evening of the event in lots to the south and west of University Hall.

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I’ve returned from hearing Phillip Russell, Director of the Texas Turnpike Authority (TxDOT’s toll road division), and have to say that I was charmed. He was a really friendly guy, well-spoken, and politically correct to a fault. He gave a very brief extemporaneous talk (which he’s probably given a thousand times before to similar groups) that generally provided the motivational groundwork for TxDOT’s pursuit of toll road facilities, in general, and the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) program, in specific.

There were at least 50 public- and private-sector transportation planners, engineers, and consultants in attendance, not the type of crowd to be particularly hostile to the TTC. He highlighted the need for new funding sources not only to build new surface transportation infrastructure, but also to maintain the roads and bridges we already have. While claiming to be agnostic regarding the manner in which this funding is to be secured, he emphasized that the Texas Legislature, beginning in the mid-199os, has provided an increasing number of financing tools with which to accelerate the development of surface transportation projects and leverage private participation in those initiatives. Whether one agrees with the evolving emphasis on private concessions (and tolls) for these facilities, there is little doubt that the financial need is there. If one grants the need for new capacity, then the only way that we can develop it in a reasonable timeframe (short of raising taxes) is to leverage private capital. What is clear is that the TTC (or some giant infrastructure capacity improvement project) will happen, and that it will probably be funded largely by private (corporate) investment. And in spite of insurances that mechanisms are being written into the contracts for managing the unexpected over the lifetime of these concessions and that all stakeholders will be treated fairly, the TTC will never be uncontroversial.

A few interesting snippets from Russell’s talk and answers to questions:

- Rail components of the TTC will probably be funded with project concession revenues. That is, the high-speed/commuter rail components will only be developed after the roadway facilities have begun generating spendable revenue.

- There will be no non-compete clauses, per se, written into TTC contracts. He emphasized that TxDOT will continue to maintain and expand non-TTC roadway capacity as the need arises, but that they would build into the contracts provisions allowing for negotiations between TxDOT and the concessionaires for issues arising in the course of the concession period.
- Asked to comment on the criticism of the TTC for destroying the connectivity of FM and other state roads, Russell reflected back on the construction of the Interstate Highway System. He suggested that if you were satisfied with the way TxDOT addressed the issue then, then you would probably be satisfied with the manner in which it will deal with the connectivity issue raised by the TTC. And the converse would be true.

All in all, an interesting, though not terribly informative talk. I wish Russell would be in attendance on Friday to rebut more populist criticism contained in “Truth Be Tolled.”

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The Women’s Transportation Seminar

11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, February 20, 2007
at The ITC, in the John B Board Room, 2nd Floor
1001 Jones Street
Fort Worth, TX 76102

WTS Luncheon, 20 February 2007

Phillip Russell, P.E., Texas Turnpike Authority’s Director, will be our distinguished
speaker. Mr. Russell is the director of the Texas Turnpike Authority Division of the
Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). As division director since 1998, he is
currently developing two high-priority elements of the Trans-Texas Corridor. For
Russell, this involves overseeing the environmental studies, financing options,
contracting agreements and public-private partnerships.

Under his direction, the division is also responsible for expanding the state highway
system through the development of toll roads, working with districts and local officials
on the formation of regional mobility authorities and state toll projects, and overseeing
the preparation of all comprehensive development agreements for TxDOT.
Mr. Russell will be sharing his Trans-Texas Corridor presentation.

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Tomorrow, Tuesday, 20 February, hundreds of campuses, cities, and businesses will be participating in the Global Emergency Teach-In on climate change. University Hall room 532 will be set up for the live web-cast, and an auditorium is being set up in the Architecture Building as well (room 204). A pdf flyer is attached.

Climate Change Teach-In — 12-2.30pm, Tuesday, 20 February 2007

For more information, see http://www.2010imperative.org/. But if you want to watch the web-cast, please come to one of the UTA locations (or, for that matter, other locations in the Metroplex; see “Who’s Tuning In” on the web page). In order to avoid overloading the servers, the organizers are asking people to participate in organized sessions rather than logging on individually.

Why?
Because time is running out.

What?
The 2010 Imperative Global Emergency Teach-In addressing global warming and climate change is an interactive web-cast broadcast live from New York, reaching more than 500,000 students, faculty, deans and practicing professionals in the architecture, planning and design communities in both North and South America.

Who?
Dr. James Hansen, NASA GISS
Edward Mazria, AIA, Architecture 2030
Chris Luebkeman, Arup
Susan Szenasy, Metropolis Magazine

How?
All design schools, professional design firms and governmental entities (planning departments, city officials, etc.) are being asked to substitute the Teach-in for classes/work on February 20th, 2007, from Noon to 3:30pm EST. Many schools and offices are planning day-long activities around the event.

Jeff Howard, Asst. Professor
School of Urban & Public Affairs
University of Texas at Arlington
Box 19588, University Hall 519
Arlington, TX 76019-0588
Phone 817-272-5119 Fax 817-272-5008

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The 2007 IPCC Working Group report confirms that mankind’s role in driving climate change is a significant, if unintended, consequence of technological advancement. Unfortunately, our socioeconomic fabric is knit from technologies the waste products of which include high concentrations of greenhouse gases that drive the warming of our climate. Not only is this relationship ultimately unsustainable, but it also raises the specter of unforeseeable, nonlinear climate catastrophe.

The icon of our social, technological, political, and developmental advancement – the modern city – is a crucible in which planners struggle to balance environmental sustainability, individual preference, and the public good. Urban planning-as-usual appears to present an insufficient response to a post-industrial, environmental threat that derives from the very source of our prosperity . However, migrating planning to a more sustainable footing may be more easily said than done.

At least in the short-term, numerous structural impediments militate against the capacity of contemporary urban planning theory and practice to constructively respond to these environmental risks: the global dominance of a growth-obsessed political economy, tradition-bound city and regional planning institutions, the increasing influence of property rights advocates in the national and local dialogs, and the continued decay of social capital. In order to realize a future in which American urban planning is an essential contributor to developing a truly sustainable urban future, it is critical that we confront these challenges and seek a new path.

Kent Hurst

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Sponsor: Texas Council for the Humanities

Title: Community Projects Grants

E-mail: elupfer@humanitiestexas.org

Web Site: http://www.humanitiestexas.org/grants.htm

Program URL: http://www.humanitiestexas.org/grants/downloads/HTxcommunitygrant.pdf

SYNOPSIS: The sponsor provides support for public humanities projects developed by local sponsors on topics from the disciplines of the humanities.

Deadline(s): 08/15/2007

DEADLINE NOTE: Letters of intent are due August 15 for the September 15 application deadline.

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Sponsor: Center for Latin American Studies

Title: Summer Visiting Scholar Grant

E-mail: clas@uchicago.edu

Program URL: http://clas.uchicago.edu/svsrg.shtml

SYNOPSIS: The sponsor announces its annual Summer Visiting Scholars Competition for faculty from non-research U.S. universities and colleges. Recipients research and write on a Latin American topic for one month during the summer of 2007 at either or both campus(es) of the University of Chicago or University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and enjoy access to university libraries and resources.

Deadline(s): 02/28/2007

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Sponsor: Library of Congress

Title: Kluge Center Fellowships

E-mail: scholarly@loc.gov

Program URL: http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/fellowships/kluge.html

SYNOPSIS: The sponsor seeks qualified scholars to conduct research in the John W. Kluge Center using the Library of Congress collections and resources for a period of up to eleven months. Up to twelve fellowships will be awarded annually. The Kluge Center especially encourages humanistic and social science research that makes use of the Library’s large and varied collections. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, or multi-lingual research is particularly welcome. Among the collections available to researchers are the world’s largest law library and outstanding multi-lingual collections of books and periodicals. Deep special collections of manuscripts, maps, music, films, recorded sound, prints and photographs are also available. Further information about the Library’s collections can be found on the Library’s website: http://www.loc.gov/rr/.

Deadline(s): 08/15/2007

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