Location: Oakland, CA
Website: www.urbanstrategies.org
The Urban Strategies Council is a community building support and advocacy organization located in Oakland, California.
Founded as a non-profit in 1987, the Council works with stakeholders in low-income communities, community-based organizations, and public systems to expand services for children and families, improve health, educational, and other outcomes, and increase employment and economic opportunities
The focus of the Council's work is to support youth, family and community development as a means of building healthy, vibrant communities in order to reduce persistent poverty.
The Council is a community building support and advocacy organization. The Council's approach to its support work is focused on working community stakeholders to build strategies and capacities (including our own) for effective collective action.
We recognize that sustainable change involves not only building strategies and capacities, but also requires the exercise of leadership to build a common agenda for change that will improve outcomes for children and families.
The Council works to build partnerships and alliances across a wide array of community interests. At the same time, the Council takes leadership in identifying issues that impact urban communities, building understanding of the issues and crafting agenda for addressing those issues.
Showing posts with label Oakland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oakland. Show all posts
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Help Save Knowland Park!
Location: Oakland, CA
Website: www.saveknowland.org
Knowland Park is a 500-acre wildland park in the Oakland hills, deeded to the city in the 1970s under the condition that it would always remain a park. Located above the Oakland Zoo, which sits on a portion of the property, it is the largest and most pristine of Oakland’s parks, a thriving hotspot for rare native plants and wildlife. But it has never been listed on the city’s Parks website, despite repeated requests.
Thus its amazing natural resources remain relatively undiscovered by the public.
In 2011, the City approved a major “conservation” theme park expansion of the Oakland Zoo into more than 50 acres of sensitive wildlife and rare plant habitat in the undeveloped area of the park. The development would include an aerial gondola ride with 60-foot towers and a three-story ridgetop visitor center, restaurant and gift shop, all approved without a full Environmental Impact Report and over the protests of numerous environmental and citizens’ groups.
Two of these groups, the Friends of Knowland Park and the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, have filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing the City to complete a full environmental review as required under the California Environmental Quality Act.
A full EIR would require thorough consideration of other alternatives to this destructive and expensive project.
0ur goals are to save the park’s precious habitat for existing wildlife and to protect the remainder of Knowland Park from further development, specifically:
- Ensure preservation of the largest remaining piece of open space owned by the city of Oakland for wildlife habitat, native plants and free public access.
- Dissuade the Zoo from its current ill-conceived expansion plan and work toward a more modest plan that serves an authentic conservation goal: preserving wildlife habitat.
- Reduce or mitigate traffic congestion, noise/light and air pollution impacts on surrounding communities and wildlife.
- Increase community awareness of the threats to open space and wildlife habitat in the South Bay hills and the relationships between the fight to protect Knowland Park and other community concerns.
- Require the City to complete a full Environmental Impact Report.
Website: www.saveknowland.org
Knowland Park is a 500-acre wildland park in the Oakland hills, deeded to the city in the 1970s under the condition that it would always remain a park. Located above the Oakland Zoo, which sits on a portion of the property, it is the largest and most pristine of Oakland’s parks, a thriving hotspot for rare native plants and wildlife. But it has never been listed on the city’s Parks website, despite repeated requests.
Thus its amazing natural resources remain relatively undiscovered by the public.
In 2011, the City approved a major “conservation” theme park expansion of the Oakland Zoo into more than 50 acres of sensitive wildlife and rare plant habitat in the undeveloped area of the park. The development would include an aerial gondola ride with 60-foot towers and a three-story ridgetop visitor center, restaurant and gift shop, all approved without a full Environmental Impact Report and over the protests of numerous environmental and citizens’ groups.
Two of these groups, the Friends of Knowland Park and the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, have filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing the City to complete a full environmental review as required under the California Environmental Quality Act.
A full EIR would require thorough consideration of other alternatives to this destructive and expensive project.
0ur goals are to save the park’s precious habitat for existing wildlife and to protect the remainder of Knowland Park from further development, specifically:
- Ensure preservation of the largest remaining piece of open space owned by the city of Oakland for wildlife habitat, native plants and free public access.
- Dissuade the Zoo from its current ill-conceived expansion plan and work toward a more modest plan that serves an authentic conservation goal: preserving wildlife habitat.
- Reduce or mitigate traffic congestion, noise/light and air pollution impacts on surrounding communities and wildlife.
- Increase community awareness of the threats to open space and wildlife habitat in the South Bay hills and the relationships between the fight to protect Knowland Park and other community concerns.
- Require the City to complete a full Environmental Impact Report.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
OpenOakland
Location: Oakland, CA
Website: www.openoakland.org
OpenOakland, a Code for America Brigade, is a civic innovation organization that brings together coders, designers, data geeks, journalists, and city staff to collaborate on solutions to improve how our local government serves all citizens of Oakland.
We draw on our wide range of expertise and perspectives to build open-source applications and working relationships that promote civic innovation and open government in Oakland.
Our projects range from events like City Camp to Open Government Pledge, to a community-based open-data portal and OaklandWiki, to apps that help you chart crime trends, submit FOIA requests, adopt your local storm drain.
Website: www.openoakland.org
OpenOakland, a Code for America Brigade, is a civic innovation organization that brings together coders, designers, data geeks, journalists, and city staff to collaborate on solutions to improve how our local government serves all citizens of Oakland.
We draw on our wide range of expertise and perspectives to build open-source applications and working relationships that promote civic innovation and open government in Oakland.
Our projects range from events like City Camp to Open Government Pledge, to a community-based open-data portal and OaklandWiki, to apps that help you chart crime trends, submit FOIA requests, adopt your local storm drain.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Oakland Crimestopping
Location: Oakland,CA
Website: www.oakland.crimestopping.com
This project is not affiliated with the City of Oakland or the Oakland Police Department, but we do use data published on CrimeWatch, the City’s community crime mapping website.
There are several things to do here:
- Browse crime reports by day and by type.
- Sign up to receive e-mail alerts and RSS feeds for crime reports in your neighborhood.
- Information about site updates and new features can be found on our blog, blog.crimespotting.org.
Unfortunately, CrimeWatch suffers from a few drawbacks that we believe Crimespotting helps to address.
CrimeWatch is inaccessible to many popular browsers, and does not “gracefully degrade” for maximum flexibility. CrimeWatch provides maps of crime reports but makes them difficult to explore.
Our map view is completely explorable - it’s possible to pan and zoom, select date ranges in the past, and view specific kinds of crimes.
You can also share links directly to a particular view of the map, which is important for sharing and publishing information. If you don’t have the required Flash plug-in to view the interactive map, we have a browseable crime database with maps in image form for combinations of dates and types of crime.
We believe that this map-first approach is a valuable and sensible way to publish information for people to use - everyone knows how to find their house, school, or workplace on a map, but few people remember relevant details such as the city council district or police beat these places occupy.
An important source of inspiration for Oakland Crimespotting comes from Chicago Crime, a freely browseable database of crimes reported in Chicago created by Adrian Holovaty and Wilson Miner.
Once per day, we collect fresh crime reports from CrimeWatch and save them in our database. The technical details on how this is done can be found on Mike’s blog, especially in posts from December and January. We are currently exposing crime reports going back one month.
The map is an example of Modest Maps, our Flash and Python framework for displaying tile-based geographical images. The tiles we’ve chosen to use come from Microsoft® Virtual Earth™.
Who
Oakland Crimespotting was designed and built by Stamen Design’s Michal Migurski, Tom Carden, and Eric Rodenbeck. Feedback, complaints, and suggestions are welcome at info@crimespotting.org.
Website: www.oakland.crimestopping.com
This project is not affiliated with the City of Oakland or the Oakland Police Department, but we do use data published on CrimeWatch, the City’s community crime mapping website.
There are several things to do here:
- Browse crime reports by day and by type.
- Sign up to receive e-mail alerts and RSS feeds for crime reports in your neighborhood.
- Information about site updates and new features can be found on our blog, blog.crimespotting.org.
Unfortunately, CrimeWatch suffers from a few drawbacks that we believe Crimespotting helps to address.
CrimeWatch is inaccessible to many popular browsers, and does not “gracefully degrade” for maximum flexibility. CrimeWatch provides maps of crime reports but makes them difficult to explore.
Our map view is completely explorable - it’s possible to pan and zoom, select date ranges in the past, and view specific kinds of crimes.
You can also share links directly to a particular view of the map, which is important for sharing and publishing information. If you don’t have the required Flash plug-in to view the interactive map, we have a browseable crime database with maps in image form for combinations of dates and types of crime.
We believe that this map-first approach is a valuable and sensible way to publish information for people to use - everyone knows how to find their house, school, or workplace on a map, but few people remember relevant details such as the city council district or police beat these places occupy.
An important source of inspiration for Oakland Crimespotting comes from Chicago Crime, a freely browseable database of crimes reported in Chicago created by Adrian Holovaty and Wilson Miner.
Once per day, we collect fresh crime reports from CrimeWatch and save them in our database. The technical details on how this is done can be found on Mike’s blog, especially in posts from December and January. We are currently exposing crime reports going back one month.
The map is an example of Modest Maps, our Flash and Python framework for displaying tile-based geographical images. The tiles we’ve chosen to use come from Microsoft® Virtual Earth™.
Who
Oakland Crimespotting was designed and built by Stamen Design’s Michal Migurski, Tom Carden, and Eric Rodenbeck. Feedback, complaints, and suggestions are welcome at info@crimespotting.org.
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