Sustainable City Year Reports 2022-23 (Sisters)

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Browsing Sustainable City Year Reports 2022-23 (Sisters) by Author "Schlossberg, Marc"

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    Connecting Sisters, Oregon
    (University of Oregon, 2023) Schlossberg, Marc; Lee, Grace
    Situated in the northwest pocket of Deschutes County, Sisters includes varied outdoor recreation options, beautiful scenery, and top tier hiking and mountain biking trails. The city’s thriving downtown is bisected by East Cascade Avenue, which bustles with economic activity and serves as a throughway to Redmond, Bend, and central Oregon. The street is often congested with vehicular traffic, which keeps speeds slow and makes crossing for most pedestrians relatively easy, if not slightly uncomfortable. Crossing this primary street by bike, however, is more difficult, especially for less confident cyclists such as youth and the elderly. Parallel streets to East Cascade Avenue also enjoy robust commercial uses, contain extensive car parking for the entire downtown region, and run the risk of acting as alternative ‘through streets’ for motorists trying to avoid East Cascade. A downtown bypass road to the north of East Cascade Avenue, primarily for diverting freight trucks from the city center, is being planned and developed, and will likely reduce truck traffic through the heart of Sisters, making viewsheds of pedestrians and cyclists crossing East Cascade Avenue slightly easier, though congested conditions are likely to be the norm due to the popularity of Sisters as a regional destination and ‘on the way’ between central Oregon and the more populous regions to the west. Population and housing growth are expected to continue over the next decade, putting pressure on Sisters to both accommodate new residents and maintain a high level of community livability. Sisters Elementary School will soon be moving to join a middle and high school on a single campus area on the southwest side of town. New housing developments are occurring throughout the entire Sisters community and many students live in outlying communities in the region as well, creating automobile traffic to the school and through the community during school drop-off and pick up. Because of its small size, travelling within the city is relatively easy to do by foot, bike, or driving, though there could be more to explicitly support people on bike both in terms of infrastructure connectivity design and in encouraging its use. And with better support for cycling, both residents and tourists to the community stand to benefit. Below are some of the key ideas that can help move the community in this direction.
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    A New Future for the Sisters Elementary School Site
    (University of Oregon, 2022) Betros, Rosemary; Rola, Katherine E.; Banks, Megan; Brown, Anne; Knudson, Kaarin; Schlossberg, Marc; College of Design, University of Oregon
    Over fall term 2022, Community and Regional Planning graduate students worked with the City of Sisters to design a research based redevelopment proposal for the Sisters Elementary School and Sisters School District administration building site. Students analyzed potential opportunities and challenges of revitalizing these two adjoining properties through three different lenses: 1) age friendly neighborhoods; 2) adaptive reuse of preexisting structures, and 3) a community and recreation center. Despite different focus areas, as the teams moved through the planning process, they sought to incorporate what they understood to be community values: connection, livability, accessibility, equity, and safety. With their focus areas and these values in mind, they organized their proposals around the overarching themes of connectivity, built spaces (especially housing), and open and green spaces. The teams imagined the site in a way that would sustain Sisters’ strong sense of pride and community as the city continues to grow in the future. They also wanted to encourage healthy lifestyles for Sisters’ residents and ensure that people of all ages, incomes, and abilities could access the site safely. This report describes the information that the teams gathered and analyzed to create their designs, details each team’s site proposal, and offers ideas for implementation.