Open Streets 2020 is on hiatus, but healthy and resilient neighborhoods are still on.
It’s up to all of us to think about how we can re-imagine our streets to accommodate healthy activity during this time of social distancing. We’ll stay active online and in our neighborhood. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Stay well and stay in touch. See you in 2021.
Making a Positive Impact
The Open Streets Ethnographic Field School
Learn about ethnographic methods in an applied research context: collect data, analyze it, and provide feedback to program stakeholders. Data will be collected on event day, August 16. The field school will be taught by Dr. Ricardo B. Contreras as a Summer 1 course under ANTH 460/560, for 6 credits. Details here.
Better Block Corvallis
A lending library of things people can borrow for neighborhood activities and events. Pieces require assembly, but that’s the point: you are imagining a space and making a place where people want to gather.
The Open Streets Classroom
A University-Community Partnership for the Public Good. Our free February 27 forum will create tangible university-community collaborations for our August event. The keynote speaker is Dr. Adonia Lugo, a mobility justice advocate and anthropologist. Registration and more details here.
Schedule in the works!
Sponsors sign up to host an activity in a park or in the street.
If you live on the route, surprise us with something fun in your front yard or in the street in front of your home. Neighbors who would like to give us a heads up can sign up, too.
Need ideas? Check out some of our own or visit our photo gallery from past events. Pinterest is a great source, too.
The Open Streets Classroom:
A University-Community Partnership for the Public Good
Keynote: Dr. Adonia Lugo
Participants worked in small teams around the following topics:
Health
Neighborhood engagement
Engineering and design
Inclusion and representation
Peace literacy and civil discourse
Sustainability
More than What One Can See: Sustaining the Street Life Observed through Ethnography
In this talk, Dr. Lugo will share her trajectory that started with bringing a ciclovía to Los Angeles and led her to help form the field of mobility justice. She traveled to Bogotá, Colombia in 2008 to conduct ethnographic fieldwork about the ciclovía, the basis for the international concept of open streets. On returning to Los Angeles, she co-created CicLAvia, which grafted the Colombian idea onto L.A. streets. Over the course of her ongoing fieldwork, Adonia found that the fluidity of public space she observed through ethnography was frozen not just by street design, but also by structural inequality tied to race, class, and gender. Applying these findings, she became an advocate for diversifying sustainable streets movements.
Cultural anthropologist Dr. Adonia E. Lugo started learning about “human infrastructure” (the need for diverse social networks to promote sustainable cultural transformation) through studying bicycle advocacy. In 2016, she co-created The Untokening as a core organizer. Adonia chairs the the Urban Sustainability department at Antioch University Los Angeles, supports People for Mobility Justice as an advisory board co-chair, and consults with Pueblo Planning. Her book, Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance, was published in 2018.
What People Say
I LOVE this event! I love that it’s low-key and free and a manageable length and that it moves around each year. I love the community it encourages!
2019
The open street events are so important for community interactions and people getting to meet each other.
2017
Blog
Beyond a One-Day Event
- The Open Streets Classroom: a University-Community Partnership for the Public GoodEvent Date: February 27, 12-4 pm Location: Corvallis-Benton County Library Meeting Room645 NW Monroe Ave, Corvallis This is a free event where participants will identify ways to build inclusive, walkable, bikeable, and livable neighborhoods. Join us to create community-university collaborations in the context of Open Streets Corvallis. Everyone is welcome! Spanish interpretation and lunch provided. Registration required. Dr. AdoniaContinue reading “The Open Streets Classroom: a University-Community Partnership for the Public Good”
- Better Bike LanesAfter 40+ years of adding bike lanes to busier roadways throughout Oregon, there’s a push to do more for the safety and comfort of people biking (or skateboarding, scootering, etc.). Two ways of accomplishing this include widening bike lanes and/or adding something to physically separate people rolling along relatively slowly from people in faster movingContinue reading “Better Bike Lanes”
- Placemaking in SouthtownOn Sunday July 28th, after months of planning and design, a community street mural was painted at the intersection of Lilly Ave. and Bethel St. in south Corvallis. The work was completed by over 40 volunteers from the community. This mural is only the second street mural painted in Corvallis and the first to goContinue reading “Placemaking in Southtown”
Be a Volunteer
Volunteers make Open Streets Corvallis possible! Short shifts, camaraderie, and plenty of time to explore the event, too.
We appreciate your commitment to the community!