The University of Oregon's Sustainable City Year Program is moving east of the Cascades for the first time in its six year history.
The program brings together UO students and faculty with members of a different Oregon city each year. Redmond has been selected and will benefit from more than 40,000 hours of student work aimed at improving sustainability, infrastructure and livability. Redmond's Community Development Director Heather Richards says they're getting started April 8 with a bicycle tour of existing infrastructure.
Richards: "We live in a rural area; people are pretty car-dependent here. But the city itself is only 5 miles long and 3 miles wide and we think there's a great opportunity to get people using their bikes and walking more in our community both for mobility and also for health."
Richards says other projects include studying the feasibility of a downtown parking garage, improving the look and feel of the Redmond Airport, expanding Centennial Park and working on the Cascadia Emergency Preparedness Plan.