The OAPA Conference

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This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association’s (OAPA) Annual Conference at the Portland Convention Center and present two posters I created that discuss the work I have been doing here at OEM.  Pictures of the posters can be seen here:

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PDFs of the posters can be found on the OEM website.

At the OAPA Conference, I also had the opportunity to listen to Kent Yu and Jay Wilson, Chair and Vice-Chair of OSSPAC, talk about the new Oregon Resilience Plan.  For me, the big take-away was that we shouldn’t just think about natural disasters as a one time emergency; instead, we should perceive them as the obvious results of our everyday planning.  Natural disasters offer us an opportunity to think about how we organize our communities and to maybe make some really important and beneficial changes.  As Jay Wilson says, “You constantly need to ask yourself, ‘How prepared am I at this very moment?'” How prepared are you for a magnitude 9 earthquake?   

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About Geoff Ostrove

Geoff (MCRP, 2013, Community & Regional Planning; MS, 2012, Communication & Society, Univ. of Oregon; BA, 2010, Communication, Humboldt State Univ.) is a doctoral candidate in Media Studies at the University of Oregon. His primary focus is on integrating communication theory into the world of community planning and analyzing the political economic factors that influence our perception of land use and development. Geoff is currently working with the Oregon Infrastructure Finance Authority (IFA) through the Oregon Sea Grant's Natural Resources Policy Fellowship. His masters project for the Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management (PPPM) focused on the need to acknowledge the polyrational nature of our communities in order to implement effective public engagement campaigns. Geoff was honored with the University of Oregon's 2013 Public Impact Award, as well as IAMCR's 2013 Urban Communication Research Grant. He was also named one of Humboldt State's Emerging Scholars in 2010. His wide range of research interests include: intercultural communication, religious studies, critical theory, political economy, rhetoric/public address, and urban planning & natural resource management.

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