Portland's Sustainability: Rooted in History

I celebrated my first week in the Pearl District by taking a 2 minute saunter to get a cup of coffee and read the Oregonian at Lovejoy Bakery, a definitive third place. http://www.pps.org/reference/roldenburg/  On a cool morning, conversation, coffee, and contemplation abound in this  synergistic mix of public and private space. There is a sense of repose here, a comfortable spot to take in the ballet of life.

Spaces like this are rare, they are works of art blending history and innovation--the essence of New Urbanism. The Pearl District is a model of New Urbanism http://www.pearldistrict.org/about-the-pearl-district/ Twenty years ago it was a decaying  industrial district, now, with a 95 walk score, it is a prototype of the future.  

Craig Ustler, the developer of Orlando's Creative Village, arguably the most promising urban infill project in Florida http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-racial-zoning-injustice-042415-20150423-story.html is a student of the Pearl District.  It informs his plan to blend transit, parks, and mixed-use development to create a definitive urban neighborhood.  Ustler http://www.ustler.net believes the intersection of Lovejoy and 10th Avenue, the site of Lovejoy Bakery, demonstrates "why Portland gets it."  The lesson is not lost on my students, who study Portland with Mr. Ustler and then incorporate this knowledge into plans to form and activate Creative Village. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29405235/CreativeVillageExec.pdf 

Currently, Portland and Orlando are worlds apart.  The sprawling Orlando metropolitan area is saddled with the the nation's highest pedestrian death rate, and applying its driving death rate to the nation would result in 15,000 addition fatalities per year. By contrast, applying Portland's driving death rate would reduce fatalities by 15,000. Yet, Central Florida is not without hope.  Orlando's new Greenworks Plan envisions the city becoming the Portland of the southeast, and investments in commuter rail and a significant pedestrian-bike system signal change.http://www.cityoforlando.net/greenworks/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2014/03/gw_cap_plan2013.pdf But Orlando is also tied to its past, a history defined by the creation of a Magic Kingdom divorced from civic responsibility. http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300098280

Portland has invested in civic art for over a century.  In 1904,  the Olmsted Brothers prepared one of the nation's first plans for a park system in Portland. The idea of integrating a range of parks, from urban squares to large outlying preserves, was a novel concept. It set the foundation for American city planning profession, which came into fruition in the 1910s and 1920s, a "golden age" of civic design in the United States.  Ladd's Addition, Laurelhurst Park, and Washington Park speak to this tradition. 

                                      

Portland's history is not seamless, it is filled with fits and starts.  It took nearly a century for the Olmsted Brothers Park Plan to reach completion.  In 1939, another milestone was set when noted urbanist Lewis Mumford came west.  In a presentation to the City Club, he declared Portlanders "could do a job of city planning like nowhere else in the world."  But after seeing the neglect in "letting this fine land with its wonderful scenic beauty get away from you, it made me wonder if you are good enough to have it in your possession." Mumford deeded a regional plan to the city's leadership, but it was ignored until the early 1970s (the same time Walt Disney World opened) when a young cohort of reformers, led by Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, incorporated Mumford's major concepts. "Portland is a better place thanks in large part to the wisdom and foresight of Lewis Mumford," Goldschmidt noted in 1982. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944369908976056  

Portland is one of the nation's most sustainable cities because of its civic culture and its history. History provides a point of origin for citizens to join experts in tethering humanity's boundless potential to a set of time-tested principles and new ideas. This is the art of city planning and stay tuned for another exploration of its application in the Pearl District.