Can Mayor Hales Jump the Shark and Lead Portland to the Promised Land?

Charlie Hales shocked Portlanders when he announced he is withdrawing from the mayor’s race.  The decision was political, politicians do not cede office without calculation, but it was also honorable.  The city is grappling with prosperity, and Hales will now focus on crafting a new comprehensive plan to address the issues of rapid growth, rising rents and homelessness.  Most mayors live for a revving tech sector and lucrative real estate market, but Portland is different.  It has, historian Carl Abbot writes, “a moral political culture that values the public good over the individual.”

Four decades ago, Oregonians invested in the novel idea that the judicious use of land could create a sustaining mix of private capital and civic enterprise.  The investment is generating a considerable return.  Portland is a magnet for the so-called “creative class,” the knowledge workers that are crucial to the 21st century economy. In contrast to metropolitan areas of similar size (e.g. Austin and Minneapolis) attracting the creative class, the Rose City does not have a major research institution.  Its lure is a lively pedestrian-oriented, bike friendly, nature infused urban environment that offers new venues for work and leisure.  In the past five years software industry jobs have expanded by almost 70 percent, from 7,200 to over 12,000.  The Pearl District alone has three collaborative work centers—Central Office, We Work, and Desk Hub—that are key indicators of a thriving tech sector.  At the same time the Pearl’s rents have exploded, rising nearly 50 percent in a year.  My 1000 square foot unit rented for $1700 a month one year ago—today it goes for $2500 a month. 

Not surprisingly, the neighborhood is rife with land sharks.  At the local breakfast café I feel I have been transported to Orlando circa 2006, as jargon filled discussions mimic real estate infomercials: “set investment goals,” “secure return” and “outperform the market.”  The difference is the product for sale.  “Drivable sub-urbanism,” as real estate expert Christopher Leinberger calls it, fueled Orlando’s real estate bubble and bust.  “Walkable urbanism” is for sale in the Pearl District.  The neighborhood's high walkscores www.walkscore.com signify that most daily needs can be met within walking or rail transit distance.  Rents and property values are higher, but when the car is an option Leinberger found walkable urbanism less costly than than owning a car and living in a suburban subdivison. http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/foot-traffic-ahead.pdf  I make ends meet because I lives sans auto and rent my parking space for $200 a month.  Giving up the automoblie mitigates the impact of high rents, but once the land sharks smell blood humanity suffers.   

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Large outside investors have a found a formula for translating properties with high walkscores into profits. They have been especially active in city's near eastside, buying apartment buildings at $100,000 a unit, investing $15,000 in unit upgrades, and then selling the building at $150,000 a unit.  The other strategy is to make upgrades and then significantly raise the rents, which often forces out existing renters.  The land sharks are feeding and their tactics explain why Mayor Hales declared that “a lot of the city is at a very fragile point right now.”

Cutthroat real estate speculation brought the country to the edge of economic collapse in both the Great Depression and the Great Recession.  A skilled technocrat, Hales is the one person who can ensure that a new comprehensive plan will direct development for a future population (expected to grow by 200,000 in the next twenty years) on lines that will procure sustainability, equity and profit.  There is a unique moral dimension at play in Portland, and Hales' ability to navigate the perils of prosperity will play to a much larger audience than the city’s 660,000 residents. 

This summer the Mayor attended the Vatican summit on climate change.  Portland is a prototype of the Promised Land Pope Francis envisions, a city where carbon is in remission and nature is ascendant.  Portland remains a work in progress, and reaching the Promised Land requires a leader who must convince citizens not to worship the Golden Calf.  Has a Portland Mayor ever had a greater exit?

Tanner Springs: A Tonic of Wildness

Tanner Springs is a laboratory that will determine if a restored natural habitat can thrive in a dense urban environment. This week volunteers joined members of the Portland Parks and Recreation (PP&R) to plant over 300 native grasses and shrubs in areas overrun by “Ecological Disrupters,” invasive plant species that degrade wildlife habitat.  Ecological Disrupters are mostly “weedy” non-native plants (e.g. English Ivy) that have aesthetic appeal in a yard, but create biological deserts when they take root in natural lands.  The Tanner Springs Management Plan’s “zero tolerance” policy requires their removal.  Ecological Disrupters are also eradicated in Forest Park, but Tanner Springs is a different type of park, it is a human creation.

English Ivy in Forest Park

The square block park was once part of the marshy Willamette River floodplain where Tanner Creek flowed into Couch Lake.  Over a century ago, the creek was buried in a sewer line and the area was filled to provide land for a rail yard.  In 2003 the site was reinvented once again.  By then, the development of the Pearl District was in full swing.   After Jamison Square opened in 2000, the Portland Development Commission sponsored a series of charrettes to elicit citizen input for the park being planned two blocks to the north.  It was determined that a water feature and access to nature were essential to a vision would set Walden Pond in the midst of the city.

Notice Couch Lake at terminus of Tanner Creek

Atelier Dreiseitl (Germany) and Green Works, P.C. (Portland) was commissioned to design Tanner Springs.  The idea was “to peel back the skin of the city” and create a native plant-dominated park that paid homage to the lost wetlands.  Water is pumped to the highest elevation, and it is released into two runnels that follow a sloping topography that drops six feet.  The runnels branch into a series of rock-edged rivlets that flow`into a low-lying pond.  The rocks were arranged to tune the trickle of water into a natural harmony, an attempt to engage the senses the city deadens.  This system provides an ecological function as well.  Stormwater from the surrounding block is filtered through the site’s hydrologic system, and the funneled underground to be treated with UV lights. 

Tanner Springs is also a work of art. A 12-foot high wall of 368 undulating recycled rail ties borders the pond.  Chunks of cobalt-blue art grass were fused into the rails, each hand painted by Herbert Dreiseitl with abstractions of lost wildlife.  Grassed terraces on the north and south sides of the park mimic stadium seating to observe “the game of nature” at play.

In 2005 Tanner Springs Park opened to much acclaim. The New York Times described it as “a sort of cross between an Italian piazza and a weedy urban wetland with lots of benches perched besides gently running streams.” The “weedy urban wetland” was actually three distinct landscapes: (1) lawn and landscaping (2) grasslands and (3) marsh.

Three planting zones: Lawn, grasslands, marsh

After a decade, Tanner Springs remains a work in progress.  It requires constant weeding and analysis, as maintaining natural habitats on a site affected by soil contamination and a high water table is challenging.  5,000 cubic yards of soil saturated with oil and heavy metals was removed, and a one to two-foot layer of compost and topsoil now underlies the grassland areas, which are the most difficult to maintain.  Hardy xeric shrubs from Eastern Oregon have fared the best, as they have adapted to the site’s poor soil and minimal shade.  Water percolation was also hampered, and an underground pipe was installed to run water from the pond to the head of the runnels. 

This spring and summer volunteers invested over 400 hours removing Ecological Disrupters, restoring the flow and harmonic tunes of weed infested runnels, and studying the park’s idiosyncrasies.  Michelle Shapiro, a heady field botanist, heads the volunteer group and she worked with PP&R horticulturist Robin Akers and botanist Erin Riggs crafting a plan to rejuvenate the park’s degraded grasslands.  To enhance the charachter of the park, they utilized native plants that “grow with vigor, work together to crowd out weedy species, and require minimal irrigation.” If Portland is to truly be sustainabile Tanner Spring will be just one in a myriad of native habitats, an early point of reference in a rich and diverse landscape.    

Tanner Springs is an exercise in ethics, as well as ecology.  It provides the “tonic of wildness” that Thoreau deemed necessary to mitigate the incessant intrusion of commercial society.  “When an osprey snags a koi ten feet away from a shallow pond or a great blue heron walks through a created wetland in one of the city’s densest neighborhoods it’s a transformational experience for a five-year old,” Portland urban naturalist Mike Houck writes.  The park is fostering for all ages what Aldo Leopold called an “ecological aesthetic.” The famed ecologist believed discerning beauty in the functions of a healthy environment was crucial to human survival.  This premise centers The Sand County Almanac, the “bible” of modern ecology that documents Leopold’s attempt to transform a played out farm on the Wisconsin River into a viable natural habitat.  Tanner Springs Park is a similar experiment, and its stewards are equally resolute. 

As the new planting takes root, beauty will take form on ecological lines.  At a time when climate change has placed nature in flux, Tanner Springs offer a place of repose, a modern version of Walden Pond.  Here one can contemplate wildness and learn, as Thoreau did, that “It’s not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”

Civic Exemplars: Millard Rogers Jr. & Mariemont

One of the most pleasant walks in a historic American suburb is along the parkway connecting Mariemont, Ohio's town center to a scenic overlook of the Little Miami River.  For me the walk is a pilgrimage, an opportunity to viscerally experience a community where democratic sensibilities and nature are infused into daily life.

The shaded, tree-lined corridor provides a gentle transition from government buildings to Tudor revival apartments, to duplexes and single-family homes incorporating various interpretations of English architecture. The 15-minute journey terminates at the Concourse, a half-moon, green jewel encapsulating a picturesque scene of distant blue-gray hills.  Taking in this view on a fall afternoon, I was reminded of developer Robert Livingood's claim: “the Concourse will be one of the show places in the United States ... for it has this great advantage--the sun does not set in the eyes of the visitor." 

View from Concourse

Livingood was the executor for Marie Emery, the philanthropist who founded Mariemont and hired John Nolen to plan it.  The new town was to be a "National Exemplar.” If Livingood, Emery, and Nolen's ambitions were never fully realized, their vision is revered.  Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (DPZ) consider "Mariemont too valuable to ignore," and for good reason. It inspired their iconic plan for Seaside. DPZ and Seaside initiated a revolution in city planning, and Mariemont is sacred ground for some.  It is one of those rare places where the past informs the future, an artifact that will be either a point of hope or despair for this generation.

                               

I returned to Mariemont to deliver the inaugural Millard F. Rogers, Jr. Lecture.  Rogers, who passed last April, was a renaissance man.  The director of the Cincinnati Art Museum for twenty years, he also wrote a definitive text, John Nolen and Mariemont: Building a New Town in Ohio.  A founding member of the Mariemont Preservation Foundation, Rogers almost single handedly ensured that Mariemont was named a National Historic Landmark.

Mariemont Chapel

Rogers understood that planning is an act of faith and fiscal acumen.  He had the good sense to ignore academic fashion, and he never wrote off Emery or Nolen as elitist or paternalistic.  Rather, he placed them in their time and honored them for their idealism and commitment.  Emery, an enlightened capitalist and one of the wealthiest women in the nation, wanted to build a community that benefited wage earners of different economic grades.  John Nolen, at the apex of his career in the early 1920s, was the obvious choice for the job. 

The conservative Emery (Robert Taft was her attorney) and the Progressive Nolen were united by the desire to channel America's amazing productive powers into building quality communities.  It was a high-minded project, Nolen designed a the model community that redefined the pursuit of happiness in modern terms. "The solution of many of our most difficult problems connected either with the increase of wealth or the sharing of what makes life most worthwhile is to be found, in the plan for Mariemont," he wrote Livingood. By illustrating the benefits of planning, Mariemont would challenge market forces to match their product. “For lovers of mankind this is in many respects ... a dramatic moment," Nolen announced when Mariemont's plan was unveiled before the Cincinnati Commercial Club in 1921.

Mariemont’s history is captivating.  Egos conflict, opportunities are lost, and ideals are realized.  Was Mariemont a success?  Dale Park, the first neighborhood built, remains viable and affordable, but the town never became a workers haven.  If Mariemont failed to produce a model community for labor, it still provides a model working community. The careful integration of apartments, single-family homes, and shopping, and civic buildings offers a distinct alternative to the disjointed auto-scaled suburban landscape designed to market segments. For planners confronted by NIMBYism every time multi-family or density is mentioned, Mariemont proves that good design can mix uses, create community, and enhance property values.

Neighborhood Center

Perhaps Mariemont is best gauged by the quality of life afforded the town's children. The public schools are exemplary and the town's pedestrian orientation allows children to safely navigate their way to school and a range of activities.  This daily fact of life placed Mariemont on the national news (ABC, July 21, 1999). The 3-minute piece contrasted the life of the Mariemont teen to their cohort struggling to find community in the disconnected subdivisions spreading over the nearby Kentucky countryside.

Something as complex as city planning offers few simple measures, but Marie Emery offered the best test.  Shortly before her death in 1926 she offered this adage: "Good Morning. Is the sun a little brighter there in Mariemont? Is the air a little fresher? ...And the children? Do you feel safer about them? Are their faces a bit ruddier? Are their legs a little sturdier? Do they laugh and play a lot louder in Mariemont? Then I am content."

It is hardly coincidence that Mariemont is well suited to children.  Nolen spent his formative years in an orphanage, and as a city planner he advocated allocating public resources to a wider populace.  John Nolen crafted an exquisite plan, Emery and Livingood implemented it, and Millard Rogers memorialized it.  Future development will honor the past and this is Rogers’s legacy.  In a democracy a plan is a test of civic virtue and, in Mariemont, no one grades higher than Millard Rogers, Jr.

My review of John Nolen and Mariemont: Building a New Town in Ohio  https://networks.h-net.org/node/22277/reviews/22764/stephenson-rogers-john-nolen-and-mariemont-building-new-town-ohio