A Little Chaos, Why Portland is a Green City

The new film, "A Little Chaos," depicts how Andre Le Notre, Louis XIV's famed landscape gardener, allows a fountain of free flowing nature in the manicured grounds of Versailles.  It was a daring act in a time when "order over landscape" was the rule.  The garden's strict geometry demonstrated the power of the Sun King, a divine ruler who controlled nature, his subjects, and the destiny of France.  Unfortunately, the film strays into a mishmash of fictional romantic meanderings but its central tenet--landscape design reflects cultural values--is essential to understanding Portland.  In the early 20th century "a little chaos" was injected into the Rose City, and it has never been the same.

The Fountain of Apollo, celebration of the Sun King at Versailles

An era ended in 1903 when the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted died. "The park planner of the people," stood in stark contrast to Le Notre, "the gardener of the king," a contemporary noted.  Central Park, Boston's Emerald Necklace, and Brooklyn's Prospect Park were public works of art that redefined the urban landscape. With their father's passing, John Charles and Frederick Law Jr. were determined to extend his legacy.

The celebration of re-creation at Central Park

The senior Olmsted believed cities were "artificial" places where obsessive commercialism produced "un-natural men."  Thus, he designed idyllic landscapes where citizens could ponder nature and "re-create" themselves.  In effect, Central Park offered an escape to Walden Pond.  Influenced by Darwin, his sons did not view the city as artificial creation.  Rather, it was a living organism and its growth could be directed on beneficial lines.  They envisioned an "organic city" built in conjunction with a park system, which ordered development and placed nature and new more active forms of recreation close at hand.

Portland was the Olmsted Brothers test case.   In 1903, John Charles Olmsted came west.  After meeting with civic leaders and Park Board members, he analyzed the topography, natural features, and soil composition in producing a basic but effective environmental analysis.  His Report to the Portland Parks Board proposed setting aside lands unsuitable for urban uses (e.g. floodplains, steep slopes) as  preserves, exemplified by Forest Park, Mt. Tabor, and Swan Island.  He was also an artist, and crafted singular components--nature preserves, neighborhood parks, playgrounds, scenic reservations, parkways and boulevards--into a comprehensive system. Olmsted's genius was to offer citizens immediate and visceral contact with nature.

The neighborhood park keyed the enterprise.  It ensured nature was close at hand, and Olmsted wanted to minimize flowery ornamentation.  Native vegetation and "small scale naturalistic scenery is the first consideration," he wrote.   Given that neighborhoods parks would be heavily utilized, investing in "adequately wide and numerous walks" was a necessity.  A little chaos was also required: "these walks must especially provide for short-cutting since local parks are directly in the way of many pedestrians." The call to ensure short-cuts to nature was a delightful new maxim for landscape architects, and the citizens of Portland were the beneficiaries.

The Olmsted Brothers plan experienced modest success.  Laurelhurst Park and Terwlliger Boulevard were established before World War I, and Forest Park took form after World War II.  By then, however, the Olmsted Brothers vision of an organic city had given way to the Modernist architect's concept of the "city as a machine." Modernists advocated an International Style of architecture, with buildings of a mechanical purity that were adaptable to any environment.  The International Style had a deleterious effect on landscape architecture, producing sterile plazas better suited to the Nazi defenders of Normandy, as witnessed by the fortifications at O'Bryant Plaza.

O'Bryant Plaza

Normandy

Mike Houck, Audubon's indefatigable urban naturalist, resurrected the Olmsted Plan in the 1980s. It provided a precedent for establishing a system of natural lands and trails within the Urban Growth Boundary.  In 1992 Houck teamed with METRO, Portland's regional governing agency, to draft a Regional Greenspace Plan.  By 2006, $363 million had been invested in acquiring 16,000 acres of natural areas and expanding the regional trail network.  Today the Intertwine Alliance, with over 100 partners, is creating "a world class interconnected system of parks, trails and natural areas. It is John Charles Olmsted's vision for a comprehensive expanding," Houck writes, "John Charles Olmsted's vision for a comprehensive, interconnected park system writ large." https://www.planning.org/store/product/?ProductCode=BOOK_A01283 

In the quest to green Portland, a little chaos is being added in ways the Olmsteds could never have imagined. The Pearl District is a laboratory for restoring the human and natural habitat, and Tanner Springs Park is a prototype of ecological restoration. The wetland and small stream that once flowed through the site were lost to development over a century ago.  The park, designed to recapture a sense of the past, has a recreated wetland with flowing runnels that reveal natural processes at work.  Old railroad ties border the wetland, while birds flitting through native grasses and trees supply the tunes. Most important, children can examine nature and stoke their imagination.  Tanner Springs is an antidote to what Richard Louv, author of the best-seller Last Child in the Woods, calls "Nature Deficit Disorder."

Louv wants a little chaos in our cities.  He believes we must know the animals and plants in our immediate surroundings as well as the televised Amazon rainforest.  Yards and public spaces should be alive with native plants. Then establishing links, natural corridors, could aid species migration and inject "life and meaning" into a desensitized environment. Ultimately, Louv envisions a system of "homegrown national parks" that will turn cities  into "incubators of biodiverity." http://richardlouv.com/books/nature-principle/

Portland modeled the Olmsted Brothers vision of a green city, will it lay claim to the first urban national park? Mike Houck is laying the groundwork.  He directs the Portland Urban Greenspace Institute, which is dedicated to integrating the built and natural environment. http://www.urbangreenspaces.org  Henry David Thoreau's adage "in wildness is the preservation of the world," inspired earlier generations, but Houck tweaked it to address Portland's future: "In livable cities is the preservation of the wild." With a little chaos, perhaps this vision will also come to pass.

What to learn more on how the Modernists supplanted the Olmsteds?  Read my new book, John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner http://lalh.org/john-nolen-landscape-architect/

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