Planning Pool

As some of us recover from the spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday, we thought it’d be an appropriate time to kick-off our own grand event — chicken week.  Now, as many a city councilperson can tell you, the idea of city-slickin’ chickens stimulates some compelling, if not maddening debate (evidenced here).  In tough times, urban livestock definitely has some appeal for those who’d take their victory gardens one step further.  Will chickens supplant dogs as the preferred family pet?  Or will future generations merely associate chicken with greasy, dinosaur-shaped bricks of life-shortening goodness?  Maybe something in between…

To get a sense for the realities of chicken-keeping in an urban context, our latest Planning Pool Original visits a bonafide chicken enthusiast in Portland, OR, where backyard fowl are accepted members of the community.

Enjoy!… Continue Reading

Solar Panel by Flickr user futureatlas.com

There are lots of reasons why we don’t use more renewable energy, like solar or wind power. A huge reason is cost – often a system can take 10 to 15 years to payback from energy savings. Another factor is regulatory. Sometimes, zoning laws don’t allow solar power or adding photovoltaic panels may require a construction permit.

Portland is trying to make it easier for homeowners to add solar panels to their houses. While Portland may not be solar power mecca, the city boasts a number of renewable energy firms and has a strong commitment to sustainability, hoping to reduce its carbon footprint by 40 percent before 2030 and 80 percent reduction by 2050 (see Portland’s Climate Action Plan). So, the … Continue Reading

Photo by Flickr user Landschaft

One of the great things about being a student is having the luxury of coming up with really fun ideas. Last semester, some classmates and I worked on a re-imagining of a Vancouver neighborhood around the Britannia Community Center (here’s a link to the project / sorry for the Flashtastrophe). One feature that we put into our design was the idea of a tool library.

Basically, a tool library is like a book library, except that rather than borrowing books, people can borrow ladders, lawn mowers, power tools, circular saws and other tools that people only use infrequently. Our group placed the hypothetical tool library in a light-industrial warehouse and paired it with a “Maker Shed” and … Continue Reading

Who will be the most sustainable city in the world? Vancouver, British Columbia, unveiled its Greenest City Initiative today, which sets 10 ambitious targets for resource use reduction, to achieve by 2010. Portland, Oregon, is a close competitor for this “greenest” city title, having already won the number one spot in US city rankings by Sustain Lane and Popular Science.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams is urging Portlanders to not rest on their laurels. At the Gaining Ground Resilient City conference, Adams and his team outlined an innovative strategy to advance their city’s sustainability. The vanguard of this effort is a 25 year strategic planning effort that will push a triple bottom line for the city, to ensure “that Portland is a thriving and sustainable city and our people are prosperous, healthy and educated.”

Planning and … Continue Reading

The sights and smells of street food can be one of the great experiential pleasures of a city, and every city is different. Carts sell roasted chestnuts on London’s street corners in the wintertime, while New York’s streets bristle with hot dog carts.

Portland, Oregon, shown above, is known for its array of food carts. They seem to sell every kind of food, and some even offer folding chairs to accommodate a leisurely meal.

Meanwhile, the City of Montreal, Quebec, has banned conventional street food carts for decades. While the waffle vendor shown here does technically sell street food, since it is both purchased and consumed on the sidewalk, the food is cooked inside a building and served through a window. Locally, the lack of street food is … Continue Reading

Having long envied its streetcar system from afar, I was delighted this summer to make my first visit to Portland and ride its famous streetcars. Vancouver BC, where I make my home, is often compared to Portland but its once-extensive streetcar system was scrapped in favour of trolley busses in the 1950s.

A handsome new streetcar in Portland, Oregon. Photo by author.

One thing I had not expected to see when riding Portland’s famed streetcars was the presence of advertisements in non-traditional places. Tourist information booklets displayed inside each streetcar present maps of the route and promote businesses located near the tracks.

As a transit planning nerd, I actually felt warmly towards the businesses that spent advertising money in support of … Continue Reading

Once central to urban  life, most North American public markets closed in the mid-twentieth century. Refrigeration, motordom, processed food and the rise of supermarkets all played a role in their decline.

With increasing public interest in local eating, recent years have seen a reversal of fortune for public markets. According to the American nonprofit organization Project for Public Spaces, the number of farmers markets in the United States more than doubled from 1,755 to over 3,700 in the ten years between 1994 and 2004!

Edmonton’s Old Strathcona Farmers Market was founded 25 years ago and is still going strong. Unusual among farmers’ markets, it operates Saturdays year-round in a permanent home, a large heritage building which was once a trolley depot.  Goods … Continue Reading

Oversized Shell Toe Adidas shoe sculptures are located at the corporation’s North American headquarters. For Adidas, the art is the foundation of a publicity stunt and multimedia ad campaign. (The left shoe was painted by artists from the West Coast, while a New-York-based collective provided decoration for the right shoe.) For residents and visitors of Portland, the shoes might represent conflicting meanings: love of skate shoes; East Coast-West Coast rivalry; a splash of colour in the urban environment; an irritating corporate intrusion.

Meanwhile, a huge sculpture of a drill bit looms outside a big-box power centre on the side of Vancouver’s Grandview Highway. Shavings embedded in surrounding landscaping are engraved with Canadian Tire advertising keywords like “fixing” and “driving”. The municipality required this development to include a public art component as a condition of site rezoning. Apparently, the developer’s plan promised artwork … Continue Reading

So my cell phone contract expired about a month ago now, and I thought I’d give life a shot minus the long arm of AT&T.  I purchased a Skype number, so as not to fall entirely incommunicado, but my days are largely spent without the luxury of instant telecommunication.  Overall, things have gone smoothly, but my lack of a phone has led to a series of revelations.  Most apparent is the lack of payphones in Portland, which had me walking all the way to Union Station to make a phone call (a fair walk from where I was located).  Perhaps it’s my unhealthy love of noir detective stories, but the death of the payphone is troubling to me.

Sure, wifi will soon make even cell phones irrelevant, so bemoaning the loss of the payphone is a little … Continue Reading

Baseball… How I love a good baseball game on a sunny afternoon in Portland. Being able to watch the triple-A Beavers play in a classic downtown ballpark at an affordable price doesn’t hurt either. Unfortunately, most Portlanders don’t seem to have the same zeal for the old passtime as do I. Maybe baseball isn’t in the cards for Portland — or, as some suggest, perhaps the city has graduated to the major leagues. At least one fan-base is sure of Portland’s major league credentials… but they’re not baseball fans.

In addition to owning the Beavers, Merritt Paulson (son of Henry) also owns the Portland Timbers of the United Soccer Leagues (not a typo). Like the Beavers, the Timbers play their games in charming PGE Park. … Continue Reading