Planning Pool

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

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

The mayor of Portland has helped me to better appreciate my neighbourhood grocery store.

At his lecture yesterday evening on “Active Transportation in Portland,” Portland mayor and former transportation commissioner Sam Adams described his vision of a “20-minute neighbourhood”. It includes grocery stores, laundromats, and pretty much all the services that people need in a typical day. These need to be located close enough together to be reasonably accessible by active (non-motorized) transportation. Since two thirds of the average household’s daily trips are not the “journey-to-work” trips most frequently studied by transportation planners, substantial reductions in car-dependency can be achieved by cutting down on the number of automobile trips that neighbourhood residents make to “pick stuff up”.

Mr. Adams made the surprising suggestion that … Continue Reading