About these questions…
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. …Abraham Lincoln
The questions that follow arise from wanting to “better judge what to do and how to do it” when it comes to thinking about the civic infrastructure necessary to craft and achieve Portland 2.0
When considering our capacity to manage Portland and the region as a shared civic endeavor 0f citizens and leaders in pursuit of inclusive opportunity and livability, we want to pose fundamental questions about “where we are and whither we are tending.”
These questions are the starting points for panel discussions at the Kickoff event January 26, which is open to the public (registration will be announced), and subsequent limited-enrollment workshops. If you want to stay informed, use the “subscribe” box.
The Big Questions
Are we at a new inflection point?
What have been the consequences of formalizing and institutionalizing “participation”?
Are we missing out by trying to tackle issues one-by-one?
Are we at a new inflection point?
I come from the fabulous–that is, the fabled–city of Portland. It’s the place where all the neighborhoods are handsome, all the new development is good looking, and all the planners are above average.
…Carl Abbott, historianPortland, Oregon, today is often referred to as a reference case for urban success and sustainability…. Today Portland receives a continuous stream of visitors to see the results of this 50-year legacy of civic action and innovation.
…Ethan Seltzer, PSU urban studies expert
In the 1960s, Portland was on a trajectory much like other urban areas. Families with kids moving to the suburbs, downtown emptying out after work, freeways threatening to slice up neighborhoods, sprawl threatening to make us look like Los Angeles.
Then something noteworthy happened as a younger generation of energized residents and leaders managed to come together around a shared sense that we were headed in the wrong direction. In a way, they managed to create an inflection point that led to a burst of civic creativity and action over the following decades that gave the region a reputation for innovation and urban success (acknowledging that many were left out of that success).
Beginning in the late 1960s, citizens and leaders managed to knit together a variety of hopes and grievances into a larger, positive sense of direction. According to one citizen activist of the time:
A major effort in those years was the formation of STOP (Sensible Transportation Options for People)…. And I realize that it wasn’t just about stopping the Mt. Hood Freeway; it was trying to organize support for a different way in Portland.
Organizing for a “different way” is a pretty good synopsis of the story of the region in the beginning back then, a story we are calling Portland 1.0.
In some ways the region is a victim of its own success as a desirable place to live, evidenced by gentrification and displacement of traditional neighborhoods, housing affordability, traffic congestion, and new growth pressures.
Today we are confronted with not only how to live with our own success but also the reality that Portland 1.0 was far from a success for all, especially people of color, and that “livability” was intended as an ingredient of success, but not the definition.
Nor did Portland 1.0 achieve its full aspirations around, for example, education and a broadly shared economy. And, times change, presenting new challenges and a different social and economic landscape: an increasingly diverse population, technology, the structure of the economy and jobs, and the nature of civic engagement and conditions of leadership.
Is it time for a change beyond Portland 1.0—at least that version in which “livability” has come to be the signature of this region?
Beyond Portland’s experience, due to seeming dysfunction at the national level, there is growing interest in the capacity and need for local innovation:
Cities and counties … and their states … are going to be tested like they have never been before. They are going to need to innovate and reform in ways that we can scarcely imagine.
They will need to pursue new patterns of urban growth, new forms of urban finance, and new norms of urban governance that are concrete, imaginative, integrated and, ultimately, transferable.
To do so, they will need new tools and rules, structures and systems to individually leverage their distinctive assets and collectively aggregate their political and market power.
They will need to invent, in short, a new localism that responds to this uncertain era and their heightened importance.
…Bruce Katz, Brookings Institution.
What have been the consequences of formalizing and institutionalizing “participation”?
Have we, in some ways, shrunk the civic space and broad ownership of our shared civic enterprise?
Several years ago, Carol Coletta, a leading national observer of urban affairs gave a talk in Portland in which she offered the following thoughts (paraphrased):
For us , [the Kresge Foundation] the dimensions of public life are:
• informed local voting
• vibrant public spaces and activity
• sense of civic stewardship
• sense of civic identityCivic engagement has become codified, too formalized. Not working well. An easy out. Real civic engagement must “work to be more in-your-face.” Formalized methods now are not adequate.
The future will be even less centrally driven than now. More dispersed, crowd sourced from a sense of common civic identity.
As we grapple with growth and inclusion, how do we harmonize multiple and varied neighborhood, city and regional plans and aspirations?
Here are assessments in 2004 from two of the foremost students of civic engagement in Portland:
Critics point out the failure of Portland leadership to define and sees a rhetorical high ground that could help sort and order the hyper-pluralism of interest group skirmishing in a city that is now more than ever a mosaic of vulcanizing interest, lifestyles, income brackets and ethnic identities.… The simplicity of the Goldschmidt doctrine that ‘neighborhoods and downtown need one another’ is nowhere evident in current discourse about what Portland should do next.” (Mathew Witt)
There are many ways to divide Portlanders, but so few effective ways to bridge these differences that Portland is on the brink of losing its civic exceptionalism. (Steven Reed Johnson)
Are we missing out by trying to tackle issues one-by-one?
If Portland 1.0 emerged from a shared sense of purpose (shared not by everyone but by enough) and a lot of “figuring it out,” there was a simple but powerful secret sauce: everything was related to everything. The pieces were knit together into an overall idea—vision if you will—of what Portland could be.
Alan Webber, one of the participants in creating Portland 1.0 (who, looking back in 2013, gave it that name and is now Mayor of Santa Fe, NM):
Once you know your definition of victory, then you can begin to connect the elements of your strategy into a coherent, internally consistent whole. But until you have answered that fundamental question, until you know the definition of victory, you really have no strategy. You have an assortment of programs, a loose collection of policy initiatives—but no clear strategy.
Knight Foundation “Why of Portland” Report on how Portland 1.0 came to be:
The unifying notion here is that actions should be driven by ideas, not solutions. This is another way of saying that identifying overarching principles first enables solutions to emerge in a new and useful context, rather than to drive the process with interest-driven actions from the outset. For example, in Portland the 1972 Downtown Plan really mattered.
However, it arose not as a way simply to physically remake downtown, but as part of a larger strategy to remake the city.
The vision was comprehensive and expansive, about the whole place and the city writ large. Everything is related to everything.
In addition, a good vision allows leaders to take unpopular actions. That is, people are unlikely to embrace meaningful change without first seeing whether it works. Leaders often have to take the risk of committing to changes before people can know whether the changes are likely to succeed. The vision is the baseline against which the reasons and intentions and commitments of leaders are measured, or at least it should be.
Carl Abbott, historian:
During 1973 1974, and 1975, Goldschmidt’s team brought together a variety of ideas that were waiting for precise definition and articulated them as part of a single political package that offered benefits for a wide range of citizens and groups.
Are we bold enough to question our own successes or learn from other places that have moved beyond us to become more innovative in pursuit of livability and shared success?
Some say that Portland has become too smug and self-satisfied with its own reputation for livability. We now send delegations to learn best practices to places that used to come to Portland to see how we did it.
To what extent are the innovative neighborhood, civic and regional institutions we created still sources of innovation and civic energy?
Ironically, because Portland’s reputation is that of a mecca of good planning, there was no great plan for Portland 1.0. There was, rather, a broadly shared sense of purpose and direction (even if the direction started as “we don’t like the direction we are headed”).
That meant there was a whole lot of creativity going on. Maybe having a shared purpose and figuring out how to make it work was better than having a carefully crafted plan.
Don Clark (former Multnomah County Chair) observed about elected leaders at the time:
We could not have done anything without the network of people, just ordinary citizens, who were on the same wavelength. We came together around a regional vision. They could see a region, a metropolitan area. A group of progressive leaders on the same wavelength. Had a regional vision, to make things work together better. If there was anything that caused our triumph, if that’s what you want to call it, it was that. It was just all around us.[emphasis added] Not just a few leaders but many, many people in the community.
From a summary of panel discussions of many people involved in Portland 1.0 (Knight Foundation report):
There was no grand plan, but there was a guiding vision. Initial discussions weren’t about what to build, or what not to build, but about what the city should be and what needed to happen to get it there. The conversations that kicked things off weren’t about solving the problems of “right now,” but about what the better city would look and feel like, and how it would work.
There were, in fact, lots of plans, but individually they had little power. However, by creating them with reference to this larger discussion, and to a larger vision, small things got leveraged into larger things, and that helped to sustain action over the time that it actually takes to get things done.
So here is a proposition: so much of the progressive innovation and action that made Portland a fabled city was the creativity that went into figuring out out how to give force and effect to what “was all around us,” to a “real sense that people were taking care of the place and taking care of each other through the engagement that they had in redirecting the city away from a path that was not working.”
Whether it was putting together the broad coalition of interests that made the Downtown Plan powerful, or figuring out how to give some regular voice to neighborhoods, or staff from various jurisdictions meeting over retsina to figure out how to unite around a plan to share money from withdrawal of the Mt. Hood Freeway, there was a whole lot of “figuring out” going on. All based on a shared sense of purpose built the chassis of an aroused citizenry and given form and motion by leaders in tune with them.
The story of the creation and evolution of Metro, nationally renowned as the avatar of integrated land use and transportation planning, is more a story of garage-like tinkering over a period of time rather than a carefully crafted plan from the outset. Even its seminal 2040 Plan involved a remarkable amount of creativity and inventing along the way.
Do we care as much about the people who live here as the place we share, as much about our neighbors as our neighborhoods?
Although Portland 1.0 was intended by many to be about more than “livability,” it was livability–preservation of what makes Portland Oregon a comfortable and pleasant place to live–that became the hallmark.
Importantly, the burden of our desirability has fallen disproportionately on those least able to cope and those historically bypassed by our “urban success.” Communities of color and lower income groups were left out or left behind. Promises were made but not kept. Where was accountability?
Now, with the added, often divisive, pressures of growth and recognition that many find themselves squeezed out, do we need to pose a very fundamental question about core values?