The Burnside Blog

Posted By Tim DuRoche on 02/07/2009

IF I WERE KING OF THE (URBAN) FOREST (part two)
The Burnside Blog recently asked a number of folks involved in development, architecture, policy, preservation, and other fields related to once and future Portland if they could answer a few questions. Pure conjecture, part fantasy, with a prescriptive dose of reality thrown in. The second in a series.

Mike Houck
Houck is Executive Director of the Urban Greenspaces Institute. He currently serves on the Portland-Multnomah County Sustainable Development Commission, the steering committee of the Ecological Cities Project of Amherst, MA, and the Coalition for a Livable Future board of directors.Mr. Houck has been a leader at the local, regional, national and international levels in urban park and greenspace issues since founding the Urban Naturalist Program at the Audubon Society of Portland in 1980. Houck believes to be livable, cities must have ample parks, trails, and natural areas and easy access to nature near their homes and work. He co-edited Wild in the City, A Guide to Portland’s Natural Areas and produced Wild on the Willamette, Exploring the Lower Willamette River.  In 2003 Mike was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Currently, he is an active member of the Connecting Green Alliance, and is working with Audubon Society of Portland, Trust for Public Land, Metro and others to create the world’s greatest system of parks, trails, and natural areas in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region.

1.Imagine you’re the Mayor of a Portland-like City. You’re in your First 100 Days and you’ve been given $500-some million for public infrastructure and economic stimulus and a big bright greenlight, and full public confidence and support to jumpstart major projects. . .what do you do first?

I would spend as much of the $500 million on green infrastructure or what the Portland-Multnomah County Sustainable Development Commission refers to as Greenfrastructure. The fact that you asked if I were king of the urban forest is appropriate to where my priorities would lie. One of the most important elements of the city’s infrastructure is the urban forest. I’d invest in expanding and maintaining the city’s urban forest canopy which would achieve multiple benefits: attenuate urban stormwater by intercepting and transpiring rainfall; reduce energy consumption by reducing the city’s urban heat island effect; serve as important stop over habitat for migratory birds; add value to adjacent properties; etc. Build a pipe with the same amount of money and what do you get? A pipe.

Speaking of pipes, Portland’s Big Pipe, the combined sewer overflow pipe that will basically eliminate sewer overflows into the Willamette every time it rains in Portland, and Portland sewer rate payers would also benefit from expanding the urban forest canopy and more landscaping throughout the city. We’re spending $1.6 Billion on the Big Pipe. With future projected growth the Big Pipe’s capacity will be soon overwhelmed unless we figure out how to reduce stormwater inflow. Absolutely the most cost effective and environmentally beneficial way to accomplish that objective is to capture stormwater on the site of every development infiltrate stormwater into the ground. I’d spend money to hire landscape architects, landscape designers, nursery growers and ecologists to increase the city’s landscape, plant more trees, and build more ecoroofs throughout the city.  Those investments would not only protect our $1.6 investment in the big pipe but also benefit local streams and wetlands by reducing abnormally high winter flowsand provide cooler water in hot, dry summer months through groundwater flow. Increasing the urban forest canopy and requiring more landscaping would also create green jobs.

On the bricks and mortar side I’d also spend a big chunk building more bike-ped trails that would allow more people to walk or bicycle to work or school during the week and explore the region’s parks and natural areas on the weekends. We have a fabulous regional bicycle and pedestrian trail network vision but don’t have the funds to build it out.

Finally, there’s a huge backlog in deferred maintenance of our parks and natural areas. We could put an army of restorationists to work cleaning up and maintaining our parks and removing invasive species from the city’s natural areas like Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, Forest Park, and Powell Butte. Ecosystem restoration would employ both highly skilled ecologists and unskilled labor.

2. If you had unlimited funds and a full-pass to develop, preserve, rehab, and/or build, what would you do, where, and why?

My response would be the same as your first question, only expand the types of projects. With unlimited funds every Portland neighborhood would have a robust urban forest canopy. Every development would be landscaped, wherever possible with native species, to capture stormwater; provide wildlife habitat; and better integrate the built and natural landscapes. I’d start on the regional trail network, which would be a huge public works project and large numbers of people to work, by creating both local connectors so no one would be more than a 15 minute walk or 5 minute bicycle ride to a regional trail. I’d spend a big chunk address park deficiencies in areas of the city that have been shown to be park or nature deficient by Portland Parks Vision 2020 or the Coalition for a Livable Future’s Equity Atlas. I’d throw in one of my favorite restoration opportunities, Ross Island, into the mix for restoring the city’s natural areas.

3. Back to Reality: what development area or neighborhood (No. Pearl/Centennial Mills, Downtown, Old Town/China Town, Burnside Bridgehead, NW IndustrialCon-Way, Burnside-Couch couplet, etc.) are you watching the most closely? And why?

I’d focus on South Waterfront. No redevelopment project represents more examples of Portland’s aspirations to build a more sustainable city than South Waterfront. And, no site more urgently needs the financial resources to achieve its intended objectives. Now, more than a mile of severely degraded riverbank that desperately needs restoration. The greatly expanded Willamette Greenway was planned to have two trails, one for pedestrians and one for cyclists, and a beautifully landscaped swath of land that would combine wildlife-friendly native plantings as well as more traditional landscaping up to the new condos and along greenstreets. There is supposed to be more than 3 acres of ecoroofs that help control stormwater on the 130-acre site. The city and many, many stakeholders who have participated for years in developing a vision for South Waterfront that truly integrates the built and natural environments, needs to ensure the vision for a greatly expanded Willamette Greenway and river restoration are not left behind as the district is built out. Finally, right across from South Waterfront lies what should be one of the city’s, and region’s, most important restoration projects, Ross Island.

—Thanks, Mike!