Building Green Cities

      View selections from the book at the end of this post.

Moderator: 
Mike Houck  

[Discussion topic: Wild in the City: Exploring the Intertwine]


This past weekend I took a seven-mile stroll from my northwest Portland apartment to nearby Forest Park.  Half-way back I heard that shrill-high pitched call of a bald eagle.  Then, there were two, four and finally six bald eagles kettled high  above the forest canopy---the hot white light of the sun's glare making it impossible to tell young from adult.  Six bald eagles in a 5,000-acre forest, a ten minute walk from my home in the densest neighborhood in the Portland metropolitan region.  I'm tempted to use my last blog to recount similar encounters with the urban wild over the past forty-two years. 

Instead, I'm go to go all wonky on what some might consider the esoterica of green infrastructure and ecosystem services, without which I am convinced, ultimately, there would be no urban wildlife.  But to some, such as Lisa Jackson, Environmental Protection Agency administrator, green infrastructure has gone mainstream.  Just in town for a national rivers conference, Jackson spent her time visiting rain gardens, bioswales, and green roofs and proclaimed Portland a world class city when it comes to green infrastructure. 

 

If you have a copy of Wild in the City, A Guide to Portland's Natural Areas, which we published in 2000, you'll note the all new edition added a chapter devoted to exclusively to green infrastructure and stormwater management, a nod to the fact that in the intervening eleven years there have been exciting advances in integrating the built and natural environments through innovative green infrastructure programs. 

Twenty-odd years ago I took a phone call from a public policy professor at Portland State University.  Always the curmudgeon, he berated me over the phone for "wasting my time working with park and wildlife agencies."  He growled, "I've got three words for you-----Clean Water Act!"   If we were to create a truly green city and region, he insisted, we needed people and agencies with  some real "juice"----sewerage agencies!  Taking professor Churchill's advice, our 1990 Country In The City symposium was co-sponsored by the Tualatin River's Unified Sewerage Agency, Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services, and U S EPA's watershed program.  The theme for the symposium was "Restoration of Urban Stream and River Corridors and Wetlands."

Most cities have high rates of hard, 

impervious surfaces that collect 

stormwater and convey it to the 

nearest storm drain, short-

cutting natural hydrologic cycles.  

 Photo Mike Houck

Today, standing on an impervious sea of concrete on Sandy Boulevard in northeast Portland it's unimaginable how the urban landscape could possibly be connected to or influence the Willamette River, flowing two miles to the west.  From where I stand the urban water cycle is out of sight, out of mind.  It's been engineered out of our daily lives. Every street's lined with a mind-numbing number of mini-dams---curbs---that channel rainwater into the nearest storm drain.  From there it's a long circuitous, piped journey to the nearest stream, river, or wetland.

In winter this tsumani of urban stormwater, which would otherwise have replenished the groundwater, is instead discharged via underground conduits to nearby streams and wetlands----wreaking havoc on native plant communities and eroding stream channels.  Conversely, during hot summer months cool groundwater that would otherwise have supported salmon and other temperature sensitive aquatic life has long since made its way to the Pacific Ocean, leaving local aquatic systems high and dry.  And, the really bad news is these winter and summer extremes are likely to increase with climate change.

Patrick Condon, Univ. of British Columbia, 

urges us to  build "greener, lighter, smarter, 

cheaper" by reducing impervious 

surfaces and infiltration urban 

stormwater. Photo Mike Houck

Fortunately, the concepts of green infrastructure and ecosystem services have slowly begun to filter into urban planning and becoming embedded in local and regional watershed management policies.  Sewerage agencies have morphed into watershed health bureaus.    The Tualatin River basin's Unified Sewerage Agency is now Clean Water Services and Portland's having changed its mission, logo (Great Blue Heron) and name, is now the Bureau of Environmental Services.

The Portland Experience-------Grey to Green

Portland is using green roofs, green streets, disconnected downspouts, bioswales, rain gardens, and expanding the city's urban forest canopy to complement, and in some cases replace, highly engineered, expensive grey infrastructure (pipes, concrete, streets) with cheaper, greener, smarter methods of managing urban stormwater.  One long term goal is at least 33% city-wide canopy coverage.        

L. Stormwater as art. This water feature collects water from a

rooftop and brings stormwater to the attention of passersby.

R. Curb extensions with attractive native plants not 

only infiltrate stormwater, but are an amenity 

to the neighborhood and calm traffic.  

Photo Mike Houck

Formerly, stormwater was treated as a nuisance to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible, put a maze of underground conduits.  Now, stormwater is  recognized in Portland's Watershed Management Plan as a precious natural resource to be managed on site if possible, and reintegrated into the city's expanding green fabric.  

Former city commissioner and currently Portland's Mayor Sam Adams committed $55 million in 2008 to the city's new grey to green initiative which called for planting over 80,000 trees, constructing 43 acres of ecoroofs, removing culverts to provide more salmon habitat, replacing invasive plants with native vegetation, constructing 900 green street projects, and acquiring more than 400 acres of the city's most sensitive fish and wildlife habitats.

Ecoroofs attenuate stormwater by 

capturing and storing is during peak 

rain events, and can also be beautiful 

additions to the building

 

Bioswales like this one allow water 

to infiltrate into the groundwater.   

Photo Mike Houck

Green Infrastructure

Salmon Creek Greenway in Vancouver, Washington 

has been protected for multiple values, including 

flood reduction, water quality and fish and wildlife 

habitat as an element of Vancouver's green infrastructure.    

Photo Mike Houck

The Conservation Fund pioneered the concept of green infrastructure which they define both as "as a network of natural areas and open spaces—woodlands, wetlands, trails and parks—that conserves ecosystems, helps sustain clean air and water and provides many other benefits to people and wildlife."  But, they also view green infrastructure as a process, a way to identify the best lands  for development and for conservation and as a framework for local and regional planning.  

Ecoroofs

Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services' Tom Liptan, who is probably better known in London and Chicago than his hometown, has championed the use of ecoroofs to manage stormwater for a couple decades.  According to Liptan, ecoroofs started in Europe in the 1960s to mitigate economic and environmental problems caused by conventional roofing. The result was the creation of affordable, self-sustaining, living vegetative systems-----extensive greenroofs (ecoroofs).  While these early roofs are still simple sedum-dominated roofs, there are efforts afoot in Switzerland and England to focus more attention of potential wildlife benefits to increase biodiversity in the city. 

The next agenda for ecoroofs is 

to improve their habitat value for 

species like this male 

Anna's hummingbird.   

Photo Mike Houck

Tom Liptan, ecoroof expert, has had 

a huge impact on expansion 

of ecoroofs in Portland.   

Photo Mike Houck

Portland's ecoroof renaissance emerged in 1990 to manage rain to reduce stormwater runoff and reduce pollutant discharges. Research has demonstrated that ecoroofs  provide excellent stormwater management benefits. In fact, city zoning codes have been re-written to provide  incentives to developers to add more than six acres of ecoroof throughout the city.  Portland's Green Building Policy (‘GBP’) requires ecoroofs on all city-owned facilities.

Ecosystem Services

The Intertwine Alliance's Regional Conservation Strategy defines Ecosystem Services as the benefits that nature provides to people. Healthy ecosystems provide provisioning” services in the form of food, timber, and water, and regulating services such as carbon sequestration and water storage in forests, wetlands, and floodplains. Open spaces provide cultural services such as places to play and relax. And complete ecosystems support pollination, biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and the other fundamental building blocks of life---generally referred to as supporting services.

Valuing Green Infrastructure----------Ecosystem Services

It's possible to put a dollar value on these services to bolster support for the protection and use of nature's services in both the urban and rural landscape. 

Both Clean Water Services and Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services are working with Portland State University's Institute for Sustainable Solutions (ISS) and The Intertwine Alliance, and other partners, with support from Seattle's Bullitt Foundation, to better document the economic value of protecting the region's natural landscapes and using green infrastructure-----their Ecosystem Services-------locally and regionally.

Riparian Restoration for Carbon Sequestration and Temperature Control 

The Tualatin Basin's Clean Water Services (CWS) was faced with the possibility of spending as much as $80 million to build artificial chillers to cool effluent from their water treatment plants and as much as another $50 annually to run the chillers.  Instead, CWS persuaded regulatory agencies to allow them to plant trees and shrubs along the Tualatin River and its tributaries. 

Bottom line:  the total project will cost $6 million;  involve over 36 landowners;  and eventually cover 35 stream miles.  At project's end they will have planted more than 453,000 native plants.  Relying on refrigerators to chill the effluent------as high tech a solution as one can imagine and one that yields exactly one benefit---cooler water.   Clean Water Services green infrastructure approach yields multiple benefits including creating local native green industries and absorption of over 100,000 metric tons of carbon, and improved fish and wildlife habitat-----and a net ecosystem services benefit of $74 million in capital costs and $50,000 in annual operational costs.

Before. 

 Half-mile Lane restoration in the 

Tualatin Basin.   

Courtesy Clean Water Services.

After

Restoration of 25 acres of wetlands and 

riparian areas along Roderick Creek and 

one-quarter mile of Gales Creek.   

Courtesy, Clean Water Services

Wapato Wetlands in the Tualatin Basin is the newest unit of the 

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.  Photo Mike Houck

Portland's Tabor to the River

Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services has also analyzed the efficacy of blending grey and green infrastructure in their Tabor to the River program. In June, 2000 the bureau looked at constructing a new separated stormwater collection system to replace the existing undersize pipes in the southeast Portland basin.  The costs estimate using traditional grey infrastructure was  $144 million.  The city then re-designed the project with a combination of grey and green infrastructure (ecosystem services benefits), resulting in a saving of $63 million dollars.

The re-designed project integrates hundreds of sewer, green stormwater management, tree planting and other watershed projects to improve sewer system reliability, eliminate sewer backups in basements and street flooding, control combined sewer overflows (CSOs) to the Willamette River, and restore watershed health.

In addition to the $63 million savings in the basin, reducing the inflow of stormwater into the piped system protects the $1.44 billion investment in the city's Big Pipe project which removed CSO's from the Willamette River. 

Portland projects a $63 million in savings over using piped solutions alone in constructing a new separated 

stormwater system in southeast Portland.  This was done by investing $11 million in green infrastructure solutions.   

The gray column represents grey infrastructure costs, green represents a mix of grey and green infrastructure.   

Courtesy, Portland Bureau of Environmental Services. 

Documenting Nature's Services

In addition to these on-the-ground efforts Portland State University's Institute for Sustainable Solutions (ISS) research will provide decision makers and the general public with both scientific and anecdotal information regarding nature’s benefits to people, urban ecosystems and the economy. 

One of their most ambitious programs is an Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Research Traineeship PhD program $3 million National Science Foundation grant.  This program will train 25 PhD candidates to study ecosystem services for urbanizing regions.ISS is also the home of the Bullitt Foundation funded Cascadia Ecosystem Services Partnership, which provides strategic assistance for integrating projects, facilitating communication regarding ecosystem services work in the Cascadia region (Vancouver, BC to Eugene, Oregon), especially in Oregon and Washington. For example, the Partnership is supporting a public engagement and awareness campaign to convey the value of the Portland-Vancouver region’s ecosystem services and green infrastructure, a project spearheaded by The Intertwine Alliance.

Bringing Nature into the City's Heart

Wild in the City, Exploring The Intertwine's Wild Read has described the struggle to bring nature to the fore in urban planning and M J Cody's recounting our effort to describe our region's rich diversity of parks, trails, and natural areas through Wild in the City, A Guide to Portland's Natural Areas.  Next we provided a brief history of urban greenspace planning and how we intend to co-exist with wildlife in the urban environment.  Finally, we focus on the next frontier in planning for nature in the city, an effort to bring nature into the city's heart, into the fine-grained interstices, by designing green into streets and onto rooftops, by making urban green infrastructure an integral part of the city's capital expenditures.  Documenting and valuing green infrastructure----building green cities---- is the next big challenge to integrating wild in the city at every scale, from the streetscape to large regional refuges.

View selections from the book:

Gimme Shelter: In Praise of Portland's Urban Canopy
Who'll Catch the Rain?

Mr. Pish and the Horse Chesnut

Living with Urban Wildlife

Moderator:  Bob Sallinger                                                View Readers' Comments

[Discussion topic: Wild in the City: Exploring the Intertwine]

I do most of my writing in the pre-dawn hours of the morning and this blog was no exception. However as I ensconced myself in my comfy chair and prepared to put finger to keyboard, my morning reverie was interrupted by a cacophony of squawking and bleating from the yard. It woke my wife who charged past me through the door still in her night clothes, followed closely behind by my shepherd cross who plunged into the darkness howling like the urban predator that he aspires to one day be.  A flashlight beam revealed the source of the commotion. In my small inner-city urban lot an opossum had forced its way into my chicken and goat shed looking for a meal. He probably would have settled for an egg but the chickens and goats were not taking any chances and they would wake the rising sun, not to mention the entire neighborhood, to plead their case. I carefully prodded him out of the shed with a shovel. He didn't play dead. He growled and he hissed and as he waddled off into the darkness, he gave me one last look back as if to say "to hell with you and your urban poultry."

What Does It Mean to "Live with Urban Wildlife?"

It is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot these days and is one that we explore in Wild in the City: Exploring The Intertwine. As a conservationist it is easy to focus in on the imperative to preserve imperiled species--but it is also a topic with profound spiritual, economic, intellectual, and environmental justice dimensions.  

           

Like many cities, Portland was built along a river--in fact at the confluence of two great rivers, the Willamette and the Columbia. The Willamette drains 11,500 square miles and flows almost due north for 187 miles until it runs into the mighty Columbia, turns left and heads to the sea.  In terms of average discharge, the Columbia is the 4th and the Willamette is the 19th largest of rivers in the United States. Their confluence area was once a sprawling floodplain covered in wet prairies and hardwood bottomland forest. From a conservation perspective there are few places in Oregon that would be less desirable to convert into an urban hardscape. Wildlife still abounds here---the fish and birds travel the migratory routes they have travelled since time immemorial. The question is not whether they will come, but what they will find when they arrive here.

Saving Imperiled Species

           

When peregrine falcons first began nesting on Portland's Fremont Bridge in 1994, the species was still on the front end of its recovery in Oregon. Despite having been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1973, more than two decades later, there were only 26 pairs of peregrines known to be nesting anywhere in Oregon. When they first arrived there was talk of actually removing their eggs or young from the urban nest site and fostering them into a more remote "safer" nest site on Mt. Hood.  At the time, Oregon had just emerged from the spotted owl wars pitting rural timber communities against endangered species recovery programs. Portland Audubon and others felt it was important not only that the community have a chance to experience these magnificent birds but also that urbanites be willing to  accommodate an endangered species in their own midst.  Initially, the Fremont site was expected to be a sacrifice site---good for education but not so much for productivity.  An extensive education, research, monitoring and management program dubbed " Peregrine Watch" was launched engaging natural resource agencies, Audubon, Oregon Department of Transportation and more than 100 volunteers.



Peregrine Falcon on Portland's Interstate Bridge

©Bob Sallinger



Oregon Visitor Association promotion 
featuring  Portland's commitment to 
"helping  humans and wildlife live together."

Nearly two decades further down the road, the Fremont Bridge today is Oregon's most productive known peregrine nest site, having fledged more than 50 young since 1994. Portland area bridges play host to more than 6% of the known peregrine falcon nesting population in Oregon. This month, the Oregon Department of Transportation received an Exemplary Ecosystem Initiative Award from the Federal Highway Administration for its
Strategy for Migratory Bird Management and Conservation---a program that one manager noted began with the effort to protect falcons.

Peregrine Falcon interpretive sign under Portland's Marquam Bridge.
© Tammi Miller

Past will need to be prologue. In 1998, Willamette River salmon and steelhead were also listed under the Endangered Species Act. Every fish that uses the 11,500 square mile Willamette River Basin needs to pass through downtown Portland, including 11 miles that have been listed as a Federal Superfund Site. Recovering listed salmon on the Willamette River has required a massive rethinking about how we protect and develop our urban waterway.

How do we take our river confluence, an area that once provided a wide swath of braided channels so shallow that you could walk from one site to the other in places, but which today has been channelized, deepened, hardened, and polluted, and turn it back into something ecologically functional? Peregrines were easy compared to the ecological and economic challenges of recovering our river, but programs such as the City of Portland Endangered Species Program and Watershed Health Management Plan are setting a course toward river health.

Restoration concept drawing for South Waterfront, a 140-acre brownfield site
that is being turned into Oregon's highest density development including more than
5,000 residents and 10,000 jobs but which also includes in water, riparian and upland
habitat restoration along the river, more than four acres of ecoroofs and
state-of-the-art sustainable stormwater strategies.

© City of Portland



Bird-Safe Buildings and Other Remedies  



Common Nighthawk
Painting: Robert W. Hines

Birds are not faring so well either. More than 200 species of birds pass through the Portland Metropolitan Area annually. According to the Audubon Common Birds in Decline Report,  approximately one out of four of these species is experiencing serious long-term declines. While the causes of decline often lie beyond our urban landscapes, there is much that we can do in our cities to increase permeability and reduce hazards on our urban landscapes ranging from protecting interconnected systems of natural areas to housing cats indoors to building birdsafe buildings and reducing nighttime lighting to reduce risk of collisions. In Portland, we are beginning to experiment with the potential for ecoroofs to provide biodiversity as well as sustainable stormwater and energy benefits. One hope is that we can bring back nighthawks, a species that was once fairly common over Portland but which declined concurrent with the disappearance of gravel rooftops. The City's Grey to Green Program seeks to add 43-acres of ecoroofs over the next several years.

          

What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never known a wren?

-Robert Michael Pyle in The Thunder Tree

I can't put it any better than Robert Michael Pyle did in his book The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland.  For a population that is increasingly living on urban landscapes, conservation is going to begin in backyards, undeveloped lots and neighborhood greenspaces. If we want to raise the next generation of conservationists we need to inspire and engage them, not with panda bears and polar bears on television but rather with nature nearby.  Even in a "green" city like Portland, far too many residents do not have access to nature. A recent publication by the Coalition for a Livable Future showed that in Portland nearly half the residents of Portland do not have access to a park within walking distance of their homes. Too many people have bought into the concept that cities are places for people and not for wildlife to the point where they no longer even see, let alone understand, the wildlife that does still surround them.

Just a Coyote Strolling through the Neighborhood

©Bob Sallinger

On a very rare sunny warm Sunday morning in October a coyote strolled casually through a Portland neighborhood. The sun had brought the community out into the streets, jogging, strolling, greeting their neighbors like long lost friends. The coyote, which we would learn later had been habituated to human food handouts ranging from whole plucked chickens to leftovers from a Greek restaurant, strolled among them. For more than an hour he travelled a seemingly well-worn path. At one point I lost sight of him and stopped to ask a man tending to his yard whether he had seen a coyote pass by. "No," he told me, "but check down by the road on the basketball court. He is often there about this time of day." 

Hoops anybody?

©Bob Sallinger

Sure enough that was where he was and he quickly resumed his travels, me following a short distance behind. The sight of a coyote sharing sidewalks with humans was weird enough but what was truly amazing was the human reaction. For the most part there simply wasn't one. The vast majority of people tuned him out altogether. Some did a double take, stopping to stare for a few seconds, scowl, shake their heads and then resumed what they were doing. A very few whipped out their cell phones and took some pictures.  Over the next several months Audubon worked with the neighborhood to raise awareness and eliminate feeding. (View a sampling of essays from Wild in the City: God's Dog Rides MAX, Vaux's Swifts at Chapman School, Crows.)

Raptor Cams

In 2007 Audubon and a local television station, KGW put a cheap webcam in the window of an office looking out on a pair of red-tailed hawks that had nested on the adjacent fire escape. Today bird cams have proliferated but in 2007 the KGW-Audubon Raptor Cam was relatively new thing. It was a quick and dirty set-up--since the birds had already begun nesting, a proper installation was not feasible. The shot was compromised by a fuzzy focus and a windowsill that bisected the shot.  Occasionally office workers would knock the camera over and viewers would be treated to a sideways view of the nest. 

KGW-Audubon Raptor Cam Red-tail cares for recently hatched chick. 

©Dieter Waiblinger

The first year web hits approached 40,000. By year two we had a better camera and more than half a million hits. People follow the hawks like a favorite soap opera-- inspired by the hawks raising their young amid our concrete canyons. An online community has formed around the birds, classrooms use it to support lesson plans, and when the hawks shifted to a new site this year away from our prying lens, there was a general outpouring of grief.

It leaves me wondering, in the end does it inspire people to go outside and look up? To naturescape their yards? To support the next bond measure?   

That, ultimately, is the real message behind Wild in the City: A Guide to the Intertwine---go outside, look up, down, and all around.  Connect!  We share our own yards, our neighborhoods, our greenspaces with a vast array of fellow travelers....there is much that we can do to be stewards of that trust. 

From Metropolitan Greenspaces to The Intertwine

Moderator: Mike Houck                                            View Readers' Comments

[Discussion topic: Wild in the City: Exploring the Intertwine]


Both editions of Wild in the City neatly bracket the Portland metropolitan region's efforts to integrate nature into the city.  The first edition celebrated urban greenspace planning from the late 1980s to the first wave of regional natural area acquisitions, while the region debated public policy regarding protection of nature in the city.   Wild in the City, Exploring The Intertwine picks up where the wisdom of protecting nature in the city is no longer debatable and that integrating nature into the urban fabric is considered essential to creating livable, healthy and economically successful cities and regions.

This blog entry traces the trajectory of urban greenspace planning in our region, from John Charles Olmsted's 1903 master plan for Portland Park to our newest regional initiative, The Intertwine.  Included are some lessons we've learned along the way that may be helpful for readers who may just be launching their own urban nature movement. 

No Room for Nature in the City?

As M J Cody noted last week, Portland Audubon's Urban Naturalist program was initially questioned by some, including other mainstream conservation organizations and agencies.  Allocating scarce resources to protecting "trashed" urban habitat was, they argued, problematic.  Likewise, many otherwise progressive urban planners asserted there was "no room" for nature in the modern, "new urbanist" city.  Some from the Congress for New Urbanism asserted that protecting "too much" greenspace or park land in cities was antithetical to good urban planning. 

It was clear, we had our work cut out for us.  It's taken thirty-odd years to reach the  tipping point where urban nature is not considered an oxymoron.  The new normal in many regions across the country, and internationally, is to integrate urban forest canopy, floodplains and wetlands, parks, and natural areas into greening and re-greening projects aimed at creating more livable and ecologically sustainable cities.   

Power of the Outside Expert



Dr. David Goode

 Fortunately, even in the 1980s there were a few models we could look to for advice and inspiration.  In 1984, I had the good fortune to meet the London Ecology Unit's Dr. David Goode at an urban wildlife conference in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  Years later Goode addressed  Portland's City Club.  Dr. Goode's presentation on nature conservation in London's twelve boroughs was so powerful that civic leaders we'd been unsuccessfully courting for more than a decade urged us get on with similar work in Portland.    



Camley Street Natural Park
Entrance

 The highlight of Goode's presentation was the creation of the London Wildlife Trust's Camley Street Natural Park at Kings Cross, adjacent to the Eurostar St Pancras rail station .  Camley, once a garbage heap along the Regent's Canal, was restored to a small, verdant wetland preserve and nature center next to the Regent's Canal and nearby low income housing---the only patch of green for nature play for nearby low income children.  The Camley Street story launched early restoration efforts in Portland. 

Lesson learned-----the power of the outside expert.  And if they have an English accent, so much the better!

 

Country in the City 

 A second inspiration came from New York City Park's Natural Resource Group-------affectionately known as the "Nergs."  They are responsible for managing more than 7,000 acres of fish and wildlife habitat spread across the city's five boroughs.  Their publication, Country in the City, inspired a series of Country In The City symposia we co-hosted with Portland State University's Geography Department in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Jon Kusler

Our 1990 Country In The City, Restoration and Management of Urban Stream and River Corridors, was another watershed event for us, drawing 700 experts and citizen activists from around the U. S to share research and on-the-ground case studies involving the then novel topics of green infrastructure and multi-objective management.  The national Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM) and Association of State Floodplain Managers, and US EPA co-sponsored the symposium which attracted specialists in the field of urban stream restoration, including A. L. Riley of Berkeley, CA who founded California's Urban Creek Council; stream restorationist Robin Sortir, and Joan Florscheim of Phil Williams Associates.  Keynote speakers included  Goode; Jon Kusler, Rud Platt, Tony Hiss, author of Experience of Place; and Charles Little, whose Greeways for America. They all helped catalyze, and continue to lead, a national movement around green infrastructure and urban nature across the country and their influence is still felt in the Portland metropolitan region. 

Lesson learned------hosting symposia and conferences, while energy intensive, is a great strategy to build political and grassroots support and goes a long way in establishing long-term relationships with researchers and allies. 

Iconography:  The Great Blue Heron



Great Blue Heron
Photo: Mike Houck

Pub owner Bud Clark---who had come out of nowhere to beat an entrenched incumbent city councilor in Portland's mayoral race in 1985----had just given a speech in the downtown Hilton Hotel.  As an avid duck hunter and canoeist he referenced Great Blue Herons numerous times during his speech.  I literally grabbed him as he walked out of the hotel and suggested that the heron should be proclaimed as Portland's official city bird.  After a couple of his signature "whoop, whoops!", two weeks later Portland had an official city bird.

While that may sound trivial, it was in fact, an important milestone in building an ongoing relationship with Portland's mayors and city councils for the last thirty-five years.  Each year since 1986 Portland's mayor reads a proclamation outlining what the city has done, and will do in the future, to ensure herons and their kin continue to share the city with humans.  (See an excerpt from Wild in the City below.)

Blue Heron Ale label

Serendipitously, while a friend and I were sitting in a local brewpub the afternoon the Great Blue Heron was named our city bird, the brewmaster happened by and asked what we were up to.  After recounting our city council meeting he informed us he'd just brewed a new-----as-yet-unnamed------ ale.  That evening, and to this day, we quaff what is still one if Bridgeport BrewPub's signature beers, Blue Heron Ale.  Another trivial fact?  Not really.  Bridgeport became the gathering place for the next two decades where many a plan was hatched---and more importantly important relationships were formed---over pitchers of Blue Heron Ale. 

Lesson learned------make time for celebrating your successes, preferably over a great ale! 

A Model to Emulate



Janet Cobb

As the coalition of park providers, urban habitat, trail and park advocates, and progressive elected leaders in the Portland region launched the Metropolitan Greenspaces Initiative we badly needed an on-the-ground example of inner urban and large landscape protection and management,  a model we might emulate in the Portland-Vancouver region.  We set up two visits to the East Bay Regional Park District, which had just passed a $225 million bond measure to add to their already significant natural system Janet Cobb, who had directed their successful bond campaign, arranged for two days of field tours as well as visits with numerous staff.  Cobb later traveled to Portland as well, providing us with invaluable advice on running a regional open space bond measure.  Those trips and Cobb's assistance ramped up the political will to create our own regional natural area initiative. 

Lesson learned------ Elected officials and policy makers are loath to be a pioneer, particularly in a down economy.  Use successful models to emulate and generate political will. 

Urban Biodiversity is Not an Oxymoron

One of our biggest hurdles to building the political will and agency support for protecting restoring and managing urban wildlife habitat was the entrenched bias against allegedly "trashed" urban natural resources.   A prime example was an early natural heritage project that mapped the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.  When mapped as such a large scale the pixel size was so great that the entire Portland metropolitan region was interpreted as "urban", meaning there was little if any biodiversity in the urban landscape.  

Fortunately one of our early partners, the Oregon office of U S Fish and Wildlife, contracted with the Oregon Natural Heritage Database to remap the urban growth boundary which surrounds the 24 cities and three counties within the Portland region.  At that finer scale what had appeared as a monotypic "urban" landscape revealed significant areas of high species richness right into the center of the urbanized environment.  

That early mapping effort justified future work by our regional government, Metro, and others in the Portland-Vancouver region, on both sides of the Columbia River. 

 

Lesson learned---------People love maps.  The first thing they do is look for their house.  Your best friend is the nearest GIS whiz.   Scale is everything!

Thinking Locally, Acting Regionally

On the Oregon side of the Columbia River we have the only directly elected regional government----Metro in the country.   In addition to managing solid waste, land use and transportation planning, and other issues of regional importance, Metro got into the regional parks, trails, and natural arena in the early 1990s.  Thanks to Oregon's then Senator Mark Hatfield--- the Senate Appropriations Committee chair, Oregon Congressman Les AuCoin, and Illinois Congressman Sidney R. Yeats funds were made available to a new urban office of U. S. Fish and Wildlife in Chicago which catalyzed the early Chicago Wilderness effort and launched our Metropolitan Greenspaces Program through our regional office of USFWS.   Without the infusion of federal funding and technical assistance of the Service's Oregon Field Office and Regional Director our greenspaces planning would have never gotten off the ground.*

Over the course of the next sixteen years Metro Council adopted a bi-state regional Metropolitan Greenspaces Master Plan for natural areas and parks, which included Clark County Washington across the Columbia River. The Plan called for "a bi-state, cooperative approach to establish an interconnected system of natural areas, open space, trails and greenways for wildlife and people throughout the four-country metropolitan area."

Clark County Legacy Lands

In 1995 and 2006 Metro, working with local park providers and grass roots organizations like Audubon Society of Portland, Urban Greenspaces Institute, Trust for Public Land and hundreds of "friends" groups, passed two bond measures totaling more than $360 million with which the regional government has purchased more than 12,000 acres and protected more than 75 miles of stream corridors, and constructed many miles of the regional trail network.  Local park providers received 25% of the bonds to acquire their own high priority fish and wildlife habitat.  Similar acquisitions and trail building was realized across the Columbia River in Vancouver and Clark County. 



Metro Acquisitions Map



Lesson learned-------"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Think big."  Daniel Burnham

The Intertwine and The Intertwine Alliance

After the passage of the region's second bond measure in 2006 it was obvious, especially to those of us who had worked on the 1992 Metropolitan Greenspaces Master Plan and both regional bond measures, that to achieve the long range vision of an interconnected bi-state system of parks, trails, and natural areas we were going to have to ramp up, and institutionalize the effort at every level, from the all-volunteer friends organizations to the bi-state region.  We knew we had move from mounting a series of "one offs" to a sustained level of engagement, to achieve the same level of collaboration, marketing and branding that led to Chicago Wilderness's success.

David Bragdon

In 2007 Metro Council President David Bragdon, who now directs New York Mayor Bloomberg's Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability invited Chicago Mayor Richard Daley for what might be considered the urban greenspaces equivalent of a SmackDown between Chicago and Portland.  Who, they challenged one another, would preside over the greenest city in America?  Shortly afterwards, Bragdon announced-----at Bridgeport BrewPub over pints of Blue Heron Ale-----that his final two years in office launching the creation of the "world's greatest park system" and the coalition that would make that a reality would be his legacy at Metro.

2,800 sqare mile geography of The Intertwine region
SW Washington and NW Oregon

With the enthusiastic support of the entire regional Council, Metro incubated what over the next five years would become an independent, nonprofit organization, The Intertwine Alliance.  The Alliance is dedicated to creating The Intertwine----a world class system of parks, trails, and natural areas for the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington metropolitan region.  The Alliance's goals are to protect the region's biodiversity and integrate parks, trails, and natural areas across the urban and rural landscapes in a 3,000 square mile area  encompassing southwest Washington and northwest Oregon.  The Intertwine Alliance, is a coalition of  federal, state, local and regional government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and for the first time in our region, health organizations like ODS and Kaiser Permanente and outdoor wear businesses like Keen Footwear and Columbia Sportswear. 

Portland Planning Embraces Wild in the City

Where urban planners in the early 1980s questioned the wisdom and validity of integrating nature in the city, today Portland's Buerau of Planning and Sustainability's new Portland Plan calls for the city to work actively with The Intertwine Alliance to ensure the region’s network of parks trails and natural areas are completed and maintained.  It also recognizes the need to help Portlanders connect with nature through land acquisition, restoration, watershed health, and encouraging active transportation, and conservation education.

Portland's Sustainability Institute recently produced a video, "We Build Green Cities" that for the first time integrates green building objectives with the protection of fish and wildlife habitat. We've come a long way since 1980. 

Building A National Agenda

Metropolitan Greenspaces Alliance

What goes around, comes around.  Three years ago, in concert with our colleagues at Chicago Wilderness, The Intertwine Alliance joined with similar groups around the country to launch the Metropolitan Greenspaces Alliance (MGA) including Houston Wilderness,   Chicago Wilderness, Cleveland's Lake Erie Allegheny Partnership for Biodiversity, Milwaukee's SweetWater, Los Angeles' Amigos De Los Rios, and the San Francisco Bay's Open Space Alliance. 

Vibrant Cities---Urban Forests Initiative

The U S Forest Service's Vibrant Cities--Urban Forests initiative brought urban ecologists and urban forest canopy experts from around the country in 2011 to develop a series of thirteen recommendations for how the Forest Service and other federal agencies might direct their resources to achieve their missions in metropolitan regions across the United States.  The final report, Vibrant Cities & Urban Forests included, among its thirteen recommendations the following, to "assist in the creation of and provide support for metropolitan alliances within every metropolitan region that will develop comprehensive, multi-jurisdictional Urban Regional Natural Resource Plans."

An Excerpt from Wild in the City

Click here to read the full excerpt.


 

Mike Houck, Director

Urban Greenspaces Institute

*U S Fish and Wildlife Service former regional director, Marv Plenert and his staff, Russ Peterson, Bob Fields, Pat Wright, and Dennis Peters---all since retired----deserve a huge debt of gratitude.  More recently, State Supervisor Paul Henson and his staffer Jennifer Thompson and Regional Director Robyn Thorson have continued USFWS's support of The Intertwine Alliance.  Special thanks to Nancy Pollot for her encouragement and posting our blogs. 
 

Suggested Readings 

 

The Last Landscape, William H Whyte

The Granite Garden: Urban Nature And Human Design, Anne W Spirn

Green Urbanism, Tim Beatley

Biophilic Cities, Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning , Tim Beatley

The Unofficial Countryside, Richard Mabey

The Ecological City, Rud Platt, Editor

The Humane Metropolis, Rud Platt, Ecological Cities Project

Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv

Nature Principle, Richard Louv

The Thunder Tree, Robert Michael Pyle

NEXT UP: Living with Urban Wildlife

Next week's blog will focus on "living with urban wildlife."  What happens when we succeed beyond our wildest dreams in integrating the built and the natural when we invite wildlfie, quite literally, into our backyards.  How do we co-exist with urban wildlife?  Bob Sallinger, Conservation Director, Audubon Society of Portland, will share his perspectives on living in harmony with Wild in the City.