Before all of the thoughts generated by the pdXPLORE panel discussion on Tuesday exit my brainpan altogether and my notes go stale, I wanted to get something in a post, even if it’s not completely organized. The five panelists — Carol Mayer-Reed, Rudy Barton, Michael McCulloch, architect William Tripp and Richard Potestio — have each produced elements for an exhibit at PNCA that makes a few stabs at how we can think about Portland’s future in a creative way. I haven’t spent a lot of time with the exhibits, but they didn’t seem integrated into a whole “concept,” at least not to me, so perhaps a more haphazard report makes some sense. So we’ll just jump directly into the highlights.

Portland is a river city. Well, yeah. But both Mayer-Reed and Barton pointed out that the city does a poor job of celebrating its rivers, reaching out to them, dipping its collective toes in them, especially the Willamette. I’ve been hearing this comment a lot lately, which makes me think that the idea of burying I-5 on the east bank of the Willamette may be back in play in a more serious way.

Portland isn’t as green as it thinks it is. Mayer-Reed pointed this out, based on her researches that compared the city to its near West Coast neighbors San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., but several of the panelists mentioned that Portlanders shouldn’t be smug about their density and sustainability initiatives because other places actually have had better results along these lines.
Continue reading pdXPLORE: Thinking about Portland →