Back from Portland – 2
I was down in Portland last week to give my annual lecture for the ‘Transportation and Traffic” class – a course offered by the City of Portland and Portland State University (PSU) that gives students and residents an understanding of transportation issues.
Rather than attacking city staff in a heated atmosphere, the course participants engage in more considered discussion with the top talent in the city, who no longer seem isolated from the community. The assigned projects, presented in the final class, usually in three-minute presentations, have in some cases been implemented by the City, whose staff in turn have become more aware of citizen interests.
The class started in the mid-1990s with 45 people. Though the initial expectation was that it 
would continue for about five years, it has found steady interest, with more young people being attracted to it. There have been something like 1,400 graduates of the course – an important constituency in a city that has grown increasingly sophisticated on matters of transportation and land use, in part because of the class itself. The SFU City Program is looking to construct a similar course in the Vancouver region.
Thanks to promotion by BikePortland, a larger crowd than usual showed up to hear the lecture. And BP blogger Adams Carroll did a nice job of summing up the talk here.
Don’t miss the comments that follow. Many of the posts will seem familiar to Vancouver readers.
I’d be really interested in a course like that if it was offered in the evenings for a reasonable fee.
Any idea what the breakdown in Portland is between students taking the course for credit, and residents taking the course for personal interest?
Like chris I too would love to take this course. I bet there would be a large number in Vancouver that might take this course that are just residence that have a interest in this sort of thing.
This is simply a great idea. Congrats to Portland! Let’s go Vancouver! From what I’ve read in order to achieve some of the transformative changes that are necessary to become a sustainable city, or at least as sustainable as a city can be, social learning and ongoing collaboration are key components.
I hope that Jim is right that there are a lot of people that would be interested in such a course. My other hope is that interest would extend beyond the already ‘converted’ urbanists in the city.
I came across the following, which I found to be thought provoking and inducive to generating commentary: “If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – places no one expects the average U.S. city to be able to imitate – you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white. In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for percentage of African-Americans in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group. The progressive paragon of Portland is the whitest on the list, with an African-American population less than half the national average. It is America’s ultimate White City. The contrast with other, supposedly less advanced cities is stark…Many of the policies of Portland are not that dissimilar from those of upscale suburbs in their effects. Urban growth boundaries raise land prices and render housing less affordable exactly the same as large lot zoning and building codes that mandate brick and other expensive materials do. They both contribute to reducing housing affordability for historically disadvantaged communities. Just like the most exclusive suburbs.”(i)
(i) http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-renn_22edi.State.Edition1.1691580.html