Category: portland
-
Ecotopia Revisited
Another semi-pointless ranking of US cities names Portland greenest amongst the uber green… which begs the real question… why are there no North Dakota cities in these rankings ever? :: image via TreehuggerThe verdict: “If you live in Portland, you might want to think twice before complaining about the 40-plus inches of rain dumped on…
-
Go Swift-ly into that Goodnight
A local Portland phenomenon that seems to grow exponentially each year is the pilgrimmage to Chapman Elementary School to witness the bedding down of the Swifts… and if it sounds dull, you will be sadly mistaken. A week ago, a small group met up for a birthday pre-celebration, including the finest in boxed wine and…
-
Incenting Ecoroofs in Portland
Some previous posts Sustainable Stormwater and Grey to Green alluded to a large push for incentives to promote stormwater management projects in the City of Portland. For ecoroofs, the City is putting up the money to back up the talk, with a recent announcement.:: image via Bureau of Environmental Services Read the text below… excerpted…
-
Habitat Heresy?
When I first heard the grumbling around Colwood National Golf Course being rezoned as industrial space from it’s current state as an ailing golf course I had the same reaction as others: Do we really want more displacement of open space into industrial lands, especially in NE Portland, which has a legacy of industrial lands…
-
Salmon-Safe SoWa
I’ve riffed a bit on SoWa previously on Landscape+Urbanism as filled with potential but needing some time… A recent report by Dyland Rivera from the Oregonian and picked up on Jetson Green as well, that the 35-acre area in the South Waterfront area in Portland has acheived Salmon Safe Certification, the first urban neighborhood to…
-
What I did on my Summer Vacation…
Summer is a great time to think – specifically in Oregon where August and September are typically the prime season and weather for outdoor activity, as well as conducive to the more cerebral… so what have I been doing? Well primarily watching the Beijing Olympics, working too much and too long, finishing a Fellowship application…
-
Sky Farm Replay
It’s interesting to see how trends seem to hone in on one person that becomes the locus of most of the attention around a subject. Patrick Blanc and vertical gardens, Fritz Haeg with the ‘revolutionary’ idea of tearing up the lawn and planting vegetables, Michale Pollan and well, everything related to food – and now…
-
Spotted: Pay Phone Planter
We’ve all seen them, although less and less with the popularity of cell phones – the ubitquitous phone booth. Recently on a site visit, I was walking by an adjacent property and spied some great makeshift plastic planters. I’d been looking at prefab products to use for rooftop agriculture, so did a double-take on these.…
-
Portland – Top Ten Design City
The buzz of the week is all over BusinessWeek’s listing of the ‘Top Ten Cities for Design in America’ – and I just want to throw out my plug for Portland as the long-shot entry. Why is that? Well here’s the list, via the article (with my superimposed population for Metropolitan area figures in parentheses…
-
Portland: Bridge to Commerce
Via Mike Thelin’s blog at Portland Spaces, a recent proposal from local firm Path Architecture envisions a new bridge across our Willamette River. Not an actual proposal, but a visionary idea that aligns with the proposed future crossing of the new MAX Orange-line light rail alignment, along with bus, bike, and pedestrian. A very car-less…