Sustainability presentation to Qatar delegation for the 2022 World Cup

On Thursday, February 20, COC’s Bob Wise as Director of Team Oregon, LLC and Tim Smith, Team Oregon’s partner at SERA Architects presented their ideas to a high level delegation from Qatar for the 2022 World Cup.  The delegation included the US Ambassador to Qatar, Susan L. Ziadeh and the Secretary General of the Qatar Supreme Committee of Delegates for the 2022 World Cup, Hassan Al-Thawadi.

The presentation summary is Qatar and Doha – The World Cup 2022. Bob and Tim advocated advanced sustainability principles for the World Cup to support legacy of sustainable urbanism in Doha, Qatar.

Oregon City Residents Engaged in Designing South End’s Future

Nearly 100 residents from Oregon City attended a design workshop for the South End Concept Plan last week. Many participants may have been nervous, not knowing what to expect and having the fear in their mind of potential change, but any nervous energy quickly turned to enthusiasm once they realized this was an event for collaborative community design.

Residents first walked into the McLoughlin Elementary Gym to a room full of tables covered with maps and other materials.  Consultants, City Staff and volunteers were scattered around the room until COC’s Kirstin Greene welcomed everybody and introduced Oregon City Commission President Kathy Roth who gave an overview of the “Concept Plan” and the purpose of that night’s occasion.

The purpose of the gathering was to begin getting design ideas from the community for the future of their neighborhood as this rural area transitions to more urban uses. To achieve the objective, the night included a presentation from Laurence Qamar on designing complete communities.  His presentation covered aspects of history, development patterns and best practices.

Laurence’s presentation gave the community ideas what makes great communities and how to think about possible futures for South End. Once citizens began thinking of these different concepts and how they could apply to the South End neighborhood, it was time to put some of those ideas to paper in an activity COC designed that we simply call the Planning Game.

Those maps on the tables, mentioned above, were a part of the Planning Game.  Each table was given a map, game pieces to represent land uses (residential, parks, civic buildings), markers, green yarn, felt, tape, glue and a set of instructions.  Each table included a trained facilitator.  In the game, participants arranged the different zoning pieces into a design they liked.  Residential pieces had a “value” of one point.  Large lot residential took more space than multifamily and both had one point value.

In order to complete the game, residents were asked to include a mix of parks, trails, civic buildings and residential.  They were also instructed to attempt to reach a residential point value of at least 10.  Adding all large lot, detached residential would only allow for seven points.  The point system was established to reflect the true planning framework for the area. Neighborhood retail was optional.

Some groups jumped right into the process and others took a little while to discuss concerns, but once the evening was over, we had 18 different maps that represented each table’s work.  The designs ranged from mostly large lot residential to more complete neighborhoods.  One big theme that arose from the night was that most of the maps included a vast network of walking and bicycling trails.

We are pleased with the results and happy that we received many positive comments from the residents.  Change is always a difficult thing, but planning ahead helps to ensure that the values of South End are reflected in its future.

The compilation of maps will help establish themes to guide the development of several alternative future land use patterns for South End.  The process will continue with an open house in April and continued public engagement.  For more information on the South End Concept Plan of Oregon City, please visit www.southendconceptplan.org.

Kirstin Greene Facilitates Training for Let’s Build Cully Park Pedestrian Access Plan

Kirstin is thrilled to be leading a dual-language community outreach team training for community facilitators this evening at Scott Elementary School. The effort will help direct the future pedestrian safety plan for the community and the park. The outreach team is addressing concerns about the lack of safe pedestrian, active transit and bicycle access at the park entrances because of high volume vehicle traffic from Killingsworth and Highway 30. The “Let’s Build Cully Park Initiative” is a neighborhood-based community organizing initiative managed by Verde, located in the Cully neighborhood. Watch their amazing short video on vimeo. Be inspired!

Kirstin’s training will help the team develop skills for meeting facilitation, focus-group interviews and community outreach, enabling the team to better communicate community needs to government agencies during the park development process.

“We are thrilled to have Kirstin in at the outset with the community leaders as they deepen their skills in interviewing and facilitation techniques to identify ways to improve safe access to Cully Park.” Anita Yap, project consulting team lead for the pedestrian access plan.

Kirstin lives just down Prescott Street in the Sabin Neighborhood and is pleased to be part of this important effort.

See more here.

Healthy farms, healthy people, and a more vital community – what is not to like?

Bob Wise, Associate Principal of Cogan Owens Cogan, LLC spoke at the October 12 Coalition for a Livable Future on the released Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Program. SARE funded a comprehensive regional food systems study (http://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/pdx-foodshed) and report for the Portland region and other related work on the relationship of food to health.

The Sustainable Portland Metropolitan Foodshed report examines the regional food system through the lens of Civic Ecology – an integrated web of energy, resources, goods, services, capital, and information resource flows – and sustainability principles. The report identifies challenges and opportunities created by global and national agriculture trends and environmental conditions. It also recommends strategies to strengthen the local food economy.

Bob addressed the relationships of food equity and access to the overall regional food economy and suggested specific steps that could be taken by the agricultural industry, planners, policy makers and citizens to create conditions where local healthy food can be substituted for imported unhealthy food.