Portland, home of the TOD

[Wayno]

wow, I didnt know this thread existed. Interesting. Thanks Prince George. I like the look that many 'condos' have been built with a lot of brickwork, compared to the rather bland concrete slabs that 90% of ours seem to be built with

yes, the brickwork does look nice. I was surprised to see bricks in use as the US West coast typically uses more 'flexible' styles of construction product due to the proximity of the St Andreas fault line. Seems Portland may just be far enough north to miss most of the earthquake activity.

[Queen Anne]

yes, the brickwork does look nice. I was surprised to see bricks in use as the US West coast typically uses more 'flexible' styles of construction product due to the proximity of the St Andreas fault line. Seems Portland may just be far enough north to miss most of the earthquake activity.

Portland does get the odd earthquake. They had a 3.5 one in 2006. I know that Seattle, Portland's neighbour to the north, had a fairly bad one, 6.8 magnitude, in 2001, and is supposedly due for a really bad one. But Seattle also builds with brick and concrete for large, prestige residential developments (I just asked George and he knows everything, lol).

Regarding the Pearl, I tend to think they chose to use more brick (than is usually found in the timber dominated northwest) because brick compliments the 'retro meets modern' vibe that the area has going. I guess they put earthquakes into their planning though *. You would be mad not to here George also wonders if some of these buildings are brick veneer - decorative rather than load bearing.

* Edit: I just did a little reading, and in the mid-1990s, Oregon upgraded state building codes to reflect new findings that earthquakes would produce more shakes than previously thought. As far as I can tell, the urban renewal of the Pearl started in the late '90's, so I guess most, if not all, new buildings in the district were built under the new codes. Not sure what that means for the old buildings that have been reused though, because the new codes did not cover old buildings, apparently.

[Prince George]

Well, we almost forgot to drop the other sets of photos that we wanted to share here. So a couple more examples of things that we like, and later a new project there that wasn't shaping up so well.

We didn't spend alot of time in downtown Portland (although, as we said earlier, the Pearl District was right next door to it, so we were rarely very far away. The city isn't very tall, but it gives a real dense urban feeling thanks to their secret weapon - narrow streets. This example shows a pretty typical street width, and boasts another feature of their planning. The street is one-way with only a single traffic lane, the centre is for the streetcar and buses, with the right devoted to parking for bus-stops

At the centre of town, and at the meeting point of most of these transit boulevards, is Pioneer Square. As a space, it's pretty simple, basically a large brick plaza with terraced steps on a couple of sides providing seating and an amphitheatre layout. But people make a lot of use of it and it provides their city focal point. Hmm, really didn't get a decent image of it during the day, but on the Friday night they were holding a session of "Flicks on the Bricks". The medium sized buildings, old and new, surrounding the square provide a really appealing sense of enclosure. The scale gave me a little of the feeling you get from seeing the films in the Botanic Gardens when the trees give a similar shelter.



(Click through on that one for a better sized image)

But the Queen and I must confess one foible - when we start thinking about travelling somewhere, our first plans revolve around what we might eat there. Portland delivered on a few counts. First, I'm going to give a nod to Pine State Biscuits - come for the biscuits, stay for the fried chicken and sausage gravy. More to the point for Sen-Ad, Portland is famous for its bustling street food scene, especially for its food carts. The carts all provided excellent food, whether Mexican, Indian, Middle-Eastern, or just burgers & dogs. Our 8-yr old twice had outstanding pizza from one of the carts, and my sopapilla was made by the drummer from The Shins (who retired to serve New Mexican from his cart). The carts were particularly grouped in two locations in town - carparks that had been repurposed as plazas for the carts (there are individual carts & trucks at locations throughout the metro area). It strikes us that this would be a cool use for the stalled constructions that currently turn into parking lots.




Finally, no visit to Portland is complete without going to the shop that can stop people getting excited about Krispy Kreme - Voodoo Doughnuts. We succumbed to the evil powers of their raised doughnuts, especially the Voodoo Doll (complete with pretzel pin through its heart) and the forbidden union of smokehouse bacon and maple bar.


Oh man, I could go for one of them right now. (And that collection was shared between the royal couple and the princelings)

[Omicron]

Food carts are amazing. I've never had a bad meal from the back of a van.

[Prince George]

Before I completely forget, here's the last part that I wanted to post from our visit to Portland; file this one under "Not Everything's Great In Portland". Following the successes of places like the Pearl District, Portland have embarked on a new large-scale development area called South Waterfront. Situated along the Williamette River to the south of downtown, it's bounded to the west by a freeway, to the north by a bridge across the river; our impression was that this gives it a feeling of being really cut off and isolated from the rest of the city, unlike the Pearl which benefitted so much from its direct connection to the city. This bird's eye view gives some perspective on its location (that's from Bing maps current beta, requires Silverlight), though those images are a little old.

I think that the location makes this an interesting comparison for the railyards site. The railyards are certainly closer to the city centre than this is, but they are still separated by North Terrace - so what would be the best way to ensure good connections between the two.

First up, a model showing the current concept plans for the area. You can also see a render of the proposed skyline from 2006 (via Wikipedia). Obviously, there's much greater height on the cards here than for the Pearl District. I don't think that much in the Pearl was over 10-15 stories; here there's many that are 20-30. The marketing materials for this area are very straight forward in equating this height with saving land elsewhere, I'd love to see more of that connection being made in Adelaide.



You can see that the designs here are predominantly towers with a reasonable amount of space between them. I imagine they did this to preserve light reaching the street level and avoid it becoming too claustraphobic. The towers themselves were all fine as far as they went, they were just lacking something. In fairness it's still a work in progress, and the drab weather doesn't help, but I didn't feel like it was on track to something special.


One thing that we didn't do was get enough images of the street level. This was a Saturday morning and the streets were deserted. Perhaps this will change over time, as further people live here and businesses fill more of the store-fronts, but it's not off to a great start. One of the things that I recall us noticing was that the frontages themselves were rather flat and boring; there wasn't much to catch the eye, and when the stores are empty that becomes really glaring. Another thing that we were struck by was that despite the name saying "waterfront", the waterfront itself was really underwhelming. A few manky paths running through an empty landscape. In fact, I don't recal much real recreation space in the place at all.


Finally, for public transport there's a couple of options, one predictable, the other less so. South Waterfront marks the southern end of the street car, and is also one end of the Portland aerial tram - a gondola that connects SoWa to the Oregon Health and Science University. I guess that this is the way that they're extending public transport to the university, perhaps this was simpler than sending rail up there.

[monotonehell]

Just a quick note: Don't try to link to Bing maps outside your region. For some reason Bing is very insular. If you're in the US, then no one can see what you direct them to outside the US. Same goes if someone in the UK tries to post a link for people outside the UK. Bing Maps is broken in this respect, or is it a feature? All we see is a map of Australia.

[Omicron]

Why look - it's like a US Melbourne Docklands.

[Queen Anne]

One thing that struck me about South Waterfront was the advertising I saw on the ground floor windows of one of the buildings, the John Ross condominium. It was a large sign that said something like, "Have coffee with friends, write a novel, dream, run a marathon, live in the John Ross".

Huh? Never saw anything like that in the Pearl District.

To be honest I took it as a little learning moment for Adelaide. I wish our city would quit with the 'Live in Adelaide, it's terrific!" type advertising. From what I saw, no one seemed to be flocking to South Waterfront, and that cheesy sign just made it seem all the more desperate and sad. On the other hand, over at the Pearl, they have no need for imploring signs because they are really building a place that people want to live.

[cruel_world00]

Portland, home of the TOD

[monotonehell]

For those of us who have access to ABC's iView service, the last two E-Squared might be of interest.
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/589468
The first part of each programme looks at the history of the project, the second the positive impacts and the third the negative. Both have some good lessons about induced demand, sustainability, TODs, and PT in general.

They will expire in a few days so get in quickly.
Episode 5 looks at Portland as per this thread (Expires 28/7).
Episode 4 talks about Seoul and how they replaced a major CBD freeway with a linear river park (Expires 21/7).

[Prince George]

Thanks for that link, Mono. It seems that after the episodes have gone from iView, they will still be available on the accompanying website http://www.e2-series.com/

Here's a post from the blog Portland Architecture saying that the South Waterfront is growing up. It sounds like the year since we were there has seen the area fill more with people and lose some of the empty mystery space feeling that it had. Interesting too because much of the article is about comparing SoWa to HafenCity - a huge regeneration project in Hamburg:

HafenCity is a new district at the site of Hamburg's central harbor on the Elbe River. It's one of the largest and most ambitious urban construction sites in Europe. "Though several portions of the district are unfinished," Williams reports, "HafenCity is filled on the weekends with tourists and residents eating at its waterside cafes, enjoying its vast open space and seeking a glimpse of its 'starchitect'-designed buildings...The spotlight so far has been on the Elbphilharmonie, a 350-million-euro (and counting) project...designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to look like glass wave cresting atop a brick warehouse...and will eventually house the NDR Symphony Orchtestra's concert hall..."

Although it's much larger in scope (388 acres versus 38 acres), HafenCity shares many similarities with South Waterfront. They are both former industrial-zoned waterfront neighborhoods being invented from scratch, starting with large public investments that sought to kindle private development.

But there are also key differences besides size. HafenCity is being anchored by cultural facilities and public spaces. There are not just condos with retail below, as has largely been the case in South Waterfront (other than the OHSU Center for Health & Healing).

South Waterfront also doesn't have any 'starchitect' buidings. There are plenty of reasons to be cynical of the culture of a few famous architects designing indulgent eye candy. But having, for example, a new concert hall for the Oregon Symphony designed by a Zaha Hadid, a Rem Koolhaas or even a Brad Cloepfil would help give SoWa a cultural foundation and an architectural draw. Cloepfil, as it happens, has remained embittered that he once seemed to have a commission for the OHSU Center for Health & Healing when it and the neighborhood were initially being proposed. only to be relegated, in his words, to "the bait".

Then there is the question of public space. "In HafenCity you find a lot of quality public spaces," architect Martin Haas of Behnisch Architekten told Williams. "You can see how important the urban planners understood the importance of that by seeing how much money was spent on designing public spaces." It's not to say South Waterfront doesn't have open space. But only now, years after the first towers rose there, is the first park, Elizabeth Caruthers Park, opening.

[Prince George]

In today's Advertiser, planner Kevin O'leary says that although the State government keeps repeating Portland's name like a mantra, they could stand to show they've actually learned some lessons from them.

Rann's Portland vision not a reality

KEVIN O'LEARY From: The Advertiser August 05, 2010 9:14PM

ON many occasions during the time the Rann government has been in office it has sung the praises of the city transport and planning initiatives that have occurred in Portland, Oregon, US. Portland has a reputation as one of the best cities in the world for transport and urban planning with even the Wall Street Journal, not usually known for its support of environmentally sustainable initiatives, praising the city for the way it has controlled urban sprawl, reduced car dependency and built lively pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, however, it seems that the Rann government has a distorted interpretation of the reasons for the city's success as evidenced in the approach that it is taking with transport and city planning in Adelaide.

There are four significant differences to the way planning for future urban growth is dealt with in Portland to the way it is being handled here:

* Portland has retained its urban growth boundaries despite development pressure.

* The public has been actively engaged in major decision making processes.

* The city has a detailed transport plan while Adelaide has none.

* Portland has a comprehensive growth plan while Adelaide's plan lacks credible detail.

...

Although the Rann Government holds up the Portland model as one of the most desirable city plans around the world to follow, it is doubtful whether it will be able to achieve a fraction of the success that has been achieved in this city.

Portland planners have told me that that without urban growth boundaries and the genuine public consultation processes they had in place most of the achievements made in Portland would not have materialised.

[Vee]

This article, by Alex Aylett, on the challenge of redesigning our cities 'Future City: Portland & Networked Urban Sustainability,' was posted on the Worldchanging site. (27 Sep, 2010)
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/011625.html

A few snippets....

'Portland (OR) is one of a handful of American cities that is really embracing the challenges of networked sustainability. Portland's success in keeping its emissions below 1990 levels owes a lot to it having defended a 1970s-era urban growth boundary that limited sprawl and promoted compact urban development.'

The whole article is well worth reading.
Adelaide could learn a lot from Portland.

[chrism4549]

As a US citizen, Portland is widely regarded as a great place to live. But that's if you have the money. Home prices are expensive, taxes are high, and there's been a big push to expand the boundary of development. I know a couple of folks that live out there and they actually live across the river in Washington and work and shop in Portland.

Relative to where I am, living there would be a big trade-off. There's a lot of things to like and they do set the tone for urban development in the US but how these projects are paid for has to be factored in the equation.

[Prince George]

A different take on Portland's changing development patterns: Is Portland Becoming A Bedroom Community For Its Suburbs?. The tl;dr version - Portland has been successful at bringing residential development back to the downtown areas, but major employers remain rooted in the office parks of the suburbs. Over time this may change, but for now there is a reversal of the typical urban-sprawl traffic patterns, with people commuting from the city to the 'burbs.