Last night, LA-based GOOD magazine hosted a design challenge for Portlanders. As part of a design project in several mid-size cities, the magazine asked locals like Mayor Sam Adams and the Portland Farmers Market to submit challenges, then asked design teams to tackle the problems in creative ways. The six teams from W+K, Ziba, Sincerely Interested, THINK.urban, ADX, and the Official Manufacturing Company presented their ideas last night at the Pearl District headquarters of Ziba. The house was packed!
Tickets sold out pretty fast, but luckily I was there taking notes. Some of the teams’ ideas were pretty expensive and wildly innovative—but, hey, not crazier than anything Portland already has (let’s build a streetcar!). Here’s my rundown, including most (but not all) of the ideas designers pitched.
CHALLENGE (from city planner Eric Engstrom): How can we rethink our public space to promote healthier and more active lifestyles?
IDEAS (from the OMFGCO):
• Almost all public art in Portland is passive (except that dangle ball across the street from Powell’s, which people can move if they want to get up close and personal). How about some kinetic public art, like a water feature for kids that only works if people are pedaling?
• Parking meters fed by exercise. “It’s about more than just not driving,” said the team. Instead of paying a buck to park, you could pedal for few minutes on a bike attached to a parking meter.
Lots more below the cut!
CHALLENGE (from Portland Farmers Market chief Trudy Tolliver): Local farmers are reporting that they are working more markets yet making less money. How do we increase access to fresh locally grown food while ensuring profitability for our region’s farmers?
IDEAS (from arts group Sincerely Interested):
• A Friday night Farmers’ Market. Make a market more of a fun, going-out destination and celebration. People head to the Hawthorne carts at night to buy greasy fries and sugary crepes, why not beets and apples? Actually, after the presentation, Tolliver said the idea of a night market was something the Farmers Market was already tossing around.
• Install billboards of farm landscapes around Portland to “weave food into the social fabric of neighborhoods.”
CHALLENGE (from Sam Adams’ office): How can our neighborhoods, and institutions in them like businesses, work better to support youth, their educational outcomes and opportunities?
IDEAS (from WK):
• Market the idea of volunteering and supporting schools to the 85 percent of Portlanders who don’t have school age kids. People in Portland are already excited about supporting local institutions, but schools often aren’t on their radar. “We need to the local school to be a part of people’s neighborhood that they take ownership over.” This means a slick volunteer marketing campaign at neighborhood businesses, as well as developing logos for schools that can be sold on mugs, shirts, and ephemera. “Instead of searching every Goodwill, our hipsters will get a limited edition t-shirt that will actually connect to and support schools.”
CHALLENGE (from BikePortland.org editor Jonathan Maus): How can we create a major new bikeway that helps make bicycling as visible, safe, convenient, and pleasant for as many people as possible?
IDEAS (from PSU grad student nonprofit THINK.Urban):
• Take a cue from Europe and build two-way cycletracks on Portland’s biggest streets. The two-way lanes would be separated from cars on streets like Sandy, Broadway, and Hawthorne, by a grassy median. “Prioritize bikes on the same level as cars. People are tired of looking at Europe. We want to see these things here now.”
CHALLENGE (from city of Portland Sustainable Food Policy Manager Steve Cohen): How do we get the residents of Portland to consume less meat?
IDEAS (from Ziba):
• Make an app and website that will let people put in their ingredients and dinner ideas, then set slider bars for options like cost, CO2 impact, health, and environmental friendliness that will tell them which ingredients are out of sync with their goals.
• Harness kids’ pester power by giving kids meal bingo cards for healthy food to cook at home. When the kids fill up a whole card, they get a gold star sticker!
CHALLENGE (from the Portland Development Commission): How do we help nurture a stronger, more competitive business climate in Lents Town Center?
IDEAS (from ADX):
• Lents already has a lot of great people, businesses, and spaces. Instead of building new projects and gentrifying, create a branding campaign called “I’m already here!” to promote good things in Lents.
• Turn the vacant Marshall High school into a giant community hub, which a farm on the old school field, a cafe, and summer camps for kids.
Portland government employed hipsters select Portland hipsters for ideas to shovel money from non-Portland hipsters to government selected Portland hipsters.
God I am sick of this place (and yes, I am leaving)
Thanks for the recap, Sarah! Any idea when they will be posting the video online?
Also – as a Lents resident – I cannot affirm that we already have lots of good businesses. We have a few – El Pato Feliz, a good Taqueria, soon to be Acupuncture place and we’re close to lots of good Asian places on 82nd. I’m Already Here! haha
For what it’s worth, I’m thinking a couple of residents could of produced better ideas. I do like the Marshall Community Center idea – who pays for that though…Maybe turn it into the long sought after Asian Community and Cultural Center we have been desiring out here.
ADX probably should have actually visited Lents Town Center before declaring it perfect as is.
Great people- yes, great businesses- yes but not enough to form a critical mass of things to do or an 18-24 hour business district, great spaces – um, no, there’s 13 acres of vacant lot in Lents Town Center, not to mention the few vacant storefronts are in a terrible state of repair.
Cute arrow thingy though.
Also – Marshall Highschool is 1/2 mile from Lents Town Center – just sayin’.
Yes! That asshole D is moving back to Arkansas!
I have a couple of good counter-proposals to two of those: 1) People paying parking meters with actual money to cover some of the value of the public space being devoted to storing people’s cars. Exercise is its own reward and not a substitute for paying to park.
2) Weave food into the social fabric of neighborhoods by growing more actual food in neighborhoods, not with big, ugly billboards depicting destructive monocrop agriculture.
@D: Bon voyage, and good on you for leaving instead of just complaining about Portland until you die here.
Do people actually get paid real money for this stuff? Wow. I am glad that it addresses so many really relevant issues however (thinly disguised sarcasm). Hey D….don’t leave! At least don’t go to Brooklyn, because if you think it sucks here……@geyser….yeah because anyone who doesn’t fall into lock step with you and other pretentious Portland nerds should leave because you are the majority(not) and they don’t fit into your “vision” of Portland? Fail, idiot. God forbid anyone disagree with you , because they are complaining or”negative”. Perhaps not everyone in this city is in perfect concord with you and pals. Just a thought sweetheart
Anyone constantly spewing negativity about Portland, virtually everything in it, and most of what makes up its diverse culture and distinguishes it from other cities of its size, with nothing good to say, ever, and who has no constructive, workable ideas about how to make it better, should leave and go somewhere that’s less full of things that enrage them. It has nothing to do with agreeing with me. If I were a right-winger who hates the way Portland is run and most things to observe here, I wouldn’t put down roots here; I’d go to any number of more culturally and politically conservative places and spare everyone my cynicism and constant complaining.
PS You’re misusing the word “pretentious” — yet again. Or have I claimed to be something I am not?
PPS NoPo NoPo NoPo NoPo NoPo NoPo NoPo NoPo
How do we get Portlanders to eat less meat??? Hhahahahahahaahahahaha! OMG oh… oh.. heh heh.. hahaha… hah… Since when is this a problem? Have these people ever been to any single restaurant in Portland ever? Or shopped at any grocery store here? You can get vegan options everywhere, which means people are buying them. Dude seriously. Man. Woah. Spend one day in the South and, despite our bacon obsession, I think it will be apparent that this is not an issue.
And why is the farm-scape billboard in front of a picture of Portland from the 1960s?
Yes, it’s frustrating when you can’t count on the Community Development Corporations to help you try to keep places like Marshall open and in use for the appropriate purpose (ie a High School) because they’re licking their chops just waiting to add the real estate to their asset portfolio when it’s shut down.
The zoobomb pyle is public art and pretty interactive.
That pedal to park idea is just about the stupidest idea I’ve heard in a long, long time.
Fuck, most of these ideas are ridiculous really.
But the article has brought up more questions for me:
WHY do we pay someone to be ‘Portland Sustainable Food Policy Manager’? Besides, of course, coming up with dumbfuck questions like that.
Why are not some of these questions being put forth to the candidates for Mayor?
Why is a LA based magazine hosting design challenges for Portland anyway?
Why does Sam Adams always look like shit in a suit?
That was real ? I though it was the filming of a Portlandia episode.
For the money and time that was spent on this you could have built a Habitat house for someone.
@8…I have no idea what you claim or do not claim to be, nor do I care. In addition I love Portland, and have offered several suggestions that you failed to notice because it clashes with what your little subset believes. Also, you consistently act like a child although you are well over 30. I also thought the use of the word “butthurt” in one of your posts also fits this theory. I am glad to know that anyone who disagrees with you is “right wing”. Idiots like you are not what has made this great city better, although I am sure you think so. I am sure that Urban Homesteading, more bike paths and gentrification will solve all of Portlands problems. Wait, no I am not. Nerd.
If you’ve ever wanted to solve problems that are inconsequential at best and non-existent at worst, this conference was for you.