A while back I speculated about whether the “food cart” model could address other urban services needs in an affordable way.
Recently I heard a fascinating story on NPR from Detroit, where “Peaches and Greens” provides healthy fruits and vegetables in “food deserts” in that city.
Could we do that here in Portland? Who would be the logical provider(s)?
P.S. Tonight I dropped by the book release party for “Cartopia, Portland’s Food Cart Revolution” to pick up my copy. Can’t wait to read it.
Over the next year the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability will be sorting out the various (contentious) pros and cons of creating Port of Portland docks on West Hayden Island, answering City Council’s question of whether it is possible to develop 300 acres of terminals while preserving 500 acres of habitat. At the end of the process, our Commission will be asked to weigh in with a recommendation. We’ll get our first briefing on Tuesday, which will outline staff’s workplan for analyzing the questions involved.
The Portland Plan Advisory Group is beginning to ponder the potential strategy groupings for the Portland Plan. This will inform the next round of Public Open Houses that will happen in February and March.
The current draft structure is 4 Principles, 6 Drivers of Change and the same 9 Policy Areas that we’ve worked within for the first two phases of the plan. To break it down:
4 Principles (aka Goals):
6 Drivers of Change ( aka strategies)
And the 9 topic areas we should all be familiar with now:
My “big question” at the moment is whether six strategy bundles is the right number. I don’t have any problem with the fundamental outline of the strategies, but I wonder if we can really keep in six different things in mind as we make the real world choices that will make the plan succeed or fail. Everything I know about human psychology suggests to me that three is a much easier number of things to carry around in our heads.
So I’m going to be looking for ways to re-combine and re-package these ‘drivers’ as we work through this phase of the plan development. Please help me!
Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot about Health Impact Assessments (HIAs). Last week I attended RailVolution where there was a panel on this tool. And last week’s PSU Transportation Seminar was a report on such an assessment for the Bike/Trail master plan in Clark County. The talk gives an excellent overview of what this tool is all about, you can listen to it here (MP3, 28.4M).
I’m most familiar with HIAs in the context of transportation projects, where generally the factors considered are how will the project impact air quality (either by increasing or reducing emissions) and what opportunities for active transportation (biking, walking) are created or destroyed.
It seems to me that HIAs could be a significant driver for building out our bicycle master plan – but we don’t seem to have made the political connection yet between bicycle transportation and public health. I hope that will change, and maybe HIAs can be part of that process.
This is particularly timely as we’ve just added a public health professional, Dr. Gary Oxman, the public health officer for Multnomah County to our Planning and Sustainability Commission.
So this question for today is: as we develop the health strategy component of the Portland Plan, at what level should we apply HIAs as an analysis tool?
The Planning Commission was in recess during August (except for one special meeting to wrap up Airport Futures) and September, but now we’re ready to get back to work as the newly re-constituted Planning and Sustainability Commission.
We have an organizational retreat on October 8th and then our first meeting on October 12th.
I’m delighted to welcome three new colleagues to our expanded commission:
I’m looking forward to the additional perspective our new members will bring!
Anyone who’s paying attention has noted the explosive growth of food carts in Portland over the last decade and particularly in the last couple of years. At a City Club tour and discussion a few weeks ago, I gained a better understanding of why. I think there are three factors converging in this economy that fuel the recent growth:
Remarkably, food cart pods are popping up all over the City – as far east as 122nd Ave – and in the suburbs. And they’re not just about food. A pod on N Vancouver includes dry cleaning and shoe repair. We even have a blog specializing on these carts, and I’m told an iPhone app is not far away. Despite being distributed around the region, these carts are essentially urban. Folks don’t generally drive to these carts, they arrive on foot or sometimes by bike.
How far can we take this? The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has just issued a challenge to see if a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) can deliver via a cart (it’s been done in New York City).
Which leads me to wonder if we could use this phenomenon as a low-cost way to seed new 20-minute neighborhood business districts? Once we have figured out where these districts want to be, and have created suitable zoning, could we clear a couple of sites, put in water and power hookups, and rent them out to carts? Would this attract other businesses to the area? How many of the essential services for a neighborhood could be delivered via a cart? Let me know what you think.
I’m getting a vacation!
Actually the whole Planning Commission is. In fact, this is the end of an era, as the Planning Commission that has advised Portland City Council since 1919 will be dissolved at the end of July.
After a break in August, a new Planning and Sustainable Development Commission will be convened, and we’re going to need a few more folks. This change (as explained by Mayor Adams) catches up to the merger of the Bureau of Planning and the Office of Sustainable Development a year and a half ago.
The new Commission will have 11 members (compared to 9 on the current Planning Commission). At the moment, it appears that all 8 serving Planning Commissioners will accept the invitation to serve on the new body, and one member of the Sustainable Development Commission (a joint City-County body, that is also being dissolved) will join us.
That means it looks like there are going to be two open seats. You can apply at the ONI web site.
We spent about 3 hours tonight hearing testimony about Airport Futures. This is the new zoning and planning framework for Portland International Airport and the district around it.
The session was a study in contrasts. We heard about the unanimous recommendation and consensus in the Planning Advisory Group (PAG) and glowing reviews of the sensible planning and environmental goals for PDX.
Then we heard from a variety of neighbors, from residents to golf courses to industrial land owners, the vast majority of whom were very worried that the expanded environmental zoning was going to destroy either their property values or their way of life (“will they make me take out my vegetable garden?”).
Definitely a contrast.
Everyone is complimentary of the airport portion of the plan, but it would appear that despite a wide range of involvement and outreach, a lot of nearby stakeholders did not grasp the additional environmental zoning (which seems to have a firm foundation in the science) on the properties around the airport and adjoining Columbia Slough until VERY recently.
Staff will be doing a lot of outreach in the next couple of weeks (resolving issues like the gentleman’s vegetable garden, which is probably not threatened). Once the surprise is past and people accurately understand the impacts, I hope our continuation of the hearing on July 13th will narrow down the set of policy issues we need to sort out.
I’ve been operating this blog for about 8 months now, and that’s long enough to observe the traffic and patterns of comments that people are leaving.
It seems pretty clear that the ‘housekeeping’ stuff (agendas, meeting summaries, etc.) is not generating a lot of readership or response.
What does seem to generate traffic is the essay-length pieces when I have a genuine question about about a policy choice in front of us. And people seem to find those not because they organically visit this site, but rather because I tweet or do something else that directs traffic here.
So I’m gong to change where I focus my effort. I’m going to drop the agenda-review kind of material, and will post when there is an interesting question that I think readers will want to think about.
If you object strenuously to this change, let me know…
12:30pm – Street Vacation
We approved a street vacation for a dead-end segment of N Salem St. The principal issue was that the applicant was seeking to avoid moving a water main. Interestingly the Bureau of Environmental Services does not require relocation of sewer lines (they are happy with an easement). We did not change the Water Bureau’s requirement to move the water line when the property is developed or transferred, but we did include in our recommendation a suggestion to City Council that they order a review of the consistency of bureau policies on street vacations.
1:15pm – Portland Plan Citizen Involvement Committee
The CIC gave us an overview of changes in citizen involvement approaches between Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Portland Plan and is suggesting some formal changes in policy that will be on a future Planning Commission agenda. I was glad to hear that we are now publishing key outreach materials in four languages besides English.
2:00pm – Tree Plan
We continued to process the tree plan. Key decisions today:
There are still a couple of aspects we need to resolve before final approval:
