CleanOregon

Portland State University hosted the “Civic Engagement Breakfast: Portland’s Sustainability and Community Building on the Ground: Developing our University Eco-District” yesterday and addressed a very receptive crowd about the future of the Portland State University’s Eco-District.  So, what is an Eco-District?

The Portland Sustainability Institute, (POSI) which has been charged with spearheading Portland’s five cco-district pilot projects, defines an eco-district as:

an integrated and resilient district or neighborhood that is resource efficient; captures, manages, and reuses a majority of energy, water, and waste on site; is home to a range of transportation options; provides a rich diversity of habitat and open space; and enhances community engagement and wellbeing.

Eco-Districts are one piece of Portland’s long range development plans. In fact eco-districts are noted in the city’s new five year Economic Development Strategy. Eco-Districts will also play a key role in Portland achieving its very ambitious goals laid out in the new Climate Action Plan, adopted by both Portland the Multnomah County this week.

To achieve those goals Portland will have to reinvent neighborhoods. Rather than imposing changes from the top down Portland has adopted a very Portland model of engaging local communities in creating their own experiments in eco-districts.  The stakeholders are not only the city, PDC and regional governments but most importantly the occupants of the neighborhoods both residents and businesses.

The Portland State University Eco-District is a natural. The university has a campus providing a fairly distinct boundary, an active and captive population of 28,000 students and a large physical plant covering nearly 47 acres. The construction of the Oregon Sustainability Center (OSC) in the Portland State University Eco-District will provide a powerful anchor.

There are currently five pilot eco-district projects being promoted by POSI: Portland State University, Lloyd District, Gateway, Lents and South Waterfront. Each provides a different type of environment from urban business/university center to high-rise condo housing to suburban neighborhood.

Rob Bennett, Executive Director of POSI, explains that the five districts are just the beginning and that they expect many other neighborhoods to jump in with their own districts. However, what the five pilot districts and future districts will look like is still unknown.

Portland’s Eco-District Initiative started less than a year ago with the project launch in December 2008. During the winter of 2009 a Mayoral Subcabinet was formed and Rob Bennett wrote the Preliminary White Paper. The five pilot sites have been chosen, a draft framework has been written and an Eco-Districts Technical Advisory Committee has been created.

The next is step is to baseline the districts. That will lead to a road-map which will in turn target actions and investments.

Some daunting challenges still exist.  Governance is one. Boundaries is another.  Different districts may form different approaches. It’s possible that a district may have different boundaries for energy than for water and waste. There may even be different governance structures for different aspects of each district.  These are the types of questions being discussed in the public process now playing out.

Yesterday’s Civic Engagement Breakfast at PSU was the first of two. The next will be “a highly interactive, community-wide civic ecology charette”. Details on time and location can be found here.

There are a few other cities like Freiberg, Germany and Malmo, Sweden that have experimented with eco-districts. And Portland’s cool cousin to the north, Vancouver, BC, is building the Olympic Village as an eco-district. Portland is again unique in leading the world with a city-wide vision of incorporating eco-districts into the fabric of the city. That vision is an integral part of the city’s plan for economic development, environmental stewardship, social justice and the desire to create the most sustainable city in the world.