tapestry by
Judith Poxson Fawkes |
A vision proposed for
Portland, Oregon, by Chet Orloff, Museum of the City, 2007
Portland,
Oregon, 2030
“The
Natural City”
Statement of the Vision
With the adjoining
landscape and through incredible investments in people and
infrastructure, Portlanders have created the “City of Nature,”
recognized worldwide as “Portland, The Natural City.”
Defining Practices of Portland, 2030
Portland’s education,
transportation, industrial, food, neighborhood-redevelopment, and
planning systems have taken it far beyond other metropolitan regions
in sustainability and its link to nature. There is no disconnect,
no separation, from the natural world surrounding Portland. This
city is the world’s leader in the use, design, and manufacture of
materials and practices that support the conservation and reuse of
resources and the renovation of the built environment. In order to
reach this position, the city’s residents committed themselves to
(1) include every willing citizen in achieving their city’s
ambitions and (2) invested in the economic, educational, and
infrastructural bases upon which their vision has been achieved.
Great partnerships among the private and public sectors set the
annually achievable goals and managed the progress toward becoming
the world’s “Natural City.”
Components of the Vision
Attaining the position
as the world’s “the natural city” has
necessitated—over the past 23 years—Portland’s creating a(n):
1. Educational system of the first
rank, training students of all ages in design, science and
technology, economics, urban redevelopment, and participatory
governance;
2. Transportation system built around public transit that
reaches into all parts of the larger region, connecting residents to
work, home, and recreation;
3. Permanent food system dependent upon farms, ranches, and
markets within 100 miles of the region;
4. Building codes and practices resulting in public and
private structures that (a) return power to the energy grid, (b)
recycle water, (c) support regional suppliers and contractors, and
(d) surpass all LEED standards of the early 21st century;
5. Urban design and planning systems that have raised
metropolitan Portland not only to permanent rank as the world’s most
livable city, but also the most healthy and attractive city in terms
of structural redevelopment;
6. Industrial base (professions and facilities) that leads
the nation in the design and manufacture of products supporting (a)
energy creation and conservation; (b) recycling; (c) food growing,
distribution, and preparation; and (d) transportation;
7. Focused redevelopment of long-neglected neighborhoods
that have become widely studied exemplars for the city’s overarching
vision.
Achieving the seven
components of Portland’s 2030 vision required the willingness of
thousands of citizens—encompassing the full diversity of the
region’s growing population—to contribute (to the extent possible)
their time, energy, money, ideas, and intelligence. They have been
led in this vision by individual and corporate citizens; the mayor,
commissioners, and city employees; and regional partners.
“If Zealously Promoted by
All...”
By
Chet Orloff, Portland Parks Board
Colonel Hawkins has now started on a far-reaching scheme, which, if
zealously promoted by all, will, within a few years, give Portland
the most beautiful park in the world. (Oregonian, 1902)
In the fall of 1843, on their way upriver from Fort
Vancouver to Oregon City, Asa Lovejoy and William Overton climbed
out of their canoe at a spot called “the clearing.” For these two
travelers, “the clearing” that autumn day may have been a place to
pause from paddling, to take lunch or, necessarily, a rest stop
(there being certain things one can’t do from a canoe). Whatever
their reasons for stopping, before they pushed off again they made
Portland’s first business decision. They decided to found a town.
Even as they contemplated the effect of human
hands building on their future real estate, they must have been
struck that the hand of nature had already touched this part of the
river. Shaped by volcanoes and floods, edged by forests, lined with
rivers, the new town was bounded by greens and blues. Its natural
beauty, along with its economic potential, drew settlers and, in the
next decade, Portland grew quickly. The nicknames the city
attracted in its first half-century–“Eden,” “the City of
Roses”–marked its park-like nature. Even the derisive epithets that
still stick to the city–“Stumptown” and “Puddle City”–refer to
Portland’s natural icons, trees and rain. Nature’s encompassing
presence in Portland has endured.
When we consider the nature of urban America since 1851,
the year of Portland’s incorporation, we must consider the
supporting role parks have played in sustaining the health of the
nation’s cities. When cities were blamed by early social workers
for crowding and sickening their residents, parks were seen by their
planners as refuges of health and rejuvenation. Parks counted as
economic assets because they raised property values and attracted
development. Parks mixed populations, often to good effect. Since
that decade 160 years ago, cities have incorporated parks into their
plans for physical recreation and psychological refreshment, urban
aesthetics, landscape preservation, and economic growth. Portland’s
own park history has closely followed–and most recently led–the
evolution of American parks and their relationship to the design of
cities. While this local history has, perhaps, been understood by
Portland park advocates, has only very recently begun to be
documented and analyzed. (Abbott, Fadely, Houck, Howe)
The history of parks and greenspaces in general
has been divided by others into various periods. Perhaps most noted
is Cranz’s four eras of park usage: the Pleasure Ground (1850-1900),
Reform Park (1900-1930), Recreation Facility (1930-1965), the
Open-Space System (1965-). (Cranz, 3-154) I have organized the
following essay around what I consider Portland’s own three distinct
park periods: “Creation: The Pleasure Grounds and the City
Beautiful”(1843-1910), “Recreation: Jungle Gym and Jane” (1910-65),
and “Refuge: Open and Greenspaces” (1965-the present). Woven
through these layers of time is an enduring characteristic of
Portland’s park history: the leadership of private citizens in the
creation and maintenance of its parks, a leadership sustained today
by a 150-year tradition of volunteerism, public involvement, and
perseverance.
What has inspired the people of Portland to put
such personal time and effort into their parks? Since their city’s
founding, Portlanders have believed that their city is, itself, a
kind of park – in its setting and access to nature, its open spaces
and natural acreage. In defining their sense of place and their
sense of self, Portlanders rely as much on their natural setting and
parks as on their relatively short history and their distinct and
widely recognized architectural and urban-design heritage.
Creation:
The Pleasure Grounds and
the City Beautiful (1843-1910)
Early Portlanders fully appreciated the place they had
chosen for their town: a place bounded by rivers, surrounded by
green hills, lying between ocean and mountains, warmed and bathed by
a temperate climate, made habitable by the bounty of its nearby
fields. The first generations of settlers said it was imbued with
moral, spiritual, and physical qualities that nurtured industry,
sensitivity, and refinement – values necessary for a civilized and
productive community. It was a belief that was in harmony with the
romantic philosophy espoused by an increasingly influential number
of American artists and writers in the east. Portlanders wanted to
create a city reflective of both an urban high culture and a rural
hardiness.
While Portlanders were preparing their city for
its future physical growth, a New York farmer was preparing himself
for his future intellectual growth by studying the work of the
world’s leading architects of gardens. During Portland’s first
decade, the mid-1840s to the early 1850s, Frederick Law Olmsted
began advocating parks as tools for social reform, physical
refreshment, cultural refinement, intellectual improvement, and
spiritual uplift. Onto the shoulders of America’s new parks were
placed substantial expectations. Elemental to his vision for
parks–soon realized in New York’s Central Park and others
nationwide–were access to nature and wilderness, and the role that
parks–his “wildernesses in the city”–could play in shaping persons
as well as cities. In Olmsted’s mind, the wilderness
experience–even in a park setting–imposed itself on nearly all the
senses, capturing most of one’s attention. As a park designer and
social philosopher, he saw individuals taking an active part in
their environment, immersing themselves in all its physical details.
This experience, Olmsted believed, could lead to deeper levels of
personal understanding, resulting he and other reformers believed,
in improved social behavior among the rougher urban classes. (Rybzynski,
Fadely, 18) Olmsted, his partners, and their colleagues in the new
profession of landscape architecture led dozens of communities
through exercises in park and town planning, advocating the benefits
of nature within
cities.
While Olmsted traveled the country persuading
city administrators and civic leaders to plan ahead by adding parks
to their already-built and increasingly crowded cities, early
Portlanders were giving land for parks in a city they could only
envision, not yet built and not yet crowded. Among the notable
donations were James Terwilliger’s land claim, William Chapman’s and
John Couch’s additional park blocks, and Ben Holladay’s eastside
block. In 1852, a year after incorporation, Portland accepted a
dedication from pioneer town developer Daniel Lownsdale of a row of
narrow blocks west of town. Lownsdale, whose native Louisville had
a similar row of “park” blocks, may have intended the blocks to
serve as both a promenade and, possibly, a fire break for the wooded
hills above the new townsite. (Reps, Forgotten Frontier,
42-7) The gift was never finalized by the city council, however,
giving rise to a tortuous two-decade long legal fight between the
heirs and the city. Six of these central park blocks were lost to
development because the city council was unwilling to purchase the
blocks from the heirs. The remaining 18 blocks today form a
tree-lined spine of the city. (MacColl, Merchants) In 1871
the Portland City Council purchased 40 acres of parkland in the
hills a mile west of town. Named “City Park,” it was an ambitious
achievement for a community of 8,293 inhabitants. For most of
Portland’s citizens it may also have been a dubious one, as the new
park, high above the city, was initially inaccessible by graded road
or streetcar. (Expanded more than 15-fold over the years and
renamed Washington Park, the park today has a world-class zoo, an
international rose test garden, Japanese and Shakespeare gardens, a
green amphitheater, ball fields and tennis courts, Hoyt Arboretum,
the Portland Children’s Museum, the World Forestry Institute,
several miles of trails, a small passenger train, and two elegant
reservoirs.)
In the late 19th century, City Park
offered visitors grand views of the “emerald compass” encircling the
city, interior views within the park itself, and a sense closeness
to nature, removed from the clang and cluster of the city below. It
was a “pleasure ground” in the spirit of 19th-century
cemeteries and parks. Yet, even with this large park, Lownsdale’s
Park Blocks, a handful of neighborhood parks, and the surrounding
fields and forests, three men in particular believed that the city
could do better in providing its citizens access to nature.
Even as he managed the affairs of Portland’s
Unitarian Church and the needs of a growing family, the Reverend
Thomas Lamb Eliot made time to help found and lead the local school
district, the Multnomah County Library, the Portland Art Museum, the
Oregon Humane Society, the Boys and Girls Aid Society, Reed College,
and other vital institutions. While others have held more power, no
one in Portland’s 150-year history has matched Eliot’s vision,
influence, and leadership. In him, Portland’s parks had one of its
three greatest advocates. A recently retired banker, Lester Leander
Hawkins–Colonel L.L. Hawkins to Eliot and his many other friends–was
an avid outdoorsman and Portland’s unofficial host, driving his
large tallyho carriage “Jupiter” around town while giving tours to
visiting dignitaries and residents alike. Architect Ion Lewis had
arrived from Boston in 1889, having worked for the noted firm of
Peabody and Stearns. He and William Macy Whidden established a
highly regarded partnership that produced some of Portland’s most
distinctive architecture of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. (Wilbur; Hawkins and Willingham, 184)
As the century came to a close, Eliot, Hawkins,
and Lewis lobbied the state for legislation requiring that any city
with 3,000 or more people establish a park commission. Referred to
Oregon voters, the referendum passed in 1900 and the Portland City
Council quickly established its own Portland Board of Park
Commissioners. Even as they routinely placed parks on the city
council’s agenda, the new commissioners–Eliot, Hawkins, Lewis, J.D.
Meyer, the mayor, and the city auditor–worried that parks were not
receiving the attention and enthusiasm they had expected as they
tried to plan for the future. They determined they needed the kind
of authoritative push that only outside, “expert” help could confer.
While Eliot and his fellow commissioners built
their park board, a group of leading merchants, manufacturers, and
bankers began in 1902 making even bigger plans for Portland: its own
world’s fair to celebrate the 1905 centennial of the Lewis and Clark
expedition to the mouth of the Columbia River. The “Lewis and Clark
Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair” would
be a Portland extravaganza that would, its directors confidently
predicted, propel the city and region into the new century with a
boldness equal to the demands and competition of the emerging
American economy. Eliot and his colleagues had neatly married their
own needs for a park planner to the fair board’s desire to obtain
the services of a fair planner. Eliot went east looking for a
park-planning firm with experience in designing world’s fair
grounds, like that created in Chicago by Daniel Burnham, Charles
McKim, and Frederick Law Olmsted. (Abbott, The Great
Extravaganza, MacColl, Merchants)
While Oregonians pondered parks and fair
grounds, America’s planners, architects, and designers–with the
Olmsted family and partners at the forefront–organized themselves
professionally and institutionalized a design ethic of beautifying
cities. The movement’s objective was to transform American
cities–darkened by decades of industrialization and poor, if any,
planning–into beautiful as well as utilitarian places. “Beautility”
was their catch phrase. Portland’s business and civic leaders
embraced the principles of City Beautiful–beauty, utility,
recreation, urban design, community pride–recognizing that they were
precisely what the city needed to develop its economy, shake the
town out of its 19th-century conservatism, take its mind off the
pervasive reminders of vice, and keep a step ahead of Seattle, its
rival to the north. (Guzowski, 21-32)
Fully appreciative of the Olmsted philosophy
toward park design, Eliot ultimately went to Brookline,
Massachusetts, to negotiate for the services of America’s “cutting
edge” landscape-architecture firm whose principals—Frederick Law
Olmsted, Jr., and step-brother John Charles Olmsted—were also key
figures in the City Beautiful movement. Eliot had help raise the
$10,000–half for a park plan, half for laying out the
fairgrounds–believed needed to purchase the Olmsteds’ expertise.
John Charles agreed to come to Portland. (Lutino, 2-12; MacColl,
Merchants, 269)
Arriving in early April 1903, Olmsted
immediately went to work on the design for the fair grounds. He
then turned his attention to analyzing Portland’s terrain, park
inventory, real-estate prospects for future parkland, and park
personnel. Hawkins took Lewis and Olmsted for tours by carriage
while the latter took copious notes of all he saw on five-inch index
cards and snapped hundreds of photographs of the Portland
landscape. He then spent his evenings at the Portland Hotel writing
up his notes in longhand, which were then typed by hotel
stenographers. (Guzowski, 43) Predicting a recurring problem that
would haunt the Portland system he had planned, he wrote his wife on
April 29th, “I have enjoyed my park reconnaissance very much as the
landscape is fine and the possibilities for parks, as far as land is
concerned, are excellent. But I fear the money will be deficient.”
(Olmsted, Correspondence)
Strategic, visionary planning was at the heart
of the Olmsted Report of 1903. Olmsted wanted Portlanders to look
far into the future–50 years or more–especially when it came to
purchasing land while it was still within reach of the city’s means.
Typical of Olmsted plans, it was comprehensive, including advice on
land acquisition, the qualities of good parks and park systems,
parkways and boulevards, park governance, and administration.
Olmsted outlined a “comprehensive system of
parks and parkways for Portland.” It began with a large forest
reservation between Riverview Cemetery and the southern suburb of
Lake Oswego, partially achieved today with Tryon Creek State Park.
An informal “picturesque” parkway would run from Riverview Cemetery
along the eastern foot of the West Hills, connecting the downtown
park squares, Washington Park, and passing by Macleay Park up to
what is now Forest Park. Terwilliger Boulevard today is part of this
proposed city-length parkway as are Skyline Boulevard above and Leif
Erikson Drive through Forest Park. On the river itself, at the
south end of town, he suggested the City acquire Ross Island for
park purposes. East of the river, he proposed a river bluff parkway
from Sellwood to the current site of the Oregon Museum of Science
and Industry. McLoughlin Boulevard is a partial realization of
Olmsted’s planned road. Another parkway would run north
approximately from N.E. Broadway along the river bluff above the
rail yards and Mocks Bottom to the University of Portland. A great
meadow park in the Columbia Sloughs, just west of where Portland
International Airport now sits, would preserve the bottom land
scenery near the river. He then proposed running a series of
boulevards (distinguished from parkways by their more formal
improvements) from Sellwood Park to Ladds Addition, out to Mt. Tabor
Park and then north, up to Columbia Slough Park and back over to the
proposed parkway on the bluff above Swan Island, which he also
recommended for inclusion in the park system. Like Boston’s Emerald
Necklace, designed by his stepfather Frederick Law Olmsted, John
Olmsted’s proposed park system–elongated and connected–would provide
a greenbelt nearly across and around the city. He left it to the
people of Portland, and their park board, staff, and city council,
to make the plan real. (Olmsted, Report)
With the city’s leadership focused on the Lewis
and Clark Exposition and its prospects for post-fair economic
growth, with L.L. Hawkins’ death and Rev. Eliot’s resignation from
the Parks Board, and with Portlanders’ resistance to providing
public funding for land acquisition, there was less will and little
way for Olmsted’s plan to proceed. While parks commissioners
Hawkins and Lewis had expressed total support for the plan in a 1904
Oregonian article titled tentatively “Is Portland Ready for a
Park System,” Mayor George Williams probably represented the sober
reality that the plan faced: “While we must all agree that an
elaborate system of parks and boulevards such as he has planned
would greatly enhance the beauty and attractiveness of the city, we
must cut our garment by our cloth and cannot afford such an outlay.”
(Oregonian, 44) Perhaps the greatest “lost opportunity” was
the Lewis and Clark fairground itself. Olmsted had wanted to see
this area become a park but even before he arrived it had been sold
for future development and then leased back for the fair’s temporary
use.
Olmsted himself may have been discouraged by
the City’s reluctance to proceed, but steady progress was made over
the succeeding decades, at Portland’s own deliberate pace.
Recreation: Jungle Gym and
Jane (1910-65)
With the exception of a new playground in the
North Park Blocks, in the first four years after Olmsted’s first
visit, Portlanders built homes, not parks. Olmsted himself returned
several times to consult on private landscaping projects, often
commenting on the progress–or lack thereof--of his plan. While
excitement over the fair died down, the city’s business affairs and
housing starts came to life. Portland grew by as much as 50% in the
decade after the Exposition. (Abbott, The Great Extravaganza)
The Olmsted Report initially languished, annually buried deeper and
deeper under subsequent Park Board reports. In an apparent effort
to inject life into Olmsted’s plans, The Oregonian published
occasional articles on the need for more parks and improved park
services. The February 24, 1908, issue discussed the particular
need for an able parks administrator. The newspaper argued that the
kind of park improvements described in the 1903 Olmsted Report
required a skilled superintendent with wide experience in American
and European park systems. “We must have this man,” the paper
argued, “if Portland is to keep pace with the city’s growth and if
that system is to be a worthy expression of the city’s taste and
liberality, and of this generation’s forethought for the next.”
Waiting in the wings, already chosen by Olmsted if not yet the City
Council, was “this man.”
While ably managed over the preceding four
years, the Portland Park department had not found a superintendent
equal to Olmsted’s vision. Two days after The Oregonian
article, however, the City Council hired former apprentice, Emanuel
L. Mische, already twice recommended by Olmsted. Following formal
training at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Boston’s Arnold
Arboretum, and Kew Garden, Mische had spent eight years working as a
horticulturist and designer for the Olmsteds. Hired as Portland’s
fourth park superintendent, Mische spent much of his first year,
1908, negotiating for land on Terwilliger Boulevard and Mt. Tabor.
In order to gain some control over public spaces, Mische recommended
that he be given authority for the design and placement of
fountains, monuments, statuary, sculpture, and architectural works.
Already, overall design matters related to street widening, grades,
street trees, subdivisions, and construction fell under the parks
department’s authority.
With the Olmsted Plan’s foci on connecting
urban dwellers with nature and increasing interest in more
playgrounds and exercise programs, Emanuel Mische found himself
charged by his board and the City Council with balancing the diverse
recreational needs of Portland citizens. During the six years
(1908-14) of his superintendency, Mische began to turn Olmsted’s
descriptive vision into landscapes and plantings. He also initiated
efforts to build the recreational infrastructure of playgrounds and
athletic, cultural, and educational programs that would be the theme
for Portland’s park growth. In spite of his short tenure, Mische
may be credited with laying the foundation for the balanced and
integrated park system that Portland has today. (Guzowski, 110)
Mische applied his experience in horticulture
to creating intentional designs within parks that previously had
been planned with little sense of order or relationship with parks
elsewhere in the city. Acting on Olmsted’s dictum to create a
comprehensive plan and “look” for the city’s parks, he put his
groundsmen to work transforming the Park Blocks into a showplace for
shrubs and flower beds, planting colorful ornamentals and roses, and
improving the walkways and benches. Such formality and color, he
deemed, were appropriate to a park that, even in 1908, still edged
the city’s downtown core. On the other hand, he avoided such a
formal style in Washington Park, developing instead the more
naturalistic look encouraged in Olmsted’s report. Mische next
turned his attention to the new local and neighborhood parks that
the city was acquiring in response to increasing requests for parks
from neighborhoods. (The demand for parks would be among the
earliest organized efforts by Portland’s neighborhoods). He
followed the advice of his mentor in designing Peninsula,
Laurelhurst, Columbia, Sellwood, and Kenilworth parks, filling them
with both native species and exotics from the east coast, laying out
winding walkways, and creating for the parks’ visitors a sense of
separation from the surrounding streets and homes. In the use of
shrubs and landscaping, he was able to accommodate the competing
needs of solitary pedestrians and groups of noisy children. Whether
formal or informal in design and details, Olmsted recommended that
“[t]o make them as attractive and useful as possible, it is often
best to abandon the attempt to secure simple broad landscape effects
and to design them with as many interesting features and useful
subdivisions as practicable, somewhat as a recreation building is
subdivided.” Formal gardens, promenades, ball fields, wading and
swimming pools, curving walkways, and playgrounds characterized
Mische’s new parks. No provisions were made for carriages or cars
that would intrude on visitors’ serenity or play, or jeopardize
their safety. (Guzowski, 111-128)
Olmsted had been particularly taken with the
potential for Portland’s three “scenic reservations”–Washington,
Macleay, and Mt. Tabor–parks of 100 acres or more that were large
enough for interior views and exterior panoramic vistas. Mische
shared his mentor’s interest. In Washington Park, he had his men
build or rebuild paths and stairways that took advantage of the
topography. They also constructed rustic rails and walls and
installed a playground. He shared Olmsted’s opinion that the
wilderness aspect of Macleay built by a real-estate developer to
sluice dirt off the hills above northwest Portland Park should be
maintained, with as few intrusions as possible; at the same time,
recognizing the need for security and fire prevention, he hired two
guards to patrol the trails. He rid the park of hunters, evicted a
dairy that was polluting the watershed, and succeeded in removing an
unsightly flume. (Not long before, the mayor himself had hiked into
the park with a pickaxe in hand and destroyed part of the flume,
built without permit by a real-estate developer to sluice dirt from
the west hills to fill nearby Guild’s Lake for a future industrial
center.) In 1909 the Wildwood Trail–early on one of Portland’s most
heavily used and popular forest paths–was laid down between Macleay
Park and the Forestry Center, the last remaining major building on
the grounds of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. (Portland Parks
and Recreation, “A Chronological History,” 6) Across the city, at
Mt. Tabor Park, Mische completed an ambitious design that reforested
the west slope, opened vistas toward Mount St. Helens and Mount
Hood, and constructed a shelter, bandstand, and comfort station near
the summit. His proposed series of cascades and pools connecting
city reservoirs #5 and #6 was never realized, however, due to
financial limitations. (Guzowski, 129-137)
Although Mische today is remembered for his
horticultural skills and for sensitively responding to what some now
describe as “Olmstedian” qualities of urban wilderness, he also gave
considerable attention to the needs of children at play and adult
athletes. Portland has always been a city of exercisers. Almost as
soon as they trudged in from the 2,000-mile hike across the Oregon
Trail or stumped stiff-legged off the ships that brought them up the
Pacific Coast, Portlanders took to the town’s hills and nearby
mountains, its rivers, bicycle routes, horse tracks, and walking
trails.
Two years before Mische took up his work of
implementing a vision grounded in the City Beautiful movement,
Portland had joined other cities in embracing the recreational
enthusiasm for yet another growing trend, the Playground Movement.
(Guzowski, 104) Despite, perhaps because of, the mud, children by
the hundreds swarmed into the two North Park blocks in December 1906
to inaugurate Portland’s first playground. Swings, a climbing rope,
sand boxes and see-saws, horizontal, parallel and vaulting bars, and
a great slide, gave outlet to young energy. Boys and girls each
had their own area and it was soon deemed necessary to build a fence
around the boys’ playground to keep out the men who were setting up
boxing matches, betting, and having a generally “pernicious
influence.” Beyond merely strolling though greenswards, Portlanders
were discovering new uses for their parks and Mische proved that he
could integrate the increasingly diverse users of the city’s
forests, picnic and playgrounds, fields, formal gardens, and pools.
With the exception of Macleay Park, all other parks incorporated
programs and facilities such as fields, courts, and playgrounds to
support organized sports and play. In 1911, the Parks Board hosted
the Field Secretary of the American Playground Association and
created a committee to plan “a more satisfactory system of
playgrounds” in partnership with the Board of Education, the first
major interaction between the schools and the Parks Board.
(Portland Parks and Recreation, “Chronological History,” 5-7)
After 13 years of giving shape, leadership, and
support to the creation and maintenance of parks, the Portland Parks
Board was dissolved in 1914 when voters elected to establish a
commission form of government, which abolished existing city boards,
putting their responsibilities under elected city commissioners.
Superintendent Mische then reported to a commissioner of public
works. In his first annual report after the change, Mische
complained that the new system lacked a general plan, the lack of
which, he believed, would spell failure for the park system. The
following year, he resigned. With Mische’s departure Portland lost
the experience and informed perspective that connected it directly
with the guiding principles and inspiration of the ambitious 1903
Olmsted plan.
“Without Eliot, without Mische,...and
Eliot above all,...Portland would not have achieved a notable
recreation system...” So Portland’s early park years were summed up
by Paul Keyser, who replaced Mische as superintendent in 1917.
(Keyser, 4) In his first year, Keyser, an engineer by training,
added golf to the system’s programs. The first golf course was
sited in the southeast neighborhood of Eastmoreland. Through the
1920s, the new superintendent added two more golf courses and
expanded the city’s recreational programs. The Community House
Program began offering gym, dance, handicraft, and home-economics
classes. The program established daycare services for working
mothers. Part of the city zoo was moved from the lower part of
Washington Park (Marconi Street) to the current site of the Japanese
Garden. Just below the location of the tennis courts, the parks
department established the National Rose Test Garden, “for the
scientific testing outdoors of new roses and the cultivation and
development in the open of existing varieties.” The city was given
hundreds of varieties of roses from across the United States and
Europe for planting in the new garden. During this decade the park
system also received several new sculptures, fulfilling the bureau’s
role as the city’s public-arts manager. Heroic statues of George
Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, and
the elegant, diminutive “Rebecca at the Well,” were donated to the
city and placed in the Park Blocks and eastside plazas on Sandy and
Glisan. (Portland Parks and Recreation, “Chronological History,”
11-13)
Like his predecessor, Keyser maintained a
balance of establishing recreational programs while preserving and
adding greenspaces in the city’s larger parks. During the
mid-1920s, he worried that large tracts of land recommended for
purchase by Olmsted and Mische had still not been acquired by the
city. While citizens supported small neighborhood parks, Keyser
believed that diminished interest in larger city parks such as
Washington and Macleay was due to the automobile, which was now
taking growing numbers of Portlanders to open space and forests
outside the city. Even as he enriched Portland’s recreational park
programs, Keyser sought to expand the city’s large forest reserves
to lure residents back into Portland’s own large parks. He began
efforts to expand Macleay Park along Balch Creek, from a new
wildflower garden beneath the Thurman Street Bridge up the creek to
the Audubon Society’s planned 40-acre bird sanctuary along Cornell
Road. During the1928 National Forestry Week, with the encouragement
of the Chamber of Commerce, the City Council agreed with Keyser that
the city should establish an arboretum–a long-held dream of Mische–in
Hoyt Park above Washington Park. Multnomah County deeded the city
145 acres for this purpose. Not content with these successes,
Keyser turned his eyes on even more land in what is now Forest Park,
noting prophetically–and paraphrasing Olmsted–that “Portland could
easily attain one of the largest and, I daresay, one of the most
notable parks in the country containing . . . a forest primeval,
trails, viewpoints and glens, not miles away but within our urban
borders.” (Portland Parks and Recreation, Chronological History,
12)
The Depression of the 1930s stalled Keyser’s
ambitions, as it did those of park systems in other cities. During
the ensuing economic downturn, Portland’s park bureau relied heavily
on federal relief funds, which supported trail construction, built
and restored picnic shelters, fire pits, roads, bridges, and stone
buildings, and developed playground facilities. In addition to
their construction projects, the newly employed men and women of
such New Deal agencies as the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the
Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Works Progress
Administration (WPA) staffed recreation programs as coaches,
teachers, artists, and playground supervisors. In 1938, Dorthea
Lensch was appointed Playground Supervisor to manage the bureau’s
recreation division. Nearly one-half of her staff were federally
funded relief workers. Responding to the realities of the
Depression, with adults having more leisure time and children being
offered limited activities in schools, Lensch implemented several
new recreational and cultural programs, sometimes using school
buildings in neighborhoods not served by park community centers.
The bureau offered classes in drama and dance, exercise and bridge,
photography, sculpting and painting, nature lore, first aid,
archery, badminton, and field hockey. Lensch endeavored to open the
parks to the public during a time of heightened demand for public
recreational services, which private agencies were not able to
adequately address. (Portland Parks and Recreation, “Chronological
History,” 14-15)
World War II initially resulted in the closure
of Portland’s largest parks. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor,
the city closed Washington and Mt. Tabor Parks in fear of sabotage
to the reservoirs–Portland’s immediate water supplies–and deferred
new construction for the next five years. The war created
challenges for a park bureau not yet recovered from the Depression.
With juvenile delinquency increasing as children were left on their
own with parents working for local wartime industries or in the
military, the bureau was pushed to expand its recreation programs
into schools, community centers, churches, and the new wartime
housing projects. The parks bureau worked with schools and
neighborhoods to plant “victory gardens” that provided young
Portlanders a productive out-of-school activity as well as fresh
summer and fall produce. Symptomatic of the stress felt in the city
as increasing numbers of minorities arrived to work in Portland’s
wartime shipyards and factories, baseless complaints about
“Asiatics” and African-Americans monopolizing tennis courts and
other facilities prompted Superintendent Keyser to issue plans
(never implemented) for a community center in Albina to serve ethnic
minorities. Indeed, minorities in Portland bore the brunt of
wartime anxiety. Japanese citizens were forcibly moved from their
communities and interned in camps in eastern Oregon and beyond.
African-American laborers were denied access to many kinds of jobs
and had to resort to federal action to open union positions for
them. (Portland Parks and Recreation, “Chronological History,”
16)
Throughout the first third of the century,
little development took place on the hills northwest of Portland and
even less during the succeeding Depression and war years. It was
here that John Olmsted recommended the city establish a “forest
park.” “The investment,” he advised in 1903, “of a comparatively
moderate sum in the acquisition of these romantic wooded hillsides
for a park or reservation of wild woodland character would yield
ample returns in pleasure to taxpayers and to those dependent on
them, while to a large part of the poorer classes a visit to these
woods would afford more pleasure and satisfaction than a visit to
any other sort of park.” (Olmsted, “Report to Portland Park Board,”
41-42) A group of citizens under the chairmanship of retired
forester and Portland Audubon president Thornton T. Munger put
action to Olmsted’s eloquence and in November 1946 formed a
“Committee of Fifty” to promote the city’s acquisition of the
extensively forested hills and ravines above the former site of
Guild’s Lake. The committee began raising money, consciousness, and
recruits in an effort to convince the Oregon Legislature to allow
counties to transfer to cities for park purposes lands that had come
into public ownership due to tax default. By July 1947 the City
Council was able to proceed with plans for Forest Park. It
dedicated 2,000 acres and approved plans to acquire an additional
6,000. Notwithstanding a fire four years later that burned 80% of
Forest Park, the city made further headway toward Olmsted’s “forest
reservation” in 1951 when Multnomah County transferred land to the
City for the new park and Portland high-school students launched
what would become a multi-year reforestation effort by planting
30,000 trees. (Portland Parks and Recreation, “Chronological
History,” 17)
In the two decades following the Depression and
the Second World War, the Portland Park Bureau not only multiplied
its landholdings several-fold to over 6,000 acres, but enlarged the
range of its recreational offerings. Responding to substantial
increases in recreation participation (a 35% increase in 1951
alone), the bureau added community centers; greatly enlarged its
volunteer corps (3,500 by 1957); moved and enhanced the zoo
(commencing the era of the baby elephant); created trail
maintenance, “aquatheater,” and weightlifting programs; and added to
its inventory of buildings such historic structures as the rustic
Pioneer Church in Sellwood and the elegant Pittock Mansion. As the
city grew with the postwar economy, especially during the 1960s, the
park bureau continued to make great strides in providing
recreational services, along with the space in which to provide
them. And, inspired by new Governor Tom McCall’s pressure to create
a waterfront park where the Willamette River flows through the city,
plans and provisions for open space began to command increasing
attention from the public, their political leaders, and park
officials. (Portland Parks and Recreation, Chronological History,
18-20)
Refuge:
Open and Greenspaces”
(1965-the present)
Portland was conceived in ”the clearing”—an
open space—by the river. A tradition and inheritance of open space
ensued. Daniel Lownsdale’s initial deeded blocks, Terwilliger Park,
and other gifts of land have preserved the open space refuge that
the Olmsteds and other early park planners urged growing cities to
provide. Although Portland has had in-fill and density as twin
goals over the past two decades, the city has maintained its
provisions for “breathing room” and not become a dense city. So
the vision of Eliot, Hawkins, and their fellow park-system founders;
of their planner Olmsted; of his plan’s implementor Mische; and of
Paul Keyser has been sustained.
“Open space” has broad meanings. It
encompasses small squares at the heart of the city as well as large
spaces at its edge that are not “parks” at all, but greenspaces –
wetlands, stream corridors, meadows, forests, and other nearby
“wild” places. When one looks at a map of downtown Portland, a
linear north-south pattern of open spaces emerges. The North and
South Park Blocks along Ninth Avenue, the Plaza Blocks on Fourth,
and Waterfront Park form green stretches of open space breaking up
the grid of buildings on the west side. The east side’s expansive
commercial and retail districts offer less such refuge, with space
afforded intermittently by Holladay, Buckman, and Col. Summers Parks
and the Eastbank Esplanade. It is the central business district
that presents local and national models of urban open spaces.
The renovation of Portland’s Civic Auditorium
was part of an extensive urban-renewal process that occurred in
South Portland during the 1960s and 70s. Even before the
Auditorium’s remodeling itself began, a block of open space across
the street was proposed for a park. Angela Danadjieva, a San
Francisco architect with Lawrence Halprin’s design firm, created the
design for a nearly full-block fountain park. Dedicated in 1970,
the Forecourt Fountain (since renamed in memory of founding Portland
Development Commission chair Ira C. Keller) is an abstraction of
northwest waterfalls cascading over columnar basalt outcroppings
with sculptured terraces and pools. The waterfalls, ledges, pools,
and surrounding stairs, benches, and grass provide space for
sitting, wading, and for audience members taking a break from
auditorium performances. The fountain quickly became a landmark
park and, with a bit of exuberance, was called by New York Times
architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable “perhaps the greatest open
space since the Renaissance.” (Portland Parks and Recreation, “Open
Space Inventory - Urban Parks”) This from a writer who, seeing
Portlanders thoughtlessly replacing their historic buildings with
surface parking lots, remarked that Portland was a city in the
process of destroying itself.
Sixteen blocks to the north, O’Bryant Square
began as an attempt in the early 1970s to regain one of the “lost”
Park Blocks. A gift to the city by Mr. and Mrs. William E. Roberts,
the square was designed as a hardscape to create an outdoor
“brown-bag” performance space with trees creating an enclosure.
Near the center of the square is a bronze fountain in the shape of a
rose. The park opened with concerts but soon became increasingly
frequented by members of the homeless community and drug culture.
In 1984, Pioneer Courthouse Square opened and drew potential concert
audiences away. Efforts are now underway to heighten visibility
into the park by removing trees, though O’Bryant Square’s ability to
succeed as downtown open space may depend upon its possible
connection to additional park blocks that may appear as Park Avenue
is restructured. (Portland Parks and Recreation, “Open Space
Inventory - Urban Parks,” 9-10)
Portland’s waterfront was covered for nearly a
century-and-a-half by wharves, warehouses, retail buildings, and
roads. From the Olmsted Plan of 1903 through several subsequent
plans for the downtown, the waterfront was targeted for park space.
Money and civic will, however, were always lacking. Through much of
the 1960s, Portland newscaster, secretary of state, and governor Tom
McCall prodded the city to clean up the Willamette River and create
a park. In 1971 a citizens group initiated efforts to remove Harbor
Drive, a blanket of concrete that had long separated the city from
its river. With support from Mayor Neil Goldschmidt and the
Portland Development Commission in the mid-1970s, Portland
architects Wolff, Zimmer, Gunsul, Frasca Partnership developed a
master plan for a new park. With the dedication of Waterfront Park
in 1978, Portlanders for the first time gained access to the west
bank of the Willamette. It was an immediate success, but by 2000
popularity had degraded the park, frustrating citizens beneath the
crush of high-attendance events (carnivals, concerts, and food
festivals). In 2002 the Parks Bureau initiated a master planning
process designed to balance the conflicting demands of diverse users
upon the park’s long and narrow landscape. As had been the case 30
years before, the process elicited substantial public involvement in
planning the future of Portland’s “front yard.” Guided by a
citizens advisory committee, the public participated in numerous
workshops to envision and debate potential uses and designs.
Architects, landscape architects, and planners provided technical
support and advice. The result was an ambitious vision for
Waterfront Park, one that will take many years to finance and
achieve.
Six blocks west, on a block that Portlanders
have dubbed their community “living room,” citizens have
consistently maintained an intense interest and protectiveness for
what architect Pietro Belluschi called at its opening in 1984 “one
of the best moves Portland ever made.” Taking the place of a
parking lot that had replaced the Portland Hotel (once the city’s
most popular meeting space) Pioneer Courthouse Square—immediately
adjacent to Pioneer Courthouse—quickly became a year-round, day- and
night-long gathering ground. The Square’s brick pavement—built with
bricks sold to raise funds for the project—terra cotta walls, and
classical columns are a neighborly reflection of the Square’s
surrounding buildings, which date from among the city’s oldest to
its newest. Whimsical sculptures, such as an umbrella-holding man
hailing a cab, a “Weather Machine,” a waterfall, space for events
and exhibits, a public-transit and city information center, plus a
Starbucks coffee shop and Powell’s book store place the Square
comfortably into the city’s culture. Its successful creation, led
by Martin, depended on the diverse team he brought together:
landscape architect Doug Macy, historian Terence O’Donnell, sculptor
Lee Kelly, writer Spencer Gill, and designer/artist Robert
Reynolds. (Portland Parks and Recreation, Open Space Inventory –
Urban Parks, 11-12) Urban observer William Whyte considered Pioneer
Square among the nation’s finest programmed open spaces. (Whyte,
152)
Extending from the Hawthorne to the Steel
Bridge, directly across the river from Waterfront Park, the first
section of the Eastbank Esplanade was opened in 2001 and illustrates
the challenge and successful solution to creating open space in a
closed, congested, and cacophonous location. Tucked between the
Interstate 5 freeway and the Willamette River, this narrow,
mile-and-a-half-long park includes the longest floating walkway in
the country. The habitat demonstration and riverbank restoration
project uses several large "root wads" to provide habitat areas for
fish along with bio-engineering techniques employing native
vegetation to pre-treat freeway runoff before it enters the river.
The Esplanade connects to the 40-Mile Loop trail, providing a
region-wide natural-history interpretive opportunity. Graphic
designers from the landscape architecture firm Mayer/Reed included
cultural history in the Esplanade through a series of illustrated
and text panels providing information about the river and Portland
history. Four pieces of public art, "The Running Gate," "The
Stackstalk,” "The Alluvial Wall," and “The Ghost Ship," were created
and installed by RIGGA, a group of local artists working with the
support of the Regional Arts and Culture Council’s Percent for Art
program.
From an airplane approaching Portland, the
landscape shows great contrasts. Passing over the city, the small
squares and larger parks leap out with their colorful manmade plazas
and green open space. Further out, however, one is struck by the
sheer volume of land covered by trees and water and open land. From
the airplane passenger’s perspective, the larger cityscape looks not
like a patchwork of green but like strips of green connecting
metropolitan Portland’s parts into a regional whole. These are
greenspaces that, through good luck and great vision, have (in most
cases) been intentionally preserved between and within communities.
As with all things of permanence, the vision took some time to
become reality.
In 1903, John Charles Olmsted had discussed
with Portlanders his notion of naturalizing the city with large
parks connected by parkways, winding a ring of greenspace around and
through the city. “While there are many things,” Olmsted wrote in
his 1903 Report to the Portland Park Board, “both small and great,
which may contribute to the beauty of a great city, unquestionably
one of the greatest is a comprehensive system of parks and
parkways.” (Olmsted, John Charles, “Report of the Park Board,”
1903, 14) From 1903 into the 1970s, connecting parks and
greenspaces, as Olmsted had advised and some Portlanders
appreciated, remained an almost unimaginable, even utopian,
strategy. First of all, there was the sheer cost of assembling the
land. Further, with the notable exception of Forest Park, once
Portland had established its large early parks it put increasing
emphasis on playgrounds and sports fields, and small, highly
programmed open spaces in the downtown. Independent suburban
communities in the 1970s and 1980s followed Portland’s lead in their
own parks and recreation programs – preserving and connecting
greenspaces was not part of local park districts’ agendas. Then, in
1971, the Columbia Region Association of Governments (CRAG)
presented an ambitious scheme for regional open-space planning
titled, “Proposals to the Portland-Vancouver Community for a
Metropolitan Park and Open Space System.” Integrating Olmsted’s
proposals with urban philosopher Lewis Mumford’s vision for a
regional community, the CRAG plan suggested a way to navigate toward
a regional, comprehensive park system. With no public input, the
plan stalled for two years until two events took place under the
leadership of Governor Tom McCall that would restart the process and
provide a new framework for park and open-space planning in Portland
and its neighboring communities.
In 1973 the State of Oregon initiated state
land-use planning. The law stipulated that cities were to create
urban-growth boundaries and develop comprehensive plans with
planning goals relating to the preservation of open spaces; scenic,
historic, and natural resources; land resources; and recreational
needs. The following year, the state issued the Willamette River
Greenway Plan which directed development away from the River,
establishing a minuscule 25-foot greenway setback and requiring
protection of natural elements and scenic qualities. With such
state-mandated planning goals, the Portland region acquired the
tools to begin building the “comprehensive system” of greenspaces
and parks earlier envisioned by John Charles Olmsted. Using these
tools—comprehensive regional planning, locally set land-use goals,
an urban-growth boundary—a small number of parks and greenspace
advocates, in partnership with local and regional governments, began
to realize Olmsted’s larger vision. Leading this persistent effort
were the Audubon Society’s Mike Houck and Barbara Walker, founder of
the 40-Mile Loop Land Trust. With volunteers and staff of Metro and
the Portland Parks Bureau, they helped initiate a planning process
that, through the 1990s, would result in a regional strategy and
framework for parks, greenspaces, and greenways across metropolitan
Portland.
As an urban naturalist with the Audubon Society
of Portland, Mike Houck encouraged Metro, the Portland area’s
regional government, to assume leadership in the regional protection
of natural resources and wildlife and, thereby, in compliance with
the State of Oregon’s land-use planning Goal 5, which protects
natural and historic resources and open spaces. Working with Metro
from 1989 to 1992, he convinced the agency to take the lead in
building a “greenfrastructure,” a connected system of natural areas
and greenways across the region. (Howe, 2-4). Coincident with
Houck’s work, Barbara Walker, an articulate and long-time volunteer
leader in local parks issues, had been advocating the establishment
of the 40-Mile Loop Land Trust, whose goal was to create a trail
system around the region. The concept for such a loop first
surfaced in Portland Parks and Recreation Bureau’s 1983 master plan
and benefited from the subsequent struggles for the Oaks Bottom
Wildlife refuge and the Marquam and Powell Butte nature parks.
“When I first saw Barbara’s slide depicting the Loop,” Houck
reported in 1989 to the City Club of Portland, “it was impossible to
ignore the striking coincidence of the trail and natural areas that
it passes through... It was a marriage of tremendous recreational
and wildlife viewing opportunities too good to pass up. The concept
to link these two efforts is also in keeping with the philosophies
espoused by Olmsted, Mumford, and the CRAG report.” (Houck, 5)
Consummating this “marriage” in 1992, Metro
adopted a “Metropolitan Greenspaces Master Plan,” aimed at
purchasing, managing, and protecting natural resources. The plan’s
vision was “to balance an urban landscape with wildlife habitat in
the midst of a flourishing cosmopolitan region.” Voters were
convinced and quickly authorized Metro to acquire, develop,
maintain, and operate a system of parks, open space, and
recreational facilities of metropolitan concern. (Metro, 84) In
1994, the same year Multnomah County’s parks division merged with
Metro’s greenspaces program creating Metro Regional Parks and
Greenspaces, the regional government adopted a 2040 growth concept
to guide future decisions about land-use, transportation, urban
design, and natural resources. A year later metropolitan residents
further embraced the greenspaces agenda and passed a $135.6 million
open-spaces, parks, and streams bond measure. The funds have
allowed Metro to acquire over 8,000 acres of wetlands, riparian
areas, forests, and meadows and more than 50 miles of stream and
river frontage as well as systematically strengthen its park
programs, including school classes, restoration projects, public
tours, and other environmental-education activities. If one
combines the metropolitan region’s open-space inventory (parks,
greenspaces, and the regional trail system) with individual park
districts’ recreation programs, the elements that Olmsted envisioned
for Portland 100 years ago are now in place.
In late 1988 Charles Jordan (a former Portland
city commissioner) became Director of the Portland Parks Bureau.
Despite property-tax limitation measures and the frustrations of
budget cuts throughout much of his 15-year tenure, Jordan started to
build on the city’s own 1992 park plan. The plan was based on a
five-year Parks Futures Project that identified $100 million worth
of capital improvements to the nearly 100-years old park system.
Ultimately, the 1994 general obligation bond provided $59 million
for much-needed improvements in lighting, irrigation, and paths in
parks as well as heating, plumbing, and electrical systems in
buildings. Later bond measures provided further capital funding for
the bureau. Throughout the 1990s, while Metro’s regional parks
department was adding land as well as establishing its
environmental-education offerings, the Portland park bureau focused
on improving its capital facilities–building tennis courts and
community centers, refurbishing pools, and renovating fields–in
addition to offering new classes, clinics, and workshops in
athletics and the performing arts. Parks director Jordan also led
the bureau in providing enhanced programs to underserved parts of
the community. As with most municipal park agencies in Oregon by
the mid-1990s, Portland’s was increasingly relying on non-profit
“friends” groups to raise funds and organize events. Volunteers
remarkably donated 500,000 hours of assistance to park programs and
the decade saw increasing collaboration between the parks bureau and
the school district through community-school recreational programs.
Following two years of work by many of the same
individuals and staff who contributed to Metro’s plans, Portland
crafted its own updated park vision. The “Parks 2020 Vision,”
adopted by the City Council in 2001, was an effort to recommit the
city to Olmsted’s vision of 1903: more land for parks, a regional
approach, able and informed park leadership, increased access to
parks by all, well-maintained facilities, and excellent and diverse
programs throughout the city. A Portland Parks Board was
re-established to provide public input into park policies,
operations, and plans. And, in recognition of the realities of
government funding in 21st-century Oregon, a private park
foundation was organized to raise money for land acquisition,
operations and maintenance, scholarships, and new facilities.
(Portland Parks and Recreation, 2020 Vision, 2001)
The city of Portland has changed dramatically
since Lovejoy landed in “the clearing,” since Lownsdale laid down
his park blocks, and since the first generations of Portlanders
began to boast of their community’s parklike features: the forest
and mountain views, open space, and outdoor activities that have
engaged its residents and visitors ever since. Within 50 years of
Portland’s incorporation, John Charles Olmsted gave it a vision for
the future based on parks and the city’s unique natural setting.
Notwithstanding the reluctance of early 20th-century
Portlanders to provide public dollars to implement Olmsted’s plan,
succeeding generations demonstrated their increasing commitment to
parks through levies and bonds, participation in parks programs, and
volunteer services to build a solid, if not quite “Olmstedian,”
system. From 1993 to 2003, Metro began to buy more land and lay
more trails. Today, there are over 700 parks within the metropolitan
region–from 18-inch Mill End Park to 4,683-acre Forest Park–and more
than 15,000 acres of natural areas with150-plus miles of trails
linking together many of these green and open spaces. Even as
demanding a landscape architect as Olmsted might concede that his
sometimes-reluctant client has made progress toward his vision.
In the final analysis, of course, it is not the
vision of such planners as Olmsted that accomplish the plan, but the
catalytic leadership of those like Eliot, Lewis, or Hawkins, like
Thornton Munger, Barbara Walker, or Mike Houck; the intelligent work
of committed staff; and the countless hours of thousands of
volunteers. Especially over the past 30 years, citizen
participation has been basic to the Portland story. Through parks,
citizens have contributed to the development of the region’s overall
urban design, helping shape its growth and the vision for its
future. Citizens have also preserved much of their community’s past
in parks and greenspaces because that is where much of the region’s
natural and cultural history has occurred and continues to reside.
(Fadely, 32)
Olmsted had it right when he opened his report
to the Portland Parks Board with an expression of the duty of
citizens to their city: “It is becoming more clearly realized,” he
wrote, “that every inhabitant owes to his or her city certain
duties. . . . Among them is that of making the city more beautiful
to live and work in. [And,] while there are many things which may
contribute to the beauty of a great city, one of the greatest is a
comprehensive system of parks and parkways.” Parks and greenspaces
are the places where people play, exercise, and learn; find
solitude; preserve flora and fauna. Greenspaces are the places
where Portlanders can appreciate nature’s sounds, touch, sights, and
smells within the confines of the city – in other words, where they
achieve the values espoused in the Olmsted Plan in 1903. They are
places where, in Portland, people have invested much of their civic
pride and drawn much of their civic identity. It is through parks
and greenspaces that Portlanders, 100 years after Olmsted’s report,
find their place in the natural and human history of their region
and, perhaps most deliberately and enthusiastically, express their
character as citizens.
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