The Portland Green Loop: How Active Mobility Will Contribute to Portland’s Resiliency
The past few years have been hard on Portland. Between the pandemic, wildfires, and political unrest, the beauty and unique character of our fair city have been overshadowed by hardship. But Portland continues to be a place that prioritizes the health and well-being of its citizens, and therein lies the strength of our recovery. The Green Loop is a project that tells Portland's health-focused story, with the potential to catalyze development toward a more resilient and prosperous future for the city.
This case study presentation explores how design lessons learned on a similar active mobility network project in the Bay Area can be applied to the Green Loop in Portland, providing an innovative, health-focused result that highlights community-oriented placemaking, sustainably resourced materials, and restorative, native ecologies.
Placemaking: With accessible, public-facing amenities and urban pedestrian plazas along the route, The Green Loop will foster small business development and community engagement, prioritizing equity through innovative design structures. Modular buildings, shipping containers, and food trucks act as incubators, affordably building businesses, creating communities, and establishing structures for placemaking.
Materials: Sustainable materials, selected with location source, life cycle, and transportation carbon impacts in mind, support Portland’s resilient, forward-thinking values.
Ecology: The leafy urban canopy provides respite and refuge for travelers throughout the Green Loop. Native vegetation restores historic habitats and counteracts the heat island effect.
The vision for The Green Loop is one that can be realized by following in the footsteps of other cities that share Portland’s values and have created active mobility networks that provide resilience and prosperity benefits. The result will be a new experience in Portland that supports healthy, active community-building and inspires other cities across the country to commit to a similar investment in the health, well-being, and prosperity of their communities.
Presenters
Keith Jones is the Executive Director of Friends of Green Loop, a community-based non-profit organization that advocates, educates and helps to facilitate the development of The Green Loop. Keith is an active and engaged member of the Portland Community. He currently also serves as President of the Lloyd Community Association and is on the board of the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods and Lloyd Enhanced Service District. Prior to Friends of Green Loop, Keith was an entrepreneur that specialized in the fields of marketing, economic development and travel & tourism.
Erica Strohmeier is an Urban Planner and Project Manager for SERA Design and is based out of SERA's office in Oakland, CA. Erica has more than 19 years of experience working in both the public and private sectors of urban planning, and has practiced in California and Sydney, Australia. In recent years, Erica has focused on managing projects specific to pedestrian and bicycle connectivity, as well as user safety on bike paths and multi-use trails. Erica has a passion for eliminating connectivity barriers to equitably connect people to public open space and nature. Erica has spent the last 5 years managing the creation and implementation of new active mobility network in Silicon Valley.