Children and Nature Belong Downtown

March 30, 2013   This post was first  published on the Children & Nature Network Blog. It’s editor, Richard Louv, attempted to make it more interesting for his international audience with his edits. Here, I want to re-capture some of my original thoughts.

Each year at the end of August, the Oregon Symphony holds a free concert at the south end of Portland’s downtown Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the Willamette River. Families come with picnic supper, blankets and lawn chairs. I’ve noticed that the kids who are old enough for a little independence make a beeline for the wildest part of the waterfront—a shore with driftwood, rocks and boulders.

Climbing over the tree limbs and rocks is rough going. But the kids are unfazed. That’s where they want to be.

My Portland Downtown Neighborhood Association has been talking about the need for more families in downtown Portland. Now that developers are finding financing to build again, we are seeing more proposals for apartments downtown. Members of our association would like to see some of those apartments be appropriate for families — in size, in design and in price.

Families with children who might consider moving downtown are often deterred by the lack of affordable housing and the absence of a downtown public elementary school. However, there’s another reason that families with children often avoid living downtown in America’s cities: the need for more wild in downtown to attract those families who escaped the city for the “wide open spaces” of the suburbs.

Except for “The Bowl”, most of Portland’s central city waterfront is armored with a seawall—like many river cities, with good reason. When the Willamette was at severe flood stage as it was in 1996, we had to throw up sandbags so that the first few blocks of downtown wouldn’t flood — as they did historically. The Portland Daily Journal of Commerce has some fun photos of people canoeing along Third Ave and other parts of downtown.

As a result of those seawalls, the river at normal flow appears to be about 25 feet to the surface of the water. So how do we make the riverfront more attractive to families who want to touch nature? Portland’s new Working Draft Comprehensive Plan encourages more beaches along the waterfront. One suggested policy for the Willamette River Watershed is: “Promote rehabilitation of riverbank sections that have been significantly altered because of development to create more natural riverbank conditions.”

With the intention to attract both families and fish downtown, we could do much to make “The Bowl” more natural. But to address other parts of the downtown waterfront–-and still avoid flooding–-we may need to adapt Chicago’s invention of a Fish Hotel and stairs down to this structure created out of plants to give fish resting and hiding places.

Let’s look at what else downtowns, particularly Portland’s, could do to meet children’s need for wild in their lives. Why not rethink our parks and our other public spaces downtown? Portland is lucky enough to have both a linear waterfront park and the Park Blocks, an interior corridor, originally intended as a firebreak, that extend most of the length of our downtown. Could these be re-conceived as wildlife and children’s corridors?

Portland’s early founders were wise enough to leave undeveloped blocks planted with trees (mostly American elms), running from north-to-south for twelve blocks of central westside Portland. Ultimately, these blocks, planted with native species, could become part of something much larger, along the lines of Doug Tallamy’s idea for a “Homegrown National Park.

Tallamy recommends that cities and neighborhoods across the country replace alien ornamentals with native plants—and hence attract more species of native wildlife. Many existing buildings could install green roofs and green walls with native plants to attract our native insects, the base of the food chain.

Portland might also make the streets along the Park Blocks into  “green streets.”  These streets would utilize native plants and trees and porous pavement to filter storm water from the streets and sidewalks. They would prioritize the pedestrian and the bicyclist in their design and allow for a number of sidewalk cafés. Of course they would provide a lane for business deliveries by motor vehicle and bike, perhaps limited to certain hours.

Finally, we need a contiguous green west-east corridor to connect Portland’s premier wildlife corridor, Forest Park to the river.  I nominate SW Salmon Street/Park Place, my usual path to get to Washington and Forest Park. We could give property owners incentives to turn their existing landscapes into native habitat and to green their existing roofs, walls, parking lots and driveways. We could create “Nature Play” pocket parks along the way and join this whole area into the Home-Grown National Park too. Scroll through the map I created in Google Maps  to see the entire length of the Park Blocks–North and South–and the suggested link from Washington Park to the river.

The Salmon/Park Place corridor could become a “Greenway” (a 20 mph street that prioritizes active transportation and filters stormwater) utilizing NATIVE trees, shrubs and plants and other technologies such as porous pavement. Parking could still be allowed on these streets as it protects pedestrians and helps slow the street.

In an era of cutbacks, how will we pay for a new green infrastructure that could allow our children to live downtown and have nature too? Annie Donovan who serves as Senior Policy Advisor for New Financial Instruments at the White House Council on Environmental Quality presents some ideas in her Forbes 1/22/13 article Smart Communities will Build Green Infrastructure. She writes: “For impact investors, green infrastructure is an emerging market. Investing in it will help build economically sustainable communities that are also resilient in the face of change.”

Doubtless, some of the empty-nesters who have moved into the condo buildings in central cities throughout the US would like to be impact investors in this arena. Let’s make that opportunity possible by creating the vision for our children — one that acknowledges the benefits of nature along with all the other rich amenities of our downtowns.

One last point.  Working Draft 1 of the Portland Comprehensive Plan Update could lead to a sea change in the way we redevelop cities. Children & Nature advocates would do well to take advantage of some of the most innovative parts in it, such as the focus on habitat, the “design with nature” approach, and the “greenways” concept. It’s a forward-looking document that encourages bold thinking — and not just for Portland.  Planners and advocates elsewhere can push their cities to adapt some of its best ideas as their own.

And that will be good news for children, families, community and nature.

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AFTERTHOUGHTS

The images below help to further define the setting for those unfamiliar with Portland’s South Park Blocks and “lost park blocks.” I also provide an example from the Comp Plan: its definition of Greenways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greenways are defined in the glossary of Working Draft 1 of the Portland Comprehensive Plan Update as: A system of accessible pedestrian- and bike-friendly green streets and trails that link neighborhood centers, parks, schools, natural areas, and other key community destinations. The city Greenways system is a prioritized subset of pedestrian and bicycle connections that makes use of opportunities for multi-objective, distinctive design approaches that draw on and contribute to Portland’s pedestrian, bicycle, green street, and parks and open space systems.