First Stop goes to China, Part 2: Lessons for Portland from China

Submitted by Sarah Iannarone
Assistant Director, First Stop Portland

First Stop Portland is an interesting beast. Launched in 2009 to take the burden off local agencies and firms who were being inundated by requests for tours of Portland,  it's since morphed into a comprehensive, international urban knowledge exchange program. Leaders from around the globe are visiting Portland not only learn firsthand what to do (and what not to do), but also to share their most valuable lessons from back home with Portland's brain trust.

Recently, our standard protocol went in reverse, when I was invited to by Mayor Shi Guoxing to share First Stop's version of Portland's sustainability story in Siping City, China. I wrote previously about what I shared while there. This week, I'm sharing observations and lessons from my brief visit to Siping that might be of use here in Portland.

Siping feels similar to Portland in a lot of ways. It's a mid-sized city situated near the edge of the country along a major transportation corridor. Our urban and regional populations are relatively similar. Siping is growing rapidly, albeit somewhat in the shadow of its larger and more economically thriving neighbor to two hours drive north, Changchun.

The decades-old design of  Siping's urban neighborhoods reflects many of the values Portland espouses in its current planning: density, walkability, transportation options, access to affordable local food, parks and active spaces. Even the "reduce-reuse-recycle" ethic is ubiquitous.

An average Siping housing complex connected to adjacent streets by courtyards and pathways.
Windows open for ventilation and people grow food in every inch of available land.

I observed examples of "Nature in the City" throughout Siping.
This pathway was adjacent to a major arterial road near the city center.

Public Art at Heroes Memorial Park in Siping.
Much of the park was in active use throughout the day.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...

But Portland has density and urban parks and wildlife in the city and pedicabs and buses and recycling. So what can Portland learn from Siping?  Here's what I saw working well for the city while I was there.

1. Think about public health when you think about public space. One of my favorite activities while in Siping was sneaking away in the early morning hours to the park across from my hotel to join the locals for their morning exercises. I observed several hundred people in dozens of group activities--dancing, Tai Chi, Kung Fu, aerobics, stretching, badminton, even card playing and bird watching. At 5:30 am. In addition, public health nurses were stationed at the edges of parks where people gathered to offer blood pressure screenings and informational packets about health and wellness. After working out, I noticed many people from the parks walking to nearby markets for their groceries. These morning activities brought people together in healthy ways, socially and personally.

A form of Qi Gong involving fans and bean bag-like mitts.
One of the ladies loaned me her props and I worked up a sweat in no time.

A public health nurse administers blood pressure screenings near a park's edge in the early morning hours.

2. Design for inter-generational interaction. Closely aligned with the prior observation, we know that interaction between people of different age groups is an important feature of healthy places. In America, we've observed the declining cohesion in the social fabric as our society has "advanced" the last 100 years and some research indicates that a similar trend could be possible in China. In Siping, I saw several examples of design effectively bringing  people of different ages together.

A piazza where elderly people gathered for afternoon dances and card games located near the pond where children like to fish for goldfish with tiny poles and buckets stored on site.

 A game that looked similar to croquet seemed popular with Siping's elderly folks.
Their field was situated adjacent to the childrens' play area.

3. Don't forget about the block scale in our sustainability policy. 

In Portland, there's a lot of talk about sustainable activities at the household, neighborhood, eco-district, and municipal scales. But beyond the parties during which neighbors take to their streets every summer, there isn't much talk about blocks. In Siping, I observed a lot of activity taking place at the block level. There were many blocks with uniquely decorated entryways, many appeared to have places for community announcements and even mail delivery. In some blocks, there were community composting bins and garbage bins at the ends of blocks.

The woman with the green bin is taking out her composting to the bin at the end of the block. (It seemed everyone on the block opened their doors for fresh air for an hour or so in the morning,)

It did not appear that Siping has household garbage collection. I saw people putting their trash in small bins near the ends of their blocks. A man with the yellow cart would pick it up and roll it to these neighborhood collection stations. Not sure how frequently this occurred, but I never saw trash piling up.

4. Leave room for informality. No one can argue that Portlanders don't value their neighborhood farmers markets and libraries, their community centers and parks. Portlanders work hard to keep their city livable. But sometimes, less is more. In Siping, I observed many informal activites that seemed to function quite smoothly with very little "official" intervention (and hence very little capital investment). Similar to the varied physical activities I observed  throughout Siping's parks, there were many informal markets and gathering spaces where people congregated, recreated and exchanged ideas and goods on a daily basis. Likewise, I saw a variety of people and activities occurring in the same spaces at different times over the course of several days.

Afternoon motorbike repairman sets up shop after the produce vendors from the morning "market" close up.

An example of a sidewalk vendor from the "morning market" near my hotel in Siping.

Men play cards at the end of the sidewalk near the edge of a housing development.

5. Seek outside advice. It's said that in Portland, we have meetings about meeting. We talk amongst ourselves about planning and politics and governance and community engagement. I found it admirable that Mayor Shi invited many outsiders to comment on his city's plans for the future. I hope Portland will continue to engage in a healthy, actively dialogue about its vision as a city. I also hope that Portland will stay receptive to feedback and critiques from outsiders about what we could be doing differently or better. Perhaps that's where First Stop Portland comes in, facilitating an inter-urban dialogue about sustainability and livability between Portland's best and brightest and the rest of the world...

Planning meeting in Siping as Portland's streetcar runs through PSU campus in the background.

Quebec to Portland: Vivre en Ville!

Last week, First Stop hosted members of an NGO from Quebec, Canada, called Vivre en Ville, whose focus is on smart growth, urban development, rural villages and urban livability. Their mission includes "stimulating innovation" across scales through strategic action. Their organization is engaged in all sorts of advocacy efforts from educating urban planners, to climate action research, mobility demonstration projects, public education campaigns and much more.

While here, they visited a range of sites from the New Urbanist development at Orenco Station, to urban TOD at The Belmont Dairy, to Kailash Eco-Village, a permaculture co-housing community in a renovated 1970s-era housing complex out where SE Holgate meets Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

Vivre en Ville learns about Kailash Ecovillage's "zero landfill" efforts.

They talked with local experts, too, like Linda Dobson, stormwater management expert from Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services; OHSU's development guru Brian Newman; placemaking advocate and City Repair Project co-founder Mark Lakeman; and Central City planning pro, Karl Lisle.

Planner Karl Lisle puts Portland's Central City 2035 Plan in context.

In addition to helping us brush up on our conversational French, we were excited about the tools Vivre en Ville shared with us. Our favorite was their animated film “Saga City,” through which they effectively translate a sophisticated message about urban development patterns and climate change. It is definitely worth watching the full 16 minutes of this awareness-raising short.

First Stop Goes to China, Part 1: Context is (almost) Everything

Submitted by: Sarah Iannarone
Assistant Director, First Stop Portland

Last week, I traveled to Siping City in the Jilin Province of Northern China at the invitation of Mayor Shi Guoxiang, who toured Portland with First Stop in the summer of 2011. Mayor Shi was convening a panel of global experts, and I was there to share insights from Portland as they related to the redevelopment planning of Siping’s urban transportation networks. I was honored to be invited yet slightly intimidated by the task. I study Portland for a living and comment on the strengths and weaknesses of its policies and practices weekly to visitors from around the world. However, commenting on another city’s plans for the future without understanding its history or current context felt daunting.

At first glance, the clover-shaped ring road plan as proposed by Siping’s leaders seemed outdated by American standards, a throwback to the Robert Moses era of urban transportation planning: visionary, undertaken on a grand scale, and covering wide swaths of the urban landscape with asphalt. It’s certainly not how we do transportation planning in Portland today, where we have policies to insure access in our urban core for transit, bicycles, and pedestrians. Despite its shortcomings, Siping’s plan smacked of what I call Portland’s aspirational approach: we don’t just try to accommodate future growth; rather, we try  to build the city of our dreams--sometimes more successfully than others. Siping’s dreams for its future were evident in its new transportation plan, however different they might be from Portland’s.

The interior of Northern China is growing rapidly and Siping is an important regional transportation hub. Although still primarily agricultural (corn and livestock, mostly) Jilin Province, where Siping is located, is rapidly industrializing, its population rapidly urbanizing, and its urban areas rapidly developing. It even boasts a booming automotive industry. It’s no wonder, then, that many of the values expressed in the Siping plan were related to promoting economic growth while making room for more people and their new automobiles in Siping’s urban spaces.

 What a challenge, then, for a relatively affluent Westerner like myself, who has conscientiously spent the last few years downwardly mobilizing (from auto to bike, from single-family home to co-housing) to comment on Siping’s industrial-age visions of condominiums with modern appliances and a car for every family.

Fortunately, addressing the same questions we continually come up against here at First Stop Portland came in handy while in China. Which ideas translate well from place to place? Are there universally applicable ideas and others which are purely contextual? How do we share stories about what works well for us without seeming pedantic and how do we learn from others by listening to their stories? These were the questions that informed my approach while in Siping and here’s what I ultimately shared from Portland with them:

• Intentionally build the city you want to live in. In Portland, we’ve collectively determined, as reflected in the recently released Portland Plan, that we value a place that is healthy and accessible for all of our citizens. This is evident in the investments in transit, recycling and waste reduction, green building, sustainable food systems and civic engagement we’ve made the last few decades. In addition, Portland’s Climate Action Plan is our road map for lessening our city’s carbon footprint and we’re consciously choosing, through policy and action, to de-prioritize the automobile in urban space. We hear repeatedly from local experts that investments work when they result in a place where people want to live.
• Integrate transportation and land use planning. This is something First Stop makes sure its visitors hear time and again during their visits. At the regional scale, centers of employment can be connected with transit; in neighborhoods, housing patterns can encourage walking and biking. 

• Think in systems. Building on the previous point, thinking about the relationships between 20 minute neighborhoods and regional economic development, between good neighborhood schools and public health, between housing and transportation are all part of Portland’s goals. While we’ve still got a long way to go in realizing them, understanding these relationships and working to optimize them is essential.  

• It’s all about the relationships. Connecting people to place and to each other in place is a key to Portland’s livability. From block parties and farmer’s markets in neighborhoods to the complex public-private partnerships that result in Portland’s largest ventures, reliable, place-based relationships underscore many of Portland’s successes.  

Rapid development in China is a given; whether the country will transition to a greener way of growing remains to be seen. Many aspects of the Siping plan hint at a more sustainable future, like reducing the number of automobile lanes on their arterials to make room for separate bike and pedestrian thoroughfares as well as an emphasis on improving public transit, including a bike-sharing program. More troubling is Siping's means of assessing transportation demand: forecast population growth and add a car for every adult and a downtown parking space for every car.

Development in Siping's West End

Special thanks to Dick Feeney, Andy Cotugno, Peter Koonce, Richard Brandman, and Todd Borkowitz for sharing their transportation planning insights prior to my trip.

A slideshow of my favorite images of the ways people move themselves about Siping City.




Coming in Part 2: Lessons for Portland from Siping