ECO PIONEERS
IT’S GOT AMBITIOUS BICYCLE PLANS, GYMS POWERED BY HUMAN ENERGY AND THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF LEED PLATINUM-CERTIFIED BUILDINGS IN AMERICA. MAGALI ROBATHAN FINDS OUT WHY PORTLAND, OREGON IS REGULARLY VOTED THE US’S GREENEST CITY
MODEL CITY K
nown for its rose gardens, its creative culture and its environmental awareness, Portland has long had a rep- utation as a city ahead of its
time, and regularly tops polls for the greenest US city. From sustainable transport to town planning, green build- ing to free bike initiatives, the city has been leading the way in terms of envi- ronmental policy for many years. In 1971, Oregon introduced the fi rst ‘bottle bill’ recycling programme in the US, in order to address the state’s growing litter problem and reduce the amount of waste going to landfi ll. In 1993, Portland became the fi rst local government in the US to adopt a strat- egy to reduce carbon emissions, with
the introduction of its Global Warming Reduction Strategy. Carbon emissions are now 26 per cent lower per person than they were in 1990, in contrast with the trend elsewhere in the US. In 2000, Portland City Council
created an Offi ce of Sustainable Development, and in 2009 was the fi rst US city to merge its planning and sustainability departments to form the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. “I really wanted to change it so sus- tainability is the default of all policy, of all management, of all planning deci- sions," said Mayor Sam Adams of the decision to merge the two functions. The bureau has saved more than $18m in energy costs for the city by implementing a range of innovative
Portland, Oregon is situated at the confl uence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers
measures including re-timing traffi c lights to minimise the amount of time cars spend idling, saving more than 17 million gallons of gas a year.
CYCLING PORTLAND The city has an active farmers' market scene, encouraging people to buy local produce 50 Read Leisure Management online
leisuremanagement.co.uk/digital
Thanks to its urban cycling efforts, Portland has long been seen as a bike-friendly city, and in 2010 it was voted the second best bicycling city in the world after Amsterdam by the League of American Bicyclists. Portland’s fi rst bicycle plan was adopted in 1973, calling for the cre- ation of almost 190 miles of bike infrastructure in the city. By 1996, this had been achieved, and the city adopted a new bicycle plan, which called for a further 445 miles of bicy- cle infrastructure to be built by 2016. In 1994, Oregon activists Tom O’Keefe, Joe Keating and Steve Gunther launched The Yellow Bike Project, one of the US’s fi rst commu- nity bicycle programmes. It started with 10 old bikes, donated by Portland’s Community Cycling Center, a local non-profi t cycling centre. The bikes were repaired by trainee bike mechanics at the centre, painted yel-
ISSUE 3 2012 © cybertrek 2012
PHOTO: BRUCE FORSTER
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