What kind of world have we made when our families won’t let our kids walk or bike to school? Danger, fear, obesity, dependency.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Portland has made great strides with a “build it and they will come” approach to bicycle facilities, with advocates from the community led by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance insisting the many people wouldn’t ride until there were bike lanes and bike parking in place. Since 2000, bike use has skyrocketed past bike lane installation rates. But how about the kids?

source: Safe Routes to School, Portland Survey results pdf

Kids don’t need to be convinced that cycling is fun. And being free of the hovering parent unit is even more fun. But parents are the ones needing convincing. This is where the Safe Routes to School program comes in. It is provides comfort to concerned parents as well as making cycling and walking a community-approved activity. Not dangerous. Not weird. And the kids love it!

And it works as seen in the drop of chaffeuring by parents and rise in walking and cycling numbers. Of course, this requires cities that have sidewalks, safe crossings and bike lanes.

Package delivery, Kyoto style

As reported by Tim Redmond in last week’s San Francisco Bay Guardian: “Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University,lays out that case in a new book, Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco. He argues, persuasively, that the era of easy “automobility” — a time when people could just assume the ease and convenience of owning and using a private car as a primary means of transportation — has come to an end.

Henderson isn’t suggesting that all private vehicles go away; there are places where cars and trucks will remain the only way to move people and supplies around. But in the urban and suburban areas where most Americans live, the automobile as the default option simply has to end.

‘In 10 years, there will be less automobility,’ he said in a recent interview. ‘It’s a simple limit to resources.’

And the sooner San Francisco [Portland and every other city, too] starts preparing for that, the better off the city and its residents are going to be.”

The year was 2000, and the Portland Public Schools was buffeted by another year of reduced funding. Oregon reeled economically with the dot.com bust. Outdoor School was to be a casualty. My son was in 7^th grade, attending the Environmental Middle School in Portland. Fresh off a great experience the year before at Outdoor School, his classmates sprang into action, somehow connecting with the owner of the Great Harvest Bakery and getting him to donate the proceeds from sales for a few days. The kids invited all their families and friends to the Bakery and worked the counters ringing up sales of loaves, cookies and… delicious, whole wheat, sticky buns, my favorite. I was hooked. Grassroots fundraising and pressure on the PPS School Board succeeding in saving Outdoor School that year but the threat returned year after year and many school districts are still struggling or have given up.

That year I was elected to the Metro Council, the regional government in Portland chartered by the voters to “preserve and enhance the quality of life and the environment for ourselves and future generations” through planning and providing regional services like the Oregon Zoo, parks and natural areas and recycling and solid waste management.

What’s less well known is how deeply Metro is involved in conservation education. Metro reaches tens of thousands through programs at the Oregon Zoo and in regional parks like Oxbow but also with workshops and consultations like Recycle at Work and Transportation Options. Always being one to wonder how we can do what we do even better, I took on improving how Metro itself was delivering its messages about conservation. As might be expected of any large agency, a lot was going on but not in a very coordinated fashion. In addition, there was a big disconnect between what Metro was doing and what was going on out in the community with major players like Portland Audubon, OMSI and of course, Outdoor School.

In 2006, I convened conservation educators from throughout the region, over 60 people came to OMSI full of ideas of how we could get better by working more closely together. Lots of good came out of that first and subsequent meetings. But I heard a major warning signal, too. When I asked the assembly of experienced educators what their #1 priority would be in enhancing conservation education in the region, they unanimously chorused “Saving Outdoor School is priority number one!”

They valued Outdoor School for the same reasons the Metro Council would eventually dedicate almost a million dollars a year to supporting Outdoor School for every child in the Portland metro region: it works. With its blend of rigorous, science-based education and challenging young people to examine their role in their communities and in the world, Outdoor School is effective at engaging kids’ imaginations, their hearts and their heads. They really understand the challenges we face around natural resource use and conservation. Some become teachers, many will volunteer as student counselors, some will go into science as a career. But almost to a kid, they all leave their time at Outdoor School inspired and empowered as citizens.

That’s why I am still committed to make Outdoor School for Everyone a reality. I am part of the coalition that pushing the State of Oregon to step up and fund Outdoor School again statewide. Representative Jules Bailey sponsored HB2516 to do just that. Support is strong in the Legislature for Outdoor School because legislators recognize how important it is for all Oregonians to know about the natural resources we depend on and treasure. Getting money is always a struggle but I am hopeful that with Oregon’s spirit of innovation and a little pluck, we will once again see kids from Ontario to Gold Beach, Astoria to Joseph out in the woods learning about science and life.

Watch Outdoor School on PBS. See more from Oregon Field Guide.

And From KATU

Yet, only 40 years ago this river and most others in the United States were dead zones, maybe supporting the odd carp or catfish that can thrive in low oxygen, polluted waters but empty of most other life. In the case of the Willamette River, untreated sewage and outfalls from pulp mills overloaded the river with nutrients, turning it into a stinky mess. (a fairly long film from the 1940s Oregon State University archives Update below).

Years of activism and citizen effort, beginning in the 1930s as shown here with the Mayor of Portland leading a kid’s crusade, led to state and federal laws regulating municipal sewer systems as well as industrial waste. The Clean Water and Clean Air Acts were signed into law by President Richard Nixon and the world began to change.

I remember still my Boy Scout canoe trips that included floating sewage but no ospreys or eagles. I didn’t see my first bald eagle until I was 16 on my first trip to the ocean where we saw both along the unpolluted Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Its a great success to see our rivers supporting life and recreation again. Can’t wait til it warms up a bit more and its swimming season on the Willamette!

There is still work to be done, of course. 150 years of abuse left long-lived toxins in the sediments, especially near Oregon City and in the Portland Harbor. The Willamette RiverKeeper and others keep on eye on things and lead fun trips to engage people with this incredible resource.

My friend Marc with the St Johns Bridge in the background

UPDATE: From Jim Swenson: This film was produced by the Isaak Walton League of Oregon (the late Connie McCready’s dad, an Ike leader, can be seen to the right of the big drum wearing the hat.) It was one of the first uses of color Kodachrome locally to bring out the color of the pollution plumes. It moved Oregon voters to by-pass a reluctant legislature in creating the State Sanitary Authority, precursor to DEQ.

“Audubon Society of Portland, Columbia Land Trust and Friends of Tryon Creek have teamed up to create a unique Backyard Habitat Certification Program.

The Backyard Habitat Certification Program provides assistance and incentives to residents on lots less than one acre, within the cities of Portland and Lake Oswego, to restore native wildlife habitat in their backyards. There are four program elements: removal of aggressive weeds, naturescaping with native plants, stormwater management and wildlife stewardship.”

I’ve gone through this process and converted a city lot (5000 square feet) from lawn and shrubbery into a Gold level Habitat with rain gardens absorbing all my roof runoff, ferns, shrubs, berry plants and even a small meadow in less than a year and for under $1000, going mostly for dirt and debris removal and walk materials. Plants are available at low cost from the program as well as from local Soil and Water Conservation Districts.

But, so what if my yard looks good and attracts some cool birds (Cooper’s Hawk on the hunt!)? Can restoring native habitat “one yard at a time” really have a beneficial impact? I contacted Nikki West at Portland Audubon and got this overview (3/28/13):

“We have about 1575 program participants (give or take 5) spanning over 300 acres of the urban landscape. About 35% of those are certified, the other 65% are “in progress”. 100% of them have received a site visits, educational materials, incentives, a site report and the ongoing newsletter. On the about 450 certified yards, we have tracked the installation of over 6100 native shrubs and trees. I should note though, that this figure is grossly understated, because the program didn’t start tracking tree/shrub #s until about 2 yrs ago.”

Density of certified sites: Note the heavy concentration in the “nature-less” north and east side of Portland.

This project is breaking new ground with its high level of training, planting advice and data collection as well as building a community of gardeners focusing on native plants.

It would cost about $60 million to acquire the same 300 acres of prime urban real estate if we were to try and buy this land for habitat (at $200,000 for unimproved land inside the urban growth boundary–a very low price).

Nikki continues on about national efforts. “Cornell Lab of Ornithology recently launched an interesting online tool called yardmap. Its a flashy, interactive, sophisticated citizen science website for reporting habitat features in your yard. I think a lot of people are going to love it. Personally, I got about 20 minutes into mapping my yard’s habitat features online before I got fed up and wanted to go outside to actually stick my hands in the dirt.”

And a final word from Nikki:

“To me the value of the Portland Audubon – Columbia Land Trust Backyard Habitat Certification Program is that we’re actually having face-to-face conversations with people, in their yards, measuring the real change on the landscape, and connecting them to important conservation issues here at home. Plus, we’re targeting areas of high ecological potential, effectively increasing the value of local natural areas (there are about 25 certified yards within 1000ft of Baltimore Woods (in North Portland), building wildlife corridors, and working to reach neighborhoods that are under-natured.”

How many times have you heard someone say that buses and bike lanes are such wastes of money because they have seen them empty? The bike counter on the Hawthorne Bridge helps dispel some of that notion by making the barely visible, more visible. And, of course, only running buses when they would be full would be like only opening roads for rush hour.

Now that’s an idea! Here are a few shots of downtown streets I took during the week. Wouldn’t it be nice to have wider sidewalks, say, with room for seating around the food carts, and maybe even some cycle tracks. Looks like there’s enough room to me!

SW Alder: lunchtime!

After years of working to make streets safer for cycling in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, it is a bit disconcerting to come somewhere with much higher walking and cycling numbers than Portland and find that very few cyclists use the streets and very few streets are signed/marked for cycling, even though legal. Mothers taking their children to school, salarymen on the way to and from work, students and deliverymen fill the sidewalks–weaving and bobbing among the walkers. A recipe for chaos? So it would seem, but the system works even if its a bit nerve-wracking to a visitor. (And did I mention they ride on the left!?!?!?)

But even in a huge city like Osaka, (2.2 million in Osaka proper in a region of 8.8 million, one third of Japan’s population), once you get off the main arterials, you enter neighborhoods where the streets are quiet with slow moving cars, bikes and walkers sharing narrow roadways. On street parking is rare, and off street spaces very expensive, so there is little of jumble and dodge and weave required when parked cars form obstacle courses. I saw just a few separated cycle paths, and they were along riverways, shared with a few walkers.

Enjoy this little picture show from Japan!

Empire of the Automobile is a mini documentary made by BiciCultura, of Santiago, Chile. Includes the interesting data that recent studies by the Chilean Environment Ministry found that 70% of noise in Santiago is caused by traffic. And that more deaths come from auto-originating pollution than from traffic crashes (about 4,000 per year).

2013 Vanguard conference
June 10-12 | Cleveland, Ohio

Vanguard, an annual conference hosted by Next City and held this year in Cleveland, gathers the country’s best and brightest urban advocates. Applications are due by April 26, 2013. Selected participants will be notified by May 1, 2013. The Vanguard class will be publicly announced by May 10, 2013.

According to the Vanguard website:

Our attendees are high-level, creative and ambitious people under 40 who seek to improve their cities and work for local non-profit organizations, in city government, as social entrepreneurs, artists and in other related fields. Each year, we select 40 people who have demonstrated their ability to have an impact on their city or the national dialogue about urban issues and bring them together for an inspiring series of presentations, workshops, tours and other activities.

In order to apply for Next American City Vanguard, you must be a current Forefront subscriber. Email liz@nextcity.org with questions.