Oregon Historical Society p p ijliwipjiip A reflection of the City Beautiful movement, Edward Bennett's 1912 plan for the city envisioned a stately boulevard running from West Burnside to a new Union Station. mobiles, local neighborhood enhancement efforts to mitigate the negative effects of higher densities, and consideration of a three-tier government in the metropolitan area—regional, municipal and neighborhood. But the question of a long-range vision for the community—anticipating where we actually wanted Portland to go, rather than being bullied along by trends and crises—was never really addressed until the City Club of Portland formed its Vision Committee. A direct response to the inadequacies of the Portland Comprehensive Plan, the Vision Committee accepted testimony from expert witnesses and conducted polls on a positive direction for the city's future. And, in a departure from the traditional role of reviewing and reporting, it recommended that the City Club take an active leadership role in implementing its recommendations. The City Club agreed. It was a distinct commitment to the visioning process. The committee's Report on a Vision of Portland's Future (1980), while recognizing the realities of a growing local population, diminished resources, inflated costs of goods and services and the forcing effect of all these things on living and decision-making at the local level, offered a potential vision for a different Portland in the year 2000, supported by scores of mini-visions. The Vision Report also made a serious attempt to assess the impact of "emerging issues" on the area, particularly the revolution in telecommunications and the implications of moving information rather than people. It was the first time any citizen's study in the community had taken such an approach. Its aggregate vision for the city was positive, humanistic and noticeably decentralized. Included among its glimpses of Portland 2000: • The city, in large part, will become a transit- and pedestrian-oriented place, with small cars used for occasional personal or business trips, and bicycles and mopeds common as auxiliary transportation. • The intelligent use of interactive cable TV and computers will expand public knowledge of major issues and increase the public level of participation in the government process. • Small, clean, low-capital and low traffic businesses will be run from private homes or from other locations within the district, relying on communications technology and advanced electronics in their operation. • Condominiums and other cooperative forms of ownership will increase, being built as planned unit developments to offer the amenities of lower density housing to residents and neighbors. • Schools will be expanded into full-time, multi-service community centers to offer, among other things, day-care, drop-in centers for the elderly, computer terminals for those without home access, and personal and vocational counseling. • "Wellness Clinics" will be a part of neighborhood community centers, where the emphasis will be on encouraging and maintaining physical and mental health through a variety of programs. The disarming quality of such rich, literal images was that once they had entered the public consciousness, they became impossible to ignore. Portland's legitimate concerns for the future could be seen in a newer context. Solutions of a different order were conceivable. It was in this way that the Vision Report began to nudge many civic leaders into the realm of the possible. It was a clear demonstration that a positive vision of the future could act as a catalyst for the necessary change. What was now needed was a way to draw the wider community and region into an actual visioning process for the area. Government alone could not do it because it had limited ability to plan and innovate new directions and even less assurance of widespread public support. At the same time, the many local citizen and private sector efforts to innovate change would easily remain ineffective 42
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