Sustainability History Project

In his post “Future City: Portland & Networked Urban Sustainability,” Alex Aylett provides a look “at some of the hits and misses of climate change policy in Portland (OR).” He sought to provide more than “just a summary of one city’s programs” to identify evidence of what he sees as “an important shift in the way cities are pursuing sustainability.”

Aylett finds that many cities in throughout the world are entering a new era of implementing sustainable practices, an era in which “retrofitting City Hall is nice, but the real game revolves around how we plan and travel through our cities, how we build and run our buildings, and how we make and use energy.” This “new phase of urban sustainability” is one in which the low-hanging fruit has been harvested (so to speak) and “cities are being pushed to tackle the really tough issues.”

Portland, according to Aylett, is “one of a handful of American cities that is really embracing the challenges of networked sustainability,” as evidenced by a number of organizations and projects in the area, including: Clean Energy Works Portland (CEWP); Green Building initiatives to achieve LEED certifications; and ecodistricts & the Portland Sustainability Institute (PoSI).

Readers interested in learning more about Portland or modern urban environments broadly are encouraged to read Aylett’s blog “openalex: cities & sustainability: reinventing the good life,” navigate to his article cited above, and to peruse as well his the other Portland-specific articles he has written, including:

** “city repair: (re)building the cities we want”
** “changing a city: inside portland’s 80% by 2050 target

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