Blogtown, PDX: Meet the Contenders - Question #3

The Portland Mercury's Blogtown, PDX site has been producing a weekly series of questions for the various candidates running in the Portland mayor and city council races. This series is a great way to meet the candidates and learn about the issues affecting the public and Portland city government. We're reproducing (with permission) Chris's responses here, while also providing links to the original Blogtown posts.

Question #3:

(Original Post from Jan. 3, 2008)

In your opinion, what is Portland’s most pressing problem? If elected, what would you do about it?

Chris's Response:

Think globally, act locally. The most pressing problems facing Portland are the same as those facing global society: the twin threats of Peak Oil and Global Warming. This generation of leadership will either address these challenges effectively or all successive generations will suffer for our failure.

While cities cannot solve the problem alone, all solutions involve the critical participation of cities, and Portland has the opportunity to lead the way. About one-third of carbon footprint is from transportation, and another third is from buildings, and cities have tremendous influence over both transportation and buildings. Portland is ahead of most cities, holding greenhouse gas levels to approximately 1990 levels, but we must do much more.

The key will be to use the influx of 300,000 new residents in the next 20 years to help shape the city in a more sustainable pattern. By focusing housing for these new neighbors in corridors well served by transit, we have the opportunity not only to house these folks in a more sustainable pattern, but to provide employment and services in new clusters that will help reduce miles driven for many of us who are already here – either by helping support new transportation choices, or by locating the things we visit daily much closer to our homes.

Indeed, as Portland proves out these solutions, we have the opportunity to prosper by selling the knowledge and products involved to other cities around the country and the world. Sustainability will be a major industry cluster for Portland and our region. We can already see the seeds of this in the efforts to establish local manufacturing of Streetcar vehicles.

I’ve worked on these issues at the neighborhood, city and regional scales and have the policy knowledge and skills to help make this pattern of development happen.