The Portland Plan: Urban forestry chapter

For the first time since 1980, the City of Portland is rewriting its codes and policies, including urban forestry.

Eric Engstrom of the Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability (BPS)—the bureau spearheading the all-encompassing Portland Plan—presented to the Urban Forestry Commission last Thursday on their specific topic and the overall status of the project.

Calling it the “master plan of all the different city master plans,” Engstrom said the BPS is striving for a three-year action plan that will achieve multiple benefits.

He then asked the commission for a preliminary list of potential actions that the Portland Plan can stress in the area of urban forestry, mentioning the greenhouse gas performance of the city, maintenance costs of actions, equity issues and other “key elements and umbrella issues.”

Another large issue will be integrating the forest plan with the land-use plan and sorting out the conflicts between those two things, said Engstrom.

“That boils down to figuring out if we’ve made room for trees within our development code,” he said.

Besides the urban forestry commissioners, all area citizens are encouraged to take part in the planning phase of all nine ‘action areas’ that make up the Portland Plan. The urban forestry component falls under ‘Sustainability & the Natural Environment,’ and the ‘Design, Planning & Public Spaces’ portions of the Portland Plan.

For an overview of the urban forestry project, visit here. Users are encouraged to create a Portland online user profile then comment on the Web site. There is also a survey available (due March 31), a community events and planning sessions calendar, and a 147-minute long video from a December workshop at the University of Oregon.

Here is the general email: [email protected]

–Toshio Suzuki