Community Engagement

visionPDX was the result, a city-supported, community-led initiative to create a vision for Portland's development for the next 20 years and beyond. The goal of Portland Future Focus (PFF) was to engage citizens in creating a vision of Portland in the year 2000. This vision, born from the values and expressed needs of Portlanders, would shape a strategic plan outlining clear and definable goals and strategies to guide Portland’s growth and to ensure that the city’s future was a self-determined one, rather than a mere adaptation of its circumstance and surroundings. Portland Future Focus was an ambitious initiative, and boasted broad-scale involvement for a city of its size.

visionPDX was the result, a city-supported, community-led initiative to create a vision for Portland's development for the next 20 years and beyond. The project emphasized engaging traditionally under-represented and under-involved communities: from immigrant and refugees to sexual minorities to cultural creatives. visionPDX worked with three theater companies to create unique settings for dialogue. Mobile installations like the high-tech Vision Vessel and the grassroots T-Horse were used to interact with people in their communities. Almost 40 organizations were interviewed about barriers to engagement and ways to overcome them.

The Lower Italian Market Revitalization project focuses on a crucial commercial corridor center of South Philadelphia that have been dominated by vacant storefronts. In an effort to reverse the proliferation of vacant storefronts, crime, trash and blight in the Lower Italian Market area, a group of architects, designers, planners, and policy makers formed the Planning & Design Committee of the Passyunk Square Civic Association (PSCA). The Plan addresses green elements, public art, and contemporary concepts that specifically apply to this dense urban area. Interest among residents about PSCA's revitalization plan was so high that the community formed a new committee to implement its recommendations.