Portland design commissioners on Thursday grappled with how to respond to a push by the City Council to reform the design review process.

City councilors in December unanimously approved requiring preparation of a report on design review, including options for a temporary suspension of its requirements. The report will also study design review’s economic impacts, process and use of design overlay zones and historic districts.

Portland Permitting & Development and Planning and Sustainability will prepare the report for City Administrator Raymond Lee. It is due on April 9.

In 2025, the city issued only 22 new construction permits for multifamily projects amid city and state officials pushing for more housing. But design commissioners said design review should not be blamed for the slowdown in multifamily construction.

“My concern is just that if not taken with full context, certain numbers and charts can reveal different things to different people,” said Commissioner Sarah Vaz, who asked whether impacts such as rising construction costs and inclusionary housing requirements would be considered.

A senior city staffer noted that the review is part of a wider City Council effort to remove barriers to development and to encourage development.

“There’s wide recognition that there’s many factors, and I don’t think anyone is saying that design review is why we are in the situation we find ourselves in now,” Chief City Planner Patricia Diefenderfer said.

Design review gives residents a chance to be heard, Design Commission Chairwoman Chandra Robinson said.

“Design review is a time when the public is able to come provide testimony,” Robinson said. “It’s the time when they’re able to get their voices on the record, and I think it’s an important part of the process that they’re able to share their thoughts on proposals in their neighborhood.”

Commissioners said members of the public are often unclear about the limitations of their power.

Design review “cannot change the heights, the (floor area ratio requirements), the zoning, the required parking or not parking, what a property owner can do with his property,” Commissioner Zari Santner said. “We cannot dictate those.”

Robinson agreed, saying residents often urge the Design Commission to require parking or a grocery store as part of a larger development — something the commission cannot do.

Santner said design review represents a “social pact” with city residents: Essentially, a promise that if residents allow taller, denser development, zoning and design review will ensure that it “improves the quality of life for people in neighborhoods where the development is happening.”

Commissioners did point out some potential improvements. Application requirements could be better aligned with project phasing, Vaz said. Applications can often require too much detail, too early in the process, when architects haven’t worked out items such as lighting, she said.

Members of the public who testified Thursday said they want to be able to weigh in early in a project’s review process, before the developer has fully shaped the development.

City staffers assigned to the forthcoming report will hold a similar meeting on Monday with the Historic Landmarks Commission. After the council receives the report in April, the group could weigh possible code changes.

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Two Portland city councilors are pushing a resolution to reform the city’s design review process and perhaps provide a temporary exemption for housing proposals.

The effort represents a serious challenge to design review, which is overseen by Portland Permitting & Development. Developers have long blamed the process for delaying construction and adding costs, but supporters say it improves the design of proposed buildings that go through review and allows the public to weigh in on what’s built in the city.

Councilors Angelita Morillo and Eric Zimmerman are sponsoring the resolution, which will be discussed during Wednesday’s meeting. It directs the city administrator to deliver a report to the council within 120 days. The report would:

• include an overview of the types of design review, along with design overlay zones, design districts and historic districts to which design guidelines apply, and
• offer an economic impact analysis of design review on commercial and residential development timelines during the past five years, and projections for the next five years.

The city administrator would then provide options for a temporary exemption from design review and propose potential changes to the city code that underpins the design review process.

Design review “gets talked a lot about as a barrier, but what is the barrier gets a little fuzzy,” Zimmerman said Monday.

The report will “allow us to cut to the chase,” he added. “I would like to hear from the staff – what do they think are the most attackable problems?”

The design review study dovetails with other efforts to facilitate development in Portland. In July, the City Council approved a three-year waiver on system development charges for housing projects.

It’s still an “open question” whether a moratorium on design review would affect commercial projects as well as housing proposals, Zimmerman said.

He expressed concern that design review could deter unique proposals.

Local developers “know what gets through design review,” he said. “That worries me a little bit, because I want to see someone push the envelope a bit as far as awesomeness or uniqueness or density.”

Permitting & Development is open to discussing design review reform, according to agency spokesman Ken Ray.

“We look forward to working with the City Council on ways to bring more flexibility into design review to ensure the process supports thoughtful growth and investment in Portland’s buildings that meets the needs of the people who live, work and do business in them,” Ray stated in an email on Monday.

Design review has come under fire in other cities, including Seattle, where the process has become a roadblock to development.

“We can all agree that nice-looking buildings are a good thing and probably make it more popular to build stuff, but we can’t agree on what nice looking means,” said Michael Andersen, who studies cities for the nonprofit Sightline Institute. “It’s not something you can achieve from regulation.”

Portland’s design review process isn’t as dysfunctional as Seattle’s was before the Seattle City Council suspended design review requirements in September, Andersen said.

“F�ǰ��ٳܲԲ��ٱ����, Portland Design Commission hasn’t been utterly ridiculous,” he said. “But anytime you introduce discretion, you introduce risk.”

Bruce Studer, president of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, said there’s an appetite to streamline design review in Portland.

“I think people would want a little bit smarter way to go through design review,” he said. “I don’t think just being able to block things by stalling it out is something we want to have. You want developers to be able to build things that are smart, sustainable and create lasting growth.”

The Design Commission is composed of seven members who serve staggered four-year terms for up to eight years. Members hail from architecture, development, landscape architecture, arts and related fields, along with a member representing the public at large.

Zimmerman and Morillo’s resolution passed the council’s Climate, Resilience and Land Use Committee on Nov. 13 by a 4-0 vote.

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BOSTON — After years of living on the street and crashing on friends’ couches, Quantavia Smith was given the keys to a Los Angeles studio apartment that came with an important perk — easy access to public transit.

The 38-year-old feels like she went from a life where “no one cares” to one where she has a safe place. And the metro station the apartment complex was literally built upon is a lifeline as she searches for work without a car.

“It is more a sense of relief, a sense of independence,” said Smith, who moved into the unit in July. She receives some government assistance and pays 30 percent of her income for rent — just $19 a month for an efficiency apartment with a full-market value of $2,000.

“Having your own space, you feel like you can do anything,” she said.

Metro areas from Los Angeles to Boston have taken the lead in tying new housing developments to public transit, often teaming up with developers to streamline the permitting process and passing policies that promote developments that include a greater number of units.

Building housing near public transit helps energize neglected neighborhoods and provide affordability, city officials say, while ensuring a steady stream of riders for transit systems and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the number of cars on the road.

“Transit-oriented development should be one of, if not the biggest solution that we’re looking at for housing,” said Urban Institute Land Use Lab research director Yonah Freemark, who has written extensively on the topic. “It takes advantage of all of this money we’ve spent on transportation infrastructure. If you build the projects and don’t build anything around the areas near them, then it’s kind of like money thrown down the drain.”

The Santa Monica and Vermont Apartments, where Smith lives, is part of an ambitious plan by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build 10,000 housing units near transit sites by 2031 — offering developers land discounts in exchange for affordable housing development and other community benefits.

In Washington, D.C., the transit authority since 2022 has completed eight projects that provided nearly 1,500 apartments and a million square feet of office space. About half were in partnership with Amazon, which committed $3.6 billion in low-cost loans and grants for affordable housing projects in Washington, as well as Nashville, Tennessee, and the Puget Sound area in Washington state. Almost all are within a half-mile of public transit.

“Big cities face the greatest challenges when it comes to traffic congestion and high housing costs,” Freemark said. “Building new homes near transit helps address both problems by encouraging people to take transit while increasing housing supply.”

In Boston, the Pok Oi Residents in Chinatown is a 10-minute walk to the subway and a half-dozen bus stops. That’s a draw for Bernie Hernandez, who moved his family there from a Connecticut suburb after his daughter was accepted into a Boston university.

“The big difference is commuting; you don’t need a car,” said Hernandez, who said he can walk to the grocery story and pharmacy. His 17-year-old daughter takes the subway to school. Now, his car mostly sits idle, saving him money on gas and time spent in traffic.

“You get to go to different places very quickly,” Hernandez said. “Everything is convenient.”

States across the country are passing laws targeting restrictive zoning regulations that for decades prohibited multifamily construction and contributed to housing shortages.

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a state law allowing taller apartment buildings on land owned by transit agencies and near bus, train and subway lines.

“Building more homes in our most sustainable locations is the key to tackling the affordability crisis and locking in California’s success for many years to come,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, who authored the bill.

California joins Colorado, which requires cities to allow an average of 40 housing units per acre within a quarter-mile of transit, and Utah, which mandates about 50 units per acre. In Washington, the governor this year signed a bill allowing taller housing developments in mixed-use commercial zones near transit.

“We want to ensure that there are mixed-income, walkable, vibrant homes all around those transit investments and that people have the option of using cars less to improve the environmental health of our communities,” said Rep. Julia Reed, who authored the Washington bill. “It’s about giving people the opportunity to drive less and live more.”

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has made housing a priority. Among her most potent tools is a 2021 law that requires 177 towns or communities nearby to create zoning districts allowing multifamily development. The state provided nearly $8 million to more than 150 communities to help create these zones and threatened to cut funding for those that don’t. More than 6,000 housing units are in development as a result.

“You put housing nearby public transit (and) it’s great for people,” Healey said. “They can literally get up, leave their home, walk to a commuter rail and get to work.”

Among the first to comply was Lexington, which has approved 10 projects, including a $115 million complex with 187 housing units and retail space.

Walking past earth-moving equipment and dump trucks at the construction site earlier this year, project manager Quinlan Locke said: “This is a landscape yard. It’s commercial. It’s meant for trucking. Two years from now, it’s going to be meant for people who live here, work here and play here. This is going to become someone’s home.”

Some advocates argue the lofty goals of transit-oriented housing are falling short due to fierce local resistance and lack of funding and support at the federal and state levels.

Higher mortgage interest rates, more government red tape, rising construction costs and lack of investment at transit stations also have contributed to a troubling trend — nine times more housing units built far from public transit versus near it in the past two decades, according to a 2023 Urban Institute study.

In Massachusetts, 19 communities still haven’t created new zones. Some unsuccessfully sued the state to halt the law, while residents rejected new zones in others. Lexington eventually shrank its zone from 227 acres to 90 acres after residents complained.

“If we allow the state to come in and dictate how we zone, what else are they going to come in and dictate?” said Anthony Renzoni, a selectman from the town of Holden, which sued the state and is drawing up a new zoning map after residents rejected the first one.

In Los Angeles, the six-story complex where Smith lives in East Hollywood is home to 300 new residents since opening in February. The area has gained a Filipino grocery and a medical clinic. A farmers market is set to open early next year.

Half of the building’s 187 units are reserved for formerly homeless residents like Smith, who had been living in a rundown motel via a voucher and before that on the street. She’s been assigned a case worker and is getting help with basic life skills, budgeting and finding work.

Equally important: Smith, who can’t afford a car, doesn’t need one.

“I’m very, very fortunate to be somewhere where the transit takes me where I want to go,” she said. “Where I want to go is not that far.”

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Multnomah County will soon issue a request for proposals (RFP) from parties interested in partnering in its Walnut Park redevelopment project.

In 2018, the county began evaluating future options for the 74-year-old Walnut Park Complex it owns and operates on 1.7 acres at 5329 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The building houses the Northeast Health Center, a dental clinic, a Meals on Wheels dining center, and the Urban League of Portland‘s Multicultural Senior Center. It is also home to county offices and service centers, including the Department of County Human Services, its Aging, Disability and Veterans Services Division, and a Homeless Services Department shelter, a county press release states.

Four years later, JM Woolley & Associates, Black Investment Consortium for Economic Progress (BICEP), and Cascadia Partners led a redevelopment feasibility study. The conceptual plan included a mix of housing, ground-floor commercial space, office space, community space, and updated and expanded county service space, a Multnomah County staff report states. The intent of the project is to create space to serve the Black community and people of color. The development will be designed and programmed as a community healing and service center, the feasibility report states.

Since the study was completed, the county has explored cost and financing options for the project. A partnership with a developer will help Multnomah County manage the project’s impact on its finances and leverage outside funding.

Multnomah County purchasing manager Brian Smith said staff approached the Board of Commissioners earlier in the development process for approval to look at more options for project delivery and financing.

“I’m very confident that we will be able to – we’re working on the RFP right now – to get a developer on board who will work with us and be able to balance the fiscal responsibility with the equity concerns,” Smith said.

The draft RFP will be released within the next month, and a developer will be selected in the fall.

Starting in October, the chosen development partner will spend the next 12-18 months creating a proposal for redeveloping the Walnut Park Complex. The document will identify the financing plan and incorporate long-term planning and on-site program needs, as well as look at ownership trade-offs or leasing options. The proposal will then be presented to the Board of Commissioners for adoption.

Upon reception of the board’s approval, the project will move into the design phase. The board will receive quarterly written project updates as well as multiple opportunities to weigh in during each phase.

Last week the board unanimously approved an exemption from the design-bid-build delivery method for the project. For this procurement approach, the county will enter a contract with a developer with demonstrated experience in managing complex community-driven projects and an understanding of the historic and current significance of Walnut Park.

A project budget has not been established yet.

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As nearly a billion dollars of bond money was invested in affordable housing projects in the Portland-metro area, architects found paths to success. Don Sowieja, a principal with Ankrom Moisan Architects, and Trish Nixon, president and managing principal of LRS Architects, shared their thoughts on how different approaches to the design process can help push multifamily projects toward construction.

The city of Portland has taken major steps to encourage development, Sowieja said. One of these steps was consolidating permitting functions into a single bureau: Portland Permitting & Development.

“Prior to that shift in policy organization, you might expect three to four months before you go your first round of (plan review),” Sowieja said, adding that it now takes around six weeks.

Also, the Portland City Council last year passed its Housing Regulatory Relief Project, which temporarily suspended development and process standards that apply to building projects, such as bike parking, bird-safe glazing, and landscape standards. State legislation also has provided relief from requirements and contributed to the success of LRS Architects’ projects, Nixon stated in an email.

When it comes to the overall timeline for a project, Sowieja said the design process is critical.

“One of the things we’ve found is to keep it simple,” he said.

Keeping a layout and overall composition basic allows a project to move through the process more quickly, Sowieja said. Oftentimes a proposal’s details may be unclear to city staffers, so it’s important to keep an open line of dialogue with them, he added, to navigate the approval process. Communicating early with city staff ensures there are no surprises during the design review and permitting processes, Nixon stated.

The simpler the design, the simpler the compliance, Sowieja said. For multifamily housing, unit size and type matter.

“If you have three unit types – studios, one bedroom and two bedroom – and you have one each of those types of unit plans, that’s as easy as it gets for the city to understand, as well as for the developer to demonstrate in compliance,” Sowieja said.

Designing projects that require a minimal number of requests for modifications or variances helps improve timelines and overall efficiency, Nixon stated. Before starting to design a project, LRS Architects works diligently with clients to understand all requirements and minimize adverse impacts, she added.

For projects subject to design review, Sowieja said teams should know the rules and follow them.

“It’s right there on the page,” he said. “Reading what it says and doing what it says is the best way to move quickly through a subjective process.”

Although inclusionary housing is relatively new to Portland, many cities on the West Coast have similar criteria. In Portland, inclusionary housing requires all residential buildings proposing 20 or more new units to provide a percentage of them at rents or sale prices affordable to households at 80 percent of the median family income or below, the city’s website states.

Development teams should embrace the fact that it is a requirement for multifamily projects, Sowieja said. While there was consternation at the outset, most of the development community has figured out that it is a financial and organizational impact, he added.

Meanwhile, all LRS Architects apartment projects within the city of Portland in the past five years have been 100 percent affordable, Nixon said.

Demand for multifamily projects has declined in the past 2.5 years, Sowieja said, following a roller coaster of economic cycles, including the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and interest rate increases. However, that has begun to change in 2025, he added.

“The design side is really picking up,” he said. “That takes a while to translate into construction starts, and construction is the big money and the larger economic driver.”

On the other hand, LRS Architects reports something different.

“We are seeing more exploratory activity, but not necessarily project starts,” Nixon stated, adding that such activity is taking place in the suburbs and not in the city of Portland.

LRS has seen a decrease in market-rate projects, according to Nixon. But the firm is involved in several active affordable housing projects in Portland. These include Garden Park Estates, which includes renovation and new construction (LMC Construction is the contractor), Jamii Court (O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders is the contractor), and Barbur Apartments (Todd Construction is the contractor).

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Portland-based architecture, interior design and planning firm Ankrom Moisan Architects has announced Murray Jenkins as its next president, effective July 1. He will lead the firm from its Portland office.

Ankrom Moisan’s current president, Dave Heater, will transition into a new business development role. He will be based in the San Francisco office. Jenkins will carry forward the legacy established by Heater, according to an Ankrom Moisan press release, by maintaining the team structures, operational continuity, and collaborative culture that have shaped the firm’s identity.

“As president, my goal is to create an environment where our staff feel inspired and empowered, so they can, in turn, inspire our clients through exceptional design and service,” Jenkins stated in the press release.

Over nearly 25 years with Ankrom Moisan, Jenkins has grown through every level of the firm, from architectural intern to vice president of architecture and secretary of the board. His leadership is distinguished by deep institutional knowledge, a steady hand during transitions, and an unwavering commitment to the firm’s values, according to the press release. One of those values is ensuring every employee has a meaningful stake in the firm’s success via an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).

As president, Jenkins will lead the firm in deepening its expertise across its core strengths in housing, urban living, office, retail, community, health care, higher education, hospitality and senior communities. The firm will continue to expand its leadership in sustainability and mass timber, while exploring strategic opportunities in emerging markets.

Jenkins also plans to champion innovation across the firm, including the integration of artificial intelligence and other technologies to enhance creativity, efficiency, and impact.

“We see AI as one of the most transformative changes facing the architecture and design industry, and we are approaching it with both curiosity and care,” Jenkins stated in an email. “We’re actively exploring how AI can support our work — both through language and visual models, in-app tools, and emerging platforms.”

The firm’s goal is not only speed but also improving how it designs, documents and makes decisions, Jenkins stated. The firm sees AI as a tool and is actively running pilots and encouraging teams to experiment, while being thoughtful about quality and long-term impact.

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Otak‘s name comes from the initials of founders Nawzad Othman, Ralph Tahran and Greg Kurahashi. It quickly grew into a firm with a presence across the western United States and the Middle East, with a strong reputation for smart growth planning, sustainable design and development, and innovative transportation solutions.

Over the last 45 years, Otak has built upon its multidisciplinary expertise and its services include urban design, architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, planning and construction management. With each project, Otak shares its clients’ commitment to promoting socially and environmentally responsible participation in business opportunities.

As part of its sustainability efforts, Otak has been quantifying and offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its business operations. This includes working with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to quantify and offset its carbon footprint. Otak’s team is experienced in guiding clients in their pursuit of LEED, Envision, Greenroads, WELL and Green Globes certifications.

Otak actively seeks to partner with minority business enterprises and certified firms in the communities where it works. The company recognizes that supporting MWESBs requires a strategic approach to building relationships, cultivating opportunities and providing mentorship. Otak provides mentorship opportunities to teaming partners and students exploring paths within the AEC industry.

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By Anita Snow

The Associated Press

PHOENIX — Reggie Carrillo knows firsthand that temperatures can be vastly different among neighborhoods in the same community.

The environmental activist and educator resides in a largely Mexican American area of south-central Phoenix, where segregation once forced Black and Hispanic people to live south of the railroad tracks. More than a half century later, the historic lack of investment means fewer trees and subsequent temperatures 13 degrees Fahrenheit higher than those in wealthier, leafier neighborhoods just a few miles away.

“To understand climate change, to understand the urban heat island effect, you have to understand the history,” said Carrillo, who wants to share that knowledge with his neighbors and help cool the community.

Carrillo has benefited from one of several nonprofit initiatives popping up around the United States to educate and engage residents about climate-fueled heat that disproportionately affects low-income neighborhoods of color.

Among the most ambitious is the Urban Heat Leadership Academy – an educational effort spearheaded by The Nature Conservancy, the Phoenix Revitalization Corporation, and others. Better known for preserving natural areas, the nonprofit global conservancy is now also doing more in urban areas – like planting hundreds of trees and overseeing community gardens in Atlanta’s South River neighborhood.

Held virtually on Saturday mornings with experts in various aspects of climate change, the course teaches residents like Carrillo not only why their communities are becoming so hot but also how they can organize and advocate for cooler, greener, healthier neighborhoods. Other topics include water, air quality and environmental equity for poorer Black, Latino and Indigenous neighborhoods.

As climate change leads to more intense, frequent and longer lasting heat waves across the United States and around the world, historically temperate and even cold areas are grappling with the effects of high temperatures.

Gray, cool and drizzly much of the year, the Pacific Northwest in 2021 saw triple-digit temperatures during an unusual heat wave that was blamed for numerous deaths.

In Philadelphia, where temperatures typical fall into the 20s and 30s (Fahrenheit) in the winter, summers are becoming increasingly hotter with more summer days pushing over 90 degrees.

The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit, recently wrapped up in Philadelphia a two-year initiative that used public art to raise awareness about the growing dangers of urban heat and spark conversation about extreme temperatures in low-income communities of color.

Initiatives like the Heat Response project in Philadelphia are now under way or proposed in places around the U.S., including New York’s Harlem neighborhood, Miami, Seattle and California’s Ventura County.

Owen Franklin, director of the Trust for Public Land in Pennsylvania, said the Philadelphia project sparked conversations about crowded, aging neighborhoods that lack parks or tree canopy and subsequently experience temperatures up to 20 degrees hotter than those in nearby neighborhoods.

“There is a lot of learning all of us need to do, and not just people living in these neighborhoods,” said Franklin, noting that organizers learned from community members that they often sleep with closed windows on hot summer nights due to concerns about crime.

“The rest of us need to know what people experience so we can combat the problem,” he said.

In Phoenix, Carrillo is working with several other graduates of the five-month academy to design a “cool corridor” – a pedestrian path that will be lined with plants native to the Sonoran Desert like mesquite trees, cactus, and creosote to be purchased with a grant from the Nature Conservancy and planted this fall. The team also plans to hold related community meetings with residents.

“We want people to have their voices be heard about what their neighborhoods look like,” Carrillo said.

In last year’s edition of the academy, about 40 neighborhood residents joined the weekly gatherings online to hear subject experts explain such things as transpiration, a process that allows plants to cool off surrounding areas, and the impacts of extreme heat on people.

“We are trying to help people to work on solutions that will cool down their neighborhoods over the long term,” said Anna Bettis, the healthy cities program director for The Nature Conservancy in Arizona. “Shade is a resource. If you just look around, you can see how unequally it is distributed in some neighborhoods.”

And it’s critical in places more accustomed to extremely high temperatures like Phoenix’s Maricopa County, where the mercury hit 115 degrees Fahrenheit in July and 339 people died of heat associated causes last year.

Carrillo discussed his team’s plans for a cool corridor with people who attended an informal event organized in late September by an Arizona State University class of graduate design students at Academia del Pueblo, a K-8 charter school in his neighborhood.

“We don’t have proper sidewalks here and a lot of our students have to walk five or more blocks without shade in more than 100-degree heat,” said Teresa Silva, who teaches at the school. “We don’t have transportation and their parents often work several jobs and can’t pick them up.”

Neighbor Carlos Ramirez stopped by with his son Alexis, 13, to learn how the ASU students are examining ways to improve shade in the area.

“It can get hot here,” the elder Ramirez said. “It would be good to have more trees.”

In another Phoenix neighborhood with sparse shade, heat academy graduate Curtis Merritt, a disabled Navy veteran, is working with his team to plant up to a dozen fig, apple, pear and citrus trees in an area considered to be a food desert, without adequate access to nutritious food.

The public-school student body in Merritt’s rundown neighborhood north of the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is working class and about 80 percent Latino, and the local Prentice Park has become home to scores of homeless people in recent years.

“What’s great about this project is that I not only get to help cool down my neighborhood by teaching and engaging,” Merritt said. “Someday with those trees I’ll be able to feed my neighbors, too.”

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The last month or two has been a unique time in modern world history, and its full impact is yet to be felt – especially in our cities. When the virus is brought somewhat under control (full control may take years) there will be a need to rethink many aspects of our physical, economic and social life. Improving the health of our communities has been a major goal of planning since the early days of the profession 100 years ago, but that now takes on a whole new dimension.

Planning for healthy communities is a multidimensional effort. There are many aspects of the health care system itself that employ planners to help manage their facilities and community-based programs. But most planning work until recently has not directly considered how to make communities healthier places in which to live. In 2017 the American Planning Association published its , which provides planners and their communities with a comprehensive look at what needs to be included in their plans, projects and programs to achieve much better health outcomes for everyone.

Now comes a health threat that will require local governments to increase their ability to take care of far greater housing, social service, transportation and economic challenges than they have faced to date. There is much work that will need to be done to plan for and carry out projects and programs to address the needs of our most vulnerable residents, and the federal government is the only entity that can provide the needed resources to fund those programs.

The planners’ job will be to help make sure these new resources are put to good use, and that the programs they fund are carried out in an orderly and effective way.

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The solutions to the two biggest planning challenges of our time are intertwined. Climate change and affordability seem to be separate issues, but there are planning and urban design approaches that could provide major ways to address them both.

As previous blog posts have indicated, both of these challenges are in part the result of, and continue to be exacerbated by, the huge expansion of suburban development. The planning and design professions (architects and landscape architects) have been aware of this situation for some time, but now it’s time for them to step forward and be major players in providing reasonable solutions to these challenges.

And basically, we know what needs to be done. We need to transition much of suburban America to more urban forms of development. The trick is finding the right set of incentives and regulations, and providing redevelopment models that will work in suburbia.

Looking at suburban landscapes, there appears to be little hope. But starting with station areas along high-frequency transit lines, intense mixed-use projects can be developed using a variety of building forms to fit local circumstances, and then extended outward as transportation options are developed. The planning and design professions need to develop a variety of effective and efficient urban design solutions for these different circumstances.

The private development sector will implement these projects, but without good models from which to work, well-thought-out solutions that address the real challenges we face will be rare. The Metro 2040 Plan provides the overall guidance for this transition, but how that is accomplished needs firm leadership at the local government level to effectuate sound planning and design solutions. Providing multiple attractive, affordable, alternative urban nodes will also relieve the pressure to redevelop and gentrify areas in Portland.

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