• Start year: 1986
• Type: Regulatory
• Status:

The Portland region’s
Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) continues to provide
the critical foundation for the region’s land use and
transportation planning. In place since 1980, the UGB
is an essential component of the region’s ability to
grow efficiently and to integrate housing and jobs with
an affordable, low-carbon transportation system. The
City and County have advocated for limiting growth
of the UGB and in October 2011, the Metro Council
adopted a conservative population forecast with a
limited UGB expansion of 1,650 acres for residential
land and 330 acres for industrial land.

• Start year:
• Type: Education/Awareness Raising
• Status:

The City’s first integrated
outreach campaign on thoughtful consumption, Be
Resourceful, was launched in 2010. The campaign
focuses on new ways to get what we need, including
sharing and borrowing, fixing and maintaining,
purchasing durable, sustainable, or reused products, or
experiences instead of things.
As part of the campaign, program representatives
offered presentations and staffed information booths at
community events. These efforts resulted in over 5,000
conversations with residents. Over 300 community
members shared their stories at these events so
they could be posted online to encourage others to
participate in similar activities.

• Start year:
• Type: Policy/Strategies/Action Plans
• Status:

In October
2011, the City launched a new citywide residential
food scrap collection program (www.portlandcomposts.
com). Portland residents in single-family houses and
buildings with four or fewer units can set out food
scraps in their green Portland Composts! roll carts for
weekly pickup. By putting all food scraps, including
meat, dairy, bones, grains, cooked foods and even
pizza delivery boxes, in the green roll carts, Portlanders
can divert thousands of pounds of food scraps from
landfills each year. As part of the change, garbage
service is now collected every other week. The blue
Portland Recycles! roll cart and yellow glass recycling
bin continue to be collected every week.

• Start year: 2011
• Type: Regulatory
• Status:

Recognizing the connections between food and the
community’s environmental, economic and physical
health, the City is in the process of updating its
zoning code to promote traditional and emerging
ways of producing and distributing food. The project is
addressing five topic areas related to urban food
production and distribution: farmers markets;
community gardens; urban food production;
community food distribution points; and animals
and bees.
In summer 2011 over 800 people responded to the
ideas presented in the Urban Food Zoning Code
Update Concept Report. Project staff have compiled
these comments and produced a summary report.
The City expects to propose recommended changes
to Portland’s zoning code to the Planning and
Sustainability Commission in 2012.

• Start year: 2010
• Type: Fiscal / Financial mechanism
• Status:

In June 2010, under
Mayor Adams’ leadership, the City financial utility
partners established Clean Energy Works Oregon
(CEWO) and charged the new nonprofit with the dual
mission of reducing carbon emissions and creating
family-supporting jobs. Since March 2011, CEWO
has expanded its whole-home retrofit financing
program beyond the City of Portland to include
Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Jackson,
Josephine, Klamath and Lake Counties.Over 1,000 homes have received whole-home energy
remodels since the beginning of the Clean Energy
Works Portland pilot. The pilot,
which ended in February 2011, created 45 full-time
construction jobs and over 400 workers received a
paycheck from the program. CEWO has assembled
nearly $25 million in capital and program funding.
It has also worked with several Oregon lending
institutions to leverage over $20 million in private sector
capital.

• Start year:
• Type:
• Status:

The City built nearly ten miles of Neighborhood Greenways in 2011, providing Portlanders with safe places to walk, bicycle and get out into their neighborhoods. At the same time, many Neighborhood Greenways also treat stormwater runoff and improve safety around schools. In NE Portland, the Cully Boulevard green street project rebuilt a crumbling street to add sidewalks and a new traffic signal, create a separated cycletrack and manage stormwater runoff with planters and bioswales.

• Start year: 2009
• Type:
• Status:

Installation of on-site renewable energy
systems continued to grow in 2011. In just two
years, the three-year Climate Action Plan goal of 10
megawatts of solar electric generation was exceeded.
As of December 2011, there are 14.7 megawatts of
total installed capacity Installations by
government agencies, businesses and local residents
all contributed towards achieving this goal.The City supported two Solarize Portland campaigns in 2011, resulting in over 120 new solar system installations (2011), and over 570 installations since the program’s inception in 2009.

• Start year: 2011
• Type: Technical/Infrastructure investment
• Status:

A partnership between Portland
State University, Portland General Electric and the
City resulted in the opening of Electric Avenue in
August 2011—an urban showcase for electric vehicle
(EV) charging technology. Both the City and the
County are supporting the installation of electric
vehicle charging stations across the region. For
example, the County will install 12 EV charging
stations at four County sites for use by the public
and County personnel.

• Start year: 2011
• Type: Policy/Strategies/Action Plans
• Status:

The Citywide Tree Policy Review and Regulatory
Improvement Project—a multi-bureau effort to
review the current system of regulations, address
complexities, gaps and inconsistencies, and
enhance the urban forest through a comprehensive
restructuring and update of City codes addressing
trees—was adopted by City Council in April 2011.
The first phase of zoning code amendments went
into effect in July 2011, with the bulk of the project
proposals set to go into effect in February 2013.