Proposal for Hosting Towards Carfree Cities VIII - Portland, Oregon (USA)
a. Who you are; what organization are you with?
Shift, a division of the City Repair Project, in Portland, Oregon, USA. Shift is a World Carfree Network member organization.
b. What resources, skills and time are being offered (fundraising, program work, outreach, office space, etc.)?
Shift has organized three vibrant Carfree Day street fairs in Portland. Our members have volunteer and professional experience with event planning, fundraising, publicity, bookkeeping, grant writing, working with volunteers, and making meetings go smoothly. Members have organized conferences, including a state-wide Bike Summit last year.
Portland has a large downtown university (with a Transportation Research Center), and several colleges, and the space, resources, and energetic young people they supply.
Good workshops, presentations, speakers, and other event leaders will be easy to find. Portland is home to a vast amount of transportation knowledge, energy, and excitement about carfree issues. We have many contacts in San Francisco, Seattle, Eugene, NYC and Vancouver BC. Everyone we have talked to is excited about the potential to collaborate on TCFC VIII Portland.
We have staff people who can work full-time in the year and a half before the conference, including fundraising for their positions. Staff will work from home-offices at first, and from donated office space closer to the event. We have about ten core volunteers who can help with long-term preparation, and dozens more available nearer to the time of the conference.
c. What groups would be partners; what other useful contacts do you have?
In our government, we have a bike-friendly Mayor and two carfree-transportation-friendly City Commissioners, all of whom will be in office through the end of 2008. The city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committees are both vocal and influential. Our regional government is also actively working to reduce automobile dependence in the area - launching a "Drive Less Save More" campaign this year. Portland's representatives in the state and national government are strong supporters of carfree transportation.
The Transportation Options division of the Portland Office of Transportation is committed to reducing automobile use and has pledged support for the conference. They have offered to print conference materials for free, to lead workshops and city tours, to help us with networking and outreach, and to facilitate a large street closure during the conference.
The new Transportation Research Center at Portland State University is excited to partner with us on a research component for this conference. They have just launched a new program, the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation, which will produce research and a community that would be a good fit with this conference.
We have strong working relationships with the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition and the streetcar advocacy group. We have ties with local social justice, environmental, peak oil preparedness, and permaculture activist groups. Many local business and neighborhood associations promote reduced car dependence. The City Repair project is a recognized innovator in re-thinking streets.
Bicycle groups are particularly strong in Portland. There are many organizations, including:
- Shift, an activist group. We stage a two-week bicycle festival every June, serve free breakfast to bicycle commuters, support other projects, and have a hundreds of members
- The Bicycle Transportation Alliance, a public advocacy nonprofit
- Bikeportland.org, a prominent bicycle news and culture blog
- Community Exchange Cycle Tours and Bike School
- Community Cycling Center, a nonprofit that gives bicycles to low-income people and teaches kids to ride safely
- Bike fun groups, like Zoobomb (a mini-bike gang) and the Sprockettes (a bicycle dance troupe).
- Critical Mass has been strong in Portland since 1993
- Safe Routes to School, a program that brings hands-on bike safety classes to local elementary schools
Portland also has several bicycle-related business groups, including the Oregon Bicycle Business Association, Portland United Messenger Association, and a large number of socially active bike shops, frame builders, and bike accessory outlets and manufacturers.
We have a good, ongoing relationship with most local media outlets. Transportation is very much in the news here, and this conference will be of interest to reporters. And we have an active, engaged population who care about community, the environment, and political issues surrounding transportation.
d. Why the conference should be held in your city
Portland is one of the most exciting places in the United States for innovative transportation and public space preservation. Portlanders are socially conscious, progressive, and eager to learn more about transportation issues. Turnout at transportation events is huge. Riding transit or bicycling is normal for many people. Because of activists in the 1970s, funding that was supposed to go to a huge highway network was used instead to building light rail, bicycling, and walking infrastructure, giving Portlanders more choices than many in the United States. A continuing tradition of activism makes Carfree thinking accessible here.
This conference would help us exchange knowledge and ideas with people from all over the world. It will inspire and mobilize our base and allow us to continue to set an example for the rest of the United States. It will also help words like "Carfree" and the concepts behind them become more mainstream here and in the rest of the country.
We are motivated by the opportunity to try out a massive street closure patterned on the Cyclovia in Bogota. This closure would be organized by the city government in partnership with local citizens and groups. The conference would give this closure a suitable, well-publicized start. The hope is that it could become a weekly event, and eventually permanent.
Portland is a desirable destination. Our city is visitor-friendly, with a strong tourism infrastructure and a bunch of friendly locals with spare bedrooms. By American standards, our transit system is excellent. You can take the light rail with your bicycle to and from the airport. Our streets are easily bike-able for newcomers. Portland is close to amazing natural places (coast, mountains, desert). Costs are low in comparison to other major US cities, and the weather is gorgeous in the summer.
There are several major bicycling events each summer, and we would like the conference to come right before or after one of them. Our favorite is the annual County Bike Fair, with dozens of cycling activities every day for two weeks, possibly the only event of its kind in the world. It would be an ideal way to kick off the conference and get our guests thinking creatively. There are also a number of local bicycle touring companies available for bike tours of the region after the conference.
e. What you would like to occur at the conference (overall concept and any program details)
We will plan interactive workshops catering to a broad array of interests, on everything from bicycle maintenance to community organizing to media relations to pedestrian protests to programs to convince people to give up their cars. One template for these workshops will be Vancouver BC's "Bike Bee," an annual weekend of skill-sharing and group projects. We have many potential speakers, including local and international transportation luminaries, government representatives, and citizen activists.
We want to use the conference to bring together people who have organized Carfree Days in their own cities along with people who want to organize an annual day without car traffic here, for skill-sharing and planning. This sort of project is not easy to promote in the US, but we think Portland is the best place to show that it is possible.
We would be able to have a strong research component at the conference, with academic presentations (organized with the PSU Transportation Research Center). Academic presentations will complement more planning- and activism-oriented presentations and panel talks.
All of the conference components would be arranged to maximize cross-pollination. We would like to make young activists welcome at academic talks, and poster-design workshops interesting to city planners.
One option is a secondary theme for the conference of Transportation Equality. This theme would help resonate with the lively minority cultures here, and focus some of the energy of the conference on often overlooked social justice issues surrounding car-oriented culture and infrastructure.
In keeping with the inclusivity of this theme, we will aim to have at least two public days where the public will be invited to listen to speakers and take part in workshops oriented toward activists, and attend presentations about increasing transportation equality.
Before, during, and after the conference, there will be planned days of activities, particularly showcasing Portland's unique brand of "bike fun." This could include walking, bike, and bus tours of the area, races, and scavenger hunts; activism idea-sharing sessions, pedestrian "take back the streets" actions, and test demonstrations of human traffic calming and street reclamation.
This conference has the potential to be large, because of the strong carfree activist community on the West Coast, and because of the growing interest of Americans in transportation issues. We hope to attract 300 participants, and 600 or more public day participants. We will have many people eager to lead workshops, give presentations, and show visitors around the city. Because of this potential size, we will need to start organizing (and seeking funds) early.
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