City Housing Lectures: "Creating Places for Families and Sustainability in the City"

 http://www.portlandonline.com/planning/index.cfm?c=45459&a=173544

How can Portland continue to provide new housing options for families as the city continues to grow and densify, and how can this be done in ways that are environmentally sustainable? The public is invited to attend presentations by two renowned authorities on child-friendly housing and sustainable community design, Clare Cooper Marcus and Cynthia Girling, who served as jurors for the Portland Courtyard Housing Design Competition.

Admission to this event is free.

Clare Cooper Marcus’s lecture will focus on the social benefits of housing clustered around shared outdoor space—green space that is neither a public park, nor a private yard—which particularly serves the needs of families with children. Several case studies from northern California will be presented, plus a summary of the benefits of shared outdoor space including those related to children's play, a sense of community, health, and safety from crime. Some issues preventing the provision of such space will be touched upon, as well as the potential social costs of creating inward-turning site plans.

Clare Cooper Marcus is Professor Emerita in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, and the Principal of Healing Landscapes. She is the author/ coauthor of five award-winning books including Housing as if People Mattered: Site design guidelines for medium-density family housing, People Places: Design guidelines for urban open space, House as a Mirror of the Self: Exploring the deeper meaning of home, and Healing Gardens: Therapeutic benefits and design recommendations. She has lectured and consulted in many countries. The current focus of her work is on the needs of children in urban areas, and restorative landscapes in healthcare.

Cynthia Girling’s lecture is entitled "Green neighborhoods: integrating density, livability, transportation and healthy environments." The quality and vitality of civic life is critical to all cities. In this era of impending ecological crises, environment must be an equal partner among many forces shaping the planning and design of vital neighborhoods. This presentation will focus on how good urban design and good environmental design can collaborate in urban development. Vancouver, British Columbia is a place where urban density is a fact of life and we are learning how to do dense development with a light environmental hand. This presentation will review two unfolding high-density green neighborhoods. UniverCity is a dense, mixed use, complete community under construction at Simon Fraser University. It is notable for high standards of environmental protection, particularly regarding water resources and aquatic habitat. Southeast False Creek—site of the 2010 Olympic Village and thereafter a new neighborhood—is Vancouver’s first intentional sustainable neighborhood. It sets the bar very high for green building and site design while restoring a former industrial site. These projects, while not infallible, give us hope that good urban design and good environmental design can collaborate in the city.

Professor Cynthia Girling is Chair of the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on neighborhood scale planning, open space systems and design for stormwater management. With Professor Ronald Kellett, she co-directs the neighborhoodsLAB in the Design Centre for Sustainability, a research group who create tools and processes to assist communities and professionals with designing green neighborhoods. They are co-authors of Green Neighborhoods: Planning and Design Guidelines for Air Water and Urban Forest Quality (2002) and Skinny Streets and Green Neighborhoods Design for Environment and Community (Island Press, 2005). With Kenneth Helphand, Girling co-authored Yard Street Park the Design of Suburban Open Space in 1994.

Location