Planning for Portland's future

I attended today (12/5/09) a planning workshop on Portland’s future. It was moderated by Mayor Sam Adams and is part of an official city of Portland endeavor. There was lots of interesting data about Portland, much of it comparing us to other western cities. And lots of interesting discussions at small tables. But there was little info in the presentations on important trends, like globalization and digitalization, that will impact Portland’s future. Participants needed to supply that.

There’s lots more information on it online here. Read the handbook. Take the survey.

I was there early to handout my flyer headlined “Make Portland an international city: Create strong foreign language programs, Gain a competitive edge in the global economy.”

One phrase from Mayor Adams that I liked was “our highly rated quality of life has not translated into a high quality economy.”