Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies

an image of mt hood from the pittock mansion

Urban Design Collaborative

Who We Are

The Urban Design (UD) Collaborative is an emerging network of faculty, students, practitioners and advocates concerned with designing, creating and sustaining healthy communities. There were several origins for this idea, which coalesced as a PSU initiative in 2019, and is currently evolving interactively both as a UD Collaborative at PSU and as something broader: an organization of organizations including other academic partners. This website provides a space to learn about the PSU UD Collaborative as well as the broader group which is still in formation.

Background and Mission

The idea for an Urban Design Collaborative emerged from an initial conversation the Deans of the College of Urban and Public Affairs (CUPA), the College of the Arts (COTA), and the Campus Planning Office had with local architects about finding a home for the City’s massive physical model and how it might be used to enhance and promote urban design education at PSU, which has offered a Graduate Certificate of Urban Design through a joint program of the Toulan School of Urban Studies and the School of Architecture since 2008. The conversation broadened from there to identifying potential synergies with City agencies and informing urban design theory and practice in the City. 

A subsequent meeting with the Deans and then-interim President Percy considered the opportunity for PSU to play a convening role regarding discussion of urban design issues in Portland. Michael McCulloch and Paddy Tillet, long-time leaders in the Portland architectural community, hoped PSU would be able to provide a space to bring together practitioners with the various University departments whose work impinges on urban design. President Percy asked the Deans to form a task force to explore what form such a collaborative might take, and how it might benefit PSU programs.  You can read the report of the Task Force here.

The Task Force embraced the idea of the UD Collaborative as a way to break down disciplinary and sectoral silos, strengthen university-community partnerships, and foster connections and collaboration among the diverse projects aligned with UD that coexist in close proximity on campus and in the region. We proposed furthering this idea by hosting a series of public conversations on different facets of urban design. We hoped that the process of engaging students, faculty, practitioners, advocates and other stakeholders in organizing these conversations would strengthen connections between people, programs and practices, and the form of the Collaborative and its agenda would emerge organically from that process.

Meanwhile, the UD Collaborative may need an identity as the convener of this series of symposia. In that event, a preliminary mission statement for this entity could be: 
To advance critical reflection on contemporary urban design, including creative placemaking, by stimulating dialogue among academic and professional practitioners; to ensure that all relevant disciplines and communities are engaged in decision-making that shapes our urban environments. 

Current Work

Convene Public Conversations on Facets of Urban Design

Learning by Doing: Planning Streets for People Workshop (March —June 2021)

Our inaugural event focused on streets as public space and creative placemaking as a strategy that integrates arts and culture with community-based development and design. The Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning (USP) organized this three-part virtual workshop, which  was co-sponsored by the UD Collaborative with the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at PSU in partnership with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT).

The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the latest movements for racial justice, challenged conventional notions of how public space is designed and used. The crisis also raised awareness of the key role of public spaces as drivers of the recovery and renewal of civic and economic life. With the availability of vaccines in 2021, it was time to plan for our recovery. What lessons can be learned from this rare opportunity to rethink the design and use of urban streets as safe, active and open public space? As we emerge into the post pandemic environment, how can we sustain this creative activation of streets as public spaces to help our cities recover and thrive? 

Part 1 (March 4, 2021) - PBOT staff shared lessons learned from a year of experimentation with its Healthy Business permit program for repurposing street space and framed the opportunity for future expansion of these initiatives on a broader scale. Nearly 200 attendees participated in facilitated discussions to envision opportunities for future expansion of these initiatives on a broader scale, identify barriers and build partnerships around existing and potential projects. 

Part 2 (April 16, 2021) - A listening session for students from PSU and the University of Oregon (UO) working in collaboration with PBOT and Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) staff on some of these projects, focusing on the Park Blocks Corridor downtown, and how to replicate the innovations being tested downtown in outer Northeast and East Portland neighborhoods. The students’ work spring term aims to help further the evolution of the City's public space programs and policy, as well as crystallize ideas for transforming and activating streets and other public places that can be prototyped and tested this summer and fall. The students heard from a panel composed of representatives of key stakeholders in the future of the Park Blocks corridor. This workshop aims to both inform the students' work and to strengthen the connections and foster synergies among the many existing and proposed initiatives being discussed.

The participating classes include: 

PSU Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning: 

  • Urban Design Workshop co-taught by Tim Smith with Ellen Shoshkes; and 
  • Planning Workshop led by Professor Megan Horst. Two teams:
    • Cartology group is studying the feasibility of relocating the food carts displaced from the Alder Street pod, perhaps at Ankeny West. 
    • Parking Spaces to People Places team is exploring how to adapt the street transformations being tested downtown to suit the East Portland streetscape. 

UO, School of Architecture

  • Architecture/Urban Design Studio taught by Professor Nico Larco

Part 3 (June 4) - The final workshop will feature highlights from the work of the PSU and UO students.  A panel composed of representatives of PBOT, BPS and community partners will respond to the ideas surfaced by the students' work; and reflect on how we might further the momentum of experimentation by city agencies, academia, civic and business groups as partners in community led projects to create and steward vibrant streets and public spaces in Portland. 

The Infrastructure of The Public City (April – May 2021)

The School of Architecture (SOA) hosted a series of urban design conversations in the Spring Term. series of conversations in the Spring Term, putting specific urban design concerns and projects in Portland in dialogue with other national and global locations and issues. These conversations addressed the topic, “the infrastructure of the public city,” considering both the large-scale systems and narratives that organize cities as well as concrete, contemporary urban design problems and projects. The conversations focus on housing, downtown, timber flows, urban memory, technology, the street and land, and engaged speakers from Portland in dialogue with colleagues from Los Angeles, Detroit, Tokyo, Montgomery and Vancouver BC.

Advance Proposals to Strengthen the Urban Design Curriculum  (on-going)

PSU has offered a Graduate Certificate of Urban Design through a joint program of the Toulan School of Urban Studies and the School of Architecture since 2008, which you can read more about here.  

What We Have Planned

Explore Creative Placemaking as a strategy that draws on the power of art and design to bring people together to envision multiple dimensions of urban design on both the community and regional scales. (Summer – Fall 2021)

Use the University District as a Living Lab for Creative Placemaking engaging faculty, staff, students and community partners. This creative experimentation will help drive the effort to reimagine PSU to better serve its students and communities in the post COVID environment, help efforts to restart and reimagine public life in Portland, and more broadly, help achieve the goals and strategic urban design vision of the Portland Comp Plan and CC 2035, in which the University District serves as a Center of Innovation. We are currently developing a proposal in partnership with the PSU Office of Planning and Sustainability to design and coordinate university wide engagement in creative placemaking to reimagine public spaces on campus in summer and fall 2021, in conjunction with citywide initiatives and to celebrate the reopening of campus and PSU’s 75th anniversary.

An Urban Design Collaborative: Next Steps (Fall 2021)

Town-hall style meeting to discuss the organizational structure of the UD Collaborative and develop a program of activities.

Contact us: UDCollaborative@pdx.edu