Dave Knows Portland

A Rose Quarter Roller Coaster?

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One proposal for the Rose Quarter is to transform it into Memorial Park.

The boring part: an Imax theater, a House of Blues, and a Gameworks.

The interesting part: A roller coaster!

In the spirit of the popular attraction at Jantzen Beach, the newest addition to the Portland skyline is “Hero”, a 200 foot tall steel roller coaster. The longest, fastest, tallest roller coaster in Oregon will have people visiting from all over the Pacific Northwest.

Portland has a distinctive dearth of roller coasters (though I’m quite fond of the quaint Looping Thunder at Oaks Park). Here’s an example of what a Rose Quarter coaster might look like:

And here’s a 3D video rendering of what the ride might be like:

There are more example images at the website, PDXCoaster.com, and at the group’s Facebook page. And you can follow the group on Twitter.

If you want to throw your support behind this idea you can read and sign the petition on the PDX Coaster Info page.

Rosebuds* 10/20/2009

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A different take on Portland’s Platting

In the 4000-year history of the grid, American incarnations are relatively new, appearing first about 300 years ago, frequently as a simple, orthogonal and often square (such as Portland’s) ‘Hippodamian’ grid, named after the planner of Miletus around 473 BC (Fig 1).

A session in the recent 2009 New Partners for Smart Growth conference focused on ‘The Beautiful American Grid — the Embodiment of Smart Growth,’ which lamented the fact that the grid ‘gets no respect’.

Beloved and Abandoned: A Platting Named Portland at Planetizen

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Great Places in America: Ladd’s Addition

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Brick map of Ladd's Addition at the corner of SE 34th and Madison (Photo taken by Kathleen Greenhaw)Portland’s Ladd’s Addition neighborhood was named one of the 2009 Great Places in America by the American Planning Association (APA).

According to the APA, the Great Places program celebrates places of exemplary character, quality, and planning. Places are selected annually and represent the gold standard in terms of having a true sense of place, cultural and historical interest, community involvement, and a vision for tomorrow.

One of ten 2009 Great Neighborhoods designees (the other categories are Great Streets, and Great Public Spaces), the APA notes that Ladd’s Addition is Oregon’s oldest planned community, the housing stock includes stunning examples of Old Portland architecture, such as Craftsman, Mission, Tudor, and bungalows, and is noteworthy for innovative street design, walkability, and environmental stewardship.

Past Oregon winners of the Great Places designation include Pioneer Courthouse Square (2008), and Lake Oswego’s First Addition neighborhood (2007).

Pioneer Courthouse Square’s fifty magic meters

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What do the Village Square in Whistler, the Piazza Navona in Rome, Marienplatz in Munich, and Paris’ Place de L’Hotel de Ville and Palais Royal all have in common? They are all successful urban plazas. Gordon Price, a Canadian transportation and urban planning expert, notes in his blog that they all also share another particular: their widths are about 50 meters.

So what’s so special about 50 metres, plus or minus a metre or so? Obviously, it creates a comfortable sense of enclosure, while both working at the individual scale and still accommodating large crowds.

What about Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, which Price considers perhaps the best urban square in North America?

Yep. Even though the square fills in one of the city’s famous 200-foot-square blocks, the actual space used for performance and display occupies just over 50 metres on the diagonal.

portland

Read the rest at Gordon Price’s blog, Price Tags: Fifty Magic Metres