Policy Work

The Institute engages in policy work at all landscape scales to ensure that parks, trails, and greenspaces are viewed, and funded, as essential urban services.

Local and Regional Urban Greenspace Policy Committees

GPAC members discuss the future regional greenspace vision.

The Urban Greenspaces Institute is represented on local, regional, and national advisory groups that relate to urban park, trail, and natural resource issues. The Institute’s Director sits on Metro’s Reserves Steering Committee which is responsible for advising the Metro Council on policies related to future expansions of the region’s Urban Growth Boundary. Institute Director, Mike Houck, has taken a lead role in developing maps that delineate regionally significant natural landscapes that are critical elements of the region’s parks, trails, and natural areas system and contribute to maintaining the region’s biodiversity.

In 2005 the Institute helped craft Metro’s Greenspaces Policy Advisory Committee (GPAC) vision document for the creation of a bi-state regional system of parks, trails, and natural areas. This document now informs the efforts of the Connecting Green Alliance to create the “greatest parks, trails, and natural areas system in the world.”

Connecting Green Alliance Core Group

The Institute is a founding member of the Connecting Green Alliance and our Director, Mike Houck, participates in the CGA’s core group which provides guidance to the Alliance regarding its structure and priorities.

Meryl Redisch, Executive Director of the Audubon Society of Portland, outlines goals, objectives and structure of the Connecting Green Alliance.

Coalition for a Livable Future

The Institute’s Director, Mike Houck, serves on the Coalition for a Livable Future’s board of directors. Mike was a co-founder of the CLF in 1994 The Coalition’s mission is to protect, restore, and maintain healthy, equitable, and sustainable communities, both human and natural, for the benefit of present and future residents of the greater Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region.

The Coalition for a Livable Future’s newsletter, Connections, provides regional perspectives on issues related to affordable housing, parks and greenspaces, transportation options, and regional growth management.

Mike Houck serves on the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development, a joint Portland-Multnomah County advisory group on issues related to sustainable development issues within the city and county. Mike chairs the ecological indicators project which is focused on identifying indicators that can track the impacts that individual citizens and business can make regarding moving the city and county toward a sustainable future.

The Office of Sustainable Development, Portland Bureau of Environmental Services and Sustainable Development Commission promotes projects such as this rain garden at the New Seasons grocery on SE Division.

These advisory groups are key to establishing public policy that elevates urban greenspaces as an essential urban service throughout the metropolitan region.

Local and Regional Fish and Wildlife Habitat Issues

Mike Houck continues to work with the Urban Conservation Program at the Audubon society of Portland, which is leading the regional effort to protect and restore fish and while of habitat throughout the Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan region.

The Institute partners with other NGOs to ensure public participation in local and regional policy discussions. Here citizens testify before Metro Council on the regional Nature in Neighborhoods program.

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