(Re)generative Process and the Edible City: Ecological Urbanism in Portland, Oregon

The modern city archetype is undergoing drastic change as urbanists and laypeople alike begin pulling the landscape into the world’s urban areas, which have in essence, become “edible”. Agriculture has undoubtedly shaped the city of Portland, Oregon as the landscape beyond its UGB trickles into the city fabric. Urban farms, sidewalk gardens, and everything in between have popped up throughout the city, offering plant education, social rehabilitation, community interaction, food security, and personal health, among other benefits. With different goals and values, Portland’s urban agriculture movement is varied in its intent, yet equal in its significance to a changing urban morphology derived from patterns and occurrences happening within the city limits. In better understanding Portland as a model for how notions of ecological urbanism have been applied both top-down and bottom-up, these discoveries can potentially be applied throughout the world, guiding urban growth and community development that is environmentally sustainable and conducive to both social and physical well-being. Through interviews, precedents, visual analysis, and a theoretical long-term plan for urban agriculture in Portland, a holistic understanding of the city as a complex structure of linked urban patterns can be made. The “Edible City” of Portland can be presented as a model of (re)generative process and ecological urbanism which might have the potential to catalyze in other urban scenarios.