Monday, February 22, 2010, 11:05am PST | Modified: February 26, 2010, 10:29 AM

Retooling cities means new markets for Oregon companies

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Did you know North Dakota consistently gets close to twice as much federal funding for development-related projects as Oregon?

Despite its small population (639,715 to Oregon's 3.79 million) the Peace Garden State usually ranks among the top five states in this category while Oregon sits in the bottom five.

Our ability to change this depends a lot on how quickly the local business community can adapt to a new environment in which sustainability has become standard operating procedure.

Last year, the "big three" federal agencies (Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency) formed the Interagency Partnership for Livable Communities. New federal rules being developed in response to this partnership will give us a chance to reinvent how we build, manage and direct our cities. For housing, transportation and related projects, it's a whole new game. If you're in contracting, development, design or finance, this means your game is changing too.

Being competitive in this new environment will require you to apply the same livability and sustainability filters to your core operations as those used to judge the merits of projects put forward for federal funding. The projects you take on may be the same, but the way you do them will have to change if you want to remain competitive.

Local jurisdictions see this shift happening at the federal and state levels and are re-tooling to prepare for what lies ahead. This year, the Sustainable City Year program at the University of Oregon is partnering with the City of Gresham to facilitate this process. Sustainable City Year is a university and city partnership focused on city-identified sustainability projects.

Right now more than 250 future planners and architects from the UO are devoting an entire year to helping shape a more sustainable future for the city of Gresham. The students involved in this project are helping guide how organizations and companies create, grow, and manage their operations in ways that promote the economy, livability and a healthy environment, all in one stroke.

Last term, just 18 of these students spent more than 5,000 hours creating six development scenarios for Rockwood, Gresham's urban renewal district. Multiply that over the nineteen UO courses focused on fresh ways of looking at Gresham's future this year, and you can see the impact on the city's ability to win support for shovel-ready projects such as a green city hall.

For many businesses, especially those struggling in economically depressed areas like Rockwood, sustainability may sound like a luxury. However, as Gresham's urban renewal chief, Alice Rouyer, points out, every aspect of how we live will shift as the result of the recession.

In Alice’s words, "These students are making the concept of sustainable development come alive for people. What we're seeing in Gresham is that becoming green is the best way to move — and keep — our economy in the black."

The Gresham partnership is among dozens of solution-oriented projects associated with the Sustainable Cities Initiative, a long-term effort by the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts faculty in collaboration with our colleagues in business and law.

Nico Larco is a UO architecture professor and co-director of the UO's Sustainable Cities Initiative. The UO School of Architecture ranks No. 1 nationally for sustainable design.