Through its Livable Cities Initiative the Institute engages in a variety of programs and activities to pursue its mission of better integrating the natural and built environments and ensuing parks, trails, and greenspaces are included in growth management strategies for the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region.
Specific projects of the Livable Cities Initiative include:
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.
The Institute has produced, with its partners at the Willamette Riverkeeper, Audubon Society of Portland, Greenworks landscape architecture, architects, and landscape architects a plan for Ross Island,Envisioning Ross Island (PDF), which lays out scenarios for how Ross and its sister islands Hardtack, East and Toe, might be managed as a unit with the Holgate Channel and the 160-acre city-owned Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge as an urban wildlife refuge complex, public natural area park, and place to contemplate nature in the heart of downtown Portland.
