[NEWS] Metropolis Editor Urges Portland to go Greener

By Christina Williams
Sustainable Business Oregon

Susan Szenasy, executive editor of the urban design-obsessed Metropolis magazine, has a bit of a crush on Portland.

In town for a visit this week, Szenasy sat down Tuesday with a tableful of Portland's most sustainable urban thinkers — plus one ringer from Southern California — to talk about how Portland could better position itself to lead the world to a more sustainable way of life.

Joining Szenasy at the table, which was set up on a stage at the Gerding Theater at the Armory, were:

• Mark Edlen, CEO of Gerding Edlen.
• Nancy Hamilton, director of business development for McKinstry in Oregon.
• Mark Henry, executive chef for Marriott in Portland.
• Steven Straus, president of Glumac.
• Walker Wells, the California-based director of the Green Urbanism Program for the nonprofit Global Green.

In the audience were members of Portland's architecture and green building communities.

The topic of the conversation was how to take Portland's advances in sustainability to the next level — and export some of the city's expertise to the rest of the country at the same time.

"Portland has started the conversation," Szenasy said. "There's an infrastructure of ideas here that doesn't exist anywhere else."

The group touched on a number of topics worthy of attention including the living building challenge and the Oregon Sustainability Center, ways to expand and improve upon LEED certification and an overhaul of the bidding process for buildings and renovation that would more directly address sustainability goals than the current lowest-cost mentality.

"This is a very special time in Portland," Straus said. "Thirty years ago environmental and business interests were so far apart. Now we've come together around sustainability."

Szenasy urged Portland to trumpet its sustainability achievements even louder than it has in the past.

"I can guarantee you that the national media is not talking about Portland," she said.

"You have everything in place here," she continued. "What we need is the groundswell of innovation we've been talking about. Everyone has been in survival mode but innovation has to overcome survival. You're dead without it."