Monday, Jimmy Mak's, 5:30: Bright Lights Discussion Series

An announcement from our friends at Portland Spaces:

David Bragdon is the president of Metro, the regional government best known for managing trash collection, the convention center, and the zoo; steering federal transportation funds; and determining the urban growth boundary.

Urban theorist Thomas Sieverts, writer/educator Reed Kroloff, and architect Brad Cloepfil are, variously, idealists and visionaries—and critics of many of the underlying tenets of Metro's guidance of Portland's growth.

On Monday, October 6, the two views—pragmatism and idealism—will be juxtaposed in back-to-back events. Bragdon will speak at 5:45 p.m. at the monthly Bright Lights city design discussion at Jimmy Mak's (221 NW 10th Ave). Sieverts, Kroloff, and Cloepfil will speak at 7:30 p.m., seven blocks away at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (1241 NW Johnson St) in an event it is cosponsoring with Reed College. Both events are free and open to the public.

Over his five-year tenure, David Bragdon has led a gradual expansion and refocusing of the Metro government's brand with a mix of vision, pragmatism, and great humor. Under his leadership, Metro has turned its attention to building a regional parks and trails system, developing an overarching sustainability agenda, and crystallizing urban centers throughout the region. Armed with slides illustrating his successes and failures (not to mention his usual straightforwardness), Bragdon will speak about the upcoming challenges facing Portland's urban growth boundary, and how to preserve it while enhancing livability for the additional one million residents that are projected to arrive in the next 20-30 years.

David Bragdon became the Metro Council's first regionally elected president in January 2003. Prior to that, he developed and administered transportation strategies at Oregon-based companies such as Nike, Lasco Shipping Co, and Evergreen Airlines. He then worked for five years as the Port of Portland's marketing manager. He currently serves on the governor's Big Look Task Force, and he is now undertaking a 30-year review of Oregon's land-use policy.

Writer Matthew Stadler will moderate the discussion between Sieverts, Kroloff, and Cloepfil as they debate the question "How does policy liberate design, or not?" Sieverts is best known as the author of Cities Without Cities: An Interpretation of the Zwischenstadt, which suggests that the historical influence of the compact historical European city has dissolved into a completely different and new urban form that is spreading throughout the world. Many urban planners, and Portlanders in particular, tend to call this new form "sprawl." Sieverts calls it the Zwischenstadt—a space that is neither urban nor rural, and that is less dependent on local economies than it is on the world market. Kroloff is the former editor of Progressive Architecture magazine and the current dean of Cranbrook Academy of Art. He also managed the international design competition that selected the architect for Portland's aerial tram. Cloepfil is the founder of Allied Works, the Portland-based architectural firm that has designed projects ranging from Wieden & Kennedy's world headquarters to the recently completed Museum of Art and Design in Manhattan.

Bright Lights is presented jointly by the City Club of Portland and Portland Spaces magazine. "How Does Policy Liberate Design, or Not?" is part of a series of events occurring in conjunction with the exhibition Suddenly, on view at Reed Colleges Cooley Gallery. www.suddenly.org