by Katy Swordfisk
October 4th 2022
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Portland State is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the city’s 1972 Portland Downtown Plan with an event series designed to explore PSU’s role as an urban university — and where the university goes from here.
The Downtown Plan envisioned a bustling metropolis filled with pedestrians and a web of transit, restaurants, shops, and hotels bringing visitors and workers together in a space centered around the city’s living room, Pioneer Square.
The plan also carved out a role for Portland State, not as a collection of buildings, but as a full civic partner and driving force of innovation that would benefit the city in the decades to come.
Implementation of the Downtown Plan — and subsequent investments from the private and public sectors — elevated Portland as an icon for central city recovery.
“It was such an important plan for Portland in a lot of things that we take for granted,” said Ethan Seltzer, emeritus professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. “Having Pioneer Square, having a transit mall, having a park along the river, having active uses on the ground floors of buildings, privileging pedestrian movement over automobile movement. All these things that we now just assume always were true in Portland, were not true back in the 1970s. This plan laid the groundwork for a lot of that to happen.”
It also created an opportunity for PSU to work with the city and its community to innovate and serve as a leader in designing Portland’s future. The work certainly isn’t finished, however. A city is never “done,” according to Seltzer. The panel series “PSU as an Urban University” begins at 9 a.m. Oct. 6 with a discussion titled “Portland, Portland State and the Urban University Idea: Shared Aspirations for the Next 50 Years.”
Panels offer both in-person and remote options.
Additional panels include:
- Community Engaged Research: Co-creating Knowledge to Serve | 3-5 p.m. Oct. 13
- Institutional Collaboration: PSU and its Public, Private and Civic Sector Partners | 3-5 p.m. Oct. 20
- The Future of Transportation in Downtown Portland: Inspirations from the 1972 Downtown Plan | 4-5:30 p.m. Oct. 24
- Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Governmental Reform in the Portland Metropolitan Area | 3:30-5:30 p.m. Oct. 28
- PSU Campus Urban Design: The Educational District | 4-6 p.m. Nov. 1
More information about the panels is available at https://www.pdx.edu/urban-public-affairs/panel-discussions.