This week in ENVS 220, we were preparing to ask the big framing questions for our next group project for which we chose to explore Portland environmental organizations and attempt to explore an issue that is related to one of the organizations. We chose to address the topic of green spaces versus grey spaces in Portland, and hopefully relating to a more global scale. This issue corresponds to the Portland organization, Urban Greenspaces Institute. The issue of green spaces obviously does not relate to the global sphere as a whole, because not everywhere is urban and has the issue of not enough green spaces, however, a lot of the developed world does have this issue in the majority of America, and especially in Portland, Oregon.
We first started research on what the drawbacks of having a majority of grey space and what it means to have sanctioned green spaces. Grey spaces are man-made, constructed buildings, roads, anywhere in a city that is not separated as natural, green spaces. An example of a grey space can be the majority of downtown Portland. An example of a green space can be parks, natural areas like Tryon Regional Area, anything with minimal human interference. It can be argued the value of these green spaces for the community, however, green spaces are important in preserving certain significant environments, their biotic and abiotic factors, and overall treatment of the Earth’s spaces. The presence of these spaces, as we will delve further into our project and learn, are important to urban areas, and the Earth in general.
We are hoping to include some more broad framing questions that can apply to not just urban areas. With development of a place comes paving roads and sidewalks, buildings, and the clearing of natural areas for housing. So although this issue is currently only pertinent to certain areas, maybe asking a question like how can we keep an equilibrium of green and grey spaces? How can UGI help create a plan that can better advise/aid in implementing policies that protect green spaces? Would this be viable?
As far as skills we have learned that we hope to apply to this project for gathering and analyzing data, we hope to use GIS to create a map of Portland and contrast green versus grey spaces, including those that have been visited by the UGI team. We also hope to analyze literary works for and against the constant construction of grey spaces, as well as possibly an interview from a member of a UGI member that can shed some light on the actual difference their organization is making, if they can see one. I am also curious to see if they have a plan to making this idea more widely accepted and implemented.
This project is just coming out of the works so there is a lot to do as far as planning goes, however, I believe we have a good start on the direction we plan to go.