Do-it-yourself neighborhood building

City Repair brings neighbors together, beautifies the city and inspires others

Story and photo by Edie Sidle
The Portland Upside
October 2009

Share-It Square, a neighborhood gathering place which includes a bulletin board and chalkboard at SE 9th Av and Sherrett St in Sellwood, spurred the formation of City Repair.

Placemaking, food forests, free boxes, de-paving, permaculture, deep dialogue, bioswales, and cob—you might take some wild guesses about what these terms mean, but Hindi Iserhott with City Repair uses them everyday while working with Portland communities.

First and foremost, Hindi explains, City Repair is about organized group action. Formed in 1996, City Repair came about as a result of an unfortunate experience. A boy was hit by a car while bicycling in a Sellwood neighborhood. Fortunately he recovered, and the event spurred the residents in the area to come together to make the intersection safer while defining their community in a unique way.

Some of the Sellwood residents admired the public piazzas common in Europe but mostly missing in the United States. Others thought about the neighborhood’s straight lines and grids defined by the layout of the streets, and they wanted to soften their intersection.

At the same time, City Repair founder Mark Lakeman had been coordinating “Moon-Day T-Hows,” in the same neighborhood. These wildly-popular Monday evening dessert potlucks convinced many of the residents of the importance of having a gathering place for the community.

The synergy of the two events brought the neighbors together to address their concerns. One Sunday afternoon, the residents took action by painting a design on the intersection of Southeast Ninth Avenue and Sherrett Street. They were so excited about their results that they sent a letter with a picture of their accomplishment to the Portland Department of Transportation (PDOT).

PDOT responded by demanding they remove the painting from the intersection. While stalling for time, neighborhood activists managed to gain the support of then-Portland-Mayor, Vera Katz. Eventually they also won over council members who birthed a new ordinance to legalize the efforts of the forward-thinking community group. Thus the colorful and out-of-the-ordinary Share-It Square was created.

Since then, Share-It Square has evolved to include a solar tea station, free box with “treasures” for the taking, kid’s play corner, and an artsy sitting place aka bus-stop bench. Residents will soon add a food forest. As you approach Share-It Square, you just have to stop. It’s not every day that you see such an interesting and lively intersection.

Geri Ota lived on the intersection of Southeast Ninth and Sherrett from 2000 until 2005. She fondly remembers how neighbors gathered to do something to make their community beautiful. She says she has never lived in a community like Share-It Square, which comes together to plan and then paint the intersection on an annual basis.

“I love that community... So many people came out to participate and it was such a satisfying experience to come together,” she says, recalling the annual Square renewal event.

Through donated labor and supplies, the neighborhood residents still get together each year to renew the efforts that first began some dozen or so years ago. Neighbors have a potluck and the green thumbs in the group share food from their gardens. New neighbors are welcomed, resulting in a feeling of true connection in the neighborhood.

“There was so much enthusiasm and it was a lot of fun,” Geri recalls. It was “good, hard work that was well worth it,” she adds.

It didn’t just end with one project in one neighborhood. Through the tenacious efforts of Mark and others, the Sellwood project morphed into a nonprofit, volunteer-based organization that annually spearheads 20 projects in Portland and works with other cities—Albuquerque, Asheville, St. Paul, Eugene, Oakland, and Tucson, to name a few. In six years City Repair has inspired 50 other communities nationwide to consider similar initiatives.

Mark, a trained architect, grew up in Portland in a household with two architect parents. His visionary mother focused on village design while his Yale-educated father, a City of Portland planner, played a prominent role in the development of Portland’s Waterfront Park and Pioneer Square. While growing up, Mark and his brother were immersed in talk about inner-city culture, urban sprawl, community commons, and placemaking. He jokes that the rides in the family car amounted to a “rolling architecture school.” It paid off.

Indeed, City Repair facilitates the process of helping individual communities accomplish their placemaking goals. By helping them to organize, develop consensus, address conflict, and engage in deep dialogue, people can speak sincerely and listen with open minds. Residents develop decision-making processes and other group skills that people can use effectively in their everyday lives.

City Repair seeks to focus on an organic approach. The organization centers its efforts on promoting sustainability and permanence, empowering people and community, and building friendships and partnerships instead of just doing projects.

City Repair allows each community to engage in creative problem-solving through an inclusive and participatory process. Yes, it takes longer, but the results are profound. With a flexible and adaptive facilitation process, City Repair helps each community define what works best for them and what they want to achieve rather than what is outlined in a preconceived, one-size-fits-all urban plan.

Having spent time with indigenous societies, Mark also believes in the importance other cultures hold for food, music and celebration. Before the work begins, City Repair incorporates into each project just such a life celebration in order to downplay the usual goal-driven way of doing business. City Repair also helps in the purchase of straw, sand, clay and other materials used in each placemaking project.

Most people are in favor of improving their community and the organic nature of the City Repair projects make it seem like fun. Yet these community projects have surprisingly significant effects.

A recent study by Dr. Jan Semenza and Tanya March of Portland State University demonstrates in a measurable way the value of City Repair’s community work. The survey conducted of resident participants within a City Repair project site found 53 percent rated their neighborhood better than before, 30 percent mentioned increased social interactions, and 44 percent rated their present neighborhood as an excellent place to live.

For Mark, even with these impressive findings, it is not about trying to make Portland like another city or better than another city, it’s more about working with whatever is at hand, whatever individuals bring to the table and their active creative participation. The important result is that when we give of ourselves, it means more to us. It’s also about reflecting the true community, not someone else’s definitions of what a community should be. Mark sincerely values human capital, people pushing the envelope to the edge in order to create a new paradigm where society shifts to a community focus.

Just as we are coming full circle to value locally-grown produce and local businesses in order to become more sustainable, it makes perfect sense to look into individual communities to improve our quality of life. And when all is said and done, it’s people that make our communities better, shape our ideas and our work at the local level. People are the vitality of our neighborhoods and the true foundation of City Repair.

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City Repair puts out a Request for Proposals in November. For more information, visit City Repair’s website at www.cityrepair.org or call 503-235-8946.

For years, Edie has been involved in “business writing” but more recently has been exploring creative writing, even trying her hand at poetry. She may be reached at edeegee@yahoo.com