My Life, My City: Art Pearce, Portland

Cities Today talks to Art Pearce, Policy, Planning and Projects Group Director, City of Portland Bureau of Transportation.

What was your first job?

I taught skiing in high school at a small resort called Greek Peak outside Ithaca, NY. Many Saturdays were spent in the snow with bus loads of families from nearby cities. It was a great lesson in customer service and conveyed optimism. Very few of them would last the day but those that did experienced a joy I believed in. On reflection, it is similar to my work today, rooting for a community to adapt its transportation patterns despite all social engineering to the contrary.

What attracted you to your current role?

I am inspired by finding the connection between sustainable mobility policy objectives and the tangible actions cities can take. My current role as Director of Policy, Planning and Projects enables me to support policy deliberation at the local and regional scale, create capital projects that change the shape of the landscape of Portland, and envision programme interventions that help people adapt their lives to this evolving landscape. I think of our office as the change management department for transportation.

What is your favourite part of the job?

I feel lucky to be able to directly contribute to a city that I love and see those changes impact how people navigate their daily lives.

What has been your biggest success in this role? 

Shortly after I started in this role, we reorganised the Bureau to group three previously separate divisions (Policy and Planning, Capital Project Delivery and Mobility Programs) into one department. I feel very proud that I have expanded and nurtured this group into a team who sees the connection between these activities and feels empowered to drive change in their city. I’m also proud that we ground that work in climate and equity.

What has been your biggest setback?

Inertia is very hard to shift, especially when you are asking people or businesses to change their daily practices or contribute to a social good. Even in Portland, implementing change is a very emotional process and has become less civil in recent years. The tone of public debate takes its toll on everyone.

What are you working on right now that you’re excited about? 

Portland bloomed with street use for business and public gathering during the pandemic. We are forming a new Public Realm and Street Plaza team to encourage public space as a permanent trend to more fully incorporate community activities and the identity of all Portlanders.

If you could wave a magic wand, what one thing would you fix in your city? 

I would have planned streets with enough space for cycling from the beginning as Portland grew. Cycling continues to be one of the most effective urban transportation solutions but is the hardest and most controversial to retrofit into our urban fabric.

What are you reading right now?

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is a very thought-provoking science fiction story about our inability as a global society to attend to the hard choices and trade-offs associated with climate change. I found it too easy to relate to the local scale challenges I see every day, but also inspiring to think of what is possible through more concerted effort.

Who has most inspired you in the work that you do? 

The generation of Portland planners before me that thoughtfully steered city decisions to turn Portland into an international model for sustainable cities. I feel a lot of responsibility to carry this vision on amidst a consistently challenging landscape. They navigated the challenges of their time and we need to too. They do call me from time to time to remind me of that.

If you weren’t doing this job, what do you think you might be doing?

Just before I started working in transportation planning I was doing a lot of event planning and continue to love live music, so probably something in that arena. I still see lots of correlations between the ease of experience when attending a well-planned event and the core tenets of integrated land use and transportation city planning so maybe I am just doing event planning at a larger scale.

What’s your favourite place in your city and why? 

I love cycling through Portland’s east side neighbourhoods at night and soaking in the energy of people out enjoying the city (even in the rain!) and seeing the red blinky bike lights happily coming and going on quiet streets.

What’s one thing people might not ordinarily know about you?

I am a late blooming musician, learning my first instrument in my early 40s. I now play mandolin and drums with a group of friends most weeks – sometimes even out in front of other people! One favourite recent moment involved stashing a tiny drum kit on my raft on a Grand Canyon trip resulting in an epic moonlit jam in a tiny slot canyon.

• Time in role: 8 years
• Brief career history: I have worked for the Portland Bureau of Transportation for 24 years, starting as an intern in the Transportation Planning department. I worked as a transportation planner and then capital project manager on many of Portland’s most transformational local and regional transportation projects.  I now manage transportation planning, capital project delivery and active transportation and safety programmes divisions across a team of 100 inspired changemaking staff.
• Career tip: Spend time understanding the structure and decision-making systems of your organisation and partner agencies, and develop relationships and shared goals with your peers. They will have far more power inside their departments than you could ever garner through your own hierarchy and will likely someday be a peer decision-maker who can help make things happen.