Mr. Houck has been a leader at the local, regional, national and international level in urban park and greenspace issues since 1980 when he founded the Urban Naturalist Program at the Audubon Society of Portland (www.audubonportland.org).
 
Since that time he has worked on urban parks, trails, greenspaces and natural resources in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region.  He speaks nationally and internationally on issues related to urban natural resources and sustainable development.  He helped found the Coalition For A Livable Future (CLF) in 1994 to better integrate social and environmental issues into the region’s growth management planning process.  The CLF (www.clfuture.org) consists of over 60 nonprofit organizations from the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region working to build and equitable and sustainable metropolitan region. 

Mike founded the Urban Greenspaces Institute in 1999.  The Institute’s motto: In Livable Cities is the Preservation of the Wild speaks to his philosophy that it is only by creating cities that people want to live in, cities with easy access to nature and a high quality of life, that the rural landscape and more pristine environments will be conserved.  Mike was selected as a Loeb Fellow and spent a year in residence at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, focusing on urban planning and natural resource protection with ten other Loeb Fellows from the United States and internationally (www.gsd.harvard.edu/loebfell).  

He continues in his role as Urban Naturalist at Portland Audubon Society on a part-time basis and Directs the Urban Greenspaces Institute out of the Center for Spatial Analysis and Research at Portland State University’s Geography Department where he is an adjunct instructor.  Mike serves on the national steering committee of the Ecological Cities Project of Amherst, MA.  He also serves on several local and regional urban water quality and greenspace advisory committees in the Portland metropolitan region. 

Mike is co-editor of the book, Wild in the City, a Guide to Portland’s Natural Areas, and Wild on the Willamette, Exploring the Lower Willamette River.

"Urban Park & Greenspace Theory & Policy - a Casting of the Pacific Northwest Future"
  
Mike Houck, Director of the Urban Greenspaces Institute, and for the past 25 years Audubon Society of Portland's Urban Naturalist, will present an illustrated program that traces the evolution of thinking about the multiple roles of urban parks, trails, and greenspaces in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region over the past three decades.  

He will describe the successes and challenges facing metropolitan areas throughout our ecoregion, including a proposal to launch Metro's second regional greenspaces acquisition program which is projected to garner another $220 million to add to the more than 8,100 acres and regional trails that have been added to the region since 1995.   Mike's presentation will be an exhortation to the Landscape Architecture community to become active participants in shaping the policies that will, in turn, shape our
region's landscape over the next century, and beyond.

January 20, 2006
5pm - 7pm
Pratt & Larson Building, Slab Room
1204 SE Water Street
-free and open to the public-