[1] Portland is lagging behind other cities in implementing an aggressive city/university/labor/business-driven “knowledge city” strategy. Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta and other cities have strategies; Portland doesn’t.
Knowledge cities show a strong investment in education, training and research. These cities demonstrate the ability to take research breakthroughs and turn them into new jobs and wealth for the local community.
Most of Portland’s education advocacy efforts have been focused on K to 12th grade public school funding. That must continue and Mayor Tom Potter is rightfully focused on the effort. And, recently the City has made investments to lift up Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) and Portland State University (PSU). But we need to do more and develop an integrated strategy that involves all of Portland’ private post high school education and training efforts.
City government especially needs to do more. Rarely does City government lobby the state legislature on behalf Portland Community College (PCC), PSU or OHSU - despite the fact that PSU’s mission is to, “Let Knowledge Serve the City.” Our interactions with local private colleges or universities, or hospital research faculties are mostly around land use controversies. We must do better.
To that end, earlier this year, I asked Mayor Tom Potter to create a new position on the Portland City Council called the, “High Education Advocate.” He did. He appointed me as the City Council’s first Higher Education Advocate for which I am very grateful. Jane Ames [2] is my staff liaison for this effort.
In preparation to launch a local knowledge city strategy, we have been meeting with higher education leaders, doing the basic research and scanning best practices around the world. We can learn from the cities that already have strategies in place. In the U.S., Boston, Philadelphia and Atlanta have very aggressive knowledge city strategies. Outside the U.S., so do Amsterdam, London and Singapore.
Melbourne has their first knowledge city strategy in place [3] (PDF).
When I met with local officials to discuss their efforts, they were candid that their biggest challenge remains turning local research into local products. They said that venture capital is hard to come by locally and that as a result too much local research is turned into products in other cities.