Oregon Metro Future Vision

Visioning + Long-Range Planning

Nov 7

Written by Dacie Doucette

Oregon Metro Future Vision

Portland, OR · 2025–present

Client: Oregon Metro
Location: Greater Portland region, OR
Year: 2025–present (in progress)
CP Role: Local engagement lead, on a Gensler-led team with the Institute for the Future and Mosaic Resolutions
Practice Area: Visioning + Long-Range Planning
Team: Irene Kim, Local Engagement Lead; Alex Joyce, Regional Trends and Real Estate Economics Advisor

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The Challenge

Oregon Metro is writing a 50-year Future Vision for Greater Portland, a region changing demographically, economically, and climatically with no current long-range vision. Metro wants the vision to carry the region's full range of values, including Indigenous and youth voices.

Our Approach

We lead local engagement, including the equitable engagement strategy and youth engagement. In August 2026 we led Future Fest, a day of art and workshops where people ages 14 to 24 painted a mural of the region they want. In October we led the Vision Summit, where nearly 200 leaders from across sectors worked through the futures research.

Where It Stands

The Future Vision Commission adopted six regional values in spring 2026. Metro plans to release a draft vision for public review in spring 2027.

Related Projects

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Projects

FeaturedEngagement StrategyCommunity + Regional Visioning

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Flagstaff Regional Plan Scenario Planning

Tahoe Housing Initiative

Spatial Planning + Placemaking

Conceptual planning, test-fits, streetscapes, and master plans that make places walkable, vibrant, and inclusive — with the design and economic analysis to show they can actually be built.

Visioning + Long-Range Planning

Comprehensive and general plans that frame alternative futures, surface trade-offs, and set a direction the community owns — not one it inherits from a process it didn’t trust.

Urban Analytics + Scenario Planning

Growth modeling, fiscal impact analysis, and policy evaluation that let communities test alternative futures before committing — decisions made with eyes open to uncertainty, not in spite of it.

Real Estate + Feasibility

Site feasibility, pro forma, public-private partnership structuring, and development strategy for public-sector clients navigating the gap between what a place could be and what the market will currently support.

Zoning Code Reform

Code audits, zoning updates, form-based codes, and design standards written for adoption and legal review — not just policy aspiration. Pro-forma-driven analysis that tests whether new standards produce the outcomes they promise.

Housing Policy

Housing needs analyses, production strategies, and middle-housing policy calibrated to local markets and state statutory requirements — so plans produce housing, not just goals.

Environment + Sustainability

Urban forestry, parks and open space planning, climate action, and environmental equity analysis — treated as a land use problem alongside core planning practice, not as a separate sustainability track.

How We Work

1. Road-Tested Futures

We structure work around alternative futures rather than a single recommended path, stress-testing strategies against market, regulatory, and political conditions before clients commit. Scenario planning, feasibility analysis, and housing needs assessments form the analytic foundation — so decisions get made with eyes open to uncertainty, not in spite of it.

2. Visually Striking Storytelling

Sophisticated analysis is only useful if non-technical audiences can engage with it. We translate quantitative findings, policy choices, and design ideas into plain-language narratives, diagrams, and renderings that a council member, a property owner, or a neighbor can see, debate, and act on — without simplifying the substance underneath.

3. Hands-On, Equitable Engagement

Quality process creates quality outcomes. We engage authentically, not transactionally — designing processes that meet people where they are, in their language, their venue, their schedule, so communities feel genuinely heard, not simply consulted. We integrate that input with the technical work it’s meant to inform, to create outcomes shaped by the community.

4. Place-Based Designs

Two convictions drive our practice: a plan only matters if it can be acted on, and planning works best when it’s grounded in a real place. Every plan, policy, and analysis we produce is anchored to specific places — drawing on local form, history, and patterns of use so ideas can be visualized, debated, refined, and built. Grounding the work spatially is what makes spatial planning more than a label.

5. Market-Feasible Strategies

A plan is only as good as its adoption rate. We are clear-eyed about the financial, regulatory, and political obstacles to realizing equity and sustainability, and we build those conditions into the work from the start — pro forma stress-tests, code drafts written for legal review, strategies calibrated to what the market will actually support and build.