Portland’s ‘Vision Vessel’ An unorthodox project encourages the residents of Portland to participate in the shaping of their city.

The Vision Vessel certainly attracts attention. It resembles an outdoor shower stall due to its 23-foot-long vinyl screen that coils around it and lends an air of mystery to whatever lurks within. Inside the curtain stands a triangular eight-foot fiberglass column skinned with gleaming white oak and maple. A keyboard protrudes beneath a video screen flush with the polished surface and an inviting “START” icon flashes on the screen.

What is this thing? Essentially, the Vessel is a mobile recording studio crossbred with a ballot box, commissioned by Portland, Oregon mayor Tom Potter as part of a wide-ranging initiative to reform the city’s vaunted urban-planning process. The city’s “visioning process,” a year-plus-long effort, has made ample use of hoary old citizen-involvement strategies: round-tables, neighborhood meetings, focus groups, questionnaires printed in a Babel of languages. The Vision Vessel, though, is designed to rocket democratic discourse into the podcasting age by fusing racy design and dirt-cheap technology.

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