Every year for the past two decades, the neighbors near Sherrett Street in southwest Portland repaint their colorful street intersection. Resident Mighk Simpson gives us a tour on painting day. On the sidewalk corners are spacious cob benches (with roofs), a children’s playhouse woven from tree branches and found materials, a beehive-shaped dispensary for the monthly neighborhood newsletter The Bee, a 24/7 Tea Station, and the first-ever “Little Free Library”, an innovation which has now gone viral around the world. Local residents are reclaiming this public space as a friendly places for people to get together, creating fertile ground for other collaborative projects — as well as having fun! These projects marked the beginnings of “City Repair”, a Portland urban permaculture movement which has spread throughout Portland and many other cities. [cityrepair.org/share-it-square]
