Portland State University students explored Laurelhurst Park as part of their Parks & Portland history course, according to a May 18 announcement. The class, led by professor Catherine McNeur, uses city parks as classrooms and encourages students to engage directly with the spaces while learning about their historical development.
The course aims to help students understand how public spaces reflect the changing needs and values of a community. By examining topics such as real estate, advocacy, access, and social change within Portland’s parks, the class offers insights into broader patterns in urban history.
“Whose park is this? Who gets to control it? Who gets to use it?,” McNeur asked her students during a lesson at Laurelhurst Park. “That kind of rule-making and policing of space has been part of parks from the very beginning. And these rules continue to be written and rewritten.” She also said: “Parks, in many ways, can be a microcosm of the city, and over time Portlanders have remade them to suit their new needs. Some of the tension that comes with social or cultural change plays out in parks, but people also continue to find ways to build communities in these spaces. They are spaces for protests, celebration, inclusion and exclusion. We can even trace the transformations in how we’ve understood health and nature through these spaces.”
McNeur developed Parks & Portland after years partnering with local organizations such as Portland Parks & Recreation and Friends of Peninsula Park Rose Garden for public history courses. Inspired by her own undergraduate experience taking walking tours focused on New York City architectural history, she said: “It made me realize that classrooms don’t have to have walls… History is not just in the libraries… but it’s also being able to be in the place and experience where it took place.” Students from various majors participated in this hands-on approach; Ian Coates said: “A lot of history you learn is far away in time and space… But by coming to the parks and learning about them… we’re not going to forget them.”
The curriculum includes walking tours across several historic sites such as Washington Park; Mt. Tabor; Lownsdale & Chapman Squares; North Park Blocks; Forest Park; Duniway; Lair Hill; Tom McCall Waterfront Park; Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade among others. During these tours topics range from neighborhood zoning laws—like restrictive housing covenants—to park design influences such as Emanuel Mische’s Olmsted-inspired plans.
Beyond classroom activities McNeur has reached wider audiences through short videos on TikTok and Instagram about local park histories—some receiving hundreds of thousands of views—and now incorporates student video documentaries into final projects for deeper engagement with research methods.
Looking ahead McNeur hopes that sharing both her own research process online along with student work will foster stronger media literacy skills among participants: “My dream is that the students will not only become good historians in the process but also good consumers of media,” she said.
