Our Commitment

Steel Bridge strives to advance the common good. We seek out projects whose benefits touch everyone.

In recent years, the prevailing focus has been on the interests, rights, and property of individuals and groups. The gradual loss of commonly held values is now apparent. More and more people are alarmed.

Environmental degradation and increasing disparities in access to healthcare, education, jobs and housing are symptoms of the disappearance of the commons.

The tension between individual and common interests has marked the history of our country. Yet it’s irresponsible to think the pendulum will automatically swing back. Instead we need to push from whatever toeholds we can get.

Steel Bridge is committed to working right here in Portland’s central city to restore a common good that has been battered over the past sixty years.

"Establishing and maintaining the common good require the cooperative efforts of some, often of many, people. Just as keeping a park free of litter depends on each user picking up after himself, so also maintaining the social conditions from which we all benefit requires the cooperative efforts of citizens. But these efforts pay off, for the common good is a good to which all members of society have access, and from whose enjoyment no one can be easily excluded. All persons, for example, enjoy the benefits of clean air or an unpolluted environment, or any of our society's other common goods. In fact, something counts as a common good only to the extent that it is a good to which all have access."

-"The Common Good", Markkula Center for Applied Ethics