Portland: Fast City, or City that Doesn't Work?
fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-fast-cities-portland.html
cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8463
Fast Company names Portland one of its Fast Cities 2007. There are nine different categories with 3-4 cities in each. I might have expected we'd be named a Start-Up Hub or a Creative Class Mecca, but in fact we are Green Leaders like Chicago, Stockholm and Vancouver BC.
Three decades ago, Portland became a case study on how to stuff sprawl when it enacted strict limits on urban growth. Today, it's at the forefront of the "eat local" revolution, in which individuals and restaurants buy directly from area farmers to preserve livelihoods and open space. With 13 farmer's markets, and nearby world-class vineyards, residents not only buy local but they eat and drink well too.
But it's only fair that we don't escape the view of the Cato Institute and its new Policy Analysis, Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn't Work:
Though many people consider Portland, Oregon, a model of 21st-century urban planning, the region's integrated land-use and transportation plans have greatly reduced the area's livability. To halt urban sprawl and reduce people's dependence on the automobile, Portland's plans use an urban-growth boundary to greatly increase the area's population density, spend most of the region's transportation funds on various rail transit projects, and promote construction of scores of high-density, mixed-use developments.
When judged by the results rather than the intentions, the costs of Portland's planning far outweigh the benefits. Planners made housing unaffordable to force more people to live in multifamily housing or in homes on tiny lots. They allowed congestion to increase to near-gridlock levels to force more people to ride the region's expensive rail transit lines. They diverted billions of dollars of taxes from schools, fire, public health, and other essential services to subsidize the construction of transit and high-density housing projects.
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These problems are all the predictable result of a process that gives a few people enormous power over an entire urban area. Portland should dismantle its planning programs, and other cities that want to maintain their livability would do well to study Portland as an example of how not to plan.
they talk about us
Posted at July 10, 2007 * add entry to del.icio.us
The Cato institute, a rigidly ideological right wing think tank funded by self interested corporations and anti government fanatics, isn't in the same league as a respected, objective business journalism publication like Fast Company.
Cato's claim that Portland planning has reduced quality of life is a joke -- the compact growth, transit, and other "problems" are precisely why my wife and I moved to Portland. We hardly ever have to drive; we enjoy taking the streetcar every day; TriMet and the Max take us anywhere else we want to go, without having to hassle with parking; we walk and bike (and thereby stay healthier) far more than we ever did in the 'burbs. We attend far more performance events, restaurants, etc. than we ever did when we had to drive to them, yet we spend less per month because we don't have the expenses of a car.
If livability is so bad in urban Portland, why do so many people choose to live here? Why are demographers anticipating doubling of the population in less than 20 years? I just got back from sprawly LA and San Francisco, and saw far higher housing prices, for far less space, than I do here in Portland. And for all their highway building, gridlock was much worse.
Cato promotes the interests of the sprawl lobby -- developers etc. People are voting with their feet to live in desirable places like Portland and Vancouver BC because of their smart growth planning.
Posted by: brett at July 10, 2007 05:49 PM
For the record, calling the Cato Institute a "right wing think tank" isn't quite fair. They definitely have an agenda, but it's a Libertarian agenda. Yes they're very anti-government and obviously against urban planning, but they're also very pro-civil liberties and things that are generally more aligned with the left. As libertarians, they're kinda outside the left/right political spectrum.
Also, calling San Francisco sprawly seems weird, too... parts of the bay area are, sure, but San Francisco is clearly far, far more dense than Portland. Four times as dense, according to Wikipedia!
Posted by: no one in particular at July 11, 2007 02:31 AM
You're right -- I meant the Bay Area, of course. I never drove at all in SF itself, which was a great relief, because having to drive to San Jose etc. was just depressing.
Actually LA is denser than you'd expect, too, but the problem is that they didn't plan transit and development simultaneously, so it can be a nightmare to get around by car. They're now trying to fix it retroactively (there was a big story on this in LA Weekly when I was there) but it's enormously difficult and expensive to undo all their mistakes after the sprawl is already in place. Which is why I'm so impressed by the way Portland and Vancouver BC have at least tried to plan the system (transport and development) together and in advance -- a public approach that's anathema to libertarian conservatives like Cato. Thanks for clarifying which brand of conservatism Cato favors.
Posted by: brett at July 16, 2007 01:04 PM
