ECONOMICS AND TRADE | Achieving growth through open markets
26 November 2008
A Model U.S. City Restricts Suburban Sprawl
Can the low-income enjoy Portland, Oregon, if property prices skyrocket?
This is the first article in a series on Portland’s smart-growth policies.
Portland, Oregon — It is easy to see why Portland, Oregon, scores high in many national rankings, including those of the most environmentally friendly cities and the best places to raise children.
Portland has a lively commercial and cultural center that, even during rush hours, does not feel hectic. Rather than traveling by car, people can move around by a streetcar — in the central city, for free — whose single route encircles the city. Many mixed-use buildings concentrated around the streetcar’s route include apartments, offices and shops. The city, which 30 years ago was considered not very cosmopolitan, prides itself on a thriving cultural life and many excellent (yet not pricey) restaurants. Small grassy spaces where residents can picnic abound downtown, and great hiking trails are less than a 30-minute drive from the city. Many buildings are energy-efficient. Many roads include bike lanes.
These features have earned Portland a national and international reputation. Municipal and regional officials say the city owes its success to the core values behind its development — stewardship of the natural environment and care for high-quality urban life.
When asked about “smart growth” — which denotes compact, walkable and transit-oriented communities for which the city is known — officials are quick to point out they do not use this term. The state of Oregon and the city itself initiated policies aimed at arresting suburban sprawl and its consequences, such as air pollution from cars and the loss of farmland and open spaces almost two decades before the term was coined in the 1990s.
In 1973, the Oregon Legislature passed a law that required all municipalities in the state to delineate urban boundaries and restrict development on lands beyond them. Portland established an urbanization boundary six years later. In the following decade, as the population continued to grow, Portland’s population density — the number of people per square kilometer — increased by more than 50 percent.
Carbon dioxide emissions, which the city started tracking in the early 1990s, have dropped by 2.5 percent since then.
“We are meeting the Kyoto Protocol as a result of land-use changes and energy initiatives,” said Rex Burkholder, a council member of Metro, the regional government.
Those energy initiatives include promotion of green buildings; a state tax credit for investment in cleaner transportation or in energy efficiency, conservation or use of renewable-energy sources; and city fees and rebates designed to reduce Portland’s carbon footprint.
Portland’s overall strategy has emphasized zoning based on minimum population density requirements and mass-transit development rather than highway construction. The city discourages driving and supports development of pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented neighborhoods that offer job opportunities.
“The big success of our land-use policies is developing communities where people can meet most of their needs locally,” Burkholder told America.gov.
At the time most other U.S. metropolises were pushing out farms and devouring open spaces to build suburban developments, Portland became a magnet for Americans who appreciated sustainable living more than one popular version of the “American Dream” — a single-family house with a front lawn and backyard and a car or two to get to work or a shopping mall.
“It is genuinely the ethos of the city to live sustainably and care about the [natural] environment,” said Erin Flynn, director of economic development at the Portland Development Commission.
Young and entrepreneurial people have been flocking to Portland for years. From 1990 to 2003, the city's population increased by a quarter to almost 2 million. And although the influx has slowed in recent years, the commission projects the number of residents to reach 2.3 million in 2010, a 50 percent increase over the 1990 population.
But an unintended consequence of city’s success is the emergence of a well-off creative class that has pushed property prices sky-high and made urban living unavailable to lower-income residents in Portland.
That is not something the city is willing to live with, Flynn told America.gov.
“Everybody has to have an opportunity to live his or her values,” she said.
Portland is trying to find solutions, most likely involving subsidies to developers and creative financing options, to develop affordable downtown housing so that such opportunity will become a reality for residents of all income levels.
