Urban Planning Overlord

Credit When Credit's Due

2009-10-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Elizabeth Hovde, the conservative opinion writer for the Oregonian, who penned a quite moderate screed today about Metro's Urban Growth Boundary battles. She pointed out that the farmland in Washington County and around the rest of the Portland Metro Area is a valuable resource to be preserved and enhanced, not eviscerated and bulldozed. Not quite your typical "in house righty columnist," eh BlueOregon? Can you imagine David Reinhard writing that column?

Let's give credit where credit for moderate Republicanism is due, BlueOregon. Unless you are such partisan Dem hacks that you don't care, or want to actually discourage moderate Republicanism as a threat to Democratic party primacy in Oregon.

I'm awaiting the praise ...

UPDATE: MONDAY MORNING 10/5/09: Didn't have to wait long. Thanks, BlueOregon, for giving credit where credit is due. I don't agree with BlueOregon that the pavers and the no-growthers have gone away, it's just that events of the past two years have taken away their thunder. If and when growth heats up again in Portland, both groups will be back in force.

Uh Oh ...

2009-09-08T08:56:00.001-07:00

Well, this won't do much for my profession:

Mohammed Atta was an Urban Planning Graduate Student!

And his thesis sounds like it takes "neo-traditionalism" to extremes.

Which makes an interesting point - going back to traditional forms of cities should NOT mean going back to traditional forms of culture, such as Islamic misogyny. That seems an obvious point to me, but it appears that Mohammed Atta didn't get it.

More Libertarian Hypocrisy

2009-08-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

From Dave Lister, in the Oregonian. Lister is a failed city council candidate and favorite of Jack Bog.

Which is too bad, because where Lister is starting, he's right on this one. Metro is being wooden-headed when it refuses to let Cornelius add some land to its urban growth boundary for employment uses. It's an example of the "up not out" dogma taken to its (il)logical extreme.

But Lister doesn't stop there - he continues with a broadside against the whole Oregon and Metro Portland planning system. And shows his true colors - this libertarian is against giving people choices in the way they live. To make my case:

1. A snide comment about $100,000 to pay for new bicycle lockers. Lister apparently thinks everyone WANTS to drive a car, which doesn't explain the thousands of new bicyclers on our streets every day. Secure lockers is part of giving people riding bicycles that CHOICE - a choice Lister would deny them.

2. Then the big one - we are all being forced into "suburbs ... built so close to one another you can't swing a nine iron between them," and "skinny row houses infest Portland's stately old neighborhoods like some kind of melanoma." Meanwhile, suburban development occurring in Clark, Columbia, and Yamhill Counties, where they are "resistant to the smart-growth bug," is negating all this.

What Lister and his ignorant libertarian brigade appear to be clueless to (assuming that they are not knaves to begin with and know well the consequences of what they are espousing), is that small suburban plots, skinny row houses and, yes, the high rise and mid-rise condominiums and apartments Lister undoubtedly hates, are giving people CHOICES. There remain tens of thousands of single-family homes on large lots for those who would prefer that lifestyle, and as Lister points out, more are still being built. Lister is trapped in a time-warp of 1950's suburban mentality - the majority of today's households are not single families with two parents and two or more children, and they don't want to live on a 1,000 square meter subdivision lot. But Lister wouldn't give them that choice, in part by pandering to those who would use zoning laws to prevent housing choice in their neighborhoods. Does that sound very "libertarian" to you?

3. As for his transportation spouts, Lister claims that our average commute speed on freeways is 19 miles per hour (not true), makes fun of MAX, and implies that we need more freeways, not MAX. Once again, no choice for the percentage of Portlanders who can't or don't want to, drive everywhere. And no thought to the massive government intervention in the form of eminent domain condemnation of property and blighting of existing neighborhoods in the elusive chase for free-flowing freeway traffic.

Lister, a person "to stop goofball antics at City Hall," according to Jack Bog when he endorsed him, is throwing up the usual libertarian goofball obfuscations in his attack on CHOICE in the way we live.

No, Bogdanski, it's "Asian-style Human Warehousing"

2009-07-16T09:21:00.001-07:00

More proof that the Jack Bogs and Jim Karlocks and Antiplanners of the world are emulating Canute by fighting the tides, as highrises come to suburbia because people want to live in them. Namely, many immigrants from East and South Asia.

Now I know none of these gentlemen are bigots, so I wouldn't expect any of them to argue that the solution to this "problem" is to exclude East and South Asians from this country. What they would probably argue is that these poor deluded souls have been brainwashed by conditions in their benighted native lands, and that after a few years living in the Soviet-style warehouses they will see the light and flock to single-family housing.

Maybe, maybe not. It's all about "choice," and as long as the market and government make sure people have a choice of the type of housing they want, they are both doing their job. It's when ideology gets in the way, either in the form of those wanting to abolish the single-family residence as environmentally wasteful, or those who want to abolish multi-family housing as un-American, that the problems start.

Helvetia and the Urban Growth Boundary

2009-07-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

This story, in the Oregonian, is the latest in the great battle of the Portland Metropolitan Area and its urban growth boundary. Here's the Washington County land use/zoning map. Helvetia is generally north of Hillsboro and also north of Highway 26, and east of the city of North Plains.

First, there's a temporary air of unreality in this whole discussion, given the thousands of empty lots and unsold homes the Portland area today. But now's the time to fix things, as opposed to waiting until the demands of new growth a decade or so from now cannot be met.

Next, we have the exogenous variable problem, a.k.a. "Clark County." It offers a giant escape valve should Oregonians refuse to accommodate new growth. And, barring changes in the U.S. Constitution or some factor that makes the Pacific Northwest an extremely undesirable place, new growth will be coming to this area. Putting all new growth into Clark County has some highly undesirable impacts on our transportation system and economy. I suppose for those with lots of money turning Portland into a backwater is quite ideal. It won't be ideal for their kids, but they don't seem to perceive that fact, or care about it even if they do perceive it.

And then there's the GREAT URBAN GROWTH BOUNDARY EXPANSION PARADOX. The state land use goals strongly point toward urban growth expansion onto marginal and "exception" lands, those not suitable for extensive farm and forest operations. Any attempt to expand onto high value farm and forest lands will be struck down if marginal and "exception" lands are also available for the urban growth boundary expansion. And that certainly makes sense, in terms of preserving Oregon's commercial agricultural economy. I don't know if we really want extensive forestry operations immediately adjacent to the Portland urban area, but commercial forest lands also tend to be lands that have steeper slopes, and thus their urbanization would cause significant environmental problems that are expensive for new development to mitigate.

So Metro goes first to the "exception" lands. However, these lands are generally unfit for commercial farming or forestry because they have already been divided into smaller lots and have lots of people already living there. And these people moved out into places like Beavercreek (near Oregon City), Stafford (near West Linn and Lake Oswego), and Helvetia. They like things just the way they are, and will vigorously oppose extension of the urban growth boundary. Meanwhile, the farm and forest lands "off limits" are in large parcels, easier to plan and develop wisely, with a few residents who are generally ekeing out a resource-based living right now and will slobber over the dollars offered by the developers.

My solution for Helvetia? The map makes it obvious. Designate the area south of Highway 26 and the area north of Highway 26 and east of Cornelius Pass Road as urban reserves. Allow a small area for expansion around the City of North Plains, which has been eager to grow for a couple of decades now. Make the area north of Highway 26 and west of Cornelius Pass Road a rural reserve. A four-lane divided highway would seem to be an excellent "buffer between urban and rural development.

And take the recommendations of the "Big Look" to decentralize sclerotic statewide planning goals to allow a flexible solution such as I've just proposed.

Cell Towers are Health Hazards? No Way.

2009-05-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

People hate new cell towers for mobile telephony, although there is a logical disconnect regarding their use - I've heard of local planners getting telephone calls from people irate about a new cell tower application - calling from their cell phones.

But there's no proven link between cell tower emissions and cancer - don't take my word for it:

American Cancer Society
Wireless Week
Lawrence Laboratory Professor

Compare these sources to the often hysterical-sounding, science-free conspiracy theories of those who think cell towers pose health risks. Just google the term and you'll find plenty.

Fortunately for all in this situation the Federal Government bowed to common sense and precluded local governments from trotting out health concerns as a reason to deny cell tower applications. This, of course, is another peg in the conspiracy theories.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on these people. There are plenty of things in the modern world that have proven to be real health risks. But cell towers aren't one of them.

Strange Bedfellows? Maybe not ...

2009-05-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

And now let's look at my other "favorite" blogger, Mr. O'Toole the ANTIPLANNER. O'Toole is much more intellectually coherent than Professor Bogdanski. Like the Bog-man, he's even sometimes right (he supports congestion pricing). But more often he's wrong, sometimes spectacularly wrong.

And his most recent post is a great example of his wrong-headedness. The Antiplanner should by all rights be applauding this building, which is a sign of market forces at work. People want to live in inner SE Portland, and the old nice-looking house on the site previously didn't fit very many of them in. The new building does. It's telling that O'Toole clucks over the prices of the condos, and then notes that 20 of the 27 have sold in these terrible economic times. Hmmmm.... maybe Mr. Antiplanner isn't such a fan of "the market" when "the market" doesn't promote the suburban and rural sprawl he seems to love?

As for the building itself, the subject of fits of spleen from both Bogdanski and O'Toole, it is a bit on the, er, "modern" side of the architectural scale. I suppose it could have been dressed up with brick and some onion domes to make it look like a Russian Orthodox Muscovite cathedral, but that might cause a few more issues. Actually, the building looks fine to this overlord - and if over 70% of the units are sold it seems that a few others agree with me.

Just Say No. Always.

2009-04-30T11:35:00.001-07:00

It's been exactly one year since the last post on this worthy blog.

And our old "friend" continues his tirades.

Note the complete crank-fest in the comments section. Perhaps he's expelled all contrary voices from his blog - I found a reference to noted Republican crazy (NOT!) Jack Roberts getting the boot a while back.

And note the slam upon a new target, a State Representative who dares to disagree with the blog proprietor. And a vicious ad hominem attack to boot.

But back to substance - roads get wear and tear, and a car that is driven 10,000 miles a year on those roads has more impact than a car that is driven 1,000 miles a year on those same roads. And an SUV weighing 10,000 lbs. has more impact when driven on those roads than a Mini-Cooper weighing 4,000 lbs.

The current gasoline tax is a rough calculator for apportioning the costs of keeping roads and building new ones on an equitable basis. And it's getting rougher - should a Prius driver pay only half what a Mini-Cooper driver pays for road upkeep because his car uses only half the gas, but weighs more?

So taxing cars based upon actual miles driven on our roads makes sense. As for figuring out exactly how to do it in a non-intrusive way - that's a subject for more work, once the concept is accepted.

UPDATE: Jack Bog's spyware has noted the re-emergence of this blog. Amid the usual lies: (motto: "Soviet-style human warehousing is Portland's only hope"), one of his commenters, "Ben," has this to say, among more vicious ad hominem attacks, in comment # 10, reprinted in part here:

Roads don't get wear and tear from cars, period. A car that is driven 10,000 miles a year on those roads has the same impact as a car that is driven 1,000 miles. None.
The same as an SUV weighing 10,000 lbs. and the same as a Mini-Cooper weighing 4,000 lbs. None.

Large freight rucks and other heavy vehicles along with studds wear out roads. Not cars.

In response:

1. Ben denies basic gravity with his absolute assertion. Admittedly, a heavily-laden truck has much more impact than a car on a road's surface. But impact upon a road's surface is proportional to a vehicle's weight. Does Ben claim that bicycles have the same impact upon a road surface than car's do? (Perhaps he does ...)

2. And Ben conveniently leaves out my other point - that a vehicle's impact upon the roadway is becoming increasingly divorced from the amount of gasoline needed to propel the vehicle.

Back to the Soviet planning libel from the Bog-man - I urge my dozen or so readers to peruse my past archives to determine how my advocacy of more choice for Portland's residents in their life patterns constitutes totalitarianism.

The Flanders Bike Bridge Imbroglio

2008-04-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you who haven't heard, the big rage in the Planning Overlord world - transportation division has been the proposal to reuse the old Sauvie Island Bridge (being replaced by a new structure) as a "new" bicycle/pedestrian bridge over I-405 at Flanders Street. A good summary of the issues can be found in this Portland Tribune article.

This was a close call in the mind of this particular urban planning overlord, until I read in, of all places, here, an excellent additional complication. Jack Bog has just tipped the scales - the additional complications for freeway off-ramps and cars on 14th and 16th should kill this project off for good.

I know the bike/alternative modes proponents will just say "but the cars just won again!" Yes, they did. It's one thing to mess around with local circulation patterns for a block or two. I have no problem with that. It's another to mess around with freeway onramps and offramps.

And kudos to the original research from Jack Bog, just like he did with the newspaper racks a few months ago. Too bad his views are encrusted with such bitterness.

Gnashing of Teeth to Commence (Again)

2008-04-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

If I remember correctly, a certain notorious blogger to remain un-named (but linked to here) was agog and outraged, along with his small but cranky contingent, that Metro would actually subsidize Transit Oriented Development (the horror! - but I can't find a specific link, perhaps the unnamed blogger can enlighten us all as to where, if anywhere, it is?). It turns out that not only the cranky blogger noticed, but so did the American Planning Association, which gave Metro one of its national awards for planning excellence.

And here are the photos to go along with the article:

But who would want monstrosities like these when we would have kept Portland the way it was in the 1970's and had "Newark of the Northwest" by now?

A Small Town Turns its Back on Immigrants - and Prosperity

2008-04-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

FROM "PLANNING," THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION, EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE IN THE MARCH 2008 ISSUE ENTITLED "LA VIDA LOCAL." IT'S THE STORY OF A SMALL TOWN IN NEW JERSEY, AND THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF PASSING DRACONIAN ANTI-IMMIGRANT LAWS (THE MAGAZINE IS BEHIND A SUBSCRIPTION WALL)

"The law wasn't enforceable. All it did was scare people," says Ed Robins, a self-described "aging hippie." He's standing otuside the Riverside Arts Guild, his music story and recording studio in Riverside, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from suburban Philadelphia. "One of my musicians was Brazilian, and when his landlord threatened him with exposure, he went home."

Robins is talking about a series of events that began in the summer of 2006 in this old factory town of 8,000. That's when the Riverside Township became the first muncipality in the state to enact legislation penalizing those who knwoingly rented to or employed undocumented immigrants. In deciding to do so, it joined dozens of other communities that are addressing one of the nation's hottest issues: how to handle the more than 10 million immigrants (both legal and illegal) who have entered the country since 2000, a total that's the largest in any seven-year period in American history.

Ed Robins represents one point of view in Riverside. Mark Remsa has a different take on the matter. "It's a matter of ensuring proper population density - and not overcrowding," says Remsa, director of economic development and regional planning for Burlington County, New Jersey, which encompasses Riverside. "That means that building codes are paid attention to and violations are enforced."

Immigrants have been coming to Riverside since the 1960's. Many of the first wave came from Portugal, creating a comfort zone for the latest group of newcomers - the Brazilians - who share a language and culture. Between 2000 and 2006, local officials estimate, more than 3,000 immigrants (both legal and not) arrived. Residents grew used to seeing "Brazilian Cadillacs," their term for the white vans that waited curbside to transport construction crews to work sites, and businesses on the main street welcomed the yellow and green flags that flapped outside stores, knowing that they brought customers downtown.

Yet some residents said the clannish manner of the foreigners made them feel uneasy. "I felt like a minority myself," says Nicole Forssell, a crossing guard and mother of three. "I felt they were always staring at us, and I was uncomfortable that they spoke in their own language to each other."

So when the ordinance passed, it didn't do so quietly Hundreds of demonstrators gathered - in protest and in support - causing enough of a ruckus that police cordoned off the town'a main streets. Within months, though, the streets took on a markedly different aspect. As Brazilians and Latin Americans fled Riverside, they left behind the dozen or so businesses - bodegas and restaurants, hair salons, and Western Union offices - that had catered to them. Today, Scott Street, the town's main drag, is deserted, the shops empty.

"People used to line up outside the supermarket before it even opened. Now nobody comes," says Enrique, a Brazilian behind the counter at a Mini-Market lined with shelves of coconut milk and "tostines" crackers. "Our city was beautiful; now it's sad," he sighs. "I look out the window and all I see is ghosts."

Mike Law, a landlord who says he counts many immigrants on his rent rolls, believes the Brazilians kept the streets hopping. "A lot of these stores were empty until the Brazilians came here," he says. "They opened businesses and they patronized businesses. To me, they were the Irish and the Italians of the 21st century. I think people were jealous of their success in a town that, frankly, had fallen behind the eight ball."

Robins echoes the sentiment. "There was a cold reality here after a whole: we saw that our economic base was ruined and that the ordiance was wrong. It created nothing but prejudice and separation."

It took about a year for the realization to sink in, but in September 2007 the town rescinded the ordinance. The rules were never enforced, anyway, as several human rights and business groups sued after the law was enacted in July 2006. "I don't think people knew there would be such an economic burden," says Mayor George Conard, who had voted for the legislation as a township commissioner.

IF THIS WILL HAPPEN IN A SMALL TOWN IN NEW JERSEY, WHAT IS THE FATE OF A STATE LIKE ARIZONA WHICH HAS JUST PASSED DRACONIAN ANTI-IMMIGRANT LEGISLATION AFFECTING THE STATE AND ITS SIX MILLION RESIDENTS?

WE HEAR JAMMERINGS ABOUT THE ECONOMIC DRAIN OF IMMIGRANTS, LEGAL AND ILLEGAL, BUT THEIR PRESENCE HERE IS, BY DEFINITION, AN ECONOMIC PLUS FOR OUR NATION - AND THOSE CITIES AND STATES THAT HAVE DECIDED TO SCAPEGOAT THEM ARE, I SUSPECT, GOING TO BE FINDING THAT OUT SOON.

1000 Friends of Oregon - the ACLU of Oregon Land Use

2008-04-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

I'm glad the ACLU is around to represent its viewpoint, but I'm also glad that there aren't a lot of ACLU members in Congress because I don't agree with their 1st amendment extremism.

Similarly, I'm glad 1000 Friends of Oregon exists to be a watchdog for the extreme implementation of "good land use planning," but I don't think it's a good idea to elect former heads of the organization to seats on local governing bodies.

Case in point, Robert Liberty, who led the Metro torpedoing of poor Cornelius' attempts to get some industrial land into its city and shore up it's miserably puny tax base. Manipulating Oregon's land use laws, Liberty has choked off a community's needed economic development, all in the name of a purist ideal of land use planning in Oregon.

It's the reason Measure 37 passed. Liberty and the 1000 Friends still just don't get it. It's not 1973 any more.

Antiplanner hates proposed rail line

2008-01-30T22:39:00.000-08:00

Sort of a "dog bites man" story, I know. The antiplanner is aghast that Portland may be spending over a billion dollars on a light rail line to Milwaukie, 8 miles south.

Never mind that it will serve Southeast Portland and Sellwood before it gets to Milwaukie.

Never mind that building a new freeway on the same route would cost how much exactly?

Never mind that bus rapid transit lines on their own right of way would cost just about as much.

Never mind that, as traffic gets more snarled, the antiplanner's sneer that he could ride his bike faster than the light rail trains will soon be matched by a sneer that he could ride his bike faster than automobile traffic along the same route.

Never mind that a light rail and bike only bridge across the Willamette will increase the antiplanner's and other bike riders' safety.

Never mind that the rail line will give transportation users CHOICE.

Never mind, antiplanner.

Jack Bog wants Rockwood to remain a slum

2008-01-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

I guess he's so mistrustful of the work that Homer Williams has done to turn a junked-out portion of Northwest Portland into a hated icon of hipness that he's willing to flush the good and despairing citizens of Rockwood down the toilet so that his anti-Homer purity can be maintained.

Exclusive bike lanes on Salmon and Taylor in Downtown PDX

2007-12-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

A while back, during the bicycle deaths controversies, I started contemplating how the city could create exclusive and safe bicycle lanes by retrofitting some streets. My first look was at the east-west street system.

And here's my plan (pardon the poor penmanship!):

Start with a central east-west couplet system that isn't used as a bridge approach to the east or a major artery approach to the west, and isn't used for light rail. There's one couplet that fits the bill - Taylor and Salmon.

Now take those two streets and create a central exclusive one-way bike lane on each - toward the river on Salmon, toward the hills on Taylor. It would be at least 12 feet wide. It would be separated from the vehicle lanes on either side of it by some sort of barrier or curb. The vehicle lanes on either side would be preserved mainly for local deliveries to the adjacent businesses and driveway access for any parking garage entrances and the like - but on-street parking would be gone and as you can see from my drawing, Salmon and Taylor would no longer be one-way - plus they would no longer function as through streets since traffic would be directed back onto a north-south street at each intersection.

At the river the bike couplet would connect to Waterfront Park and car-free bicycle routes there. I haven't figured out what would happen at the PGE Park end of things - that's for someone else to figure out!

Bicycles would have to obey the signal lights at all cross streets. Perhaps signals would be installed at the park blocks intersections and any west of I-405 that weren't already signalized.

A key point here is the physical separation between the bicycle lane and the service auto lanes on each side along Taylor and Salmon. Any vehicle drifting or veering into the common lane would have some sort of curb or barrier to contend with.

Next I'll contemplate exclusive bicycle lanes on the north-south streets.

I'm sure there's something wrong with this plan, please let me know!

Slow Down Just Ahead

2007-11-29T10:32:00.001-08:00

I've been doing this blog for a year now. I've got some other things going on in my life (all good), so this blog will be going into slowdown mode. I will occasionally post something that catches my eye or piques my interest or allows me to make an important point, but that will be a much rarer occasion for now.

Thanks for reading, all five of you!

Why do valuable commercial properties sit unused for 15 years?

2007-11-28T11:27:00.001-08:00

Because their owners are acting in an economically irrational manner. As is occurring on two sites in the strongest local commercial market in Portland, in the Northwest 21st-23rd area.

Sometimes property owners like these ones refuse to respond to lures and baits set by us urban planning overlords that are based upon a supposition that the property owners so lured will act in an economically rational manner.

And perhaps us urban planning overlords just need to accept that fact and move on to our next project.

What About New Orleans?

2007-11-26T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Oregonian has an excellent couple of articles by Chris Beck on why New Orleans should be rebuilt and how it can be made better.

Admittedly, it is tempting to just chuck it all and say "adieu" to a city that is largely below sea level and in the path of hurricanes made stronger (perhaps) by global warming.

Beck's key punchline, "New Orleans is our Venice," has a lot of weight. And its a great argument for rebuilding that part of New Orleans that should be rebuilt, like the French Quarter and the older, historic parts of the City. But it's not an argument for bringing back neighborhoods that never should have been built in the first place.

New Orleans has an important place in our nation. But it should be a much smaller place (at least in terms of population) than it was before. After all, how many people still live in Venice?

Street Names

2007-11-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

You'll notice that I did not compose a single post on the issue of Interstate Avenue vs. Cesar Chavez Boulevard, or Fourth Avenue vs. Cesar Chavez Boulevard. My only oblique contribution to the debate was a suggestion on Jack Bog's Blog that the City cajole some developer to name a new residential street "Cesar Chavez Court."

That's because the issue of how to honor Cesar Chavez is not an urban planning issue - it is an issue of perceptions, not reality. And, despite what Jack Bog or the Antiplanner might tell you, true urban planning overlords want to impose their will upon the populace in ways that will change our lives for the better in a concrete and substantive way. The big story on Interstate Avenue is its transformation by light rail from a run-down dead-end through street into a well-populated prosperous transit-based community - and how best to achieve or frustrate that transformation. The story remains the same whatever the street is named.

Book Review: The Devil in the White City

2007-11-21T20:45:00.000-08:00

A great book, with an urban planning angle, about the 1893 Columbian Exposition Worlds Fair in Chicago, the famous "White City," and the parallel machinations of America's first notorious serial killer, H.H. Holmes (among other aliases). A must read for life in America's "Second City" at the end of the Victorian Era.

Notice: Urban Planning Overlords Needed in Los Angeles

2007-11-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

An interesting take on the ultimate urban planning challenge - Los Angeles, California. The writer, a planner, comes to the conclusion that the only thing that can save Los Angeles from choking on its own traffic is - PLANNING!

One additional thought of mine - much of Los Angeles is flat, and there are A LOT of wide surface streets. How about a dense network of bicycle-only routes?

As I have noted in earlier threads, at least downtown Los Angeles is drinking the Portland Kool-Aid!

Hope for the East Side

2007-11-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

Maybe Portland's east side and east suburbs (beyond the I-205 freeway) aren't doomed after all. Gresham is trying to turn the tide in Rockwood. A shuttered big box, a light rail line nearby, and tax increment financing available - it sounds like something good could come of this. I hope my prediction about the far east side turns out to be wrong - here is a test, we can check back in a few years.

NIMBYs in Milwaukie

2007-11-18T00:24:00.001-08:00

In Milwaukie, an attempt to frustrate the placement of a home for "the others" in the Ardenwald neighborhood has been stymied, because the City of Milwaukie has bought the property. I'm sure they paid a premium to steal it from under the nose of Clackamas County, but this will probably get all the existing Council re-elected, or at least not recalled (as has been known to happen i Milwaukie).

The reason Milwaukie had to buy the property? Federal law is very strict that local zoning can't be used to keep these kinds of facilities out of neighborhoods, for the very good reason that otherwise there would be no place that allowed them.

On a broad public policy level, the actions of the City of Milwaukie are, of course, demagogic and frustrating to the goal of bringing people like these criminals back into society - and this type of facility has a much greater rate of success than fenced institutions deep in industrial areas do. On the other hand, would I want such a facility in my neighborhood? Of course not.

Book Review - On Trial

2007-11-18T00:20:00.001-08:00

By Gerald Dickler. An episodic book of "great" trials throughout history, the first being Socrates in 399 BC, then on through Jesus, Joan of Arc, Dreyfus, the Scopes Trial, the Moscow Purge Trials, the Nuremburg Trials, and a few others. The actual transcripts of proceedings are skippable, but the book gives a good synopsis of these famous proceedings and their surroundings. Written in 1961, so expect it to be out of print.

Book Review - Mutiny on the Bounty

2007-11-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

And oldie, but definitely not moldy. A ripping good sea adventure yarn, if not great literature, then at least Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian became a pretty important part of 20th century popular culture. I recommend it. Written in 1932, and followed by two sequels, Men at Sea (which I read many years ago), a great account of Captain Bligh's brilliant voyage from near Tahiti to Indonesia with the cast-offs from the Bounty, and Pitcairn Island (which I haven't read), an account of Fletcher Christian and the fate of the main mutineers.

Ay Caramba! More Portland in LA

2007-11-16T15:40:00.000-08:00

It's continuing to happen. The Portland Kool-aid comes to the center of car culture and sprawl development (albeit that's been changing for many years now, as mountains and oceans that can't be built on have limited sprawl). And the new champion buildings in the south part of downtown Los Angeles are being built by Portlanders. It's not just New York that thinks Portland is a grand place now. And it's unclear from the article whether the dreaded Homer Williams (cue spooky music) is involved in "South Group," the developers.

For those of us who last saw downtown Los Angeles almost 20 years ago the transformations occurring there must be amazing.

Green? Sure, as long as my view isn't spoiled!

2007-11-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

A recent disgusting occurrence along the Columbia River in Vancouver (U.S.) is not unique. Trees in a city park along the river are being surreptitiously felled, and the prime suspects are luxury homeowners wanting a view of the river.

The same thing happened a few years back at the edge of Portland's Rose City Golf Course, except in that case the trees were girdled and left to slowly die.

All sort of imprecations involving the term "selfish elitist suburban mindset" come to mind, but I think the best way to respond is thus: "Instead of enjoying the view of the river, why don't you enjoy the view of the trees?"

Downtown Projects

2007-11-09T16:28:00.000-08:00

Lots of development going on downtown, despite the supposed condo "bust." Here's a map.

And now throw in a grand plan to move Lincoln High School to Northwest Portland and use the 11 acre existing campus for intensive development. The map stops at 405. Homer Williams is involved, so Jack Bog and his chorus are frothing and seething. It's an audacious plan, but let's see what's in it for the City and the School District before condemning it out of hand.

UPDATE: Jack Bog in the comments has his usual pithy and to-the-point positive attitude about things. Well, it appears that more than a few actual parents of Lincoln High School students think it's an exciting idea. But what do they know, compared to a cranky parent of pre-schoolers on the "genuine" side of the river?

Wallowa County Follies

2007-11-08T09:45:00.001-08:00

An interesting article appeared in last weekend's Oregonian about a land trust in Wallowa County. It is interesting not just because of the activities of the land trust, which is trying, through voluntary private sector donations based largely on federal tax subsidies, to protect this little slice of Colorado (or perhaps Switzerland?) in Oregon.

What's interesting is the problem Wallowa County is facing. Increasing numbers of very rich folks from around the U.S. are buying up ranch land, building monster "second homes," ending working ranch activities, and cutting off access to public lands. Meanwhile, there's no housing being built for the lower paid service workers needed to sustain the tourist and service economy that's growing.

Some comments:

First, Wallowa County has to realize that it has a good problem. What's going on now is better than the fate being faced by less scenic portions of the West or the western Great Plains, where rural poverty is endemic and communities are dying off. What Wallowa County needs to do is alleviate the negative side effects, not solve the problem by destroying economic growth.

Second, affordable housing should be accommodated within the two cities of Wallowa County, Joseph and Enterprise, which should look at their urban growth boundaries and comprehensive plans and come up with the land and public services for affordable housing. Land zoned for mobile home parks or apartments is not going to be bought up by rich Californians for ranches - it will be developed with affordable housing if the demand for it is there - and it appears that the demand is there.

Third, other than preserving the truly unique lands such as the moraines around Wallowa Lake, the land trust should be tackling the problem of public access by buying access rights to public lands from the neighboring ranchers before they sell out the exclusivist rich outsiders. Recent controversies surrounding slimeball Mark Hemstreet (of Shilo Inn fame) and his attempts to erase long time public access rights through his land come to mind.

Finally, I have advocated the selling off of surplus public land by the National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in past threads. The scenic Wallowa Mountains are an example of land which should NOT be sold off and should be turned over to the national park service for management as recreation lands, including the recreation of hunting.

Private Sector Convention Center Hotel - YES! Subsidized hotel - NO!

2007-11-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

In the midst of this article, on the dreary prospects of additional public subsidies to support a convention center hotel, there came a shimmer of light. The private sector might just be able to build a hotel without massive public subsidies and write-downs. And if that's possible, that means someone with some financial acumen thinks that a convention center hotel is at least operationally viable as a profitable business entity.

If true, I change my mind about it - I have no objection from a physical planning standpoint to a large convention center hotel next to a large convention center. Just not with a lot of public money subsidizing the whole thing.

Measure 49

2007-11-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

Yes, it passed (cue Mandel's Hessiah Challelujah Horus). A couple of cautionary comments:

1. I hope rogue local governments (are you listening, Multnomah County?) and zealous advocacy groups (hello, 1000 Friends?) and ideological bureaucrats (DLCD, anyone?) don't try to make the dire predictions of the anti-49 forces come true by exploiting language ambiguities to frustrate the clear intent of the measure - rural landowners get three homes, no questions asked.

2. The task for the legislature (and the Big Look, if it is revived) is to equalize the rules for all landowners. This means giving all current rural property owners the right to three houses. I don't believe that our State should be discriminating in favor of long-time property owners, and since their gains are now locked in stone, perhaps it is time to give the rest of our state's rural property owners, who may not have had the foresight to buy property in 1964, the same rights and privileges. Salem's Judge James may not have been right in making this a constitutional issue, but as a matter of public policy it's where I stand.

Wildfires, Nedonna Beach, and Moratoria

2007-11-05T16:53:00.001-08:00

An interesting article about some problems in Rockaway Beach - the Nedonna Beach neighborhood, where homeowners want all development stopped until a new emergency access to the community is available - and it appears that such access at a point where it would be truly useful is very expensive.

The problem for the residents of Nedonna Beach is Oregon's moratorium laws. Unlike many other states, Oregon moratoria cannot be open-ended no-growth devices. "No new development until we build that sewer plant upgrade, which we'll get to in a few decades or so." Once an Oregon municipality declares a moratorium, it must actually set forth a program to fix the problem within about two years. So in Nedonna Beach a moratorium would just result in the residents being forced to pay for that alternative emergency access to their community through new taxes or assessments. And if they refused, the moratorium would go away and the development would go ahead.

There is another alternative of course - buy the property from the subdivider. But that would be a lot of money too, and neighbors tend to want to stop development on the cheap - property rights tend to stop at their own doorsteps.

So if I were representing the City of Rockaway Beach I would tell them to suck it up and approve the subdivision with a requirement that the subdivider provide the alternative emergency access to US 101 that will at least somewhat ameliorate the emergency evacuation problem. Alternatively, I would talk to the subdivider about a fair price for the property and then try to form a Local Improvement District in Nedonna Beach to pay for the purchase.

Bicycle Prescriptions

2007-11-04T00:13:00.001-07:00

The Willamette Week has a thorough article about how Portland could be made more bike-friendly. I agree with most of its suggestions (the "bicycle only on Sunday" roads is not one of them). #1, Separated bicycle lanes, especially interests me - the problem that the author doesn't mention is that on-street parking would appear to bite the dust. The article provides immediate and sensible policy prescriptions, and not particularly expensive ones (except for a new Sellwood Bridge, which is needed for a LOT of reasons).

Pining for Days Past

2007-11-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

Local government officials have this thing about "employment" areas. They will tolerate terrible housing shortages and sky-high prices so as to protect underutilized industrial lands from the evil hordes of residential builders. Even when, because of the sky-high housing prices, the workers in those underutilized lands must commute to San Jose or Oakland or Berkeley from Tracy and Modesto.

Here in Portland, we see the same short-sighted thinking in areas such as the Eastside "Industrial Sanctuary," and the Northwest "Industrial Sanctuary," (the latter was used as an excuse to shield Northwest merchants from competition from Costco a few years back). Yes, industrial land is still needed, but it is not an intensive use, and trying to keep it shoehorned in otherwise densely-packed central city areas is just not wise policy.

Sometimes us urban planning overlords need to interfere with market forces. But not always.

Paul Weyrich Sees the Truth

2007-10-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

Paul Weyrich and I don't agree about much - he is a prominent conservative political operator, with views on "social" issues such as abortion, stem cell research, homosexuality, etc., that I strongly disagree with.

Which is why his position on urban mass transit, which I first discovered several years ago, continues to astound and delight me. His views, and a critique of the Antiplanner's trashing of Portland, are presented on the conservative Town Hall website. The most gratifying statement he makes comes in the midst of the article:

The great thing about Portland is that residents are offered a choice.

It's something I have been saying on this blog for almost a year now, both to those like the antiplanner, who would deny residents any choice but the automobile, and those on the other extreme, who want to abolish or greatly restrict private automobile usage.

I don't share Mr. Weyrich's enthusiasm for the Portland streetcar, not because it is a train, but because it has not been given a separated right of way, and is thus at the mercy of traffic - it is basically a glamorous, immobile bus. I don't doubt that the glamour behind the streetcar is behind some of the new development that has occurred along its path, as Mr. Weyrich notes, but I have my doubts as to the staying power of that glamour over the decades.

The Antiplanner answers the criticism on his weblog. I'm unconvinced by most of the Antiplanner's counter-arguments. But you can judge for yourself.

Survey Says: Give Us Mass Transit, Not More Roads!

2007-10-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

Read it and weep, Antiplanner and Karlock.

The bad news? Americans are opposed to any new toll roads, 2 to 1. So where the Antiplanner and I agree, we are both going against the tide of public opinion. Maybe DeFazio the demagogue is on to something ...

Book Review: Devil in a Blue Dress

2007-10-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

A short, punchy detective novel by Walter Mosley. The story takes place in post-war Los Angeles and the protagonist is Easy Rawlins, a single African-American male.

The story has a terrible ending, as Easy puts all the pieces together for the readers in a convoluted, messy narrative. But then I've read The Big Sleep and I can't figure out what happened at the end of that one either.

I Thought Brazil was a Socialist Country?

2007-10-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

The Economist notes that Brazil, run by noted left-wing President Luis Ignacio (Lula) da Silva, is embracing private toll roads as a way out of a transportation mess.

Yet in the U.S. we have populist demagogues like Peter DeFazio ranting about "lexus lanes" and vowing to block support for toll roads.

Hmmm....

Bicycles and Cars

2007-10-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

Another week, another gruesome bicycle death on Portland streets. What to do?

1. When bicycles and automobiles collide, bicycles lose. Many radical bicycle advocates seem to want to have their headstones engraved with "But he had the right of way." I consider myself a garden variety mediocre driver - with no animus or road rage issues against bicyclists. And after all the times I haven't noticed bicyclists, or happened to notice them because I wasn't fiddling with my car radio or daydreaming or, occasionally and to my everlasting shame, answering a cell phone call, I'm scared to death riding a bicycle on a busy street, even with bike lanes and special bicycle markings at intersections.

2. That's why the long-term answer is not bicycle lanes, but separated bicycle paths and bicycle routes on less-traveled roadways. Or even bicycle bridges, as was recently discussed for the "Caruthers Street" MAX-bicycle bridge somewhere around the Marquam and Ross Island bridges. Hard-core bicycle fiends won't like it - they are sometimes as intolerant of newbie, slower bicyclists as cars are of them. But if this city wants to see a true explosion of bicycle use by people like me, then a network of separated bike path "expressways" is the way it is going to happen.Here's the first new route - the Sullivan's Gulch bike path proposal.

As for downtown streets, I would suggest that one north-south and one east-west route be reserved for bicyclists - no cars. For north-south First Street between Clay and Burnside is a good candidate. Part of the street is closed to cars anyway because of the MAX line, and the rest is the "odd man out" of the one-way couplet system. For east-west I suggest that Yamhill and Morrison be entirely closed off to cars and used as bicycle streets between Front and PGE Park.

I'll be thinking more about this issue in the near future, and I would welcome reader comments, especially from those who cycle more often than I do.

Don't Forget Columbia County

2007-10-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

Things are booming north of Portland. No, not Vancouver - I'm talking about Scappoose. It's another location for new suburban development - which I thought couldn't happen under Oregon land use laws (according to the antiplanner and others). Well, it's happening - part of housing choice. The suburbs still beckon for a shrinking minority of prospective homebuyers who want to live there.

Girl Scouts About to Make Foolish Decision

2007-10-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

Girl Scout Camp Arrowhead has been a fixture in the Columbia Gorge for over 50 years. Located on the slopes of Wind Mountain and Dog Mountain, the Camp is undoubtedly one of the premier girl scout camp locations in the nation based upon scenery and outdoor activities.

But now the Girl Scouts want to sell the camp. This can only be characterized as an act of self-inflicted vandalism. The camp has suffered from deferred maintenance over the years, which is the excuse to sell it. But the Girl Scouts in the Portland area have no comparable camp property - in fact, I would argue that the Girl Scouts in the entire U.S. have no comparable camp property. I can't imagine that a well-organized girl scout fundraiser couldn't raise the money to end the deferred maintenance.

What does this have to do with urban planning? A great metropolitan area is also defined by its hinterlands, and the ability of its citizens to enjoy recreational opportunities in the hinterlands. Camp Arrowhead has served as a key part of that recreational opportunity for a group of our citizens that aren't always well-served with outdoor recreational opportunities - young girls.

The Girl Scouts are apparently holding a meeting tomorrow night to approve the sale. I sincerely hope they reconsider, and work to make Camp Arrowhead once again a key part of our metropolis.

If it's good enough for California and Washington ...

2007-10-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

School districts throughout the state, like this one in North Clackamas, are now allowed by state law to collect a "construction tax," (in other words, school impact fee) to defray the costs of new school construction. The money will help school districts fund new construction projects to handle the increased enrollment new housing brings, although not enough to completely pay for all necessary new schools (or expansions of existing schools).

So the development lobby, which fought so hard to prevent Oregon joining California and Washington in charging school impact fees to new development, finally lost. We'll see if armageddon ensues in the near future.

Remember, these fees are only for new facilities. Operational costs for schools continue to be paid for by state revenue sharing and property taxes.

Beat the Clock

2007-10-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

There's a mad rush on in some quarters to "vest" Measure 37 rights before (hopefully) Measure 49 snatches some of them back. It sounds like some lawyers are going to get rich fighting about it after November.

But it exemplifies a classic problem with new land use regulations - there's often a mad rush to beat the deadline. If a city is passing new height restrictions a spate of skyscrapers will get built. If a city is passing new tree protection regulations the chainsaws will be busy until midnight. It's a part of the game.

Habitat for Humanity vs. NIMBYs

2007-10-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

An old (two months) but fascinating story that I just discovered - habitat for humanity builders discover it's not such a great idea when the homes are located next to their million dollar Marin County California homes. Note in particular the 'po folk moving in to these homes are public school teachers and the like.

(Hat tip: Austin Contrarian)

Next Big Box Battle may be in McMinnville

2007-10-08T11:00:00.001-07:00

McMinnville looking at regulating/prohibiting big box retail stores.

My advice? Regulate, YES. Prohibit, NO!

There is no doubt that big box retail stores are a blight on many communities, not for how they sell it, but for WHERE they sell it. A large ugly box, fronted by acres of asphalt, on the edge of town along a congested thoroughfare, is the norm.

But big box retail stores provide choice to shoppers along with low prices. Banning them does nothing but artificially prop up other businesses, letting them charge higher prices, and insulating them from the need to adopt sound business practices and strategies.

Why not require a big box to place the store along the street, with parking to the side and back, and a main entrance on the street itself? Just one of many thoughts ...

Poor Bend

2007-10-07T09:12:00.001-07:00

Poor Bend, the manufacturing jobs are leaving as the rich people move in. The Oregonian chimes in.

My thoughts? Why not let the displaced manufacturing businesses move to other Oregon cities that could use some economic development? Let Bend go on the path its headed down and let the businesses move to Burns, K-Falls, Madras, John Day, Heppner, Pendleton, Baker City, La Grande, Roseburg, Coos Bay, Grants Pass, Umatilla ... (you get my drift?).

This isn't a problem government has to solve.

Portland's Next Bridge

2007-10-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

The Oregonian had a recent article on the transformation of plans for what was known a few years back as the "Caruthers Street Bridge," carrying MAX trains from downtown Portland to Sellwood and Milwaukie. Well, things have changed a bit. At the time the southernmost extension of downtown Portland was Riverplace - now it's the South Waterfront. And, frankly, OMSI as the premier destination on the east side of the river doesn't seem appropriate any more either.

I can hear the two lines of attack: 1) "plan for cars, not bikes and mass transit!", and "instead of spending money on this, let's hire more cops and do more street surfacing in (insert neighborhood here)!"

1) We have plenty of existing bridge capacity for cars, and where will the cars go once they cross the bridge? How many more neighborhoods will be destroyed by new traffic arteries? How do we know more people won't cycle when we only let them ride on car-choked streets where they can be mowed down? Why not expand peoples' options to use transit with new lines?

2) This bridge will make the entire city a better place to live. Much of the money for it would not be available for other purposes in the city if we didn't use it, because it's from transportation-specific sources. And most of those "neglected" neighborhoods seem to be prospering and gentrifying quite fine - if the argument has to do with the fast-developing Far-east Portland slums then I might pause, but most of the complainers are from neighborhoods like Irvington, Buckman, St. Johns, etc.

UPDATE: Excellent analysis by Evan Manvel over at Blue Oregon.

The Return of Bicycle Sharing?

2007-10-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

San Francisco's trying a pay-bicycle sharing program. The article states that officials in Portland are "interested." After the miserable failure of the "yellow bikes" a couple of years ago, we'll let another city experiment this time!

Book Review: Let History Judge

2007-10-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

By Roy Medvedev, a noted Soviet (now Russian) historian, of the "Lenin was good, Stalin ruined everything" school (as opposed to Richard Pipes' "Stalin was the logical successor of Lenin in all ways" school). His book, "Let History Judge," is 850 pages of Josef Stalin, with a short biography at the beginning following by a depressing and mountainous pile of evidence of what a monster the man was and how he screwed up the Soviet Union completely. I wouldn't recommend the book necessarily unless you have an interest in Stalin and the mid-century Soviet Union he shaped and deformed, but if you do, the book is invaluable. It also represents that now quaint viewpoint of Medvedev that the Soviet Union was retrievable as a humane socialist society. History left Medvedev in the dust.

Lake Oswego First Addition = Great Neighborhood

2007-10-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

Lake Oswego's First Addition Neighborhood has won an APA (American Planning Association) national award as a great neighborhood.

It has a grid street system. 20 years ago it was a neglected corner of the posh suburb - now it's one of its premier neighborhoods, with property values to prove it.

And the skeptics say "people just want to live in suburban sprawl, so let them." We need more suburban neighborhoods like the First Addition.

Common Sense from the Antiplanner (not the Coos Bay Port)

2007-10-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

The antiplanner hits the nail on the head (it happens occasionally) with this post about the folly of the Port of Coos Bay, in its vain and very expensive attempts to make Coos Bay into San Pedro North.

Coos Bay has a beautiful setting. (the picture above is at Sunset Beach State Park a couple of miles south of the mouth of Coos Bay) It rains a lot more than in Ashland/Medford or Bend (the two paradigms the antiplanner holds up as the best future for the area), but that hasn't stopped Bandon (20 miles south) from becoming a great destination, thanks to the golf course and the scenery. There's no reason the area can't become a new boom town for retirees, exurbanites, and the people who provide them services (not just fast food workers, but highly paid medical types as has happened in Medford).

Oregonian WRONG on Streetcar

2007-09-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Oregonian published a fatuous editorial endorsing more streetcar routes for Portland in today's paper.

If you read around the hype you will see that the argument for the streetcar is - hype. It's not about how efficient a transportation means it is, it's all about economic development and glamour. That will wear off soon enough

The ADA

2007-09-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

Or, as any Urban Planning Overlord worth his or her salt knows, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This landmark legislation made it through Congress with enough Republican votes in part because Bob Dole, head of the Republicans in the Senate, has a withered right hand from World War II battle injuries. A testimony as to how personal experience can trump ideology for those with eyes enough to see and ears enough to hear.

Anyway, here is a fascinating article about the conflicts between New Urbanism and the ADA. The article states that an astonishing 59 million Americans suffer from some sort of permanent disability - I'm sure the numbers of severely physically disabled are less, but that still leaves millions of us.

Why shouldn't new urbanism accommodate people with disabilities?

Does the addition of an access ramp to the "Katrina Cottage" designed for rebuilding New Orleans really detract THAT much from the building? How far must we go back to an idealized past building archetype without realizing the shortcomings not considered 100 years ago when the originals were being built?

There are many quotes in the article from disability advocates and architects willing to work toward solving these problems. And then you have Andres Duany, who doesn't seem to care about 10% of the future users of his new urbanist communities.

Is This What the Big Issue will be 2100?

2007-09-27T16:48:00.000-07:00

In Japan, the nation's planning overlords are going to be dealing with a novel problem - managing population shrinkage. And if you look at declining birthrates world-wide, the rest of us may be dealing with that issue too by the end of this century. I know a lot can happen in 100 years, but that's the current trend.

Human societies have had to manage population declines in the past - but they tended to be large changes within a few years, as wars resulted in the slaughter or emigration of significant populations. Or diseases (the Black Plague of 1348 undoubtedly led to some interesting urban situations).

Counteracting the trend to some degree is the tendency of households to be of smaller average size. So the demand for housing units will not fall as fast as the population.

Perhaps other cities will be dealing with Detroit's problem, for different reasons, of course. Maybe back to farms?

Dundee 99 bottleneck

2007-09-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

An Oregonian editorial writer has first-hand experience with the traffic bottleneck in Dundee as a result of Highway 99w's increasing traffic burden.

Some comments on the article:

The writer notes a "secret bypass route" on rural roads around Dundee. This alternative route will soon be jammed as well, as the secret gets out.

Oregon's voters will not approve gas taxes needed if a Dundee bypass route is to be a free expressway.

Oregon's populist demagogue, Peter DeFazio, is now in a position of power to frustrate attempts to build a new toll road around Dundee in his misbegotten anti "lexus lanes" crusade.

The people near the bypass route will do their utmost to stop it.

And Oregon's sclerotic land use system will get in the way too. Since the bypass will undoubtedly pass through prime farmland, opponents can take advantage of this to claim it violates Oregon's rules for protecting farm lands. And they may be right.

Yes, light rail is needed. And perhaps even a resuscitation of commuter/passenger rail along the existing line through Newberg and Dundee to McMinnville (I'll explore this topic further in another post). But more auto capacity is needed too. And a toll route 99W bypass is the answer. Now let's move the impediments.

Portland Koolaid Sighting - Sacramento

2007-09-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, even Sacramento is drinking of the Portland kool-aid. If Sacramento can change, there is hope for everyone. Sacramento, for those of you who have not lived there or visited extensively, has always been a dull, dreary, depressing city, which shines only in comparison with even more dilapidated California Central Valley cities such as Stockton, Fresno, or Bakersfield (perhaps it's because of those "delta breezes," which lower summer temperatures occasionally from 105 to 90 or so!).

Actually, Sacramento, along with other Central Valley cities and towns, does have some great old neighborhoods with absolutely wonderful street trees that make all the difference in creating a desirable residential neighborhood. And now Sacramento has a spiffy downtown to match.

By the way, if you are ever driving through Bakersfield on a hot summer day, or get a sweet tooth while passing by, stop here.

Facts from Henry Richmond

2007-09-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Henry Richmond, founder of land use bogeyman (for Oregonians in Action, that is - I prefer to think of them as the ACLU of Oregon Land Use), provides an excellent argument that Measure 49, by eliminating transferability restrictions, actually helps the people that Measure 37 was intended to help, but failed to do so due to the (choose 1) incompetence or duplicity of its sponsors. Here's the link. Unlike the blatherings of the anti-Measure 49 folks, Richmond provides real numbers.

Common sense on the streetcar has to come from the feds

2007-09-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

From the non-Blumenauer feds, that is. Glamour doesn't play well in Washington, apparently, as there are problems funding streetcars instead of buses with federal money. Jack Bog parrots my lines (I don't object!).

I don't mind transit being used as an economic development tool, as the antiplanner sniffs in the Oregonian article when asked for a pithy quote. Transportation has always been used as a development tool - except that in the past the means were freeways and new roadways for autos, not transit.

But there is voluminous data available for anyone who wants to see it that buses are a better method of providing transit than streetcars (or, as I like to call them, glamorous immobile buses). There are many who argue that buses are better than fixed rail of any kind, and they have a point. However, the latter analysis fails to take into account the redundancy factor - a blocked roadway means a blocked bus line but not a blocked rail line, and also the fact that as roadways become congested buses slow down (note this schedule - an hour by surface streets on Tri-met bus route 78 from Beaverton to Lake Oswego - and due to get even longer because of increasing street congestion).

East Portland

2007-09-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

An interesting story in the Portland Tribune about the problems of growth in East Portland. That's everything from 82nd and I-205 east to Gresham.

To me, East Portland is the true test of how well the city's urban planning overlords and decision-makers can do their job. First, a little background. The areas in Portland east of I-205 were originally developed after World War II as unincorporated lands under the eye of Multnomah County. There were no sewers built in the area - it was entirely on septic systems (including such large developments as Mall 205). And, as overlords in the know can attest, counties do a lousy job of local area planning for a number of political and institutional reasons.

When Portland and Gresham annexed these areas in the 1980's and 1990's they were characterized by insufficient infrastructure. And the two cities have been playing catch-up ever since.

Another legacy of this area's past is that it is not within the Portland School District, instead being divided among Parkrose, Centennial, and David Douglas. If it were in the Portland School District it would be easier to ameliorate overloaded schools by adjusting boundaries within the larger district area, encouraging kids to go to "magnet" schoools, etc.

And now East Portland has become the dumping ground for gentrification. As we all know Northeast Portland, and now North Portland and Southeast Portland, are gentrifying. Poor people displaced from such neighborhoods don't just disappear. And they are moving to the area east of I-205, where rents and home prices are cheaper. So an area with inadequate infrastructure gets an influx of low-income residents.

The result will be a spiraling downward trend into disaster unless the City of Portland puts a lot more resources into this area - new roads, new parks, new transit, solid policing, all the things a city needs to do to make an area livable.

Jack Bog and others blather on about how their neighborhoods are neglected while the City pours money into glamour projects. They're both right and wrong - neighborhoods are being neglected and are sliding down the slope, but it's not their neighborhoods in Irvington, Mt. Tabor, St. Johns, Rose City, etc. - it's the neighborhoods east of 82nd and I-205 that are suffering the neglect.

That doesn't mean the City of Portland needs to drop everything else and throw all of its resources into East Portland. But any new downtown project needs to be looked at with a close and jaundiced eye - with the thought that perhaps the money needs to be spent farther east. For instance, I would suggest that money used to pay for ongoing operations of any new Portland streetcar extension should instead be directed toward better bus service in East Portland. That's one easy example (at least for me). Other choices will be much harder. But that's why we elect these jokers, isn't it?

Another Modest Proposal

2007-09-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

Commuter rail will soon come to Wilsonville. How about continuing it to Salem?

And building a string of compact new suburbs along the rail line, centered on the stations and not extending east of I-5, which is one to two miles west of the line?

Stations at Butteville, Donald, Broadacres, West Woodburn, St. Louis, Waconda, Keizer, and downtown Salem.

If Portland starts really growing, we're not all going to fit into the existing Urban Growth Boundary. And some of us won't want to fit into the existing urban growth boundary anyway (it's that "choice" thing again ...). So channel the suburban growth into compact communities that have easy access to the region by both road and rail. The Oregon Land Use shibboleths about farm land will have to be modified, but, as the five remaining readers of this blog know, it's time to rethink the way we protect farm and forest land. This proposal would keep vast areas of prime farm land in the Willamette Valley as is anyway.

You Know You're Getting Old When ...

2007-09-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

Postwar suburban houses, once derided, are now historic "mid-century" structures.

Life goes on ... In 40 years for now there will be a new appreciation for the "Mock-Tudor" era of the 1990's.

Portland to Seattle - and Seattle to Portland

2007-09-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

The drive between the two Northwest megapolises is getting worse, much worse. The Antiplanner has noticed it too. His solution, and the solution of auto-lovers, is to widen I-5.

There are a few problems with that scenario:

1. I-5 could be widened between Portland and Seattle, but what about the bottlenecks within these two cities? In Portland, the bottleneck would have to be alleviated by adding a new circumferential route, probably through the West Hills and Washington County. I don't think there's any feasible new route through Seattle, without a lot of earth movers and a lot of hard-heartedness to thousands of businesses and residents tossed out of their homes. The advantage of having an easy route between the two cities is decreased greatly if gridlock remains once the motorist gets near his or her destination.

2. I-5 serves as a great transportation artery for both people and goods. What are the costs of greatly expanding I-5 vs. the costs of greatly expanding the parallel rail network that serves both freight and passengers? If it costs $10 billion to greatly expand I-5 between Portland and Seattle, what would $10 billion buy in terms of increased rail capacity? Would it pay for a rail bridge in Longview to allow north-south passenger and freight trains to use the tracks on the west side of the Columbia River?

3. What about redundancy and alternative routes? If we put all of our resources into expanding I-5 and disaster strikes what happens then? If we have an alternative rail network, or even an alternative roadway, the impact of disaster is lessened.

4. What are the true costs of increased airline service? For one, can both airports be expanded economically? What about ground transportation to and from the airport, for both cargo and passengers?

Lot's of questions, no simplistic answers like "just widen I-5."

Ross Island update

2007-09-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Mr. Pamplin has seemed to come to his senses and sold part of his rock quarry/island in the middle of the Willamette River to the city.

Although it's only part of the island, perhaps Jack Bog's dystopian fantasy will not come true after all ...

A Planning Journey Across the U.S.

2007-09-14T16:54:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article from an itinerant urban planning overlord who decided to spend six weeks traveling across the U.S. and seeing what's what in small communities along the route. One of the great joys we overlords have is observation - looking at places with our education and experience in mind. But you don't need a planning degree to look at things in a different light as you come across them in your travels.

Beaverton Marches On

2007-09-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

The Round at Beaverton has had some setbacks, but Beaverton isn't looking back. Next, the old Westgate Theatre site next door. Some day the problems with the Round will be forgotten, and Beaverton will have a vibrant city center around the transit station.

Come back to this site in 20 years so that I can say "I told you so!"

The next step for Bridgeport Village

2007-09-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

It looks like it's going to involve 550 multi-family residences in a high rise on a 9 acre parcel. And another edge city will be born.

Personally, I have a pretty low opinion of Bridgeport Village - it's nothing but a huge theatre complex, some trendy stores, and a whole lot of restaurants. It's successful for now, but I think in 20 years it may be old news and down in the dumps.

Unless it becomes a complete community. And the addition of 550 nearby residences will bring long-term life to the whole area. Next, Tri-Met should add a new station on its commuter rail line at the Durham Road/72nd Street intersection. It's not ideal, but it will provide as close a link to the area's rail system as is possible without constructing an entire new route.

So there's hope for Bridgeport Village. Perhaps this sow's ear will someday be a silk purse.

I-5 Columbia Bridge May be Hostage to DeFazio Demagoguery

2007-09-12T13:23:00.001-07:00

Buried in the big Oregonian article from today about the new federal priority to build a new I-5 Columbia River Bridge is a distressing sentence.

U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, an influential transportation policy-maker as chairman of the House subcommittee on highways and transit, was the only member of the Oregon delegation who did not sign on. DeFazio, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's encouragement of highway tolls, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

DeFazio is leading the "lexus lanes" populist demagoguery against sensible tolling, or congestion pricing, of key roadways. He's now in a position to enforce his foolish ideological dogma on the new bridge, in fact, on all new roadways financed by federal money.

This and DeFazio's Smoot-Hawleyish antagonism toward free trade agreements is why I would never vote for him in a prospective run for the U.S. Senate. He represents the worst of the Democratic party. We'll see if he can use his seniority to derail common sense on a new I-5 Columbia River Bridge.

Time to Get Rid of National Forests

2007-09-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

Down in Coos County, another few thousand acres of national forest is about to become an environmental preserve. It's a great move, and I hope it is followed by the dedication of other parts of the coastal range and Siskiyou Mountains as off-limits to timber cutting.

And then, I would suggest the other shoe drop. Those national forest lands NOT environmentally sensitive should be sold off to the highest bidder (in most cases, I assume, a timber company). It's time for the Federal Government to concentrate on preservation of the environment, and get out of the forestry business - a business that is best run by private industry with state Department of Forestry regulation. That doesn't mean reserving the entire current national forest for environmental preservation though. It means keeping the important and undisturbed areas, like the Elk River headwaters, and selling off the rest.

That would solve the timber counties' tax roll problem too, as these lands would enter the tax rolls and pay for the libraries and other services that are now at the mercy of the Congressional appropriation process.

The expensive, expensive North Bethany

2007-09-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

North Bethany, 800 acres of Washington County (west of Portland), was added to the Urban Growth Boundary, over the objections of the usual suspects, a few years back. Now, it's become so expensive that some are questioning its urbanization at all.

This is truly a teachable moment. And this Urban Planning Overlord is going to use this story to make the following teachable points.

1. The "stupid growth" advocates (see the Antiplanner), and the railers against infill subsidies (see Jack Bog) are constantly attacking the subsidies thrown at Portland's Pearl and South Waterfront developments, albeit from different angles (the Antiplanner wants suburban sprawl, while Jack Bog, as far as I can tell, would prefer no growth at all).

First to demolish the antiplanner arguments. It turns out that suburban development such as North Bethany, if designed to truly mitigate its impacts and pay for itself, is expensive. The reason suburban sprawl has been cheaper in the past is that it has ignored many of the infrastructure needs, most notably the huge and numerous roads needed to disperse the generated traffic around the metropolis. That's why Metro has identified such a huge unfunded gap in transportation facility needs. That's why we suddenly need a several billion dollar bridge over the Columbia River, with no money to build it.

Next to demolish the Jack Bog arguments. If Portland simply stopped allowing new development, there would be a short-term reaction and a long-term reaction. The short term reaction can be seen to the south, the San Francisco Bay Area. Housing prices would skyrocket, enriching current homeowners and impoverishing everyone else. New homes would be built in Salem, Albany, Corvallis, The Dalles, Centralia, and those people would be jamming the roads commuting to their Portland jobs. In the long term, such a scenario is unsustainable, and the Portland economy would deteriorate. And then we wouldn't have growth problems, we'd be like Scranton, Pennsylvania, no new jobs, plenty of affordable housing. A crappy place to live, unless you are a tenured law professor, I guess.

2. The Metro "build up" gang are now pounding on North Bethany's travails to advocate no new suburban development, and accommodation of newcomers to Portland in existing communities. Two problems with this - the first is political. A lot of the people who live in existing Portland communities don't want them densified. If pushed too far, they will go to the ballot box and throw out the rascals. There's room for lots of new development within our existing communities, but that room is not unlimited.

The second comes back to my favorite word: CHOICE. While the numbers of Americans yearning for suburban sprawl nirvana has dminimished, it has not disappeared. A well-balanced metropolis must accommodate both infill high density housing AND outlying lower density housing. We don't need the Metro Robert Libertyish snobs preventing our citizens this choice.

So North Bethany is expensive. But the answer is not to jettison the whole community. The answer is to figure out a fair way to pay for it all.

3. And then there's the "wait until it is really needed" crowd. Well, first of all, there is no doubt that it will be "really needed;" barring unforeseen natural or human-produced cataclysms, Portland will need several North Bethanys over the next couple of decades. And the time to plan the development of such communities is not when the demand is now, the time to plan is BEFORE the demand. Figure out North Bethany's plan and how to pay for it over the next two years, and I would not be surprised if the housing demand will be there to build it.

What Happened to the Big Look?

2007-09-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

It has either been sidelined temporarily for political reasons, or sidelined permanently for political reasons, according to the Oregonian. The Big Look, a response to the passage of Measure 37, was to be a comprehensive review of Oregon's fabled, but now aging and perhaps sclerotic, land use system. Notably, no urban planning overlords or other "usual suspects," as one observer tartly put it, were included on the Board. The "temporary shelving" theory says that it will be back after the sound and fury of this fall's Measure 49 rewrite (or "repeal" to some) of Measure 37 has spent itself. The "permanent shelving" theory says that it has alienated the causes of the program's sclerosis, most notably the 1000 Friends of Oregon, and thus will be gone forever.

If it is gone forever that would be a big, honking, crying shame. The program needs a comprehensive look, most notably at the emphasis on rural farming and forestry uses, which are given more importance than they deserve in today's economy. However, I take the Governor at his word, and I think that the program will be back, despite the accusations of David Hunnicutt and others that 1000 Friends is wielding the knife.

Resorts Near the Metolius?

2007-09-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

There's controversy brewing near the Metolius Headwaters, as the State Land Use Board of Appeals hears contention over new resorts in the area.

For those of you who may not know for some unexplained reason, the Metolius River pours out of Cascades rock in full flow near Camp Sherman, along Highway 20 near the "city" of Sisters (and the Three Sisters Mountains) in Central Oregon.

An awesomely beautiful slice of Oregon.

There's already one big resort in the area, Black Butte. Now Jefferson County wants to allow some more. The environmentalists and locals are, of course, opposed.

There is a clear demand for such resorts, and, if done right, they can bring joy and rest to thousands of people who otherwise would not enjoy the beauty of the area. But most rural local governments, like Jefferson County, cannot, frankly, be trusted to "get it right." That's where Oregon's land use system is at its best - it forces rural officials to meet higher standards (often brings them kicking and screaming toward those standards)

So the Land Use Board of Appeals should not say "no," but it should closely review Jefferson County's plan and send it back for improvements if need be.

Proof that Things are Looking Up in the Dominican Republic

2007-09-06T16:39:00.000-07:00

The state is building a subway in Santo Domingo. Perhaps the Antiplanner needs to send a fact squad down to Santo Domingo.

All kidding aside, why is a desperately poor country like the Dominican Republic building a capital city subway? Well, there are some political reasons related to the President's re-election campaign. But the basic reason is that the Dominican Republic is no longer a desperately poor country. The nation has had four decades of progressively free and fair democratic rule, and the economy had a prolonged growth spurt in the 1990's and is undergoing a prolonged growth spurt today. Signing a free trade agreement with the U.S. and following sensible economic policies has certainly helped as well.

Here and here are some basic information about the Dominican Republic. The comparison with Hispaniola island neighbor Haiti is shocking and instructive as to what the rule of law, a free political process, and sound economics can do for a poor nation.

And the moral of this story for urban planning overlords? Fighting over whether to build a subway, just like fighting for greater environmental protections or social equity, is a luxury that sound economic and political forces can bring to a nation. They certainly aren't arguing about the merits of a subway in Port au Prince.

McMansions to Boarding Houses

2007-09-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered if this would start happening. Near Washington DC, some of the obnoxious "McMansions" going up on the site of torn-down smaller houses are actually becoming boarding houses, not single-family residences. The neighbors are outraged.

I foresee this happening in a lot of different places. First, there's less of a need for gargantuan houses as families get smaller and more individuals comprise their own households. Next, federal anti-dsicrmination laws prevent local governments from prohibiting small board and care facilities in single-family neighborhoods, generally for up to five boarders. And finally, as neighborhoods change up and down the socio-economic ladder large houses in crummier neighborhoods will start taking in boarders.

Frankly, I don't see this as a terrible problem. I see it as the housing market at work.

Affordable Housing Crisis - Manufactured Home Parks

2007-08-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Also known as "trailers" or "mobile homes," or other, less flattering and stereotypical terms, manufactured home parks are an excellent location for affordable housing. But the owners of the manufactured homes most often rent their spaces within the park, which makes them subject to eviction as land prices increase and owners want to convert. A recent situation in Roseburg exemplifies this trend. Nearer to Portland, a park in West Linn has been destroyed and will be replaced with standard housing, and a park in Wilsonville is in jeopardy. Unlike the civic-minded L&H Lumber Company of Roseburg, the property owners nearer to Portland appear to be motivated exclusively by greenbacks.

The owners of the homes come in two categories. The first are owners of modern manufactured homes that meet current standards. They can be moved to another park if a space can be found, not always possible in a location that the home owner desires. The second, more dire situation involves the owners of older manufactured homes that do not meet current standards. If evicted, they cannot move the homes.

The property rights free market types among us say, "oh well." Even some affordable housing advocates ignore this sector, because it is suburban, not urban, and I suspect invokes a bit of snobbery about "trailer trash" among otherwise well-meaning affordable housing advocates.

I think the solution is simple (except for the inevitable lawsuits from property owners) - exclusive mobile home park zoning on existing parks, that does not allow other types of housing. Here is an example from San Diego County of a zoning ordinance that has an exclusive mobile home zoning district (scroll down to Section 2160, Page 9 on the pdf document, for you zoning wonks out there). The zoning was applied to all existing mobile home parks in the County many years ago. If a conservative property-rights community like San Diego can do this, why not Oregon's communities, before more affordable mobile home parks go through the crisis faced by the Roseburg park tenants?

Los Angeles Grows as Planned

2007-08-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

An interesting article about Los Angeles - it is growing pretty much as Urban Planning Overlord Calvin Hamilton, long-time (1964-86) city planning director, envisioned. A city of many centers, not one. And a pretty good vision for Los Angeles, when you think about it. Note that the plan gives people choices - low density vs. high density housing, transit options.

We Urban Planning Overlords get a bum rap from all sides. But Los Angeles is changing for the better, and the Overlords directed it that way. COOL!

High Speed Rail Yet Again

2007-08-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

I remember more than two decades ago the first "serious" talk about high speed rail in California, involving something called a "mag-lev" train. The whole thing fell apart - if I remember, there was an actual private corporation involved that bit the dust.

Now I see that talk of such a line between Los Angeles and San Francisco is back on the table. And at a price tag of "only" $37 billion $. Oy vey!

But wait a minute. What are the alternatives? Traffic between the two Californias is expected to continue to grow at a steady rate over the next decades. More capacity is needed.

1. Build an entirely new freeway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Where would it go? How much would it cost? What about the ancillary impacts of air pollution and climate change?

2. Build new airports, or greatly expand existing airports. Where? Fill in more of San Francisco Bay? Fill in Santa Monica Bay? Wipe out areas around the existing airports to build new runways? How much would this all cost? And what about the environmental damage, noise, etc.?

So maybe high speed rail, even at $37 billion, doesn't look like such a bad deal after all.

But I would suggest that, if high speed rail is going to be an actual competitor to airplanes in terms of speed, it will need to avoid becoming a glorified commuter line, or make a lot of stops in podunk locations between the two metropolitan areas. So I'd go with the Pacheco Pass route myself (see linked article for more info).

And the Cascade Corridor is the other obvious West Coast location for high speed rail. Or should be expand PDX into the Columbia River instead?

P.S. To read the article more than once, you need to sign up with the San Jose Mercury News. But it's free, so your only cost is more junk email.

North Interstate Rezoning (finally)

2007-08-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure why the City of Portland has waited until several years after the North Interstate MAX line was completed to study rezoning the area. For one thing, they've given bureaucratic ammunition to the planning-haters, first by taking so long to do the rezoning, and second, for allowing existing zoning to retard redevelopment along North Interstate. Certain critics have jumped all over this, not surprisingly.

As for the substance, the whole point of putting MAX on North Interstate was to change the neighborhood. Thanks to bureaucratic inertia it hasn't happened yet. It's time. I personally wouldn't mind nine story condos along the corridor, but if the city decides on a lower height limit for neighborhood reasons that's OK too.

Another Modest Proposal - LIght Rail to North Plains

2007-08-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

This idea would definitely get me kicked out of the DLCD-1000 Friends "Preserve Agricultural Land at ALL costs!" axis.

An extension of the urban growth boundary from Hillsboro to North Plains via Helvetia - centered around a new light rail line extension along the old Oregon Electric/Burlington Northern line from Quatama/Orenco north. The first portion of the rail line, from Orenco to Highway 16/Cornelius Pass Road would need to be re-created, but the rest of the right of way is there. Four stations, at about 2 miles apart, at Highway 26, Helvetia, near Jackson School Road, and in North Plains. Extend the Urban Growth Boundary in a linear fashion along the new line. Plan development around the new light rail stations. The 2+ mile distance between each station will ensure fast running. And also the area is served by the Sunset Freeway (SR 26).

Yes, it's right into the heart of Washington County agricultural land. But it takes a discreet bite out of it - there's a lot left. And agricultural land tends to be flatter and in large, more plannable chunks. The alternative is to expand into exception lands where existing residents will fight urbanization tooth and nail (witness: Stafford, Beavercreek, etc.) and where the land tends to have steeper slopes and more development constraints. The one area where I would expect some resistance to my proposal along the route is the Helvetia community, an existing rural residential area with little or no commercial agriculture.

There are one million more people coming to Portland over the next few decades. They can't all fit into existing neighborhoods, or in downtown condo towers, or in Vancouver sprawl. This is the kind of visionary thinking needed to accommodate some of the growth. We'll see if the rapidly congealing Oregon Land Use system, stuck in the myths of the 1970's, can cope with such "new looks."

A Modest Proposal - Streetcar + MAX

2007-08-20T14:15:00.001-07:00

One of the problems with the proposed streetcar to Lake Oswego is that it requires two transfers for anyone using the current 35 bus line to get to downtown Portland (along the current bus transit mall on 5th and 6th) from Marylhurst or West Linn. Right now, no transfers are required. And transfers take time, and discourage ridership.

But there's an easy way to eliminate one of the transfers - connect the streetcar tracks with the new MAX tracks on 5th and 6th avenues and run the streetcar all the way to Union Station.

They're the same gauge.

Just a suggestion...

UPDATE: In the comments my idea has already been shot down because the streetcars are narrower. An opportunity lost, apparently, unless a technical solution is found (perhaps ramps can extend from the streetcar exits to the MAX curb? - expensive and prone to breakdowns, I'm sure).

Why we shouldn't fear Mexico and why we should have an open border

2007-08-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

An excellent Economist article on the rise of the Latin American middle class. Thanks to liberal economic policies (including free trade agreements with us) there won't be a mass exodus from Mexico if we open the border. Read it before it disappears behind a subscription wall (or, better yet, get a subscription to the best English-language newsweekly available).

Eastside Streetcar - Bad Idea

2007-08-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

It's time for a decision on the eastside streetcar. And it looks like the decision is going to be "build it."

A big mistake. The streetcar is nothing more than a glamorous (for now) immobile bus. When the glamour wears off, it will be seen as a colossal waste of money.

As for the economic development the streetcar will supposedly spur, I think that development can and will occur whether or not a streetcar is put in. There is a strong incentive for new high density development just because of the existing MAX line and stations at the Convention Center, Lloyd Center, and Rose Quarter. Good bus service along MLK/Grand will serve that density just as well for now. Some day, if a light rail line crosses at the south end of downtown (the Caruthers Bridge) to the east side, a MAX connector, on its own separated right of way, from the Conventio Center to the OMSI area may be feasible or appropriate. But that's a long way off.

Jack Bog's right on this one, pointing out the exorbitant costs involved in this project, although I don't agree with his eastsude anti-development diatribe.

Amanda Fritz has some interesting thoughts and has done some good research on the project and process too.

Hayden Island East

2007-08-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

There's a land use battle brewing in Milton-Freewater, as Umatilla County (Pendleton) wants to approve a site for Costco at the State Line. The State Planning Officials don't agree.

From a purist perspective, the State is right. Placing commercial uses outside of the urban growth boundary is a dangerous business, leading to the type of development infecting other parts of the nation.

However, there are some special circumstances here:

1. Milton-Freewater is not a thriving community. There is an economic development aspect to this proposal that will help out residents of the area by providing local jobs.

2. There isn't an 18 acre site in Milton-Freewater's urban area, which means there won't be a Costco elsewhere in Oregon if it doesn't go on this site.

and, MOST IMPORTANTLY:

NO SALES TAX!

The anomaly between Oregon and Washington tax systems, apparent to anyone crossing the Columbia River on I-205 or I-5, means that consumers benefit from the location of a store in Oregon rather than Washington. It's not a great way to run a railroad, but it's a fact. Not only will Oregon be better off if Costco is located in Milton-Freewater rather than Walla Walla but, more importantly, consumers will be better off because less of their income will go toward goods that meet their needs.

P.S. My link doesn't work - the East Oregonian hides behind a subscription wall, just like the New York Times :) So here's a copy of the actual article:

A Thursday meeting in Salem will help determine the fate of a parcel of land at the southwest corner of Stateline Road and Highway 11, about 4 1/2 miles north of Milton-Freewater.

Umatilla County says rezoning the land for commercial use will attract a large-format retail store - unofficially, Costco Wholesale Corp. - to anchor economic development in the area. A state representative, on the other hand, says such a zoning change would create a competing business enterprise outside of Milton-Freewater.

On June 19, 2007, the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners changed the 18.34-acre site from rural light industrial and rural residential zoning to a commercial designation, citing an exception to the comprehensive plan for state zoning.

Lane Shetterly, director of the Department of Land Conservation and Development, is recommending an appeal of that decision. County Commissioner Bill Hansell will defend the rezoning before the Land Conservation and Development Commission, which will decide on the issue.

"There is a strong precedent for locating urban uses in urban growth boundaries," said Shetterly, explaining that the location could have a detrimental economic effect on the city of Milton-Freewater by creating competing centers of activity. "An exception should be exceptional."

Shetterly said the county record has not, thus far, demonstrated the need for the zoning exception, saying the county should continue to seek a suitable location for a large retailer within the Milton-Freewater urban growth district.

According to the county, a large-format retail store such as Costco requires a host of minimum site requirements, including 18 acres of land that generally is rectangular in shape, space and access to accommodate semitrailers, as well as adequate public services that require utilities. The county says no properties in the Milton-Freewater urban growth boundaries meet the requirements and the state-line property is a one-of-a-kind location for the kind of development specified.

"We firmly believe that we have satisfied the exception process," Hansell said. "What good is having an exception if they're never gonna be granted, no matter how justified they are?"

The matter of attracting Costco has been a back-and-forth issue for multiple area communities, including Walla Walla and College Place. At one point, after passing off on the disputed Oregon property, it appeared as if a deal was secured to have Costco locate at the Blue Mountain Mall in Walla Walla. Whether the company would reconsider the state-line property is uncertain.

Can Tucson Save Itself by Following Portland's Lead?

2007-08-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

Memo to Antiplanner: Another city is thinking about drinking the Portland Kool-Aid. Time to send them an op-ed to warn them off and glorify their car culture!

Memo to Jack Bog: Don't follow the link unless you want to throw up all over your computer.

Tucson looks to Portland. As Tucson and surrounding Pima County hit the one million mark, the local paper does an interesting series on future prospects.

I believe that Tucson is a stunningly beautiful city. It's the best of Arizona (with Phoenix being the worst). It's also about as progressive as Arizona gets, politically. There's no reason that Tucson shouldn't be able to emulate Portland and become an outpost of urban sanity in the American Southwest - in fact, if any city can do it, needs to do it, and will gain the most from doing so, it is Tucson.

Some Tucson facts:
The surrounding Sonoran Desert ecosystem is the most diverse in the U.S.
It's not as hot a Phoenix. When it's 110 in Phoenix, it's only 105 in Tucson.

Why I Hesitate to Vote for a Democrat in 2008

2007-08-13T12:31:00.001-07:00

David Broder exposes the Democrats' lunacy on free trade issues. And they all seem to have been infected. Pandering to those who have lost jobs to globalization, ignoring the many more who have gained jobs, or better jobs, due to the same process.

And of course they completely ignore the benefits to Mexico from NAFTA, or the benefits to flow to poor Panamanians and Peruvians if the U.S. enters similar agreements with those nations.

Shame on the Democrats. It's sad that my choice in 2008 appears to be the failed policies of the Republicans, or the soon-to-fail policies of the Democrats.

YES on Measure 49

2007-08-13T09:49:00.001-07:00

There's a blog out there for Measure 49, the "sensible rollback" measure designed to curb the excesses of 2004's Measure 37. Here it is. Hopefully, it will counter the hysterical anti-49 blatherings of Land Rapists (er..I mean "Oregonians") in Action and the other property rights fanatics.

Eastbank Esplanade

2007-08-10T09:32:00.001-07:00

The Oregonian editorial writers, who in 2001 thought the Eastbank Esplanade was a waste of money, have changed their minds.

May this be a lesson to all Portland nay-sayers and cranks!

That being said, I don't know if the Sullivan Gulch trail will be the smashing success that the Eastbank Esplanade is. But it's worth the money anyway. The best way to promote bicycle ridership is not bike lanes, where self-selected bike kamikazes with a suicide wish tend to congregate, but grade-separated trails, on relatively level terrain, where wussies like me can ride free from the knowledge that we are just a few unprotected feet away from several tons of bone-crushing steel in the hands of a Lars Larson listener, a distracted soccer mom on her cell phone, a meth-head, or other assorted miscreants.

Thomas Sowell transhes smart growth

2007-08-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell has connected the dots - a major cause of the submprime mortgage mess unfolding is restrictions on growth.

I've followed Thomas Sowell's career for many years. In the 1980's he was a courageous voice for conservatism, and was quite unfairly trashed as an "Uncle Tom" (or even worse epithets) by the African-American political establishment. His rigorous free-market analysis of issues, and debunking of left-wing shibboleths, was not always correct, but always refreshing and interesting.

In the past several years, however, he has become a shrill shill for the far right in this country, enthusiastically endorsing the trashing of our civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism (of the "we must destroy our liberties in order to save them" school) and parroting the worst know-nothing nativist anti-immigration clap-trap being bleated into our political discourse.

With that said, let's look at his allegation that "attractive and heady phrases like "open space," "smart growth" and the like have accompanied land use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point where it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land."

He is on to something. The "smart growth" movement as formulated is not a restriction on growth - it is a channelling of growth into forms that will, 1) respond to true market demands for housing not met by the private building industry, 2) reduce public infrastructure costs, 3) be more environmentally friendly, and 4) promote more healthy and happy long-term sustainable communities. In Portland "smart growth" has resulted in thousands of new housing units near the central city that the private sector would not have built on its own - the private sector would have built what it knows, suburban sprawl housing, condemning those who wanted another housing choice to no choice at all. Yes, Portland has subsidized those new units - just as new suburban development is subsidized in the standard post-war development paradigm.

But Sowell is right: "smart growth" is becoming a buzz-word that can be misused. If it is used by suburban communities or municipalities to restrict any growth at all then it is no longer "smart," housing prices will rise, and "creative" mortage policies will flourish.

So, the moral of the story is: don't let "smart growth" concepts be hijacked by "no-growth" advocates. Because "no-growth" is just as stupid as suburban sprawl.

Light Rail in downtown Milwaukie

2007-08-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

There's a tussle breaking out over the preferred location of light rail tracks in downtown Milwaukie. The original plan would use a grede-separated right of way along the existing train tracks. But the Waldorf School (next to the tracks) doesn't like the noise and wants the MAX line to use two downtown streets. The merchants don't like that idea.

I think the merchants have the right idea, if not for the right reasons. I'm no expert on whether their businesses would suffer if train tracks were located in streets adjacent to their businesses. But I do know that the transit users would suffer. I'm assuming that downtown Milwaukie's streets are not wide enough to give the trains their own separated right of way, so they would be sharing the street with vehicle traffic. This will slow the trains down considerably, making them less attractive to prospective patrons.

Furthermore, the railroad alignment is adjacent to downtown Milwaukie, a short walk away. It won't be a significant deterrent to a good synergy of station and downtown.

As for the noise impacts on the Waldorf School, they already have freight trains rumbling by the school. If they don't like it, I'm sure they could sell out for a pretty profit once the station is in and use the money to move to a quieter location. Of course, their school would be less accessible, but that's apparently not important to them - typical short-sighted thinking.

Haggen comes to its senses

2007-08-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I commented on the stupid quixotic campaign Haggen Grocery was leading against a commuter rail station next to their store in Tualatin - despite the fact that it would be good for Haggen's business. They were rallying local NIMBYs and the Karlockian ideologues to their campaign.

They came to their senses. They worked out an agreement with Tri-Met and now support the stop. They should expect business to pick up as commuters, on their way to and from the train station, stop at their friendly local store for some excellent (if somewhat high-priced) grocery items. The few spillover commuter cars in their lot will use some of the many empty spaces among the hundreds available.

Maybe Haggen will become a bigger grocery chain after all!

The Round in Beaverton

2007-08-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Round in Beaverton continues it's checkered story. And the libertarian boo-birds are having a field day. I expect the antiplanner to be crowing about this story in the near future.

My prediction? In ten to twenty years "downtown Beaverton," around the Round, will be a thriving, successful place. The Round is early for its time, is not supported right now by similar developments, and, worst of all, is located in Beaverton. Beaverton is synonymous in the Portland area with dull California-style suburbia. Would-be residents would rather live in thriving Orenco Station, or, better yet, the glamorous Pearl District. But, as more and more homeowners choose this type of living (and to much gnashing of teeth by suburbia-lovers, they are), and as prices remain lower in Beaverton than in other more desirable light rail station areas, downtown Beaverton will prosper too. And the problems of today will be long-forgotten, as sprawl lovers attack the next outpost of urbanity designed to give our citizens a CHOICE.

How to Make a Bad Building Worse

2007-08-06T11:03:00.000-07:00

The parking garage at 10th and Yamhill, many stories for many cars, is an architectural and urban disaster. So Portland wants to do something with it. It wants to keep the disaster and add 25 stories to the top.

I suppose the ground level retail ambience would be improved by a comprehensive redesign. But I've seen my share of skyscrapers for which the first several stories are a parking garage, and they are awful looking. A good street life consists of more than ground level retail - it needs some uses directly above as well, offices or residences or more retail space.

Here's a hotel in San Diego with this kind of design - from the looks of it it's been "re-clad" since I saw it last. It's still real bad - it looks worse from a less oblique angle. The ground floor is a waste land.

Other options may be more expensive, but they will make this eyesore better, not worse.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-31T23:11:00.000-07:00

The seven books are great reads, but I'm glad this is the last. I know this is an odd complaint for this type of book, but it's not realistic enough. At its worst, it reminded me of the DaVinci Code.

But that's not a reason not to read all seven books. Just don't mistake them for Tolstoy.

Agriculture vs. Residents

2007-07-23T23:59:00.000-07:00

In other parts of the country, such as east of Los Angeles in the "Inland Empire," agricultural smells disgust nearby residents.

Book Review: A History of the Jews

2007-07-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

An interesting book by Paul Johnson, a noted historian, spanning 4,000 years of history. More than history, it discusses great ideas and philosophies associated with Judaism. Those parts were heavy slogging for me, but the history gives new insights on a people who can be genuinely called survivors.

On another note, I will be otherwise occupied over the next three weeks, so I probably won't be posting. Stay cool, all 10 of you readers! (or is that too optimistic?)

Portland's Suburban Escape Valve

2007-07-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

It's in Clark County, Washington of course.

Opponents of suburban development will, of course, fret about it, try to bring Clark County "to heel," perhaps, as arch-suburban hater Robert Liberty (Metro Councilor) has suggested, forgetting about new bridges or light rail to Clark County and letting those awful suburbanites stew and fester in their own traffic jams.

And haters of the Oregon land use system will, of course, claim that the rush to Clark County shows that people still want suburban development, and therefore Oregon must abandon all of this elitist urban growth boundary nonsense and join the suburban frenzy.

As you might guess, I believe that both of these extreme viewpoints are wrong.

Clark County represents another choice for local residents. Many of our citizens want the standard suburban lifestyle, and Clark County seems determined to offer it to them. Of course in a couple of decades the pristine new suburbs will be frayed at the edges, and the failure to pay for capital facility needs and ongoing maintenance will become more pronounced. But there will be the next wave of suburbanization beyond Battle Ground and Ridgefield, and the process will continue until, many decades from now, the slopes of Mt. St. Helens are reached.

Portland's urban planning overlords have the luxury of taking Clark County's growth pattern into consideration in developing Oregon's plan. Since standard suburban development is a shrinking demand, and it is being met by Clark County, Oregon's planners can concentrate on meeting the new, unmet demands for small lot, dense, inner city housing, and new suburban development that is denser and more transit-oriented that Clark County's. Together, Portland and the North are meeting housing needs. And it appears that at least the City of Vancouver is joining the Portland model bandwagon to some extent. If all of Clark County decided to adopt Portland's model, a part of the housing market's choice preferences would be unmet, and Oregon would reqwire additional standard suburban development.

As for the bridges, there are other reasons to rebuild them - commercial freight being the top one, independent of rampant Clark County suburban growth.

"Smart Living:" Stupid Zoning

2007-07-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

A peek at Sunday's Oregonian regarding some new 15-foot wide monstrosities being built in the City of Portland sent me to the City's "Living Smart" program. There are now two, count them two, award winning designs for the City's 25-foot wide lot "infill" program.

For those of you not steeped in zoning arcana, I'll try to explain the situation for you so that your eyes don't glaze over.

1. Back 100 years ago or so much of Portland was platted with 25-foot wide lots (most about 100 feet deep from the street). Most people back then bought two of these lots together to make a 50-foot wide combined lot, then placed their foursquare or bungalow on the property.

2. But the underlying lots still exist on paper - and the City of Portland, like many jurisdictions, allows a property owner to restore these lots by tearing down the house built on two combined lots, even though the zoning for the area wouldn't allow the creation of such small or narrow lots today. The zoning-ese term for these lots is "legal non-conforming."

3. However, the single-family zoning district that covers these lots now requires certain setbacks from the property lines for any structures. For side yards the required setback is five feet.

4. Thus, someone creating a new home on a 25-foot wide lot in a single-family residential zoning district can only build a 15-foot-wide house.

I think both designs that the City's "Living Smart" program has produced are pretty bad - and it's telling that only two designs have been "certified" or whatever they do, by the program. One of the designs manages to be ugly even without providing for a one-car garage in the front. The other puts the garage in, which is a guarantee for an awful looking design, since the garage door must be at least 10 feet wide.

There are two solutions the city can logically make to correct this bad situation - it can either:

- not allow the disaggregation of sub-standard old subdivision lots to sizes below those allowed by current zoning; or

- get rid of the side yard setbacks and allow a builder to put two houses together on the lot line in a "paired" design.

My preference is the latter option, because I don't think "single-family detached" housing is a magical neighborhood mantra, the paired houses are as likely as any house to be lived in by the owner rather than rented, increased housing stock means more affordable housing, infill is preferable to sprawl, etc.

But many cities prefer the other approach - it's a policy decision. And, clearly, either of these approaches is preferable to the "stupid zoning" approach Portland has taken, resulting in impossible design challenges for even the most creative builders.

San Diego Sexual Architecture

2007-07-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

According to some, a giant male organ is rising in downtown San Diego.

The same can be said of virtually any skyscraper. I forget the architectural book I read many years ago that referred to them as "skyprickers."

What is perhaps more interesting on a less titillating level is the transformation of downtown San Diego from a sailor playground to a "sunny Vancouver." There are thousands of new middle and upper income residents living there - by choice. The fake libertarians and Levittown-lovers and those pining for 1950's life would take away that choice and make these people live where they don't want to live, in exurban enclaves. Fortunately, us urban planning overlords are overcoming the roadblocks set out by the ideological and the clueless.

Immigration Again

2007-07-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

Trenchant and I think accurate analysis from The Economist on the defeat of the President's immigration bill. Since it will soon disappear behind the subscription screen, I will provide a few choice excerpts:

Piecemeal legislation may follow, strengthening the border and, perhaps, making it easier for farmers to employ foreign workers. But a bill that deals realistically with the huge number of illegals in America will be stymied until at least 2009, when the next president is sworn in. And it may take much longer. Any politician who is tempted to throw his weight behind immigration reform may consider the fate of John McCain, the presidential candidate most strongly associated with the Senate bill. His support among Republicans has eroded in the past two months and he is struggling to raise money.

Yet the collapse of the Senate bill does not mean illegal immigration will go away, either as a fact or as an urgent political issue. Indeed, one likely consequence will be an outbreak of ad hoc law-making in cities and states. One such place is Arizona, where Janet Napolitano, the governor, signed a bill this week imposing stiff penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants. One in ten workers in Arizona is illegal, according to the Pew Hispanic Centre. So the law, if rigorously enforced, could disrupt the state's economy. Which suggests it will not be. One landscape gardener in Scottsdale who worked illegally for three decades and now pays illicit workers $7 an hour thinks the measure is ridiculous. “Who else is going to pick lettuces and trim trees in this heat?” he asks, pointing to the sun on a 47°C (117°F) day. He has no plans to change his ways, and says he will simply move if he is caught.

Those who defeated the Senate's immigration bill won a pyrrhic victory. Not only did they sacrifice funding for border policing; they also lost a guest-worker programme that would have allowed hundreds of thousands of legal grunts into the country each year.

The nativist wing of the Republican party was fiercest in opposition to the Senate bill, and crowed loudest over its defeat—something it may come to regret. In the long term, anti-immigrant hardliners are likely to suffer most. Latino voters are growing quickly in number and history suggests they will punish intolerant talk on immigration. Mark DiCamillo, a pollster, points out that California's Hispanics used to lean only slightly leftwards. In 1990, for example, they favoured Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic candidate for governor, over Pete Wilson, a Republican, by 53% to 47%. Then in 1994 came a ballot initiative, supported by Mr Wilson, which sought to make life much more difficult for illegal immigrants. Since then California's Latinos have favoured Democrats by a margin of between two-to-one and four-to-one.

High Speed Rail

2007-07-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

High Speed Rail continues to spread in Europe. In fact, Europe is developing the best of both worlds, low-cost air travel for longer distances and high speed rail for shorter distances. The break point is six hours for non-business and four hours for business travelers. It's not perfect - lots of subsidies, some sclerotic state-run railways. But it's a necessary governmental intrusion into the transport market, designed to not only give citizens a choice in travel mode, but also to relieve congestion and crowding on the air travel system.

Which, as anyone in the U.S. knows, is a big mess here, and going to get even messier as the increasing number of travelers collides with finite airport capacity and increased security concerns. Our shambolic Amtrak rail system is, of course, a national joke.

It will take billions to build high speed rail networks in the U.S. But its a worthy goal, one that will undoubtedly have to wait for a Democratic President in 2009 to be even contemplated. But the U.S. prototype, the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, is already in place. There's talk of high speed rail for Midwest cities that are 100-500 miles apart. Other obvious high-speed corridors exist in Florida, Texas, California, and, of course, here in the Northwest from Eugene to Seattle. It's time for an "all aboard" to bring rail back as a choice for shorter 100-500 mile trips.

Portland vs. Pittsburgh

2007-07-06T09:10:00.001-07:00

No, it's not an NBA game (no NBA team in Pittsburgh) or a Major League Baseball game (no major league team in Portland) - it's an interesting post and photo comparison of the two cities.

Pittsburgh is a city with a fascinating history and, I think, a good, if not great, future, despite it's crummy weather.