Post by John Zeger on Jun 18, 2005 16:35:04 GMT -5
"Oregon's state growth management laws require each urban area to draw an urban growth boundary (UGB), outside of which urban development is not permitted to occur. Each urban area has an obligation to maintain a 20 year supply of buildable land within the urban area. By the middle 1990's, the Portland area's land use agency, Metro, needed to expand the UGB to ensure a 20 year supply. Metro projected that, if pre-1990 development trends were to continue to 2040, the urban growth boundary would need to be expanded to 1433 sq. kms, upfrom the 1990 figure of 939 sq. kms.
However, instead of adopting an expansion that would have been consistent with expected growth, Metro decided to require densification. In 1995, Metro adopted a 2040 Plan tht allowed the area inside the UGB to grow only 8.6 percent from 1990 to 2040 (to 1020 sq. kms). With population growth projected at 67 percent, this would have required significant densification. At the same time, Portland would emphasize mass transit and generally not expand roadways to accommodate demand (despite the fact that nearly all new travel demand would be by automobile, according to Metro's own projections).
These decisions led, however, to a rather rapid negative consequence. Portland's traffic congestion grew substantially more than average, and by 2001 was the worst of any medium-sized metropolitan area in the U.S. ... housing affordability fell more in the Portland area than in any other metropolitan area of more than 1 million people over the previous ten years.
The business climate worsened, and in recent years the Portland metropolitan area has had one of the highest unemployment rates in the US, after having been lower than the national average in the early 1990s.
But the most serious blow to the 2040 Plan was the reaction of neighbourhoods to densification. A citizens' group qualified a referendum for the May 2001 ballot that would have stripped Metro of any authority to increase densities. Metro, fearing its passage, drafted its own, weaker density limitation for the same ballot, which it entitled "Prohibit Density in Existing Neighbourhoods." The citizens' measure lost, but Metro's anti-densification measure won with a 66 percent majority.
Obviously, with no more ability to force higher densities in existing neighbourhoods, the 2040 Plan's urban growth boundary target could not possibly accommodate the projected new population (new residential densities would have to be nearly ten times average suburban densities and approximately the same as the pre-amalgamation core city of Toronto for the target to be reached).
It took Metro only seven months to abandon the targets in its 2040 Plan. ... The economic realities and political unpopularity of densification, even at the relatively modest rates proposed in Portland, forced abandonment of a 45 year plan in less than seven months."
Wendell Cox, "'Smart Growth' : Threatening the Quality of Life," AIMS Frontier Centre for Public Policy, March 2004
However, instead of adopting an expansion that would have been consistent with expected growth, Metro decided to require densification. In 1995, Metro adopted a 2040 Plan tht allowed the area inside the UGB to grow only 8.6 percent from 1990 to 2040 (to 1020 sq. kms). With population growth projected at 67 percent, this would have required significant densification. At the same time, Portland would emphasize mass transit and generally not expand roadways to accommodate demand (despite the fact that nearly all new travel demand would be by automobile, according to Metro's own projections).
These decisions led, however, to a rather rapid negative consequence. Portland's traffic congestion grew substantially more than average, and by 2001 was the worst of any medium-sized metropolitan area in the U.S. ... housing affordability fell more in the Portland area than in any other metropolitan area of more than 1 million people over the previous ten years.
The business climate worsened, and in recent years the Portland metropolitan area has had one of the highest unemployment rates in the US, after having been lower than the national average in the early 1990s.
But the most serious blow to the 2040 Plan was the reaction of neighbourhoods to densification. A citizens' group qualified a referendum for the May 2001 ballot that would have stripped Metro of any authority to increase densities. Metro, fearing its passage, drafted its own, weaker density limitation for the same ballot, which it entitled "Prohibit Density in Existing Neighbourhoods." The citizens' measure lost, but Metro's anti-densification measure won with a 66 percent majority.
Obviously, with no more ability to force higher densities in existing neighbourhoods, the 2040 Plan's urban growth boundary target could not possibly accommodate the projected new population (new residential densities would have to be nearly ten times average suburban densities and approximately the same as the pre-amalgamation core city of Toronto for the target to be reached).
It took Metro only seven months to abandon the targets in its 2040 Plan. ... The economic realities and political unpopularity of densification, even at the relatively modest rates proposed in Portland, forced abandonment of a 45 year plan in less than seven months."
Wendell Cox, "'Smart Growth' : Threatening the Quality of Life," AIMS Frontier Centre for Public Policy, March 2004