History vs. Density in Portland

Portland’s urban-growth boundary has made housing less affordable, which is “pushing minorities out of their traditional neighborhoods to the edges of the region.” It is also leading some people to leapfrog to the next city: the two fastest-growing cities in Oregon are small cities about 10 miles away from Portland’s growth boundary.

Portland’s solution has been to increase density and the city has adopted numerous plans to squeeze more people into the city. But this is only going to make housing even more expensive.

One reason for that is that some neighborhoods have the political muscle to opt out of the city’s plans to impose infill development everywhere. Residents of the upper-middle-class Eastmoreland neighborhood, for example, have asked the National Park Service to list the neighborhood on a National Register of Historic Places. This will limit the amount of density that can be added to the area.

Naturally, some neighborhood homeowners relish the idea of selling their homes for a premium to a developer who will tear them down and put up apartments or condos, so they aren’t enthused about the historic designation. Ironically, the ability of the government to declare your home “historic” and thereby limit what you can do with it comes from the same Supreme Court decision that allows the government to mandate that people accept higher densities in their neighborhoods.
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That Supreme Court case involved Penn Central vs. New York City. Prior to the case, the Supreme Court had allowed cities to restrict land uses through zoning as a way of preventing nuisances. New York City wanted to prevent any modifications of Penn Central’s Grand Central Terminal not because those modifications would be a nuisance to anyone but just for historic preservation–essentially, aesthetics. The Supreme Court, in what some consider to be one of the twelve worst decisions it ever made, allowed the city to do so.

That opened the door for cities to prescribe anything they wanted. Do you own a farm that barely pays its way? You can’t develop it because we’ve decided it’s pretty. Do you own a highly profitable farm inside the city limits? You have to develop it because we’ve decided it should be homes. Do you own a vacant lot in a neighborhood of single-family homes? You can’t built a house on it; you have to build a multifamily dwelling because we want density. Did your house burn down? You can only replace it with an apartment.

When it made its decision, the Supreme Court presumed that city officials were rational people who would make decisions in the best interests of everyone. Portland proves this wrong if anyone still needs such proof. Supposedly, density reduces congestion, makes housing more affordable, and puts people closer to low-cost consumer goods. Portland has proven that density in fact makes congestion worse, housing less affordable, and consumer goods more expensive because only high-priced stores can afford to locate in dense neighborhoods.

None of that matters, because for Portland, density has become the goal, not the means to other goals. Eastmoreland and a few other neighborhoods might be able to opt out, but most who try are going to get crushed in the density juggernaut that will only stop when some other court decision finally overrules the Penn Central one.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

3 Responses to History vs. Density in Portland

  1. Sandy Teal says:

    Under any real idea of “sustainable”, a city must be friendly to families with kids. How can anything be sustainable if it isn’t reproducing? Yet most “sustainable” policies result in fewer and fewer kids. SF is an extreme result. Does anybody know how Portland lines up on having enough kids to reproduce its population?

  2. Not Sure says:

    You don’t need kids to be sustainable if you can manage to encourage progressive hipster doofuses to keep moving into the city from elsewhere.

  3. Tombdragon says:

    We are under the impression that our single family home, in Portland, is nothing more than a placeholder for future high density housing. Do we like it? Absolutely not! The tactics Portland uses to drive established families away from the region include – poorly implemented “improvements” whose purpose is to consume Federal Dollars, traffic congestion, crumbling inadequate infrastructure, and ever increasing property taxes, with bonds attached. The point is to drive up the cost of living, in favor of non-residents, who have no vested interest in the area, and willingly compromise, by moving into NEW High Density Housing.

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