Planning of outer southeast Portland has failed so badly that even the planners are recommending that the city slow densification of the area. As reported in the Oregonian late last year, the city upzoned the area to much higher densities but failed to install basic urban services to support those densities. The result is just one more disaster in the model of urban planning called Portland.
Some background: In 1994, Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, gave every city in the region a population target and told them to upzone neighborhoods to reach that target so they wouldn’t have to make large expansions of the region’s urban-growth boundary. Metro specifically targeted 36 neighborhoods for densification, including outer southeast Portland and the Portland suburb of Oak Grove.
At the time, the Antiplanner lived in Oak Grove, the only targeted neighborhood that successfully fought densification. In 1996, I met someone from outer southeast Portland whose neighborhood was not so lucky. The planners came to their neighborhood and proposed upzoning to as high as 65 housing units per acre. The residents strenuously objected, and after much haggling, the planners agreed to a modest amount of upzoning, but warned that if the neighborhood failed to add enough new housing, even more upzoning would take place later.
The residents breathed a sigh of relief. But after the city council approved the plan, the planners came to the neighborhood group and said, “Whoops! We accidentally gave the wrong ordinance to the city council. The one they approved has the upzoning that we originally proposed, not our compromise.” When residents said, “Then repeal the ordinance and pass the right one,” the planners responded, “We can’t do that! That would require downzoning people’s property, and we would have to compensate them for it.”
Never mind that, in the previous two decades, Oregon planners had downzoned 97 percent of the private land in the state and paid out not a single dime in compensation. Meanwhile, wealthier neighborhoods in southwest Portland successfully lobbied to minimize densification, insuring that so-called smart growth was really a form of class warfare.
Now, nearly two decades later, outer southeast is the poster child for poor planning.
Thousands of new housing units have been built, but streets remain unpaved, many have no sidewalks, and traffic has become so bad and crossings so unsafe that a five-year-old girl was killed in a recent accident. Perhaps in part due to that tragedy, planners are talking about, yes, downzoning many of the streets that had been rezoned for apartments and townhouses.
Southeast Portland isn’t the only victim of bad planning. The Gateway District, in northeast Portland, was slated for its own densification with mixed-use developments. Ironically, Gateway originally was made into a thriving business district by Fred Meyer, who built a shopping mall there in 1954 when it was outside the city limit so that he could avoid regulation. Now, thanks to too much regulation and planning, the area has seen virtually no new development.
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The city uses tax-increment financing to subsidize new developments in the district, but few of them have taken place. Meanwhile, residents feel ripped off because their taxes have to support services to those new developments because the taxes collected from those new developments are used to pay back the bonds sold to subsidize them.
Both of these plans were written by downtown planners who didn’t live in or care about the districts except as models for their new urban fantasies. Residents of these districts–Gateway and other Southeast–were largely working-class families attracted to the affordable housing. Planners were middle-class college graduates with dreams of walkable, mixed-use developments.
In both areas, the city created “citizens’ advisory committees” that consisted mainly of people who didn’t live in the districts. The committees typically included representatives of the region’s transit agency, the water bureau, and other government officials, plus a couple of business owners in the district and maybe one or two residents. The business owners, who usually didn’t live there, were too happy to listen to planners’ promises of more residents and subsidies to city improvements. Residents’ objections to density were drowned out by the government officials on the committees who firmly believed in densification.
Unlike outer southeast, Gateway residents did get some compromises. Planners originally wanted to allow 14-story buildings in the area, turning it into another Halle Neustadt. Residents fought that off.
Today, planners admit that their plans “may have been, in hindsight, unsophisticated and overly ambitious.” And yet, what is their recommendation today? For Gateway, “taller, transit-friendly buildings to give the district a fresher, more urban feel and new crosswalks, street connectors and curb extensions to slow cars and encourage pedestrians.”
For outer southeast, they want to take the four-lane Foster Boulevard, one of the main travel corridors in the area, and cut it to two through auto lanes with two bike lanes and a center left-turn lane. Foster is currently lined with businesses like auto shops, hair salons, and bars–just what you’d expect in a working-class neighborhood. Planners probably dream of replacing these with Trader Joe’s, bike stores, and microbrew pubs. Even if planners aren’t so naive, it is hard to see how increasing congestion is the solution when a neighborhood has too many houses for the infrastructure.
Right now, someone at southeast 92nd and Foster can drive the seven miles to downtown Portland in 20 minutes, or perhaps 25 if there is a lot of traffic. The bus takes 41 minutes, and the expensive ($576 million for 8.3 miles) light-rail line that Metro crammed down the area’s throat take 46 minutes. Taking out two traffic lanes may make transit a bit more competitive, but it won’t make the neighborhood more livable.
In other words, despite admitting that their past plans failed, planners want to do more of the same, only no doubt with even tighter prescriptions and more traffic congestion. That ought to work, if only because by the time the city recognizes these new plans of failed, today’s planners will have moved on to other jobs or retired.
Come on msetty, and gilfoil and all of the other planners who follow this blog – tell me about how the Gateway neighborhood plan has worked – or NOT? I live there, in the area. Please, tell me about the misconceptions those of us who have lived in the area for 40+ years, and who have attended the meetings and experienced the lies told to us by the so-called “Urban Planners”?
In the last few years, Politicians have often said the problem with outer SE Portland is, it was not planned, somehow trying to place the blame on sprawl and lack of planning. When in fact it was the planners and politicians that took a desirable low density safe area and turned in into a area, that is becoming the place most people would not move to.
This use to be a area with lots of single family homes big yards, open space and scattered farms and little or no congestion. The Planners and politicians fixed those problems as they eyed the open space as a blank canvas to fill with their dreams not the property owners dreams.
I was at several outer SE planning meetings and asked if your going to change the zoning of a property, shouldn’t you ask the property owners and neighbors if that is what they wanted for their property and neighborhood? I was always told they don’t have the funds or time to do that.
It’s all about real estate.
Devlopers + public subsidies = increased tax revenues. Portland operates like a for-profit corporatation. Services = accounts payable loss of profits.
Somehow you never hear of planing committee meetings or what they are scheming up in them until they are done with another cockamamie plan. Then before it’s adopted by the city they have a public hearing where they say thing like “we’ve been planing this for a year now. It’s to bad we didn’t get your input then.” Like it’s set in stone now, sorry.
Of course if the plan is in line with their silly liberal car hating utopia dream world the leftist city councel’s mind is all ready made and you know how they will vote. Recently Choo Choo Charlie was asked if they weren’t going to seriously consider the public’s input at the hearing why even have one? To which he answered “Because this is a city ordnace and we have to”. Not because we want input about the degree of devastation our plan will have on our once free and prosperous citizens before we pass it. No, no, because “we have to”.
The destruction of our transportation infrastructure at Foster Blv. will truly be devastating to our economy for years to come. As Happy Valley is built out in the future free flowing trafic on Foster will become even more important for commerce and our economy. Yes, Foster should be improoved, but that improovement should be widening it to six lanes of trafic and a turn lane. Not narrowing it to two lanes. That would be just another part of the destruction of our transportation system by car haters and farther depredate our feable economy.
Hopefully this horrible plan can be stopped in it’s tracks, but public silence won’t do it. That’s for sure.
I live in SE Portland and this article is correct.
I have spoken to various city planners at open houses, and their excuse
for planning failures is “oh, we did not see that coming.” Either planning is
impossible or they suck at planning.
The only thing I would like to add is that kids don’t have sidewalks to walk on, and
there are not enough streetlights for our dark winters. Predictably unsafe. And
two girls and one young lady lost their lives in the past 18 months in accidents
due to poor visibility and no safe place to walk.
So yeah- planning kills in Portland.
If you think reducing Foster to two car/bus lanes from four will slow traffic, Metro and the City of Portland are contemplating reducing Powell’s car/bus lanes from the Ross Island Bridge to 82nd east. It’s part of the Powell-Division Transit & DEVELOPMENT project. I went to the first “Steering Committee” on this project and pleaded with the Staceys and Novicks leading this parade to not reduce lanes (road diet) on Powell; but I just got silence.
I went to another government funded neighbor hood association meeting, and at this meeting Metro’s chief spokesman for this proposed Powell-Division Transit and Development project explained the need of the project as being demonstrated by how packed the buses are for outer Southeast Division currently. But I am not sure she caught the irony of the TriMet spokesman who followed her presentation. The TriMet spokesman talking about this same Southeast Division area said, “TriMet would be restoring bus service in this area after it had been cutback over the last five years. These dimwits cut bus service for much more costly fixed rail systems, and then use the bus service cuts to explain the need for more light rail.
And as for South East Foster the PBOT engineers say rush hour commutes will be increased by three minutes on average, but I bet you this is static analysis not including the effects of growing population in the outer east side. Let’s get the illogic here: local area population is growing with most folks needing to commute to work or other places several miles and without having lots of spare time to spend doing transit transfers. So, the planners decrease road capacity through a major street by 50%.
Portland needs a Liberty Transportation Citizen Committee without ties to a government paycheck or government contracts. I would like to spend some effort on trying to get something like this up and running. Most immediate issue I worked on was the recently proposed Portland street tax PBOT’s documentation requesting the street tax was flawed and a lot less than convincing. I would also like to spur more competition in the Taxicab business, as fares seem too high in Portland. What with car technology advancing, there are car ride services like Uber popping up. Wouldn’t people prefer door-to-door transit than slogging, waiting and transferring with mass transit?
Well despite planners being bound by outdated plans, as usually is the case, the future still looks bright. Citizens just need to free themselves from the rigidity of central planning, Soviet style. Even bicycles can break the barriers set up by planners by adding electrification for longer distances (although wind and rain continue to be drawbacks to bike dependence).
Why can’t the planners address their FAILURES, and the fact that they probably can’t walk safely through areas of East Portland? msetty, gilfoil……….anybody?
Tombdragon,
don’t expect any of the planners or planning advocates to reply in a substantive manner. If you misspell a word or miss a comma, they are all over you, gloating and sneering. However, if you have something to hit them with, heavy proof that they can’t dance around or avoid, they stick their thumbs in their mouth and hide in the closet.
Although this site is called the “Antiplanner”, we’ve learned from this piece that planning isn’t all bad – you see, there’s good and bad planning.
Bad planning is when upzoning occurs, which allows developers to build higher density housing.
Good planning is when enlightened government bureaucrats changes the zoning of an area, forcing developers to build only low-density housing.
Bad planning is when out of touch government bureaucrats builds sidewalks, speed bumps, and bike lanes, forcing drivers to slow down and causing congestion.
Good planning is when enlightened government bureaucrats builds 6 lane arterials with turn lanes, allowing traffic to move faster. Pedestrians and bicycles? Only middle class people walk or ride bikes.
You know you’re in a badly-planned area of town designed by out-of-touch bureaucrats when you see brew pubs and coffee shops. Since working class people don’t like beer or coffee, you can be sure they only exist because they are being subsidized by middle class social engineers.
Conversely, you know you’re in a well planned area when there’s no sidewalks, lots of auto parts stores, strip malls, and fast food restaurants. These were enabled by developers who care about the working class. Why would they need sidewalks or bike lanes? Working class people don’t walk or ride bikes. That 5 year old girl who got killed? Sounds like she was pretty middle-class.
“You know you’re in a badly-planned area of town designed by out-of-touch bureaucrats when you see brew pubs and coffee shops.”
Of course, the pubs and coffee shops had nothing to do with planners; they showed up there organically.
Conversely, you know you’re in a well planned area when there’s no sidewalks, lots of auto parts stores, strip malls, and fast food restaurants.
Ironically, suburban areas all have sidewalks, often in better condition than in the city, and safer because planners aren’t bent on combining auto and pedestrian traffic for the sole purpose of slowing down cars.
Planners are liars and liars are planners.
Let’s take an area redone by planners. For example, one close to me in Seattle, next to the (choir of angels) light rail. The stations have 3-4 people waiting at any one time, maximum, the 2 year old right of way already looks crappy and rusty even though it’s stone covered, and the trains only show up every 5min because there’s no demand.
Let’s go over to a place called Mt. Baker Station. Used to be a collection of stores with parking. Now there is a huge, 3 story (choir of angels) light rail station that probably cost more than half of downtown Portland, a 5 story mixed used building that is COMPLETELY empty despite being completed and ready for occupation, and no parking. I have never seen more than one person anywhere in the vicinity of the station the many times I’ve driven by.
Now, speaking of pubs and coffee shops, let’s head over to Columbia City. It’s a collection of restaurants, some fine pubs, and a bunch of coffee shops. Also many ethnic dining choices. People access Columbia City almost exclusively by car. There is extensive walking in the core area, though no one walks outside of that zone. Very busy on weeknights and weekends.The light rail is many blocks away (thank God) and no one walks from there to CC. The area is older buildings that weren’t upzoned or government subsidized. A 4-lane arterial, Rainier Ave, passes thru the center of Columbia City.
Compare the success of organic, private development to the (choir of angels) useless government created boondoggles at Mt Baker Station. That’s what planners can take credit for. Stupid piece of )$&)$*, they really think people are stupid enough to believe their bogus lies.
No gilfoil, you’ve got it all wrong! Bad planning means that the needs of the market – consumers or residents – aren’t met, and we have traffic congestion, crumbling infrastructure, bike lanes and light rail instead of sidewalks, crosswalks, parks, adequate public transit service or roads to handle the traffic. Speed bumps and slower speeds on arterial streets are irrelevant. Your answer says it all you – if you are a planner – because it demonstrates that you have nor regard, respect, or understanding that the public, that, in order to pay your salary, needs to quickly and efficiently needs to work either in front of the consumer or at an office, maybe they deliver goods, services and labor or or all of the above. You gilfoil have no interest or inclination to learn how public transit, roads, or highways function in our economy, or how the consumer functions to meet their needs within the community. So far as I can tell, “planners” seek to meet the needs of an imaginary consumer, that functions under the “ideal” circumstances that “planners” imagine. The realities are the planners got it all wrong – especially in Portland where I live. The “planned” environment inhibits us to the point where Oregon has the highest percentage of food stamp participation in the country. How do you explain that?
Tombdragon, if you’re pro-market, you certainly can’t be in favor of downzoning. Imagine you are a developer who wants to build high-density housing and you know there’s a market for it. But suddenly some Big Government bureaucrat comes along and tells you “NO – you must build low-density housing. You must provide 2 parking spaces per unit” – even though some of your future tenants have only a single car or even none.
Is this Soviet Russia? Nope. Red China? Wrong again. It’s East Portland. Welcome to the nightmare of jackbooted thugs telling hard working developers and working class people what they can do with their property and their money!
Yes, the same apartments built without parking, where the new residents, if any, proceed to own cars and park them willy nilly. This is a well documented problem with the parking free monstrosities built in Portland. Only a planner could be deceitful and sociopathic enough to deny the proof in front of his own eyes. Many of these parking free or low parking units need to be SUBSIDIZED by the city because developers know it will be hard to attract tenants.
Planners are liars and sociopaths, cut from the same clothe of the thugs who planned the starvation of millions to achieve political goals in the planner’s nirvana, the Soviet union.
And what is currently known as smart growth was developed by the communists, who derided the “waste” of space and resources that they considered the suburbs, and the associated interstate highway system.
Metrosucks, I’m sorry to hear about you having a hard time finding a parking place. You sound pretty upset about it. Have you considered renting a parking space? Imagine a parking space all for you, no more having to fight the communists and psychopaths.
Look at all the parking for rent: http://portland.craigslist.org/prk/
Isn’t the free market great?
Obviously you are a member of that greatest enemy of the public, a government employee. Your sarcastic replies consisting of illogical, meaningless snark point to this. You are utterly incapable of earning an honest dollar in the private sector. Enjoy it while you can. Like the Soviet Union, all tyrannies, whether administrative rule based or dictator-based, fail.
You want to force apartment buildings to include more parking than they would freely choose to build. I’m starting to wonder if you’re simply a Big Gubmint, planning-obsessed, petty thug. Which planning department do you work for, I wonder?
By not providing parking for the units they build, and pretending against all evidence that the residents will NOT buy or own cars and will NOT park them in other peoples’ driveways and parking spots, a externality is created that imposes costs and inconvenience on others. This is very basic, which is why it is completely above your head. Articles in the Oregonian have been written about the parking problems created by parking free apartments.
I do not work for any planning department and am not a big government obsessed thug, but you are a piece of shit.
gilfoil – Portland developers want to build high density housing ONLY because the Portland Development Commission subsidizes their construction. certainly not because consumers “demand” their construction, The South Waterfront, and the Pearl District – all subsidized developments – are still waiting for tenants. Parking requirements exist to ensure public safety, and clear streets. Again I say you are obviously ignorant of the market and the needs of the taxpayers who pay your salary. The best incentive for responsible behavior for the Portland City Council, and to ensure the demise of Metro Regional Government would be to eliminate the Urban Growth Boundary that over-values the property within that boundary.
Another example of the “planning” failure known as Portland, Oregon:
http://djcoregon.com/news/2014/06/20/developers-not-biting-citys-lure/
The developers must love the left-wing planners who “believe” that these new residents of Portland will be giving up their cars and thus the planners let the developers build fewer parking spaces. The left wingers call it “subsidizing automobiles” and the right wingers call it “making apartments pay for their own externalities”.
The Antiplanner raised an interesting angle on this. Are these new high-density neighborhoods in existing blue collar neighborhoods supposed to become dense white collar neighborhoods? Is “traffic calming / forced congestion” a means to make the neighborhood more white collar?
What about children? Does a denser neighborhood correlate with more or less children? Correlate with better or worse schools?
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/07/broken_promises_gateways_lost.html
“Gateway remains decidedly suburban, with wide streets carrying traffic at speeds that preclude walking and biking. 102nd Avenue has new trees and banners yet remains a fast-moving four-lane mishmash of aging strip malls, car lots and fast-food outlets, with the occasional 1950s house nodding to the district’s curious and inconsistent zoning history. ”
Seems perfect for the working-class folks living in this area who hate walking and biking. Not sure what the problem is here..?
Another quote from the same article:
“Gateway would be a “regional center,” a bustling hub of high-tech jobs and educational institutions on Portland’s eastern edge. Gateway would be a “second downtown,” with all the parks, bike lanes, coffee shops and density to go with it. ”
It’s obvious why the planners’ dreams failed. Coffee shops, parks, and bike lanes. Working class people hate all of these things. For them to be happy, give them wide streets that are dangerous to walk across, fast food, and muffler shops, and that’s exactly what they have in this neighborhood. Again, why is the Oregonian agitating to have the heavy hand of the government come in and ruin something that seems to be working fine?
I just love how planners magically “transform” used car lots and muffler shops into “high-tech jobs and educational institutions”. Where are those car lots and muffler shops going to relocate to, and why? Do planners think that if you put in a Starbucks that high tech jobs will suddenly migrate there?
Or is it that the years of street construction and lack of parking will drive all the existing businesses bankrupt, and that the vacant land will attract Bohemian artists?
Good planning is when the affected property owners decide how their property should be zoned. Bad zoning is when the politicians and city and Metro planners decide. Such as they did in the Gateway area in Portland. The Gateway shopping area has always been a successful area, because it has plenty of parking that the planners see as horrible.
The best description I have heard is that good urban planning is more like gardening, working with what is already there, than imposing a plan like a landscaper.
Thank you sprawl; finally a voice of reason. Gateway is a working class neighborhood; not some “walkable” middle class coffee shop, brew pub-infested area. It’s perfectly fine as it is. Why the “antiplanner” is trying to interfere with the free market remains a mystery.
I have lived in PDX for 25 years. The brew pubs and coffee shops blossomed in the low rent areas.
Planners and developers (those self-appointed, tasteless hacks) came into the areas that the bohemians and artists had created, and then pushed rents up and claimed that they were the ones that brought “vibrancy” to the area.
I know SE PDX pretty darn well- and outer SE is a disgrace. The city just annexed areas and re-directed
their tax dollars towards development downtown. You can debate theory- but the results are clearly sub-standard.
The new crapartments are ugly and will become slums. Already in DC the city has found that turnover in the small units near coffee shops is high- people are “aging out” at thirty and moving to the burbs for a bigger place. Developers in PDX are like lemmings, but unfortunately they take the city down when they run over the cliff.
But, New Urbanism is an exercise in utopianism and confirmation bias. Now, Gilfoil, go get on the Google bus and displace the remaining jazz musician in San Francisco.
This is what “infilling” looks like, from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-developers-take-rowhouses-to-new-heights/2014/06/22/96a2222e-f307-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.html
They’re like skyscrapers in small villages: renovated townhouses — but between 40 and 65 feet high — right next to squat, two-story rowhouses in Washington neighborhoods from Petworth to NoMa to Adams Morgan.
Their common nickname: pop-ups. Their common epithet among neighbors and on local blogs: monsters. Middle Fingers.
These skyward-extending residences are spreading across the city, fueled by small developers eager to cash in on the District’s real estate boom and seize any inch of available real estate, which these days means vertical empty space. Though developers have the right to build upward — and say they are providing needed housing stock — the city is evaluating how it can ensure that pop-ups in some neighborhoods reflect their community’s character.
English Major,
I take it you think the city should spend more money on East Portland? Why throw good money after bad? Again, the neighborhood has wide arterials, no sidewalks, acres of parking, and fast food outlets. It’s easy to drive to where you want to go, and easy to find parking when you get there. It’s exactly the way working class people like it. Why mess with success?
Rather than bitterly attacking me for riding the Google bus (which I don’t), why don’t you study hard and get your own job at Google? Where does this resentful class envy come from? I’d hoped readers of the Antiplanner would be adverse to this kind of socialist nonsense. It’s time for English Major to pull himself up by his bootstraps, buy a car or a truck, and join the working class.
One more comment about the brew pubs. As the Antiplanner clearly stated:
“Foster is currently lined with businesses like auto shops, hair salons, and bars–just what you’d expect in a working-class neighborhood. Planners probably dream of replacing these with Trader Joe’s, bike stores, and microbrew pubs”
For someone who calls himself “English Major”, you could use some work on reading comprehension. Brew pubs are planner and yuppies, not working class people. If you and your friends started a brew pub, congratulations – you are helping ruin another perfectly fine working class neighborhood!
Gilfoil, the outer SE, NE and Gateway were a success before the Planners ruined it by mandating the rezoning and Smart Growth stack and pack policies, 20 years ago.
Most of the changes from the density mandates, has made it worst. Sidewalks are not needed in low density areas that do not have a lot of traffic. As kids, we road bikes, walked, played baseball, touch foot ball and basket ball in the street, all the time with few interruptions from cars, in a auto oriented neighborhood. The area was extremely bike and pedestrian friendly.
The area had few sidewalks and was very walkable and bike friendly. All the kids rode a bike everywhere or walked without any problem. Most kids walked or rode a bike to school, within a mile or so from school. Very few kids were driven by a parent.
Unlike today in Portland in walkable communities, where most kids are driven by a parent.
gilfoil it was the Portland planners and politicians that interfered in Gateway, by outlawing drive through businesses auto repair and supply businesses etc. Trying to mandate a high density Smart Growth stack and pack regional center.
Gilfoil, your cranky, poorly reasoned comments bore me. I happen to be a successful professional, btw. It’s not envy- it is watching and listening to the snobby, mis-guided Portland “planning” community. It is watching nerds take credit for the work of artists. It’s seeing live music being pushed out of the central city.
If you are the biomat guy- go back to milking junky veins.
“Brew pubs are planner and yuppies, ” Really? Get out much?
“Gilfoil, the outer SE, NE and Gateway were a success before the Planners ruined it by mandating the rezoning and Smart Growth stack and pack policies, 20 years ago.”
The Planners allowed developers to build high-density housing! They didn’t mandate it – they didn’t force anyone to build anything. There was a market for rentals, and they filled it. When the Smart Growthers interfere with the market, that’s Big Gubmint Socialism, but when your side makes rules that prohibit high density housing, that’s just the free market at work, right?
“Brew pubs are [for] planner and yuppies, ” Really? Get out much?
Take it up with the Antiplanner. He’s the authority on the matter, and I think it’s pretty clear from what he says that working class people do not go to Brew Pubs or Trader Joe’s.
Sorry gilfoil – they mandated it and resident have been force to accept it. Planners have rejected developers proposals, because the idiot planners have insisted the Gateway area be “walkable” ignoring the absence of sidewalks. This is what they have forced on us:
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/07/in_gateway_a_well-meaning_proj.html
Read about the continuing documented failures of planning here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/east_portland_tell_us_your_sto.html
You smug reaction is what we have come to expect, and I doubt a Portland Planner would dare to identify himself out in east Portland for fear of their life.
Gilfoil the property owners did not want higher densities in most neighborhoods and said so, the politicians and planners did force them to change their zoning without the property owners permission. Mostly because they all lives some were else.
I would not use the word allow when they mandated and forced the higher densities and change that created all the problems the property owners were afraid would happen and did..
sprawl, why even have zoning in the first place? If a developer buys a piece of land and wants to build a high-density building and there is a demand for such a building, why should Big Government planners (i.e. a zoning board) be able to stop them?
I keep forgetting, it’s not planning itself that’s bad; it’s high density (planned or not) that’s bad. Once density increases beyond suburban levels, all kinds of terrible things happen, like brew pubs and cafes.
ll kinds of terrible things happen, like brew pubs and cafes.
Again, the small, sociopathically inclined mind of a government planner thinks nothing but cool and hip brew pubs and cafes are meaningful in the bigger scheme of things. Anything else is just detritus they should bulldoze to build apartment bunkers.
Ironically, all the coffee shop/brew pub areas planners worship so much had nothing to do with government planning and are entirely the result of the free market.
Of course, I also suspect this is the sociopathic planner’s weak attempt at sarcasm. Enjoy your continued failed attempts to turn all those areas you dislike into your fantasy coffee shop/brew pub nirvana. It must be great being such a worthless excuse for a human, that you can’t accomplish a single constructive thing that benefits the general population.
Metrosucks, I won’t rest until there’s a brew pub in every neighborhood which everyone in the neighborhood can walk or bike to. *cue diabolical cackling* muhahahaha!!!
So gilfoil – the Troll – you make light of how poorly people are treated as if it is a joke! This “planning” costs us real dollars that we have lost because regulations, and taxes are passed, and fees raised for “services” we don’t want or need, and in many cases those we do need are never delivered. Density isn’t bad, but using property tax revenue to fund density across town while those neighborhoods who pay go without sidewalks, and road improvement that are needed to accommodate the density imposed on them by the city.
fees raised for “services” we don’t want or need, and in many cases those we do need are never delivered.
What services do mean in both cases (unneeded and needed)?
How about the city proclaiming we need to reduce garbage pick-up to every two weeks, and we have to “recycle” food scraps, and raising our rate while receiving less service? Water?Sewer Rates that are among the highest in the nation, building a $10 million dollar facility and proclaiming poverty and raising our rates again. An “Arts Tax” to support the arts, Now they want to charge a “few” for road maintenance because the City of Portland hasn’t been maintaining the roads adequately, because 20 years ago they diverted franchise fees from road maintenance into the general fund – at the objection of many citizens. The City of Portland Annexed our part of Multnomah County in the mid 1980’s promising road improvements, sidewalks, and infrastructure improvements. They annexed, we paid to be connected to sewers, and still no parks, road improvements or sidewalks. They raised property taxes, increased density in our neighborhoods, and used the proceeds of our increased property taxes to embark on Urban Renewal Downtown, instal sewers for the more affluent neighborhoods, at a highly reduced rate, while we pay full price. I can go on, but you don’t care.
Tombdragon, you’re confusing a planner with facts. They live in their own selfish little world where reality and candor are carefully avoided.
I understand what you are asking for, Tombdragon, but isn’t what you are asking for is more planning? Sewers, parks, sidewalks and road improvements are what planners plan for, is it not? It seems like your complaint is not against planning per se, but planning that is not fairly distributed between the different parts of the city. That seems to me to be a lot different from condemning planning outright. Once you lynch all the planners who have unfairly focused on Downtown, won’t you need to hire some new planners to focus on East Portland? I guess you could call them “antiplanners” if you want, but they’re still going to be doing planning all the same.
No I answered your question – “What services do mean in both cases (unneeded and needed)?”
The fact remains that planning has been a complete and utter failure here in Portland, If ou planning were successful, we wouldn’t have some of the worst traffic congestion in the country – competent “planners” would have “planned” for increases in traffic. Out new “Big Pipe” wouldn’t just be “adequate” to serve our needs today, but would serve us into the future – but alas, after 10 years of construction and $1.9B it ONLY meets the needs for todays storm water runoff. When the planners “planned” for the Gateway “Business Center” to be “walkable” they would take the time to learn that the Gateway/Woodland neighborhood was platted and built with no sidewalks, except along major streets. Oh and no developers are willing to commit to the “walkable” plan because they know the east wind blows bitterly cold in the winter and the south wind blows hot in the summer. Lets not forget the Powellhurst-Gilbert Neighborhood – the city’s most impoverished neighborhood, that experienced the infill growth goals of the entire city, while driving away jobs, no sidewalks, and few traffic controls – lousy “planning” from what outsiders consider the best planned city in the USA. I could go on mentioning the planning disasters – the Rockwood neighborhood – planned for more poor people to move to from the central core as they were driven out – they couldn’t support a grocery story, so now there is none in the neighborhood. They had to build a Court House Annex in its place to deal with the criminals exported there from the Portland Central Core. Oh yes the Beaverton Round went through 3 or 4 contractor bankruptcies before the City of Beaverton moved into the development because few chose to live there, and business wouldn’t locate there. I could go on, but safe to say “planning has caused much more harm than good here in the Portland Metropolitan Area, especially if the area you live in is the victim of that planning. Here’s what they should be “planning” for its how should we “Plan” to attract business here to employ the population so “we” can afford to bankroll the “planning” and the high cost of living we have to endure because the “planning” has made Portland a very expensive place to live, for what we earn.