Randy Gragg, the architecture critic for the Portland Oregonian, thinks that Portland “lacks a coordinated transportation plan” and needs a “grand vision” to deal with transportation in the future. In fact, what Portland needs is to deal with the reality of how people really live, not a vision for how some people think everyone else ought to live.
In 1992, Portland-area voters decided to create Metro, a regional planning agency that would create a vision for Portland’s future and implement that vision through land-use and transportation planning. Now, after fifteen years of expensive planning and increasing congestion, Gragg is effectively saying that Metro has failed.
Portland light rail and mid-rise development. Flickr photo by ahockley.
