Saturday, the Antiplanner spoke in Damascus, Oregon, a rural community on the fringe of the Portland area that Metro planners have targeted to become a dense, New Urban city of 100,000. The residents of the area are none too happy about that and have been fighting it by passing initiatives preventing the city from cooperating with Metro.
Meanwhile, I’ve been intrigued with a similar situation in New Mexico: Mesa Del Sol. This is 12,900 acres of formerly state-owned land adjacent to (and recently annexed into) Albuquerque. The state and city hired Peter Calthorpe to plan a New Urban community, and then picked Forest City, a national developer that specializes in mixed-use projects, to develop the area. Fortunately for Forest City, the area had no previous residents to protest the development.
