The Oregonian‘s latest coverage of Portland’s densification disaster focuses on outer Southeast Portland, a neighborhood that lacks sidewalks on three out of four streets and has poor roads and transit service to boot. When the city proposed to densify the neighborhood in 1996, residents hotly protested, but the city promised to add sidewalks and improve other services.
Since then, the city has added not an inch of sidewalk, roads are in worse shape than ever, and transit service is even less frequent than it was in 1996. But the city has permitted the construction of more than 14,000 new dwelling units. One homeowner (presumably not the home’s occupant) built five three-story duplexes in his or her backyard.
This is the fate that was planned for Oak Grove, a neighborhood the Antiplanner lived in until 1998. Oak Grove was one of 36 neighborhoods targeted by Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, for densification. Metro also gave Portland and 23 other cities and three counties population targets that they had to meet by densifying neighborhoods. Oak Grove residents protested loudly enough that they avoided densification, but that just meant that some other neighborhood had to be densified to meet the population targets.
