I’ve previously noted (twice, it turns out) research showing that 60 to 70 percent of all jobs in modern urban areas are outside of downtown or other “regional and town centers.” Just as planners in the 1950s through the 1980s were obsessed with “saving downtowns” some fifty years after downtowns became obsolete, planners today are obsessed with town centers several decades after they were really relevant.
Portland politician and Metro council president David Bragdon says that planners don’t dare leave the development of such town centers to “laissez-faire unpredictability.” So he supports “public investment” because “planning means nothing without investment.”
Yet, as the Oregonian reports, private investment is doing just fine at building a new $250 million town center. The only problem is that this one wasn’t in Metro’s plans, so some people think it should not have been approved.
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This story was previously noted on the Portland Transport blog, written mainly by members of the loyal opposition. However, as the comments on that post indicate, many in the Portland area (including some who also comment on the Antiplanner) are skeptical of Portland’s grandiose plans.
Meanwhile, a member of the Portland city council has a “vision” of streetcars running all over town. Those streetcars will go slower than buses, and occupy more space in the road.
“What would Portland look like if we implemented solutions to global warming and peak oil?” Adams asks. “It would look a lot like Portland circa 1920, a time when the main means of motion were your feet, streetcars and bikes.” Meaning it would look like Portland when mobility, incomes, homeownership rates, and consumer choices were a lot lower than today. That is supposed to be good?
AntiPlanner:“What would Portland look like if we implemented solutions to global warming and peak oil?†Adams asks. “It would look a lot like Portland circa 1920, a time when the main means of motion were your feet, streetcars and bikes.†Meaning it would look like Portland when mobility, incomes, homeownership rates, and consumer choices were a lot lower than today. That is supposed to be good?
JK: Yes that is supposed to be good. You see the world is running out of oil. The world temperature is careening out of control. The earth has a fever. And the sky is falling.
The truly sad part is that so many people believe these crackpot beliefs. (get back to me when the ice covering those Viking farms in Greenland finally melts, we run out of coal to convert into gasolene and Al Gore quits profiting from global warming panic.)
Of course many people also believe that:
1) You can cure congestion by jamming more people closer together.
2) High density saves money
3) Transit saves energy.
4) People like high density
All of which beliefs, and more, are proven false at DebunkingPortland.com
Generally people who believe this crap are people who never look at data, or consider Al Gore or a Sierra Club web page a primary data source. For an example see the lower graph at sierraclub.org/sprawl/articles/modal.asp for a graph with changed horizontal axis (the original paper had a log horizontal scale and didn’t look very dramatic) which gives the false impression that driving falls dramatically with density increase, while actually the effect fairly moderate until you suppress central New York city densities. Notice that the graph is flat for 5 data points (maybe 6) then falls only for the 3 (maybe 2) extreme cases.
Sad that anyone buys this crap.
Thanks
JK
Yesterday I walked past a streetcar sitting still and empty in the middle of NW 23rd avenue (the trendy congested shopping area in Portland). It had cars backed up behind it for several blocks. People in the jam were standing outside of their cars and slowing traffic going the other way. Why the problem? Someone parked a little too far from the curb so the streetcar could not pass. A bus would have simply moved 6″ to the left and gone around. I can only imagine what a mess this created for the rest of the system. Nice transportation solution…
would bridgeport village exist without the massive public subsidies associated with I-5 and I-205? i don’t think so.
just 4 blocks or so from my house, my neighborhood has a massive scar. thousands of people’s homes were destroyed or moved. all with public funds.
however, it means that i (and all my neighbors) can get to the container store pretty quickly (well, at certain times of day). and thats a huge reason why bridgeport village is there.
eeldip: would bridgeport village exist without the massive public subsidies associated with I-5 and I-205?
JK: What public subsidies? These are both interstates and are paid almost entirely with road user fees. Unlike transit which, in Portland, sucks off of the taxpayers for over 80% of its money.
For instance see: http://www.DebunkingPortland.com/Roads/Docs/Delucchi_Chart.htm
Thanks
JK
sorry i wasn’t more clear jim, but i was talking about construction of the highways. never would have happened without massive public subsidies. not sure about I-5 and I-205, but lots of interstates were build with 90/10 federal matching funds.
so yea, bridgeport village would not exist if it wasn’t for federal income tax. because it would be out in farmland with no customers. its a great example of how public investment can help private enterprise.
not only was I-5 paid for with user fees it has been there for 60 years!
eeldip,
you mean federal GAS tax, not INCOME tax, right?
oh yea, they were actually using the gas tax by 1956…. stand corrected!
wow, thats sort of an odd funding mechanism if you think about it. i would guess that the majority of the funding for the interstates in oregon came at the expense of drivers in the NE states.
it would be a stretch to call it a user fee. but its close…
wow, thats sort of an odd funding mechanism if you think about it. i would guess that the majority of the funding for the interstates in oregon came at the expense of drivers in the NE states.
Correct. We can see that the funding mechanisms for federal roads do indeed charge folk in the NE and the SE and all over (also note the % for ‘property taxes’ and for ‘general fund appropriations’, which is all taxpayers).
DS
Danalso note the % for ‘property taxes’ and for ‘general fund appropriations’, which is all taxpayers.
JK: Oh, Dan, this gets so tedious correcting planner’s misconceptions:
1) Suppose roads were highly subsidized by the majority of taxpayers for the users. Vola! The users are the majority of the taxpayers!!!! The majority subsidizing the majority is not exactly an outrage.
2) Fact is that transit is highly subsidized by the majority of the taxpayers for the users. OOPS! The users are a tiny minority getting a free ride to the tune of 80% in Portland. The majority subsidizing the a tiny minority IS an outrage except for the needy.
Thanks
JK
JK, we are the most generous country in the world. The needy could and would be taken care of by VOLUNTARY donations if the government got out of the Robin Hood business.
Don’t forget that other Metro successful center that was designed to be serviced by rail, not cars and be a neighborhood of mixed uses. Absolutely NO BIG BOX STORES ALLOWED.
The first store opened last Wednesday. Here is a clip from our newspaper:
The 280,000-square-foot Portland store employs 400 workers and features 10,000 exclusively designed products, a restaurant serving its famed Swedish meatballs and a supervised children’s play area.
from: http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118538605186839000%5D
Of course the other spectacular award winning planning coup in the region is The Round. It got a little new coverage this week too:
The troubled Round at Beaverton Central development might face foreclosure and could be sold at auction in December.
A Lake Oswego attorney filed a foreclosure notice Friday on property owned by Dorn-Platz Properties Beaverton Holdings LLC, claiming the developer had fallen behind with payments on a $31.5 million debt.
From: http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118546655276202900
Just another week of planner screwing up and wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on their silly schemes.
thanks
JK
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Sorry, but it’s mostly income and property taxes that pay for roads.