It Was Bound to Happen

Most city residents don’t want density. But they also don’t want urban sprawl. How do we deal with this conundrum? The obvious (but stupid) answer is to put all new residents in a few extremely high-density developments. That solution prevents sprawl without densifying most existing neighborhoods.

So I was not surprised when Jim Karlock pointed out to me that Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams proposed in a speech last week that Portland “should plan to accommodate our share of projected regional growth — Metro anticipates 300,000 more Portlanders by 2035 — within 1/4 mile of all existing and to-be-planned streetcar and lightrail transit stops.” This would, he said, “encourage responsible, transit-supportive development while protecting our existing single-family neighborhoods from undo growth.”

By which, I presume, he means “undue growth.” (I previously mentioned a news report of this speech but had not read the complete text.)

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But the biggest problem is that Adams is blithely condemning future homebuyers and renters to high-density housing even though we know most of them would prefer single-family homes. The only exceptions will be those who are rich enough to buy out the homes of existing residents, thus forcing many of them to accept lower standard housing.

Someone once estimated that, in twenty years, 80 percent of a growing region’s residents will be people who do not currently live in that region. It is easy for people to live there today to make decisions that will profoundly affect the lives of people who won’t live there for some time. They get to pay the costs, we get to enjoy the benefits (which are mainly smug self-satisfaction).

The real alternatives are not “densify existing neighborhoods” or “super-densify areas within a quarter mile of transit stations.” Instead, they are “should Portland or its suburbs grow?” Why should Metro (Portland’s regional planning agency) assign population targets to each city in the region? Why not just let people live where they want to live — especially when doing so keeps housing far more affordable?