The real estate market is tanking, and government-subsidized downtown booms are busting. But Gresham — Portland’s largest suburb, with more than 100,000 people — has a plan.
The new plan is going to make downtown a “vibrant” place by making it “the focus of the community.” Yeah, right. Downtowns haven’t been “the focus” of major cities since the 1960s. A focus, yes, but not the focus.
How will they do it? Why, with public/private partnerships, of course. In other words, subsidies. In other words, tax-increment financing.
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Better times: The Rockwood Fred Meyer before it closed.
Gresham has such a great track record for these plans. Take a look at the list of Gresham’s urban renewal plans for the Rockwood neighborhood, which go back to the early 1990s. In case you haven’t heard of it, Rockwood is the neighborhood where much of the light-rail crime has been taking place.
The neighborhood used to be “focused” on Fred Meyer’s, a major retail chain in Portland. (Fred Meyer invented supercenters years before Sam Walton got into retail.) But that particular Fred Meyer store closed after the light-rail line was built. Why? Too much crime.
So much for the benefits of planning. Now planners are going to do for downtown that they did to Rockwood. That should turn out well. Just be glad you aren’t a Gresham taxpayer.
Oh, yay! Everything bad is the result of the planners! Suburban housing goes bust = planner’s fault. City centre housing goes bust = planner’s fault.
Downtowns, such as Vancouver’s do extremely well = AntiPlanner ignores them or writes a report on the Vancouver region lacking any context or unederstanding of the region.
People demand better development = AntiPlanner calls them elitists.
AnitPlanner calls himself an antiplanner = actually loves planning just not the current practices in planning.
and yadda, yadda, yadda.
So I suppose being the smarmy type gives you knowledge that nobody else has? Where’s the Vancouver proof? Where’s the people demanding better development proof?
Most of what you call “demanding better development” comes from former urbanites moving out of the cities (and their new found personal discovery of NIMBY) infecting suburbs with things like “walka-bility”, “town centers” (in most cases these artificially imposed in a lot of suburban cities) and other nonsense that tries to “urbanize” the suburbs when that’s the very reason people choose to live outside the city.
And I said live, because there are a lot of people who do go into the city for dining and entertainment, they just choose not be put into cramped dinky dwellings or $1million condos downtown.
It’s too bad urbanists have this attitude towards the suburbs because people who live outside the city certainly don’t go into the major urban centers and try to “suburbanize” them, now do they?
> On March 24th, 2008, Haunchie said:
> It’s too bad urbanists have this attitude towards the suburbs because people who live outside the
> city certainly don’t go into the major urban centers and try to “suburbanize†them, now do they?
They are welcome to it, if they can pull it off.
Considering how expensive land is in the city, where mere condos can cost up to $1 million as you mentioned, how likely can high-rise apartment buildings be converted to single family homes with yards on quarter or half acre lots? Or blocks of skyscrapers converted to office parks and strip malls?
It’s not that the suburbanites are more considerate towards the city dwellers, it’s simply because there’s not enough money to even attempt this.
But the reverse happens because it’s not inordinately expensive to build densely in the ‘burbs, where land is significantly cheaper. (It does cost more, but not impossibly more, as per above). And I don’t see how converting a few dozen / hundred / how ever many acres in the suburbs into a “walkable town center” will harm or ruin it? If you don’t like it, you can always avoid it and drive to plenty of other places. This is, after all, the ‘burbs, where land, malls, parks, golf courses, and road space abound plentifully. It’s not like they will use up all the suburban land for town centers any time soon.
Evidence, plz, to back the extension of your hasty generalization that suburbs are falling under the bulldozer blade and turned into New Urban nirvanas.
DS
AP wrote:
“The real estate market is tanking, and government-subsidized downtown booms are busting. But Gresham  Portland’s largest suburb, with more than 100,000 people  has a plan.
I’m surprised you didn’t connect Gresham’s redevelopment with the LA Times article; one of the developers of a busted LA downtown condo mentioned in the story is none other than Williams & Dame, which just won exclusive rights from the GRDC, in their nice quiet way, to do the Rockwood Redevelopment. The award has to be one of the political non-surprises of the year, H & D having become the Portland specialist in subsidized development.
Since Metro annexed 13,000 acres to Gresham’s UGB in 2002, the city motto for prospective residents priced out of Portland should be Keep Movin’!.
Where’s the Vancouver proof?
Vancouver, BC in CANADA eh. Not Vancouver, Washington. If you dont think Vancouver, BC’s downtown has done extremely well, then there is not point in arguing. I’d have better luck arguing with a cement wall. I have to admit I was earlier wooed by some arguments about the death of downtowns, but on closer observation I’ve seen a lot of downtowns that are doing quite well. Were not moving back to New York style downtowns, but that doesnt mean that downtowns are some inherently evil anachronism.
So I suppose being the smarmy type gives you knowledge that nobody else has?
Unlike your blanket statement that anyone who supports new urbanism or smart growth is just a NIMBY.
And since when did suburbs become something of religious purity?
former urbanites moving out of the cities (and their new found personal discovery of NIMBY) infecting suburbs with things like “walka-bilityâ€Â, “town centersâ€Â
People live in the suburbs for the space, the quietness, the schools and the less crime. How is that religious purity? And what happens when the former urbanists move there? Well, they raise taxes, bring in mass transit and public housing…precisely the things people moved out of the city over.
And then you get the moving to the exurbs
Sounds like white flight.