The Portland Edge

Challenges And Successes In Growing Communities

Connie Ozawa

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781559636957
  9781559636872
• eBook ISBN:
  9781597267779
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Portland, Oregon, is often cited as one of the most livable cities in the United States and a model for "smart growth." At the same time, critics deride it as a victim of heavy-handed planning and point to its skyrocketing housing costs as a clear sign of good intentions gone awry. Which side is right? Does Portland deserve the accolades it has received, or has hype overshadowed the real story?

In The Portland Edge, leading urban scholars who have lived in and studied the region present a balanced look at Portland today, explaining current conditions in the context of the people and institutions that have been instrumental in shaping it. Contributors provide empirical data as well as critical insights and analyses, clarifying the ways in which policy and planning have made a difference in the Portland metropolitan region.

Because of its iconic status and innovative approach to growth, Portland is an important case study for anyone concerned with land use and community development in the twenty-first century. The Portland Edge offers useful background and a vital overview of region, allowing others to draw lessons from its experience.

1

The Portland Edge in Context

Heike Mayer and John Provo

Portland is known as the “Capital of Good Planning” (Abbott 2000). For many urban planners the region has been the poster child for regional planning, growth management, and other innovative urban planning policies. While the following chapters examine a variety of issue areas in which the Portland region has gained this reputation, this chapter provides a broad context for that discussion. We begin by describing the region’s demographic and economic landscapes as well as the evolution of some key policies dealing with urban and regional planning. We provide some comparative statistics on metropolitan Portland and a number of similarly sized regions across the United States. We conclude by highlighting key challenges facing the region.

The Portland, Oregon-Vancouver, Washington, Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area is 30 miles north of the 45th parallel and roughly on a line with Augusta, Maine, and Fargo, North Dakota. Surrounded by high mountains at the northern end of Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley, the region’s temperate climate provides mild temperatures all year with a famously wet winter and a wonderfully dry summer. Spectacular mountain views abound throughout the region and inspire a connection with a rich outdoor culture that offers boundless opportunities to kayak, camp, hike, fish, and hunt.

Portland is also known for vibrant, diverse neighborhoods that cluster around commercially active neighborhood streets like Hawthorne Boulevard, Belmont Avenue, and Northwest 23rd. The city has an excellent transportation system that is anchored by extensive regional bus, light rail, and streetcar systems. These networks support transit-oriented developments like Orenco Station in the region’s western suburbs and the trendy Pearl District, formerly a warehouse district adjacent to downtown that is now home to condominiums, restaurants, and specialty shops.

Portland residents and visitors alike spend hours at Powell’s City of Books, the nation’s largest independent bookstore. They can drink a pint at one of the region’s many microbrewery pubs or drive just outside of the city for a pinot noir tasting at a world-class winery.

Things Look Different Here

Looking at the Portland metropolitan region through consumer marketing data and quality-of-life rankings in the popular press suggests that things really do look different here. Portlanders are more likely to spend their time and money on active outdoor recreation than observing team sporting events. They read more and they watch cable television less than folks in most places. The region ranks seventh in U.S. cities in newspaper circulation and it ranks third—after Seattle and San Francisco—in the absolute number of coffee shops (Cortright 2002). Travel and Leisure magazine ranked Portland high in safety, cleanliness, proximity to nature, and “getting around” in March 2003. In fact, getting around in Portland by foot is so much easier than in other U.S. cities that the American Podiatric Medical Association ranked Portland among the nation’s best cities for those who love to walk. Other magazines and organizations rank Portland as the top market for wireless technology, as the leader for constructing ecoroofs, as one of the most literate cities, and as one of the least expensive cities on the West Coast to live (Portland Development Commission 2003). The cumulative impact of such accolades is apparent. In September 2003, Harris Poll ranked Portland number eight before Seattle and Denver as a place where most people want to live. Echoing this result was Money magazine ranking of Portland among the best places to live in the nation, second to New York City. For all that they do tell, these rankings offer only one kind of story about the Portland region. Data like these do not reveal much about the people who live in the city and how they make urban life work. In this chapter we present a thumbnail sketch of the region that goes beyond the questions in magazines.

Demographic Landscape

The historic pace of Portland’s growth has been described as temperate—more the tortoise than the hare (Abbott 2002). However, over the last three decades, the Portland region’s population has grown larger and more diverse. The six-county metropolitan area counted a total population of 1,918,009 people in 2000. From 1990 to 2000, the region’s population grew by 402,557 people, a 26.5% increase. The population almost doubled since the 1970s and as a metropolitan statistical area it ranks 23rd among all U.S. metropolitan areas. The Portland-Vancouver Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA) includes six counties. Five counties are in Oregon and one county (Clark County) is in the state of Washington.

At the center of the region is Multnomah County, home to the City of Portland and accounting for 660,486 residents in the 2000 census (see Table 1.1). The surrounding counties of Columbia and Yamhill make up the rural fringe of the PMSA, while Clackamas and Washington counties include both rapidly urbanizing suburban rings around Portland and large swaths of rural areas outside of the urban growth boundary. Of the six counties, Clark County, across the Columbia River in Washington State, has seen the highest percentage change in population growth between 1990 and 2000, at 45%.

Portland population growth has been primarily attributed to the region’s economic success, especially in the 1990s. According to the 1998 Oregon Employment Department’s In-Migration Survey, approximately 33% of the survey respondents reported coming from California (Oregon Employment Department 1999). In particular, the young, single, and college educated were attracted to the region. According to a census report, the Portland PMSA ranked fifth behind Naples, Las Vegas, Charlotte, and Atlanta in attracting the young, single, and college educated between 1995 and 2000 (Franklin 2003). The report also found that this demographic group is more likely to settle in central cities than in suburbs or nonmetropolitan areas. In the Portland metropolitan region the central county, Multnomah County, experienced the greatest influx of young people (see Fig. 1.1.) The “young and restless” still flock to Portland even though the region experiences high unemployment. In contrast with the invitation issued in the 1970s by Oregon Governor Tom McCall “to visit but don’t stay,” Governor Kulongoski quipped that today’s new residents were welcome but should bring a big savings account and a picnic basket (Wentz 2004).

Table 1.1

Population by county in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region

SOURCE: U.S. Census. 2000. Ranking Tables for Metropolitan Areas: Population in 2000 and Population Change from 1990 to 2000. http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t3.html (accessed 21 February 2004).

In 2000, the largest ethnic minority group in the Portland metropolitan area was the Hispanic or Latino group, which accounted for 7.4% of the total population. The Asian/Pacific Islander population in the region accounted for 6.2%. Other ethnic groups have a rather small presence. The 2000 census reported that the region’s population included 3.4% African Americans and 1.9% American Indians. These figures represent a sharp increase, with the total nonwhite and Hispanic population almost doubling from 11% in 1990 to 19.5% in 2000. This was driven by the dramatic and largely suburban phenomenon of growth in the Hispanic population, which increased its share by 4.5% between 1990 and 2000.

FIGURE 1.1. The Portland Metropolitan Region with the Urban Growth Boundary.

Source: Original.

In general, the region’s poverty rates follow national trends, with rates across the metropolitan area increasing from 1980 until a period of decrease from 1993 to 1996. Since 1997, however, poverty rates in the region have increased while national figures show decreases. The latest data on poverty from the census indicate that poverty rates in the region as a whole have risen, from 9.2% in 1997 to 9.5% in 2000. Increasing suburban poverty has contributed to this change. In Multnomah County, which includes most of the City of Portland, the poverty rate has dropped from 13.6% in 1997 to 12.7% in 2000, while Washington County’s poverty rate has risen from 7.1% in 1995 to 7.4% in 2000. Poverty rates decreased in Yamhill County (11.2% in 1995, 9.2% in 2000) and in Clark County, Washington (9.3% in 1995, 9.1% in 2000).

Economic Landscape

The Portland metropolitan economy has grown rapidly over the last decade. Underlying this growth has been a structural transformation of the region’s economic drivers with the most striking change being the emergence of high technology firms. The region’s economic history began with its success in trading natural resource products. Portland’s proximity to the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean was pivotal in its role as a trading gateway to the rest of the world (Abbott 1983). The region exported grain, lumber, and wood products. Consequently, the necessary infrastructure—grain elevators, wholesale operations, and warehouses—was set up in close proximity to the ports and the railroad. All this economic activity took place near Portland’s downtown, and from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century the suburban counties in the region were part of the agricultural hinterland. In the latter part of the twentieth century, suburbanization and growth in the high technology industry changed the role of these suburban counties and most of them are now not only residential but also have a large share of the region’s traded-sector industry clusters, networks o...

Table of contents

• ABOUT ISLAND PRESS
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Table of Figures
• PREFACE
• Introduction - Challenges in Growing Communities
• 1 - The Portland Edge in Context
• 2 - It’s Not an Experiment: Regional Planning at Metro, 1990 to the Present
• 3 - Urban Redevelopment in Portland: Making the City Livable for Everyone?
• 4 - Dialectics of Control: The Origins and Evolution of Conflict in Portland’s Neighborhood Association Program
• 5 - The Myth and Reality of Portland’s Engaged Citizenry and Process-Oriented Governance
• 6 - Community Radio in Community Development: Portland’s KBOO Radio
• 7 - If Zealously Promoted by All: The Push and Pull of Portland Parks History
• 8 - Centers and Edges: Reshaping Downtown Portland
• 9 - The Reality of Portland’s Housing Market
• 10 - Housing Density and Livability in Portland
• 11 - The Evolution of Transportation Planning in the Portland Metropolitan Area
• 12 - Keeping the Green Edge: Stream Corridor Protection in the Portland Metropolitan Region
• 13 - Portland’s Reslvonse to Homeless Issues and the “Broken Windows” Theory
• Conclusion
• About the Contributors
• INDEX
• Island Press Board of Directors