Portland: Nature in the City

It was a conscious effort by the planners and citizens of Portland and Oregon to not become sprawling like its southern neighbors or be completely rural like its eastern neighbors, and hence the city is an effort to keep a middle ground between these two extremities of urban development.

The Senate bill 100, created an institutional structure for statewide planning. It required every Oregon City and county to prepare a comprehensive plan in accordance with a set of general state goals. While preserving the principle of local responsibility for land-use decisions, it established and defined a broader public interest at the state level.

which mandated an urban growth boundary to restrict development and sprawl outwards, and preserve farmlands in the outskirts of the city’s boundaries. This bill helped restrict the size of the city to a manageable level where transportation investments would be faster and easier to implement.

This was supplemented by the disapproval of the Robert Moses plan for the freeway (east-west connector), which would gentrify and divide communities. Instead Metro, TriMet and local jurisdictions to plan out its light rail system connecting the heart of the city used this Federal Highway Administration (FHA) money.

As Oregon grew in the 1960s, Willamette Valley residents began to view development as an environmental disaster that wasted irreplaceable scenery, farmland, timber, and energy. Metropolitan growth was explicitly associated with the painful example of southern California. Governor Tom McCall summarized the fears of many of his constituents in January 1973, when he spoke to the Oregon legislature about the “shameless threat to our environment and to the whole quality of life—unfettered despoiling of the land” and pointed his finger at suburbanization and second home development.

The results of this effort by both the residents of the state and the government is that, there are a lot of urban trails for hikers and nature lovers in this part of the country, which is due to the urban growth boundary, one of Portland Metro’s major planning achievements to keep a check on sprawl as well as for conservation of farmlands and forestlands that lie beyond the boundary. The UGB’s also promote the efficient use of land, public facilities and services inside the boundary. There is natural resource conservation that is done on both the local level as well the regional level, one such effort is the Forest park located northwest of the downtown, which is an 8-mile long forest in the middle of the city.

About Metro, Portland:

Portland Metro[i] is a Metropolitan Planning Organization[ii] that invests its time and resources in activating existing corridors and making connections between cities, nodes within a city, and counties. Metro as a regional government body has several responsibilities, which are listed below:

• It puts its resources into Transportation Research and Modeling, Long Range Transit Planning, Active Transportation Planning, Transit Oriented Development studies and investments within the realm of Transportation Planning.
• It also provides land use planning regionally and is responsible for the urban growth boundary (UGB).
• Metro also manages several park facilities within its jurisdiction.
• It is responsible for maintaining a closed landfill, and owns and operated two garbage, hazardous waste and recycling transfer stations.
• It owns and operated the Oregon Convention Center, Oregon Zoo, and Portland Center for Performing Arts, and Portland Metropolitan Exposition Center.
• It is responsible for planning for regional fish and wildlife habitat protection.
• It has the authority (un-exercised yet) to take over operation of the regional transportation authority, known as TriMet.
• It is responsible for the region’s Geographic Information System (GIS) and maintains the Regional Land Information System (RLIS).

In summary, what works for Portland, is its Urban Growth Boundary, which not only allows Portland to restrict growth and sprawl outwards, but makes the city more accessible and fiscally advantageous for the government to get grants for transportation improvements, the very active and role playing community and good governance by the regional and local partners.

[ii] A metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is a federally mandated and federally funded transportation policy-making organization in the United States that is made up of representatives from local government and governmental transportation authorities.