How the West Was Lost - Ballot Measure 37 and its future

[Quetzal]

How the West Was Lost

THE DRIVE FROM THE DOWNTOWN CENTER OF MOST AMERICAN CITIES is remarkably similar. A cluster of high-rise offices surrounded by gentrified downtown neighborhoods eventually gives way to a ring of blighted buildings. When the blight recedes, it's replaced by well-to-do suburbs and chic malls, which in turn are replaced by middle-class housing subdivisions, car dealerships, and strip malls. When the strip malls and then the trailer parks peter out, you reach, at last, the farms.

One city where this is not the case is Portland, Ore. Driving down Kaiser Road in suburban Portland recently, I came to a sign marking the city's urban growth boundary. The sign read, "Entering Agricultural Zone—Drive Carefully." On one side of the sign is a densely packed suburban neighborhood. Beyond the sign is pristine arable land dotted with family farms. Crossing over the boundary is like going from the built-up suburbs of Boston to the pastoral Berkshire Mountains—but in 100 feet, not 100 miles.

Elsewhere in the developed world, strict borders between the suburbs and farmland are common; in fact, most developed countries have land use regulations guaranteeing such borders. In the United States, only Oregon does. The urban growth boundary is most pronounced around Portland, the state's largest city. While most of the Western boom towns like Phoenix and Las Vegas have followed a model of sprawling, auto-dependent development, Portland has opted for a dense, transit-oriented urbanism more common in the older cities of the Northeast.

Spurred by an influx of new residents in the 1960s and '70s, many of them fleeing California's rampant sprawl, Oregon in general and Portland in particular embarked on an experiment in development, an attempt to grow differently than its West Coast neighbors. Portland's regional growth was to be directed by the Metropolitan Service District, known as "Metro." Created by popular referendum in 1978, Metro was and is the only elected regional government in the United States. Its reform-minded representatives, together with like-minded city officials, instituted a range of rules and regulations designed to control growth.

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How the West Was Lost

[kaitykaity]

1. Don't give up on us yet.

I don't think the courts have ruled on this one yet,
I think that Metro is going to throwing up challenge
after challenge after challenge.

That greedy old woman is going to be dead before she
has a chance to spend a dime of that money.

[0rganism]

2. M37 is NOT doing what its primary supporters hoped it would do

The prevailing idea was to scrap regulation altogether by using threats of potentially limitless depreciation claims. Instead, counties are taking up the matter of the actual property values, forcing claimants into a lengthy cycle of litigation and negotiation.

I was very doom & gloom right after it passed, but now I'm halfway looking forward to seeing the fur fly.

[stevedeshazer]

3. It has the potential to backfire big time

It may actually end up reinforcing land use planning in the end.