Tax funded propaganda at it's worst. Ripe with ignorance, chuck full of deceit and cover up and a lesson in government agencies without accountability or ethics.

So distorted is this pitch for this approach to "planning" that careers should be lost and severe consequences realized by the central characters.

Commissioners, councilors and department management.

I always wondered why the voters in PDX are so rarely the target of criticism for their shallow review of candidates for city/county office and their inability to effectively "revolt" when the community gets skewered.
"You reap what you sow"

I have a cousin who has a doctorate in urban planning, teaches it at a state university in the southwest, and is highly sought after around the country as a paid consultant in the field. He has told me more than once that Portland is regarded as Shangri-La amongst urban planners everywhere.

That presentation really took me back. I remember in 2000 - several years before I convinced the wife to move from So Cal to Portland - seeing some of those plans for Hollywood. I had visited Portland many times but always stayed with relatives on Tabor and did the usual downtown, Irvington, Laurelhurst stuff as that area was not on the visitor radar. I now own a lovely old house in the Hollywood area and am thrilled to watch these plans come into fruition.

I was always a bit concerned about the I205 Max as it seemed to be a train to nowhere (no offense to the fine people of Clackamas). When you add in the Milwaukie part of the loop, and see the future corridors and extensions, it looks very complete and logical. Think of all that underutilized land and crappy lots that will benefit, which should reduce the pressure to sprawl out further. Isn’t it great to live in a town where future growth is being thought through as opposed to having it imposed on us by developers?

Mmmmm. It just occurred to me that this may not be the right forum for this post.

Unfortunately it never occurs to you that you are full of crap and haven't a clue what you are talking about.
Especially when it comes to logic.
You don't understand what you are paying for or getting.
Those corridors and extensions are friggin chaos rat races, gridlock in the making and completely disconnected from the realities of growth.
In effect it's the enormously expensive, delusional planning of fantasies.

The lessons learned are funnny:

- Plan first, build LRT later

This is fascinating considering they just "had" to commit $27M to light rail on the east side even if there is a financial risk due to deadlines.

- Don't over-emphasize parking

I would have never guessed

This entire City Council is a one-trick pony.

Isn’t it great to live in a town where future growth is being thought through as opposed to having it imposed on us by developers?

I don't know where you get such blind faith in the altruism of government v. private enterprise. Are government employees in general and planners in particular of some nobler race than the rest of us? Or are "developers" simply subhuman? Is their really any difference in their respective motivations?

The "imposition" of future growth on us by developers could not occur without the complicity of government planners. Indeed, government bodies are the only entities likely to impose anything on you, old darling.

Crooks are crooks, power is power, people are people.

Anyone who ascribes good judgement based on some artificial distinction like public employment is wearing rose-tinted spectacles...

...and a blindfold.

OK folks...
spend a fun filled morning on the web checking out the International Downtown Association @ www.ida-downtown.org and it's parent organization the atcm.org
Learn all about organizing a BID, setting up plannning seminars; purchase books videos and other educational materials to make your town or city "clean and safe". "Variety, vitality and vibrance" have been the watch words for some time now, but you gotta be a member to learn all about the secret handshakes and the pass words.
Portalnd isn't original, it is just one of the pack and the city pays big bucks to join the group. And believe me the city must join up.
Check it out. I would love the readers' opinions about this.

Who paid for the pull-out section in The Portland Tribune that says we need new taxes for road repair? The new taxes part is in the small print near the bottom.

I don't know where you get such blind faith in the altruism of government v. private enterprise. Are government employees in general and planners in particular of some nobler race than the rest of us? Or are "developers" simply subhuman? Is their really any difference in their respective motivations?

...and a blindfold.

Wow...

I fully agree with this statement by rr.

Those in government are just as banal and venal as those in the private sector. Of course, there are more in the private sector just because the private sector is bigger and has less notional and nominal oversight. Indeed, it is at the interface of government and the private sector, where contracts for government work by private contractors takes place that this can be seen so clearly.

From my perspective, this looks a great deal like those who have an interest in obtaining government contracts actively "cultivating" the family and friends who "just happen" to have government positions. But maybe that is skewed perception.

Of course, public agencies are supposed to have public oversight and relative ease of access to the the records of operation, right? Try getting that in the private sector. (ROFL)

This, by the way, augurs for a much, much higher level of banality and venality in the private sector than in the supposed "transparency" of notional democratic governance. I think experience bears that out.

Ben, There are a lot of people here who express anger at real or perceived slights but a quick look at your body of work really makes me worry. If you believe more than 5% of what you type, or tend to be the same even when stripped of the internet anonymity, I suggest you see some one. I have some experience in the world of CNS drug development. There is something out there that can help you.

Rr, I never said anything even close to “planners are saints and developers are evil.” Developers want to make as much money as possible, whether they are building snout houses in Sherwood or towers on Interstate. I have no fundamental problem with either. Many here believe that planners have horns and eat babies on the weekend. In reality they draw lines on maps based on experience, education and the will of politicians/voters (I know that statement will generate flack). I was merely saying that the Hollywood and Max plan looks pretty good to me. I take it you disagree.

“government bodies are the only entities likely to impose anything on you, old darling.” A ridiculous statement. Government may allow this stuff, but 99.99% of what you see was not built by our Orwellian masters. Drop the paranoia but keep up the sweet words.”

“Crooks are crooks, power is power, people are people.” A true statement.

He has told me more than once that Portland is regarded as Shangri-La amongst urban planners everywhere.

This is the gospel being spread--I heard it in grad. school in '91.

i still don't understand how building apartments is "social engineering". someone explain please!

Sherwood,

I love the game, too, but... Isn’t it great to live in a town where future growth is being thought through as opposed to having it imposed on us by developers? is obfuscatorially challenged.

You live in Hollywood - I grew up in Laurelhurst and Hollywood. Aren't they horrible? Don't you just recoil at the urban blight that those privately imposed, lawlessly unplanned, architecturally incoherent neighborhoods represent.

Developers "develop" what people will buy.

The notion that sprawl is inherently bad is an artificial one propagated by those whose careers and egos are dependent on "planning". Throw in a few whose land holdings or options might lose value in the absence of government-imposed sprawl (see Damascus/Happy Valley), and you've got a feel for the "moral high ground" of planning.

Hollywood and Laurelhurst were "sprawl".

Enjoy it while all those folks from East County whiz by on their way to Hillsboro.

Be careful crossing Sandy/Broadway near 39th, and stay out of the Laurelwood, won't you?

How is building apartments "social engineering"? It is not -- if that is all they were doing. Most Americans say they want to live in single-family homes, but Metro has decided that a much larger percentage of Portlanders must live in apartments. So they subsidize apartments and penalize (with high land prices) single-family homes. That is social engineering.

Regarding the Hawai'ian video: Bischoff tells at least one outright lie: She claims that Bechtel built the airport light-rail line in exchange for land. She fails to mention the $95 million that Bechtel was paid in addition to the land. I remember when that line was first being considered, some elected officials repeatedly told the public that Bechtel was building the line for free simply because it believed in light rail.

I've written a more detailed response to Bischoff for the Hawai'i Reporter.

*****Most Americans say they want to live in single-family homes, but Metro has decided that a much larger percentage of Portlanders must live in apartments. ... That is social engineering.****

You know I am getting tired of this holier than thou "social engineering" crap. ***Most Americans want to live in single family homes.**** Of course we do. And preferably on 5 acres and with a gardener.

****And that is social engineering**** Oh and what activity by government isn't? Are the developers are building those roads & freeways out to the developer owned farmland in that capitalist utopia you talk about. No they aren't. You can develop up or you can develop out. Each has it's plusses and minuses. And how you develop is determined as much by topography as by the decisions of "planners". Afterall there is a reason why there is sprawl in Phoenix and not so much here.

The experience after WWII when freeways were built out to the developer owned farmland was that in many cities the middle class fled to the tract homes leaving the poor in the inner city to fend for themselves. Portland has sought to counter this and succeeded by a combination of forward thinking, friendly topography (hilly land), and a unique combination of a concerned farm community and concerned urban citizens that resulted in the Oregon Land Use laws. Whether this can be replicated on a large scale elsewhere remains to be seen.

Greg C

Ps. Columbus Ohio has been in the forfront of planned sprawl since the 60's. They have annexed rural land and delivered services to it before the sprawl gets ther. It is one spread out auto oriented city. Yet it has it's version of the Pearl District located off a freeway in the eastern suburbs. A "new urban" collection of condo's, shopping malls, office towers, and yes even parking meters on it's "main" streets. And when I was there recently the head of the local homebuilders association was taking local planners to task. The planners fault? They weren't creating enough dense subdivisions with walkable streets that the market in America is demanding right now. Ponder that for awhile.

Rr, You should move back. Maybe you could put a deposit on one of those condos going in over the new Whole Paycheck. Now I take your point about private developers, although I would like to point out that they can choose to build single family homes by the MAX if they want to, especially if that’s all people want to buy. And unless it’s the biggest coincidence I’ve ever seen, the fact that every lot around here is the same size, the blocks match and we can all walk to a main artery where transportation can be found, I think a wee bit of planning may have occurred even here. As I've said before, all new urbanism is is stealing ideas from the past that worked.

The Laurelwood advice came a little too late. I have a six-year-old, so tend to live in that place. In the summer we hang out on the back patio of the Moon and Sixpence. The smoking ban cannot come soon enough for me.

"The notion that sprawl is inherently bad is an artificial one propagated by those whose careers and egos are dependent on 'planning.'"

Sprawl may not be inherently bad, but it's usually bad in reality and especially in its modern, freeway-era form. I grew up in sprawling Beaverton and thought the place was a horror. I know many, many people who agree with me--and in the case of none of us do our careers or egos depend on planning.

So, please, all you antiplanners, don't tell me that sprawl and tracts of single-family homes eating up farms and forests are the only things that all or most people in this city want. Many of us approve of government planning and basically share Metro's goals. If the "comment community" on this blog--especially considering the deluge of comments posted by a few individuals of a libertarian bent--were representative of Portland as a whole, then yes, we'd have to conclude that city government around here is completely disconnected from the citizens.

But that doesn't seem to be the case. Unlike most places in America, in Portland the Sherwoods appear to outnumber the Ricky Raggs, Bens, Antiplanners, Karlocks, and McMullens.

Welcome to Portland, Sherwood; I like the way you think. May people like you prosper and multiply (but at no more than a zero-population-growth rate, of course).

I don't get it, Jack. What's the complaint? The powerpoint seemed pretty straightforward. It described the planning process used by Portland, and highlighted the steps taken to implement T.O.D. in the Hollywood district.

Of course it's "propaganda," so is anything that promotes what someone thinks is a successfully implemented program.

Is your position that the Hollywood transit line and associated development has been a failure? That is was or is badly managed?

Or that Portland planners should not talk to their cohorts around the country?

The person is paid to plan for Portland. The person is not paid to generate p.r. for a particular type of plan so that she can fly to Hawaii to promote it to other cities.

I think transit-oriented development subsidies are a waste of money. If the gazillions of people who we're told are going to move to Portland really do show up, there will be ample demand for apartments near bus lines. They can be built without needing to have the taxpayers subsidize them.

Richard,
Thanks for the welcome. I have received many in the three years since I moved here - not what you would expect if your views of Portland were derived from this blog. Rest assured that I tell everyone it rains all the time and the wife and I are finished on one child, nicely below the replacement rate.

Jack,
If Portland paid for this guy to fly around the world on a pr jag you may have a point. I suspect it's more of a professionals yacking to fellow professionals type of thing with Hawaii paying the fare. Lawyers have plenty of get togethers don't they? After all no one else will talk...(joke removed by author).

Jack is right; the point is that this planner is paid to plan for Portland, not go around telling every one else what they should be doing.
Planning is not all bad. If there is no planning one ends up with something like El Paso, TX which is just awful. You have not experienced real sprawl till you see El Paso!
However the costs of all the junkets, seminars and organizations can be excessive. Also the end result can be that every place ends up looking like every place else. This is what has happened to retail stores and restaurants; homogenization.
But then maybe the majority of folks now want to see the same things everywhere they go in the world.
I am not one of them. I do not want McDonalds in Butan or Wal Mart in New Zealand, nor do I want to visit another place only to have it look like Portland or for Portland to look like Boston or Denver, or Billlings.

Sherwood,
As I said up thread you haven't a clue what you are talking about. Your narrow minded use of the tired "you're mean and our planing is stopping sprawl" fails miserably to explain in any way how our planners plans are any substitute for accomodating growth as was done before the Metro "Smart Growth" agenda.

The current planning subsidizes and spawns a few pockets of pretty at the expense of evereything else.

It certainly isn't "managing growth" despite the morons at the oregonian editorial board and Portland Tribune.

But then you obviously have no idea where the countless millions comes from to subsidize the fanatsies, or what it is spent on, or how bad of a problem the region has. Yor three years here has rendered you a genuine sap lapping up the hogwash like no one else.

The UGB is nothing but a blind blockade. UGB expansions, clear back to at least 1998, sit stuck in the planners quagmire in search of more planning and countless millions to divert into subsidizing grand and unworkable schemes.
Pleasant Valley is sprawl, Damascus is sprawl, North Bethany is sprawl, Wilsonville's Villebois is sprawl but they all have Metros' stamp of approval so I guess it isn't sprawl?
Nearly all of the infill TODs are heavily subsidized and chaos in the making with indadequate parking an zero consideration for traffic and the cost of congestion. While NEVER triggering the transit riders promised.
Three years and you've got it figured out though.

I'm with Jack on this issue. Somewhere along the line the FACT that this planner is taking both time off from her job and possibly being paid by the City of Portland to evangelize about "Smart Growth" is being missed. And this is no doubt given the "Okay" by the idiots at City Hall who can't seem to find the money to fix potholes or pave the dozens of unpaved streets in the City. Talk about poor priorities!

As the original post says, even if Portland pays none of the travel expenses (who knows in this case?), it does pay for the employee's time -- in preparing the talk, and perhaps the time spent giving it as well.

God forbid local governments communicate with each other and try to learn from each other's successes and mistakes. They might actually become more efficient!

Yes, and God forbid they should do it by e-mail.

Sherwood: Rr, You should move back. Maybe you could put a deposit on one of those condos going in over the new Whole Paycheck.
JK: Speaking of “you should move back” why don’t you take your own advise? Don’t Californicate Oregon.

Sherwood: Now I take your point about private developers, although I would like to point out that they can choose to build single family homes by the MAX if they want to, especially if that’s all people want to buy.
JK: No they can’t. Most zoning (and soon ALL) around toy train stations has a minimum density - no homes allowed, only high density crap.

Sherwood: And unless it’s the biggest coincidence I’ve ever seen, the fact that every lot around here is the same size, the blocks match and we can all walk to a main artery where transportation can be found, I think a wee bit of planning may have occurred even here.
JK: Wrong again. Hollywood was built, before zoning, on prime farmland. It was sprawl. It was entirely planned by the developer, not some idiot city planner, enabled by modern transportation of the day - the little toy train (streetcar) PAID FOR BY THE DEVELOPER so his customers (the home buyers) could get to jobs in the downtown. Of course, most of the jobs are no longer downtown and the streetcar was replaced by something better - first buses then cars.

Sherwood: As I've said before, all new urbanism is is stealing ideas from the past that worked.
JK: Ideas that worked for a lower standard of living. Now that we have progressed in our standard of living, we demand something better than a crummy little condo next to a noisy, gang infested toy train track.

But not to worry, Portland’s policies are slowly lowering our standard of living as the average person can no longer afford a house.

Thanks
JK

How about we mandate that all public debt (including all forward promises beyond the terms of any city council member) be reduced to zero no less frequently than once every twenty years? Then remix. It could be that simple.

Extended remarks -- PDX: We're Still On The Sustainable Level of Development Kick

Don't forget the farmer perspective. Sustainable development types, in any context related to use of land and land use planning, should prefer to send Bruce Warner on junkets carrying frozen tins of Marionberries and the like to foreign destinations.

rr, if you mention Damascus you might note that the principal drive for the formation of the city was to spare it from becoming the DEVELOPMENT (read it exclusively as expanded tax base) play ground for either Gresham or Happy Valley. I just spent the last two days trying to knock down some weeds in a hay field out that way, to meet a local need for horses. I would like to be able to do the same in twenty years. It is the Rex Burkholder's TOGETHER with the M37 crowd that are practicing astroturfing to present the notion to local yokels that this is their last best chance for development, SO AS TO DRIVE DOWN THE PURCHASE PRICE . . . whereupon the "strategic" buyer will use their connections to reanimate the full development potential. The planners are themselves acting like glorified property aggregators to FACILITATE development.

The question I posed, but remains unanswered, over at NWRepublican was "Can I just treat M37 and M49 as an ill wind that will pass?" Talk about Orwellian crap from the so-called defenders of individual liberty and their tripe about the OTHER landgrabbers.

The present value calculation of the forward tax burden to cover public debt to accommodate someone else's private development desires results in property values for those who do not develop of far below zero. Ah . . . but for Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve's drive to stimulate the economy through debt/credit creation we would not all have become such whores for creation of illusionary WEALTH. Land use planning nirvana can try to be the glossy lipstick that is put on the cancerous-big-debt-pig. Article XI of the Oregon Constitution however offers sage advice that is more suitable to defining the relationship between citizens and their runaway beast of a government than does trying to shape all public debate on development into one related to the private-limits/public-license pertaining to land use planning. If there is some nexus between public debt AND use of land for nearly all land development and any economic undertaking which of the two competing analytical regimes should predominate?

Prevent sprawl by limiting public debt. Simple.

Limit public debt - great idea. Perhaps you should start referring PDC debt issues to the voters through the ballot initiative process. ORS provides for it. If enough people are opposed to these shenanigans, seems like it would be easy to stop this runaway train.

Jimmy,

Great to hear from you. Lately we’ve had this guy called Ben who may be the only person to read your webpage and believe it. He’s using you words but is way too angry to function effectively in the real world. Anyway, off we go:

“Speaking of “you should move back” why don’t you take your own advise? Don’t Californicate Oregon.” I hear this a lot. There is nothing in SoCal that is anything like the parts of Portland you hate so much. It is a vast (about 250 miles to get out of San Diego heading North) sprawling hell hole much more like Beaverton than anything else. Surely you would want me to make it more like that.

“Most zoning (and soon ALL) around toy train stations has a minimum density - no homes allowed, only high density crap” If nobody wants to live in these festering hell holes they will not be built. Then along can come a developer of “normal” houses and persuade the city that they made an error. I’m assuming that as every city since man started building these things is dense at the core it won’t happen. But all we can do is stay tuned.

“It was entirely planned by the developer, not some idiot city planner,” All of Portland was built by one developer using the same guestimates! I could have sworn I’ve seen many maps and zoning diagrams from the early 1900s. I guess you learn something new every day.

“Ideas that worked for a lower standard of living.” No, no and may I add no. They work because humans can walk a certain distance in a certain time. Your legs may have atrophied due to only ever operating pedals, but most people still have the same requirements for a human scale development. Check out Rome, Barcelona, London, Boston etc. They have different architecture but very similar scale. I think we need to start a fund to get you out and about a bit. There are hundreds of thousands of places out there that are better than Tigard. Honest to god I’m not making this up.

“next to a noisy, gang infested toy train track.” This is becoming a bit of a theme with you. Not every one that is walking or riding a train is out to hurt you. Put down the garage door opener for a bit and go and share some space with your fellow man. Admittedly some of them are total arseholes, but 99% of them are fine.

“But not to worry, Portland’s policies are slowly lowering our standard of living as the average person can no longer afford a house.” Portland is the cheapest large town on the west coast by a vast margin. The housing bubble has nothing to do with any of this and you know it.

And what have you read Sherwood?
Nothing but Metro's web site of public deceit no doubt.
You really shouldn't pretend to know Oregon having been here only 3 years.
As far as your views of the planning around here and what it does and doesn't do you obviously have no inclination to genuinely study any of it.
Instead you trumpet the fraud in the tones of the biggest liars around here.
Your dishonesty is only surpassed by your ignorance. Your lack of familiarity of land use and transportation planning around here leaves you looking like a sloppy Metro Councilor.
The countless examples of unintended outcomes, missed objectives, unrealized promises and complete failure are easy to list.
In stark contrast all we hear from the likes of you is smearing of the messengers and empty sloganeze.
Metro and our other local planners (and officials named Sam) are lost in visions overly reliant upon perpetual conceptualization and theories forever waiting for reality to come along.

There are no plans for the rising traffic and worsening congestion from growth, no plans for affordable housing, no plans to shorten working class commutes, and no plans for replacement revenue to cover the misspent millions.
There can't be. They are all too busy having delusions of graduere about saving us from sprawl, global warming and peak oil.
I can hear them now as we get bowled over with congestion, debt and regional chaos.
Voters will be blamed for not handing over more millions for more of the same delusions.
Delusions that prioritize $300 million for more light rail and streetcars while the Sellwood Bridge, closed to trucks and buses, gets not one dime.
The 205 MAX, transit mall, Milwaukie Light rail, more streetcars and more transit oriented development will contribute nothing to our road system as growth worsens the entire region's congestion.
Pretty darn special huh Sherwood?

I wonder how much you know about the rest of the region outside of Portland?
It ain't working pal.

I guess you haven't figured it out yet Sherwood, being a native Englander and all, but Portland isn't located in Europe. I personally don't want this area to emulate London or Barcelona. They're dense, polluted hell holes.

http://tinyurl.com/2z63xh
http://geographyfieldwork.com/BarcelonaPollution1.htm

Portland's planning elite and their emulation of the European model will ruin this city. What's the point of saving farm and forest land if we all have to suffer in an urban labyrinth?

There's only 35.6 people per square mile in Oregon, as opposed to the UK's 637. I think there's enough room for a few more people in this state without packing them in a relatively small are like the poor Londoners.

And I think Ben is correct, I doubt you've ever ventured out of this city.

Careful, guys. You'll rile him up to the point where his continual ad-hominems start to insinuate things like your inability to read such luminaries of the Peak Oil pantheon as Y2Kunstler.

OTOH, I am quite fond of quoting Y2Kunstler's opinion that, in a world of dwindling oil reserves, we are going to have to return to heavy water-based industrial shipping, and deal with all of the truly vile grit that goes along with that. Amidst all of the man's logical fallacies and lack of critical thinking, he is actually dead right about that one, in the same manner that a stopped clock is right twice a day. You would think that all of the Metro types that endlessly polish that naked emperor's knob all year long, would have read the guy enough to absorb the full impact of that key idea.

Instead, they work overtime do as much as they possibly can to drive light industry and shipping traffic out of Portland. Someone, some day, is going to make a lot of money tearing out those hideous condos along the waterfront, as we gear back up to be an industrial port city again.

In the meantime, I plan on making a nice living off of idiots who give up their cars, hoping that public transit will magically solve all of their needs, that is, if my taxes don't rise so far to negate the increased revenue.

Cabbie,

Love the new moniker.
I was in a cab the other day in Minneapolis heading to a golf course. The driver didn’t know where we were going, or indeed where the largest park in town was, but I had a nice chat. It seems that the economics of driving a cab there have been turned upside down by the new light rail system - $1.50 to downtown as opposed to $45. When I say system I mean one line, but I’m sure others are planned (maybe they had a visit from a Portland planner). He seemed like a nice guy but was resigned to an imminent career change. They are putting in some condos downtown, so maybe I should have told him to hold on long enough to make his fortune off the newly arriving idiots.

Maybe we should look to some European cities for ideas on how to run a transit system. It seems that London contracted out their system and saved something like 50% of the cost. Copenhagen did the same and saved some 25% and expanded the coverage by about 10% and that socialist haven of Stockholm followed with a 20% savings. How about contracting out Trimet and see what is saved?

But then we are in the UGB. Wouldn't want to think outside of the box, er UGB. Reminds me of those secure hamlets in Vietnam, or maybe its the Rez as what the natives refer to. Just think the Rez, UGB and Secure Hamlets are all pretty much the same.

Michael Wilson

Sherwood: They are putting in some condos downtown, so maybe I should have told him to hold on long enough to make his fortune off the newly arriving idiots.
JK:Oh, you mean the big condo tower right on the transit mall? I got to attend a talk by the developer - that is a neat project with the lower 10 floors being parking! And that is right on the transit mall!!

Thanks
JK