Portland, Oregon Voters Sour on Densification Over Time
Densification involves tradeoffs: less urban greenspace, less parking per person, more traffic congestion, hotter urban temperatures, and others. The Sustainable Northampton survey hints that respondents may not be eager to make these sacrifices: 90% of respondents said "We Should Protect More Open Space and Wildlife Corridors".
Portland, Oregon has implemented many aspects of Smart Growth, starting in the 1970s. Recent votes there suggest that some of these principles, notably densification, are becoming increasingly unpopular. These votes deserve attention, as they indicate how people feel about Smart Growth after they've had actual experience with it. It would be a shame for Northampton to travel needlessly the same path from enthusiasm to disillusionment.
Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute details the shift in Portland sentiment in the following two articles, reprinted with permission.
How Not to Run a City Part Two: Planners Derailed
July 10, 2006[Part One describes how Smart Growth principles were enlisted for private gain.]
Despite bad reviews offered by, among others, the Cascade Policy Institute, Thoreau Institute, and others, Portland, Oregon is still touted as the model for other cities to follow. Streetcar proponents in Madison, light-rail proponents in Minneapolis, and dense housing proponents in Denver all point to Portland as a successful example of these activities.
In Portland itself, the number of advocates for such plans is rapidly declining. The 2004 Neil Goldschmidt sex scandal fractured the consensus among Portland's elites. But rank-and-file Portlanders had already become disenchanted with Portland's expensive, congestion-producing plans.
To see this trend, let's briefly review the history of planning in Portland:
- 1919 - Portland became the first city in the nation to pass a zoning ordinance, which protected the city's single-family neighborhoods from unwanted intrusions of apartments or shops.
- 1920 - Using an initiative petition, realtors overturned the zoning ordinance (which allowed New York City to claim to be the first to pass a zoning ordinance). The vote to reject the ordinance won by just 219 votes out of 61,000 cast.
- 1924 - A city council now dominated by realty interests adopts a new zoning code that places more than 40 percent of the city, including many single-family neighborhoods, in a multi-family zone.
- 1960s - Developer Bill Weston starts buying homes in single-family neighborhoods zoned for multi family, replacing them with cookie-cutter apartment complexes, bringing down the values of adjacent single-family homes and saturating the market for dense housing.
- 1969 - Oregon's legislature requires all Oregon cities and counties to write comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances that conform to those plans.
- 1973 - The legislature creates a seven-member Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) appointed by the governor with power to write planning rules that all cities and counties must follow.
- 1974 - LCDC's rules require all cities to draw urban-growth boundaries and severely restrict what can be done outside those boundaries. Outside, most land must be zoned for 40-acre minimum lot sizes, later increased to 160 acres. Inside the boundaries, the rules mainly require that cities provide a full range of housing, meaning that cities must zone at least areas for multi-family housing.
- 1975 - Attorney Henry Richmond founds 1000 Friends of Oregon to monitor the plans written under LCDC's rules. In effect, 1000 Friends becomes LCDC's enforcement arm, challenging plans that do not preserve enough land from development outside of urban-growth boundaries and, on occasion, challenging plans inside growth boundaries that do not provide enough multi-family housing.
- 1986 - The last plan passes 1000 Friends' and LCDC's scrutiny and is approved. At this time, less than 1-1/4 percent of the state is in an urban-growth boundary, about 1 percent is in a rural residential zone allowing 5-to-10 acre lot sizes, and virtually all of the rest is rural (40-acre lot sizes) or some other preservation zone.
Up to this point, almost all of the impacts of Oregon's planning rules have fallen on rural landowners, who have seen their properties downzoned, first to 40-, and then to 160-acre minimum lot sizes. (A 1993 rule would be even more strict, forbidden rural landowners to construct a house on their own land, even if they owned 160 acres, unless they actually farmed the land and earned $40,000 to $80,000, depending on soil productivity, per year from farming it.)
Oregon's urban residents think they benefit from these rules. They get to enjoy pastoral vistas instead of subdivisions as they drive between Oregon cities. Of course, they tell themselves that the rules "protect the farmers," but many farmers are frustrated by the strict and sometimes inane rules governing their land.
- A farmer just outside the Salem urban-growth boundary started selling blueberries from a roadside stand. To add value to the sales, his family made blueberry muffins, then blueberry pancakes. Soon the Blueberry Cafe, which complies with all health codes, was selling several tons of local blueberries a year, but LCDC shut it down for violating a rule that at least 75 percent of what farmers sell must be locally grown.
- LCDC rules forbid the construction of par-3 golf courses in rural areas, but strangely allow the construction of regulation (average par 4) golf courses. (Could it be because the elites who have written the rules golf at par-4 courses but think par-3 courses are beneath their dignity?)
- When a regulation golf course sought to put a snack bar on the ninth hole to relieve golfers' thirst, it is told that it can only sell food at the clubhouse.
In 1976, angry rural landowners use the initiative process to put a measure on the ballot repealing the law that created LCDC. But demographics weigh against them: two out of three Oregon voters live inside of an urban-growth boundary. Not surprisingly, the measure wins less than 43 percent of the vote. When ruralites try again in 1978, they get less than 40 percent of the vote.
In 1981, Oregon enters a deep recession which many blame on the state's "anti-business climate." But when rural landowners try to repeal Oregon's land-use law again in 1982, they manage to get just 45 percent of the vote.
Table One(All results statewide except 2002, which is Portland-area only)
Election History for Land-Use Measures
Year Measure Yes No
1976 Repeal LCDC 42% 58%
1978 Repeal LCDC 40% 60%
1982 Repeal LCDC 45% 55%
2000 Property Rights 53% 47%
2002 No Densification 66% 34%
2004 Property Rights 61% 39%By the late 1980s, LCDC and 1000 Friends appear to have won everything they ever wanted. The plans were done and nearly 98 percent of the state was set aside for minimal to no development. LCDC had been tested at the polls three times and received overwhelming support from the state's urban voters. Some people wonder if 1000 Friends has any reason to continue. Indeed, looking for more worlds to conquer, founder Henry Richmond started the National Growth Management Leadership Project to spread the gospel of growth planning to other states.
Then, in about 1988, the Oregon Department of Transportation proposed the Westside Bypass, a new freeway in the Portland area to serve suburban Washington County, the fastest-growing part of the Oregon side of the Portland area. (Relatively unregulated Vancouver, Washington was growing much faster than anything in Oregon.) The area served by the freeway was entirely within Portland's urban-growth boundary, but the highway itself would briefly cut across a corner outside the boundary.
Though the freeway would have no exits outside the boundary, planning advocates went ballistic, claiming that the freeway was a "boundary buster," i.e., a covert attempt to expand the boundary. In reality, much of the opposition came from auto opponents who used the boundary as a way to snare land-use planners to their point of view. The effort was successful, as a 1989 memo from the director of the Department of Land Conservation and Development to then-Governor Neil Goldschmidt reveals that the agency was responding to the Westside Bypass by writing a "transportation planning rule" that would deal "with the question of how transportation planning decisions affecting land use are made."
1000 Friends jumped on the bandwagon, getting large grants from a variety of foundations to do a study of "land use-transportation-air quality" (LUTRAQ). Based largely on speculation, the LUTRAQ study claimed to show that people living in higher densities with good transit service would drive less than people in lower densities.
Influenced by LUTRAQ, in 1991 LCDC adopted a transportation planning rule heroically directing all Oregon urban areas with more than 25,000 people to reduce per-capita driving by 20 percent within 30 years (later reduced to 10 percent). To achieve this reduction, the rule specifically ordered cities to plan for higher densities, mixed-use developments, retail shops that front on the sidewalks instead of parking lots, and more transit service. Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation abandoned the Westside Bypass, with the result that Washington County highways have become increasingly gridlocked (but planners don't care).
Metro's 1997 plan for Portland, described in detail in The Vanishing Automobile, called for a 70-percent increase in population densities, high-density redevelopment of at least three dozen neighborhoods and numerous corridors, and restrictions on large retail stores and parking in retail areas. This plan was largely a response to LCDC's transportation planning rule. In anticipation of the plan, most of the twenty-four cities and three counties in the region rezoned many neighborhoods to higher densities in the mid-1990s. In some cases, the zoning was so strict that if someone's house burned down, they would not be allowed to rebuild it: they could only build an apartment or other multi-family dwelling.
One problem with the plan was that Bill Weston's 1960s and 1970s apartments, combined with apartments built in the 1970s as a part of downtown urban-renewal projects, had pretty much saturated the demand for high-density housing in the region. Although single-family home prices were rapidly rising in the 1990s, real estate analysts found that rental rates were flat. So developers made no effort to build any of the high-density projects that planners had zoned for.
Portland and other local governments responded with tax waivers, tax-increment financing, below-market land sales, direct grants, and other subsidies to developers who would put in high-density or high-density mixed-use housing projects (see recent example). A few downtown condominium projects sold well, but most multi-family housing ended up with high vacancy rates. The shops that were supposed to occupy the mixed-use developments also remained vacant unless there was plenty of parking for them.
Studies revealed that, contrary to LUTRAQ's claims, most people in these developments did not greatly alter their driving habits. Instead, their cars jammed the streets that mostly had been designed to serve much lower density neighborhoods.
Planning advocates argued that higher densities were needed to avoid urban sprawl in Oregon's Willamette Valley, which covered one-seventh of the state but housed two-thirds of its residents. Ironically, this was refuted by a study commissioned by the Willamette Valley Livability Project, one of many groups created by 1000 Friends of Oregon. The study found that 5.9 percent of the valley had been urbanized in 1990 and predicted that, under current planning rules, this would increase to 6.6 percent by 2050. But if there were no rules, and "private property rights and short-term market forces" were allowed to prevail, 7.6 percent of the valley would be urbanized by 2050. So the restrictions on rural landowners and densification of urban areas protected just 1 percent of the valley from development.
The neighborhood densification that resulted from the transportation planning rule alienated many urban residents who had previously supported Oregon's planning. It was one thing to downzone rural lands to protect the scenery enjoyed by urban residents. It was another thing to upzone urban neighborhoods, increasing congestion and often bringing down residential values.
A visible sign of dissatisfaction with densification could be seen in the voting trends for light rail. While light rail was sold to the voters as a way of reducing congestion, planners considered it to be more of a land-use program. Light rail "is not worth the cost if you're just looking at transit," Portland planner John Fregonese told a Wisconsin newspaper. "It's a way to develop your community at higher densities." Indeed, under LCDC's rules, planners rezoned one-half mile around nearly every rail station to higher densities.
Portland-area voters were asked to vote on light rail four times during the 1990s. In 1990, 75 percent of them supported it. In 1994, 65 percent supported it, still a comfortable margin. By 1996, this had fallen to 55 percent. In 1998, only 47 percent supported it. Since the 1994, 1996, and 1998 votes were all for the same project, it was clear that people were becoming disenchanted with the idea. In the 1998 vote, residents of the city of Portland supported rail, but residents of every suburb but one opposed it -- a suburb that had no rail plans and so was not threatened by rezoning.
Table Two(All results for the Portland area only)
Election History for Light-Rail Measures
1990 Westside 75% 25%
1994 South-North 65% 35%
1996 South-North 55% 45%
1998 South-North 47% 53%Light-rail advocates claim that the fact that Portlanders voted for three out of four light-rail ballot measures shows they support it. But, as usual, planning advocates conveniently ignore the clear and probably irreversible trend of increasing opposition to rail transit boondoggles.
In 2000, Oregonians in Action, a group representing rural landowners, sensed the alienation among urban voters and wrote an initiative petition, known as measure 7, restoring property rights to landowners whose property values had been reduced by land-use regulation. This would not stop densification; it would only help rural landowners who had owned their property before the rules were passed.
Planning advocates bitterly opposed measure 7. Oregon's governor, John Kitzhaber, warned that "it would destroy the quality of life, the very soul of our state." Yet the measure received 53 percent of the votes, many from people (as one planner admitted) "tired of heavy-handed government planners." In response, the executive director of Metro revealed just how out of touch he was with the voters by demanding a grandiose constitutional amendment mandating "tight regulation" and planning for "coordinated land uses."
Planning advocates took measure to court and had it thrown out in a precedent-setting technicality. Oregonians in Action fixed the technicality and put the measure, now numbered 37, back on the ballot in 2004. Opponents outspent supporters by four to one, yet this time the measure passed with a phenomenal 61 percent of the vote. The majority in every county in the Portland area and every county in Oregon but one supported the measure.
Like measure 7, measure 37 did nothing about densification, but in 2002 Oregonians in Action wrote another initiative seeking to take away Metro's right to densify neighborhoods. Metro responded with its own measure halting any densification until after 2015. During the campaign, Metro supporters claimed the Oregonians in Action measure was supported by greedy speculators while Oregonians in Action asked its supporters to vote for both measures. The Metro measure received 66 percent of the vote; the Oregonians in Action measure received only 42 percent. Both sides declared victory, but it is evident that Metro submitted its own measure only because it feared to fight a battle over density.
In the 1970s and 1980s, downzoning alienated rural Oregon landowners by taking away their property rights. In the 1990s, densified upzoning and tax subsidies for dense developments alienated urban residents by increasing congestion and threatening urban services. In 2004, the Goldschmidt scandal made the region's elite realize that Portland's plans had been hi-jacked by a group of developers seeking corporate welfare.
Still, many Portlanders remain unaware of the scope of the harm planners are doing to their city.
- They resent the congestion and the so-called traffic calming projects, but they don't realize that planners are deliberately increasing congestion.
- They resent the insider deals for urban-renewal projects, but they don't realize that those projects are part of a utopian plan to get people to live in high-density housing.
- They see families with children flee Portland for Vancouver and more affordable distant suburbs, but they don't realize that unaffordable housing is the result of plans aimed at discouraging people from living in a house with a large yard.
- They worry about the $57 million hole in the Portland school budget, but they don't realize that that hole is the result of property taxes taken from the schools to subsidize transit-oriented developments.
Fortunately, liberal bloggers such as Jack Bogdanski and Bill MacDonald have joined fiscal conservatives such as Save Portland and ORTEM in alerting the public about these plans. Planners know that if they ever again dare go before the voters seeking money for light rail or density, they are likely to lose. So the only question is how much damage can they do without ever again seeking voter approval.
Portland Votes on Density
May 24, 2002On May 21, 2002, nearly two out of three Portland-area voters voted to "prohibit increased density in existing neighborhoods." Opponents and supporters of smart growth, the planning fad that calls for increasing urban densities, both claimed victory, leaving many people confused about who really won.
- Oregon has lived with increasingly strict land-use laws since 1969.
- In 1969, the legislature required every city and county in the state to zone all land in their jurisdictions.
- In 1973, the legislature created a seven-member appointed commission that would write rules with which all city and county plans and zoning would have to comply.
- In the mid-1970s, the rules written by the commission required all cities to identify urban-growth boundaries. Outside of the boundaries, most land would have 40-acre minimum lot sizes.
- Planning and zoning was complete by the mid-1980s, when 1.25 percent of the state was inside of urban-growth boundaries, about 4 percent was zoned "rural residential" (5- to 20-acre minimum lot sizes), and the rest was zoned "rural" (40-acre minimum lot sizes).
- In the late 1980s, the 40-acre minimum lot size was increased to 160 acres.
- In 1993, a new rule was written requiring owners of farm land to actually earn (depending on land productivity) $40,000 to $80,000 a year farming before they could build a house on their own land, no matter how many acres they owned.
Up to this point, all of the impacts of planning had fallen on rural landowners. Since rural residents make up only 30 percent of the state, their protests were ignored by the urbanites who were happy to have the state "protect open space" at the expense of the ruralites.
Portland-area residents were so happy with planning, in fact, that they voted in 1992 to create Metro, a regional government with dictatorial planning authority over twenty-four cities and three counties. Some people said that the ballot title, "Limits regional government," didn't accurately describe a measure that created the nation's most powerful regional government. But while a few voters were deceived, it is likely that the measure would have passed even with an accurate ballot title.
Rapid population growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to the development of most of the available vacant lands inside the growth boundaries of Portland, Eugene, and other of Oregon's major urban areas. Planners had originally promised to expand the boundaries as the state's population grew. To maintain affordable housing, Oregon law requires that each city compare the amount of vacant land within its boundary with the projected growth rate to insure that the boundary has twenty years supply of developable land.
Yet, as Peter Drucker reminds us, anytime the government does anything, it almost at once becomes "moral." Instead of being a flexible planning tool, the growth boundary became for many a sacred line. By 1993, a zero-option movement was growing that demanded no expansion of the boundaries, especially the boundary around the rapidly growing Portland area. As a result, the state legislature agreed that Metro could meet the twenty-year developable land supply requirement by rezoning existing neighborhoods to higher densities.
Metro anticipated an 80-percent increase in the Portland area's population by 2040. Its plans called for a mere 6 percent expansion of the urban-growth boundary--though the zero-option people have prevented even that.
To accommodate the rest of the newcomers, in 1995 Metro gave population targets to each of the cities and counties in its jurisdiction. To meet their targets, the municipalities had to rezone many neighborhoods of single-family homes for apartments and other high-density developments.
Metro insisted that local governments use minimum-density zoning, meaning that all new development in that zone be at least 80 percent of the maximum density of the zone. If you own a quarter-acre lot in an area zoned for 36-unit-per-acre apartments, you can't build a single-family house: you must build at least seven dwelling units. If your house burns down, you can't replace it with another home; you must build apartments or row houses.
This rezoning provoked enormous controversy in the neighborhoods in which it took place. Despite dozens of meetings crammed with hundreds of angry residents, the cities managed to rezone almost every neighborhood on Metro's target list. City officials told residents that they had no choice: Metro was making them do it.
Today, most Portland-area neighborhoods of single-family homes can point to nearby four- and five-story apartment buildings that have sprung up in response to Metro's demands for higher densities. These developments contribute to congested streets, crowded schools, and overstressed water, sewer, and other urban services.
Because the market for apartments was already saturated in 1995, developers built these high-density complexes only after getting millions of dollars in subsidies from Metro and local governments. Metro often buys land and resells it to developers at half price on the condition that they put in high-density housing. The cities then waive property taxes and development charges. Metro also funnels direct grants to many developers using federal funds that, ironically, are supposed to be used to reduce congestion.
In 1989, a group named Oregonians in Action formed to help defend rural landowners from Oregon's strict land-use laws. Rural groups had previously challenged the laws at the ballot box in 1976, 1978, and 1982. But urbanites always outvoted the rural minority.
The politics changed in the 1990s as densification began imposing significant costs on urban residents. So an Oregonians in Action measure on the November 2000 ballot easily won statewide support. Measure 7, as it is known, would require local governments to compensate landowners if any land-use regulations have reduced the property of their land since they purchased the land, the measure easily passed. The courts have since held up measure 7, but its success at the ballot box has left planning proponents worried.
In 2001, Oregonians in Action gathered enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot that would take away Metro's authority to require cities to increase neighborhood densities. Polls showed that most Portland-area voters supported the urban-growth boundaries but opposed densification. This measure should have led to a clear debate over the trade offs between density and expansion.
Metro responded by putting its own measure on the ballot. Metro's measure prohibited density increases in selected neighborhoods only, and then only until 2015. But the ballot titles for the two measures were worded almost identically. If both measures passed, the one with the most votes would prevail.
Metro's measure completely changed the nature of the debate. Instead of a debate over density vs. expansion, it was a debate based on demonizing Oregonians in Action. Metro's supporters never argued they wanted higher densities. Instead, they claimed that greedy land speculators supported Oregonians in Action's measure. Metro's measure, they claimed, would protect neighborhoods and restore local control without helping evil developers.
Oregonians in Action could have fight back by trying to demonize Metro. It chose instead to campaign for its own measure without impugning the integrity of the other measure. "Our ads were anti-density, theirs were anti-developer and never addressed density," says Oregonians in Action's director, Larry George.
Metro's strategy succeeded. With the support of Oregon's popular governor and other top officials, Metro's measure won 66 percent of the vote. Oregonians in Action's measure won only 42 percent of the vote.
Yet in a sense, Oregonians in Action's strategy succeeded, too. "I voted for both," admits George. "We wanted at least one of the anti-density measures to pass overwhelmingly, and that happened." Metro's measure provides at least some protection against density, but if the other measure had passed, George feared that "Metro and friends would have had us tied up in court for years."
The victory of Metro's measure can hardly be construed as a victory for smart growth. "During the whole campaign," notes George, "they ran away from density and even argued that Metro does not mandate density increases." Many observers believe that Oregonians in Action's measure would have easily won if Metro hadn't confused the issue by putting its measure on the ballot.
Yet it is clear that Portlanders still place a lot of faith in Metro and government planning. "People are fed up with the increasing traffic problems and other issues brought about by density," one voter told me, "but they are not ready to defang Metro."
Since its creation, Metro built support for its policies by claiming that they would reduce congestion and save Portland from becoming like Los Angeles. In fact, Metro's internal documents admit that its plans will quadruple congestion and that its real goal is to "replicate" Los Angeles-style congestion in Portland.
Multnomah County, which contains Portland, was about the only county in Oregon to vote against measure 7 in 2000, and it voted overwhelmingly for Metro's measure in 2002. Washington and Clackamas counties, which contain most of Portland's suburbs, voted against measure 7 and split nearly 50-50 on the density measures.
So the May election represents a mixed victory for both sides. The planners won; density lost. How much influence the vote will have on Portland's future remains to be seen.
See also:
Randal O'Toole: "Smart Growth Doesn't Just Threaten Urban Areas"
Smart Links: Turning Conservation Dollars into Smart Growth Opportunities, published by the Environmental Law Institute, proposes to use the popularity of public funding for open space to promote smart growth.
Everyone loves open space. To most urban residents, "open space" means city parks. If they think about it, they realize that their backyards also contribute to open space. Large yards also contribute to diverse wildlife habitat and healthy watersheds. But smart-growth goals of high-density housing are incompatible with this form of open space.
When people vote for open space funding, they are not voting to give up their yards. Yet Smart Links proposes that the two be tied together. Specifically, the report urges federal and state distributors of open space funds to only give money to local governments that have adopted and implemented "smart growth development techniques on lands in the jurisdiction that are not slated for conservation."
City and county officials are highly susceptible to such extortion. They'll ask their constituents, "Do you want to get open space funds from the federal government?" If the answer is "yes," they'll consider it a mandate for high-density, mixed-use zoning.
Randal O'Toole: "The Folly of 'Smart Growth'"
The region’s cities and counties encountered major opposition when they tried to rezone existing neighborhoods to higher densities. One Portland suburb recalled its mayor and two members of its city council from office after they endorsed higher densities over local opposition...
Although the smart growth policies — high-density developments, light-rail transit, limited freeway expansions, traffic calming, and parking limits — are supposed to reduce per capita driving by 10 percent, Metro’s own planners say that they will fail to meet that goal...
Metro Portland's Long Experience with Smart Growth: A Cautionary Tale
Expected home price inflation was found to be greater than expected in most of the states that embraced smart growth, including Oregon, Washington, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Colorado...
Restrictive growth policies actually caused increased suburbanization in Portland, which now has the 10th greatest suburbanization rate in U.S. As home prices went up in the site-restricted metropolitan area, families moved further out to find affordable housing...
Portland: A Photo Tour of Spiraling Densification
Portland Suburb Successfully Staves Off Densification
Oak Grove residents protested loudly enough that the Clackamas County Commission asked Metro to take Oak Grove off of its list of neighborhoods to be densified. Metro did so. But dozens of other neighborhoods weren't so lucky.
Halle-Neustadt: A Case Study in Compact, Transit-Oriented Development
There will always be a market, though probably a small one, for high-density housing, whether in Radiant-City high rises or New-Urban mid rises. The problems arise when planners ignore the market and try to impose their ideology on people through prescriptive zoning codes, regulations, and subsidies.
LA Weekly: "What's Smart About Smart Growth?"
Real estate developers have caught on, using the phrase shamelessly to gain public support for enormous developments, from a hillside subdivision near Santa Clarita to the Westside’s Playa Vista, the massive, 5,800-home development near Marina del Rey. In a city where growth was once a dirty word, smart growth is the spoonful of sugar that suddenly makes bigness palatable...
Berkeley, California: Cautions on Infill
How to implement infill has been a hot topic in Berkeley for some time. Sharon Hudson gives her perspective in "Filling in the Details of Berkeley's Infill Planning Award" (8/8/03):
Citizen input into long-range planning is excellent—which is why citizens are so astonished when their plans are entirely ignored by the current Planning Division. Developers sometimes work successfully with neighbors to create good and popular developments, but a long list of appeals, lawsuits, and despised large developments indicates a major problem. Staff routinely stonewalls, obfuscates, refuses to respond, and ignores neighborhood concerns. In contradiction to our own ordinances, staff makes no genuine attempt to facilitate cooperation between applicants and neighbors. Instead, propelled by their simplistic “smart growth” philosophy, staff encourages developers to build the largest possible projects over neighborhood objections...Vancouver Sun: "Call it EcoDensity or EcoCity --either way it's a hard sell"
Scrape-Off Redevelopments Provoke Backlash in Denver Neighborhoods
Pictures of Northampton Streets at Various Densities
"Sprawl and Congestion—is Light Rail and Transit-Oriented Development the Answer?"
...markets work effectively only when there's a reasonable relationship between cost and price. Unfortunately, the cost of automobiles to society largely is borne by taxpayers and residents, rather than by automobile owners and drivers...
What is true for automobile drivers is in considerable degree true for transit patrons. In Seattle bus riders pay only 25% ($1.25) of the cost of a one-way trip, while the remainder ($3.75) is borne by taxpayers. The buses get considerably worse per-passenger miles per gallon of fuel than autos do, with prodigious externalized costs...
It is sheer fantasy to spend billions of dollars on a few rail lines, in the belief that such expenditures will cause a massively dispersed metropolitan region to revert its settlement patterns to those of the pre-automotive era...
Every US community that instigated rail lines in the past quarter-century experienced burgeoning transit costs and falling transit marketshare. Every one. The report of Seattle's Interim Monorail Committee described the reasons:
The very factors that drive congestion—dispersed neighborhoods and business centers, increased population, higher ratio of employed adults, high automobile ownership—undercut the viability of conventional public transit technologies. The bus is a flexible technology, and its capital cost is fairly modest. But it does not offer a reasonable alternative for most commuters in a dispersed metropolitan area, and it is poorly equipped to serve the "chain-linked" trips common to today's travelers. Its high operating costs (especially labor) severely encapsulates its ability to serve mobility needs. Metro's bus operations are 75% subsidized, underwritten by a hefty 6/10ths percent sales tax plus a share of the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax equivalent to 3/10ths percent sales tax—yet it struggles to maintain a mere three percent marketshare of trips.
Rail—save for the unusual circumstance in which a surplused freight rail line, located in a fairly heavily settled corridor, can be obtained inexpensively and converted to transit—is even less promising. Thirteen US metropolitan areas introduced or expanded rail service in the 1980s. The uniform result was a radical increase in required tax subsidies and a marked decrease in transit marketshare...
...There is a misconception that rail is an energy efficient, environmentally benign technology. While that impression has considerable truth when applied to long-haul freight, it is not true of rail as a passenger device in US urban communities. The automobile consumption of fuel per passenger mile, in 1993, was 3,593 BTUs. Rail transit was higher, 3,687 BTUs.[20] But actually, the picture for rail is considerably worse. The automobile takes its passengers directly from origin to destination, but rail typically requires supplemental trips to and/or from the station, whether park-and-ride, kiss-and-ride, or by bus...
Further, urban rail systems require local transit operators to alter bus routes to "feed" the rail, due to the limited coverage of its stations and its higher capacity. These feeder lines, as in Portland, are among the least cost-effective and least energy-efficient of the bus lines. And buses are far more fuel-consuming per passenger mile than automobiles (4,374 BTUs/mile vs. 3,593 BTUs), and are even less fuel efficient than trains (3,687 BTUs)...
...not a single light rail line in America carries as many passengers as one conventional freeway lane...
There are a myriad of environmentally superior options, including walking, bicycling, carpooling, vanpooling, congestion pricing, telecommuting, flexible working hours, parking reform, pricing strategies to improve bus utilization, etc.—that are beggared and largely ignored while the money and attention is directed to rail. As for good urban design, it's jeopardized rather than aided by squandering money on high-capacity urban rail projects...
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