Citizen Testimony and Government Machinations, the Promise and Peril of Portland's 2035 Plan

The Portland Planning & Sustainability Commission (PSC) is taking final testimony before its signs off on the 2035 Comprehensive Plan.  The first major revision of the city plan since 1980, this 900-page multi-faceted document is blessed with vision and detail.  Portland is expected to add 260,000 residents, with the most intense growth set for the Central City, where the number of residential units will double. 

City Council member Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Portland Housing Bureau, remarked that, “A big part of accommodating growth is to increase the height of all of our buildings." At the same time, “all height and floor-area-ratio bonuses should be tied to affordable housing. All of them." http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/06/portland_approves_major_20-yea.html

Much of the testimony to the PSC focused on policies to derive the right mix of housing, density, and affordability.  Density bonuses allow developers to transfer development rights from one site within the Central City to another to attain a community benefit.  In the past, 18 options items triggered density bonuses, but the new plan reduced this number to three:

1. Provision of Affordable Housing

2. Protecting Historic Buildings

3. Preserving Open Space

In the Pearl District, which is expected to add 6,000 households (50 percent more than the downtown), utilizing density transfers to protect historic buildings is a priority.  In 1983, a study by the American Institute of Architects identified 90 buildings and structures worthy of historic protection.  Approximately, one-third of those buildings have been lost, and there is a fear that intensifying development pressures are sterilizing the neighborhood's unique authenticity.  Historic structures offer a counterpoise to the new glass-sheathed towers, and the re-worked bonus transfer system seeks to secure the Pearl District's tie to the past and its electic, understated beauty.

Courtesy of Hallet Realty

The 2035 Comprehensive Plan allows bonus transfers for historic landmarks, buildings and structures in an historic district, or a building listed on Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory. The property owner can transfer development rights to a “receiving site” within the Central City.  Since 2001, Pearl District policy has advocated using bonuses to support "dense development on smaller parcels to create more variety and articulation in building design." (Pearl District Development Plan, 14)  The new plan is built on this foundation, as the North Pearl Sub-District is a prime “receiving” area for development bonuses in the Central City.

Since this area was previously a rail yard, it is devoid of historic structures and well-suited for high-density development.  By 2035, the North Pearl is expected to have a dynamic varied skyline that “contributes to the health, vibrancy, and livability of urban living.”  Buildings can reach 225 feet, and there are no height restrictions when a structure's floor plates above 100 feet are 12,500 square feet or less, and no façade above 100 feet is longer than 120 feet.

The 28-story Cosmopolitan, the tallest structure in the Pearl District, was constructed on this model.  Its svelte form and reflective sheath is distinctive, a “point tower” that embodies the aspirations of the developer to offer a unique product to the marketplace.  At the same time, a delicate balancing is required to harmonize a soaring modernist structure with its surroundings, and to create the active human scaled pedestrian experience that imbibes the Pearl District.

The Pearl District is also a prime “opportunity area” for transferring development rights to increase the supply of affordable housing.  To earn a bonus, developers can construct affordable housing on-site as part of a project, pay into a public benefit fund for the production and preservation of affordable housing, and fund work outside of the Central City. 

As an Urban Renewal District, 35 percent of the Pearl District’s housing is expected to be affordable.  The City Council raised that figure to 45 percent and allocated $67 million to be expended over the next decade to meet that goal.  Currently, 28 percent of the Pearl District's housing is considered affordable.  The number is inadequate, but the neighborhood provides a working model in a society where mixing subsidized and market housing is anathema. 

Unlike most suburbanites, I live across the street from subsidized housing, the Pearl Court.  It provides housing for residents earning 40 to 60 percent of median income, and the five-story building is a congruently fit in the neighborhood.  In fact, it was not until I took an architectural tour that I learned that Pearl Court did not offer market rate housing.  

Reaching the affordable housing goal set for the Pearl District will require coordinating the actions of the Bureau of Housing, the Portland Development Commission (PDC), and the PSC.  This is a difficult task.  I noted this in my testimony to the PSC, as the PDC’s latest plan for Centennial Mills, which removed the original requirements for open space and public activation, conflicts with the 2035 Comprehensive Plan's vision for the site.  

Notice the public green space under the asterisk at Centennial Mills

This disconnect also contradicts Chapter 1, Policy 1.19, which states: “Use area‐specific plans to provide additional detail or refinements applicable at a smaller geographic scale...within the policy framework provided by the overall Comprehensive Plan. The North Pearl District Plan, an Area‐Specific Plan adopted by ordinance, calls for creating “a network of access corridors, plazas, and urban open space features” on the Willamette waterfront.

When a PDC representative announced the new plan for Centennial Mills had removed the public open space requirment to the Pearl District Planning Committee, members were flummoxed. Not only did this decision contradict the North Pearl District Plan, it violates the 2035 Comprehensive Plan.

In the intricate give and take of city planning, trust is essential. The Pearl District was built on the good will and interaction of residents and developers. They fashioned a unique set of plans that guide the decision-making of the Pearl District Planning Committee.  Securing citizens support is not enough for the 2035 Comprehensive Plan to suceed, governing agencies must also be commited to implementing, as the plan reads, “Portland residents’ collective desires and values.”

A Streetcar Named Sustainability

As an investor looking to live more sustainably, the streetcars running on NW 11th Avenue in the Pearl District caught my eye. Powered by electricity, their bright colors, expanse of glass, and sleek quaintness offered a distinct alternative to the automobile. I had a visceral response to my first ride, I realized I could live without a car and escape the road-rage addled lifestyle that dehumanizes Orlando.

I bought a unit next to a park and near a streetcar stop.  Perched over the street trees, my balcony offered a glimpse of the western hills, a commanding view of the Go by Streetcar sign and a pleasant vista framed by congruent architecture and centered on the streetcar line. Close to nature and with easy access to the lifeblood of the city, I was invested in a new future.

The first night in my condominium I was startled by the noise of a streetcar gaining speed. The gentle strain of its engines reminded me of the sound a wave makes as it gains strength, and it revived a timeworn instinct to quickly mount a surfboard. Those days are past, but I took solace in the mechanical resonance as it signaled the challenge of a new adventure, living without an automobile.

I was bemused by detractors claiming that streetcars do not allow residents to forsake their cars and do not provide a legitimate transportation need. I expected this line from the Cato Institute’s Randall O’Toole. The Koch Brothers fund the ultra conservative think tank, and O’Toole myopic anti-environmental, anti-regulatory research parrots Koch Industries' profit motive.  It also posits the same dated logic that developers used in the 1960s to turn vast tracts of water-logged Florida into the nation's most sprawl consumed and unsustainable landscape.http://www.cato.org/blog/portland-model-nation

I was surprised, however, when Portland State professors David Banis and Unter Shoebe, labeled the Pearl District streetcar "a vanity transit that brands this neighborhood as accessible." (Portlandness, 2015, 36) Aaron Goulb, a Portland State University professor of urban planning, classified it as a “place making tool” not “a transportation tool.” Unlike buses, they it does not “transport a lot of people quickly.” http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2016/06/portland_streetcar_targets_com.html

Given the fact that buses do not travel quickly in the Central City and their routes are often circuitous, I found the streetcar the most efficient means of transit. Streetcars are not particularly fast, and I settled into a routine where I walked more than I expected, nearly 12,000 steps a day. However, when the weather was inclement, the trip was longer than a mile, I was in a hurry, or I had to transport heavy or bulky objects, I chose the streetcar. I’ve moved three chairs, two large vases, three floor lamps, an end table, and the goods to outfit a kitchen and two bathrooms on a streetcar. I could never have done this on a bus. Dr. Goulb undobutedly poured over a bevy of statistics in his research, but I wonder if he ever tested the experience he quantified.

Buses are integral to a transportation system, but they have limited appeal. People who will not ride a bus will ride a streetcar because it is fun, offers a better ride, and it follows a straightforward route to Portland’s iconic destinations. In addition, once riders learn to navigate the streetcar system, they are more willing to take a bus.http://brokensidewalk.com/2015/streetcars-vs-buses/

As noted in a recent PBS special, the streetcar’s superior ride and permanence was crucial to the Pearl District being named one of “Ten Towns that Changed America.” Streetcars and rail, not buses, fuel transit-oriented-development (TOD), and Portland’s $251 million investment in its streetcar network spurred $4.1 billion in real estate development. In comparison to a low-density single-family home subdivision, the value of Central City TOD real estate is 72 percent higher per square foot, it consumes 93 percent less land, and its greenhouse gas emmissions are 72 percent lower.

Efficiency of electric streetcar compared to SUV

Twenty years ago, Portland set the parameters for TOD with the LUTRAQ study, which assessed the impact of a proposed freeway, the Western Bypass, on land use, transportation, and air quality. The  research team concluded that investing in a transportation system and synergizing its components (railcar, streetcar, bus, autos, bikes, pedestrians) would secure a better return of public funds. The Western Bypass was nixed and public dollars were invested in providing the infrastructure to spur TOD.http://www.friends.org/resources/reports

Studies are now underway to extend streetcar spurs beyond the urban core. Historically such investments keyed suburban development. In Portland, Laurelhurst exemplified an “addition” that harmonized streetcars, sidewalks, street trees, and homes.  Residences were located within a quarter mile of parks and streetcar stops, which provided access to nature and the city.  A century later, this development pattern has not only proved profitable, it is much more sustainable than the suburban development the Cato Instiute champions.

On a purely functional basis, buses may serve more riders, but urban planning is an art not a reductive science. Aligning sight lines, integrating public uses, and spacing and orienting buildings must delight the eye, and offer a variety of experiences that add value to a community. In this task, it is essential to ply a city's history because envisioning the future rests on employing and celdbrating the colleted wisdom that defines our humanity .

Black and White: The Virtue of Sustainability

A wave of criticism from the left and right is claiming that Portland is an “abnormally white,” racist city. http://livingnewurbanism.blogspot.com/2016/06/is-portland-racist-city.html In a recent issue of the Oregonian, an articulate high school student joined the chorus: "I heard stories that brought to shame the perception of a utopian Portland, so progressive and green and...white...Portland displaces and targets, decorates small businesses and bodegas where crack housed used to thrive with a liberal curtain of rainbow-accented evergreen trees."

Gentrification is rife, but the city council has allocated over $100 million for affordable housing, taxpayers are being asked to ante up another $258.4 million, and impediments to inclusionary zoning have been removed. Portland is also becoming more diverse. In 1940 it was 98 percent white, by 2010 that number had dropped to 76 percent. Sadly decrying Portland’s racism masks the more vexing question: Is Portland’s commitment to sustainability transferable to more racially diverse cities?

Sustainability demands virtue, the ethic limiting personal interests for the public good. Aristotle considered virtue vital to procuring the “good life” cities offered, while Thomas Jefferson saw it as the “social bond” that fused a republic. Portland’s consensual grass-roots politics is predicated on virtue. It plays out in citizen’s support for regulating private development to procure a “good life" that values the public realm, celebrates livability, and prioritizes sustainability. But critics wonder if the consensus that created Portland’s green environs is a product of its whiteness. “It just may take racial homogeneity for an American city to work—not a happy conclusion,” Marshall Berman writes (The Dark Ages: The Final Phase of Empire, 2006, 273).

Berman’s assertion forces the issue that sustainability may be a “white thing,” and Portland is the testing ground. In the 1970s, disruptions to the national economy coupled with a faltering lumber industry to send the city into a tailspin. Between 1970 and 1980 its population dropped by 4.7 percent, and needless to say gentrification was not an issue. When Portland re-emerged as a model green city in the early 1990s, “dumpies” was the term for “downwardly mobile professionals” who traded the city’s unique quality of life for less pay. A desire for the good life rather than the goods life made it possible to reframe the nation’s hyper-consumption on more sustaining lines. Transit options, a vibrant regional food culture, energy efficiency, extensive bike and park networks, a vibrant downtown, and the legalization of marijuana and assisted suicide were procured, but the Ecotopian “less is more” lifestyle does not have universal appeal.

In an article, "Contesting Sustainability: Bikes, Race and Politics in Portlandia," Portland State University sociologists Amy Lubitow and Thaddeus R. Miller contend that sustainability is “a political concept,” that must be “constantly negotiated” and “contested.” For them, sustainability is a process—not a set of principles—where aggrieved parties can procure a political solution. The Koch Brothers and Exxon are also invested in this logic, which they have used to stall efforts to mitigate climate change.

In 1993, Portland was the first city in the United States to adopt a plan to reduce its carbon footprint. Since then, population has increased by 14 percent while carbon emmissions have dropped by 31percent. Biking and walking are the most ecological forms of transportation, and reducing automobile dependency is key to Portland's initiative. Equity is also a concern, as the 2015 Climate Action noted, “Low-income populations and communities of color often have less access to healthy and energy efficient housing, transit, or safe bicycling and walking routes. Consequently, any strategies to reduce carbon emissions must seek to remedy these deficiencies.” https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/583501

In 2011, a plan to improve bicycle safety on Williams Avenue, Portland’s busiest bicycle commuter route, was contested by residents of bordering Albina, a gentrifying historic African-American neighborhood. Lobrik and Miller contend the controversy revealed the need to advance “the notion of a more political sustainability.” The issue, however, was not about sustainability, it was about history.

For African-Americans, gentrification and bicycling were intertwined. For some bicycling was an act of white privilege, but the overriding issue was inclusion. Citizens, who felt powerless, wanted a say in the project. In the 1950s and 1960s, highway and urban renewal projects had eviscerated the community, while calculated racism (e.g red-lining, deed covenants) had depleted trust. Improving pedestrian and bicycle safety on Williams Avenue was "a test," a activist stated, “to determine whether some of the lessons have been learned from previous projects where the outcomes have been really, really poor." http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/its-not-about-the-bikes/Content?oid=5619639

Lessons were learned. The outcome did not, however, as Miller and Lubitow claim, “alter the actual technological design.” The authors never assessed the project's design, which added five pedestrian crossings and a new buffered bike lane. But the lethal legacy of racism was addressed, as funds were allocated to commemorate the neighborhood’s history through a series of art projects.

Respecting the past in a period of rapid change is essential, and Williams Avenue is now a place of slower movement and more reflection. Providing for the safe travel of pedestrians and bicyclists is not only good for the environment, it is good for humans. It allows for more personal face-to-face interaction, which builds trust and solidifies diversity through common experience. These actions are the essence of the good life, and they define the politics of sustainability.

A Historic Vote will Define Portland

In a historic pronouncement, the Portland city council asked voters to approve a $258.4 million bond measure for affordable housing. If passed, the measure will set the foundation for a systematic response to the housing crisis. Since declaring a “housing state of emergency” in October, the city council has allocated nearly $100 million to stay the emergency and this final investment should still critics, such as suburban savant Joel Kotkin, who claims that the gentrification of minority neighborhoods is a racist mark against the “achingly politically correct city.”

Limiting suburban sprawl and investing in sustainability is Portland’s downfall, Kotkin contends. His new book, The Human City, offers affordable, laissez-faire Houston as a prototype, but he fails to mention that the displacement rate of African-Americans in the historic Third Ward matches Portland’s. Thousands of Houstonians also inhabit gated subdivisions on low-lying flood prone land, an exclusionary, unsustainable landscape foreign to Portland.

Portland is a definitive “knowledge city,” according to analyst Richard Florida, where clustering population in urban centers is a key factor in innovation and economic growth. http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/02/what-makes-some-cities-vote-democratic/4598/ The booming high tech sector exemplifies how specialized skills, creativity, and abstract thinking can fuel profits. The good news is that capital is flowing into Portland; the problem is that markets do not respect equity.

City planning is a paradoxical enterprise. In a capitalist society where property rights and free enterprise are sacred, planners must set controls on development to procure the common welfare. Portland, as much as any city in the United States, balances private interests and the public good to productive ends. Yet, even here, housing a diverse range of incomes is a challenge.

Gentrification, which is the opposite of the lethal dis-investment that eviscerates cities, is a product of urban revitalization. In Portland, investment in pedestrian scaled urbanism with access to transit has increased the demand for new development in older neighborhoods with disadvantaged populations. Lisa Bates, a Portland State University professor, identified areas prime for gentrification based on their percentage of renters, racial make up, education levels, and income. There is no simple solution, but given that at least 44 percent of households rent in these areas; ensuring that 45 percent of the housing stock remains affordable (the requirement for urban renewal areas) is step one. 

Of course, homeowners will still sell their property to reap windfall prices. In the real estate market, the profit motive is a Darwinian force that drives cycles of boom and bust. Thus, even the best-planned city will grapple with gentrification until housing is defined as a public utility.

Allocating $258 million for affordable housing will move Portland in that direction. The bond measure vote, then, is not only a test for the city but the nation. When Ronald Reagan severed funding for the department of Housing and Urban Development, he claimed municipal governments should solve urban problems. His mantra still holds sway, and Portland stands at the nexus of progressive and conservative values. In November property owners will be asked to help their less fortunate neighbors, and their decision will reveal the virtue of a free people and Portland’s standing as a model city.

A version of this blog appeared in the Portland Oregonian 
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/07/258_million_affordable_housing.html