Portland 2035 Comprehensive Plan

[MarkDaMan]

It's downtown Portland planning time
Portland Business Journal - April 20, 2007
by Andy Giegerich

And as Portland's planning department embarks on its ambitious new Central Portland Plan, many can't wait to see if it will contain ideas as visionary as those floated in 1988's Central City Plan. All told, the 1988 manifesto recommended 464 actions, compared with just 17 recommended by 1972's Downtown Plan.

Karen Bean, Portland's central city senior project manager, said it's unlikely that the current efforts, set for completion in 2010, will contain as many ideas as the 1988 plan. That version spelled out such bold notions as development within the gritty North Macadam and Northwest Triangle districts.

Today, those areas are called, respectively, the South Waterfront and Pearl districts.

But the Central Portland Plan, which will analyze overall central city conditions and determine how to best update the 1988 efforts, could still shape Portland for decades.

"The 1988 plan is the reason our central city looks and feels the way it does today," said Veronica Valenzuela, Mayor Tom Potter's liaison to the planning bureau. "And these new efforts could dictate what we look like 30 years from now."

Potter's proposed budget, released this week, suggests that the city apply $851,068 toward the Central Portland Plan.

Among other things, the study will explore development regulations, including buildings' allowable heights and constraints on transportation and parking, and the pending expiration of the area's urban renewal districts. Bean said it will also analyze housing, arts and culture.

But much of the plan remains in the development phase. As part of that, the planning department is trading notes with purveyors of other such studies, including the Portland Business Alliance, which recently unveiled its proposals to enhance the central business district, and the Portland Development Commission, which is studying downtown's west-end trends.

Planners from the Portland Department of Transportation will develop their own Central City Transportation Management Plan in tandem with the planning department's proposals.

"With fundamental issues of which parking regulations work and what adjustments we need to make, a lot relates back to the central city process in terms of economic and housing goals," said Steve Iwata, the city's transportation planning supervisor.

Beyond that, Bean's department's work is so preliminary that it's still evaluating exactly which areas to study.

The 1988 plan examined eight districts it considered part of the central city: downtown, Goose Hollow, the area that became Old Town/Chinatown, the Northwest Triangle/Pearl District, Lower Albina, Lloyd Center/Coliseum, Central Eastside and North Macadam/South Waterfront.

The efforts could attract a cadre of urban design enthusiasts. Scores of citizens participated in the 1988 effort; Bean said planners could draw on interest generated by Potter's VisionPDX project, which enticed many urban landscape critics to offer suggestions.

"We've know that there are stakeholders looking for big-picture ideas and specific fixes," Bean said. "Hopefully, we'll be able to take care of both."

The city will increasingly tout the study through the media and other sources in hopes of attracting more citizen involvement.

Many in the urban design community already know that Central Portland Plan work has begun. Tad Savinar, who is advising city and regional leaders on light-rail-area retail planning, said a growing number of Portlanders are interested in how downtown evolves.

"Just as we've seen a shift in cultural and societal behavior with the electronic age, we're seeing the same in terms of how people maneuver through and what services people expect from a city," Savinar said. "This type of planning is coming at a very opportune time."

And while it might seem like there are too many downtown plans on the table, Ethan Seltzer, director of Portland State University's School of Urban Studies and Planning, noted that good cities constantly reconfigure their layouts.

"A lot of planning went into what we're enjoying today, and the rate at which things change is fairly astounding," he said. "It ought to be a constant."

Indeed a planner's job is never done. Not only are there always things to be added, there's a steady flow of emerging services that weren't available, say, 10 years ago, said Seltzer. That said, there could be more coordination among the various planners creating their city visions.

"The onus is on the Planning Commission and the City Council to see the interconnectivity there," he said.

While the Central Portland Plan could take three years, it will arrive more quickly than the 1988 effort, which took four years.

"We're trying to do it in a manageable time frame given the scope of the project," said Bean.

agiegerich@bizjournals.com | 503-219-3419

http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2007/04/23/story9.html?t=printable

[MarkDaMan]

After visioning, it's time to plan
By Jim Redden
The Portland Tribune, Aug 24, 2007

The next mayor of Portland will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shape the future of the city.

A multiyear process to rewrite several of the plans that guide city growth will unofficially begin Sept. 19 when the community vision project presents its report to the City Council.

The report will lay out a vision of how Portland should look and work 30 years from now. According to Planning Bureau Director Gil Kelley, the information will inform a state-mandated process to update the Comprehensive Plan that determines how the city is zoned, including where new development will be concentrated in coming years.

Kelley said his bureau also will use the opportunity to update a number of related city plans as well, including the Central City Plan that governs downtown and inner east-side growth, along with the Transportation Management Plan, which will help determine the location of future transit lines.

“This is serious stuff, and people need to pay attention,” said Ethan Seltzer, director of Portland State University’s School of Urban Studies and Planning. “It will have a profound impact on how the city looks over the next couple of decades.”

In fact, so many plans are in play that Kelley refers to the expected results as “the Portland Plan.”

The mayor has historically exerted control over the planning bureau by assigning it to his or her office, naming the director and appointing the members of the Portland Planning Commission, which must approve major plans – including the so-called “Comp Plan” – before they are referred to the council.

“These are not decisions that are made by hearings officers or the planning bureau,” Seltzer said. “Ultimately, these plans must be approved by the mayor and council.”

Controlling this critical planning process may be the biggest prize in next year’s mayor’s race, which is expected to get under way next month.

Mayor Tom Potter has said he will not announce his future political plans until after Sept. 12, when he turns 67. Potter’s unwillingness to declare his political plans so far has kept the 2008 mayor’s race in limbo.

Several people are thought to be interested in running for mayor, including Commissioner Sam Adams and developer Bob Ball, who worked on the City Charter reform measures that met with mixed success at the May elections. But perhaps because public opinion polls show that Potter remains popular, no one else has announced for the office yet.
Visioning comes at good time

The upcoming planning process gives the vision project – also known as VisionPDX – an importance that was not foreseen when it started around three years ago.

When Potter ran for mayor in 2004, he complained that City Hall had lost touch with the public. The project he initiated after taking office was intended to give residents a chance to say what kind of city they wanted to see in 30 years.

So far the project has cost more than $1.2 million and involved hundreds – if not thousands – of volunteers from around the city.

Much of the work has revolved around collecting and analyzing about 13,000 questionnaires distributed at public events and collected by a range of nonprofit organizations. The surveys were supplemented by focus groups, online surveys, interviews with decision-makers and other means of gathering public opinions.

A citizens steering committee has spent months summarizing the responses into a series of documents that will be formally presented to the council Sept. 19. They include a final vision document – otherwise known as “the Vision” – that will offer a broad perspective of the findings, including challenges that Portlanders feel must be overcome to achieve their goals.
Locals brace for an influx

Preliminary results are consistent with previous surveys that show many residents value the region’s environment and want good schools, safe streets and equal opportunities for all.

But they also show deep concern over perceived threats to future livability, especially the need to build the equivalent of five new South Waterfront-size developments over the next 25 years to house all the additional people projected to move to Portland.

The committee also is expected to make a series of follow-up presentations to the council, including a yet-to-be-finalized request to fund a Community Action Coalition to track council progress on implementing the vision.

Regardless of the details and fate of the funding request, Kelley promises the information generated during VisionPDX will be incorporated in the Comp Plan revisions.

He sees it as replacing the early rounds of outreach efforts that traditionally accompany such plans, although he believes that some hearings still will need to be held as the work progresses.

Major issues that will be addressed during the planning process include whether and how to concentrate growth along transportation corridors, where to route new transit lines and what can be done to make new developments fit into existing neighborhoods.

According to Seltzer, the planning effort also should address impacts of city-encouraged gentrification on lower-income residents.

“The previous plans did not say what should happen when public investments lead to displacement,” Seltzer said.
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118790111137709600

[MarkDaMan]

2035 plan projects development alongside the Willamette
Premium content from Portland Business Journal by Andy Giegerich , Business Journal staff writer
Date: Friday, August 31, 2012, 3:00am PDT

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/print-edition/2012/08/31/2035-plan-projects-development.html?s=print

The Willamette River is at the heart of Portland’s future.

The Central City 2035 plan released this week calls for extensive development on both the west and east sides of the river.

Much like the 1972 plan led to the transit mall and Tom McCall Waterfront Park, city officials envision Central City 2035 as a blueprint for development that will guide future city investments. It still requires approval from the Portland’s Planning Commission and the City Council.

“When I first came here 30 years ago, all design regulations stopped at the river bank,” said Paddy Tillett, a ZGF Architects LLP architect who helped shape the just-released Central City plan. “It was a no-man’s land, a ‘DMZ’ that didn’t encourage development on either side of the river. This plan makes the river more of a way to orient” business and recreational activity.

The plan also calls for “larger and taller mixed-use buildings” to emerge in the South Waterfront, the Pearl District’s northern end, Goose Hollow and in what’s likely to become known as the OMSI district in Southeast Portland. In 20 years, the U.S. Post Office site near the Broadway Bridge could be home to hundreds of residents and office workers.

“We have plenty of zoning capacity” to develop those areas, said Joe Zehnder, the city’s chief planner. “But we do see the potential for those parts of town that have been slow to fill up.”

‘Bookends’

The riverfront development called for in the plan includes new northern and southern “bookends” that frame the river’s economic opportunities. Near the Ross Island Bridge, Oregon Health & Science University, OMSI and Portland State University would lead the area’s burgeoning education and employment hub.

To the north, new infill development and public spaces could anchor growth as the Rose Quarter redevelops.

“It’s a good plan,” said Michael Zokoych, owner of Michael’s Italian Beef and Sausage Co. Zokoych was a member of the 16-person steering committee that headed efforts to draft the plan.

“We’re able to now talk coherently about being able to do new things along the river without having to be so extremist in shutting down all commercial and tourist uses of the river. We’re all hopeful about what’s coming for the future.”

The plan welcomed more projects such as Beam Development’s $16 million Burnside Bridgehead redevelopment. Planners have their fingers crossed that Melvin Mark & Co.’s Morrison Bridgehead project, anchored by the $25 million James Beard Public Market, will one day enhance the bridge’s west-side entrance point.

“We need private development to get to the river. That’s what those bookends are about,” Zehnder said. “We’re hoping private investments there will be done in a way that provides competitive advantages in how development connects to the river.”

Zehnder said there’s strong developer demand for Class B and Class C office space, particularly near the east Willamette banks. However, it’s difficult to renovate existing buildings to meet seismic and other code rules. Plus, developers regularly gripe that Portland’s system development charges, which in some instances exceed 10 percent of project costs, are too high.

“We’re working on addressing some of those economic barriers that make some of that Central Eastside space difficult to bring to market,” Zehnder said.

The plan also seeks pedestrian and bicycle mobility around downtown and the river banks.

“There’s a definite need for that,” said Doug New, CEO of the marketing and design company The New Group. New wasn’t involved in the 2035 effort. “We have many bike commuters, and anything the city can do to encourage better traffic flow for them is good.”

Kat Schon, co-owner of the Portland Store Fixtures outlet on the city’s Central Eastside, hopes that further development in her neighborhood is limited to businesses.

“We’d like to see the Central Eastside remain industrial and business-focused,” she said. “There are a lot of trucks coming in and out of here. I hope the city doesn’t trend toward adding more residential buildings, like the Pearl.”
Previous plans shaped present-day portland
Portland’s Central City 2035 plan builds on two other urban design initiatives from decades past.

The Downtown Plan of 1972 helped ensure that Gov. Tom McCall Park would provide west-side access to the Willamette River. Without it, the much-disliked Harbor Freeway would still run north and south along the Willamette.
The plan also provided direction that allowed the city to rethink adding the controversial Mount Hood Freeway from downtown Portland to Gresham. The project would have decimated several Southeast Portland neighborhoods.
The city eventually steered the sizable federal funds allotted toward the freeway project toward construction of the MAX light-rail system.

The 1972 plan further called for the city to encourage more walking and bicycling, ideas that continue to receive support from Portland leaders and many businesses today. The city, however, did not meet its stated goal of having public transit provide between 65 percent and 75 percent of all downtown trips. Various groups estimate that between 12 percent and 14 percent of Portland’s downtown commuters take public transit to work.
The city again tweaked its long-term vision in 1988. Of the 464 suggestions in that year’s Central City Plan, 408 were implemented.

Those plans included:

• A riverbank walking loop that became the Eastbank Esplanade.
• The streetcar line along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue that opens next month.
• Business assessment districts that eventually funded safety programs and streetcar line extensions.
• More biking and walking spaces along Willamette River bridges.

The 1988 plan also defined the city’s “urban core” as areas that extend across and along the Willamette, including the Pearl District and Central Eastside. In so doing, it set the stage for today’s planners and businesses to create the Central City 2035 plan, which the public will begin analyzing Sept. 11. The new plan must be approved by the Portland Planning Commission and the City Council.

Fast Fact

Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission will hold a public hearing on the plan from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sept. 11 at City Hall, 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave.
Andy Giegerich covers government, law, health care and sports business.

[crow]

2035 plan projects development alongside the Willamette
Premium content from Portland Business Journal by Andy Giegerich , Business Journal staff writer
Date: Friday, August 31, 2012, 3:00am PDT

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/print-edition/2012/08/31/2035-plan-projects-development.html?s=print

This is great news. It will be interesting to learn how they treat the inner eastside. On one hand keeping it business-centric could be rich and have strong funky culture, but residential should be allowed, perhaps less concentrated. I think of places like SoHo. People do and will continue to live there. The railway and the elevated freeway make the area less desireable and perhaps more gritty.

[Sioux612]

"Bigger and larger buildings" - does this mean SoWa will raise their limits of 325' to something over 400'?

[MarkDaMan]

The struggle of Portland planners with tower envy: Guest opinion
By Guest Columnist
on September 28, 2013 at 12:00 PM, updated September 28, 2013 at 12:04 PM
By Michael Mehaffy and Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/09/the_struggle_by_portland_plann.html#incart_river

The world's city experts flock to Portland to study its world-class urban livability, so why do some Portland planners and developers seem to want to remake the city into yet another forgettable collection of high-rises? That's the perplexing direction taken recently by the West Quadrant Plan Stakeholder Advisory Committee, a group helping to redraft Portland's Central City Plan.

The fad for high-rise "starchitecture," embraced by cities such as Dubai, Shanghai and Houston, has left those and other cities with unhappy results. Portland's high-rise boosters say they will do things differently -- incorporating mixed-use retail at their base and paying close attention to the quality of the streetscape. They point to Vancouver, B.C., as an example of how to do great high-rise cities.

But Vancouver is a questionable model for Portland. For one thing, its tall buildings were funded by a wave of wealthy Chinese part-time expatriates. That surge of concentrated wealth also helped to make the city one of the world's least affordable.

While some argue that tall buildings are inherently more sustainable, the research shows otherwise. Above about 20 stories, buildings have to add much more concrete and steel to stiffen against wind forces, resulting in high "embodied energy." Glass "curtain walls" make it harder to resist heat gain and loss. These and other effects help to explain the recent spate of news about the poor sustainability of tall buildings.

Some argue that tall buildings provide greater residential density, which helps with urban sustainability. But high urban densities can also be achieved without tall buildings, as human-scale cities such as Paris demonstrate. By contrast, tall buildings often achieve lower residential density than one might expect because of setbacks needed to limit shading, wind and view problems. On Portland's small blocks, these "massing" problems are especially acute, and they are often not adequately addressed during design review.

Research suggests that tall buildings can also disrupt a city's feeling of human scale and everyday aesthetic appeal. Regulations allowing taller buildings in historic areas like Skidmore can also fuel higher land prices, increasing the economic pressure for demolition of the remaining historic buildings. Such buildings can overshadow beautiful historic buildings, damaging their aesthetic appeal. (We can all see where this has already happened, sadly.)

But perhaps most significant when it comes to urban livability, tall buildings isolate people in "vertical gated communities," away from the vitality of the street. Research suggests that this is especially problematic for families with children, for elders, for modest-income residents and for other vulnerable populations. By contrast, a street with many residential entries and "eyes on the street" can be safer, more active and more supportive of social interaction. The planners of Vancouver's most lauded tall-building neighborhood took great pains to provide a portion of townhomes and other residences at street level, but social isolation still exists in the towers.

These lessons show that the negative effects of tall buildings can be compensated for, in part, but they also demonstrate that tall buildings are a problematic typology and hardly a utopian vision of the future. So why do some Portland planners and developers seem so determined to impose their vision on the city?

In our work we have seen, over and over again, city boosters who made horrible mistakes in a misguided attempt to be trendy and "modern." What's worse, they destroyed the urban treasures they already had -- traded away for a few shiny baubles that quickly became tarnished. Today, many of those leaders come to Portland to learn our lessons. How ironic it would be if we, of all people, destroyed our own livable heritage in the dubious pursuit of an illusion of modernity.

Is this what citizens want?

Michael Mehaffy is executive director of Portland-based Sustasis Foundation and a consultant in sustainable urban development. Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard is the director of the International Making Cities Livable Conferences, bringing urban leaders from around the world to Portland, and the author of "Livable Cities Observed."

[tworivers]

Very interesting, thanks for the link Mark!

Personally, I'd be perfectly happy if, in some alternate reality, Portland never built another tower over 20 stories but instead was able to rapidly densify the central city over the next decade with well-designed mid-rise mixed-use/residential buildings. Hell, we might even be talking about a legit CBD subway, not to mention a very lively 24-7 streetscape and cultural atmosphere.

[Tykendo]

Another article from no makeup wearin', Birkenstock clad, armpit non shavin' earthies. Give me a break. There's nothing wrong with going special. The stumping of Portland is like a clamp on daring to dream. To go to a different place. To say, "Yes we can". Portland needs to continue to move forward, not be stuck in the past. Build Portland build. The skyline, tourism, and anything else that moves Portland to succeed. Don't limit yourself Portland. You've done that for way too long.

[tworivers]

Tykendo, I mostly agree with you. I strongly suspect that these writers are the typical provincial, culturally bland PDXers with a fear of anything too contemporary ("trendy") or anything that doesn't "fit in".

Personally, I don't think that stumpiness is really the issue with Portland's skyline. I think it's more about the quality of what tends to get built downtown. Look at the pathetic waterfront. I do want to "go special", I just don't care about how many tall buildings we have or will ever have.

Sprinkle in some 500-footers, sure -- despite the fact that our economy clearly does not have the demand for it and our billionaires either have suburban mindsets or live in Seattle (maybe someday?) -- but what I think central Portland really needs pronto is more architectural moxy, bolder/smarter developers, and more of a concerted effort (a la South Waterfront but with incentives and disincentives specific to the DT area) to fill in every available spot currently vacant or devoted to auto parking or Plaid Pantry's or whatever into vibrant mixed-use residential development from market rate to subsidized/affordable.

[pdxstreetcar]

I'm as into infill as anyone on here but why does moving forward require high rise towers? Seems more like some outdated 1960s vision of the future where the skyline as viewed from the Interstate is all that matters.

I think Portland has better developers than most other cities and I'm not just talking about Gerding Edlin but also other big developers and small developers. Most other big city developers are out of state wall street funded REITs and crappy national developers that build bland mirror glass towers on top of a 10 story parking garage.

[BrG]

I'm as into infill as anyone on here but why does moving forward require high rise towers? Seems more like some outdated 1960s vision of the future where the skyline as viewed from the Interstate is all that matters.

I think Portland has better developers than most other cities and I'm not just talking about Gerding Edlin but also other big developers and small developers. Most other big city developers are out of state wall street funded REITs and crappy national developers that build bland mirror glass towers on top of a 10 story parking garage.

Of note... The local big and small developers are very often funded by them too.

For starters, changing the FAR and height restrictions in the land use code Portland is no easy task. This city sems to digest gradual change rather than drastic.

Well executed at the base, a tall tower (or a set of them) can work fine in Portland. Often, the bases are not well executed, with oversized plazas and landscaping that leaves something to be desired. They also often have substantial above grade parking that mucks up the design of the base. However Portland's design rigor within the BDS would at least help with keep those undesirable features in check. The 200' block sizes will help with that too.

Really, the biggest issue for tall towers in Portland, is the question of whether the market can support the rents. They are costly to construct and design and that reflects in the rents/ condo costs, obviously. The land costs are not yet an obstacle here, as in other pricy markets but the rents will still be more than anything that has been seen in the PDX market. Will the businesss and potential residents that inhabit these towers see the dollars and cents case for moving into one, two or ten of them? Will the projected rents actually support the design and construction of handsome quality buildings?

Questions yet to be answered.

[davehogan]

Tykendo, I mostly agree with you. I strongly suspect that these writers are the typical provincial, culturally bland PDXers with a fear of anything too contemporary ("trendy") or anything that doesn't "fit in".

Personally, I don't think that stumpiness is really the issue with Portland's skyline. I think it's more about the quality of what tends to get built downtown. Look at the pathetic waterfront. I do want to "go special", I just don't care about how many tall buildings we have or will ever have.

Sprinkle in some 500-footers, sure -- despite the fact that our economy clearly does not have the demand for it and our billionaires either have suburban mindsets or live in Seattle (maybe someday?) -- but what I think central Portland really needs pronto is more architectural moxy, bolder/smarter developers, and more of a concerted effort (a la South Waterfront but with incentives and disincentives specific to the DT area) to fill in every available spot currently vacant or devoted to auto parking or Plaid Pantry's or whatever into vibrant mixed-use residential development from market rate to subsidized/affordable.

We're still a young city. I grew up in Buffalo, where a house from the 1860's isn't always considered that historic. It's also a much more dense city, so just give Portland a second.

For what we're doing, we're on the right path it seems. We're not going nuts with skyscrapers that can't be filled, we're not going nuts with suburbia that won't ever be lived in.

At the same time, should we say no to tall buildings that are likely going to be profitable for decades upon decades?

[NJD]

For anyone interested, the West Quadrant Plan (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/61672) update has a new draft version (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/463059)(pdf)...

notes of interest: remember these are conceptual

* expand the maximum buildable height area to include a much larger portion of downtown including further south and a northern Pearl cluster...
* remove height restrictions in the maximum buildable height zone (currently 460') that are not within view corridors and base building limitations solely on available FAR and FAR bonuses...
* Jefferson Street earmarked as the future subway alignment for the blue/red lines...
* pedestrianize museum park blocks...
* make burnside/ broadway intersection a "Times Square" (with ads and flashy lights i guess)...
* revive I-405 capping plans...

interesting ideas for sure, I do hope some of these come to fruition, but i'm not going to get my hopes up

[hat]

Didn't see any mention of subway on Jefferson st.

[MarkDaMan]

For anyone interested, the West Quadrant Plan (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/61672) update has a new draft version (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/463059)(pdf)...

notes of interest: remember these are conceptual

* expand the maximum buildable height area to include a much larger portion of downtown including further south and a northern Pearl cluster...
* remove height restrictions in the maximum buildable height zone (currently 460') that are not within view corridors and base building limitations solely on available FAR and FAR bonuses...
* Jefferson Street earmarked as the future subway alignment for the blue/red lines...
* pedestrianize museum park blocks...
* make burnside/ broadway intersection a "Times Square" (with ads and flashy lights i guess)...
* revive I-405 capping plans...

interesting ideas for sure, I do hope some of these come to fruition, but i'm not going to get my hopes up

Interesting documents to go through. Glad to see Portland is planning for the next wave of growth. Like hat, I didn't see any mention of a subway in any of the plans though.

[urbanlife]

For anyone interested, the West Quadrant Plan (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/61672) update has a new draft version (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/463059)(pdf)...

notes of interest: remember these are conceptual

* expand the maximum buildable height area to include a much larger portion of downtown including further south and a northern Pearl cluster...
* remove height restrictions in the maximum buildable height zone (currently 460') that are not within view corridors and base building limitations solely on available FAR and FAR bonuses...
* Jefferson Street earmarked as the future subway alignment for the blue/red lines...
* pedestrianize museum park blocks...
* make burnside/ broadway intersection a "Times Square" (with ads and flashy lights i guess)...
* revive I-405 capping plans...

interesting ideas for sure, I do hope some of these come to fruition, but i'm not going to get my hopes up

Some amazing things in the future for Portland, but I think you might have been reading too much into these pdf files.


Actually it looks like I figured out your mistake, you might have been looking at the design charrette. Those are just a collection of ideas that is used to create a composite to begin to assemble an overall plan, that doesn't mean everything you see in a design charrette is going to make it to reality. Most things in design charrettes, live in the fictional world and never see reality, but they are great for stimulating ideas.

I will say though, the Jefferson Circle in Goose Hollow would make a realistic access point for a future subway line through the downtown that could run east to downtown and then curve north. It could also have a connection to allow it to continue east as well. Doubtful if this would ever happen, but I like the idea of it.

[hat]

Looking over the charette maps, I found on page two "Potential future below grade transit facility?" so it's at least on the city's radar. It's pointing toward Madison, which is penned in as Jefferson for some reason.

[zilfondel]

Madison leads to Hawthorne on the east side...

[65MAX]

It's pointing toward Madison, which is penned in as Jefferson for some reason.

The hand drawn parts are on mylar or vellum, superimposed on the base map. They just put the mylar in the wrong spot when they scanned it.

[NJD]

Yeah, it's all hypothetical until the council approves the plans... and funds them...

[2oh1]

Can we keep the subway talk in the subway thread?

Yeah, it's all hypothetical until the council approves the plans... and funds them...

EXACTLY. There is no "news" to report on this front, and there probably won't be any for a long long long time (decades, I suspect).

[urbanlife]

Looks like we are getting an interactive sneak peek at the new comprehensive plan for 2035.

A number of things in this plan I was expecting to see, hopefully the city follows through with a number of these plans. If that happens 2035 Portland will be even more amazing than today.

Portland planners on Monday released a sneak peek of the city's future -- or one fun-to-play-with version of it, anyway.

A new, high-tech map application shows the city's 20-year roadmap that could guide development patterns and prioritize public investments for transportation and parks.

At its core, the 2035 draft Comprehensive Plan outlines the type of Portland that planners hope to create in the next two decades and the path to get there.


Streetcar and light rail: The city's map includes three potential streetcar routes headed by the Bureau of Transportation.


As we've already highlighted, planners are looking to reduce allowable densities in parts of east Portland that are already bursting at the seams.


Corridors and centers: Click just about any major thoroughfare – Sandy Boulevard or Milwaukie Avenue or MLK

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/07/streetcars_to_johns_landing_an.html


And here is the link to the interactive map.

http://www.portlandmaps.com/bps/cpmapp2/#q1

[Derek]

Ah, the O-live idiot commenters are out in full force.

[maccoinnich]

I'm afraid to even look.

As I mentioned in the Open Thread, there's a staggering number of transportation projects in there. I can't quite work out what the significance of it all is. Are we meant to read something into the fact that they're showing a streetcar along Sandy to Hollywood TC, but not along Belmont? Both were included in the streetcar system concept plan.

Portland has a great history with its plans. The 1972 Downtown plan contained the ideas that led to the creation of the transit mall, Pioneer Square, the Pearl District and Waterfront Park. I just wonder if there's so much in here that nothing is more important than anything else?

[Derek]

I'm afraid to even look.

As I mentioned in the Open Thread, there's a staggering number of transportation projects in there. I can't quite work out what the significance of it all is. Are we meant to read something into the fact that they're showing a streetcar along Sandy to Hollywood TC, but not along Belmont? Both were included in the streetcar system concept plan.

Portland has a great history with its plans. The 1972 Downtown plan contained the ideas that led to the creation of the transit mall, Pioneer Square, the Pearl District and Waterfront Park. I just wonder if there's so much in here that nothing is more important than anything else?


Thank you for posting your insight on the Portland Reddit page. :tup:

[maccoinnich]

City’s Comp Plan makes it clear: Portland is mostly finished adding auto capacity

In case you weren’t sure whether Portland is truly unusual as mid-sized U.S. cities go, the 20-year comprehensive plan map released this week ought to make it clear.

The plan might be the city’s clearest statement ever that it’s betting everything — not just the future of biking or riding mass transit, but everything — on being able to make car-lite transportation dramatically more attractive than it is now.

“To get the most out of the infrastructure we’ve got, you’ve got to get people into other modes. That’s part of preserving the capacity for people who need it.”
— Joe Zehnder, Chief Planner, City of Portland

Because the city calculates that 122,000 new households will arrive in Portland by 2030 — that’s 50 percent more than it has today — it needs to increase the capacity of its streets. But instead of doing this by knocking down buildings for turn lanes, onramps and parking garages, almost everything on the city’s transportation agenda (with the notable exception of truck and rail freight improvements) would contribute to reducing the amount of space the average person takes up while they’re moving around.

...continues at BikePortland (http://bikeportland.org/2014/07/25/citys-comp-plan-makes-clear-portland-mostly-finished-adding-auto-capacity-109204).

[urbanlife]

...continues at BikePortland (http://bikeportland.org/2014/07/25/citys-comp-plan-makes-clear-portland-mostly-finished-adding-auto-capacity-109204).

That is great news, it will be really interesting to see how Portland evolves to a city that have people commuting by so many different modes of transportation.

I also like that in the plan it looks like East Portland will be getting some needed attention with potential parks and transportation for that part of the city.

[Shilo Rune 96]

Why is the density being lowered right next to the brand new light rail? Looks like East Moreland got some special treatment, because their land value is going to sky rocket!

[zilfondel]

Why is the density being lowered right next to the brand new light rail? Looks like East Moreland got some special treatment, because their land value is going to sky rocket!

They are focusing the density/development from East Moreland into Woodstock. :shrug:

Seems like a strategic decision to focus gentrification into poorer neighborhoods, while leaving the wealthier neighborhoods alone. Guess who funds the politicians?

[urbanlife]

They are focusing the density/development from East Moreland into Woodstock. :shrug:

Seems like a strategic decision to focus gentrification into poorer neighborhoods, while leaving the wealthier neighborhoods alone. Guess who funds the politicians?

Pretty much, that is the only explanation for this one. Though that might lead to a streetcar line or something running to Woodstock as that neighborhood becomes more dense and active.

[maccoinnich]

The minimum size for a new lot in an R5 zone is 3,000 sq ft. In most eastside neighborhoods the lots were originally platted at 50' x 100', for a 5,000 sq ft lot. These can't be further divided, because of the minimum lot size requirements. In Eastmoreland there are many 75' x 100' lots, which can be split in two. This has led to a lot of houses on large lots being demolished and replaced with two lots. The neighborhood association is really angry about this.

I saw Charlie Hales speak about this somewhere—Bright Lights?—and the point he makes is that for as angry as it makes people, it doesn't actually achieve much for the city's growth goals. Every house demolition only leads to one more dwelling unit. i.e., you could have 100 houses demolished in Eastmoreland, and 200 new houses built, for a net increase of 100 units, and you still wouldn't have as many new dwelling units as a mid-sized apartment building in a commercial corridor. However you would have a lot of voters who are angry at the city, and who might vote in politicians who are less in favor of smart growth.

So as much as I support development, I think he has a strong point. R7 better reflects the current character of the neighborhood than R5 does anyway. Given the land use patterns around the Bybee station, I don't think that's ever going to be a highly used station.

Also, given that there's a bunch of down zoning proposed in East Portland, I don't think it's fair to characterize this as special treatment for rich neighborhoods.

[urbanlife]

Good points mac.

[twofiftyfive]

Seems like a strategic decision to focus gentrification into poorer neighborhoods...

Isn't this redundant?

[maccoinnich]

This was on the front page on the NW Examiner this month, and incidentally was not identified as an opinion piece. There are some amazing logical leaps being made here. About the only thing she didn't suggest was that tall buildings lead to child pornography.

Some call it vertical sprawl

http://nwexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/vertical-sprawl-pearl-district1-953x878.jpg

The South Waterfront, with three 325-foot-tall buildings, is the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s model for the North Pearl. Photo by Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard

New development in the Pearl, Goose Hollow and West End is increasingly trending towards high-rise apartments and condos. While many residents want increased density in these downtown neighborhoods, they are concerned about the effects of new tall towers on livability. Yet the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability seems intent on facilitating skyscraper development in these areas, as they have in the South Waterfront.

Over the last year, BPS has been presenting drafts of the West Quadrant Plan to the Stakeholders Advisory Committee. The issue that has raised the greatest discussion, particularly from members of the public, has been building heights.

...continues at the NW Examiner (http://nwexaminer.com/some-call-it-vertical-sprawl).

[Derek]

Don't want to be surrounded by high rises? Don't live downtown. Geez, that's almost as bad as Willamette Weekly.

[urbanlife]

Seriously, who complains about tall buildings being built in downtown? It isn't like developers are mowing down neighborhoods to build towers everywhere.

[philopdx]

This is one of the most disjointed examples of word processor diarrhea I've seen put into print.

Some of the assertions:
-Living in a tall building guarantees social isolation, negatively impacting one's immune system
-Glass siding can melt cars
-If a building is tall, then cafes, street level windows, calmed traffic, wide sidewalks and trees and benches cannot exist
-" It may be a primeval instinct, but humans do not feel comfortable lingering in narrow, deep, dark canyons."

[Derek]

I find it absurd that the author resides in the Pearl and wrote that steaming pile of shit. She should see on a daily basis that all of the points you mentioned, and the rest of the ones in her article, are simply not true.

[davehogan]

Lots of times people who are opposed to tall buildings in their neighborhood have a view that they don't want to lose. They start making up all kinds of reasons that developments should be stopped because they bought their view first.

When I lived in NW most of the people who complained the loudest wanted all the new development on the east side of the river, as long as it wouldn't impede their view.

[maccoinnich]

So I went on a bit of a rant on the NW Examiner site. Reposting here:

I take issue with the fact the fact that this was on the front page of the NW Examiner, without being flagged as being an opinion piece. Obviously the author doesn't like tall buildings, and she has a right to that opinion. I might however gently suggest that if she is so uncomfortable with tall buildings, then living in the central city of a 2.3 million people region might not be the best life choice. The vast majority of the land area in Portland (and its suburbs) is zoned exclusively for single family residences, with low height limits. It's also worth noting that Portland also some of the lowest height limits of any major US city.

I feel like I could go through this article line-by-line refuting it, but it being late at night, I'll stick to the worst lines:

"North of Lovejoy, development may be of unlimited height—in other words, higher than the Wells Fargo Center." Yes, this is true, however the author (deliberately?) neglects to mention that there are Floor-Area-Ratio limitations. i.e. the taller a building gets, the skinnier it is has to be. This creates an effective height limit.

"Thus, the tallest buildings tend to be luxury units, often for global investors." The Cosmopolitan (Block 15) is the first large condo building to be built in Portland since the recession. All the other buildings under construction are for rent, and thus not available for global investors. If one looks at tall buildings built before the recession, such as the Cyan or Indigo, they rent at rates that are in line with the prevailing rents for new buildings in downtown.

"Tall buildings inflate the price of adjacent land, thus making the protection of historic buildings and affordable housing less achievable. In this way, they increase inequality." How does a tall building inflate the price of adjacent land? Perhaps in the same way that luxury cars inflate the price of compact cars? This doesn't make any sense.

"This form of investment leads to speculation. Placing economic gains above livability also leads to housing bubbles." Whereas single family homes in Nevada and Florida never create bubbles?

"These global investors rarely visit their condos, reducing the local population actually living in the area. This jeopardizes the economic viability of grocery stores and other businesses dependent on a local residential population, further risking a neighborhood’s livability." The density of the Pearl has made it commercially viable for Whole Foods and Safeway to open. New Seasons is under construction at the Conway site. Is the author seriously suggesting that stores will be under threat of closing?

"Tall buildings may also decrease a community’s livability and street-level comfort (e.g., fewer ‘eyes-on-the-street,’" I've read Jane Jacobs too. How exactly does a taller building have fewer eyes on the street?

"Humans are social. Social isolation is one of the worst forms of punishment humans have devised." How does a tall building increase social isolation? Is someone who lives on the 20th floor less capable of interacting with people than someone who lives in a single family home in Happy Valley?

"Solitary elders often do not fare well in the upper floors of a high-rise. They may spend much of the day alone at home, and they cannot even see human beings from their window." Again, how is an old person who lives in a high rise less able to see other people than someone who lives in a low rise building? The Mirabella Senior Living in South Waterfront is a great example of how a tall building can actually benefit seniors - with short horizontal distance to travel due to the small floor plates, seniors with reduced mobility can still live with a large degree of independence.

“On average, towers consume 50 percent more energy per habitable square foot of floor space than do mid-rise structures.” I'm pretty skeptical of this statistic. How would a unit in a tall building consume more energy than one in a lower rise building? Of course, if the author's concern was really in reducing energy usage, she would be writing an article against old single family homes, which use massive amounts of energy due to larger facade areas, poor (or non-existing) insulation, and large travel-to-work distances. Never forget that America's most sustainable city is New York. People in Manhattan particularly use a fraction of the energy per person than the average American does.

"Moreover, high-rise buildings are constructed with materials (steel and glass) that require more energy in their manufacture." Over the lifespan of a building, the embodied energy of a building is dwarfed by the energy used to maintain it. Any difference in embodied energy created by additional structural requirements is irrelevant when measured over decades.

"The “greenest” building is the older mid-rise building readapted and reused for modern times." Have I missed that there is somewhere in Portland with a huge supply of vacant older buildings ready for adaptive reuse?

"High-rise buildings diminish the hospitality of the street in several ways." Is the author seriously making the case that there is a poor street environment at the Brewery Blocks, which has two 189' buildings? Or around the Indigo, which is 266'? I guess all those people crowding the streets in front of Anthropologie, West Elm, Henry's, Sur La Table, Lardo, Grassa and Blue Star Donuts just aren't sufficiently in touch with their primeval instincts.

[soleri]

I read the Suzanne Lennard piece in The NW Examiner. I think most of her concerns are overstated, at least as far as Portland is concerned. A few areas in and around downtown (and Lloyd) dotted with high-rise residential will not change the city in a dystopian direction. I think she is, for the most part, thoughtful and academic on the subject, somewhat like early Jane Jacobs. Since The NW Examiner is mostly hyperbolic opinion pieces by Allan Classen, this was hardly anything to get upset about.

My concern for Portland has more to do with the gradual loss of its funky seed-carriers, the hippies and bohemians, who bent this city toward "weird" and helped tune Portland to its nicely eclectic nature. Portland is being discovered, there's nothing we can do about it, and it's likely the coming years will remake Portland into a yuppie paradise. Yes, yuppies with more spending money than hippies is not exactly a bad thing. But it's disheartening to think much of Portland's creative spirit will recede just as it has in San Francisco and Seattle. Change is the only constant, so enjoy this iteration while you can.

I'll side with the new in its battle with the old for this reason. Still, Portland has a vested interest in keeping most of its neighborhoods intact and vibrant. Lennard gets that even if she's unduly alarmed by a few high-rise buildings. This isn't Vancouver B.C. with its epic inflows of Asian money. Portland is getting better even as it loses some of the glad rags that made it charming. On the other hand, if Donald Trump comes to town, sound the alarms.

[bvpcvm]

Still, Portland has a vested interest in keeping most of its neighborhoods intact and vibrant. Lennard gets that even if she's unduly alarmed by a few high-rise buildings. This isn't Vancouver B.C. with its epic inflows of Asian money.

Interesting that you note Vancouver, with its hundreds of high-rises - yet it still manages to land at the top of "most-livable city" lists all the time.

[soleri]

Interesting that you note Vancouver, with its hundreds of high-rises - yet it still manages to land at the top of "most-livable city" lists all the time.

I like Vancouver although the sameness (or just call it what it is: mediocrity) of its vast forest of high-rise condo towers can be anesthetizing. Portland is, in truth, the more interesting city despite its lack of comparable wealth. And it's this quality we ought to revere even if it is living on borrowed time.

[hat]

I read the Suzanne Lennard piece in The NW Examiner. I think most of her concerns are overstated, at least as far as Portland is concerned. A few areas in and around downtown (and Lloyd) dotted with high-rise residential will not change the city in a dystopian direction. I think she is, for the most part, thoughtful and academic on the subject, somewhat like early Jane Jacobs. Since The NW Examiner is mostly hyperbolic opinion pieces by Allan Classen, this was hardly anything to get upset about.

My concern for Portland has more to do with the gradual loss of its funky seed-carriers, the hippies and bohemians, who bent this city toward "weird" and helped tune Portland to its nicely eclectic nature. Portland is being discovered, there's nothing we can do about it, and it's likely the coming years will remake Portland into a yuppie paradise. Yes, yuppies with more spending money than hippies is not exactly a bad thing. But it's disheartening to think much of Portland's creative spirit will recede just as it has in San Francisco and Seattle. Change is the only constant, so enjoy this iteration while you can.

I'll side with the new in its battle with the old for this reason. Still, Portland has a vested interest in keeping most of its neighborhoods intact and vibrant. Lennard gets that even if she's unduly alarmed by a few high-rise buildings. This isn't Vancouver B.C. with its epic inflows of Asian money. Portland is getting better even as it loses some of the glad rags that made it charming. On the other hand, if Donald Trump comes to town, sound the alarms.

The debate over building height is still up for grabs. It takes a whole lot more energy to build and maintain a metal-frame skyscraper than the typical concrete and wood 5-6 stories we are seeing on Division and Williams. Although density downtown doesn't bother me, I would love to see, for example, instead of a 30 story tower, 6 5-story buildings on Powell, or Williams or Belmont. Concentrating all building in one area of town necessitates that other areas have fewer mixed-use projects. Berlin is a great example of a gigantic area of 5 story buildings with a few sky scrapers in Potsdamer and Alexanderplatz. That lends itself to a fantastic miles-wide area of mixed-use neighborhoods with more decentralized transit. When you have an imbalance of density like in the US, in towns like Portland, everything has to go through the downtown area.

[urbanlife]

The debate over building height is still up for grabs. It takes a whole lot more energy to build and maintain a metal-frame skyscraper than the typical concrete and wood 5-6 stories we are seeing on Division and Williams. Although density downtown doesn't bother me, I would love to see, for example, instead of a 30 story tower, 6 5-story buildings on Powell, or Williams or Belmont. Concentrating all building in one area of town necessitates that other areas have fewer mixed-use projects. Berlin is a great example of a gigantic area of 5 story buildings with a few sky scrapers in Potsdamer and Alexanderplatz. That lends itself to a fantastic miles-wide area of mixed-use neighborhoods with more decentralized transit. When you have an imbalance of density like in the US, in towns like Portland, everything has to go through the downtown area.

I prefer both, I like seeing skyscrapers going up throughout the whole city center, and with 5 story buildings going up along corridors with highrise districts distributed throughout the metro that is connected by rail.

[Derek]

The debate over building height is still up for grabs. It takes a whole lot more energy to build and maintain a metal-frame skyscraper than the typical concrete and wood 5-6 stories we are seeing on Division and Williams. Although density downtown doesn't bother me, I would love to see, for example, instead of a 30 story tower, 6 5-story buildings on Powell, or Williams or Belmont. Concentrating all building in one area of town necessitates that other areas have fewer mixed-use projects. Berlin is a great example of a gigantic area of 5 story buildings with a few sky scrapers in Potsdamer and Alexanderplatz. That lends itself to a fantastic miles-wide area of mixed-use neighborhoods with more decentralized transit. When you have an imbalance of density like in the US, in towns like Portland, everything has to go through the downtown area.


Your entire post is contradictory. There are literally dozens of 5-6 story buildings going up along various Eastside corridors (where they belong), as well as multiple high-rises going up downtown (where they belong).

[hat]

Your entire post is contradictory. There are literally dozens of 5-6 story buildings going up along various Eastside corridors (where they belong), as well as multiple high-rises going up downtown (where they belong).

There are. Contradictory?

[Derek]

There are. Contradictory?


So where is this "imbalance" you speak of? You're saying Portland has too much of an imbalance of density, and that you don't mind density downtown, but at the same time there's dozens of mixed use projects all over the place. We don't have Berlin-like density because it's a far older city, and US development patterns suck, but Portland is doing OK for itself with a mixture of high-rises in the core and mid-rises on busy corridors.


I guess I'm just not interpreting your post very well with the way it's worded. :P

[davehogan]

I just got home from the Flaming Lips free show on the waterfront, and it was awesome being downtown for most of the day to see all the cranes in the sky.

2035, bring her on!

[bvpcvm]

I think he means he'd prefer several smaller projects on, say, Division than a huge one downtown. It wasn't clear to me either.

[2oh1]

I think he means he'd prefer several smaller projects on, say, Division than a huge one downtown. It wasn't clear to me either.

It wasn't clear to me either - but the future of Portland isn't one or the other. It's both.

[hat]

So where is this "imbalance" you speak of? You're saying Portland has too much of an imbalance of density, and that you don't mind density downtown, but at the same time there's dozens of mixed use projects all over the place. We don't have Berlin-like density because it's a far older city, and US development patterns suck, but Portland is doing OK for itself with a mixture of high-rises in the core and mid-rises on busy corridors.


I guess I'm just not interpreting your post very well with the way it's worded. :P

Sorry if I was unclear. This certainly will be controversial for this site, so I'll keep it short. I see a fixation with fantastically huge projects, and the assumption this is a favorable outcome for cities. US development patterns suck for a lot of reasons, the tendency for commuting from small house by SOV to downtown, for example, is just one. I know very little about city planning (I am a layperson), but my reason for bringing up Berlin was to show a different direction Portland can take in its development. Density along a corridor/neighborhood necessitates transit, and semi-autonomous neighborhoods where commuting may not be necessary. And that gets people out of cars. Density primarily downtown... we've seen what that looks like in almost every city in the US.

Yes, the answer is both, but it's a blurry one. How much do we want to incentivize 5/6 story buildings in neighborhoods other than downtown? This is one question the 2035 plan must grapple with.

[soleri]

Sorry if I was unclear. This certainly will be controversial for this site, so I'll keep it short. I see a fixation with fantastically huge projects, and the assumption this is a favorable outcome for cities. US development patterns suck for a lot of reasons, the tendency for commuting from small house by SOV to downtown, for example, is just one. I know very little about city planning (I am a layperson), but my reason for bringing up Berlin was to show a different direction Portland can take in its development. Density along a corridor/neighborhood necessitates transit, and semi-autonomous neighborhoods where commuting may not be necessary. And that gets people out of cars. Density primarily downtown... we've seen what that looks like in almost every city in the US.

Yes, the answer is both, but it's a blurry one. How much do we want to incentivize 5/6 story buildings in neighborhoods other than downtown? This is one question the 2035 plan must grapple with.

Almost every European city has a pre-automotive paradigm, so density wasn't an abstract value. It was entirely natural given the constraints imposed by living without personal mobility devices. There was a cycle of virtue in all of this, of course. The more people had to live close to their jobs, the more transit was needed. And the more local retail districts formed to meet real needs.

Portland has been called America's most European city because it echoes so much of this in its own development. Of course, Portland's main growth spurt came after the car, so it's not that European. And the current debate about reversing the dominance of the car here shows the retrofit won't be painless or free of rancor. Old timers, in particular, are unhappy their neighborhoods are getting denser. Read the comment threads on any online Oregonian development story and you really catch the bitterness about all this.

I don't think you're going to impose European-style apartment blocks in most of Portland. The resistance would be immense and politically toxic. What you can do is push density in places where the residential patterns are either new (e.g., Pearl, SW, Lloyd, downtown.) or along retail strips where single-family houses are not directly impacted. I think Portland's urban planners are pretty much doing precisely this, needless to say.

Suzanne Lennard's values here are close to mine but I think she's making a mistake trying to politicize the issue the way she has. Portland is doing the next best thing, increasing density dramatically where it can but only marginally where it's too politically charged. Even if you think high-rises are vertical sprawl, it beats the horizontal sprawl of most American cities (e.g., Phoenix, Houston or Atlanta). Portland is one of America's most exciting cities for this reason. It will never be Berlin or Paris because it came of age at the wrong time. But in this nation of car-loving, TV-watching, lawn-mowing burghers, it ain't bad at all.

[hat]

Almost every European city has a pre-automotive paradigm, so density wasn't an abstract value. It was entirely natural given the constraints imposed by living without personal mobility devices. There was a cycle of virtue in all of this, of course. The more people had to live close to their jobs, the more transit was needed. And the more local retail districts formed to meet real needs.

Portland has been called America's most European city because it echoes so much of this in its own development. Of course, Portland's main growth spurt came after the car, so it's not that European. And the current debate about reversing the dominance of the car here shows the retrofit won't be painless or free of rancor. Old timers, in particular, are unhappy their neighborhoods are getting denser. Read the comment threads on any online Oregonian development story and you really catch the bitterness about all this.

I don't think you're going to impose European-style apartment blocks in most of Portland. The resistance would be immense and politically toxic. What you can do is push density in places where the residential patterns are either new (e.g., Pearl, SW, Lloyd, downtown.) or along retail strips where single-family houses are not directly impacted. I think Portland's urban planners are pretty much doing precisely this, needless to say.

Suzanne Lennard's values here are close to mine but I think she's making a mistake trying to politicize the issue the way she has. Portland is doing the next best thing, increasing density dramatically where it can but only marginally where it's too politically charged. Even if you think high-rises are vertical sprawl, it beats the horizontal sprawl of most American cities (e.g., Phoenix, Houston or Atlanta). Portland is one of America's most exciting cities for this reason. It will never be Berlin or Paris because it came of age at the wrong time. But in this nation of car-loving, TV-watching, lawn-mowing burghers, it ain't bad at all.

Quite so. Vertical vs. horizontal sprawl. That's nice. And as I said, I don't really know the answer to this. I say these things as a non-home owner, so I cannot empathize. Even I have mixed feelings about the outcome of our new Division and the effects of infill. You place all of this this in a fine light, rarely seen on the Oregonian or most online news sites.

[2oh1]

Going vertical creates communities through density because it brings people closer together. Horizontal sprawl impedes the creation of communities because it pushes people further apart.

Like it or not, Portland is expected to grow considerably in population over the next few decades. Going vertical keeps our city livable, walkable and mass transit friendly. Going horizontal creates traditional sprawl and is ignorant in more ways than I'll even bother to mention. The problem is, what too many people REALLY want is for Portland's population to stop increasing. Short of something catastrophic happening here, there's zero chance our region's growth will stop. Without vertical growth, the only option is sprawl.

Go to the bank and trade a $100 bill for its value in pennies. Spread those pennies out across the floor. If you're not going to stack 'em, they're going to have to sprawl way out. OK, so maybe you're fine with stacking a few as long as you keep the stacks low. Let's see how that works out when you have to add another $10 in pennies.

I don't think you're being realistic about Portland's increasing population.

[dubu]

Portland just needs longer trains/ tracks with taller buildings by the train stops. Further from the stops have townhouses apartments and houses. That's how I see a dense city medium size city.

It doesn't need to be like tokyo

[urbanlife]

Portland just needs longer trains/ tracks with taller buildings by the train stops. Further from the stops have townhouses apartments and houses. That's how I see a dense city medium size city.

It doesn't need to be like tokyo

Well the longer trains won't happen without redoing the entire system, and tunneling through downtown because the blocks can't handle longer trains. This is something we all know will never happen in our lifetime.

[maccoinnich]

Wasn't sure where to put this, as it's such an incoherent article. I guess this will do, as she mentions the Comprehensive Plan.

Column: Portland's skyline is looking up

The old adage “first impressions are lasting” applies to cities as well as people.

We’ve all had the experience of approaching a city for the first time whose skyline gets you downright excited as it rises on the horizon. A city whose civic personality, once you’ve entered the core, continues to build your sense of expectation and adventure. I like this town, you tell yourself .I’ve never been here before, but I can’t wait to start exploring it…

Over the years Portland has increasingly gained that kind of enchantment. There’s just something about it that makes you want to stop, explore and maybe end up staying here forever.

Of course there’s much more that constitutes a city’s character than its skyline. What we call a “cityscape” comprises much more than buildings. It’s about parks, sidewalks, rivers, bridges, greenways, public art.

...continues at Portland Business Journal (http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/real-estate-daily/2014/08/column-portlands-skyline-is-looking-up.html?page=all).

[maccoinnich]

23,000 new apartments and condos projected for downtown. Where will they go? Portland City Hall Roundup

http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impact/photo/15618740-large.png

The number of apartments and condos in Portland's downtown core is projected to double over the next 20 years, adding about 23,000 new housing units, according to a new report from city planners.

The projections are included as part of a West Quadrant Plan, which breaks Portland's west-side core into seven districts.

Much of the city's recent downtown housing growth has come from the relatively blank canvasses of the Pearl District and the South Waterfront.

Those areas are projected to handle many of Portland's downtown newcomers, too.

...continues at the Oregonian (http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/08/23000_new_apartments_and_condo.html#incart_river).

[maccoinnich]

There's some really interesting stuff in the draft West Quadrant Plan (https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/499586) [PDF], which what the Oregonian article above references. I've only just had a chance to skim read it, but things that jump out at me are capping the freeway between the West End and Goose Hollow, a Green Loop along the park blocks, encouraging more development along Naito Parkway in downtown, redeveloping the smartpark at SW 3rd & Alder & redesigning O'Bryant square.

[hat]

There's some really interesting stuff in the draft West Quadrant Plan (https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/499586) [PDF], which what the Oregonian article above references. I've only just had a chance to skim read it, but things that jump out at me are capping the freeway between the West End and Goose Hollow, a Green Loop along the park blocks, encouraging more development along Naito Parkway in downtown, redeveloping the smartpark at SW 3rd & Alder & redesigning O'Bryant square.

Green loop blog (http://greenbikeloop.weebly.com/#/)

and on bikeportland (http://bikeportland.org/2014/01/17/citys-green-loop-could-be-like-sunday-parkways-everyday-100088)

[dubu]

h

[urbanlife]

I imagine we will see a number of residential buildings popping up in the West End in the coming decade which will really beef up the downtown.

[hat]

Not sure exactly where to put this. WWeek (http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-32426-city_report_predicts_east_portland_will_get_11600_.html) had a link to the recent BPS report on development. Click on "report" in the article. Shows maps of every neighborhood where zoning was changed.

[maccoinnich]

Is Portland ready to grow up? 10 takeaways from the 20-year plan for the westside

http://imgick.oregonlive.com/home/olive-media/width960/img/oregonian/photo/2015/02/05/downtown-portland-skyline-28c0ca1b559fd635.jpg

Portland's skyline could look quite a bit different in 20 years. Planners are suggesting taller buildings be allowed in some areas of town, including specific blocks in historic Old Town. More 40 story buildings could be built, if developers take advantage of density bonuses and other incentives.


By Andrew Theen | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Portland is growing up.

The blueprint for the next 20 years of development on the city's westside is almost ready for prime time.

On Wednesday, the City Council held a more than four hour public hearing on planning proposals that could be coming to the downtown core.

Background: In 2012, The Oregonian's Anna Griffin had a three-part series ahead of the Central City 2035 process (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

The planning process is winding to a close after more than two years of work. Nearly 70 people testified to talk about the West Quadrant component of the city's Central City 2035 plan. The West Quadrant is Portland's downtown, South Waterfront, Pearl District, Goose Hollow and everything in between (see map below).

The City Council didn't approve the plan on Wednesday - they plan to take up the issue again in a few weeks. More changes could be in the works.


...continues at the Oregonian (http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/02/is_portland_ready_to_grow_up_1.html).

[urbanlife]

Hopefully the more changes ahead won't be reducing building heights.

[babs]

Hopefully the more changes ahead won't be reducing building heights.

I don't think the central core should have any building height limits. Tall buildings don't harm anyone.

[davehogan]

I don't think the central core should have any building height limits. Tall buildings don't harm anyone.

They can harm future development. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a new tallest in town, but when you think of sqft one massive building can overbuild a downtown area very quickly.

[maccoinnich]

I've been listening to yesterdays' council hearing so that you don't have to. (I'm a couple hours in. If it were a drinking game where I took a shot every time Amanda Fritz asks what the community thinks, I'd be very drunk right now). Anyway, although the West Quadrant Plan doesn't propose any increase in height limits in the West End of Downtown, person after person was lining up to testify that the council should reduce the height limits to 100'. It was actually quite entertaining to hear Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard (http://nwexaminer.com/some-call-it-vertical-sprawl), with her terribly posh English accent, rant about the negative effects of tall buildings, capitalism and the World Bank. I doubt however that it will have any impact on the plan.

[urbanlife]

I've been listening to yesterdays' council hearing so that you don't have to. (I'm a couple hours in. If it were a drinking game where I took a shot every time Amanda Fritz asks what the community thinks, I'd be very drunk right now). Anyway, although the West Quadrant Plan doesn't propose any increase in height limits in the West End of Downtown, person after person was lining up to testify that the council should reduce the height limits to 100'. It was actually quite entertaining to hear Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, with her terribly posh English accent, rant about the negative effects of tall buildings, capitalism and the World Bank. I doubt however that it will have any impact on the plan.

Wow, thanks for taking one for the team. :tup: The people who show up to these things should really be carted off to the loony bin. If these people had their way, downtown would be leveled except for two story buildings.

http://memecrunch.com/meme/231KB/give-that-man/image.jpg?w=1024&c=1

[PDXDENSITY]

I, personally, think every building should be limited to the height of its original model...

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/10/107770058564c2fd459946317776f0390b71e5746ba7079fd637c39837cfc36f.jpg

[maccoinnich]

Well the highlight for me was right at the end when Steve Novick, ever the comedian, said that he felt compelled to complain "about the idea that all anybody seems to care about is height". The strangest part was when a letter was read out loud, from the former board president of the Eliot Condominiums, asking that heights in the West End be reduced to 100'.

Although Novick's line was a joke, there was a good point there. There was very little testimony on big ideas in the document such as the Green Loop, riverbank restoration / restoration, extending the retail core, housing growth, the hierarchy of retail/boulevard/flexible streets, tree canopy, freeway capping, etc etc.

[urbanlife]

Well the highlight for me was right at the end when Steve Novick, ever the comedian, said that he felt compelled to complain "about the idea that all anybody seems to care about is height". The strangest part was when a letter was read out loud, from the former board president of the Eliot Condominiums, asking that heights in the West End be reduced to 100'.

Although Novick's line was a joke, there was a good point there. There was very little testimony on big ideas in the document such as the Green Loop, riverbank restoration / restoration, extending the retail core, housing growth, the hierarchy of retail/boulevard/flexible streets, tree canopy, freeway capping, etc etc.

That right there pisses me off, if you live in an apartment building downtown, you lose the right to complain that everything should be shorter than what you live in because it might block your view.

I would have to say, this right here is why I would never want to be a City Council member, I would cuss so much at people saying stupid things like this.

[PDXDENSITY]

That right there pisses me off, if you live in an apartment building downtown, you lose the right to complain that everything should be shorter than what you live in because it might block your view.

I would have to say, this right here is why I would never want to be a City Council member, I would cuss so much at people saying stupid things like this.

I'd argue it is criminal when we have a shortage of housing and skyrocketing rents. This is a member of the landed class trying to make their moat wider and deeper, nothing our bureaucracy should appease.

I agree, this person makes me angry in a Marie Antoinette sense, but at least Marie was naive. This guy is just a psychopath.

[zilfondel]

I, personally, think every building should be limited to the height of its original model...

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/10/107770058564c2fd459946317776f0390b71e5746ba7079fd637c39837cfc36f.jpg

Underground buildings only! Humans are allergic to altitude and vertigo causes birth defects and blah blah blah!

/antcity

[PDXDENSITY]

Underground buildings only! Humans are allergic to altitude and vertigo causes birth defects and blah blah blah!

/antcity

http://wp.stcharleslibrary.org/wordpress/movies/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/morlock.jpg

Guess H. G. Wells was right...

[Encolpius]

I agree, this person makes me angry in a Marie Antoinette sense, but at least Marie was naive. This guy is just a psychopath.

Forumers: honestly, I don't understand outbursts of aggression like these. Your targets are, after all, members of the community who appear to care passionately about the well-being of their neighborhoods and take the time to involve themselves in the sort of public process that, by your own admission, most of you couldn't be bothered to turn up for (thank you to those who do, and report them to us). They're not opponents of density, they're not mouthpieces for out-of-town interests or sprawl developers; they just happen to disagree with you (for mostly well-articulated reasons) about the relationship between building height and livability.

If these people had their way, downtown would be leveled except for two story buildings.

Are you perhaps misunderstanding their point of view?

As the woman with the pretentious Brit accent points out, high density does not automatically mean buildings taller than 100 feet. 'Even BPS’s own publication... reported [that] Portland does not need height to compensate for any foreseeable shortage of development capacity.' If density can be achieved (and perhaps spread over a far larger area of the central city and eastside) without towers, then why is building high so imperative? I haven't heard any very articulate reasons on this forum so far, just variants of a false dilemma between highrises or no new development whatsoever.

The South Waterfront, which has been deliberately built as high as the market will sustain, is by all accounts (I haven't lived in Portland for a while so tell me if I'm grossly mistaken here) a dreary place that doesn't feel very 'Portland' at all; in fact, it lacks the diversity of street life and cultural activity that distinguish what most of us think of as 'urban'. The sections of the Pearl District built to lower height limits have a much different feel. They feel simply like pricier, snootier versions of older Portland neighborhoods like NW, Buckman or Boise-Eliot. Ms. Crowhurst Lennard gives plenty of reasons (link (http://nwexaminer.com/some-call-it-vertical-sprawl) that mac posted), grounded in very recent social science research, why neighborhoods composed predominantly of 'human-scale, five- to eight-story, stepped back, mixed-use building[s] around an interior garden courtyard' promote a more vibrant community and collective life, and a more sustainable and affordable city overall. A height limit of 100 feet would produce a neighborhood of buildings like these. What's so intolerable about that?

Moreover, why is it impossible for some people to have a rational conversation about the future of cities without caricaturing their opponents as Morlocks? Didn't the awful twentieth century sufficiently teach us to beware of this haughty and disdainful variety of 'urbanism'?

[bvpcvm]

I mostly agree with you, with a few caveats. For one thing, while there are a lot of development opportunities in the central city, many of them are tied up in surface parking (at least downtown) and the owners don't seem very interesting in doing anything with their properties. So we have fewer real development opportunities than in theory. Moreover, anyone who rents here is paying through the nose, and rents will return to earth more quickly with higher buildings.
Now, having said that, many on this forum look to places like Copenhagen as models of development, but if you look at Google Streetview for Copenhagen, there's not much in the way of high rises. In face, much of the housing is relatively low-rise. I spent a week in Cologne a few years ago in a very very walkable neighborhood (https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=50.959839,6.917655&spn=0.005731,0.012649&t=h&z=17) - there was one, anomalous, 16 story tower, but everything else was not only 3 story buildings, each of them had pretty decent sized courtyards inside. The actual density wasn't that high. Another example: San Francisco. Yes, there are a few very tall buildings, but most of the city is around 3-4 stories. And no one would say that SFO isn't vibrant. Yes, SFO has its own problems of unaffordability due to lack of development opportunities that are built at their full density. I think the problem with this lady's testimony is that some parts of town are well known for being more interested in preserving their property values than in really being worried about the city.

[maccoinnich]

Forumers: honestly, I don't understand outbursts of aggression like these. Your targets are, after all, members of the community who appear to care passionately about the well-being of their neighborhoods and take the time to involve themselves in the sort of public process that, by your own admission, most of you couldn't be bothered to turn up for (thank you to those who do, and report them to us). They're not opponents of density, they're not mouthpieces for out-of-town interests or sprawl developers; they just happen to disagree with you (for mostly well-articulated reasons) about the relationship between building height and livability.

With the exception of the woman who lives in the Eliot—a high rise building!— I mostly agree with you that the opponents of height were testifying because they believe it's the best thing for the city. I think they're wrong, and it's important to realize how radical a change it is. They are proposing completely altering height limits that have been in place now for four decades, without any public consultation.

Are you perhaps misunderstanding their point of view?

As the woman with the pretentious Brit accent points out, high density does not automatically mean buildings taller than 100 feet. 'Even BPS’s own publication... reported [that] Portland does not need height to compensate for any foreseeable shortage of development capacity.' If density can be achieved (and perhaps spread over a far larger area of the central city and eastside) without towers, then why is building high so imperative? I haven't heard any very articulate reasons on this forum so far, just variants of a false dilemma between highrises or no new development whatsoever.

People sometimes point to Paris as a model for a dense, medium rise city. It's true that Paris is very dense, but it achieves that by being very consistently dense. If there are any single family detached houses in the inner arrondissements, they're certainly very rare. This is not a model that's replicable to Portland. From a theoretical point of view, we could decide to tear down all the houses in Ladd's Addition and replace them with 8 story buildings, but in a city where 4 story building at 33rd & Division are controversial, I don't see it happening.

A lot of people at the hearing spoke about their desire to save the historic buildings in the West End. I entirely agree with them. The collection of churches in particular is one of the things that makes the neighborhood special. But if we remove them from the list of developable sites, and we want to massively increase the population in the West Quadrant, then we have to be realistic about how where we're going to get that capacity.

Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard talked about how unaffordable Hong Kong and Singapore are, as if that is inextricably linked to the fact that they have many high rises. She darkly referred to "global investors" and the "World Bank". Well, San Francisco is a mostly low rise city (outside of the Financial District) and it's now unaffordable to anyone who doesn't work in the tech industry. The London property market is now completely dominated by petrol money and Russian oligarchs, despite the fact that it too is mostly low rise.

The South Waterfront, which has been deliberately built as high as the market will sustain, is by all accounts (I haven't lived in Portland for a while so tell me if I'm grossly mistaken here) a dreary place that doesn't feel very 'Portland' at all; in fact, it lacks the diversity of street life and cultural activity that distinguish what most of us think of as 'urban'.

I would encourage you to go see South Waterfront again next time you're in Portland. The neighborhood initially had an issue that a lot of capacity was released into the market right as the global economic crisis hit. For a few years, there were not many people or businesses there. In the last few years it was really changed, and a lot of new businesses have opened up. Go there today, and the streets are actually fairly busy with people. The area where the streetcar, tram, and bicycle valet all meet is one of my favorite urban scenes in Portland. With its large number of cyclists, its LEED buildings and its wonderful open spaces it is a very 'Portland' neighborhood, unless your notion of 'Portland' is very narrowly drawn to only include the streetcar suburbs.

The sections of the Pearl District built to lower height limits have a much different feel. They feel simply like pricier, snootier versions of older Portland neighborhoods like NW, Buckman or Boise-Eliot. Ms. Crowhurst Lennard gives plenty of reasons (link (http://nwexaminer.com/some-call-it-vertical-sprawl) that mac posted), grounded in very recent social science research, why neighborhoods composed predominantly of 'human-scale, five- to eight-story, stepped back, mixed-use building[s] around an interior garden courtyard' promote a more vibrant community and collective life, and a more sustainable and affordable city overall. A height limit of 100 feet would produce a neighborhood of buildings like these. What's so intolerable about that?

And yet in the Pearl we have a model of a very livable community with many buildings over 100'. The map below, taken from the Block 136 Design Review, shows the heights of existing buildings in the Pearl. Notably it includes the three of the buildings in the Brewery Blocks, the 937, the Encore, the Casey, the Metropolitan and the Edge Lofts, all of which I think are pretty successful projects. Immediately outside of the Pearl there is the Indigo, which is a great mixed use building that has a great presence both on the skyline and at the street level.

I'm not going to repost why I thought that article in the NW Examiner was terrible, but you can read my comments below it. In short, it was full of non-sequiturs and statements without any evidence to back the statements up.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b112/maccoinnich/skyscraperpage/November%2018%202014%20-%20LU%2014-230014%20DZM%20AD%20-%20Block%20136%20Mixed%20Use%20-%20Drawings_zpskumnvzzw.jpg (http://s18.photobucket.com/user/maccoinnich/media/skyscraperpage/November%2018%202014%20-%20LU%2014-230014%20DZM%20AD%20-%20Block%20136%20Mixed%20Use%20-%20Drawings_zpskumnvzzw.jpg.html)

Moreover, why is it impossible for some people to have a rational conversation about the future of cities without caricaturing their opponents as Morlocks? Didn't the awful twentieth century sufficiently teach us to beware of this haughty and disdainful variety of 'urbanism'?

I feel like you might have nailed it here. Although I'm not incredibly familiar with Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard's career, my guess is that she's of an older generation of urbanists that reacted again the worst examples of mid-20th Century urban planning. And that's fine; someone needed to. I grew up in Scotland, which built high rise social housing with great enthusiasm in the 1960s. Scotland is now tearing down all those towers with equal enthusiasm. We shouldn't be doing towers in the park style planning. But no one is proposing that, and the Portland Zoning Code has plenty of provisions to prevent it. (Ground floor active uses, maximum setbacks, transit street main entrances, etc etc).

In summary, I think the people testifying were doing so from a position of what urbanists like Leon Krier tell them about tall buildings, and not from a position of what the reality on the ground in Portland is.

[PDXDENSITY]

they just happen to disagree with you (for mostly well-articulated reasons) about the relationship between building height and livability.

Are you perhaps misunderstanding their point of view?



No, I am not. I believe the true measure of livability will be maintaining our UGB and allowing growth to happen within it. The true choice of livability is between further subsidizing sprawl or protecting the ecosystem by creating a dense, connected neighborhood. If these folks aiming for height restrictions aren't considering these realities, they aren't making informed pleas to livability. Like another said, I am not arguing for towers in a park-- I want our city to work for us AND the environment.

We simply cannot do that with people continually pushing back on height in our central core. It is at its lightest delusional and misinformed and at its heaviest, an actually ecologically damaging point of view. It makes me less forgiving when people aren't considering the big picture for their idea of a "livable" view from a condo they bought a few years ago.

[dubu]

i thought they had a height limit because it would cost too much to build tall buildings downtown because the ground was not easy to build buildings on.

[PDXDENSITY]

i thought they had a height limit because it would cost too much to build tall buildings downtown because the ground was not easy to build buildings on.

It's mainly due to height restrictions, not actual engineering limitations.

[dubu]

portland is really hilly so you never see the skyline from the suburbs anyways. unless you are on a hill or live in se portland

[zilfondel]

i thought they had a height limit because it would cost too much to build tall buildings downtown because the ground was not easy to build buildings on.

You are partially on the right track; taller buildings are much more expensive (per square foot cost) due to needing deep pile foundation and structures engineered for seismic stability. However, it just means that the building will cost more, and developers tend to want to spend less money on the building to turn higher profits.

portland is really hilly so you never see the skyline from the suburbs anyways. unless you are on a hill or live in se portland

From my experience, it is precisely the people who live on the hill who are opposed to taller buildings downtown, as they could block their great views of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens.

[Encolpius]

[W]hile there are a lot of development opportunities in the central city, many of them are tied up in surface parking (at least downtown) and the owners don't seem very interesting in doing anything with their properties. So we have fewer real development opportunities than in theory. Moreover, anyone who rents here is paying through the nose, and rents will return to earth more quickly with higher buildings. [Emphasis added]

Crowhurst Lennard questions this last claim, and so would I. What is the effect of highrise development on rents and prices in the central city? Construction in steel and concrete is more expensive than medium-rise construction in wood or brick, and consequently depends on higher rents from both residential and commercial tenants to pencil out. These higher rents are achieved through a combination of advertising (million-dollar views as a form of conspicuous consumption, luxury condos as the new status symbol), silver-plated amenities (gyms, tanning beds, etc.) that reduce the need for residents to leave their buildings or interface with their neighborhoods, and to some degree through the effects of such highly-concentrated density itself, which drives up rents in the immediate vicinity (even if adding more housing stock actually lowers rents citywide). Also, of course, developers sell many of these condos to absentee tenants who effectively use them as speculative investments, as places to park their wealth. Catering to this kind of investor does nothing to increase affordability for Portlanders.

Of course affordability is complicated. It may have more to do with policy than urban form. (Low-rise London was once relatively affordable, had few skyscrapers, lots of council flats. Now has a number of skyscrapers, far fewer council flats, is ridiculously expensive. Berlin nowadays is one of the most successful -- and affordable cities -- in Europe, has few highrises, no center. Municipal housing policy is an important variable in these cases, but they show that mid-rise / polycentric form is by no means incompatible with affordability). As far as housing supply is concerned, it seems to me that twenty medium-rise buildings on Grand/MLK (or on 82nd!) could rise just as quickly as (in fact, probably far quicker than) one massive tower on NW 12th.

As for the parking lot tycoons, they're obviously sitting on their land, gambling the value will go up as more and more skyscrapers rise up around it. Rather than rewarding them for speculating with our neighborhoods, a reasonable alternative would be to implement a tax on parking lots.

People sometimes point to Paris as a model for a dense, medium rise city. It's true that Paris is very dense, but it achieves that by being very consistently dense. If there are any single family detached houses in the inner arrondissements, they're certainly very rare. This is not a model that's replicable to Portland.

Fair point. However, we're still a long way from matching the density of Paris (56,000/sq mi, according to Wikipedia) and to catch up, we certainly don't have to concentrate all of our density downtown. There's no question at the moment of the city running out of available land, not as long as we have so many parking lots downtown and plenty of low-density buildings lining Belmont, Hawthorne, MLK, and so on.

And yet in the Pearl we have a model of a very livable community with many buildings over 100'. The map below, taken from the Block 136 Design Review, shows the heights of existing buildings in the Pearl.

As the map shows, south of Lovejoy those tall buildings are rather the exception than the rule. And I'm okay with exceptions: they're a bargaining chip to be used, under the right circumstances, to extract really juicy concessions from developers.

We shouldn't be doing towers in the park style planning. But no one is proposing that, and the Portland Zoning Code has plenty of provisions to prevent it. (Ground floor active uses, maximum setbacks, transit street main entrances, etc etc).

Really? Isn't a building like the Overton (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=202572) basically the same thing, albeit with one floor of retail and parking garage entrances beneath the park? Skinny towers are just as effective as towers-in-park at segregating their residents from the street.

I believe the true measure of livability will be maintaining our UGB and allowing growth to happen within it. The true choice of livability is between further subsidizing sprawl or protecting the ecosystem by creating a dense, connected neighborhood.

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen, as bvpcvm mentioned, demonstrate the highrise vs. sprawl alternative to be a false dilemma. It's not a coincidence that lots of North American cities have both dense, high-rise cores and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Both are the consequence of an urbanism that can't distinguish the interests of the neighborhood and community from those of developers and real estate speculators.

I would encourage you to go see South Waterfront again next time you're in Portland.... The area where the streetcar, tram, and bicycle valet all meet is one of my favorite urban scenes in Portland. With its large number of cyclists, its LEED buildings and its wonderful open spaces it is a very 'Portland' neighborhood, unless your notion of 'Portland' is very narrowly drawn to only include the streetcar suburbs.

Okay, I'll certainly take another look. Although, to be perfectly honest, I'm afraid my notion of 'Portland' may indeed be based largely on those erstwhile streetcar suburbs east of the river or northwest of I-405. I find the Pearl attractive aesthetically and from an urbanism standpoint, but culturally it doesn't do much for me. And that's partly why I'm afraid of concentrating so much density in just one area -- it's medium-rise cities, in my experience, that have just the right level of consistent density to provide a variety and meaningful diversity of urban environments wherein everyone can find someplace they feel comfortable and at home.

[PDXDENSITY]

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen, as bvpcvm mentioned, demonstrate this to be a false dilemma. It's not a coincidence that lots of North American cities have both dense, high-rise cores and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Both are the consequence of an urbanism that can't distinguish the interests of the neighborhood and community from those of developers and real estate speculators.

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen are also approaching thousands of years old. It's not a good comparison. Density does preserve ecosystem and wilderness in conjunction with the UGB. Europe is an ecological disaster, also. Many original species extinct. We are smarter than that.

[dubu]

longer max lines and more apartments on the max lines?

might have to demolish some houses to do that though

[maccoinnich]

Crowhurst Lennard questions this last claim, and so would I. What is the effect of highrise development on rents and prices in the central city? Construction in steel and concrete is more expensive than medium-rise construction in wood or brick, and consequently depends on higher rents from both residential and commercial tenants to pencil out. These higher rents are achieved through a combination of advertising (million-dollar views as a form of conspicuous consumption, luxury condos as the new status symbol), silver-plated amenities (gyms, tanning beds, etc.) that reduce the need for residents to leave their buildings or interface with their neighborhoods, and to some degree through the effects of such highly-concentrated density itself, which drives up rents in the immediate vicinity (even if adding more housing stock actually lowers rents citywide). Also, of course, developers sell many of these condos to absentee tenants who effectively use them as speculative investments, as places to park their wealth. Catering to this kind of investor does nothing to increase affordability for Portlanders.

Rental prices are driven by what the market will bear, not by what it costs to build a building. A city with a tight rental market supports fairly high rents. The idea that concrete / steel buildings rent at higher prices than wood framed building isn't borne out by a cursory look at apartments that are available for rent in Portland. A 589 sq ft apartment at the Cyan (concrete frame) rents for $1,569 a month, or $2.66 a sq ft. A 587 sq ft apartment at the Parker (wood frame) rents for $1,593, or $2.71 a sq ft.

And where in Portland are all these condos that are being hoarded by foreign investors? Given that the Cosmopolitan on the Park is the first large condo building to be built post-recession, this claim of Lennard's doesn't even make sense. In any case, a few empty units isn't actually a huge problem, given that US municipalities largely fund public services through property taxes. (The UK has very low property taxes, and high income/sales taxes, so empty units are a much bigger problem there from a public policy point of view).

Of course affordability is complicated. It may have more to do with policy than urban form. (Low-rise London was once relatively affordable, had few skyscrapers, lots of council flats. Now has a number of skyscrapers, far fewer council flats, is ridiculously expensive. Berlin nowadays is one of the most successful -- and affordable cities -- in Europe, has few highrises, no center. Municipal housing policy is an important variable in these cases, but they show that mid-rise / polycentric form is by no means incompatible with affordability). As far as housing supply is concerned, it seems to me that twenty medium-rise buildings on Grand/MLK (or on 82nd!) could rise just as quickly as (in fact, probably far quicker than) one massive tower on NW 12th.

London still has very few skyscrapers relative to the size of the city. The vast majority of its population lives in 1-2 story buildings. There have been a number of high rises built in the City / Canary wharf since the 1980s, but these are primarily office buildings. The biggest development issue in London right now is rich people building giant basements in neighborhoods like Kensington and Belgravia.

That Berlin is very affordable relative to other European cities probably has more to do with the fact that it a) is not the major financial center of Germany and b) had lots of vacant land on which to build post-reunification.


As for the parking lot tycoons, they're obviously sitting on their land, gambling the value will go up as more and more skyscrapers rise up around it. Rather than rewarding them for speculating with our neighborhoods, a reasonable alternative would be to implement a tax on parking lots.

Well, we already do have property taxes on parking lots, but given the stupidity of Oregon voters in the 1990s, assessed value doesn't keep up with market value. I would fully support changing this. But if we're going to move to a model that taxes land value more than land use, it would intensify development (i.e. you'd probably get more tall buildings, not less).


Fair point. However, we're still a long way from matching the density of Paris (56,000/sq mi, according to Wikipedia) and to catch up, we certainly don't have to concentrate all of our density downtown. There's no question at the moment of the city running out of available land, not as long as we have so many parking lots downtown and plenty of low-density buildings lining Belmont, Hawthorne, MLK, and so on.

I don't think the neighbors adjacent to Belmont and Hawthorne would appreciate having even more of the city's development pushed onto those corridors. This already a hot political issue, before anybody has even tried to (further) limit density downtown.


As the map shows, south of Lovejoy those tall buildings are rather the exception than the rule. And I'm okay with exceptions: they're a bargaining chip to be used, under the right circumstances, to extract really juicy concessions from developers.

And no one is arguing that every block in the Central City should be a tall building. Not me, not the City Council, and not the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability. Indeed BPS are proposing the opposite: that low rise historic buildings be preserved, by strengthening the FAR bonus system.


Really? Isn't a building like the Overton (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=202572) basically the same thing, albeit with one floor of retail and parking garage entrances beneath the park? Skinny towers are just as effective as towers-in-park at segregating their residents from the street.

No. In addition to having ground floor retail and townhouse units that open directly onto the street, it preserves the traditional street pattern. (Something Corbusian planning sought to eradicate.)



Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen, as bvpcvm mentioned, demonstrate this to be a false dilemma. It's not a coincidence that lots of North American cities have both dense, high-rise cores and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Both are the consequence of an urbanism that can't distinguish the interests of the neighborhood and community from those of developers and real estate speculators.

Again, Cologne and Copenhagen—wonderful cities—are not models that are replicable in Portland. In choosing what to build, developers respond to what they're allowed to build. If we want to create a medium density city like those then we can get rid of the R5-20 zoning and let multifamily buildings be built on every block in the city. I don't see that happening.



Okay, I'll certainly take another look. Although, to be perfectly honest, I'm afraid my notion of 'Portland' may indeed be based largely on those erstwhile streetcar suburbs east of the river or northwest of I-405. I find the Pearl attractive aesthetically and from an urbanism standpoint, but culturally it doesn't do much for me. And that's partly why I'm afraid of concentrating so much density in just one area -- it's medium-rise cities, in my experience, that have just the right level of consistent density to provide a variety and meaningful diversity of urban environments wherein everyone can find someplace they feel comfortable and at home.

That's fine that you like the streetcar suburbs. But please don't project your own aesthetic tastes onto other people. Some of us like living in dense urban environments.

[urbanlife]

Forumers: honestly, I don't understand outbursts of aggression like these. Your targets are, after all, members of the community who appear to care passionately about the well-being of their neighborhoods and take the time to involve themselves in the sort of public process that, by your own admission, most of you couldn't be bothered to turn up for (thank you to those who do, and report them to us). They're not opponents of density, they're not mouthpieces for out-of-town interests or sprawl developers; they just happen to disagree with you (for mostly well-articulated reasons) about the relationship between building height and livability.



Are you perhaps misunderstanding their point of view?

As the woman with the pretentious Brit accent points out, high density does not automatically mean buildings taller than 100 feet. 'Even BPS’s own publication... reported [that] Portland does not need height to compensate for any foreseeable shortage of development capacity.' If density can be achieved (and perhaps spread over a far larger area of the central city and eastside) without towers, then why is building high so imperative? I haven't heard any very articulate reasons on this forum so far, just variants of a false dilemma between highrises or no new development whatsoever.

The South Waterfront, which has been deliberately built as high as the market will sustain, is by all accounts (I haven't lived in Portland for a while so tell me if I'm grossly mistaken here) a dreary place that doesn't feel very 'Portland' at all; in fact, it lacks the diversity of street life and cultural activity that distinguish what most of us think of as 'urban'. The sections of the Pearl District built to lower height limits have a much different feel. They feel simply like pricier, snootier versions of older Portland neighborhoods like NW, Buckman or Boise-Eliot. Ms. Crowhurst Lennard gives plenty of reasons (link (http://nwexaminer.com/some-call-it-vertical-sprawl) that mac posted), grounded in very recent social science research, why neighborhoods composed predominantly of 'human-scale, five- to eight-story, stepped back, mixed-use building[s] around an interior garden courtyard' promote a more vibrant community and collective life, and a more sustainable and affordable city overall. A height limit of 100 feet would produce a neighborhood of buildings like these. What's so intolerable about that?

Moreover, why is it impossible for some people to have a rational conversation about the future of cities without caricaturing their opponents as Morlocks? Didn't the awful twentieth century sufficiently teach us to beware of this haughty and disdainful variety of 'urbanism'?

My issue is when someone who lives in a downtown highrise complains that there shouldn't be any more highrises going up around there building. This has nothing to do with the city or creating a vibrant community, this is about protecting one's views, which I have no sympathy for when they choose to live in a highrise downtown.

[PDXDENSITY]

My issue is when someone who lives in a downtown highrise complains that there shouldn't be any more highrises going up around there building. This has nothing to do with the city or creating a vibrant community, this is about protecting one's views, which I have no sympathy for when they choose to live in a highrise downtown.

Exactly. It's just monied pretentious shit.

[Encolpius]

My issue is when someone who lives in a downtown highrise complains that there shouldn't be any more highrises going up around there building. This has nothing to do with the city or creating a vibrant community, this is about protecting one's views, which I have no sympathy for when they choose to live in a highrise downtown.

Exactly. It's just monied pretentious shit.

I don't doubt that selfish considerations of this sort are what it's mostly about for some of the people advocating height restrictions. Then again, people who live in a neighborhood do have a right to share their opinion on the future of that neighborhood. I'm concerned, though, that hurling the same epithets at everyone who challenges the prevailing strategy on development is just a cheap way of suppressing the existence of meaningful disagreement about that strategy.

Rental prices are driven by what the market will bear, not by what it costs to build a building.

If only rental prices reflected anything so rational as what it costs to build a building! Scandalously, alas, the upper echelon of the market is largely driven by things like advertising, status and exclusivity, and above all by speculation and investment. Instead of encouraging the diversion of housing resources into such wasteful and irrational expenditure, the city could encourage affordable development in cheaper neighborhoods of the city by limiting highrise development where rents are most expensive.

And where in Portland are all these condos that are being hoarded by foreign investors?

They don't need to be foreigners. Various studies, for example, have suggested that Brits are far more likely than Russian oligarchs to buy London condos for investment purposes, and I'm sure the same is true for Americans in American cities. The long-term reasons why speculative real estate investment is growing more attractive have to do with global economic trends which I fear I couldn't get into without risking a rant about tall buildings, capitalism and the World Bank. Suffice it to say that if this phenomenon hasn't yet reached in Portland in a big way, it probably will if rents continue to rise between now and 2035, as the developers who will build the next generation of high-rise towers in Portland and the banks that will finance them are well aware.

Or have you already forgotten the role that real estate speculation played in Portland's last housing bubble?

Encouraging luxury highrise development fans real estate speculation, which is bad for rents downtown and bad for affordability citywide.

London still has very few skyscrapers relative to the size of the city. The vast majority of its population lives in 1-2 story buildings. There have been a number of high rises built in the City / Canary wharf since the 1980s, but these are primarily office buildings. The biggest development issue in London right now is rich people building giant basements in neighborhoods like Kensington and Belgravia.

That Berlin is very affordable relative to other European cities probably has more to do with the fact that it a) is not the major financial center of Germany and b) had lots of vacant land on which to build post-reunification.

Good points. Highrise condos that sell for obscene amounts (and generate equally obscene advertising campaigns (http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/this-advert-for-luxury-london-flats-is-bordering-on-the-apocalyptic--e11dUJmBqe)) are being built all over London, but perhaps these are small in relation to the quantity of housing stock overall. In any case, I think policy is the far more important variable: Germany has very progressive housing policies that limit rent increases, and London used to build staggering amounts of council housing. I support radical changes in housing policy to favor of affordability, as I think I've already mentioned on this forum.

Well, we already do have property taxes on parking lots, but given the stupidity of Oregon voters in the 1990s, assessed value doesn't keep up with market value. I would fully support changing this. But if we're going to move to a model that taxes land value more than land use, it would intensify development (i.e. you'd probably get more tall buildings, not less).

Intensifying development is great. Putting a limit on heights above 100' would spread that development more widely.

I don't think the neighbors adjacent to Belmont and Hawthorne would appreciate having even more of the city's development pushed onto those corridors. This already a hot political issue, before anybody has even tried to (further) limit density downtown.

I appreciate the political delicacy here. However, I suspect there's a way to make increased density more palatable to everybody in Portland by 1) spreading it equitably rather than concentrating it in just one or two neighborhoods, and 2) through a strong public process that forces developers to listen to and address neighbors' reasonable concerns. Portland is unique among its peers in having such a high degree of public participation in planning, which in turn is due to the absence of many powerful corporate interests that often dominate discussions of policy and the direction of downtown development in other cities. These are strengths that many people on this forum may not fully appreciate.

As for historic architecture, it seems empirically this is less likely to survive in a highrise district than one in which historic buildings and contemporary ones are of more-or-less equal heights. Probably this has to do with the development pressure exerted by high-intensity land uses like condo and office towers.

No. In addition to having ground floor retail and townhouse units that open directly onto the street, it preserves the traditional street pattern. (Something Corbusian planning sought to eradicate.)

Given that Portland's streets are gridded just like Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, I don't understand the distinction you're making. Is it that the Overton (and other buildings of this typology in the South Waterfront, e.g.) occupy ordinary city blocks rather than megablocks? If so... fine, but surely you agree such architecture nonetheless appears colder and more remote than, say, five stories of apartment windows over shops, built up to the property line on both sides of the street?

That's fine that you like the streetcar suburbs. But please don't project your own aesthetic tastes onto other people. Some of us like living in dense urban environments.

You missed my point: I'm not saying everyone has to love Boise-Eliot and hate the Pearl, I'm pointing out that cities of dense (but mostly medium-rise) urban neighborhoods accommodate more diversity generally, thus catering to a wider variety of tastes and experiences. In contrast, the more typical North American model of high-rise financial district, low-rise yuppie entertainment district / kitschy shopping/tourism district, sprawling suburbs, is quite boring for everyone (except perhaps for yuppies, but even they must find their lives tedious).

Again, Cologne and Copenhagen—wonderful cities—are not models that are replicable in Portland.

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen are also approaching thousands of years old. It's not a good comparison. Density does preserve ecosystem and wilderness in conjunction with the UGB. Europe is an ecological disaster, also. Many original species extinct. We are smarter than that.

It's fantastic that you care so strongly about preserving the environment, PDXDENSITY. For precisely that reason, you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss urbanist principles based on the greenest of the world's existing cities. If you think Europe is an ecological disaster, well, you'll be astonished when you come and visit.

Meanwhile, the idea that no lessons applicable to Portland can be gleaned from two of Northern Europe's most important and vibrant cities is ridiculous. But you might have the wrong impression about them if you only imagine medieval squares and churches with some musty old canals and a Roman amphitheater. In fact, all the major cities of Northern and Central Europe are modern cities, built by modern planners and architects almost wholly in the period since the Industrial Revolution (and rebuilt after WWII or since the end of the Cold War). They nonetheless follow very different development models than most of the cities of North America -- models which, from the standpoint of accommodating density and preserving agriculture and green space, seem to work amazingly well by comparison.

My argument is not, though, that Portland should blindly imitate any other city or model. Least of all the model of highrise luxury condominium or apartment towers that has so consistently failed to provide affordability or prevent sprawl in all the countless locations it's been tried, yet nonetheless seems to be regarded as though, to paraphrase Maggie Thatcher, There Were No Alternative.

[maccoinnich]

Given that Portland's streets are gridded just like Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, I don't understand the distinction you're making. Is it that the Overton (and other buildings of this typology in the South Waterfront, e.g.) occupy ordinary city blocks rather than megablocks? If so... fine, but surely you agree such architecture nonetheless appears colder and more remote than, say, five stories of apartment windows over shops, built up to the property line on both sides of the street?

Are you really saying you can't see a difference between the street level engagement of this

http://i.imgur.com/abqmC2b.jpg

and this?

http://www.nextportland.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/The-Overton-01-e1418754159264.jpg

(FWIW I'm not overly fond of the rotated axis of the Overton. I think the engagement between the podium and the tower is clumsy. But I am not particularly worried about it eroding the livability of the city.)

[soleri]

The Corbu archetype probably maxed out in Portland in the 1960s with the half dozen or so lookalike towers in south downtown. The north Pearl towers under construction will probably be the last to break 20 floors and they barely rhyme let alone oppress with their non-uniform appearance.

The argument here that Encolpius wants to advance would have been useful some 50 years ago when cities were clear-cutting their old urban fabric in order to construct horrors like Cabrini-Green and Pruitt-Igoe. Hats off to the organic urbanists for waging war against those monsters. But that's not what it happening today. There's no Vanouver or Hong Kong in the making (let alone Chinese investors) robbing Pearl of its quaint brownfields' charm. I would agree South Waterfront's inorganic urbanism is problematic. Still, it's nice to think a city is more than tall buildings but the relatively few in Portland are not the enemy. The enemy, if there is one, lurks on the periphery of growth boundary, patiently biding their time until they can turn their bulldozers on more irreplaceable farmland.

I'm ideologically in tune with the Jane Jacobs' school, and I appreciate this conversation coming from Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard and Michael Mahaffy. In my heart of hearts, I would love to see a city with five-story residential blocks that are the life-blood of old European cities. But American cities got to that party late and it's probably our unlucky fate to have this mix-and-match development style. That said, it's not a real battle since most areas of Portland will not be affected by it. The argument shouldn't pit one kind of density against another. It should be real cities against ungodly sprawl.

[Encolpius]

Are you really saying you can't see a difference between the street level engagement of this * and this? *

Can we begin by discussing the similarities? In both cases, the towers are too tall to fit into the surrounding cityscape, too tall to fit into the frame of the street, and both try to disguise this at street level by travestying nature and traditional urban forms (is that a triumphal arch I see standing forlornly in the Ville Radieuse's central square?). This leads to, as you correctly point out, abrupt disengagement between the horizontal elements (non-residential) facing the street and the vertical elements (residential) fleeing it. Both are, from the perspective of a twentyodd-story resident, towers-in-a-park, and the orientation of the tower relative to the street serves in both cases to minimize the number of windows actually overlooking the street, creating barriers of distance (and in the Overton's case, reflective glare). Really, I couldn't say it better than bvpcvm already has in another thread (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=88332&page=159):

[E]ven though the base apparently has some retail - some 'eyes on the street', the tower is set back so far that it makes it all look like a fortress, the people in the tower won't interact with the street at all. In fact, they're fleeing the street, and the city.

Surely the similarities are striking enough that one could be excused for calling the Overton's architecture 'Corbusian'. If not, well, just look at those pilotis where the tower meets the park for chrissakes and tell me if that isn't an architectural homage?

However, the differences: Le Corbusier's architecture is egalitarian (in an authoritarian sense). The Overton is unapologetically elitist: the park is an exclusive place for residents to take the air without having to mingle with others outside their socioeconomic class. Le Corbusier's proposal is forward-looking; the Overton is wistfully reactionary. Above all, Le Corbusier was ruthlessly honest about the role of architecture in a modern city ('machines for living' and all that); the Overton, like all towers-on-podiums, disguises what it really is. This dishonesty, this posing-as-some-kind-of-brick-auto-body-shop-from-street-level, makes its residents invisible, enhancing the other alienating effects of the architecture.

Other Portland highrises are, to a greater or lesser extent, more successful than the Overton at mediating between the Tower and Street. But all towers existing within a traditional urban grid require some kind of architectural mediation. NYC changed its strategy at midcentury, I believe, from mandating setbacks above podiums to requiring spacious plazas like the one sitting beneath the Seagram Building. In this case, the architect must wrench a massive hole in the fabric of streets and sidewalks in order to provide the pedestrian with sufficient space to appreciate in the monumentality of a New York City skyscraper. Such feats are impossible in Portland, however (the mini-plaza (https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Standard+Insurance+Center/@45.517044,-122.678455,3a,75y,91.88h,102.52t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1so_US-CaSAQSw46CfXYSOTA!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x54950a10066ed471:0x9fb51ff95a3a67c4) of the Standard Insurance Center on Fifth notwithstanding), as long as we want our buildings to 'fit in' to the surrounding fabric; this creates an inescapable contradiction in which architecture must be fundamentally duplicitous, essentially alienating.

[Encolpius]

All of that being said, no, Portland is not in imminent risk of succumbing to the worst architectural atrocities of the twentieth century... and even if the North Pearl did succumb, it wouldn't be a terrible loss.

The argument shouldn't pit one kind of density against another. It should be real cities against ungodly sprawl.

I think I can mostly get behind this statement. Let me just emphasize my original point -- don't demonize neighborhood residents that favor density on the whole but oppose heights in excess of ten stories. They're not the enemy, and from a livability and affordability standpoint, they're probably right.

[PDXDENSITY]

Then again, people who live in a neighborhood do have a right to share their opinion on the future of that neighborhood.

Actually, I think in terms of heights those restrictions are unethical to our environment. Therefore, I do believe this sort of whining should not be tolerated when we should be preventing sprawl. And limiting buildings to ten stories downtown is insane.

I will continue to criticize these people for the unethical ecosystem damagers they are. They also drive up my rent. Snobs.

[RED_PDXer]

Intensifying development is great. Putting a limit on heights above 100' would spread that development more widely.

:yuck:
Ummm.. let's consider planning 101 for a second. We're talking about the Central City. All MAX lines connect here. Streetcars operate here. Almost all regional bus lines come through here. And you desire to spread development elsewhere? Do you realize there have been billions of dollars invested in the Central City???

Why don't you pose this to the neighborhood associations on the eastside? I'm sure it'll be well received.. This logic is flawed to say the least. Period.

[Encolpius]

:yuck:
Ummm.. let's consider planning 101 for a second. We're talking about the Central City. All MAX lines connect here. Streetcars operate here. Almost all regional bus lines come through here. And you desire to spread development elsewhere? Do you realize there have been billions of dollars invested in the Central City???

Shocking, I know. Tell me though, what amenities can't be provided in the central city except in buildings taller than 100'?

Are you proposing to build twenty-story art museums? The world's tallest public library? A vertical park? A zoo atop a baseball stadium atop a symphony?

Because isn't the purpose of all the public investment we've made in the central city to provide access to culture and amenities for the benefit all Portlanders? No? Is it actually just to provide developers with fancy real estate and a few thousand Portlanders with penthouse views? Sorry, was that the point of cities all along these past four thousand years?

[hat]

:yuck:
Ummm.. let's consider planning 101 for a second. We're talking about the Central City. All MAX lines connect here. Streetcars operate here. Almost all regional bus lines come through here. And you desire to spread development elsewhere? Do you realize there have been billions of dollars invested in the Central City???

Why don't you pose this to the neighborhood associations on the eastside? I'm sure it'll be well received.. This logic is flawed to say the least. Period.

I think this is exactly the point. There have been billions of dollars invested in the central city because there is relatively little impetus to invest elsewhere, i.e. it's where the money is. If the city continued to limit heights downtown, and encouraged development in Lloyd and Central Eastside (in some cases this is what they are doing), we might expect more public investment there (e.g. streetcar on 7th).

All MAX lines connect downtown, but this is a less than ideal system for transit. Berlin, Paris, Boston, even Philly, all have transit systems where not all eggs are in one basket. I would argue we have seen a concentration of wealth and skyscrapers downtown for almost the entire history of Portland, which has limited development elsewhere. When we have 20+ buildings and single family houses, the only option between these is car. This is the typical equation for sprawl. The environmentalist argument for no height limits need only look at almost every city in the US for evidence. This is why height restrictions exist, not just because people want their views. And this is the reason Portland's plan includes density in neighborhood centers, on corridors, as well as in the CES/Lloyd.

[urbanlife]

All of that being said, no, Portland is not in imminent risk of succumbing to the worst architectural atrocities of the twentieth century... and even if the North Pearl did succumb, it wouldn't be a terrible loss.



I think I can mostly get behind this statement. Let me just emphasize my original point -- don't demonize neighborhood residents that favor density on the whole but oppose heights in excess of ten stories. They're not the enemy, and from a livability and affordability standpoint, they're probably right.

If someone lives in a highrise downtown and complains that buildings shouldn't be taller than a few stories, then that is what we call being a hypocrite.