Portland's Suburban Development

[mSeattle]

Great set! Looks good too for suburbs.

[MitchE]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

it's almost as if all these developments hired the same architect

It may not be far from the truth. There are only a handful of developers that build large scale communities in Portland. By far the largest is Arbor Homes which is independent and locally based. Most of the big national builders won't touch Portland with a ten foot pole. I've heard they don't want to mess with the landuse laws and find it difficult to produce their "product" in this market. Arbor Homes has freely admitted they like the urban growth boundary and landuse laws for this reason. It's helped them go from a small time custom home builder to the market leader in Oregon in less than 15 years.

[PacificNW]

☝
Crisp444.....I see you have lived in Boston...what a beautiful city with its own beautiful neighborhood brownstones.

[Marcu]

I'm for mixed use and all but this just doesn't look right.

[MarkDaMan]

^I've seen it in person...it isn't right. Who in the hell wants to live above an expansive Target parking lot overlooking one of the largest intersections in East Portland? I don't think it is considered affordable housing, nor is it for the elderly...they must have cheap rents though because it is absolutely horrific in person! I guess it must have been an early attempt here in Portland to add density, as you can see from the other pics, we've kinda learned a bit more over time.

[Doady]

It all looks very nice and well designed, but I would expect development along a rapid transit line to be much denser than what is shown in these photos.

Originally Posted by Marcu

I'm for mixed use and all but this just doesn't look right.

I don't know, it seems pretty average to me, only 1-2 floor higher than the average mixed-use strip mall.

[pdxman]

The MAX isn't what you'd call "rapid" transit...too many stops and the DT area pretty much negate the eXpress in the name

[phillyskyline]

I gotta say I was completely shocked when i opend this thread I thought I would see sprawling homes w/ large acres of land!

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Raraavis

Great density, very walkable, and public transit, it is a shame all suburbs weren't built like this.

I agree.
one could do a lot worse.

[fangorangutang]

^the Portland area has plenty of those too (although you'll rarely find lots as big as those in the midwest, south, etc. as seen in the Sprawl Festival threads). These dense, mixed-use developments are still far from the norm, although more and more are popping up all over the place. It's misleading to suggest that the developments here exemplify suburban Portland, just look at Google maps and you'll see it's pretty similar to suburbia anywhere else...these developments, while they are mostly good, solid, well-conceived designs in and of themselves, do not necessarily create a more walkable and transit-friendly built environment (at least not YET) because they are spread all over the place and disconnected from one-another contrary to what some have said, just take a look at Google maps again or drive around. The exceptions are the TODs along the MAX line. I don't mean to bash on P-town or anything. I realize we're making great strides here, but I don't want anybody to get the impression that our city and metropolitan area should be treated as a model for how to build North American cities just because we have probably the most progressive policy framework within which to do so.

Great shots though. I do really like those brick townhomes.

[MarkDaMan]

fango, I respect your opinion, however there is less than a handful recent residential developments in the Metro service territory that wasn't built in TOD style. What strikes me about Portland is that many other cities I've visited and lived, Phoenix is a great example, their new housing developments are behind gated walls with everyone getting their own .47 acres, or whatever it breaks down to. I can't think of one gated community in Portland. Anything built in the Portland metro in the last five years has been built in 'TOD' style. You are correct that many of these developments are still early pioneers and don't have the connectivity that the overall plan for the community will one day enjoy. But the recent developments have shown that this is the wave of Portland's future. If you've been through Orenco lately you'd see that it is connecting almost all the way to the Streets of Tanasbourne now, which in turn is just about connected all the way to the 185th MAX station. There is talk about streetcar lines and even a massive 'central city' plan for Hillsboro. With the recent Metro bond passed to buy $220M worth of new tracks of parkland region wide, a 120 mile loop trail in the works, and an extension of alternative forms of mass transit to the burbs, we've got it going on!

If you head out to Gresham you have so much going on along the MAX lines. In fact, Gresham will even be getting a new transit stop soon, their new proposed tallest (a whopping 6 or 7 stories) is a step in the right direction also for a community that protested a 4 story development just a few years ago. While we cannot wash away the terrible idea of an auto centrist society that spent many decades between WWII and into the 80's developing boomer housing and sprawl across America, you can change the culture of an auto society by increasing density, encouraging infill, changing codes to add stricter housing requirements, and taking steps to focus density, as Portland has with the urban growth boundary and Metro Government. I do think that the Portland area does have many of the right ideas and can share our fairly new found sustainable focus with several communities across America on how the modern suburb should connect, look, and feel.

[e2ksj3]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

very interesting to see this side of Portland.. we rarely see these types of areas on SSP... and while some of the design issues and functionality have improved over recent decades... I can't help but find the architecture in every one of these pics to be hideous... cartoonish... it's almost as if all these developments hired the same architect

I actually kind of like the architecture, but I guess that's because I'm in the southeast and we don't see a lot of the "cedar" type designs like what you typically find in the Pacific NW.

I love how everything is dense and near mass transit, and they have bike lanes and sidewalks everywhere. Cities and towns around the country could learn a lot from the Portland area.

[Goody]

dude that is for the most part fucking awesome that they are building that dense


I like most of that, its not even just alright, its nice.

[crisp444]

Originally Posted by PacificNW

☝
Crisp444.....I see you have lived in Boston...what a beautiful city with its own beautiful neighborhood brownstones.

Most certainly... I live here now on this block:





Still, the buildings I referenced on this thread are the most beautiful suburban brownstones I have ever seen. I think both the architecture and landscaping are great. Go Portland!

[der Reisender]

great thread, we are doing better in the burbs than i had thought, guess i may have to ride the blue line out of town one of these days and look around. design should improve over time and Gateway has several larger projects starting the permits process, so hopefully they will help it realize its potential

again, love this thread, a view we dont get much here

[OhioGuy]

While I'd 100% prefer to live *in* Portland rather than its suburbs if I were to ever move to the area, I really do like what I see here. I like the color used in a lot of these designs and I like a lot of the designs themselves (particularly the "brownstones"). I also like how clean everything looks. Flowers, trees, and just enough grass to balance out the concrete & asphalt of the sidewalks and streets. I love a green city! (or I guess a green suburb in this case)

[MitchE]

Thanks for the comments everyone. I did this thread because this forum focuses so much on the urban core and and I wanted to generate some discussion about the suburbs. Portland and the Metro government have a lot of progressive policies and it is really amazing and interesting seeing them play out in the suburbs.

In my opinion it's really the only place to test their true effectiveness... not only because it's being built from scratch (vs the central core where there is critical mass and the older built form lends these policies an advantage) but also because the market forces for sprawl type development are stronger out there where the existing development is already autocentric.

Regarding fangs comments, I agree with him that your impression would be wrong if you think ALL the suburbs look this dense and walkable. They certainly are not. The thing is that most of the developments that are "unwalkable" or "strip/boxy" were built over 20 years ago when the growth policies were still being developed. Like MarkDaMan says, almost everything built in the last 5-10 years looks much like you see in these pictures, especially the stuff by transit.

The interesting thing is the Metro government has minimum density quotos for all new development out in the burbs that surprisingly is denser than the 100 year old streetcar suburbs of inner Portland. If you project these trends 15 years into the future the typical suburban neighborhood will be as dense or denser than the inner city neighborhoods of Portland. Some food for thought.

Fang, I'm curious about this comment.

Originally Posted by fangorangutang

I don't want anybody to get the impression that our city and metropolitan area should be treated as a model for how to build North American cities just because we have probably the most progressive policy framework within which to do so.

Why can't it be a model for other cities? I think the same thing would happen if the policy tools and landuse model that Portland has is adopted elsewhere ... assuming people have the desire and political will to do it.

[fangorangutang]

^I should have worded that better. What I mean is, yes, our regional and state policies and institutions like Metro are definitely worth emulating. However, people should not look at the current built environment as a model, as most of it still does not resemble the newer development in the last 5-10 years. If we keep the current momentum going, however, we may just see the use of these land use policy tools translate into a more uniformly urban landscape.

Oh and Mark, sadly, I haven't been out to Orenco yet, but from what I've seen in pictures and heard, it seems really impressive.
I lived for three years out on Walker and 185th, and go back about every weekend or two to visit my mom. The area is definitely starting to get built up, with the apartments around Willow Creek and the ones that partially cover some old wetlands just south of Walker and 185th. Again, I'm really glad that all of these developments are coming up. My gripe is that they aren't connected to each other, or to the suburban neighborhoods around them. There isn't really a sensible street grid or pattern to them, and none of them are mixed use, but are instead served by existing shopping plazas that are often over a half-mile away. 185th Avenue is also still very uncomfortable to walk on. Anyways, I'm done bitching. Can't expect these early stages in the urbanization of our suburbs to be perfect. Just cross your fingers that they eventually turn into solid, enjoyable, livable, and sustainable neighborhoods!

[pdxstreetcar]

Thanks MitchE for this great tour.

I've found if one explores the Portland suburbs a bit one will see just how common this dense type of the suburban development is and in particular almost everything built in the suburbs in the last 10 years is of this model. Thats not to say that everything in the suburbs is like this, not at all. But this development isnt just in a few isolated places, its in all corners of the suburbs. You can even go to edge of the urban growth boundary and see dense housing even apartment buildings and townhomes on one side of the road and farmland on the other side of the road stretching all the way to the coast....Aerial 1

Aerial 2

Here's the Aerial over Orenco MAX Station Orenco
Scroll a few blocks north of the station to see the main New Urbanist 'Orenco Station' and scroll just south of the station to see a dense housing development thats not quite 'N.U.' but perhaps even more transit friendly due to its closer proximity to the station.

I agree completely the design and construction quality/materials (less vinyl or EIFS siding) could be better, even just different windows would do a lot. And also less repetition of the same buildings would be better but of course all this costs extra money and the suburbs dont bring in the same rents/sales as the city.

[Urbanpdx]

That mixed use building on 122nd over the grocery store should be the poster child against mixed-use. It really is a nasty place.