2040: a Portland odyssey

Sunset, Nov, 1996

Can a green and thoughtful city plan for perfection?

I married into Oregon. My wife is sixth-generation, with forebears who came across the Oregon Trail and founded a village that carries the family name. After a decade in California my wife still views the Golden State as sunny but suspect, and Portland as the land of milk and honey.

I don't object. Portland is hard not to love. Its river valleys and wooded hills glow with maternal tenderness. The regimented greenery of the Park Blocks testifies to a conservatism that is deeply reassuring. "To know how Portland would react in any given situation," I once read, "it was only necessary to know how Calvin Coolidge would react."

Not anymore. Portland is becoming someplace else. In Beaverton's Silicon Forest, computer companies slap up office complexes that look like concrete houses of cards. Toward Wilsonville, billboards announce "Luxury Townhouse Living For the 90s" on former dairy farms. Says Mike Burton, "I tell everyone - 75 more people for dinner tonight than there were for breakfast. Every day of the week."

Burton is executive officer of Metro, "the only directly elected regional government in the country," as he is fond of saying. In 1992, Metro was told to devise a plan to accommodate the 1 million new Portland area residents expected by the year 2040.

In much of the West, the idea of planning 50 years ahead seems socialistic or insane. When it comes to development, many Western municipalities act like Johnny Olsen on the old The Price Is Right, shouting "Come on down" to any builder with blueprints tucked under his or her arm. But Oregon conservatism understands that unless you plan for it, the future will probably not be better than the past.

Two years ago, when Metro polled Portland area residents about what kind of region they wanted to live in, 17,000 of them filled out a detailed questionnaire. Maintaining urban growth boundaries - lines keeping city separate from country, town separate from neighboring town - was their strongest desire. Residents voiced other wishes, too, ones that seemed out of sync with the way 1990s America actually functions. They wanted to drive less and walk more. They wanted fewer strip malls and a greater sense of community.

Burton drives me around to show how the Region 2040 plan is working to meet those desires. Clearly, if you add a million new residents, and you don't want them to sprawl out, you build in, and up. Within Portland, Metro encourages dense, mixed-use developments. In outlying communities like Gresham and Tualatin, Metro hopes to turn suburbs into regional town centers linked by light rail, with pedestrian-friendly Main Streets replacing the suburban shopping mall. "Suburbs," Burton says, "are passe."

Town centers and strolls along Main Street: it's a lovely vision. But some observers are doubtful. Jon Chandler of the Oregon Building Industry Association notes that for Metro's 2040 plan to work, every city in the region will have to permit denser housing than it currently allows. "People are always in favor of building in other areas," he says, "but against it where they are." He warns that Oregon's population boom may outstrip even the best-laid plans. "I wouldn't say our land-use policy is facing its final exam. But it's having a significant midterm."

At day's end I drive to Durham, the town my wife's ancestors founded. These days it's not so much a town as an appendage of two other suburbs. If I look one way I see remnants of the Oregon the Durhams traveled to: thick woods, bosomy hills. In the other I see the new Oregon: a regional mall parking lot crowded with cars but devoid of people - save for a lone rollerskater darting into traffic.

That nervous skate across four lanes of traffic: this must be what America wants, because we have so much of it. If it isn't what we want, is there any way we can avoid it? That's what Portland is asking. And if Portland - green, thoughtful Portland - can't find an answer, who can?

For information on Metro's 2040 plan, call or write Metro at 600 N.E. Grand Ave., Portland, OR 97232; (503) 797-1888; or check out its Web site at http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/metro.>