Welcome! This forum presents an alternate perspective on the current challenges facing the city of Portland, Oregon. What effective solutions are available? What is the actual evidence that they will work, or not? How can these lessons be applied in Portland? We will pass along regular entries on timely issues from other parts of the world, comparing notes on our challenges here. We will also offer our own commentaries and those of Portland-area colleagues.
Portland is rightly regarded as an important global model of urbanism and of urban successes. Portland started with the advantage of small blocks, facilitating walkability; the Urban Growth Boundary was created in the 1970s, about the same time a freeway along the waterfront was replaced with Tom McCall Waterfront Park; Portlanders’ love of their natural setting ensured tree-lined streets and efforts to protect views of snow-capped Mt. Hood; a proposed multi-story garage in the city center became Pioneer Courthouse Square in 1984, thanks to community effort, and many other squares and parks have followed; a streetcar system and light rail were started, which gradually helped to generate suburban neighborhood centers, improving walkability; a compact mixed-use neighborhood began to replace the old industrial area of the Pearl District, initially at a good human scale; and early development of bike lanes positioned Portland as a leading US city for bicycle planning.
But we must be honest: Portland is also, and increasingly of late, a model of what can go wrong. But that too is an invaluable contribution to share with other cities, as they share their lessons with us. In that process, we may all learn from our mistakes as well as our successes, and find a path to becoming better cities. We may thereby reverse the downward spiral of so many cities today, including Portland – losing their affordability, losing their diversity, losing their architectural heritage, and becoming places of isolation, homelessness, traffic congestion and – for too many – economic stagnation, and declining quality of life.
This blog was started by Suzanne Lennard and Michael Mehaffy, both with Ph.D. degrees in architecture (at UC Berkeley and Delft University of Technology, respectively) but also with wide interests in sociology, public health, anthropology, psychology, economics, public affairs, and above all, the ingredients of livable, sustainable cities, and how we can get and keep them. This perspective is informed by seminal scholars in urban issues including Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, William H. Whyte, Christopher Alexander, Lewis Mumford and others, and also by cutting-edge new research. We hope you'll find it thought-provoking at least, and find some of the ideas inspiring, as we have...
…[When we saved Greenwich Village] we were called names for this: selfish and negative. What a bunch of negative people! But everybody in the neighborhood understood…
Death and Life, p.208:
What are proper densities for city dwellings? … Proper city dwelling densities are a matter of performance … Densities are too low, or too high, when they frustrate city diversity instead of abetting it …
Very low densities, six dwellings or fewer to the net acre, can make out well in suburbs … Between ten and twenty dwellings to the acre yields a kind of semisuburb. …
I should judge that numerically the escape from “in-between” densities probably lies somewhere around the figure of 100 dwellings to an acre, under circumstances most congenial in all other respects to producing diversity.
As a general rule, I think 100 dwellings per acre will be found to be too low.”
In other words, SE Division Street is Jacobs’ recommended minimum.
Assuming a 200 x 400 block including streets, I work 100 DU/A out as about 35 units on a 100 x 100′ lot. But I don’t think a narrow (200′ wide) strip of that density achieves the result Jacobs sought. If you factor in the surrounding blocks at about 8 DU/A, it drops down to suburban densities.
From what I understand of Jane Jacobs, she was a champion of grassroots community advocacy, repurposing older buildings, anti-demolition and certainly not in favor of demolishing affordable housing stock to build new market rate and upscale housing. She was the quintessential “NIMBY”. She understood the balance of cultivating a diverse and vibrant community vs density for the sake of density at any and all costs. I’m sure she would have approved of the Division Design Initiative , which is the epitome of community driven design. It’s a shame that the current, fanatical quest for density has blinded many to Jane Jacobs core, integral urban planning values.
And I’m sure she would have approved of bald guys with glasses! Sadly, I guess we’ll never know what she really believed about the proper densities for city dwellings.
It sounds like from the Jacobs quote above, that the Division Design Initiative’s call for 3 stories or lower, and especially when no useful buildings were being removed (mostly converted gas stations and parking lots), would not align with Jacobs’ views. Even the 4-story buildings along Division don’t give you enough density to achieve diversity, since they’re limited to a narrow strip, 100′ on either side of Division (or along Hawthorne, etc.). You would really need that density for several blocks deep, like Crown Heights in Brooklyn, to get the “diversity” that Jacobs speaks of.