Clash in Portland Over Urban Growth Limits

PORTLAND, Ore. —  One of the first major metropolitan areas in the nation to throw up an imaginary fence around the suburbs to rein in sprawl is deciding whether to loosen the restrictions.

An “urban growth boundary” that has preserved forests and farmland on the doorsteps of Oregon’s largest city has made Portland a national model for controlling sprawl.

Metro, an elected regional agency created in 1979, decides when and where the line can be extended, based on population growth within the imaginary fence.

But a property-rights group, Oregonians in Action, says Metro is too stingy in expanding the boundary. The result, the group argues, has been overcrowded neighborhoods, traffic jams and a burden on public services in Portland and its suburbs.

“They’re throwing out land use policy most citizens don’t want,” said Larry George, the group’s executive director. “The problem is, Metro isn’t listening to citizens.”

A measure on Tuesday’s primary ballot proposed by the group would prohibit Metro from setting minimum population density requirements within the urban growth boundary. That has been the regional body’s main tool for containing sprawl.

Some critics of Measure 26-11 say groups backing it--including Realtors and home builders--are mainly interested in extending the urban growth boundary so they can profit from developing land that now lies outside the line.

“Oregonians in Action is taking advantage of the fact that most voters don’t understand the urban growth boundary. They, along with the home builders and Realtors, are trying to blame everything on Metro,” said Evan Manvel, research director for 1,000 Friends of Oregon, a nonprofit group founded to help shape land use policy and protect quality of life.

To head off the measure, Metro is offering its own proposal on the primary ballot--Measure 26-29--that is backed by the mayors of all 24 cities and the three urban counties covered by the agency.

The Metro proposal would modify its charter to maintain its control over urban density. But additional planning would be required to “protect the livability of existing neighborhoods” and ensure adequate services, utilities and park access.

George said the Oregonians in Action proposal would force Metro to start from scratch by seeking approval from individual neighborhoods and cities.

But Rex Burkholder, one of the seven Metro councilors, says it would bury Metro in added paperwork and block long-term planning. “It would eliminate all controls on sprawl,” Burkholder said.

The Portland metropolitan area grew from a population of 1.5 million in 1990 to 1.92 million in 2000.

Burkholder said filling available space within the urban growth boundary before allowing expansion into outlying areas has helped preserve neighborhoods and farms, avoiding the kind of suburban flight that caused inner city decay in other metro areas.

But Kelly Ross, government affairs director for the Home Builders Assn. of Metropolitan Portland, says Metro has ignored warnings from the construction industry that the area will run out of “buildable” land faster than Metro predicts.

“There is intense frustration and often outright hostility out there,” Ross said.

Some of the pressure for expansion has simply moved development across the Columbia River to neighboring Clark County, Wash., where scattered housing and business growth leaves neighborhoods disconnected from public transportation, services and each other, said Clark Williams-Derry of Northwest Environment Watch in Seattle, which studies population growth.

“The contrast is very stark,” Williams-Derry said.

Stuart Meck, senior researcher for the American Planning Assn. in Chicago, said the trend throughout the country has been to assign urban planning to some kind of regional government to avoid the kind of squabbling between cities and neighborhoods that has helped encourage suburban sprawl.

“While it sounds very populist to say let each local government decide about density, it leads to bickering or dumping problems on each other,” Meck said, adding that neighborhoods cannot set policy because they are not governments.

The planning association has developed model legislation for managing urban growth based partly on Oregon and on other states, including Washington, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Maryland, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Meck said the model calls for regional planning that coordinates the efforts of cities and counties, the opposite of the Oregonians in Action proposal.

“You can’t have growth without considering the impact on other jurisdictions,” Meck said.