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Urban Growth Boundry - Oregon Leads The Way

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Urban Growth Boundry - Oregon Leads The Way Empty Urban Growth Boundry - Oregon Leads The Way

Post by  Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:24 pm

All states should use this model! This is not government controlling private property owners rights, it is protecting our farms. NO FARMS - NO FOOD! Do you want your state to look like New Jersey?

Urban Growth Boundry - Oregon Leads The Way Njsprawl


http://www.oregonmetro.gov/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=277



The
following material is excerpted with written permission from How
Smart
Growth Can Stop Sprawl, a briefing guide for funders
by David
Bollier.
The views expressed are those of the author. (Washington, D.C.:
Essential
Books), 1998.

Many localities, particularly in the West, have
successfully used urban growth boundaries, or UGBs, to contain future
development,
encourage more livable urban spaces and protect farmlands and open space
from development. Under the UGB concept, local governments estimate the
amount of land needed for new business, housing, recreation, etc., for
a period of time. They then draw a line around this land. New
development
can occur within the line but not outside it. UGBs are typically set for
twenty years -- long enough to be taken seriously but short enough to
accommodate
revision. One of the most successful champions of UGBs has been the
Greenbelt Alliance, the San Francisco Bay Area's land conservation
and urban planning nonprofit group. In recent years, its advocacy has
helped
persuade 15 Bay Area communities, including San Jose, to adopt UGBs.

The value of UGBs is not in drawing a fixed
boundary
per se, but in the pressure it exerts on municipalities to make a direct
reckoning of the long-term costs of unplanned sprawl. UGBs virtually
force
a town to undertake a more sophisticated, long-term structural approach
to fostering economic and community vitality -- rather than just letting
sprawl happen. UGBs provoke a discussion about other reforms, such as
fair
housing within a metro region, infrastructure spending, etc. Growth
boundaries
also allow states to target monies for transportation, schools and
sewers
to those cities and counties that have taken steps to identify and
implement
boundaries and make regional plans.

Case Example:
· Oregon: Urban growth boundaries
were one of the most significant reforms enacted by Oregon in its 1973
state-wide planning legislation. Each locality was required to adopt a
UGB as part of its overall planning, a rule that helped Portland
maintain
its high quality of life over the next 25 years and has preserved 25
million
acres of farmland and forests. Some towns, such as Corvallis and
Ashland,
have actually decided to permanently freeze their boundaries. Kentucky's
growth boundary has preserved the bluegrass country around Lexington
since
1958.

Statewide urban growth boundaries are now
mandated
in Oregon, Washington, and more recently in Tennessee.
Localized
UGBs exist in over 15
California
communities, Boulder, CO
and Lexington, KY.

Resources:

What
is an Urban Growth Boundary? (Prepared by the Oregon State


Department of Land Conservation and
Development).

Factsheet:
Urban Growth Boundaries (Prepared by the Greenbelt Alliance).

Bound for Success, the Greenbelt
Alliance's
excellent manual describing how communities can adopt UGBs, the
Greenbelt
Alliance describes how a UGB "affirms your community's identity by
ensuring
that it doesn' t merge with nearby communities; promotes urban and
suburban revitalization; uses public facilities more efficiently,
thereby
saving taxpayers money; encourages the development of more affordable
housing
and mixed use centers; stimulates community development patterns that
support
more accessible public transit; protecting farmlands, watersheds and
wildlife
habitat...." among other benefits. To order, visit www.greenbelt.org.

Some Observations About "Suburbanites" Ruining Portland...

While this may be common to many cities, since I live in Portland, Oregon, this is the only place that I have observed this happening.

The bohemian district...the district of art galleries, second hand shops, restaraunts, coffee shops and record stores keeps on moving around, a victim of its own success.

Before I was a part of these things, because I was a child, one of the largest low rent districts in Portland was in Inner Northwest, close to the warehouses and such things. Of course, now this area is known as Trendy Third, with suburbanites flocking their during the weekend and after work to drink coffee at Starbucks and shop at high price botiques. About seven years ago, SE Hawthorne Blvd became the place to be for the culturally minded, although quite a few of those culturally minded were nothing but dirty hippies looking for old Grateful Dead records and shake weed. (At the age of 14, I actually aspired to being one of those dirty hippies.) Now, although Hawthorne still posseses a corner where you can find three head shops in a 2 or 3 block radius, they are all overpriced head shops, and all of the vegetarian restaraunts and bars are also high priced. In other words, Hawthorne has become the place to get high priced trinkets with a left wing slant. At the present time, the place to be for the hip is shifting to Northeast Alberta, a neighborhood that was once Portland's "ghetto", or what passed for it in Portland. Now, what used to be a depressed neighborhood is being ruined by the opening of health food restaraunts and art galleries. Where will it all end?

The way that this happened is all the same: once the down and out folks find a place to hang, the rich folks who think they are still hip all flock there slumming, attracted by the rich cultural life. However, they want their culture a little less raw, in the form of Pottery Barn and Urban Outfitters. Soon, the poor can't afford their old neighborhood and the hip don't want to be seen there, so they have to find some other poor, out of the way neighborhood to spruce up.

And, while gentrification is hardly a new thing, only in Portland does it happen so rapidly, that I know of.


Join date : 1969-12-31

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