The post Test Post for Primary Category appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The pandemic has caused us to make lightning-fast changes to the human environment in response to the serious threat to our health. Climate change is a slow-moving pandemic for the natural environment, so our tendency has been to put off making major changes to address it, even though it has the potential to be far more devastating to the future of life on Earth than the coronavirus. Recent scientific studies continue to reinforce that point.

One of the changes that is imperative in creating a more just, healthy and sustainable environment is to redevelop cities with well-designed, higher-density communities around high-capacity transit. But this seems to go against one of the lessons of the current health crisis, which is that density is bad. And indeed some dense living environments can make spread of the virus easier, especially those that make it difficult to avoid very close interaction with others. However, there are many examples of high-density communities where physical “distancing” is no more difficult than in a typical suburb.  There are any number of planning and design solutions that allow people to be in safe and healthy urban environments that also enhance their mental and social well-being.

As for the corollary point that cars may be more important now than ever, that seems to bring us back to where we’ve been headed for the last 70 years, with an increasingly expensive, congested and unhealthy street system. When presented over the last month with nearly empty streets, many of us are beginning to envision much more creative ways to use those movement corridors than with single-occupancy automobiles.

The bottom line is that we cannot make the mistake of “wasting a good crisis” by turning back to old solutions.

The post Blog: Climate change — Earth’s pandemic appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The last month or two has been a unique time in modern world history, and its full impact is yet to be felt – especially in our cities. When the virus is brought somewhat under control (full control may take years) there will be a need to rethink many aspects of our physical, economic and social life. Improving the health of our communities has been a major goal of planning since the early days of the profession 100 years ago, but that now takes on a whole new dimension.

Planning for healthy communities is a multidimensional effort. There are many aspects of the health care system itself that employ planners to help manage their facilities and community-based programs. But most planning work until recently has not directly considered how to make communities healthier places in which to live. In 2017 the American Planning Association published its , which provides planners and their communities with a comprehensive look at what needs to be included in their plans, projects and programs to achieve much better health outcomes for everyone.

Now comes a health threat that will require local governments to increase their ability to take care of far greater housing, social service, transportation and economic challenges than they have faced to date. There is much work that will need to be done to plan for and carry out projects and programs to address the needs of our most vulnerable residents, and the federal government is the only entity that can provide the needed resources to fund those programs.

The planners’ job will be to help make sure these new resources are put to good use, and that the programs they fund are carried out in an orderly and effective way.

The post Blog: Planning and the pandemic appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The solutions to the two biggest planning challenges of our time are intertwined. Climate change and affordability seem to be separate issues, but there are planning and urban design approaches that could provide major ways to address them both.

As previous blog posts have indicated, both of these challenges are in part the result of, and continue to be exacerbated by, the huge expansion of suburban development. The planning and design professions (architects and landscape architects) have been aware of this situation for some time, but now it’s time for them to step forward and be major players in providing reasonable solutions to these challenges.

And basically, we know what needs to be done. We need to transition much of suburban America to more urban forms of development. The trick is finding the right set of incentives and regulations, and providing redevelopment models that will work in suburbia.

Looking at suburban landscapes, there appears to be little hope. But starting with station areas along high-frequency transit lines, intense mixed-use projects can be developed using a variety of building forms to fit local circumstances, and then extended outward as transportation options are developed. The planning and design professions need to develop a variety of effective and efficient urban design solutions for these different circumstances.

The private development sector will implement these projects, but without good models from which to work, well-thought-out solutions that address the real challenges we face will be rare. The Metro 2040 Plan provides the overall guidance for this transition, but how that is accomplished needs firm leadership at the local government level to effectuate sound planning and design solutions. Providing multiple attractive, affordable, alternative urban nodes will also relieve the pressure to redevelop and gentrify areas in Portland.

The post Blog: A climate-smart and just urban transition appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

As mentioned in my previous post, the planning profession in the mid-20th century was not aware of some of the negative consequences of its zoning practices. Single-family housing was assumed to be the norm for most people, and there was little thought given to the consequences of zoning the majority of the land area in most cities exclusively for that use. Over the past few decades, however, the planning community has increasingly recognized that there are several major problems with this practice. Not only was suburbia a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore climate change, but it was both economically and racially discriminatory.

Oregon is in the forefront of efforts to address these discriminatory effects. House Bill 2001, which the Legislature passed last year, mandates that the Portland-metro area and other large cities change their zoning ordinances to allow up to four residential units on lots previously zoned for single-family use. While clearly not the whole answer, the net effect over time will be that smaller, more affordable residences will be built in these neighborhoods. To more proactively address racial discrimination Oregon will need to also significantly upgrade its enforcement of fair housing laws throughout the state.

The city of Portland is on track to this spring adopt its , which will implement HB 2001. This new modification to the zoning code has been four years in the making and received extensive hearings and comment periods. While allowing up to four units, the amount of total square footage developed would be dramatically reduced from about 6,500 square feet to 4,500 square feet on a 5,000-square-foot lot. This change will allow construction of much smaller units while encouraging new building forms that fit within the character of the neighborhood.

The post Blog: Changes coming to traditional neighborhoods appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In the past few years the planning profession has begun to actively confront the inherent racism (intentional or not) of past planning practices in this country. Community planning and its zoning mechanism took hold in the early part of the 20th century as a way to address the serious health impacts of urban development. Cities had been growing haphazardly for centuries with little thought given to the impacts that factories and other polluting entities had on residents.

When the first plans and zoning codes were developed it seemed appropriate to separate the noxious uses from residential areas, but that soon grew to include full city plans that separated all distinctive uses from one another. What came to be known as “Euclidean zoning” created distinct areas for industrial space, commercial space and residential space, but it went further and carved out distinct areas for different types of residential uses.

Over time what this produced were large areas of single-family housing separated from areas of apartments. In addition to the fact that houses are much more expensive than apartments, this was not a benign, color-blind process.

Accompanying the planning process were two very pernicious actions adopted by the real estate industry: neighborhood covenants and redlining. The worst of the covenants specifically excluded certain groups from living in a neighborhood, and home mortgage redlining steered nonwhites to other areas of town. Both have been ruled illegal, but the long-term consequences persist to this day, with significant housing segregation. The redevelopment of poor urban neighborhoods that started in the 1950s made situations worse by evicting people from their communities to make way for new and more expensive housing, which was once again mostly accessible only to white people.

Next time I’ll discuss efforts under way to directly address this historical situation.

The post Blog: Planning and racism appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

One of the most controversial consequences of Portland’s growth and subsequent redevelopment of many inner-city neighborhoods over the last 10 years has been the impact on parking. This is a real hot-button issue that affects all of us, and one of the least understood components of city planning. As is true with the related issue of increasing street capacity for automobiles, parking is also affected by “induced” demand, which essentially means that the more you provide, the more traffic you’ll get.

This is increasingly relevant as we try to ratchet down transportation’s impact on climate change. As the single biggest contributor to that existential problem, we all have to be cognizant of how our auto-dependent culture needs to be radically modified as quickly as possible. Conversion to electric vehicles will help, but it likely will be 20 years before even half of all new vehicles have zero emissions. To have any hope of significantly reducing auto emissions soon we will have to create the conditions for significant reductions in vehicle miles traveled. That means placing serious limits on highway capacity construction and new parking spaces in concert with much increased investment in transit service, and bike- and pedestrian-friendly improvements.

Portland was an early leader in placing limits on downtown parking in the 1970s, which helped downtown grow in a very transit-friendly way. Now a similar shift has to happen in other areas throughout the region that must create more density in order to accommodate a growing population. But even more important is a shift in our parking expectations that needs to accompany this physical change. While it’s sometimes inconvenient and frustrating, the rapidly deteriorating climate situation demands significant responses. Taking a little more time to park is a small price to pay.

The post Blog: Parking and the climate crisis appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

After several years of work, debate, state legislative action, extensive outreach and more work, the Residential Infill Project (RIP) is ready for final review and adoption by the Portland City Council early next year. What this project basically recognizes is that Portland’s inner-city neighborhoods, like those in other popular and growing cities, have become the preserve of the affluent – and that has helped dramatically increase the price of housing for all. It has also led to smaller homes being increasingly torn down and replaced by much larger ones even as family sizes have decreased.

RIP addresses these issues by proposing several dramatic changes. It would allow up to four units to be built on most of the traditional single-family zoned lots in the city, but it would do so only if some very strict new size and design limits are followed. These new rules would apply to all of the traditional single-family zoned lots (R7, R5 and R2.5) in the city, except for those in hazardous or sensitive natural areas. However, under the new size limitations for a 5,000-square-foot lot, for instance, where you could now build a 6,750-square-foot house, the total for up to four units could not exceed 4,000 square feet. There are also other design constraints that restrict height, other building features and parking.

These changes have been discussed and reviewed extensively since 2015, when it became apparent that we had an immediate crisis caused in part by a historic injustice. Throughout the 20th century, single-family zoning fostered both economic and racial segregation. RIP presents the opportunity, at least in part, to right those wrongs. And it’s now required for all of the larger cities in Oregon by House Bill 2001 adopted in the most recent legislative session.

The post Blog: Residential Infill Project draft is ready to review appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In the last few years the city has spent a lot of time and resources to revise both its design review process and its design guidelines and standards. This has been a long time coming and was much needed. The guidelines (applicable to larger projects going through Design Commission review) and standards (mainly applicable to smaller projects going through a staff approval process) had not been revised since the 1990s, and the process had some serious flaws. The Design Overlay Zone Amendments (DOZA) are now being considered by both the Planning and Sustainability Commission and Design Commission, with unified recommendations from both due to the City Council in the next couple of months.

Running parallel to that citywide effort, an organization called PDX Main Streets has been working with various groups within neighborhoods with historic business districts that have seen a lot of redevelopment in the last few years. This nonprofit has raised money and engaged professional designers and planners to work with these local groups to help produce what they call specific “design guidelines” for “main streets,” as well as a variety of other resources for these groups to use.

While the city has acknowledged that these independently produced documents have value for those neighborhoods, officials have been reluctant to incorporate them into DOZA, primarily because they perceive the neighborhood guidelines to be largely rooted in historical development patterns. They consider the DOZA guidelines and standards to be more people- and future-oriented. Both have a lot of merit. As things stand now there’s a lot of justification for moving DOZA through to final approval. The big question is if the finer-grained neighborhood guidelines should be incorporated into the city’s design review process directly – and, if so, after what process and on what timeline. Meanwhile, the main streets will continue to redevelop. Hopefully the new DOZA standards will be helpful in minimizing impact on the neighborhoods until an agreement is worked out with the city.

The post Blog: DOZA and the PDX Main Streets Design Initiative appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The city of Portland is in the midst of significantly changing the zoning code to better implement ambitious policies for providing more affordable and better-designed housing choices. Last month the City Council received final testimony on the proposed Better Housing by Design (BHBD) changes, and on Oct. 22 the Planning and Sustainability Commission and Design Commission will both hear testimony on the proposed Design Overlay Zone Amendments (DOZA). Still to come next year are the Residential Infill Project recommendations. The combined effect of these ordinance changes should be significant.

The BHBD applies to the multi-dwelling residentially zoned areas of the city, making significant changes to the way the housing in these areas will be designed and built. More diverse types of buildings are encouraged to better fit their surrounding neighborhoods, with strong incentives to provide more affordable housing units. City Council should be making a decision on this package in the next few months.

The new DOZA draft amendments package is the culmination of a yearslong effort to update how the city reviews and approves building design in those areas subject to the “D” overlay zone, primarily in the Central City and along major transit corridors. The two commissions are supposed to make their recommendations to the City Council within the next few months. Hopefully there will be good consensus around the primary elements that will allow these long anticipated code improvements to be adopted soon.

One of the areas DOZA will not address immediately is the design of new buildings along many of the older neighborhood “main streets.” Redevelopment in these areas has clearly caused significant controversy, and some neighborhood groups are signing on to the nonprofit PDX Main Street Design Initiative and its proposed guidelines. There is more to come on this initiative and the Residential Infill Project.

The post Blog: Big zoning changes coming appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.