Its scary? People need to stop using that phrase in association with clearly non scary stuff. I thought Portland was all about progressive urban planning, density, mass transit. I thought the reason you live close in on the East side is because it is close in, dense, thriving. If you want CC&Rs, if you want restritions on the free expression of style, if you want to hamstring dense development ... move to the burbs. Scary. LMFAO.

I bought a house in inner se Portland w/ a large lot cause I wanted a garden and space and I wanted to be close in.... that was possible 12 years ago....not so much now.....now greedy developers are swooping in on houses like that, destroying them, destroying gardens, mature trees, neighborhood open spaces, and building light blocking monstrosities....chipping away at my quality of life.
Happily some of these developers and speculators are losing their shirts and are being forced to find real jobs. Hopefully, we can use this downturn as a time out on shitty infill that degrades livability.
Now if these developers and speculators want to build big monuments to their egos...go ahead...go build them in degraded environments of the urban core (redeveloping parking lots, strip malls, brown fields, etc...). Not in anyone's backyard.

Demondog, do you own or rent?

the problem with our local planning is that we're supposed to increase density in some places, and "protect existing neighborhoods" elsewhere. It's that second part that seems to fall by the wayside. My neighborhood of old single-family homes is zoned so that someone can come in and build a triplex on a standard 5,000 sf lot. How is that protecting the neighborhood?