Not that Michael Jordan. This Michael Jordan:
- Just as exciting, right?
Michael Jordan is the chief operating officer over at Metro and just released the agency’s big report (pdf) detailing its recommendations for the future of Portland’s urban growth. Jordan’s plan? Not to expand the urban growth boundary, the border that limits Portland’s outward development.
The decision is something of a surprise because Metro has chosen to add 28,000 acres to the Urban Growth Boundary over the last 30 years, opening the door for new housing or industrial lands to push out into former farms.
In my opinion, this is a smart recommendation from Metro. In the report, Jordan’s team cites a couple startling stats that prove the need to keep Portland compact:
There are 15,000 acres of vacant land zoned for new development within the current urban growth boundary.
95 percent of development in the last decade has been within the 1979 border of the urban growth boundary
83 percent of PDX residents believe that land use regulations are “an essential tool to protect the region’s quality of life. “
In a nationwide study, compact communities were shown to reduce average driving by as much as 33 percent.
I’m with Jordan. But, in the near future will this boundary lead extreme population density? A space jam, if you will?
Now if we could just contain the sprawl in Clark County…
It is curious that the world as a whole does not have a policy of population control, since that would resolve a vast majority of the current issues we face, and certainly improve everyone’s quality of life.
China does, so do we REALLY need to go there?
Sure. Because population control doesn’t necessarily follow China’s example.
Thank, God. I have hope for Portland in staying with this philosophy of reducing sprawl. We are the land of forests and rivers. Not parking lots and Super-Targets. Let’s try and keep it that way.
P.S. Marq Young, the Space Jam reference was assuredly awesome.