Researcher(s):
Travis Meng Gaby Seltzer Jesse Simpson Raiven Greenberg
ENVS course(s): 330 Initiated: March 2016 Completed: April 2016 Go to project site
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In this project we broadly explore how growth management policy may exacerbate or relieve inequity in the housing market and affect displacement. Growth management policy, a set of urban strategies of densification and city revitalization, became prominent in growing U.S. cities in the 1960s; urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are one such growth management strategy, administrative lines drawn around cities that serve to contain sprawl and development.
We analyzed Portland's UGB by means of several methods, hoping to see in what ways it has contributed to gentrification in Northeast Portland neighborhoods. We conducted literature review, a textual analysis of Portland's municipal planning documents. We also created several GIS maps utilizing taxlot and census data to spatially convey changes in land value and racial makeup of Portland neighborhoods over time. In addition we interviewed members of the Mahonia Land Trust just outside the UGB, as well as two women from NE Portland who are involved with racial preservation and several anti-gentrification nonprofits in Portland.
Our various methodologies, when combined, show that Portland’s UGB has not directly distorted housing values in Portland, but forms part of a broader urban strategy of densification, urban revitalization, and gentrification. Contrary to the win-win framing of municipal renewal documents, this gentrification has amounted to continual displacement with implications of race and class, as evidenced by both our interviews and spatial analysis.
In accordance with these findings we lay out three possible "solutions" to combating the negative externalities of the UGB and slowing the process of gentrification in Portland. These include: relaxation of the UGB, liberalization of zoning policy, and the creation of land trusts. Through these proposed solutions, we hope to contribute in some way to the continuing discussion of the relationship between planning policy and socioeconomic and racial equity in Portland and beyond.