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Researcher(s):
Jesse Simpson Perri Pond
ENVS course(s): 220 Initiated: November 2014 Completed: December 2014 Go to project site
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An Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) regulates the expansion of urban sprawl onto rural land, aiming to protect natural resources and promote more compact urban development. Portland’s UGB was enacted in 1979 by Metro and stands as a symbol of Portland urban planning. To proponents, the UGB is a keystone tool in smart growth planning, preventing uncontrolled and undesirable sprawl. However, opponents have argued that these planning efforts distort housing markets, make housing unaffordable, and repress consumer desire for suburban development. Housing equity lies at the heart of fierce debates over UGBs in general; our investigation centered on the empirical data about housing prices and examined how rhetoric about housing prices has been deployed in relation to the Portland UGB. To do this, we created maps of census tract level data for median housing values, housing value per room, and construction of homes since 1970. We then found the means and distributions of this data for the tracts inside and outside the boundary. To investigate perceptions, we analyzed the narratives of several sources opposing and supporting the UGB, paying attention to the role that housing prices and the UGB play within these opposed perspectives.
Despite the centrality of housing prices to arguments opposed to the UGB (and the confidence with which a relationship is stated) we found inconclusive empirical data about the relationship between housing prices and the UGB, corroborating the analysis of prior scholarly sources we found. The perceptions of housing prices and the UGB seem to bear little relation to the data we have found. Arguments about housing prices exist in the context of contrasting narratives, which attribute unaffordability to either violation of neoclassical economic laws of supply and demand, or to insufficient planning for affordable housing to account for the economic and demographic growth the region has seen.
Framing question: What are the effects of regional urban planning on housing equity?
Focus question: What are perceptions and realities of housing prices in relation to the Portland Urban Growth Boundary?