I was unable to do any direct work with OPAL in the past week, due to the weekend field trip to Willapa Bay for ENVS 330, but I have advanced my independent study by making some framing questions for my research going forward; refining and annotating my reference list; and through further investigation of the Gateway Regional Center, which ended up including some preliminary GIS analysis of changes in home values, rents, and poverty levels by census tract since 2000. I used my concentration questions as a basis for creating my framing questions (considering they are in the same broad realm of gentrification and transit), but added questions pertaining to describing, evaluating, and imagining an instrumental role for bus riders unions. I also added a couple evaluative questions (What are costs and benefits of gentrification? Who bears these costs and benefits?) to point towards equity and distributional issues surrounding gentrification. While some use the term “revitalization” to refer to the positive side of gentrification (which entail, at the very least, higher property taxes for cities and profits for developers), I see the two sides as fundamentally undifferentiated.
Now, turning towards the issue of the Gateway Regional Center, triumphantly proclaimed in “Opportunity Gateway Concept Plan and Redevelopment Strategy” as the next urban center of Portland, being as it is situated near two highways and two light rail lines and is close to the airport. The document envisions 2019 Gateway in rather vivid detail, imagining it would inspire “a feeling of being amidst architecture. The area feels vibrant and alive. Moving through the Gateway Regional Center, your eye is drawn to a palette of interesting forms and shapes: storefront windows, porches, ornamental lights, railings, balconies, landscaping, artwork, and decorative signs.” (5) The Oregonian article “The lost vision for east Portland’s Gateway” provides a decided rebuke to these dreams, over a decade after the institution of the urban renewal zone, characterizing it as “underdeveloped, underutilized and under-served. Rather than the best of urban life in a more suburban setting, residents and business owners have usually received the worst of both.” The tangible results of the Gateway Renewal Zone amount to some modest streetscape and intersection redesigns. The document imagined “owners of Gateway South (the area once known as Mall 205 and Plaza 205) have developed a collection of stores, restaurants and shops, centered around a park and tied together by garden-lined sidewalks.” (5) Instead, the mall is still called Mall 205 and still looks like Mall 205. The shops that the document imagined appearing alongside 99th Ave have also failed to materialize, assuming that one doesn’t count the Fred Meyer that’s been there since the 60s.
It was difficult for me to find specific scholarly information evaluating the success/failure of Gateway, so I decided to start mapping to assess the quantitative side. I gathered data on poverty rates, housing values, and rents by census tract from 2000 and 2014.
As you can see, the tract roughly conterminous with Gateway has experienced stagnation in terms of housing values and rents, while the rest of East Portland has seen a dramatic increase in poverty rates. Overall, the spatial pattern shows a clear east-west divide along 82nd Avenue, with intense housing appreciation thus far limited to its western side.The City of Portland remains focused on channeling growth into Gateway, as evidenced by both the “Default Urban Form” depicted in the Comprehensive Plan and the current zoning regulations. While inner eastside Portland is zoned to remain fundamentally single-family, excepting development around arterials and on the yellow line to the north, Gateway is projected to grow from bungalows, single-story malls surrounded by surface parking, and low-slung apartments into a dense, mixed use center. It is zoned as a central commercial (CX) zone, which “is intended to provide for commercial development within Portland’s most urban and intense areas,” and features height limits generally around 100 feet, reaching even higher in select pockets. Despite the transit and highway access that planners noted in 2000 and dense zoning, there is little in the way of ongoing development in Gateway. Gateway is far from unique in terms of featuring a disconnect between the existent built environment and the city’s zoning code. Much of east Portland, especially Lents, wide swathes of land alongside I-205 and dotted centers of Gateway has been upzoned to proportions far beyond those of Hawthorne and Division, yet it is in those relatively central locations that the spatial transformation of Portland occurs. The relative failure of the City of Portland to spark gentrification in Gateway, at least so far, illustrates some of the spatial dynamics of the process. The simple provision of transit and public zoning and planning are insufficient to spark the process on their own, and historic disinvestment only leads to gentrification to the extent that it creates a lucrative rent-gap, which itself is highly dependent on proximity to the center.
I’m interested in researching the City of Portland’s justification for its current zoning regime. I suspect it is related to issues of unequal power between different neighborhoods (with wealthier residents more able to organize to maintain a locational monopoly on access to urban amenities through zoning laws). Notions of historical preservationism probably play a role as well, though we should be conscious of the classist undertones of aesthetics and taste.
Leave a Reply