To contextualize the neighborhood associations geographically and in terms of socio-economic indicators, I created six maps. The variables mapped are the percent of residents 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree; percent of the population that identifies as white; the percent of owner-occupied households; median household income; percent of people living in the same house as one year ago; and percent of households categorized as families. I created this maps by using 2014 American Community Survey data by block group, spatially joining each block group to the neighborhood association boundaries, and mapping the mean figure for each of the variables. Unlabeled territories are either unclaimed by a neighborhood association or claimed by multiple associations (indicated by dotted borders).
Over the course of research for this past week, I’ve come to the conclusion that I haven’t been focusing on perhaps the most important or interesting aspect of the Residential Infill Project. My research question was, if anything, too narrow and, more importantly, answerable largely through generalizations of a laundry list (some have bought into the city’s agenda and solutions for housing issues; some are vehemently opposed; all possess little power beyond being able to raise an organized stink). It’s relationship with the guiding question was a little tenuous too, with a lot of ground to cover between the very narrowly descriptive and broadly evaluative worlds. While doing more research on the infill project, it came to my attention just how much I was seeing municipal policy unfold before me. The timeline of the project aligns almost perfectly with this semester, featuring reports of the revised proposal to the Residential Infill Project Stakeholder Advisory Committee and to the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission in October, followed by two public hearings with the City Council in November, and a vote on December 7th (assuming they don’t simply vote at the end of the November public hearing).
Thus, I’ve decided to reorient my study into more of an examination of the process of drafting RIP itself and the powers expressed therein—how is the creation of infill policy shaped by local actors? Some neighborhood associations are actors in this process, and all but one of the neighborhood coalitions had an associate on the SAC, but these organizations are but one relatively marginal type of actor in the process. Their engagement occurred after the plan had been drafted and revised by a body of ~23 citizens, of which about half were developers of some sort and most of the remainder were architects or realtors. It remains to be seen how their input and the public feedback is incorporated into the plan, but their overall role is almost assuredly one of extracting acceptable compromises rather than shaping agendas.
I’ve also decided that a coded/quantified content analysis is a relatively inappropriate methodology given the nature of the neighborhood associations and their vastly different degrees of activity and engagement with infill plans. Perhaps a dozen or so of the associations even discuss RIP at length and developing a code would seem to require more time than it would save in terms of content analysis. It seems more worthwhile to simply quote and aggregate the opinions which engage with infill, focusing primarily on the surveys and letters sent by neighborhood associations, but including perhaps meeting minutes and newsletters in the relatively rare cases in which they say enough to be analyzed.
Moving forward, I intend to refocus my investigation into two fronts. First, a closer examination of how the project has changed/not changed since its inception, achieved by studying the meeting minutes and draft project documents of the Residential Infill Project Stakeholder Advisory Committee and by comparing the most recent proposal to the forthcoming one. Continuing in this vein, it would be interesting to investigate the initial given rationales and guiding principles for the RIP. Second, a social network analysis of infill policy creation, based first on the members of the Residential Infill Project Stakeholder Advisory Committee, emanating outward to cover the organizations (including neighborhood associations and coalitions) with which they are associated. Other important nodes to incorporate are those organizations supporting Measure 26-179 and those supporting or opposing the push for inclusionary zoning.
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