This past week, I refined my social network analysis, adding data pertaining to the boards of directors or partner organizations of organizations in my network. These included the board of directors of the Portland Business Alliance, Go Lloyd, 1000 Friends of Oregon, Central City Concern, PCRI, and Travel Portland; the Central Eastside Industrial Council 2016 Officiers; and the partners of Venture Portland and Oregon Walks. Additionally, I defined each node by the type of organization: City, Developer, Architecture Firm, Other Business, Business Association, Citizen Commission, Nonprofit, and Advocacy Group, allowing for a color coded graph to be created.
Additionally, over this past week I attended the presentation of the Residential Infill Project to the Planning & Sustainability Commission, composed of 11 volunteers, mostly occupying positions in nonprofits or real estate firms, including 2 members of RIP SAC—Teresa St. Martin, with Windermere, and Eli Spevak, of Orange Splott LLC. The PSC on the whole seems to reflect the Portland municipal urbanist consensus. Overall support for RIP as moving in the right direction was not questioned by any members of the PSC; rather, the limited debates which occurred centered on how far and how fast densification should be pushed in policy, given skepticism/opposition by community members, and on the relative importance of negotiating with community stakeholders. Megan Tallmadge, the director of the Coalition of Communities of Color, stood as the most forceful advocate for expanded densification, questioning if limiting zoning intensification to the chosen HOOZ was the right way forward. In response to replies by the city officials that this policy was a balancing act, with the proposals for densification constrained by the opposition of vocal neighborhood associations, Tallmadge advocated for ignoring the concerns of neighborhoods as Portland is in a housing crisis.
Eli Spevak reflected my understanding of the political dynamics of RIP SAC, pointing to the formulation of an urbanist, pro-development coalition, composed of an alliance of nonprofits, developers, and District Coalition representatives, focused on addressing affordability through the aggressive expansion of missing middle housing. Though Spevak characterized this coalition as “unlikely,” my research is leading me to the hypothesis that such a nonprofit-developer nexus stands at the heart of Portland municipal governance, the goals of these two groups aligned through the densification-as-equity narrative.
I also learned more about the dynamics of the PSC in relation to this process—members continually emphasized that the main role of the PSC would come in the formulation of code, following approval of the conceptual report by the City Council. Spevak brought forward a draft letter proposing specific changes to RIP (largely pertaining to allowing added density) and the commission discussed if they were going to edit the letter and endorse it as an organization. The rest of the PSC seemed broadly receptive to his proposals, but were unsure about the procedural dynamic, noting that they would have a chance to alter the exact details of RIP following council approval. They settled on drafting a more conceptual letter to the council through email.
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