More about Portland, historic preservation, retail vibrancy, and urban growth boundaries

On the Main Street list, Frank Milan writes:

Portland Oregon started their historic preservation focus early on, so they avoided some of the effects of the urban removal period of the 1960s ... Portland has a requirement downtown that all first floor storefronts are people-active, so even the parking garages have storefronts on the first floor. They also have a flexible program of incentives for development, which involves trading -- for example, one more story for the building in exchange for increased setback from the property line and streetscape improvements ...

My reply:

Historic Preservation matters little if you can't halt sprawl. Cleveland has lots of great historic buildings... So does Detroit. And Baltimore. And Philadelphia. Etc.

DC had a somewhat strong historic preservation program too. But DC also had suburban outmigration, and two periods of white flight after school integration, and then the civil disturbances/riots of 1968.

While the residential neighborhoods have been stabilized through historic preservation, historic preservation in and of itself hasn't been enough to fix commercial districts. What has begun this process is a marginal increase in demand for urban living (in historic building stock) which is drawing more residents into city neighborhoods. (Portland's incentives likely do help them.)

Granted that these cities have much different situations and populations than Portland, even so, the buildings and property values in the center cities (and inner-ring suburbs) are destroyed through sprawl and exurban development, which makes "old buildings" and public infrastructure (schools, rec centers, libraries, etc.) practically worthless.

Portland is somewhat different because they benefit from urban growth boundaries, which seriously checks the development of malls, power centers, strip shopping centers, and the like.

I will track down the per capita retail figures for Portland soon enough, which I expect will "prove" my thesis.

HP is a strategy (and note I am a zealot on HP issues) that helps stabilize the average center city/inner ring commercial district and neighborhood vis-a-vis the suburbs, but I don't think in and of itself it is enough to fully right the sinking shift. Too many financial, economic, and planning policies favor the suburbs over the center cities.

The Main Street Approach is all about the economic fundamentals and model of the community in which the Approach is implemented. Urban growth boundaries are a way of equalizing the economic playing field.

People like Myron Orfield write about the need to rebalancing taxing capacity by merging cities and counties (such as Indianapolis, Lexington, KY, Louisville, KY, etc.) into one political entity.

This equalizes taxing capacity, but it's not enough to rebalance development towards the center, to best utilize extant infrastructure and building stock. You need different laws and zoning regulations to do so.

That's where urban growth boundaries come in.