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Originally Posted by dirtyrascal7
You know, I just read an article the other day about Portland and how progressive they were about zoning so that you didn't have to drive 20 minutes to make a simple grocery run and other things like that. It seems like the whole state of Oregon has their shit together... hmmmm... I may have found my new home.  |
I live a 2-minute walk from Fred Meyers, 7-11, 2 coffeeshops, a pizza place, a bar, a dry cleaner's, a laundromat, and a strip mall with assorted businesses, including a FedEx/Kinko's. I also live a 15-minute walk from Oregon State University and all of the things associated with it. The beautiful thing about Corvallis in particular is that even if you go downtown (where the good bars are), and drink, there is (during the school year) a night bus to get you home, or cabs (any time), or your feet (most places are less than a 30-minute walk from downtown).
There is a general emphasis here on the idea of "smart growth". Compare metro Portland to metro Seattle. Both areas have seen a lot of growth in the last ten years, but the key difference is that Portland has something called the Urban Growth Boundary. They also have a regional governing board called Metro which oversees the entire Portland metropolitan area (which covers three counties) and makes sure that transportation and service needs are being met within the urban growth boundary before attempting additional expansion. The UGB encourages reuse and revitalization of older neighborhoods, and the supervision of Metro means that the region is looking at a bigger picture that includes mass transit (like the Portland streetcar, MAX light rail line and the extensive bus system). Seattle is trying to play catch-up with Portland when it comes to mass transit, and they have no UGB, so the suburbs keep pushing further and further outward--which equals sprawl. Meanwhile, in Portland, we are redeveloping older areas into higher density housing and commercial districts.
Oregon's other cities follow Portland's lead in this idea of "smart growth" for the most part. There are a few cities that haven't--Salem, Oregon (the capitol), and Albany, Oregon being two I can think of. Most of the areas that don't adhere to the idea of smart growth are rural and economically depressed, and looking to grow in order to grow their economy. But generally, there's the idea that we don't like sprawl, and we want to have as sustainable an existence as possible--which means not eating up farmland with tract housing.