A City that Takes its Planning Seriously (or Not)

This article was originally posted by Planetizen. To read the rest of the article, click here.

Portland is a city that’s often better known by the representations of it—like the television show Portlandia—than as an actual working, breathing city, but as Winston Churchill noted, “a joke is a very serious thing.” The people of Portland seem to acknowledge that even the most far-fetched representations of their city and its citizens have kernels of truth packed within them. Of course, even Portland, rife with a highly educated population that is sophisticated in all debates about planning policy, suffers from the same battles with NIMBYs and the usual antagonisms of a pro-development v. pro-environment debate. But it also has a regular live, on-stage discussion event on the topic of planning. That takes place in a jazz club. And when I attended last week, it was packed.…..read more.