Portlanders show up for more housing as Residential Infill Project heads to council

RIP is as much about choice as it is about density. Right now if you want to live close to town you can live in a hotel style apartment building or you can buy / rent a single family home and hope you can afford it. I’m not convinced this will solve all of our problems (I would bet most people don’t think that) but if we keep with single family housing only our problems or traffic, housing cost, and class / racial inequality will keep getting worse.

“People like having some space for kids and pets to run around and play, and some space to entertain guests and to garden and to be shaded by tall trees in summer. People like having some separation from neighbors, so you don’t sneeze and your neighbor says bless you.”

There are lots of ways these things exist in dense neighbourhoods:
– PARKS: they are great for playing, and you don’t have to mow the lawn. When I lived in Vancouver, BC in a neighbourhood of low-rise apartment buildings I literally had a park on either end of my block. All the grass/trees/flowers without any of the work. All the hours my partner and I currently spent mowing/weeding/maintaining our yard in Portland could be spent doing other things (like enjoying our neighbourhood parks).

– EXTRA SPACE: While these 4-6-8 unit building don’t have to include amenity rooms or variations thereof, they could. Co-op housing frequently includes community run space for exactly these purposes (large kitchen with room for entertaining/meetings, spare rooms that can be reserved for guests, etc).

– GARDENS: Not everyone wants to garden, but for those that do there is no reason why these units (2-4-6-8) couldn’t have garden plots available (especially as the ratio of built space to lot size shifts) AND/OR why we can’t have more community gardens.

– SHADE: Again, no reason why these units / increased density means removing shade trees.

– SEPARATION: While some people just want to be alone and not see anyone, plenty of people enjoy the benefits of neighbours. Who better to watch your cat while you go away for a few days or your kid for a hour while you run to the store. As for sound, there are So Many Ways to make apartments soundproof. (In my last apartment I rarely heard my neighbours unless I was talking with them).

First let’s address a couple of technical points. The Residential Infill project would only impact the city of Portland, so the suburbs would not be altered. Also, even if this proposal passes, the rezoned parts of Portland would be far from having “extreme density.” Extreme density is something that we can observe in cities such as Hong Kong where residential high-rises cluster into a small land area. In Portland, density would only increase modestly as some single-family units are replaced with duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes.

With or without this rezoning, the vast majority of the land available for residential housing in the Portland metropolitan area would continue to be occupied by single-family houses. Those families that are looking for a suburban lifestyle and a single family house would continue to have ample opportunities to live as they wish. However, up until now, it was literally illegal for those who wish to live in more liveable urban environments to do so. It was outlawed by zoning regulations. And it is quite probable that many of those workers who currently drive to the suburbs after work do so because no other options are available to them. These modest revisions to city of Portland’s zoning would merely give people the freedom to choose from different kinds of lifestyles.

Up until now we have addressed how zoning revisions would increase choices in the greater Portland metro area. Let’s also discuss about what you list as the benefits of living in a suburb. You claim that the number one reason why living in the suburbs is preferable is because it increases the living space for its inhabitants. I would argue exactly the opposite.

The living space inside one’s home obviously depends entirely on the square footage of a given residence—whether the home happens to located in the suburbs or in the city is irrelevant. The average amount of outdoor private space may in fact be greater in the suburbs than in the cities. While some suburban homeowners may take advantage of some of that space at least some of the time, if you drive through any suburb you will quickly notice that for the most part humans are nowhere to be seen. The only regular outdoor activity that the archetypal suburban homeowner seems to engage in is the mowing of the lawn, usually creating a vast grassy area that completely destroys the natural vegetation yet creates zero benefit to the people living on the property. Even children do not play much outdoors anymore. Since the suburbs are unwalkable and unbikeable almost by definition, if you do happen to spot a live human in the typical American suburb, he or she is most likely to be unhealthy, overweight, and increasingly, even morbidly obese.

The unhealthy lifestyle choices in the suburbs compound themselves. Because the residents do not have much opportunity to engage in any kind of physical activity, after a while they lose their natural desire for exercise and movement. Eventually, rather than taking whatever modest measures they could to counteract the effects of their detrimental lifestyle choices, they start to view physical activity as some kind of negative. They put much effort into ensuring that they can store their motorized couches as close to their intended destinations as possible. Circling around parking lots looking for the closest space to the store becomes normal, as if walking a few extra feet were something that a rational person tries to avoid as much as possible. As Mr. Money Mustache has pointed out, this process reaches its pinnacle of insanity with the drive-thru, an infrastructural invention that would make some sense if we were living on Mars where we had to get our “business done without ever coming in contact with the planet’s hazardously thin sub-zero atmosphere.” The suburban dweller loses his ability to move around his own body of his own accord.

Since a resident of the suburbs spends his entire existence in a hermetically sealed climate-controlled box, from his home to his office building to his motorized couch, he also loses his ability to acclimate to the changing of the seasons. Rather than slowly adjusting to the increase in temperatures as spring rolls around and we head into the summer months, he can only tolerate his air-conditioned environment. And this brings us back to all of that living space that we talked about earlier: most suburban homeowners would be horrified if someone were to suggest to him that he spend some time sitting, let alone exercising, outdoors if the temperatures are even slightly elevated from what he considers to be his comfort zone. The idea that the human body has great potential to adjust to a variety of outside conditions is entirely foreign to his way of thinking. He may have half-an-acre, an acre, or more private space, where all vegetation save grass has been meticulously destroyed, but for the most part all of it goes to waste.

Even more importantly, the land goes to waste exactly because it is private. Humans are social animals. We like to do things in groups, and only the rarest of us will have enough discipline and self-motivation to do something regularly if we are not motivated externally to do so.

In this slightly upzoned Portland, residents are more likely to have opportunities to walk or bike to work, to school, to the store, or to the park—and because it is a park, it is much more likely that we will have others to share our adventures with.