Gordon Price Back in Portland


Gordon Price will be back in Portland for his annual session with the PSU/PDOT Traffic and Transportation Class. His presentation is open to the public:

On Wednesday 11/19, Gordon Price will give a free presentation on the effective integration of transportation in high-density environments with an emphasis on land use. If you’ve seen Price speak before, fear not! He always has a new presentation and a trick or two up his sleeve…

Price is a former City of Vancouver, B.C. Councilor and current Simon Fraser University and University of British Columbia Professor who teaches, researches, and writes extensively on urban development and planning.

To learn more about Price, check out his electronic magazine, Price Tags at http://www.pricetags.ca/pricetags.html or his daily blog on Vancouver and worldwide urban affairs, http://pricetags.wordpress.com/.

What: Gordon Price Presentation
When: Wednesday 11/19, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Where: Portland Building, 1120 SW 5th Ave, 2nd Floor Auditorium
Cost: Free and Open to the Public

Questions?
Contact: Scott Cohen
City of Portland, Office of Transportation
scott.cohen@pdxtrans.org
(503) 823-5345


11 responses to “Gordon Price Back in Portland”

  1. The first video – yes. The second? Not so sure, but it seems so.

    Thanks for the post, Chris!

    Regardless of your particular perspective on transportation and land use issues, Price’s presentation will give you plenty to chew on.

  2. “Is this the Gordon Price you refer to?”

    I love it – another advocate of high density admits that he prefers to live in a house.

    And he admits that high density is not politically popular.

    Why do we even listen to these hypocrites?

  3. Why do we even listen to these hypocrites?

    I think perhaps you weren’t listening closely enough.

    I watched both videos completely and saw no evidence of hypocrisy.

    He was referring to political realities and what people say to each other, and that most people prefer not to live on an arterial street. I don’t think he was expressing his own personal preferences there. (As proof, the address listed on his personal bio page is that of a multi-story multi-family dwelling in a dense neighborhood in Vancouver, BC … looks to me like he’s walking the talk.)

    To use as an example much-debated density hot-spots like the Pearl District and South Waterfront, much of the development has occurred off of arterial streets (unless you consider 10th and 11th with their numerous stop signs and traffic signals and crossings as “arterial”).

    Some development is appropriate along arterials, especially residences over retail and restaurants, but it is not a surprise that some people prefer to live a little bit removed from automobile traffic, whether living in high density multi-family dwellings, or single-family houses.

  4. If people prefer to not live on high traffic streets, why don’t we remove the traffic from the streets, not move the houses? The cars have wheels, even if they run out of gas, a single person can still move one of them off the street in a couple of minutes, where as moving a house takes several people a month.

  5. I love it – another advocate of high density admits that he prefers to live in a house.

    Gordon Price lives in the West End in Vancouver, which is almost certainly more dense than any neighborhood in Oregon. And it is lovely.

  6. “Gordon Price lives in the West End in Vancouver, which is almost certainly more dense than any neighborhood in Oregon. And it is lovely.”
    And he proably bought that home quite a few years back, when the prices were relatively affordable. I’m, seriously, not knocking the concept, at all. But where is the cost on this type of living going?

  7. Having been a past guest at Gordon’s home, I just have to chime in here.

    Gordon lives in a rather simple, mid-rise, 1960s era, cooperative building near Stanley Park. He lives in a high density building, in a high density neighborhood, with the busiest street in Downtown Vancouver just two blocks away. And yes, it is lovely.

    Agree or disagree with Gordon, he is one of the best public speakers out there, and he is guaranteed to make you think and question your own assumptions about urban design.

  8. Lance Lindahl wrote: Gordon lives in a rather simple, mid-rise, 1960s era, cooperative building near Stanley Park.

    How many of those types of buildings exist in Portland?

    It seems that all of the “urban, dense” buildings being built are luxury, not simplistic…overrated, expensive buildings rather than affordable for the median household here in Portland.

  9. “How many of those types of buildings exist in Portland?”

    You mean, large buildings built in the 60s? Not very many. We tore a lot of buildings down in the 60s to build freeways. There are a lot of suburbs that have houses built in the 60s in them, and a lot of them are where the median households in Portland live nowdays. Of course, back in the 60s the rich lived in those houses at the edge of town, and the median households lived in the buildings that were being torn down.

    Hummm, I think I see a trend here: Rich people get new buildings, other people get older buildings… And so 40 years from now, the Pearl will probably be middle class.

  10. Matthew wrote: We tore a lot of buildings down in the 60s to build freeways.

    That is not correct.

    The largest removal of buildings had nothing to do with a freeway, but so-called urban renewal projects such as the South Auditorium District and the Lloyd District (which was built to take advantage of a freeway, but not because of the freeway itself). The South Auditorium District in particular displaced thousands of residents to build very plain, spartan buildings which has little “life” in the pedestrian areas, many retail spaces are vacant, and attempts to revitalize it recently haven’t been successful either (one was to convert a fully occupied apartment complex, evict all the residents, replace the units with condos…the developer had trouble selling the units so one building was turned back into apartments.)

    Comparatively speaking, few buildings in Portland were removed because of a freeway – yes, I-5 (through North Portland) and I-405 had impacts, but I-5 south, I-84 and I-205 as well as U.S. 26 had little to zero impact on existing development – there generally wasn’t any, or the freeway was built in an undevelopable area (i.e. Sullivan’s Gulch).

    If anything, Portland’s experience with “urban planning” is more to evict “undesirable” humans from existing homes…

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