Via Planetizen.
An article in Citiwire suggests that Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are actually pretty good at planning, but lack the authority to put their plans into action.
Portland, where Metro plays the federally-mandated role of MPO, is one of the few places where the MPO has real authority.
But even here the politics are tough. Local governments are loathe to surrender what they perceive as their local needs to a greater regional good. Witness the local flap over adding industrial land to the UGB in Cornelius.
With or without statutory authority, the politics of regional planning are hard.
21 responses to “The Policy and Politics of MPOs”
Try doing it with 91 different municipalities to satisfy!
Oops, didn’t mean to hit “post” just yet. Here’s my full comment:
Try doing it with 91 different municipalities to satisfy! Still, though, the more people the process involves, the more the regional plan ends up actually reflecting the needs of the region, including groups who might not otherwise have had a say. If politics is the art of allocating resources amongst competing interests, then regional planning is definitely Exhibit A on how to get it done.
Metro had been a miserable failure as shown by giving us housing prices at least double what they would be without their regulations.
Metro has given us a transit system that costs several times what simple buses cost and has had little to none success in increasing market share.
Metro has gloated as traffic congestion got worse as it poured money into wasteful rail.
Metro’s authority needs to be terminated. As does their income stream.
Take away their land use planning and their land use mandates and their density mandates.
Thanks
JK
Metro had been a miserable failure as shown by giving us housing prices at least double what they would be without their regulations.
Proof?
jk: Take away their land use planning and their land use mandates and their density mandates.
No thanks. It’s been working well for more than 30 years and it’s the primary reason why Portland is known for quality of life.
Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that JK’s “at least double” assertion is true, and that disbanding Metro is something that could garner serious support as a policy measure (by initiative?), how would people react to the notion that they’re voting for a minimum of a 50-percent near-term reduction in their own property values?
JeffF Says:
jk: Take away their land use planning and their land use mandates and their density mandates.
No thanks. It’s been working well for more than 30 years and it’s the primary reason why Portland is known for quality of life.
JK: Portland had better schools, less neighborhood traffic, more affordable housing and more neighborhood open space BEFORE Metro mandates made these things end.
How does more neighborhood traffic improve our quality of life?
How do more crowded neighborhoods improve our quality of life?
How do poorer schools improve our quality of life?
How does less neighborhood open space improve our quality of life?
How does less affordable housing improve our quality of life?
How do more congested roads improve our quality of life?
How does giving millions of dollars in corporate subsidies to developers improve our quality of life?
(All of these are either explicit Metro goals, or side effects of Metro policies.)
Thanks
JK
Bob R. Says:
Metro had been a miserable failure as shown by giving us housing prices at least double what they would be without their regulations.
Proof?
JK See the Cost Of Housing section at debunkingportland.com
JK: Also see The Planning Penalty, How Smart Growth Makes Housing Unaffordable at americandreamcoalition.org/penalty.html
Thanks
JK
Don’t forget, before Metro existed, we weren’t fighting a war in Iraq either. Nor were there Trillion dollars of bailouts for bad banks. And no subprime either. Those are probably all Metro’s fault too.
(Well, we weren’t fighting the 5th war in Iraq, we had only fought 3 there.)
JK: Portland had better schools, less neighborhood traffic, more affordable housing and more neighborhood open space BEFORE Metro mandates made these things end.
Well, we also had a whole lot fewer people at that point, JK. Our housing is comparable to other desirable cities on the west cost and there are 37,000 acres of open spaces in the city limits–compare that to other cities, please.
We had better schools before anti-tax zealots gutted the state’s budget, that’s for sure.
Matthew Says: Don’t forget, before Metro existed, we weren’t fighting a war in Iraq either. Nor were there Trillion dollars of bailouts for bad banks. And no subprime either. Those are probably all Metro’s fault too.
JK: Actually a good case can be made that Metro style land use and housing regulation played big part in the Trillion dollar housing bubble.
Simple economics tells us that you cannot have a price bubble when there is rapidly available low cost supply which is what you get in the absence of Metro style regulations.
Thanks
JK
JK, you’ve really got to update your quoting style. You’ve attributed to me something which you said.
Nevertheless:
I asked for proof of JK’s assertions.
Two items were offered by JK:
See the Cost Of Housing section at debunkingportland.com
There are lots of tables comparing housing prices in different regions, and links to a few studies of various topics here and there, but there is no direct thesis that I could find laying out the case for why Metro policies have given us housing prices “at least double” of what they otherwise would be.
Also see The Planning Penalty, How Smart Growth Makes Housing Unaffordable at americandreamcoalition.org/penalty.html
I’ll assume you’re referring to the Oregon edition of the report, found here:
http://americandreamcoalition.org/PenaltyOR.pdf
I’ll admit I’ve just skimmed the report today — I looked at it more thoroughly on one of the many past occasions where you’ve linked to it.
Setting aside any discussion over the creditiblity of Randal O’Toole, and focusing on just what is in the report itself:
The flaw in the methodology of this report is that it seems to assume that all of the increase of property value in a region which has strong planning (as the author defines it), compared to the increase in value of unplanned areas (again as the author defines it), is attributable to a “smart growth penalty” rather than any actual genuine increase in value.
The methodology doesn’t also seem to control for the fact that many areas dealing with population influx, density, and livability issues are going to adopt some kind of planning framework. The report appears to make no effort to distinguish cause from effect here.
In any case, that report puts the “Portland Planning Penalty” at $60,000, which is not “at least double”.
Simple economics tells us that you cannot have a price bubble when there is rapidly available low cost supply which is what you get in the absence of Metro style regulations.
Simple economics actually tells us that real estate is not fungible.
You can buy a plot of land _somewhere_, but you can not buy a plot of land with the geographic attributes you require (where you want to live) — the supply is inherently limited. I can buy a piece of land in Madras, but if what I really want is to live and work in San Francisco, the land in Madras is of limited utility.
Dammit, Bob; I was planning on buying an acre or two in Texas and having it towed to the South Pacific. You mean I can’t do that?
I’ve lived in the Portland area for pretty much my whole life of 35+ years.
It seems to me that the increase in property prices isn’t do to Metro regulations – it’s due to proximity to employment.
For example, Irvington used to be pretty “ghetto” (for lack of a better word) in the 1970s and North Portland and inner SE were seen the same way. People with more money were moving to places like Mountain Park.
Today, Irvington and N Portland have had some of the highest percentage increases in property values over the last 30 years. This wasn’t caused by Metro. The land use regulations were already in place and I haven’t seen where the UGB has affected property within a couple of miles of downtown Portland. Even if someone wants the UGB to be abolished, who wants to drive to downtown Portland from Forest Grove or Troutdale?
I’d say that the lack of investment and the lack of increasing our freeway system has done more to increase property values than the UGB has. Since it takes me 50 minutes to drive from downtown PDX to Vancouver, my house was cheaper than a house in Irvington.
Dammit, Bob; I was planning on buying an acre or two in Texas and having it towed to the South Pacific. You mean I can’t do that?
Well, that depends on how skilled you are as an engineer, doesn’t it? :-)
rapidly available low cost supply
The problem is that it’s not cheap to develop that land. Just look as Damascus. The truth is that it costs more money to provide services when people are more spread out, since it takes more driving, pipes, wires, roads and other infrastructure to serve the same amount of people.
And specifically regarding schools, what about the fact that Portland district has unfair competition since families can move to suburban districts but foist the cost of new schools onto all of the residents in the districts, including ones that have been there for generations and paid for their neighborhood schools many times over? It seems that many of Portland schools’ problems could be because of declining enrollment.
Overall, I wish we could solve the real problem by making people pay for what they use and cause, including things like freeway financing and oil defense that come from the Federal government. If so, people would realize that it’s cheaper to have denser development and we wouldn’t have such a need for planning.
I don’t know if home prices would be 50% less–that would make livable Portland phenomenally cheap and would quickly be changed by law of supply and demand. OTOH, the UGB could be driving Portland prices somewhat higher because, despite our attractiveness to people, Oregon has had unusually high unemployment rates, frequently ranking close to the highest in the country. People are willing to pay more for housing—if there is a job to pay for it. In Oregon that is a big IF.
JK:
Metro had been a miserable failure as shown by giving us housing prices at least double what they would be without their regulations.
By “miserable failure,” of course, he means “spectacular success.” The whole point of planning is to create liveable — that is, highly desirable — communities. But when you do planning right, lots of people want to live there and enjoy the results. Which means, more demand for house.
People are willing to pay a premium to live in the Portland area, thanks to Metro’s decades of successful planning. If planning was poor or non-existent, of course we’d have cheaper housing. Fewer people would want to live here.
When it comes to planning, “more expensive housing” means “it worked.”
Housing prices are supply and demand. If there’s demand for high-end housing like there was in Portland, it can definitely push median prices up.
In order to prove that the UGB is artificially increasing prices of homes, one must prove that there is a shortage of homes on the market. There is not to my knowledge, however.
Any O’Toole / Cox article written will lump all land-use policies as “smart growth” – which is lacking a true analysis as different states have varying regulations.
With the recent housing market crash, prices of homes will certainly and hopefully come down a bit.
Portland is not San Francisco – where their only hope is building up as they are running out of land. That will definitely increase prices artificially.
Portland is still a low density city, UGB or no UGB. When I first moved out here from the East Coast, I was shocked to find out that LA is twice as dense, as I had thought that it was the epitome of auto-centric sprawl.
Our relatively low density is the biggest reason I have consistently argued the rail has no place in Portland