Quote:
Originally Posted by BIMBAM
Just go for the low hanging fruit first and try to follow Vancouver's lead (Canada, not WA). We haven't been able to pull off fully redeveloping the SFH neighbourhoods that cover much of the city's land area and have had NIMBY push back on plenty of things which is part of why prices got so out of control here. That said, densifying with mixed-use midrises along commercial corridors of stripmalls and lowrise commercial could work in Portland as well as here, as could sending your LRT out to suburban commercial centres and letting those areas densify. Our Metrotown area in Burnaby started out as just a mall, then a mall with a skytrain stop, then a mall with a skytrain stop and some apartment highrises nearby, and now it's evolved into a legitimate transit oriented urban neighbourhood. I'm sure you can find similar strategies that could get something built while you push for the harder victories (and you'll need to to avoid our fate).
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I would be very interested in the background of the residents of all of these suburban towers that have sprouted up in suburban Vancouver the past 25 years. My impression is that ethnic Chinese immigrants are a very large proportion of these residents. Personally I don't see a big market for high rise housing in Portland yet. I think the 3-5 story buildings sprouting up all over Portland are more in tune with what people want to live in. Also Portland simply doesn't have a condo market yet. Pretty much all of the newly built density in the city is rentals.