Portland 2035 Comprehensive Plan

[dubu]

i thought they had a height limit because it would cost too much to build tall buildings downtown because the ground was not easy to build buildings on.

[PDXDENSITY]

Originally Posted by dabom

i thought they had a height limit because it would cost too much to build tall buildings downtown because the ground was not easy to build buildings on.

It's mainly due to height restrictions, not actual engineering limitations.

[dubu]

portland is really hilly so you never see the skyline from the suburbs anyways. unless you are on a hill or live in se portland

[zilfondel]

Originally Posted by dabom

i thought they had a height limit because it would cost too much to build tall buildings downtown because the ground was not easy to build buildings on.

You are partially on the right track; taller buildings are much more expensive (per square foot cost) due to needing deep pile foundation and structures engineered for seismic stability. However, it just means that the building will cost more, and developers tend to want to spend less money on the building to turn higher profits.

Originally Posted by dabom

portland is really hilly so you never see the skyline from the suburbs anyways. unless you are on a hill or live in se portland

From my experience, it is precisely the people who live on the hill who are opposed to taller buildings downtown, as they could block their great views of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by bvpcvm

[W]hile there are a lot of development opportunities in the central city, many of them are tied up in surface parking (at least downtown) and the owners don't seem very interesting in doing anything with their properties. So we have fewer real development opportunities than in theory. Moreover, anyone who rents here is paying through the nose, and rents will return to earth more quickly with higher buildings. [Emphasis added]

Crowhurst Lennard questions this last claim, and so would I. What is the effect of highrise development on rents and prices in the central city? Construction in steel and concrete is more expensive than medium-rise construction in wood or brick, and consequently depends on higher rents from both residential and commercial tenants to pencil out. These higher rents are achieved through a combination of advertising (million-dollar views as a form of conspicuous consumption, luxury condos as the new status symbol), silver-plated amenities (gyms, tanning beds, etc.) that reduce the need for residents to leave their buildings or interface with their neighborhoods, and to some degree through the effects of such highly-concentrated density itself, which drives up rents in the immediate vicinity (even if adding more housing stock actually lowers rents citywide). Also, of course, developers sell many of these condos to absentee tenants who effectively use them as speculative investments, as places to park their wealth. Catering to this kind of investor does nothing to increase affordability for Portlanders.

Of course affordability is complicated. It may have more to do with policy than urban form. (Low-rise London was once relatively affordable, had few skyscrapers, lots of council flats. Now has a number of skyscrapers, far fewer council flats, is ridiculously expensive. Berlin nowadays is one of the most successful -- and affordable cities -- in Europe, has few highrises, no center. Municipal housing policy is an important variable in these cases, but they show that mid-rise / polycentric form is by no means incompatible with affordability). As far as housing supply is concerned, it seems to me that twenty medium-rise buildings on Grand/MLK (or on 82nd!) could rise just as quickly as (in fact, probably far quicker than) one massive tower on NW 12th.

As for the parking lot tycoons, they're obviously sitting on their land, gambling the value will go up as more and more skyscrapers rise up around it. Rather than rewarding them for speculating with our neighborhoods, a reasonable alternative would be to implement a tax on parking lots.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

People sometimes point to Paris as a model for a dense, medium rise city. It's true that Paris is very dense, but it achieves that by being very consistently dense. If there are any single family detached houses in the inner arrondissements, they're certainly very rare. This is not a model that's replicable to Portland.

Fair point. However, we're still a long way from matching the density of Paris (56,000/sq mi, according to Wikipedia) and to catch up, we certainly don't have to concentrate all of our density downtown. There's no question at the moment of the city running out of available land, not as long as we have so many parking lots downtown and plenty of low-density buildings lining Belmont, Hawthorne, MLK, and so on.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

And yet in the Pearl we have a model of a very livable community with many buildings over 100'. The map below, taken from the Block 136 Design Review, shows the heights of existing buildings in the Pearl.

As the map shows, south of Lovejoy those tall buildings are rather the exception than the rule. And I'm okay with exceptions: they're a bargaining chip to be used, under the right circumstances, to extract really juicy concessions from developers.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

We shouldn't be doing towers in the park style planning. But no one is proposing that, and the Portland Zoning Code has plenty of provisions to prevent it. (Ground floor active uses, maximum setbacks, transit street main entrances, etc etc).

Really? Isn't a building like the Overton basically the same thing, albeit with one floor of retail and parking garage entrances beneath the park? Skinny towers are just as effective as towers-in-park at segregating their residents from the street.

Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY

I believe the true measure of livability will be maintaining our UGB and allowing growth to happen within it. The true choice of livability is between further subsidizing sprawl or protecting the ecosystem by creating a dense, connected neighborhood.

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen, as bvpcvm mentioned, demonstrate the highrise vs. sprawl alternative to be a false dilemma. It's not a coincidence that lots of North American cities have both dense, high-rise cores and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Both are the consequence of an urbanism that can't distinguish the interests of the neighborhood and community from those of developers and real estate speculators.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

I would encourage you to go see South Waterfront again next time you're in Portland.... The area where the streetcar, tram, and bicycle valet all meet is one of my favorite urban scenes in Portland. With its large number of cyclists, its LEED buildings and its wonderful open spaces it is a very 'Portland' neighborhood, unless your notion of 'Portland' is very narrowly drawn to only include the streetcar suburbs.

Okay, I'll certainly take another look. Although, to be perfectly honest, I'm afraid my notion of 'Portland' may indeed be based largely on those erstwhile streetcar suburbs east of the river or northwest of I-405. I find the Pearl attractive aesthetically and from an urbanism standpoint, but culturally it doesn't do much for me. And that's partly why I'm afraid of concentrating so much density in just one area -- it's medium-rise cities, in my experience, that have just the right level of consistent density to provide a variety and meaningful diversity of urban environments wherein everyone can find someplace they feel comfortable and at home.

[PDXDENSITY]

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen, as bvpcvm mentioned, demonstrate this to be a false dilemma. It's not a coincidence that lots of North American cities have both dense, high-rise cores and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Both are the consequence of an urbanism that can't distinguish the interests of the neighborhood and community from those of developers and real estate speculators.

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen are also approaching thousands of years old. It's not a good comparison. Density does preserve ecosystem and wilderness in conjunction with the UGB. Europe is an ecological disaster, also. Many original species extinct. We are smarter than that.

[dubu]

longer max lines and more apartments on the max lines?

might have to demolish some houses to do that though

[maccoinnich]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Crowhurst Lennard questions this last claim, and so would I. What is the effect of highrise development on rents and prices in the central city? Construction in steel and concrete is more expensive than medium-rise construction in wood or brick, and consequently depends on higher rents from both residential and commercial tenants to pencil out. These higher rents are achieved through a combination of advertising (million-dollar views as a form of conspicuous consumption, luxury condos as the new status symbol), silver-plated amenities (gyms, tanning beds, etc.) that reduce the need for residents to leave their buildings or interface with their neighborhoods, and to some degree through the effects of such highly-concentrated density itself, which drives up rents in the immediate vicinity (even if adding more housing stock actually lowers rents citywide). Also, of course, developers sell many of these condos to absentee tenants who effectively use them as speculative investments, as places to park their wealth. Catering to this kind of investor does nothing to increase affordability for Portlanders.

Rental prices are driven by what the market will bear, not by what it costs to build a building. A city with a tight rental market supports fairly high rents. The idea that concrete / steel buildings rent at higher prices than wood framed building isn't borne out by a cursory look at apartments that are available for rent in Portland. A 589 sq ft apartment at the Cyan (concrete frame) rents for $1,569 a month, or $2.66 a sq ft. A 587 sq ft apartment at the Parker (wood frame) rents for $1,593, or $2.71 a sq ft.

And where in Portland are all these condos that are being hoarded by foreign investors? Given that the Cosmopolitan on the Park is the first large condo building to be built post-recession, this claim of Lennard's doesn't even make sense. In any case, a few empty units isn't actually a huge problem, given that US municipalities largely fund public services through property taxes. (The UK has very low property taxes, and high income/sales taxes, so empty units are a much bigger problem there from a public policy point of view).

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Of course affordability is complicated. It may have more to do with policy than urban form. (Low-rise London was once relatively affordable, had few skyscrapers, lots of council flats. Now has a number of skyscrapers, far fewer council flats, is ridiculously expensive. Berlin nowadays is one of the most successful -- and affordable cities -- in Europe, has few highrises, no center. Municipal housing policy is an important variable in these cases, but they show that mid-rise / polycentric form is by no means incompatible with affordability). As far as housing supply is concerned, it seems to me that twenty medium-rise buildings on Grand/MLK (or on 82nd!) could rise just as quickly as (in fact, probably far quicker than) one massive tower on NW 12th.

London still has very few skyscrapers relative to the size of the city. The vast majority of its population lives in 1-2 story buildings. There have been a number of high rises built in the City / Canary wharf since the 1980s, but these are primarily office buildings. The biggest development issue in London right now is rich people building giant basements in neighborhoods like Kensington and Belgravia.

That Berlin is very affordable relative to other European cities probably has more to do with the fact that it a) is not the major financial center of Germany and b) had lots of vacant land on which to build post-reunification.

Originally Posted by Encolpius

As for the parking lot tycoons, they're obviously sitting on their land, gambling the value will go up as more and more skyscrapers rise up around it. Rather than rewarding them for speculating with our neighborhoods, a reasonable alternative would be to implement a tax on parking lots.

Well, we already do have property taxes on parking lots, but given the stupidity of Oregon voters in the 1990s, assessed value doesn't keep up with market value. I would fully support changing this. But if we're going to move to a model that taxes land value more than land use, it would intensify development (i.e. you'd probably get more tall buildings, not less).

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Fair point. However, we're still a long way from matching the density of Paris (56,000/sq mi, according to Wikipedia) and to catch up, we certainly don't have to concentrate all of our density downtown. There's no question at the moment of the city running out of available land, not as long as we have so many parking lots downtown and plenty of low-density buildings lining Belmont, Hawthorne, MLK, and so on.

I don't think the neighbors adjacent to Belmont and Hawthorne would appreciate having even more of the city's development pushed onto those corridors. This already a hot political issue, before anybody has even tried to (further) limit density downtown.

Originally Posted by Encolpius

As the map shows, south of Lovejoy those tall buildings are rather the exception than the rule. And I'm okay with exceptions: they're a bargaining chip to be used, under the right circumstances, to extract really juicy concessions from developers.

And no one is arguing that every block in the Central City should be a tall building. Not me, not the City Council, and not the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability. Indeed BPS are proposing the opposite: that low rise historic buildings be preserved, by strengthening the FAR bonus system.

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Really? Isn't a building like the Overton basically the same thing, albeit with one floor of retail and parking garage entrances beneath the park? Skinny towers are just as effective as towers-in-park at segregating their residents from the street.

No. In addition to having ground floor retail and townhouse units that open directly onto the street, it preserves the traditional street pattern. (Something Corbusian planning sought to eradicate.)

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen, as bvpcvm mentioned, demonstrate this to be a false dilemma. It's not a coincidence that lots of North American cities have both dense, high-rise cores and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Both are the consequence of an urbanism that can't distinguish the interests of the neighborhood and community from those of developers and real estate speculators.

Again, Cologne and Copenhagen—wonderful cities—are not models that are replicable in Portland. In choosing what to build, developers respond to what they're allowed to build. If we want to create a medium density city like those then we can get rid of the R5-20 zoning and let multifamily buildings be built on every block in the city. I don't see that happening.

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Okay, I'll certainly take another look. Although, to be perfectly honest, I'm afraid my notion of 'Portland' may indeed be based largely on those erstwhile streetcar suburbs east of the river or northwest of I-405. I find the Pearl attractive aesthetically and from an urbanism standpoint, but culturally it doesn't do much for me. And that's partly why I'm afraid of concentrating so much density in just one area -- it's medium-rise cities, in my experience, that have just the right level of consistent density to provide a variety and meaningful diversity of urban environments wherein everyone can find someplace they feel comfortable and at home.

That's fine that you like the streetcar suburbs. But please don't project your own aesthetic tastes onto other people. Some of us like living in dense urban environments.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Forumers: honestly, I don't understand outbursts of aggression like these. Your targets are, after all, members of the community who appear to care passionately about the well-being of their neighborhoods and take the time to involve themselves in the sort of public process that, by your own admission, most of you couldn't be bothered to turn up for (thank you to those who do, and report them to us). They're not opponents of density, they're not mouthpieces for out-of-town interests or sprawl developers; they just happen to disagree with you (for mostly well-articulated reasons) about the relationship between building height and livability.



Are you perhaps misunderstanding their point of view?

As the woman with the pretentious Brit accent points out, high density does not automatically mean buildings taller than 100 feet. 'Even BPS’s own publication... reported [that] Portland does not need height to compensate for any foreseeable shortage of development capacity.' If density can be achieved (and perhaps spread over a far larger area of the central city and eastside) without towers, then why is building high so imperative? I haven't heard any very articulate reasons on this forum so far, just variants of a false dilemma between highrises or no new development whatsoever.

The South Waterfront, which has been deliberately built as high as the market will sustain, is by all accounts (I haven't lived in Portland for a while so tell me if I'm grossly mistaken here) a dreary place that doesn't feel very 'Portland' at all; in fact, it lacks the diversity of street life and cultural activity that distinguish what most of us think of as 'urban'. The sections of the Pearl District built to lower height limits have a much different feel. They feel simply like pricier, snootier versions of older Portland neighborhoods like NW, Buckman or Boise-Eliot. Ms. Crowhurst Lennard gives plenty of reasons (link that mac posted), grounded in very recent social science research, why neighborhoods composed predominantly of 'human-scale, five- to eight-story, stepped back, mixed-use building[s] around an interior garden courtyard' promote a more vibrant community and collective life, and a more sustainable and affordable city overall. A height limit of 100 feet would produce a neighborhood of buildings like these. What's so intolerable about that?

Moreover, why is it impossible for some people to have a rational conversation about the future of cities without caricaturing their opponents as Morlocks? Didn't the awful twentieth century sufficiently teach us to beware of this haughty and disdainful variety of 'urbanism'?

My issue is when someone who lives in a downtown highrise complains that there shouldn't be any more highrises going up around there building. This has nothing to do with the city or creating a vibrant community, this is about protecting one's views, which I have no sympathy for when they choose to live in a highrise downtown.

[PDXDENSITY]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

My issue is when someone who lives in a downtown highrise complains that there shouldn't be any more highrises going up around there building. This has nothing to do with the city or creating a vibrant community, this is about protecting one's views, which I have no sympathy for when they choose to live in a highrise downtown.

Exactly. It's just monied pretentious shit.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

My issue is when someone who lives in a downtown highrise complains that there shouldn't be any more highrises going up around there building. This has nothing to do with the city or creating a vibrant community, this is about protecting one's views, which I have no sympathy for when they choose to live in a highrise downtown.

Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY

Exactly. It's just monied pretentious shit.

I don't doubt that selfish considerations of this sort are what it's mostly about for some of the people advocating height restrictions. Then again, people who live in a neighborhood do have a right to share their opinion on the future of that neighborhood. I'm concerned, though, that hurling the same epithets at everyone who challenges the prevailing strategy on development is just a cheap way of suppressing the existence of meaningful disagreement about that strategy.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Rental prices are driven by what the market will bear, not by what it costs to build a building.

If only rental prices reflected anything so rational as what it costs to build a building! Scandalously, alas, the upper echelon of the market is largely driven by things like advertising, status and exclusivity, and above all by speculation and investment. Instead of encouraging the diversion of housing resources into such wasteful and irrational expenditure, the city could encourage affordable development in cheaper neighborhoods of the city by limiting highrise development where rents are most expensive.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

And where in Portland are all these condos that are being hoarded by foreign investors?

They don't need to be foreigners. Various studies, for example, have suggested that Brits are far more likely than Russian oligarchs to buy London condos for investment purposes, and I'm sure the same is true for Americans in American cities. The long-term reasons why speculative real estate investment is growing more attractive have to do with global economic trends which I fear I couldn't get into without risking a rant about tall buildings, capitalism and the World Bank. Suffice it to say that if this phenomenon hasn't yet reached in Portland in a big way, it probably will if rents continue to rise between now and 2035, as the developers who will build the next generation of high-rise towers in Portland and the banks that will finance them are well aware.

Or have you already forgotten the role that real estate speculation played in Portland's last housing bubble?

Encouraging luxury highrise development fans real estate speculation, which is bad for rents downtown and bad for affordability citywide.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

London still has very few skyscrapers relative to the size of the city. The vast majority of its population lives in 1-2 story buildings. There have been a number of high rises built in the City / Canary wharf since the 1980s, but these are primarily office buildings. The biggest development issue in London right now is rich people building giant basements in neighborhoods like Kensington and Belgravia.

That Berlin is very affordable relative to other European cities probably has more to do with the fact that it a) is not the major financial center of Germany and b) had lots of vacant land on which to build post-reunification.

Good points. Highrise condos that sell for obscene amounts (and generate equally obscene advertising campaigns) are being built all over London, but perhaps these are small in relation to the quantity of housing stock overall. In any case, I think policy is the far more important variable: Germany has very progressive housing policies that limit rent increases, and London used to build staggering amounts of council housing. I support radical changes in housing policy to favor of affordability, as I think I've already mentioned on this forum.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Well, we already do have property taxes on parking lots, but given the stupidity of Oregon voters in the 1990s, assessed value doesn't keep up with market value. I would fully support changing this. But if we're going to move to a model that taxes land value more than land use, it would intensify development (i.e. you'd probably get more tall buildings, not less).

Intensifying development is great. Putting a limit on heights above 100' would spread that development more widely.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

I don't think the neighbors adjacent to Belmont and Hawthorne would appreciate having even more of the city's development pushed onto those corridors. This already a hot political issue, before anybody has even tried to (further) limit density downtown.

I appreciate the political delicacy here. However, I suspect there's a way to make increased density more palatable to everybody in Portland by 1) spreading it equitably rather than concentrating it in just one or two neighborhoods, and 2) through a strong public process that forces developers to listen to and address neighbors' reasonable concerns. Portland is unique among its peers in having such a high degree of public participation in planning, which in turn is due to the absence of many powerful corporate interests that often dominate discussions of policy and the direction of downtown development in other cities. These are strengths that many people on this forum may not fully appreciate.

As for historic architecture, it seems empirically this is less likely to survive in a highrise district than one in which historic buildings and contemporary ones are of more-or-less equal heights. Probably this has to do with the development pressure exerted by high-intensity land uses like condo and office towers.

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

No. In addition to having ground floor retail and townhouse units that open directly onto the street, it preserves the traditional street pattern. (Something Corbusian planning sought to eradicate.)

Given that Portland's streets are gridded just like Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, I don't understand the distinction you're making. Is it that the Overton (and other buildings of this typology in the South Waterfront, e.g.) occupy ordinary city blocks rather than megablocks? If so... fine, but surely you agree such architecture nonetheless appears colder and more remote than, say, five stories of apartment windows over shops, built up to the property line on both sides of the street?

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

That's fine that you like the streetcar suburbs. But please don't project your own aesthetic tastes onto other people. Some of us like living in dense urban environments.

You missed my point: I'm not saying everyone has to love Boise-Eliot and hate the Pearl, I'm pointing out that cities of dense (but mostly medium-rise) urban neighborhoods accommodate more diversity generally, thus catering to a wider variety of tastes and experiences. In contrast, the more typical North American model of high-rise financial district, low-rise yuppie entertainment district / kitschy shopping/tourism district, sprawling suburbs, is quite boring for everyone (except perhaps for yuppies, but even they must find their lives tedious).

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Again, Cologne and Copenhagen—wonderful cities—are not models that are replicable in Portland.

Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY

Cities like Cologne and Copenhagen are also approaching thousands of years old. It's not a good comparison. Density does preserve ecosystem and wilderness in conjunction with the UGB. Europe is an ecological disaster, also. Many original species extinct. We are smarter than that.

It's fantastic that you care so strongly about preserving the environment, PDXDENSITY. For precisely that reason, you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss urbanist principles based on the greenest of the world's existing cities. If you think Europe is an ecological disaster, well, you'll be astonished when you come and visit.

Meanwhile, the idea that no lessons applicable to Portland can be gleaned from two of Northern Europe's most important and vibrant cities is ridiculous. But you might have the wrong impression about them if you only imagine medieval squares and churches with some musty old canals and a Roman amphitheater. In fact, all the major cities of Northern and Central Europe are modern cities, built by modern planners and architects almost wholly in the period since the Industrial Revolution (and rebuilt after WWII or since the end of the Cold War). They nonetheless follow very different development models than most of the cities of North America -- models which, from the standpoint of accommodating density and preserving agriculture and green space, seem to work amazingly well by comparison.

My argument is not, though, that Portland should blindly imitate any other city or model. Least of all the model of highrise luxury condominium or apartment towers that has so consistently failed to provide affordability or prevent sprawl in all the countless locations it's been tried, yet nonetheless seems to be regarded as though, to paraphrase Maggie Thatcher, There Were No Alternative.

[maccoinnich]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Given that Portland's streets are gridded just like Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, I don't understand the distinction you're making. Is it that the Overton (and other buildings of this typology in the South Waterfront, e.g.) occupy ordinary city blocks rather than megablocks? If so... fine, but surely you agree such architecture nonetheless appears colder and more remote than, say, five stories of apartment windows over shops, built up to the property line on both sides of the street?

Are you really saying you can't see a difference between the street level engagement of this



and this?



(FWIW I'm not overly fond of the rotated axis of the Overton. I think the engagement between the podium and the tower is clumsy. But I am not particularly worried about it eroding the livability of the city.)

[soleri]

The Corbu archetype probably maxed out in Portland in the 1960s with the half dozen or so lookalike towers in south downtown. The north Pearl towers under construction will probably be the last to break 20 floors and they barely rhyme let alone oppress with their non-uniform appearance.

The argument here that Encolpius wants to advance would have been useful some 50 years ago when cities were clear-cutting their old urban fabric in order to construct horrors like Cabrini-Green and Pruitt-Igoe. Hats off to the organic urbanists for waging war against those monsters. But that's not what it happening today. There's no Vanouver or Hong Kong in the making (let alone Chinese investors) robbing Pearl of its quaint brownfields' charm. I would agree South Waterfront's inorganic urbanism is problematic. Still, it's nice to think a city is more than tall buildings but the relatively few in Portland are not the enemy. The enemy, if there is one, lurks on the periphery of growth boundary, patiently biding their time until they can turn their bulldozers on more irreplaceable farmland.

I'm ideologically in tune with the Jane Jacobs' school, and I appreciate this conversation coming from Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard and Michael Mahaffy. In my heart of hearts, I would love to see a city with five-story residential blocks that are the life-blood of old European cities. But American cities got to that party late and it's probably our unlucky fate to have this mix-and-match development style. That said, it's not a real battle since most areas of Portland will not be affected by it. The argument shouldn't pit one kind of density against another. It should be real cities against ungodly sprawl.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Are you really saying you can't see a difference between the street level engagement of this * and this? *

Can we begin by discussing the similarities? In both cases, the towers are too tall to fit into the surrounding cityscape, too tall to fit into the frame of the street, and both try to disguise this at street level by travestying nature and traditional urban forms (is that a triumphal arch I see standing forlornly in the Ville Radieuse's central square?). This leads to, as you correctly point out, abrupt disengagement between the horizontal elements (non-residential) facing the street and the vertical elements (residential) fleeing it. Both are, from the perspective of a twentyodd-story resident, towers-in-a-park, and the orientation of the tower relative to the street serves in both cases to minimize the number of windows actually overlooking the street, creating barriers of distance (and in the Overton's case, reflective glare). Really, I couldn't say it better than bvpcvm already has in another thread:

Originally Posted by bvpcvm

[E]ven though the base apparently has some retail - some 'eyes on the street', the tower is set back so far that it makes it all look like a fortress, the people in the tower won't interact with the street at all. In fact, they're fleeing the street, and the city.

Surely the similarities are striking enough that one could be excused for calling the Overton's architecture 'Corbusian'. If not, well, just look at those pilotis where the tower meets the park for chrissakes and tell me if that isn't an architectural homage?

However, the differences: Le Corbusier's architecture is egalitarian (in an authoritarian sense). The Overton is unapologetically elitist: the park is an exclusive place for residents to take the air without having to mingle with others outside their socioeconomic class. Le Corbusier's proposal is forward-looking; the Overton is wistfully reactionary. Above all, Le Corbusier was ruthlessly honest about the role of architecture in a modern city ('machines for living' and all that); the Overton, like all towers-on-podiums, disguises what it really is. This dishonesty, this posing-as-some-kind-of-brick-auto-body-shop-from-street-level, makes its residents invisible, enhancing the other alienating effects of the architecture.

Other Portland highrises are, to a greater or lesser extent, more successful than the Overton at mediating between the Tower and Street. But all towers existing within a traditional urban grid require some kind of architectural mediation. NYC changed its strategy at midcentury, I believe, from mandating setbacks above podiums to requiring spacious plazas like the one sitting beneath the Seagram Building. In this case, the architect must wrench a massive hole in the fabric of streets and sidewalks in order to provide the pedestrian with sufficient space to appreciate in the monumentality of a New York City skyscraper. Such feats are impossible in Portland, however (the mini-plaza of the Standard Insurance Center on Fifth notwithstanding), as long as we want our buildings to 'fit in' to the surrounding fabric; this creates an inescapable contradiction in which architecture must be fundamentally duplicitous, essentially alienating.

[Encolpius]

All of that being said, no, Portland is not in imminent risk of succumbing to the worst architectural atrocities of the twentieth century... and even if the North Pearl did succumb, it wouldn't be a terrible loss.

Originally Posted by soleri

The argument shouldn't pit one kind of density against another. It should be real cities against ungodly sprawl.

I think I can mostly get behind this statement. Let me just emphasize my original point -- don't demonize neighborhood residents that favor density on the whole but oppose heights in excess of ten stories. They're not the enemy, and from a livability and affordability standpoint, they're probably right.

[PDXDENSITY]

Then again, people who live in a neighborhood do have a right to share their opinion on the future of that neighborhood.

Actually, I think in terms of heights those restrictions are unethical to our environment. Therefore, I do believe this sort of whining should not be tolerated when we should be preventing sprawl. And limiting buildings to ten stories downtown is insane.

I will continue to criticize these people for the unethical ecosystem damagers they are. They also drive up my rent. Snobs.

[RED_PDXer]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Intensifying development is great. Putting a limit on heights above 100' would spread that development more widely.

Ummm.. let's consider planning 101 for a second. We're talking about the Central City. All MAX lines connect here. Streetcars operate here. Almost all regional bus lines come through here. And you desire to spread development elsewhere? Do you realize there have been billions of dollars invested in the Central City???

Why don't you pose this to the neighborhood associations on the eastside? I'm sure it'll be well received.. This logic is flawed to say the least. Period.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by RED_PDXer

Ummm.. let's consider planning 101 for a second. We're talking about the Central City. All MAX lines connect here. Streetcars operate here. Almost all regional bus lines come through here. And you desire to spread development elsewhere? Do you realize there have been billions of dollars invested in the Central City???

Shocking, I know. Tell me though, what amenities can't be provided in the central city except in buildings taller than 100'?

Are you proposing to build twenty-story art museums? The world's tallest public library? A vertical park? A zoo atop a baseball stadium atop a symphony?

Because isn't the purpose of all the public investment we've made in the central city to provide access to culture and amenities for the benefit all Portlanders? No? Is it actually just to provide developers with fancy real estate and a few thousand Portlanders with penthouse views? Sorry, was that the point of cities all along these past four thousand years?

[hat]

Originally Posted by RED_PDXer

Ummm.. let's consider planning 101 for a second. We're talking about the Central City. All MAX lines connect here. Streetcars operate here. Almost all regional bus lines come through here. And you desire to spread development elsewhere? Do you realize there have been billions of dollars invested in the Central City???

Why don't you pose this to the neighborhood associations on the eastside? I'm sure it'll be well received.. This logic is flawed to say the least. Period.

I think this is exactly the point. There have been billions of dollars invested in the central city because there is relatively little impetus to invest elsewhere, i.e. it's where the money is. If the city continued to limit heights downtown, and encouraged development in Lloyd and Central Eastside (in some cases this is what they are doing), we might expect more public investment there (e.g. streetcar on 7th).

All MAX lines connect downtown, but this is a less than ideal system for transit. Berlin, Paris, Boston, even Philly, all have transit systems where not all eggs are in one basket. I would argue we have seen a concentration of wealth and skyscrapers downtown for almost the entire history of Portland, which has limited development elsewhere. When we have 20+ buildings and single family houses, the only option between these is car. This is the typical equation for sprawl. The environmentalist argument for no height limits need only look at almost every city in the US for evidence. This is why height restrictions exist, not just because people want their views. And this is the reason Portland's plan includes density in neighborhood centers, on corridors, as well as in the CES/Lloyd.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

All of that being said, no, Portland is not in imminent risk of succumbing to the worst architectural atrocities of the twentieth century... and even if the North Pearl did succumb, it wouldn't be a terrible loss.



I think I can mostly get behind this statement. Let me just emphasize my original point -- don't demonize neighborhood residents that favor density on the whole but oppose heights in excess of ten stories. They're not the enemy, and from a livability and affordability standpoint, they're probably right.

If someone lives in a highrise downtown and complains that buildings shouldn't be taller than a few stories, then that is what we call being a hypocrite.