PORTLAND, Ore. -- Fly over this city at dusk and see where progress stops.
Near the downtown, the lights of offices, stores and apartment towers shimmer. Headlights string together like a necklace from the city to the suburbs, where houses twinkle and shopping malls glow.
Then suddenly, there's nothing. Darkness. Just 20 minutes from the city line, the electric pulse that marks progress stops.
Portland is the national capital of the anti-sprawl religion embraced these days by politicians from Maryland to Southern California's Ventura County. Vice President Al Gore has made the issue of controlling suburban sprawl and saving farmland part of his presidential campaign.
Whether it's called Smart Growth, as in Maryland, or Greenline Initiative, as in San Jose, Calif., or Envision Utah, the movement started here 25 years ago with a maverick governor who articulated a fear that uncontrolled growth would ruin Oregon.
So these days, officials from other states -- including Maryland -- are making pilgrimages to Portland to find out how to duplicate its success.
The answer can be discouraging to those looking for a quick fix.
"This didn't just spring out of Zeus' forehead. We had a 20-year start-up," says Robert Liberty, executive director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, the state's leading anti-sprawl advocacy group. "This is not a battle for the faint of heart."
That lesson is being learned by Gov. Parris N. Glendening, now facing a furious assault on his decision in January to cut from the state budget several projects that don't meet his Smart Growth standards.
"I understand that these decisions aren't pleasing everybody, but I wasn't elected to please everyone. I was elected to stop sprawl, and that's what I'm doing," Glendening told his critics last month.
The governor's comments came after he moved to stop five bypasses -- around Westminster and Manchester in Carroll County, Brookeville in Montgomery County, Chestertown in Kent County and Lonaconing in Allegany County -- as well as a state police training center in Sykesville. Blocking these projects stirred opposition in each locality.
Opposition will grow
Limited-growth advocates in Oregon say that as Glendening pushes more reforms under his anti-sprawl banner, he'll face broader resistance. The question is whether he and future governors can forge alliances for a program with no short-term paybacks.
Liberty says being a leader -- as Oregon was in 1973 and Maryland is striving to be today -- isn't easy.
"There are a lot of people watching Maryland," Liberty says. "If Glendening falters, if Maryland falters, a lot of other states are going to hesitate."
Two decades ago, the first battle to contain sprawl was fought here -- led by the movement's father, Gov. Tom McCall, and 1000 Friends of Oregon, which he founded to ensure the state's 1973 landmark land-use law was more than words on a page.
The law is responsible for some remarkable decisions in the Portland area:
A park hugs the Willamette River where a freeway once stood. The number of jobs downtown has doubled since 1971, while the number of parking spaces remained fixed. A proposed highway connector west of town was scrapped in favor of more mass transit and placing new development closer to it.
Liberty and others shake their heads at the notion that these changes could happen only in the Pacific Northwest and not in Maryland. "We're not Birkenstock-wearing, latte-lapping crystal gazers. We're loggers and cowboys," he says with a laugh. "We have a Republican-majority legislature and we voted for Nixon and Reagan."
The man who oversees the government body that shapes the landscape and transportation for the Portland region says residents didn't leap at the chance to switch from cars to trains and buses.
"We're in love with our cars," says Michael Burton, executive director of the Metropolitan Service District. "Mass transit is for other people to ride so that they'll be out of our way."
So why does limited growth work in Portland?
Burton attributes it to the simplicity of the vision, which he describes in two sentences: "First, with the exception of our weather, everyone can see Mount Hood. Second, every child can walk alone to the library."
It also works because the Oregon legislature provided a comprehensive framework in 1973, approving 19 specific statewide goals on land use and giving one agency immense enforcement powers. Communities had until 1979 to establish growth boundaries.
The enforcing agency, the state's Land Conservation and Development Commission, reviews and approves or rejects local growth boundaries. Each municipality is required to draw a line around all the land it estimates it will need for 20 years of growth.
Boundaries don't stop growth -- they corral it, as the twilight aerial view of Portland shows and statistics confirm. From 1979 to 1998, the Portland region's population jumped almost 25 percent while the territory within the boundary expanded about 3,000 acres, or 1.5 percent.
The growth areas can be expanded if the need can be demonstrated. In December, Portland officials voted to add 5,300 acres to meet new population projections.
Burton and Liberty say Glendening, in initiating his Smart Growth push, was wise in directing Maryland's financial support for roads and schools to established communities. But they question whether his initiative goes far enough.
Liberty believes allowing counties to designate their own growth areas, as Maryland's plan does, "will make some difference, but not enough."
"If everybody is going to hell in a handbasket and you're just getting there slower, that's no reason to celebrate," he says.
Change in government
Oregon's anti-sprawl leaders say they were able to make their plan work because they understood the need to change the way they governed.
"Small, fragmented governments can't control their destiny. They can't even stand up to Wal-Mart," Liberty says. "To break the pattern of sprawl, you need new government institutions."
In the Portland area, that new institution was the Metropolitan Service District, or Metro, founded in 1979 as the first elected regional government in the country.
The 24 cities and three counties in Metro's 460-square-mile area relinquished control of zoning and transportation planning but retained authority over other traditional government functions. In addition, Metro is responsible for most parks, the zoo, the performing arts center and civic center.
It is run by a seven-member council, elected by districts, and an executive director, elected at large. It has 675 full- and part-time employees and a budget of $411 million. Nearly half its revenue comes from user and entrance fees. A portion of property taxes funds voter-approved bond issues.
"You need a state framework," explains Gussie McRobert, the former mayor of Gresham, a city of 68,000 east of Portland. "But you absolutely have to have a regional government because things that run from the top down don't work."
Conflicting interests
Metro walks a fine line between the sometimes conflicting interests of Portland and its suburbs.
The Portland Metro area is home to almost half of Oregon's 3 million people. Of those 1.5 million people, just 450,000 live in the city proper.
Rob Drake -- mayor of Beaverton (pop. 53,000), west of Portland -- says a Metro advisory panel consisting of representatives from Portland's surrounding communities helps maintain the balance between urban and suburban interests. "It's not a lovefest," he acknowledges. "But we share information, we listen. There is no 800-pound gorilla."
As hard as it was to mount an anti-sprawl campaign in Oregon, it will be even harder in Maryland, Liberty and Burton believe.
For one, Glendening is trying to pull in the reins on a galloping economy. People have the money to buy bigger houses and bigger cars and more of them.
Mass transit, especially in the Baltimore area, is not as well developed or used as the Washington, D.C.-area system.
And, as his latest battle over the Brookeville bypass in Montgomery County indicates, opposition is coming from his own party.
In January, the governor eliminated the proposed 1 1/2-mile bypass on Route 97 because he believed it would encourage more sprawl in Howard and southern Carroll counties. County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and state Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, both Democrats and bypass supporters, criticized Glendening, saying more than 9,000 vehicles pass through the little village of 48 homes each day and create a safety hazard for residents.
Duncan called the governor's decision "dumb growth."
On Friday, Glendening reversed himself, agreeing to fund the bypass after all, assuming the county met certain conditions.
Limited-growth advocates in Oregon say tortured conflicts like the one in Brookville are inevitable as government and the business community chafe and then adjust to new laws.
Burton cautions that no-growth activists become disenchanted because programs like Smart Growth don't stop development.
Glendening's point man on sprawl understands how hard it will be to prove progress is being made.
"Smart Growth is hard to measure," acknowledges John Frece. "It's the forest saved when the mall isn't built. It's the farm saved when the subdivision isn't approved. It's the waterfront that remains beautiful."
Not even Portland's anti-sprawl campaign is perfect, not by a long shot, its supporters say. Yet it remains the national model.
"We've come up with a pretty good product, maybe the best so far, and I'll tell you what, that's as scary as hell," says McRobert, the former mayor.
Housing prices inside the growth boundary have risen sharply as land has become scarce. The median price of a single-family home went from $78,000 in 1990 to $139,900 in 1996.
Officials say a great deal of that increase is because of the economic boom in the region's high-technology "Silicon Forest." Still, they are looking for ways to supply more affordable housing.
During every legislative session, lawmakers backed by developers and property rights activists file bills to weaken the 1973 anti-sprawl law.
"Some of the biggest detractors have gone away because what they said would happen didn't happen. But it's a constant assault," says McRobert.
Even Liberty has graded Oregon only a C for stopping sprawl, saying municipalities aren't encouraging enough redevelopment and "infill" on vacant lots.
"This is not a time for self-congratulation," he says. "In a single decade the Soviet Union falls, apartheid ends and China explores capitalism. It's asinine to think we can't overhaul government."
Pub Date: 3/22/99