City Limits: Walking Portland's Boundary by David Oates

Abstract

theway Abbott claims inhis conclusion. Such questions about thereachofAbbott's analytical frameworkaccompany his studythroughout; it isthe merit ofhis rich textualarchive,however, to have made these queries possible. Ursula K. Heise StanfordUniversity CITY LIMITS: WALKINGPORTLAND'S BOUNDARY byDavid Oates Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 20o6.Maps, notes, bibliography, index. 125pages. $18.95 paper. The famous urbanist Lewis Mumford wrote: "Each generation writes itsbiography in the buildings it creates." His observation, made in all likelihood from a perch overlooking New York City's Central Park, reflected the role that skyscrapers and signature buildings played in defining the nature and destiny of a great city. Here in Oregon and the Pacific North west, we might make a slightmodification to Mumford's quote: "Each generation writes its biography in thecities itcreates."The challenge here is linkingcities ? built places ? to spec tacular landscapes. Mumford himself noted this,challenging his 1938City Club ofPortland audience to wonder whether what occurred here as citybuilding was worthy,not of joining other buildings but ofmaking the most of this landscape as a "home for man." In thattradition,David Oates has provided us with a book about what it means toknow ingly build a city in this landscape. InCityLim its: Walking Portland's Boundary, Oates hikes TheWay We Worked Brown Bag Lunches Taking its cue from theNational Archives traveling exhibit TheWay We Worked, these lunchtime talks focus on the "workforce" as an entity that "is shaped by immigration, ethnicity slavery racial segregation, wage labor and technology, gender roles and class as well as by the American ideals of freedom and equality" Wed., January 3, 2007 Commissioner Sam Adams will talk about the history ofwork, biking, and biking-to-work inPortland. Wed., February 7, 2007 Portland jazz greats Mel Brown and James "Sweet Baby" Benton will be joined by former city commissioner and jazz commentator Dick Bogle as they reminisce about jazz inPortland and perform "unplugged" jazz favorites. This program isgenerously supported by Jimmy Mak's. Both talks are FREE (bring your own lunch) and will be heid in the Pavilion at theOregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave., Portland. For more information, go to www.ohs.org or call 503.306.5232. 628 OHQ vol. 107, no. 4 thePortland metropolitan area urban growth boundary, treatingus tohis observations of the landscape and thoughts about boundaries. One of themost significant aspects of Oregon's approach to land-use planning is that itwas crafted from the outside, looking in.That is, instead of drawing a line around "prime" farmor forestlandand treatingtherest as basically up forgrabs,Oregon has, since the 1970s,requiredurban uses to justifythemselves. Urban growthboundaries are used to identify where rural transitions to urban. This approach made Oregon different,for some amodel and forothers a pariah. Oregon made a conscious choice tomake decisions about the future of the land in and around itscities. Perhaps most important,by looking from theoutside inOregon made the conver sion of land from rural to urban uses subject to a tough test ? thedemonstration thatharm would come to theurban area ifrural landwas not allowed tourbanize. This isnot the typical approach. The idea that Oregon communities would plan theirfu turesand carefullyregulate the spread of cities was more planning and government than some could handle. The Oregon land-use planning program was unsuccessfully challenged three times at thepolls. Unable togetOregonians to dump theirapproach toplanning, opponents succeeded ingetting Measure 37passed under the appealing but totallymisleading ballot titlebeginning with thewords, "Government must pay." Smack in themiddle of the debate about how Oregon has planned its future lie the urban growth boundaries of the state and, perhapsmost heatedly, theone thatcollectively surrounds Portland, twenty-four other cities, and parts of threecounties. Itstands as a potent symbol ofwhat makes Oregon different,land use planning effective,and land-use planning an emblem of the eternal conflict between individual choices and the common good. As Oates so cogentlydescribes, thisbound ary signals an important and inescapable fact whether you support or oppose planning, namely that we are all (literally)in thistogether. Urban growth boundaries are predicated on the fact thatwhat happens in one part of our cityaffects what happens inanother, thatcities are really ecological units in the truest sense of theword. This book is both the story of Oates...