On the very long list of things I love about living in the Portland metropolitan area two things rise to the top.
I love that I can catch a bus on my corner or a trail a couple of blocks away and go almost anywhere in the region I want to without driving. I've got a grocery store less than a half mile away and corner stores in three directions. There are Mexican, Italian and Chinese restaurants within walking distance and a new Hawaiian one five minutes away by bus. I live in a residential neighborhood in Milwaukie that is linked to everything I need and enjoy. That linkage is my favorite thing about living here.
What I love next best is the fact that I can leave all that behind and be in farm fields or forests quickly just by crossing the region's urban growth boundary. It's not far from my home – a few miles and I'm on my way to Mount Hood or the Columbia River Gorge or a U-pick farm to get berries.
I actually like some kinds of change – a new restaurant filling a storefront downtown, a grocery store opening in a long abandoned building, a neighborhood park built on the site of a former drug house. That kind of change makes it easier and more fun to live here. It means there might be jobs for my neighbors.
But I also find it reassuring that some things aren't changing so much. I am grateful to the folks who drew a line around our region 30 years ago and protected the countryside, the forests, the productive farms and more from urban sprawl. I am grateful that it is not easy to move that line outward. It has to really make sense. It has to be a necessary move to ensure that there is room for people to live and work in our region.
Most of the people I talk with are skeptical about expanding the urban growth boundary. A lot of them think the last expansion had some mistakes in it and any new one ought to be pretty well thought out. They wonder whether we can afford to build the roads and sewers and schools and parks that make new communities great places to live when we don't have the money to fill our own potholes now. They'd rather spend their tax dollars fixing up what we already have that needs fixing, and helping local businesses grow right here.
What they tell me is that our farms and forests are important to them. They want to make sure we've made the best possible use of the land already inside our region's edge before we go moving the line across irreplaceable farmland and into timeless forests.
If we're planning for 40 or 50 years down the road, which is exactly what we're trying to do, they want to make sure the region grows where it has the greatest likelihood of linking to existing communities with roads in place and other services close at hand. They want to make sure the land we move into is not our highest value farm land or most beautiful forests.
This is the conversation we are having right now in our region. Should we keep the urban growth boundary about where it is or expand it? If and when we expand it, where are the most suitable places to build new communities and enable job creation? Should we spend our tax dollars to keep our streets and cities in good shape or build new roads to new cities?
Over the next several weeks, Metro, our three counties and our 25 cities will all be listening to what you have to say about these very big choices. Attend an open house, comment online, send mail or e-mail, or testify before the Metro Council.