Abstract:
Portland, Oregon, is demonstrating that light rail linked with land use planning can have a dramatic positive impact on shaping regional growth. More than $2.4 billion in new development has been attracted to Portland's field of dreams, ridership is at record highs, the rail system is expanding more than threefold, property values in the rail corridors are up, and sprawl has been slowed. Portland has used transit as a vehicle to move people, to clean the air, to reinvest in the city's downtown, to defer highway investments, and to enhance the community's quality of life. On a regional scale, the marriage of land use and transit is at the center of an unprecedented experiment to reinvent the American dream of a livable community. The impact of Portland's light rail system, known as MAX, has been felt from one end of the line to the other. In downtown Portland, MAX has played an important role in revitalizing the city center. Along the new Westside line, stations are becoming a magnet for new transit-oriented communities, resulting in infill housing projects, suburban transformation and redevelopment, and new award-winning urbanist communities carefully carved out of green fields. Portland is helping show other cities that a coordinated approach can help create a new genetic code for how cities develop. It is not enough to build rail in the hope of shaping growth and creating economic development; cities need to change how they build rail and to focus first on building communities.
Supplemental Notes:
This paper is available on the CD-ROM, Light Rail: Investment for the Future, 8th Joint Conference on Light Rail Transit.
