That’s a neat trick, George! :)

If you figure it out, make sure you share with the rest of us.

i think you raise some good points. i think good planning linked to economic policies that promote justice is the best way to deal with the downsides of gentrification.

the conditions extant in north portland in the 90′s were the result of economic policies that intentionally impoverished the area. now that money is pouring into the neighborhood, the communities here are faced with some terrible choices.

not that i have any good solutions… but i see my neighbors look at the value of their homes, worth 10x what they were worth only 5 years ago, and struggle with the choices. should they sell out? lots of them want to sell to people in the community- but those people arent buying!

another point i want to make is that change is a constant with cities. the chapel of the chimes was not originally an african american business. the storefront churches were originally stores. the trick is not to prevent change, but to make sure that the winners are those who deserve to win, and the losers are those who deserve to lose.

Here’s one small example:

In the case of the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area (ICURA), New Seasons got a variance that reduced low- and moderate-income housing opportunities in the neighborhood. As zoned and envisioned by planners, that corner lot at Rosa Parks and Interstate should have been street level retail with parking beneath and 20-some units of affordable housing above (much like the very workable design of Whole Foods in the Pearl).

The owners of New Seasons didn’t want to make that investment in the neighborhood, so they cut a back-room deal that allowed them to transfer the low-income housing units to a project in outer Southeast Portland and build a surface parking lot adjacent to a transit stop.

New Seasons presented this as a “take it or leave it” proposition, and city planners (and the local neighborhood associations) “took it” for fear that New Seasons wouldn’t build if they had to invest enough to fit their development to the vision of high density, transit-oriented architecture.

Maintaining that their customers “don’t take mass transit to do their shopping,” they set the store as far back from the transit stop on their lot as possible, built a parking lot at what was envisioned as a pedestrian-friendly intersection, and displaced 20-odd planned affordable housing units. The net result (besides the displaced housing) is that both the parking lot and store are too small, and the vision of walkable neighborhoods with street level businesses clustered around transit stops is subverted by suburban style, car-oriented architecture.

Not only does it displace working people; it’s ugly and moderately dysfunctional (cramped parking and over-crowded retail space with inadequate shelf and storage space).

There is such a thing as urban renewal without massive displacement. Unfortunately, the Portland Development Commission, the City of Portland, and the local neighborhood associations are either too intimidated or too cowed by business interests to stand up for the working poor, who are increasingly being pushed to the outer east side.

Development and affordable housing are not mutually exclusive; business owners just act that way. And our governing bodies have a tendency to let them get away with it, by way of issuing zoning variances. This is why the black community of Portland gets nervous whenever the PDC starts talking about another urban renewal project.