Los Angeles: Poster Child for Successful "Smart Growth"

From all over the world, people visit Portland, Oregon, to learn the wonders of “smart-growth” planning. City officials ooh and ah over Portland’s light rail; reporters photograph the region’s urban-growth boundary; and planners exclaim over the city’s high-density, transit-oriented developments.

In 1992, planning advocates argued that only regional planning could save Portland from becoming like Los Angeles, the most congested, most polluted city in America. So Portland-area voters agreed to create Metro, a regional planning authority with near-dictatorial powers over land use and transportation planning in three counties and twenty-four cities.

Although Metro estimates that Portland’s population will grow by 80 percent in the next few decades, it decided not to expand the region’s urban-growth boundary by more than 6 percent. To accommodate everyone else, Metro gave population targets to each local city and mandated the construction of scores of high-density, mixed-use developments. To handle growing transportation demands, Metro proposed a 125-mile rail transit network, while it reduced roadway capacities through so-called “traffic calming.”

Congestion is rapidly increasing, which turns out to be a part of Metro’s plan. “Congestion,” says Metro, “signals positive urban development.” Metro wants congestion in most areas to reach near-gridlock levels because relieving congestion “would eliminate transit ridership.”

In 1994, Metro looked at other U.S. urban areas to see which one was closest to its plan for Portland: a high-density region with few roads and lots of rail transit. It turned out that the highest density urban area in America also has the fewest miles of freeway per capita and is building one of the most expensive rail transit networks. What city is that? Believe it or not, it was Los Angeles, which turns out to be the epitome of smart growth. Metro concluded that Los Angeles “displays an investment pattern we desire to replicate” in Portland.

If you want to replicate Los Angeles in your community, then by all means follow Portland’s smart-growth example. If your idea of a livable city is something other than Los Angeles, then you had better find something besides “smart growth” to follow.