The Portland Edge: Challenges And Successes In Growing Communities by Connie P. Ozawa

The Portland Edge: Challenges And Successes In Growing Communities Reviews

• 
  Jamie

  This book was very, very informative on Portland's strong history of urban planning and community activism. Almost too much so. The topics were more varied than I thought, encompassing everything from the urban growth boundary and transportation planning to the origins of KBOO (Portland community radio) and Portland's approach to homeless populations.
  
  The issue I have with the book is impartiality. The back cover implies that it will take a critical look at Portland's policies to see how they measure up, but the book's content comes across as Portland apologetics. It appeared that the authors were more concerned with trying to prove that the policies worked than asking if the policies worked. Portland is poster child for urban planning, and if the results of the policies didn't make a positive impact here the entire field of planning is disparaged. Considering that all of the authors live in Portland and are employed in the urban planning field, I suppose a bit of bias creep is not too surprising.
  
  Also related to bias is some odd methodology used in the analysis. For example, some of the cities used for comparisons were unusual choices, and in some cases were changed depending on the attribute being compared. Some of the statistics were stated in a way that seems overly rosy, such as stating raw numbers instead of percentages.
  
  The information is great and interesting, and the research was very thorough. Having said that, it provides an in depth view on how Portland's planning process works and shows how this area is bucking the national trend of sinking all infrastructure spending into the automobile. For anyone interested in Portland, and to a lesser extent planning in general, it's worthwhile.
• 
  Smiley Esq.

  The Portland Edge takes us where (most) lay readers seldom dare to go: directly into the facts and figures, the terms and names, of the planners and plans of the City of Roses over the past 3-5 decades (more cogently) and century-and-a-half since the city's founding (with no small amount of astuteness, with regard to fundamental, formative trends and their making).
  
  Got that?
  
  Portland, OR is, thus, a model city in many ways: one that took the "right-hand path" during the rather-dire national-trauma year of 1973 (c.f., Andreas Killen's 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America) and ended up with a bustling metropolis that — struggles and compromises aside — didn't end up rolling over for "corporatization" forces and fly-by-night victories benefiting the Inter-National, Anyways, Inc. contingent(s).
  
  Few wouldn't benefit from reading this portable tome: if for nothing else, it forces you to slow down and digest things in a manner that parallels employment in an Office Where Things Get Done, working against the Punditry-chatter that can easily infect those both on the Left and the Right.
  
  (Get cracking, citizens!)
• 
  Rickie

  A useful read when it comes to learning about Portland's planning history, although not as informative as it could be. Some of these essays simply reiterate what has been written in scholarly articles elsewhere but some of it is new.
• 
  Evan Corey

  This is a really good and comprehensive primer on Portland's growth, culture, politics, urban planning and governance. It is also a great way for planners everywhere to think towards a progressive future. Read this!