Growth has been coming to Oregon, rapidly to many parts of the state in the 90s. Most forecasters
believe growth will continue. As growth comes our way, what do we want Oregon to look like - not
just physically, but as a society?

The answer will depend in no small part upon how we design our communities. Winston Churchill
said: "We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us."

Our great challenge is to stop sprawling across the Oregon landscape. If we can stop sprawls,
Oregon may well become the most civilized place in the country.

What might sprawl looks like? Here's a very simple model to get a sense for the physical spread of a
sprawl in the year 2040. Assume Oregon will grow from our 3.2 million today to five million. That's
an increase of 1.8 million. Assume also two persons per household (it's higher than that today, but
shrinking; two keeps the model simple). Given these assumptions, the model tells us we need room
for about 900,000 new households.

How much land do we need to accommodate 900,000 new homes? It depends upon how widely we
disperse homes and employment. To finish the run through our simple model, let's assume we
disperse the development at the rate of three units per acre, including employment (commercial,
industrial, etc.). This pattern is common in sprawling suburban America. The model tells us we will
need 300,000 acres.

If we distribute this 200,000 acres in rough proportion to existing population, we can expect to see
urbanization from the Portland metro area engulf Sandy, Canby, Newberg, Forest Grove and North
Plains. Urbanization would draw Albany and Corvallis together and Eugene past Coburg and the
Eugene airport. Medford will spread from Central Point to Ashland and Bend and Redmond will
merge.

Would this development pattern advance Oregon's civilization? I think not, and here are the reasons.

First, Oregon cannot afford to provide services to this amount of a sprawl. We know this already
from our experience trying to pay for our state highway system. Maintenance of the existing system
will soon absorb all available revenue. The people of Oregon seem to be saying that they have built
as much system as they are willing to maintain. How, then, can we pay for added capacity to serve
an additional 300,000 acres of urbanized land?

The great weight of the evidence is that it costs considerably more to provide services to sprawling
development. The American Farmland Trust (AFT) studied the costs of providing services to two
development patterns in the Central Valley of California: sprawl (3 units per acre) and less dispersed
(6 units per acre). Working with the 39 cities of the Central Valley, AFT found that sprawl would
cost those cities $1 billion each year more than the city revenues generated by the development. At
the less dispersed pattern of 6 units per acre, development would produce a surplus of $200 million
over the cost of providing the same services.

Make a list of the qualities you appreciate (or wish you had) in your community. Among them will
probably be: accessibility, mobility, safety, clean air, diversity, affordability and sense of place. These
qualities are generally unavailable in sprawling developments.

Accessibility means having your common destinations nearby. Sprawl spreads things out and usually
isolates residential areas from regular destinations. Less dispersed development patterns bring uses
closer and make them more accessible.

Mobility is the ability to move from place to place. The dispersion and separation of sprawl makes
walking, biking and transit impractical. People have no choice but to use cars for all trips everywhere.
Congestion is often the result. "New urbanist" Peter Calthorpe tells of a study comparing the lives of
boys in a Vermont town with those in a sprawling California suburb. The boys in Vermont have three
times the mobility of their California counterparts because they can walk or ride their bikes on a
variety of routes to their destinations - school, playground, stores, friends' houses - all nearby. The
California boys rely upon their parents to drive them to every destination. (The Vermont boys also
watch less TV.)

People place a high value on safe communities. Portland Police Chief Charles Moose testified during
Metro hearings that keys to crime reduction are community policing and "eyes on the street." He
argued against dispersed development patterns because they isolate people from one another and
because they are more difficult and expensive for police to patrol. He called for diversity of housing
types and a mix of uses in order to bring people onto the streets in their neighborhoods and to make
it easier to get officers out of their cars and onto the streets with their neighbors.

Clean air is essential to healthy urban living. Oregon has made great strides in the past 20 years:
nearly all Oregon cities now comply with federal air quality standards on carbon monoxide, ozone
and other pollutants. The huge increase in auto use, however, threatens to offset the gains from
improved technology. Tailpipe emissions are the single largest contributor (41%). Dispersed
development patterns are a major cause. Alternatives to auto use - walking, biking, transit - become
impractical as development disperses. They become realistic if we plan communities for accessibility
and mobility.

Diversity in our communities makes them more humane and interesting. Consider just one
observation about diversity. Baby boomers are now dealing with aging parents and confronting a sad
consequence of poor community design: dispersed development does not accommodate older
people. Gathering places and other common destinations are rarely accessible on foot and transit is
unavailable. Hence, our parents have to drive to almost every destination. At some point our parents
can (or should) no longer drive. At this point, they become prisoners, dependent upon others to go
anywhere. If they move from the neighborhood to care facilities, neighborhoods suffer are real loss.
How much better it would be if we designed our communities to accommodate our parents as they
age!

Since the beginning of the 1990s, housing affordability has eluded fast-growing, west coast cities.
Dispersed development is unlikely to yield affordable housing, as Denver and Salt Lake City
demonstrate. Less dispersed communities can make housing more affordable by making life more
affordable. Suppose your household could dispose of one of your cars because work, school, stores
and other common destinations are accessible and make the second car unnecessary. The American
Automobile Association says it costs $6,465 a year to operate a new car driving 15,000 miles a
year. Divide that amount by 12 and you have $400-500 a month to put into rent or a mortgage
payment.

It is hard to find a "sense of place" amid urban sprawl. Most people - as evidenced by "visual
preference" surveys - find sprawl to be ugly and lifeless. There is little charm in strip commercial. A
sense of place that differentiates our place from any place (or no place) derives from the other
qualities discussed here and traditional downtowns and gathering places. Sprawl sucks the life out of
these places.

Why should we choose sprawling development patterns when less dispersed patterns are more likely
to give us the qualities we seek in our communities?

    Historian David McCulloch, author of Truman and Mornings on Horseback, said: "The built
   environment is not just the work of an architect. It is the work of a civilization." The citizens of
   Oregon have taken important steps since the passage of Senate Bill 100 to maintain Oregon's
              livability and civility. The next generation should follow that path.