Learning the wrong lesson

In 2002, Metro decided that the best place to expand the urban growth boundary in order to meet its statutorily required 20 year inventory of housing land, was as far away from the major job center as possible. So they brought thousands of acres in and around Damascus into the boundary.

They were so excited. Finally, they had a blank slate upon which they could draw their urban village utopia. They started plans for 50,000 new residents, fully in their blueprint of "new-urbanism:" bike paths, mixed use commercial centers, small lots crammed with townhouses - we've all seen the drill.

Some folks in Damascus went along, seeing a big payday ahead when they sold their land. But most of the good folks in Damascus saw it for what it was: a pig in a poke. Not only was there no way in Hell that there would ever be enough money to build out the necessary infrastructure for a new city of 50,000 people (which means all their plans would sit idle, much like the Beaverton Round, the Cascade Station, and other new-urbanist wet dreams) but the folks in Damascus didn't want their little burgh to be turned into what the Metro planners wanted in the first place.

So they passed a couple local initiatives which pretty much stopped Metro in its tracks. Now, seven years later, Metro has finally admitted defeat.

But predictably, they are taking precisely the wrong lesson from that defeat.

The lesson they SHOULD learn is that people don't share their new-urban vision. For the most part, people don't want to live that way. They want back yards and cul-de-sacs, and they want to use their car to move around as they please.

But why would Metro learn that lesson now? It's not as if this is the first spectacular failure of one of their new urbanist projects. After all, when others don't share your religion, it is only because they haven't had sufficient exposure to your gospel. The fault isn't with the religion.

David Bragdon, Metro council president, had this to say about the fiasco in Damascus:

"I think this council will look very skeptically at further urban growth boundary expansions. The reality is that we need to be more efficient with land already inside the boundary."

In other words: "Fine. If you don't bend over and let us force our plans on you when we expand the boundary, we are just gunna pile everyone inside the current boundary."

It would be too much to hope for, I guess, that one of these dolts might think:

"Hey, maybe this model we all think is so cool isn't what the folks we are elected to represent actually want. Maybe we should learn from our many expensive failures, because it seems every time we try to build one of these new urban villages, it ends up a financial disaster. Perhaps what we should do is expand the urban growth boundary, and allow the local areas to decide how they want to allow growth on it."

No, don't worry. I am NOT that naive. I know that people like Peter Bragdon and Carl Hosticka and all the other central planning social engineer utopians do not consider it their job to represent the people who elected them. Their job is to establish their religion, and force it on their subjects regardless of whether they want it.

So it was absolutely predictable that the takeaway from the Peter Bragdon types would be that we can't expand the urban growth boundary. That lesson serves his agenda.

An agenda that is increasingly being exposed as one that is ruining what was once a terrifically functioning metropolitan area.