Portland Suggested & crash thoughts

Bruce responded to one of my posts and gave me permission to
forward this here.

Colin
http://carfreeuniverse.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 22:31:51 -0000
From: theillusionist1 <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: http://carfreecity.us

Glad to see this project is finally started.

As I write there's a copy of J.H.Crawford's in arms reach on the
right.  I also bought 12 copies and gave them out to friends and
family over the last few years.

I suggest that one excellent prospective location is Portland, Oregon.
 I now live 150 km South, but I spent 10 years in Portland.  Portland
has an excellent public transit system by US standards: multiple tram
(light rail) lines criss-crossing the city with busses filling in the
gaps.  Also very bike friendly with a mild climate.

Oregon has interesting land-use laws, and was the first (and one of
few) US states to implement the 'urban growth boundary' approach to
limiting sprawl.  I know people in the 'no-growth' movement here, and
I'm pretty confident that they could be pursuaded to SUPPORT a
car-free development project, even if it otherwise violated most of
their standards.

See, car-free development has the potential to REVERSE urban growth.
If car-free urban development can be demonstrated as succesful (as I'm
sure it can), then additional conversions to this model can be
considered.  Car-free development is the only way I can think of that
would cause a city to REDUCE it's infrastructure while maintaining
economic vitality.  Many no-growth people around here got into that
movement as a response to autocentric development.

I also believe many people in the city of Portland would be receptive.
 Portland has an unusually high fraction of car-less city dwellers
already.  Several of those books went to Portland and were well-received.

Colin, regarding a coming crash, I DO expect a whopper of a financial
crash in the next 4-8 years, but I doubt it will initially be a lot
worse than the Great Depression.  I expect it will do a lot to further
car-free cities, as economic hardship and hyper-inflation will likely
put car-ownership out of the reach of lower-middle-class and below.
The more momentum the carfree US city project can gather, the easier
will be the transition will be.

I hope we don't have a 'hard crash' that makes it a moot point.
Personally, I give a much higher probability of a limited managed
crash than of a civilization-shattering hard-crash.  Either could
happen, but there's not much one can do in event of an unlikely hard
crash, so plan for the  more likely and more manageable event.

Please keep me on your short list of potential supporters.  Thanks for
picking up this project, Colin.

Regards,

Bruce Stephenson
Corvallis, Oregon
[email protected]








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