What Will a Climate-Focused Future Look Like in Oregon?

written by James Sinks

The climate is changing, and with it, so is Oregon’s future.

Wildfires are burning more frequently, hotter, and closer to the city limits—and, in the case of Talent in southern Oregon in 2020—into downtown. The Pacific Ocean is gnawing into beachfront bluffs up and down the coast and creeping closer to development.

In Oregon’s larger cities, rising populations are sending more exhaust-producing cars and trucks onto increasingly crowded roads and freeways. At the same time, state officials have been given aggressive targets to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Looking ahead, what will we do? And, just as importantly, where?

For the past half century, the leading-edge statewide planning system—with its seemingly contradictory goals of guiding both conservation and development—has helped to decide where Oregonians live, shop, work and play.

Climate-related impacts and threats weren’t on the radar when the state’s planning goals were drafted. That was then. Now, they are inescapable, from heat waves to flooding, and are predicted to only progressively get worse.

That’s putting new pressure on the graying land-use system to keep protecting the state’s quality of life, in both rural and urban places. The statewide system and the planners who manage it are scrambling to adapt, at both the state and the local levels. That’s because the state system determines the overall framework for land use regulations, but it is up to counties and cities to then write their own zoning plans and to enforce them.

The stakes are high—just as decisions made nearly fifty years ago helped to determine how Oregon looks and feels today, the choices looming today will shape how livable—and safe—an evolving Oregon will remain for the next fifty.

When the land use system was created in 1973, the motivating fear was that California-style sprawl was poised to devour the state’s prime farm and forestland, and that resorts and “condomania” were threatening to overtake the coast and other scenic landscapes.

Today, a half century later, the land use system has largely performed as hoped by its authors—and has fulfilled many predictions of critics.

The Willamette Valley and Hood River Valley haven’t been bulldozed. Difficult-to-expand urban growth boundaries have kept development more orderly, even as the state’s population has surged. And urban spots that might have become blighted—such as Bend’s Old Mill District and Portland’s Hawthorne corridor—have been revitalized.

On the flip side, as opponents said would happen, a constrained land supply has helped to make houses more unaffordable, which is helping to speed gentrification and keep lower-income families from building wealth through real estate equity. Simultaneously, property owners have bristled over the inability to use their land as they see fit.

The tug-of-war over the trade-offs isn’t going away. But the status quo has.

In 2020, Gov. Kate Brown issued a sweeping executive order that required state agencies to regulate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a goal of reducing pollution to at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2035, and at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Land use and transportation policies will be key in achieving the targets because roughly 40 percent of the emissions in Oregon are connected to driving, said Evan Manvel, a land use and transportation planner with the Oregon Department of Land Use and Development.

“To meet Oregon’s climate pollution reduction goals, state rules and local land use and transportation plans will have to change significantly,” he said.

So what might a more climate-focused future look like in Oregon? Some of those changes are already on the drawing board.

Imagine dense clusters of buildings where 30 percent of the population in Oregon’s larger cities will live, but not rely on cars, echoing some of the development patterns happening along Portland’s light rail corridors. The land use agency is considering new rules to foster “climate friendly and equitable communities” in the state’s larger metropolitan areas, Manvel said.

Imagine current inner-city neighborhoods where houses have been converted to duplexes and triplexes, or with “accessory dwelling units” in the backyard, reducing the number of people commuting from the suburbs. The state Legislature in 2019 eliminated single-family zoning in most cities to accommodate more so-called “infill” development.

Imagine new rules that could make it more difficult and expensive to live or build in hazard-prone areas near beaches and in forests, and requirements for landowners to keep lots cleared of dry fuel that could make fires worse. The Department of Forestry and land use agency are drawing new detailed maps that will reflect risk levels for the state’s urban fire interface areas, down to individual lots. And a sea-level-rise map is in the works to help advise coastal community planners.

Seaside and Rockaway Beach are among the places at risk of being inundated first, said Christine Shirley, climate change resilience coordinator for the land use agency.

Envision more electric vehicle chargers, more bus lanes and rush hour tolls on highways, as government looks to reduce congestion and the miles people drive. The Department of Transportation is studying tolling as well as collecting taxes based on mileage as opposed to gas sales.

“The future hopefully looks like giving more people more options to not get into their cars,” said Brett Morgan, metro and transportation policy manager for 1000 Friends of Oregon, a nonprofit that advocates for strong land use policies. The average Oregonian drives about 14,000 miles annually, he said.

In many places in rural Oregon, however, driving is the only way to get around. “There are communities in Oregon where you need to drive 400 miles to get to a population center. We have to figure out how we balance the needs of people who are more transportation isolated.”

Morgan said Oregon is better positioned than most states to cope with the impacts of the climate crisis, thanks to the planning system. “Whether folks do realize it or not, Oregon and the way we’re looking at climate change, we are well positioned to be a leader for wildfire reasons, for transportation reasons, development patterns, for how we approach housing. Oregon looks and feels a particular way because of the land use system.”

For example, urban growth boundaries, the lines drawn around 241 Oregon cities and towns, are an effective tool in reducing fire risks because they keep large-scale developments out of fire interface zones, he said. It has an added benefit: by protecting more rural acreage from development, the state will be able to rely on more forest and farmland for carbon sequestration, according to the Department of Land Conservation and Development.

Because most Oregonians live in cities, that’s where state officials foresee the biggest changes. In the Portland area, planners are thinking about solutions such as zero-net-carbon buildings, density, shared cars and “twenty-minute neighborhoods,” where you can reach destinations within twenty minutes on foot, said Andrea Durbin, the director of the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

Fostering a more livable city for a growing population doesn’t stop there, she said. Her office is also considering other real-world impacts including more days of intense heat, flooding and wildfire smoke. One strategy is to increase tree cover and park space for more summer shade.

“Our future is changing rapidly, and our climate experiences are changing more rapidly than any of us expected,” she said. “We need to adapt to that—and also see that there can be some positives to these changes too.”

The city is mindful that housing affordability is a significant barrier for those that want to buy homes, she said. Efforts to increase infill development will help by making more residential units available, she said. “The more we can help to create neighborhoods that are accessible and provide more options for people to live, all of those help to improve the quality of life while also addressing climate change.”

Yet the reality is that more people will continue to live in more traditional housing, and will need to drive.

“It’s one thing to talk about a twenty-story condo tower in the Pearl and another thing to talk about a twenty-story tower in White City or Talent or choose your smaller suburban town,” said David Hunnicutt, the director of the Oregon Property Owners Association, and a longtime critic who said the land-use system has been too restrictive for too many people.

The drive to increase density under the auspices of climate change is just the latest way to make development harder and more expensive—even when Oregonians, particularly those from underrepresented communities, are clamoring for affordable housing, he said.

“These rules are being designed by people who have an academic background but don’t understand how what they are proposing does not play out in parts of Oregon that aren’t downtown Portland,” said Hunnicutt. “You can’t make most cities look like downtown Portland, and nor should we.”

Some people prefer mass transit to driving, and some can only afford mass transit, Hunnicutt acknowledged, but many more people prefer cars, he said, and that fact alone demands more imagination for meeting carbon goals.

“Is it really feasible to expect the general public is going to make the switch from the peace and freedom of their own automobile onto mass transit? If a model is predicated on forcing people out of cars onto transit, it is doomed to fail,” he said.

State planner Manvel is more hopeful. An increasing number of households do not have children at home and the state believes more Oregonians will choose to live and work in vibrant and clean climate-friendly corridors—and drive seldom, if at all.

The legacy of the land use system is that it has helped to keep Oregon a place where people want to live, he said, and it will continue to meet those challenges while helping the state attempt to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets.

“We know most new development will need to be in neighborhoods where shopping, employment, parks and housing are in closer proximity,” he said. “Public investments in transportation need to be shifted toward increasing options, making walking, cycling and transit safer and more convenient.”

Oregon’s future relies on it.

The state land use system is based on a series of widereaching goals and relies on partnerships with local government planning officials. Cities and counties develop their local comprehensive plans, which must be consistent with these statewide planning goals:

1: Develop a citizen involvement program that ensures the opportunity for citizens to be involved in all phases of the planning process.

2: Establish a land use planning process and policy framework as a basis for all decisions and actions related to use of land and assure a factual base for such decisions and actions.

3: Preserve and maintain agricultural land.

4: Conserve forest land by maintaining the forest land base and protect the state’s forest economy by making possible economically efficient forest practices that assure the continuous growing and harvesting of trees as the leading use on forest land—consistent with sound management of soil, air, water and fish and wildlife resources and provide for recreational opportunities and agriculture.

5: Protect natural resources and conserve scenic and historic areas and open spaces.

6: Maintain and improve the quality of the air, water and land resources of the state.

7: Protect people and property from natural hazards.

8: Satisfy the recreational needs of the citizens of the state and visitors and, where appropriate, provide for the siting of necessary recreational facilities including destination resorts.

9: Provide adequate opportunities throughout the state for a variety of economic activities vital to the health, welfare, and prosperity of Oregon’s citizens.

10: Provide for the housing needs of the state’s citizens.

11: Plan and develop a timely, orderly and efficient arrangement of public facilities such as infrastructure and services for urban and rural development.

12: Provide and encourage a safe, convenient and economic transportation system.

13: Conserve energy.

14: Provide for an orderly and efficient transition from rural to urbanized land use, to accommodate urban population and urban employment inside urban growth boundaries, ensure efficient use of land and provide for livable communities.

15: Protect, conserve, enhance and maintain the natural, scenic, historical, agricultural, economic and recreational qualities of lands along the Willamette River.

16: Recognize and protect the unique environmental, economic and social values of each estuary and associated wetlands.

17: Conserve, protect, and appropriately develop coastal shorelands, recognizing their value for protection and maintenance of water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, water dependent uses, economic resources and recreation and aesthetics. The management of these shoreland areas shall be compatible with the characteristics of the adjacent coastal waters.

18: Conserve, protect, and where appropriate, develop coastal beach and dune areas.

19: Conserve marine resources and ecological functions for the purpose of providing long-term ecological, economic and social value and benefits to future generations.