ABSTRACT
Portland is a mid-sized metropolitan region with an outsized reputation for good urban planning. The starting points were city-level initiatives in the early 1970s that defined a symbiotic relationship between urban core and older neighbourhoods (Abbott 1983); a coeval set of decisions to prioritise public transportation and rail transit over freeways; and creation of the statewide Oregon land use planning system in 1973-1974 (Abbott 1983; Adler 2012). In the ensuing decades, Portland has maintained a professional reputation for ‘smart growth’ and a popular name as an epicenter of hipness.
