To get there, cities in the region must adopt minimum housing densities, maximum parking ratios, use land more efficiently and reduce dependency on the automobile. Overall our strategy is to increase housing opportunities to support jobs, maintain a competitive business climate, invest in our neighborhood infrastructure to support their growth and development, and keep a ready workforce for our targeted industries. Development and redevelopment in Portland today is more complex. It requires more creativity and ingenuity that ever. Standards are tougher.
Public concern is intense.
Still, the outcomes of meeting our goals make this effort worthwhile. And while cities around the country are growing faster than their populations, Portland is not. Like other cities in the late 60s, business investment and families were moving out of the city to the suburbs. We were losing the city's downtown housing and fewer people were coming downtown to shop and play. A community effort provided the leadership, that recognized that the key to turning the city around was to bring people to live and work downtown and to strengthen the city's neighborhoods to protect against further flight to the suburbs.