The pace is leisurely. People engage in conversations and then drift out to their cars parked at the curb, hop on their bikes or walk on down the street. Over at the post office, clerks chat amiably with customers. William Healy, director of community development, came to Salem several years ago from San Diego, where he spent 25 years as a planner. There are commuters here, Healy told me during a telephone interview, but they tend to be people who took a new job in Portland and didn't want to move their families, or else didn't want to buy a new house.
Some people commute from Portland to Salem for the same reason.
Interstate 5 links Salem with Portland, but much of the land between the two cities is occupied by farms in the fertile Willamette River Valley. D.C. Oregon's political leaders kept that from happening in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. There is true state and local planning in Oregon, and it seems to work pretty well, Healy said. Salem, like all cities in Oregon, is required to have an urban growth boundary and a long-range plan for managing growth. Do a better job of dovetailing land-use planning with transportation planning.