For the city this represents 70,000 additional housing units over the next 15 years and 150,000 net new jobs. 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.