Oregon Plans: The Making of an Unquiet Land Use Revolution (Culture and Environment in the Pacific West)

Check out Sy Adler's history of a landmark land-use planning system in OregonPlans: The Making of an Unquiet Land-Use Revolution (2012; Oregon State University Press; 256 pp.; $24.95). In his detailed and readable account, Adler, a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, explains how the statewide system grew up in tandem with its watchdog group, 1000 Friends of Oregon.The introductory chapter takes up the system's "prehistory," including early steps toward farmland preservation in the 1960s, and the final chapter briefly reviews more recent happenings. But the bulk of the book focuses on the years between 1971 and 1975, when the legislature adopted legislation setting state planning goals, the pace of implementation of local comprehensive plans stepped up, and there was a frenzy of public participation at both the state and local levels. In response to that legislation, a new state agency had to define itself within the space of a year. So did the new organization formed to monitor the process.That process was complex and, at times, controversial. The new agency had less time and much less staff to establish itself than planned, and its budget was often tied to the availability of federal grants. Local planners regularly had to redo their work, and they ran into difficulties in selling the local plans to recalcitrant politicians.All that said, Oregon was in the vanguard and other states learned from its successes and its failures. One important lesson was that it might be wise to mandate local plans only in fast-growing counties.Adler brings his history down to earth by quoting people who took part at all levels of the planning process. Still, readers might feel that they are reading about life on another planet--so far is the Oregon experience from anyone's experience today.The 1972 book on whose title the author plays. The Quiet Revolution in LandUse Control, argued that land was being transformed "from an individually owned commodity bought and sold in the marketplace to a common property resource in which the larger community had an interest." The far-reaching Senate Bill 100 was supported by two Republicans, Gov. Tom McCaU and State Representative Hector S. Macpherson, who said he considered farmland as "precious" and more than just a commodity.Today, 40 years down the road, a politician taking such a stance in public would be expelled from one political party and marginalized in the other. It remains to be seen whether the period Adler chronicles was a prophetic signal of the future of planning or a short-lived phenomenon from a past century.

This is a subject with which I am familiar and in which I am mentioned. The book reads accurately, completely and well.

A densely written and detailed history of land use and its politics in Oregon. Written by my brother-in-law, this volume covers all aspects of the decision making process on zoning land use. Based on historical record including interviews, personal papers and public documents.