Oregon Plans: The Making of an Unquiet Land Use Revolution

Culture and Environment in the Pacific West

by Sy Adler

Oregon Plans provides a rich, detailed, and nuanced analysis of the origins and early evolution of Oregon’s nationally renowned land use planning program. Drawing primarily on archival sources, Sy Adler describes the passage of key state laws that set the program into motion by establishing the agency charged with implementing those laws, adopting the land-use planning goals that are the heart of the Oregon system, and monitoring and enforcing the implementation of those goals through a unique citizen organization. Oregon Plans documents the consequential choices and compromises that were made in the 1970s to control growth and preserve Oregon's quality of life. Environmental activists, farmers, industry groups, local governments, and state officials all played significant roles. Adler brings these actors—among them governors Tom McCall and Robert Straub, business leaders John Gray and Glenn Jackson, 1000 Friends of Oregon, and the Oregon Home Builders Association—to life.

"Adler's story is about unusual conditions, purposeful action, dynamic personalities, and the messiness of democratic and bureaucratic processes. His conclusions reveal much about how Oregonians defined liveability in the late twentieth century." —William L. Lang, from the Preface
 A volume in the Culture and Environment in the West series. Series editor: William L. Lang

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2012

Reviews

[Rock · Rating 2 out of 5]

History of legislation and regulation of a complex issue is challenging, and unfortunately this book does not meet that challenge. Oregon's land use regulatory regime was developed in no more than 10 years, from 1967 to 1975 or 1977, depending on whether you include the coastal goals or not (they were adopted after the initial 15 goals set the framework and of course applied to only a subset of the state). Within those 8 to 10 years, a lot of people played important roles, and unfortunately you can't count on this author to remind you of the context of someone whose role was explained a year or more before they are brought up again in relation to another issue. Additionally, the goals themselves are discussed mostly using their goal number as they were numbered at the time, but the goal numbers changed over the regulation development process. There is a helpful table that can be referenced to understand which goal had which number at which time, but that could have been integrated into the text. Another area that is missing context is how the legislative and regulatory process for land use differed for other issues. Considering the entire book was about that, it would have been helpful for the reader to know whether these processes were particularly fraught in this case, or if, say, cosmetology legislation and regulation had similar issues at the time.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complex, environmentally driven and fraught with hard, persistent political work, Oregon enacted some of the earliest and most comprehensive land use planning policies in the nation. Tom McCall demanded that government had the right to mandate land use, and that development should be according to the comprehensive plan. Adler's work covers primarily 1965-1980 and there's a lot more from that date forward. "Scratch a farmer, find a sub-divider", tax breaks for agricultural use, competing demands for zoning designations. So complicated, so many points of view.