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In 1995, Portland

quietly diverted billions of dollars in public

Introduction

funds to Goldschmidt's clients and cronies.

started calling

Known to insiders as the "light-rail mafia,"

itself "The City

Goldschmidt's machine suffered a huge set-

The city of Portland, Oregon, has received

That Works"

back in 2004 when the public learned that,

enormous publicity in recent years for its land-

while mayor, Goldschmidt had a three-year

use and transportation planning. The New

without any sense

sexual relationship with a teenage girl starting

York Times calls Portland "the city that loves

of irony that it

mass transit."1 Portland is "successfully getting

when she was just 14. The former mayor disap-

people out of their cars," says the BBC.2

peared from view, leaving his allies to fend for

borrowed the

themselves. Today, public employee unions,

From all over the country, city planners,

slogan from a city

neighborhood groups, and county officials are

elected officials, and reporters travel to Portland

famous for

among those challenging what remains of the

to examine the region's urban-growth bound-

machine, and the main goal of many of these

ary, rail transit system, and transit-oriented

patronage, pork,

groups is to halt the diversion of funds from

developments. "It sometimes seems as if the

and a political

essential urban services to expensive transit

whole country is looking to Portland as a role

machine.

and land-use projects.

model for 21st-century urban development,"

says Governing magazine.3 Portland's plans have

won numerous awards from the American

History

Planning Association, and Congress happily

gives the city more than its share of federal tran-

sit dollars to fund expansion of the region's

The planning that made Portland famous

light-rail system.

attempts to integrate land-use and transporta-

Residents of the Portland area are not as

tion. Urban planners have long believed in a

enthusiastic about the region's planning

land-use-transportation connection that would

process. Recent elections reveal that most cit-

allow them to manipulate one through the

izens are upset by the unaffordable housing,

other. So Portland plans land uses to try to

traffic congestion, increasing taxes, declining

reduce the amount of driving people do while

urban services, and disappearing jobs that

it plans transportation to try to slow the con-

have resulted from the plans.

version of rural land to urban purposes.

In 1995, the city council adopted the slo-

No such integration was contemplated in

gan, "The City That Works."4 No one on the

1973, when the Oregon legislature required

every city and county to write plans that con-

council felt any sense of irony that Portland

formed to goals and guidelines established by

was borrowing a slogan first applied to

a Land Conservation and Development

Chicago by Mayor Richard J. Daley. Daley, of

Commission appointed by the governor. The

course, was famous for using a political

rules aimed to protect farmland from leapfrog

machine of patronage and pork to get himself

development (subdivisions not physically

reelected five times. Since few Portland may-

adjacent to the nearest urban area) by requir-

ors remain in office for more than two terms,

ing all cities in the state to draw urban-growth

no one imagined in 1995 that the Northwest

boundaries. Development inside the bound-

city was also run by a machine.

aries was allowed to proceed unchecked while

The head of that machine, Neil

development outside was strictly limited to

Goldschmidt, had been mayor of Portland in

rural uses.

the 1970s. President Carter appointed him

The commission's rules specified that the

Secretary of Transportation in 1979, and in

initial urban-growth boundaries should

the late 1980s Goldschmidt served as gover-

include enough land to accommodate twenty

nor of Oregon. In 1991 he left public office

years worth of growth. As that land was devel-

and started a political consulting firm that

oped, cities were to expand the boundaries to

used his federal, state, and local contacts to

maintain land and housing affordability.

promote seemingly idealistic schemes that

2