I attended the dinner for the conference by the International Academic Association on Planning, Law and Property Rights held here in Portland, Oregon last evening. As any land use geek might imagine, I had a fabulous time talking about land use systems throughout the world. But the most interesting thing to me was that some of our international guests had come to the conference with preconceived notions about how planning is done in this country, thinking it was more like Houston without zoning, rather than the complex systems we have in Oregon and Washington.
In speaking with one gentlemen from Belgium, I remarked that at one point there was an attempt (although admittedly a weak attempt) to create a National Land Use Policy Act. Here is an interesting law review article discussing that attempt. He seemed shocked that the US had even contemplated this, much less almost 40 years ago. Furthermore, he seemed stunned that the experiments with urban growth boundaries in Washington and Oregon seemed to parallel planning efforts in Europe where population densities are much denser and land for resources is precious.
I had a lot of fun. So to celebrate the international flavor of this conference I thought I would share a favorite new discovery of mine which is a local music blog Ghost Capital which highlights a lot of obscure off-the-beaten-path music from around the world. Just as the conference helped bring ideas from around the world together to create new discoveries, this blog does this by exposing us to sounds from around the world.
3:17 pm
A few years ago when the City of Damascus hosted the Board of the International City Planners Association I got in a long talk with a planner from Austria about our respective planning systems. We were having a hard time understanding each other, not because of language, but because there was something that just wasn’t clicking in what we were saying. We finally figured it out. We were coming at our planning systems from totally different foundational perspectives. In Austria (and generally in Europe he said) you can’t do anything with your land except what the government says you can do. In Oregon you can do anything you want with your land except what government tells you what you can’t do. That reflects somewhat on the Houston perspective you shared, Jamie.
8:09 pm
Thank you for the insight John. I think the could explain what was going on.
I would also note that when I started talking to some folks there about urban growth areas and attempts to preserve resource properties they really understood that. But that makes sense where their countries are much more densely populated with less land for resource activities.