Posted on 09/12/2003 2:55:10 PM PDT by bicycle thug
As Oregon struggles with joblessness and economic stagnation, it's hardly surprising that longtime opponents of Oregon's land use planning system will try to place the blame on laws that have protected our state's quality of life for a quarter-century. Bill Moshofsky's falsely reasoned guest viewpoint (Register-Guard, Aug. 25) is just the latest example.
Moshofsky's column does, however, provide an opportunity to consider the economic impact of Oregon's land use laws. When we do, it becomes clear that our land use program is among our most important tools for promoting economic recovery and protecting the billions of dollars of investments Oregonians have made in our communities.
• Good planning protects property values by providing predictability for landowners.
Prudent investors understand a key principle of real estate economics: What happens next door can destroy - or enhance - the value of one's own property.
Thus, a prospective home buyer asks: Could a lot adjoining my house become a 24-hour convenience store or a junk yard? The head of a job-generating industrial plant wants to know: Might nearby lands be rezoned for big-box retail stores, making it harder to move heavy equipment in and out? A couple investing their life savings in the restoration of an historic hotel wonders: Will the area remain attractive to tourists, or will it succumb to sprawl that drives away customers?
All of these are examples of actual land use issues that have occurred in Oregon. They demonstrate that citizens, businesses and investors alike need predictability in land use so they can make sound economic decisions.
Enemies of planning often attack Oregon's urban growth boundaries. But the Real Estate Research Corporation, an independent real estate investment consulting firm, concluded in 1998: "In reality, the most stable investment markets - the ones that have staying power and hold value - also have growth controls, either government-enacted or enforced by natural geographic boundaries. It's no coincidence that San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston are hemmed in by water... . Developers reflexively loathe the regional growth boundaries set by Portland, Ore., but admit the laws have led to a thriving downtown center as well as a healthy metropolitan area."
According to economic consultant Joseph Cortright, protecting Oregon's quality of life is a critical element of a successful economic strategy in the high-tech era. And as Oregon business leaders have often noted, our state's planning program helps protect the qualities that make our communities livable - the very qualities that attract good companies and family-wage jobs.
• A well-planned community protects taxpayers' and landowners' investments in their land, buildings and service systems.
It would seem foolish to pour money into a building and then walk away from it. Yet this is precisely what many communities across America have done. The economic vitality of countless American main streets, once cohesive community centers, has been siphoned away by unplanned development on their outskirts. These now dispirited communities are sad witnesses to the folly of inadequate planning and sprawling development.
Sprawl is not a sound economic development strategy. The costs of wasteful, unplanned development to taxpayers and property owners are staggering. Good planning helps hold these costs in check.
• Oregon's economy depends on good planning and, yes, on land use regulation.
Take agriculture, which generated $3.6 billion in 2002 while ag-related businesses employ one of every 12 Oregonians. Or take tourism, which generated $6.2 billion while employing 136,000 people. Just as scattered development of farmland eventually will destroy it, so, too, will badly planned development degrade the unique and scenic places on which our tourism industry depends.
In short, Oregon's land use planning program is one of our state's most important economic assets. It helps investors know what land is available for what type of development. It protects the value of investments against ruinous devaluations caused by incompatible activities on adjoining lands. It helps save taxpayer dollars by steering development into sensible locations and away from inappropriate sites. Finally, it helps us protect the bountiful natural and scenic resources and the extraordinary quality of life that make Oregon such a desirable place - for people and for business.
It is critical to our quality of life and economy that we not succumb to the enemies of good planning if we wish to pass anything worthwhile of our beautiful state to our children and grandchildren.
Tom Bowerman, a fifth-generation Oregonian, is a Eugene property manager. Constance Beaumont is director for education and outreach of the Oregon Community Protection Coalition.
What is amazing is that the people of Oregon, like sheep, willingly accepted a lower standard of economic living as a substitute for a higher standard of ecological living. Certainly nobody lied to them in 1973 when this matter was discussed.
They took the slogan "Don't Californicate Oregon!" a little too seriously.
And the former Soviet Union and the current Red China would be ecological paradises.
As a subscriber to "Oregonians In Action," I don't subscribe to this Commonist Plot. (grin)
Communists get so tiresome. I just did a quick check to see what ICOMOS was up to these days, and found that they've dredged up another way to control us. Freedom of movement is about to take a hike (bad pun), because now reading the gobbledygook of the following it appears it is necessary for the global elite (the "experts" as they call them) to "protect" all our "cultural routes". In plain English, these are ROADS, used or abandoned, and "aquatice, mixed, or other type of physical route"(waterways and railways). You see, they must "protect" them from TOO MUCH TOURISM:
"(f) The protection, conservation/preservation and promotion of a cultural route calls for both public awareness and participation of the inhabitants of the concerned areas, setting up management tools adapted to the protection against all kinds of risks, specially the negative repercussions of tourism, and the development of land use policies in concert with national, regional or international plans and aiming for a sustainable development. http://www.icomos-ciic.org/CIIC/NOTICIAS_reunionexpertos.htm
Wading through this crap, it appears anything can be considered a "cultural route":
(e) Even if in certain sections the material traces of a cultural route do not appear clearly preserved [an ancient Indian path through someone's private forest, even if imagined, perhaps?], the existence and value of the cultural route as a whole can be shown through the existing immaterial aspects.
No roads, no tourism. Of course, these two propagandists for the left probably already know that.
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