FAYETTEVILLE — Portland, Ore., which I recently visited for a physics education conference, is the way a city should be. It’s the nicest city I’ve come across yet in America, and is a lot like Fayetteville. But Fayetteville can learn from Portland, hence this column.
Portland is a real city, not the hollowed-out shell that many American cities have become because of automobile dominance and the flight to the suburbs.
There are 600,000 people living within the city limits. Suburban sprawl is discouraged (but not eliminated) by strict statewide land use laws, resulting in higher density within all Oregon city limits. This, and Portland’s inviting central city, brings residents downtown or along the rail lines forurban living in the city’s many apartments and condominiums. Thus the central city hums with life and commerce.
Central Fayetteville is partly hollowed out.
Except for banks and lawyers, commerce is light throughout the weekdays, and except for Dickson Street there’s little going on nights and weekends.
Our square is a jewel but, other than our occasional (but wonderful) Farmers’ Market and art shows, little happens there. Years ago, most commerce followed the car out to the mall area, a good example of James Kunstler’s “Geography of Nowhere” as described in his book of that name.
Such car-centric shopping dooms cities. Portland has shopping malls, but they’re small, downtown, served by transit, require little parking, and don’t disrupt the urban fabric built of small, regular city blocks.
It’s a sign of a sick city when people have to climb into their car and drive out to a mall to buy a pair of socks or a screwdriver, as we do in Fayetteville.
Such everyday shopping is easy in Portland. We have few if any doctor and dentist offices left in central Fayetteville. Without Colliers’ drugstore and the central IGA, we couldn’t conduct any of our daily business in the center.
Portland’s transportation system is the key to its success. Portland has nearly tamed the automobile.
There’s a thick bus network and four light-rail lines running out in all directions from downtown. Like all forms of American transportation (especially cars), these are subsidized.
It cost me two bucks for a fast 30-minute train ride downtown from the airport, a trip that would have cost at least $25 in a taxi. Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, are you listening?
Four long central downtown streets devote two lanes exclusively to railand buses, with one lane remaining for one-way car traffic. All other streets are two-lane and two-way, with parking on one or both sides, a design that discourages fast driving.
During the 1960s, Portland talked the state into building an interstate highway around the city instead of along the city-side bank of the Willamette River. Then they broke up the pre-existing freeway along the bank and turned the riverfront into a wonderful well-used long park with a broad multi-use trail on both sides of the river.
Portland invests heavily in public space. There are many parks, statues, other public art, underground parking lots, some decked parking, no flat ground-level lots (such as Fayetteville has across from the Walton Arts Center), six farmer’s markets, a large museum of science and industry, free parties on blocked-off streets, and an arts center with a separate concert hall.
Dedicated trails and bicycle lanes encourage bicycling, which quadrupled from 1991 to 2006. The downtown layout of small square city blocks with pedestrian crossing lights at every corner and short wait times works in favor of pedestrians and against fast cars.
Like Fayetteville, Portland is quirky. The Portlander’s motto, “Keep Portland weird,” parallels our “Keep Fayetteville funky.” I joined a group of colleagues for a guided walking tour of central Portland. Among other things, I learned that the city regularly elects liberal Democrats.
We visited the world’s smallest park. It’s circular, two feet across, bounded by a curb, and in a crosswalk in the six-lane boulevard next to the lake-side park. This nationally registered park is the location for many wedding ceremonies (but people can’t actually stand inside the park) and is in the Guiness Book of World Records. To see it, search for “Mill Ends Park” and click the Wikipedia article.
A few years ago, when park repairs were needed, Portland had a “boulevard party” to welcome therepair crew arriving in huge construction equipment;
they used a large crane to lower tiny repair items into the park. It was a joke, and a good example of Portland’s love of life.
ART HOBSON IS A PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.
Opinion, Pages 11 on 08/15/2010