This video is sponsored by Curiosity Stream.
Look at this road.
It looks like any other dangerous suburban arterial.
I'm filming this on the side of a road with no sidewalk
but this street has a boundary running through it
separating the urban side over here
from the rural side here.
Nobody could build housing on this side.
It's required to stay agricultural,
and the housing on the other side of the boundary
is higher density than you'd expect to find
right up against a farm on the edge of a metro area.
This is a visual example of the promise
of an urban growth boundary.
A line meant to keep urban growth within the line
and protect farm and forest land outside of it.
These boundaries are often cited
as an effective way of limiting suburban sprawl
and protecting natural resources.
But do they actually do anything
or do they do too much
and make housing more expensive for everyone in the region?
These are important questions to answer as many US cities
and cities abroad have urban growth boundaries.
Let's try to answer those questions after the bike bell.
(bell ringing)
- The concept of an urban growth boundary is simple
but there's more to it than just drawing a line.
For example, where do you draw it?
What cities don't do is draw it right up against
the existing extent of urbanization,
essentially shrink wrapping the region
and not allowing any new growth on the urban fringe.
Here's how it works In Portland,
where I took that video from before.
The UGB must have enough land inside for 20 years of growth.
According to Oregon state law
they have to evaluate the boundary every six years
to ensure that's still true.
For example, in 2019 Metro,
the regional agency that manages planning
determine that the region needed
an additional 2000 acres added to the boundary.
Their projections estimated
that they needed 9,200 more housing units
than they had capacity for
and made the boundary adjustments.
They can also decide to simply upzone parcels
to more efficiently use the land
and not make any boundary adjustments.
Portland made no adjustments
to their boundary in the round before last.
Portland also identifies areas
outside the boundary where they may expand
into in the next 50 years.
They're called urban reserves.
Areas determined to be appropriate
for future urban development.
The point of a UGB isn't to strangle growth
but to ensure that it happens
in a compact, efficient manner.
Urbanites get their dense, transit supportive
metropolitan areas,
and rural folks get peace of mind.
They know their land can stay rural
and the city won't encroach.
But even the best ideas have unintended consequences.
There are two common critiques of urban growth boundaries.
One, that they constrain the supply of housing
making housing more expensive,
and two, that they don't do anything
to actually contain sprawl.
Let's start with the first critique.
According to the logic, by constraining the land available
for development, UGB's decrease the supply of housing
causing housing prices to increase.
In a West coast city like Portland
where housing unaffordability is almost a given already
a UGB related price increase would just be piling on.
It could hurt a lot of people.
So is it true?
Like most things in planning, the answer is complicated.
Studies have shown that UGB's can increase the cost
of land within the boundary
but not necessarily the final cost of housing.
How does that work?
Well, if housing is built to higher densities,
in part to maximize the value of the limited land,
the cost per unit could still be lower.
Remember those buildings at the beginning of the video?
Three stories right on the edge of farmland is pretty dense.
This can offset the higher initial land costs.
This might mean
that there are fewer large lot single family subdivisions
but that's a good thing
if you don't want wasteful lawns and longer commutes.
One recent study of the Seattle area, which also has a UGB,
even shows that on average housing prices are lower
just inside the UGB than just outside of it.
Only extremely expensive and extremely inexpensive homes
saw price increases inside the UGB.
The author of the study speculated
that because land prices were higher inside,
developers were more likely to maximize the number
of units on each lot
which resulted in lower prices, just like we said.
But that's just one study
and like I said, it's complicated.
Two studies found that housing prices increased in Portland
due to the UGB while another found no effect.
A study of Knoxville Tennessee's urban growth boundary
found an increase in prices
and yet another Seattle study found a price decrease.
The reality is that
there are many factors influencing housing prices
and the constraint of land due
to the urban growth boundary is just one aspect of that.
One study found that there could be an increase
in prices right inside the UGB
because that boundary locks in nice rural views
for the houses nearby.
Those homeowners know that there won't be any
new development blocking their views for years.
We know that UGB's don't necessarily increase housing prices
within the region, but what about the second critique
that they don't actually stop sprawl at all?
Well, to be fair, nothing about boundaries
suggests that the development within it has to be
compact, walkable with access to transit.
A study of land development
within the urban growth boundary found
that exurban development,
development at a density even lower
than suburban development was occurring.
This was happening in the unincorporated rural areas
in the UGB
where there wasn't high density zoning
to encourage more intense use.
Okay, so sprawl can still happen within the boundary
but does the boundary stop sprawl outside of it?
Maybe not.
What's stopping development from just skipping
over to the next town down the road
outside the urban growth boundary
and setting up development there?
The boundary then would be just displacing sprawl
not stopping it,
and if those people are still commuting into the UGB
it could actually create a negative environmental impact
due to the longer commutes.
This is called a spillover effect.
Portland's metro area is up against
the Oregon Washington border
and the state of Washington
didn't have any statewide growth management planning
until 1990, years after Oregon adopted theirs.
That meant that suburban development couldn't happen
on the fringe of the Portland metro area in Oregon
but it was game on in Washington.
Vancouver, Washington was a release valve
for suburban growth for decades.
Basically, Portland exported its sprawl to Washington.
There's also evidence that some suburban development
happened in more far flung rural communities.
These critiques about housing prices
and spillover effects aren't enough to totally
discredit the idea of UGB's,
but just an example of how all land use policies
in a region need to work in concert.
Now, what are some of these complimentary policies
that can make a UGB work better?
Land use policies within the boundary have to allow
and encourage higher density development
so housing prices remain reasonable.
A UGB is pointless if all the developable land
within the boundaries essentially zone to allow sprawl.
The city of Portland,
one of the 24 cities within the UGB,
recently passed the residential infill project,
one of the most aggressive measures
to increase density in a central city anywhere in the US.
It allows fourplexes on any residential lot in the city.
Effectively, single family zoning is history.
It even allows sixplexes
if half the units meet affordability standards.
Optimistic projections have the residential infill project
increasing housing production in the city by 20%.
That's a lot of homes, which means that when Metro
has to decide to expand the urban growth boundary,
the answer is more likely to be No.
With the right mix of policies,
urban growth boundaries can effectively rein in
car-oriented suburban development.
But only three US states, Oregon, Washington
and Tennessee require large urban areas to adopt a UGB.
Some cities like San Jose, California
and Boulder, Colorado have adopted them
without state mandate.
State mandates are helpful though
because they typically require regional cooperation.
Like I mentioned before
without all cities within a metro area on board
you're gonna get spillover effects.
All of that sprawl's just going to be redirected
to the community that doesn't want to take part in it.
The state of Oregon passed its UGB law, SB 100,
back in 1973.
Republican governor Tom McCall
seized upon an unlikely alignment of
environmentalists, farmers, loggers and urbanites,
and called for and signed a law
for comprehensive statewide planning.
Here's what he had to say about suburbia.
- But there is a shameless threat in our environment
one of the whole quality of our life
and that is the unfettered despoiling of our land.
Sage brush subdivisions, coastal condo-mania
and the ravenous rampage of suburbia
here in the Willamette Valley
all threaten to mark Oregon's status
as the environmental model of this nation.
- Hey, that's pretty progressive
for the 1970s.
State law requires entire regions to
submit their urban growth boundaries for state approval.
The state then checks them
up against Oregon statewide planning goals
and if they meet those goals, they're approved.
Few states exert as much
top down land use control as Oregon,
but you need that kind
of state mandate to force local governments
within regions to work together.
Urban growth boundaries aren't perfect
but paired with the right supporting land use policies
they can be effective at curbing low density development.
And honestly
we need to use every tool we can to stop that kind
of development because it bankrupts our local communities,
harms the environment and increases traffic congestion.
So it just makes sense.
This is my last video for my visit to Portland.
Did you know that I used to live in Portland?
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about myself personally on YouTube,
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