housing crisis comes at a time when the city is preparing a comprehensive plan to take us to the year 2000. The plan will have a direct effect on how the housing crisis is handled. Consequently, it would be wise to examine the city’s history and where it is likely to go. In 1961, Jane Jacobs wrote Death and Life o f American Cities, a watershed work in understanding what makes a city tick. Our city leaders like to take credit for carrying out many of Ms. Jacobs’ major ideas. For example, Angus Duncan, aide to former Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, says, “All those ideas about the city that people attribute to Neil are really standard formulas. You can find that thinking in Jane Jacobs and in cities all over the country. It’s just that Portland’s in a much better position to put those ideas to work, to get them institutionalized.” This self-serving pat on the back denies the reality that for the past twenty years the city fathers have ignored the major principles of Jane Jacobs’ work, putting Portland on a course that will lead to urban blight, spiritual decline and economic chaos prevalent in many of the older Eastern cities. According to Ms. Jacobs, “To understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena. . . . “A mixture of uses, if it is to be sufficiently complex to sustain city safety, public contact and cross-use, needs an enormous diversity of ingredients. . . . The Portland State University “campus” is a perfect example of the destruction of a vital neighborhood to serve the advantage of one primary function (higher education). PSU and the Portland Development Commission pursued a systematic course of knocking down the homes and apartments of students and non-students, and community businesses (Papa John’s, Montgomery Gardens, Montague’s Pizza Parlor, Green Spot Tavern, etc.) to create parking lots and empty lawns. The increased parking facilities encouraged more traffic and pollution as exemplified by the curtailment of a bus program that was bringing in 900 students a day from the Westgate Theatre, Zoo, and Coliseum parking lots. The final blow to the PSU “campus” was the conversion of the South Park Blocks into a split-level suburban mall that neatly separates everyone and prevents the kind of outdoor gatherings that were so prevalent in the ’60s and early ’70s. On non-school days it was quite common to see people catchin’ some rays, walking the dog, studying or just hanging out. Today it’s a rarity to find a soul around PSU except those going to and from classes. The South Auditorium area is plagued by similar problems, compounded by the creation of a living space affordable by only one class of people. These folks provide limited use of the area by day and none at night. Only when the Civic Auditorium has an event going does the area see any varied foot traffic, and that is usually very transitory since there are no interesting, accessible shops in the neighborhood. The proposed city government complex is going to extend this gray dullness even further downtown, without the slightest consideration being given to creating some kind of diversity. This is a far cry from the South Portland of yesteryear that mixed Jews, Italians, gypsies and bohemians in the city’s most colorful and dynamic neighborhood. The Portland Development Commission applied for aid from the federal government for the renewal project, citing incompatible mixtures of commercial and residential lots. The 4,500 people displaced by the projects (both South Auditorium and PSU) might tell quite a different tale. They would say that there was a great oppor- turnity for free enterprise right in the neighborhood. First and Second avenues—from about Hooker to Harrison—formed the hub of a thriving commercial world. Businesses, homes, schools, and houses of worship spilled over in every direction. Some would talk of Mosier’s bakery, reputed to be Portland’s finest. People from all over town and beyond trouped there to get bagels and black bread. Then there were the delis— Zusman’s and Korsun’s—and the Lighthouse Fish and Oyster Company. Others might wax nostalgically about the late Sam Wilderman, a Portland attorney and legislator who was famed for his portable feasts of Kosher corned beef that attracted legions — they will swear the Cafe Espresso with its two great white rooms in a Victorian storefront which, along with the cheap flats above Mosier’s, provided the center of Portland’s early bohemian scene. More might tell of Papa John’s, where you’d never go hungry no matter how much change you had in your pocket. City planners called this a “ seedy assortment of shops and stores hoping to attract neighboring inhabitants when they were in need of such things as clean shirts, soles and heels, groceries, furniture mending, haircuts, watch repair, and beer.” A good description of a vital neighborhood except for the middle-class cultural bias. This bias is at the core of what’s driving Portland to look like every other city from Atlanta to Phoenix. The old photos and stories of Portland clearly show a city that could have rivaled San Francisco as the gem of the West for looks and cultural diversity. * The city’s comprehensive plan talks about mass transit corridors and the need to build row houses and apartments along them. It would eliminate commercial activities that depend on drive-in trade (banks, Plaid Pantrys, McDonalds, etc., would be limited to parts of 82nd, Powell, Union, NE Broadway, Sandy Blvd., Macadam, Columbia, St. Helens Road, Foster Road and Marine Drive). Unfortunately, nowhere in the comprehensive plan is there talk of creating diversified, primary and secondary uses for these corridors. Five will get you ten that Division, Hawthorne, Belmont, Stark, Burnside, Fremont, and Prescott will continue to function basically as automobile corridors. As such, they would retain little or no foot traffic and substantially contribute to the pollution problem that, in summer, makes us look like a little L.A. If the city is to grow in a healthy direction, these areas must be given separate small-block identities and developed. Suburban traffic must be limited by making conditions less convenient for cars. One of the reasons NW 21st and 23rd avenues are so vibrant is that there is much less through traffic to the suburbs, making for narrow streets, wide sidewalks and much pedestrian use. A successful mass transit system will never work without a war of attrition on the auto, led by our fearless leaders. Without this commitment, light rail will join Tri-Met (which now spends $1.85 for each $1.00 it takes in) in being a deadly albatross around our city’s pocketbook, just as mass transit is all over the East. These corridors must be commercially built up, yet maintain a mixed- use concept. A huge, dense shopping mall like Lloyd Center has decimated inner Northeast. If all that business activity was diversified throughout the area, inner Northeast would be a much more vibrant place to live. The Hollywood district in Northeast retains vitality because of its narrow streets, mixed primary and secondary uses plus a good mixture of new and older buildings. Lloyd Center—a very profitable and highly praised enterprise in this city— has violated nearly every basic commandment for city diversification and interest. Driving through the area at night evokes a Twilight Zone serial after the A-bomb has struck. The passion for newness means that you will only see operations that are well established, high-turnover businesses that can afford the costs of new construction. As Jane Jacobs says, “Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighborhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. Supermarkets and shoe stores often go into new buildings. Well-subsidized opera and art museums often go into new buildings. But the unformalized feeders of the arts—studios, galleries, stores for musical instruments and art supplies, backrooms where the low earning power of a seat and table can absorb uneconomic discussions —these go into old buildings. Perhaps more significant, hundreds of ordinary enterprises, necessary to the safety and public life of streets and neighborhoods, and appreciated for their convenience and personal quality, can make out successfully in old buildings, but are inexorably slain by the high overhead of new construction. “Even the enterprises that can support new construction in cities need old structures in their immediate vicinity. Otherwise they are part of a total attraction and total environment. Flourishing diversity anywhere in a city means the mingling o f high-yield, middling-yield, low-yield and no-yield enterprises. " As we have seen, Portland’s record in new construction does not leave much optimism for a healthy urban environment. While these projects have raised some needed tax dollars, a healthier way to raise the tax rate is to expand the city’s territorial quality of successful areas. Public and quasipublic bodies should establish themselves in areas that will help diversity. Moreover, the unchecked power of business and governmental finance must be curtailed to stop their cataclysmic effect on neighborhood development. As Jane Jacobs says, “When government and/or business decide that they are heavily going to invest in a district, they behave not like irrigation systems, bringing life-giving streams to feed steady, continual growth. Instead they behave like manifestations of malevolent climates beyond the control of man—affording either searing droughts or torrential, eroding floods.” Watching all this, we feel a bit helpless as Winchell’s puts its ugly mark on 23rd Avenue—or Plaid Pantry adds new abominations on 21st and Division and 30th and Belmont, when they already had eyesores on 26th and Division, and 27th and Belmont. Eventually this unchecked development, whether a Plaid Pantry or Lloyd Center, will grow old and stagnate and soon be ready for the next urban renewal project. Most importantly, Portland is an immense laboratory in city building and design. This is the laboratory in which our city planners should be learning, forming and testing their theories. Instead, the practitioners of this discipline have ignored the study of real life and are instead guided by an imagination that grinds out a tasteless gruel which will eventually put us in the same porridge pot as the Clevelands and New Yorks. We must all begin to act with the knowledge that we’re in this pot together. Our success or failure in grabbing the wheel of history and turning it in a more vital, imaginative direction will determine whether or not our love for our fellow Portlanders will be reflected in the neighborhoods and institutions of the Rose City. Casual, intimate, and family dining in the comfort of our bucket seats. Enjoy fine steaks, seafood, omelettes and sandwiches. Home-style cookin’ and lots of it at pre-gas-shortage prices. The Rolls Royce of Restaurants T H R E E - L I O N S ’ - B A K E R Y you b p This has got classiest potata ever. The HOTPOTATA C^fe 422 SW 13th Portland, Oregon 223-7573 FAMOUS FOR THE BEST AND ONLY BRIOCHES IN TOWN. WE'RE ALSO FILLING OUR PASTRIES WITH ALL KINDS OF WONDERFUL THINGS — LIKE PATE, WHIPPED CREAMS, CHOCOLATE, MARZIPAN, AND APPLE-RAISIN. 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