Before I say anything else, I want to thank you for your support of the land use program over the past 10 years. It buoyed the agency and program supporters in the legislature, and helped make the necessary vetoes possible. You and Oregonians have sustained a public policy - containment of urban development and protection of our farm and forest land base - for nearly 30 years. This is remarkable in our age of immediate gratification, sound bites and short-term political agendas.

Has it been worth it? Let's reflect upon the program for a moment.

What did we set out to do?

We stated our purpose in Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) 215.243. This section of law, enacted in 1973 in Senate Bill 101, a companion to SB 100, sets forth Oregon's fundamental land use policy. Here it is, distilled to a sound bite: stop sprawl and protect farmland.

Have we done it? Or, better question: Are we doing it? I'll start with sprawl

SPRAWL
For the nation as a whole, the 1980s and 1990s were a time of sprawl galloping across the landscape. According to the Brookings Institution, from 1982-1997 the U.S. population grew by 17 peercent. But the amount of urbanized land grew by 47 percent. In those 15 years, overall density in urbanized areas dropped from 5 persons/acre to 4.22 persons/acre.

Here's a comparison among Oregon, Florida, and Georgia that Professor Arthur Nelson of the Georgia Institute of Technology did for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy: Between 1992 and 1997, Georgia urbanized 1.62 acres for each new resident; Florida urbanized 1.25 acres; Oregon urbanized 0.56 acre per new resident.

What follows are a lot of Portland numbers. My apologies to all of you from other parts of the state. It seems only Portland's numbers make it into the national news and comparison studies.

Atlanta: between 1970 and 2000, the population doubled, but the land urbanized grew 3 and ½ times.

Cleveland: between 1970 and 1990, the population dropped by 11%, but the urbanized area expanded by 33% (Natural Resources Defense Council).

Minneapolis/St. Paul: between 1982 and 1997, the population increased 25%, but the urbanized land area increased 61% (Brookings Institution).

Chicago: between 1970 and 1990, the population increased 4%; the urbanized land area increased 46% (Natural Resources Defense Council).

Kansas City: between 1990 and 96, the population increased 5% but the urbanized land increased 70% (Time, March 22, 1999).

Portland: between 1979 and 1999, the population increased 42 percent; the urbanized land area increased 20 percent (Speech, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, February 11, 1999).

Portland: between 1980-2000, the city's population grew 40% (some from annexation) after declining for two decades (Environmental Law Institute, 32 ELR 10160).

Atlanta: Each person in the Atlanta region travels average of 34 miles a day by car, the highest in nation (Smart Growth America, "Measuring Sprawl and its Impact").

Portland: Each person in the Portland region travels average of 24 miles a day by car. The Portland region experiences twice the rate of walking to work compared to the nation's most sprawling cities ("Measuring Sprawl and its Impact").

Jobs?
Nationally, between 1979 and 1999, the central city's share of office space in a region shrank from 74% to 58% (Brookings Institution). In Portland, between 1992 and 1997 private sector jobs grew by 21.4% (State of the Cities Report).

Here's a comparison of regional planning efforts in metropolitan Portland, Kansas City and Minneapolis/St. Paul. In the early 1990s, each region was (and probably still is) involved in long-range planning. Each was expecting some 700,000 new residents over a 40-year period. Kansas City projected a need for 130,000 acres to accommodate that population. Minneapolis/St. Paul thought it would need 100,000 acres. Portland did a "base case" analysis (projecting past development patterns into the future) and concluded it would need 120,000 acres to accommodate the coming 720,000 people. The Portland region rejected the "base case" because it showed Gresham growing into Sandy; Wilsonville, West Linn and Tualatin growing together; and Hillsboro, North Plain and Forest Grove/Cornelius closing the gaps between them. The Portland region instead adopted the 2040 Growth Concept to accommodate this population on 35,800 acres, saving over 80,000 acres of rural land from urbanization.

Here's my last comparison, from "Measuring Sprawl and its Impact", the most comprehensive comparative study of sprawl yet, done by Smart Growth America and released this past summer. The study measured sprawl in 83 metropolitan areas of the U.S. using four factors (1) density of population; (2) separation of uses; (3) accessibility of street network; and (4) presence or absence of well-defined urban centers. SGA measured 22 variables to derive its ratings.

The average rating on each of the four factors, and overall, was 100 points. Portland achieved an overall score of 128, placing it among the ten least-sprawling metro areas in the country.

I want to point out the most interesting Portland result from the SGA study, on factor 1, density. Portland got its lowest mark: 101.3. Portland is only very slightly more dense than the average metropolitan area in the U.S. This speaks softly to critics of the land use program. Remember those op-ed pieces in the Oregonian that said the land use program was cramming people into high-rises and soon we would be like New York City?

The Oregonian picked up on this in an analysis of the 2000 Census. Speaking of the change in the metro area between censuses in 1990 and 2000, the April 8, 2001, article said:

"Yet the increase in density - from 3,500 people per square mile to 3,800 - was so incremental that it left most Portlanders with about as much elbow room as
they had a decade ago. Heavy infill was concentrated in such a small number of areas that nearly 800,000 of the 1.4 million people living in the Portland area in 1990 saw no change in the density of their neighborhoods."

While metropolitan areas all over the country are losing density, the Portland metro area is gaining density, but very gently. We should think of this as the Portland area's "soft landing."

FARMLAND
Before I fill your heads with numbers, let me fill refresh them with two images that testify more eloquently to the success of Oregon's effort to protect farmland. First, visualize the Red Hills of Dundee. Before LCDC's Goal 3 (Agricultural Land) required farm zoning in 1975, Yamhill County had the Red Hill zoned for five-acre homesites. Today, the Red Hills is the most prestigious address of Oregon's world-renowned wine industry.

Second, consider the intersection of U.S. Highways 99W and 22 in Polk County west of Salem. Anywhere else in the country, there would be a shopping malls and office towers at this intersection. But there, in the midst of Oregon's most populous valley, not far from a large city, lies a heavily-used intersection of two state highways, with farm use underway on all four corners.

Now for the numbers.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service, has long been tracking farmland loss nationally. NRCS reports results every five years in its Natural Resources Inventory, or NRI. NRCS established thousands of data-gathering locations in farm areas around the country. Every five years, NRCS goes to each point and measures development in the vicinity. Once development crosses an objective threshold, the farmland at the data point is deemed lost farmland. There are others tracking loss of farmland, such as the American Farmland Trust. But the NRI is the standard.

Here is a comparison of the percentages of the agricultural land base converted in six states from 1992 to 1997, from the NRI:

Maryland - 7.54%
Pennsylvania - 6.54%
California - 3.69%
Washington - 1.6%
Idaho - 1.38%
Oregon - 1.04%

But here is an important footnote. In the most recent NRI, at Oregon's request, the NRCS differentiated between farmland lost in protected farm areas and farmland lost in urban growth boundaries and rural residential areas. Now we can tell how well we are doing protecting the farmland we are trying to protect. Between 1992 and 1997, then, Oregon lost 1.04 percent of its farmland base. But 72 percent of the land converted to urban use occurred within UGBs and rural residential zones. In short, even during "boom-time", we lost very little of the land we are trying to protect.

1000 Friends of Oregon analyzed U.S. Census of Agriculture data and found that between 1978 and 1992 - all years in which the Oregon land use program was in effect - Washington County absorbed 40,000 more new residents than did Clark County in Washington. Yet Clark County lost 6,000 acres more farmland than Washington County did. Per farm income dropped by ten percent in Clark County over that period. It rose in Washington County by 36 percent.

The 1992 Census of Agriculture reported 1,711,500 acres in farms in the Willamette Valley. In 1997, the number was 1,757,000 acres (much of the gain was conversion of forest land to farmland).

One more indicator of success. In the early 1990s, both the Legislature and LCDC heard much testimony that farmland protection program was treating all agricultural land the same. Critics on both sides said it was too easy on dwellings and partitions on the most productive land, and too strict on the least productive land. In 1993 and 1994, the Legislature and LCDC made major adjustments to respond to this information. Since the reforms, the numbers of land divisions, farm dwellings, nonfarm dwellings and other nonfarm uses on high-value farmland, the 4.5 million acres of land most suitable for the growing of crops, are far below their pre-reform numbers. The numbers of dwellings on agricultural land of lower capability are higher than pre-reform years.

The conclusion that I draw from all this information on sprawl and farmland is that the Oregon statewide land use program is succeeding. It is accomplishing what it set out to do in 1973.

POLICY FOR THE FUTURE: STOP SPRAWL, SAVE FARMLAND

We are now in a recession. It's time to "rethink." Is this 30-year-old policy of urban containment and resource land protection the right policy for the next 30 years?

I'll give you my answer by connecting a few dots.

Let's think of some of the greatest challenges we face in the next 30 years and ask if Oregon's 30-year growth management strategy of urban containment and resource land protection is a sensible way to address the challenges.

1. Health:
Remember during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the city asked people to stay off the highways for a few days? Traffic counts dropped 22 percent; asthma-related medical emergencies decreased by 41 percent (Environmental Building News, p. 10).

As little as five years ago, it wouldn't have occurred to me to link physical health to sprawling development patterns. Today, it's in the news every week. You devoted time to it this morning in your "Community Design and Human Health" workshop.

Those of you who attended the workshop may have heard, or you may have read, that there are obesity and Type II diabetes epidemics in the US today. In 1985, obesity (30 poinds overweight) had reached 10 to 15 percent in seven states. By 1994, obesity had reached at least 10 to 15 percent in all 50 states, and was over 15 percent in 16 states. By 2000, all states except Colorado had obesity rates over 15 percent, and nearly half had rates in excess of 20 percent (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Between 1977 and 1995, walking trips nationally declined 50 percent. Today, 75 percent of trips one mile or less taken by car (Alternative Complementary Therapies). According to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the replacement of walking and cycling with automobile travel is a major reason for Americans' sedentary lifestyle and weight gain.

Here's the connection between the dots: the Smart Growth America sprawl study shows that a city's sprawl index is by far the most powerful predictor of whether people will walk to work.

What are we going to do?

Perhaps we should stick with our policy to contain urbanization and stop sprawl by building walkable communities.

2. Water Quantity:
Who can doubt that this is the issue of the century? Agriculture's water will increasingly be going to cities, especially in the western U.S. US Filter, a German company that is a major water providers in the U.S., recently bought 30,000 acres of Imperial Valley farmland for the water, intending to sell to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (17 million customers and growing). Megalopolises will be taking water from farms all over the world. Farmland will be coming out of production.

What are we going to do? We should connect the dots: save Oregon's farmland, especially the farmland that is "prime" even without water.

3. Cost of infrastructure:
We grew fast in the 90s, but decided to stop spending on infrastructure. We've had no increase in the gas tax since 1991. We can barely afford to maintain and operate our existing transportation system, let alone add capacity to accommodate our appetite for driving. Oregon's not alone. Voters in Washington recently rejected Measure Resolution 51. People seem to be telling their elected officials: "We've built enough infrastructure."

This morning's Oregonian editorialized on school costs. Oregon spends more per public school pupil than the U.S. average. One thing we spend too much on, according to the Oregonian, is busing. One reason is that we build schools at locations to which students can't walk or ride their bikes. But I diverge…

Universities, research institutes, scholars and associations have been studying the relationships between development patterns and the cost of public infrastructure for decades. I've heard that there are more than 800 such studies since the mammoth "Costs of Sprawl" study done by the Real Estate Research Corporation in 1974. Although the studies are not unanimous, they are nearly so: sprawl costs more. I want to mention two that I think are instructive for Oregon.

In the early 1990s, the New Jersey legislature asked Rutgers University to compare the costs of two development patterns to accommodate population growth in that state - 520,000 people over 20 years: the compact pattern proposed in the Governor's plan and the historical, sprawling pattern. Rutgers published a multi-volume study that concluded that compact development pattern would save New Jersey $1.3 billion in public facility capital construction cost over the 20 years and $400 million annually in operation and maintenance costs. It would also, by the way, save 90,000 acres of "prime" farmland.

The second study was done by the American Farmland Trust (AFT) in 1995. The AFT had become alarmed at the loss of farmland in the Central Valley of California, arguably the nation's most important farm area, with 6.2 million acres of "prime" farmland. At the time of the study, the population of the valley stood at four million. The forecast was that the valley would gain eight million new residents - for a total of 12 million people - by the year 2040. AFT compared the consequences of eight million new people in two development patterns: 3 units/acre and 6 units/acre. As you might guess, the more compact pattern saved much more of the valley's farmland. Surprising to many, however, was the savings on public infrastructure. Chose six units/acre and the cities and counties of the valley save $29 billion in the cost of taxpayer-financed services over the 45 years.

Here's an AFT study result that should warm the hearts of our anti-tax activists: in the sprawling pattern, each new resident would cost local governments $123/year more in the cost of services than the new resident would pay in taxes. But in the compact pattern, each new resident would contribute $27/year more in taxes than the resident would cost in services.

So, we continue to grow, we continue to demand services, but we are unwilling to pay any more taxes. What are we going to do?

Maybe we should connect the dots: stick with our compact growth policy and accommodate growth where the existing infrastructure is, or in a pattern of development that will pay for it.

4. Growing energy dependence:
Since 9/11, U.S. dependence upon oil from the Middle East has been on our minds. According to American Public Transit Association (APTA), if one in ten Americans used public transit regularly, U.S. reliance upon foreign oil could be cut 40 percent.

How can we do that? Perhaps we should stick with our compact urbanization policy and build walkable communities.

5. Diminishing Air Quality:
Highway vehicles are responsible for 60 percent of carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. According to APTA, public transportation generates one-half the carbon monoxide, one-half the volatile organic compounds, one-half the carbon dioxide and one-half the nitrogen oxide per passenger mile as the private auto. If one in ten Americans used public transit regularly, the U.S. would be able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 25 percent of the standard set under the Kyoto Agreement.

How do these dots connect? The Smart Growth America sprawl study shows that the degree to which a region sprawls is the best indicator of the region's ozone levels. The least-sprawling cities, Portland included, have only two-thirds the ozone levels as the most-sprawling cities. The Brookings Institute says: "…possibly the only way to improve air quality and reduce energy consumption without imposing new taxes, government mandates or regulations is to increase the use of public transportation."

Perhaps we should stick with our compact urbanization policy and build walkable communities.

6. Loss of agricultural land:
Is farmland loss really a problem? The "we have plenty of farmland; there is no need to protect it" mantra has some traction today, given competition for U.S. farm commodities from imports.

So this problem is not on everybody's list. It should be, and would be if we could look past the next five or ten years.

Think of all the forces at work that will diminish the world's supply of arable land:

· Population growth (National Geographic says we will add 1.6 billion in less than 30 years)
· Competition for water between growing cities and irrigated farmland
· Declining water quality
· Declining water tables
· Declining stocks of fisheries around the world;
· Efforts to protect water quality that result in retreat of farming from riparian areas (examples: efforts to reclaim the meanders of the Kissimmee River to save the Everglades from south Florida's cattle and tomato industries; the four-state effort to save Chesapeake Bay from the nutrients, herbicides and pesticides that flow into the bay from the Susquehanna River)
· Global warming (disappearing glaciers and snowpacks).

Any thoughtful person could add to this string of forces. Let me add one: Changes in China.

The population of China doubled between 1949 and 1994, to 1.2 billion. Even with its one-child-per-family policy, the population is expected to reach 1.5 billion in the middle of this century. Meanwhile, China's economy has been growing between 8 and 12% annually for 20 years. Its standard of living is rising rapidly. Nutrition and population experts will tell you, and confirm by pointing to the "tiger"economies of southeast Asia over the past 20 years, that eating habits change as living standards rise. They have observed, for example, that the Chinese are already eating more wheat, eggs and meat and drinking more beer. But between 1949 and 1994, China lost between 15 and 33% - 50 to 100 million acres of its 272 to 346 million acres - of its arable land. China's State Land Administration reported that China lost an average of 659,000 acres of farmland annually in the 1990s. China, which has prided itself on being able to feed its people, went into the wheat import market early in the 1990s. The WorldWatch Institute predicts that China will, before the middle of the century, need to import the world's entire wheat crop grown for export.

The American Farmland Trust, in its October, 2002, report "Farming on the Edge", says that from 1992 to 1997, the U.S. converted 6 million acres of agricultural land to urban use, an area the size of Maryland. The U.S. lost "prime" farmland 30% faster in the 90s than in the 80s. Eighty-six percent of U.S. fruits and vegetables is produced in urban-influenced areas.

What are we going to do? Perhaps we should stick with our policy to protect Oregon's farmland.

Compact development, urban containment and farmland protection continue to look like good policy for the next 30 years.

The six trends I noted are big challenges, long-term challenges. But we have big challenges that are much nearer in term: Ignorance and Apathy. So many Oregonians are new to Oregon. They don't know why Oregon decided to stop sprawl and protect farmland in 1973. We have a great story to tell. We must get the story to Oregonians in a language they can understand.

We must also recognize that the Oregon land use program has its flaws. We work on these constantly, as you well know. Every session of the Oregon Legislature since 1973 has enacted legislation to make the system better. Our system is admired for it fundamentals; if it were a building, we would says the beams and girders - the bones - are beautiful and strong. Increasingly, the program is recognized for its results, and copied. But its details - the façade of the building, if you will - has become baroque, rococo even, in the farmland protection and UGB expansion processes. The ornamentation is oppressive, sometimes leading to rigidity.

How did it get this way? It's a long story of politics, the subject of a speech I'd like to give some day. Not all the "improvements" of the past 28 years have been improvements. For today, though, as we work on the façade again in the 2003 legislative session, let's be mindful of the bones of the building. They are sound; we should protect them for another 30 years.

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