What L.A. Could Learn from Portland. By Steve Hymon, LATimes, August 18, 2008. "[In a recent visit to Portland, Ore.], it was hard not to marvel at all the things that city does well on the transportation front. I began to wonder what… could be applied here [in Los Angeles]… One of the worst things about downtown L.A. is the number of parking lots [which] have made it difficult to create the kind of critical mass of people that attracts businesses important to a thriving city center… Back [in] the 1970s [when] state air quality officials [in Oregon] began cracking down on car pollution… they imposed tight rules on emissions and told cities to find ways to get people to drive less. With that kick in the rear, Portland initially created a plan that capped the number of parking spaces downtown, thus encouraging more people to take mass transit. Officials also zoned the city [so] that the buildings closest to mass transit stops were given strict limits on how much parking they could construct. [The exact opposite policy applies in] Los Angeles: New residential and commercial buildings have minimum amounts of parking they can build. There is no maximum [and] attempts to relax the minimums… have been controversial… 'They had a great plan adopted 20 years ago,' [Gail] Goldberg, [head of the L.A. planning department,] said [of Portland], 'and the City Council sticks to the plan.'"
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