Today the Metro Council voted 6-0 to add 1985 acres to the region’s urban growth boundary for future housing and jobs. (Councilor Rex Burkholder was excused.) This represents less than a one-percent expansion of the region’s urban footprint to accommodate thousands of additional households and workers over the next 20 years.

At www.oregonmetro.gov/greatplaces, you can view interactive maps and download reports about each of 10 areas being considered.

On Friday, Aug. 19, the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission approved the urban and rural reserves map for Washington County, which was approved by the Metro Council and the Washington County Board of Commissioners last spring.

This decision, combined with LCDC’s decision last year to approve the urban and rural reserves for Multnomah and Clackamas counties, completes four years of collaborative effort to provide significant protections for farmland and natural areas while supplying enough land for good jobs and vibrant neighborhoods for the future. No other metropolitan area in the United States has ever attempted—let alone achieved—such a thoughtful and far-reaching plan.

Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette packed her bags for Puerto Rico in March to discuss Metro's sustainable land use policies with professional planners and students at Universidad Metropolitana in San Juan. Collette was joined by GBD Architects President Phil Beyl and two graduate students from Portland State University.

The Metro Council will soon consider improvements to the Portland region’s growth rules that will require more effective and efficient use of existing public investments and that improve the management and accountability of public services. Metro’s goal is to ensure the region makes the most of its existing cities as part of the agency’s long-term strategy to provide good jobs, protect valuable farm and forest land and preserve outdoor recreation opportunities. Four public hearings will be held throughout the region over the next three weeks.

The council addressed the urban growth boundary as a board for the first time at a Tuesday worksession, and at least four councilors said they were comfortable with saying the region will need about 15,000 new residential units to meet state capacity requirements.

For the past three years or so, the Metro Council and our regional partner cities and counties have been engaged in a process we've been calling "Making the Greatest Place." This summer we adopted two big critical parts of that effort. We designated Urban and Rural Reserves to help us manage our region's population and employment growth over the next 50 years, and we finalized a 20 Year Regional Transportation Plan that described the kind of region we want to live in and the transportation priorities that will help us build that region. This winter we will be taking the next steps toward our goal of making this region great. To focus that conversation, Metro's chief operating officer Michael Jordan has released a Community Investment Strategy that calls for our region to invest in safe, livable communities; promote economic development and good jobs; protect our natural areas; reduce inefficiency, foster innovation and demand accountability.

Metro COO Michael Jordan calls for more effective investments in public structures to maintain quality of life.

Responding to what he labeled an “imperative to act,” Metro Chief Operating Officer Michael Jordan today released recommendations that are designed to foster partnerships to invest in sustainable, prosperous and equitable communities. Jordan’s strategy lays out both broad and specific actions that, if followed, will build the public structures needed to make the most of existing communities, provide for good jobs now and in the future and protect important natural areas and recreation opportunities. The recommendations call for cities, counties, Metro and businesses throughout the region to tackle looming financing gaps and inefficiencies that slow progress and increase costs. They also call for new state rules that would improve the efficiency and effectiveness of local investments. Along with efficiency measures, the report also responds to Metro’s legal obligation to analyze the region’s employment and population growth capacity within the existing urban growth boundary. The recommendations lay out multiple options for regional policy makers to consider, ranging from no expansion to a very limited expansion primarily for large site industrial development.

Metro today released the results of a public opinion survey designed to develop valid and statistically reliable information regarding the attitudes of residents about the quality of life in the region and growth management principles. Six hundred voters in the Metro region were randomly selected and interviewed on the phone between July 31 and Aug. 3, 2009. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 4 percent.

On the very long list of things I love about living in the Portland metropolitan area two things rise to the top.

I love that I can catch a bus on my corner or a trail a couple of blocks away and go almost anywhere in the region I want to without driving. I've got a grocery store less than a half mile away and corner stores in three directions. There are Mexican, Italian and Chinese restaurants within walking distance and a new Hawaiian one five minutes away by bus. I live in a residential neighborhood in Milwaukie that is linked to everything I need and enjoy. That linkage is my favorite thing about living here.

What I love next best is the fact that I can leave all that behind and be in farm fields or forests quickly just by crossing the region's urban growth boundary. It's not far from my home – a few miles and I'm on my way to Mount Hood or the Columbia River Gorge or a U-pick farm to get berries.

I actually like some kinds of change – a new restaurant filling a storefront downtown, a grocery store opening in a long abandoned building, a neighborhood park built on the site of a former drug house. That kind of change makes it easier and more fun to live here. It means there might be jobs for my neighbors.

But I also find it reassuring that some things aren't changing so much. I am grateful to the folks who drew a line around our region 30 years ago and protected the countryside, the forests, the productive farms and more from urban sprawl. I am grateful that it is not easy to move that line outward. It has to really make sense. It has to be a necessary move to ensure that there is room for people to live and work in our region.