Growing Oregon

Oregon is facing a significant housing shortage, needing to construct about 29,500 additional homes annually, primarily in the Portland region and Willamette Valley.

Anyeley Hallovà chairs the commission that oversees Oregon's growth management system. She's passionate about developing compact neighborhoods that provide equitable and affordable housing — and that help combat climate change. But not everyone is happy about moving in this direction.

Property rights activists nearly derailed Oregon's growth management system in the early 2000s. And no one was more prominent — or colorful — than Dorothy English.

The proposed Westside Bypass freeway in Washington County had a lot of momentum — until critics said it ran afoul of Oregon's growth management system. The freeway fight in the early 1990s wound up affecting transportation policies throughout the state.

How Betty Niven went from petitioning her city council for a sidewalk to

Al Johnson is a lawyer who played a big role in changing how cities have to think about housing in Oregon. They can't just zone out homes for working class residents.

Oregon leaders talked a lot about how the new growth management system would protect the state's farms and open spaces. But only gradually did it become clear how life would change inside Oregon's cities and suburbs.

In the 1970s, Oregonians looked to California and didn't want the same fate for their state A new crop of young legislators in Salem saw an opportunity to advance an ambitious agenda. It took nearly a decade to put in place a system that has some of the strongest protections in the U.S. for farms, forests and other open spaces.

OPB is digging deep into the evolution of Oregon's unique approach to growth and the impact it has on our lives today. Here's how the story came about, and how you play a role in supporting this work.

Fifty years ago, Oregonians feared their farmlands and other open spaces would be overrun with urban sprawl. This eventually led to the state's unique land-use system. This is part one in a six-part series describing how this happened and explaining why it affects so many things you might not have thought about.