There are extensive empirical studies on the impacts and effectiveness of Smart Growth policies; however, very few of them consider the perspective of individual decision makers and, to this author's knowledge, none have studied developers as location-aware decision-making agents. This study tries to fill this gap partially by assessing the impacts of Portland's smart growth policies on developers' location choice behavior with developer-based location choice models. The dissertation has two purposes. By assessing the impacts of Smart Growth policies on individual home developer's location choice, it provides a micro- and behavioral foundation for the understanding of Smart Growth policies. As a bi-state metropolitan area located on the border between Oregon and Washington, the Portland region provides a unique environment that allows my research to examine whether home developers react to Smart Growth policies differently in the two states with different land use policy systems. The dissertation also aims to create a developer-based land development forecast model, which can be used as a scenario analysis tool for the Portland region's long-term land use and transportation planning. Besides the developer location choice model mentioned above, the components of this comprehensive developer-based land development model also include a time series regression model that predicts annual new housing supply in the region and a model that synthesizes housing projects in a forecast year. The study shows that home developers in the Portland metropolitan area are sensitive to most Smart Growth policies that have been implemented in the region, but they react to them differently across the border between Oregon and Washington. Single-family home (SFH) and multi-family home (MFH) developers show different preferences for location attributes. The most significant predictors of where a developer will choose to locate a project are the locations of previous projects. After controlling for all of the other factors discussed above, there remains a strong preference for developing SFH units outside of the UGB in both Oregon and Washington sides of the Portland metropolitan area. Latent class models have been developed to detect taste variations among home developers in the SFH and MFH markets separately. Estimation results show clear taste variations across developers and housing projects with respect to site attributes in their location choice. With other variables in the segmentation model being the same, project size provides a better fit to the data than developer size, indicating that developers have taste variations among their different projects. Large size SFH projects developed by contractor-owners are more likely to be within the UGB and their locations tend to have higher residential density, housing diversity, transportation accessibility, road density, and land price. With most MFH projects within the UGB, estimation results show that large size MFH projects prefer the locations with higher residential density, housing diversity, mixed use, road density, land price, average household income, and proportion of young and middle age households. The three-step new housing supply and location choice forecast model seem to be able to capture the basic trend of housing market and land development in the Portland region. Three different aggregate housing supply forecast models, an conditional time series regressive model, a unconditional time series regression model, and an auto-regression integrated moving average (ARIMA) model were tested and their advantages and disadvantages were discussed. Both the SFH and MFH project synthesis models can simulate housing projects well for a forecast year. Three location choice models were developed to allocate synthesized housing projects into space. The three models are characterized separately as: (1) assumed market homogeneity and atomization of development projects; (2) deterministic market segmentation and synthesis of projects by size; and (3) probabilistic market segmentation and synthesis of projects by size, using a latent class approach. Examination of forecast results shows that all three models can successfully capture the basic spatial pattern of housing development in the region; however, the spatial distribution of MFH development is lumpier and more unpredictable. While Models 2 and 3 are more sophisticated and make more sense from a theoretical perspective, they do not return better forecast results than Model 1 due to some practical issues. Models 2 and 3 would be expected to perform better when those practical issues are solved, at least partially, in future research.

American urban neighborhoods are a patchwork; the spatial arrangement of types is a reflection of the dominant transportation technology at the time of their development. The earliest suburban areas were made accessible by fixed route systems such as the electric streetcar, followed by the widespread adoption of the automobile; each transportation epoch resulted in characteristic patterns of land use. This study uses aerial photographic coverage of Portland, Oregon from the years 1925, 1936, and 1945, a time of decline for the once popular trolley lines and dramatic increase in automobile usage, to monitor change within the residential areas of Portland's east side over a twenty year period. Classic economic models of the time acknowledged transportation as a force shaping the city; modem ideas in urban planning such as Traditional Neighborhood Design and Transit Oriented Development look to pre-automobile urban form as a means to reduce automobile use and its negative implications. This study uses variables of housing density and street connectivity derived from the aerial photography; the measured values of these variables are then considered for their spatial and temporal distribution using statistical comparisons. The results are compared to ideas within the urban models and current thinking about urban morphology. While generally consistent with the expected patterns, deviations and differences between the two variables are considered for their implications. Models offer a simplified version of the growth of American cities, considering only a few of the many aspects of a dynamic environment. By isolating on these variables of density and connectivity, a greater understanding of their role in arriving at the modem residential urban environment may be reached, and this understanding can add to the discourse in current planning debates.

Between 1845 and 1980 the Portland waterfront between southwest Washington and Clay Streets, east of Front Street, metamorphosed from wilderness to trade center, to highway, to inner-city vacant lot. No place in Portland has more graphically illustrated the rapidly changing forces of the modern age in which the city has grown. For much of its history this stretch of waterfront was mired in law suits. The struggles centered on public versus private ownership. Originally dedicated as public property, but left unimproved by the city, the waterfront was usurped by private investors. Eventually, private owners allowed their property to decay prompting the public to encourage improvements. The legal battles even became reversed as private investors sought to force the sale of the waterfront to the city. Through all the confusion of legal battles this stretch of waterfront played a central role in the development and identity of Portland. It has finally become, undisputed public territory. The tension and greed of private investment have been replaced by the lack of municipal funds for aesthetic improvement and have left this stretch of land, a potentially fine and important urban park, a vacant lot.

Urban water use arises from a mix of scale-dependent biophysical and socioeconomic factors. In Portland, Oregon, single-family residential water use exhibits a tightly coupled relationship with summertime weather, although this relationship varies with land use patterns across households and neighborhoods. This thesis developed a multilevel regression model to evaluate the relative importance of weather variability, parcel land use characteristics, and neighborhood geographic context in explaining single-family residential water demand patterns in the Portland metropolitan area. The model drew on a high-resolution panel dataset of weekly mean summer water use over five years (2001-2005) for a sample of 460 single-family households spanning an urban-to-suburban gradient. Water use was found to be most elastic with respect to parcel-scale building size. Building age was negatively related to water use at both the parcel and neighborhood scale. Half the variation in water use can be attributed to between-household factors. Between-neighborhood variation exerted a modest but statistically significant effect. The analysis decomposed household temperature sensitivity into four components: a fixed effect common to all households, a household-specific deviation from the fixed effect, a separate extreme heat effect, and a land use effect, where lot size exaggerated the effect of temperature on water use. Results suggested that land use planning may be an effective non-price mechanism for long-range management of peak demand, as land use decisions have water use implications. The combined effects of population growth, urbanization, and climate change expose water providers to risk of water stress. Modeling fine-grain relationships among heat, land use, and water use across scales plays a role in long-range climate change planning and adaptation.

Until recently, few have questioned the notion that the separation of uses in land use zoning is inherently correct. Many observers of the city are now suggesting that zoning, as it has been practiced in this country over the last 80 years, has created cities that are fractured and function poorly. Others propose that zoning should be reconsidered as a remedy for urban dysfunction. They suggest that the whole notion of zoning be rethought. The purpose of this study is to uncover some of the underlying rationales and methodologies that set the model for zoning. This study examines the rationales behind the classification and location of land use zones in a fast-growing area of Portland, Oregon, for its first zoning ordinance through history, culture, and geography. Between 1919 and 1924, two ordinances were prepared using two very different methodologies. The first of these was designed by nationally known consultant, Charles H. Cheney, using the latest scientific methods. After its rejection in the polls, a second ordinance was developed by a prominent group of realtors in conjunction with the city planning commission using more intuitive methods. This “realtors’ code” (MacColl 1979) was approved by the Portland electorate in 1924. Some fifty years later, the Portland planning commission would identify zoning as having played a significant role in the deterioration of the Buckman neighborhood in the study area. The comparison of the rationales and methods behind the locations of zone boundaries in both ordinances against the locations of actual uses in the study area, reveals the powerful influences of social Darwinism, laissez-faire attitudes, and newly developing social science methods on the association of zoning with the separation of uses and the land use patterns that were created.

A lack of land use controls on sexually oriented businesses contributes to the unique configuration of Portland, Oregon's strip clubs: nearly fifty clubs are distributed throughout the city's neighborhoods. Considered a locally unwanted land use (LULU) by many, these strip clubs are regulated by a variety of formal and informal social processes in the absence of zoning. This qualitative study explores drivers and constraints shaping the spatial configuration of Portland's strip club industry as well as influences on land use conflict at strip club sites and working conditions for women who work as exotic dancers in the clubs. Data collection entailed review of documents (newspaper articles, legal and administrative decisions and records, and ballot measure pro/con statements); site observations; and in-person interviews with exotic dancers, strip club owners and managers, public employees who deal with strip clubs in their line of work, and people who live and work near strip clubs (n=43). Analysis follows Clarke's (2005) situational analysis methods. The study finds that strip clubs are not necessarily incompatible with residential locations and that such locations can confer benefits to dancers. The normalization of strip clubs in Portland decreases the place stigma associated with strip clubs but has a lesser impact on the person stigma of being an exotic dancer. With regard to land use conflict, the study finds that tolerance of sexual commerce is associated with urbanicity and that neighborhood socioeconomic status has a more complex relationship to community response than is suggested by the literature on land use conflict. Based on these findings, the dissertation argues that conflict resolution programs may be more effective than zoning at managing potential negative effects of sexually oriented businesses, and that improving working conditions for exotic dancers is a complex challenge. It proposes broader adoption of the sex work discourse, including the integration of labor issues in sex industry to advocacy efforts on behalf of other freelance and service sector workers.