Central Planning Fails in Oregon

RALEIGH — Onerous urban planning is driving former Portland, Ore. residents across the Columbia River into Vancouver, Wa., according to a community development director who warns that the story of those two states and two cities should serve as a caution to other urban centers. Richard Carson, director of community development in Clark County, Wa., said Oregon’s mandated state land use planning from the 1970s has turned “the Mecca of American urban planning” into what he says the media now calls “Little Beirut.”