PROTESTING PORTLAND'S FREEWAYS: HIGHWAY ENGINEERING AND CITIZEN ACTIVISM IN THE INTERSTATE ERA by ELIOT HENRY FACKLER A THESIS Presented to the Department of History and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts June 2009 11 "Protesting Portland's Freeways: Highway Engineering and Citizen Activism in the Interstate Era," a thesis prepared by Eliot Henry Fackler in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of History. This thesis has been approved and accepted by: Committee in Charge: Ellen Herman, Chair Jeffrey Ostler Matthew Dennis Accepted by: Dean of the Graduate School 111 © 2009 Eliot Henry Fackler IV An Abstract of the Thesis of Eliot Henry Fackler for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History to be taken June 2009 Title: PROTESTING PORTLAND'S FREEWAYS: HIGHWAY ENGINEERING AND CITIZEN ACTIVISM IN THE INTERSTATE ERA Approved: ---------ht _ Ellen Herman From its inception, the Oregon State Highway Department and Portland's political leaders repeatedly failed to address the city's automobile traffic problems. However, in 1955 the Highway Department published a comprehensive freeway plan that anticipated new federal funding and initiated an era of unprecedented road construction in the growing city. In the early 1960s, localized opposition to the city's Interstate system failed to halt the completion of three major routes.
Yet, politically savvy grassroots activists and a new generation oflocalleaders used the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 to successfully stop the construction of two freeways in the mid 1970s. Though favorable legislation and the efforts oflocal politicians were instrumental in thwarting the Highway Department's plans, this study will focus on the crucial role played by the citizens who waged an ideological battle against recalcitrant highway engineers for Portland's future. v pressures resulting from globalization by engaging in subtle protests within in the maquiladoras, opting to participate in the informal economy, and utilizing community groups to facilitate social change. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Eliot Henry Fackler PLACE OF BIRTH: Mansfield, Ohio DATE OF BIRTH: February 6, 1982 GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon The College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Arts, History, 2009, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, History, 2004, The College of Wooster AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: United States History PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2007-2009 Student Advisor, Department of History, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2008 GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS: Oregon Heritage Fellowship, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, 2009 Graduate Teaching Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2007-2009 Ohio Environmental Fellowship, Ohio Environmental Council, 2004 Cum Laude, The College of Wooster, 2004 VI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people who made this endeavor both possible and worthwhile.
My sincerest gratitude goes to my advisors Ellen Herman and Jeff Ostler. Their challenging questions, gentle criticisms, and shrewd editing made this thesis immeasurably better. I would like to thank Matt Dennis for providing both formal and informal guidance these past two years. This Spring I have been lucky enough to get to know Brian Ladd.
Brian's scholarship, advice, and insights have helped me to think about freeways and city streets in new and interesting ways. This project benefitted from the financial assistance of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, from the work of the late Ernie Bonner, and from a wonderful conversation with Val Ballestrem. Fellow graduate students at the University of Oregon have provided friendship and support. I would particularly like to thank Matthew Kruer, Emily Gilkey, Carrie Adkins, Clinton Sandvick, Feather Crawford-Freed, Becca Cherba, Luis Ruiz, Camille Walsh, and Chris Cornelius.
I am forever indebted to Jeff Roche and Tom Humphrey for their professional advice and personal encouragement, and to Nick Chiorian, Brendan Callahan, and Tom Stockdale for supplying the observations and questions that ultimately led me to this project. I would also like to thank my parents, Holly Harman Fackler and Todd Fackler, their respective spouses, and my siblings, Evan and Libby, for their support. Ann and Tom Stockdale, two of the most wonderful people I have ever met, are owed a special thank you for their love and encouragement. Finally, words cannot express how grateful I am to my wife, Jen.
Without her none of this would have been possible. Vll For Jen, my driving buddy V111 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. THE EMERGENT CITY: PLANNERS, HIGHWAY ENGINEERS, AND PORTLAND BEFORE 1956. THE MOBILE CITY: FREEWAY CONSTRUCTION AND FAILED OPPOSITION, 1955-1972 45 IV.
THE LIVABLE CITY: FREEWAY REVOLTS IN PORTLAND, 1965-1978 78 V. EPILOGUE: DISMANTLING HARBOR DRIVE 115 BIBLIOGRAPHY 118 IX LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. 1946 vehicle trip "desire" patterns, Portland, Oregon. Portland's proposed freeway system, 1955 49 3.
52nd Avenue and 96 th Avenue alignment alternatives for Interstate 205 77 4. Mount Hood Freeway alignment in relation to housing 84 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In 1955 the Oregon State Highway Department published a report outlining the proposed locations of 14 limited-access freeways that would slice through Portland's century-old neighborhoods. The ISO-page document, entitled Freeway and Expressway System, Portland Metropolitan Area, anticipated the passage of a new Federal-Aid Highway Act that would fund the long-anticipated Interstate Highway System. The following year, Oregon traffic engineers began building the state's portion of that system.
As they oversaw the design and construction of urban freeways over the next two decades, highway engineers and planning officials in the local and state government met resistance from citizens whose homes, businesses, and neighborhoods would be destroyed by the interstates. By the mid 1970s, after a decade of widespread resistance against planned freeways, neighborhood groups in southeast and northwest Portland successfully halted the construction of two routes and ushered in a new era of citizen participation in city planning. Portland's anti-freeway movement is the story of two paradigm shifts that led to a fundamental transformation of local planning practices and increased neighborhood activism. The first was an ideological shift that resulted from the imposition of a massive highway system onto an already existing cityscape.
The destruction caused by urban freeway building raised the ire of residents in the path of the bulldozers. Mounting concerns about the ecological impacts of human consumption and automobile-centered 2 planning gave freeway protests an additional sense of urgency and encouraged the support of local leaders. These environmental concerns had antecedents in earlier battles to preserve wilderness areas, but only in the 1960s and 1970s did Portlanders - and citizens across the country - become involved in efforts to actively reduce road construction and automobile usage in order to protect the urban environment. The second shift had far-reaching political consequences for Portland and ultimately set it apart from other cities.
Because state highway engineers were given considerable funding and authority by the federal government, they dominated city planning after 1956. As a result of this bureaucratic control, residents of American cities found that they were effectively excluded from the decision-making process. As freeway projects threatened to carve up San Francisco, Boston, New Orleans, and dozens of other cities, protesters fought to save their neighborhoods and gain a measure of control over transportation and land use planning. In their efforts to wrest control from the Oregon Highway Department, Portlanders achieved a victory unique among the urban freeway revolts: the institutionalization of a neighborhood planning organization.
In creating the Office of Neighborhood Associations (now called the Office of Neighborhood Involvement) the city of Portland gave residents a say in local planning matters. This move toward greater democratic participation remains the unique legacy of Portland's anti-freeway movement. Portland today is often called an "ecotopia" or a planner's paradise, and for good reasons. Metro, the nation's only elected regional government, coordinates planning in the surrounding region while the Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI) gives 3 neighborhood groups a voice in local planning.
No freeways have been built in the city since the completion ofInterstate 205 in 1982, and city officials routinely reject plans for new parking garages, street widening, and other projects that would accommodate automobiles. At the heart of these planning principles is an "environmental imagination" shared by many Oregonians and rooted in a reliance on and appreciation for the state's diverse and verdant landscape. This environmental imagination has permeated state politics for most of the past century.l It is no coincidence that many of the leaders and citizens who eventually voiced concern over the social and environmental impacts of freeways were natives who took pride in their state? Thus, when freeway protesters coalesced in Portland in the 1960s, they urbanized Oregon's environmental imagination and continued the debates about development that had been occurring for decades along the riverbanks and shorelines, and in the expansive mountains, forests, and fields of the Oregon countryside. In addition to their desire to preserve the character of individual neighborhoods and the city in general, the citizen activists who led Portland's anti-freeway campaigns also demanded to be included in planning decisions.
In one of the few accounts linking 1 See Richard W. Judd and Christopher S. Beach, Natural States: The Environmental Imagination in Maine, Oregon, and the Nation (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2003). Judd and Beach use the term "environmental imagination" when referring to the popular imagery and ideals that inform the views of the residents of Maine and Oregon.
See also, William G. Robbins, Landscapes o/Conflict: The Oregon Story, 1940-2000 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004). Both of these books trace the history of environmentalism, resource use, and land use planning in Oregon. These two excellent monographs examine the broader historical events and political discourses in which this history of Portland's freeways is situated.
2See Ernie Bonner, "PlanPdx.org: Interviews with Planning Participants," Portland State University, http://www.edu/usp/planpdxorg-interviews-planning-participants. Specifically, see interviews with Don Clark, Frank Frost, and Charlotte and Ogden Beeman. 4 Portland's repudiation of freeways with the city's revolution in neighborhood participation, historian Gregory Thompson emphasizes the importance of the political elite in harnessing neighborhood activism to transform transportation and land use planning. 3 The watershed mayoral election of Neil Goldschmidt in 1972 and the emergence of a Portland City Council and Multnomah County Commission comprised of freeway critics certainly altered the ways in which the city would develop in the coming years.
However, as important as the political elites have been, neighborhood activists were the crucial element in the reformulation of transportation and neighborhood planning practices in Portland. Organized citizen groups were instrumental in bringing a halt to the freeways, electing and influencing politicians, and reimagining the local planning process. The paradigm shifts that marked Portland's emergence as an "ecotopia" were not articulated by Goldschmidt or others so much as they were exemplified by the groups that organized against freeways. Citizens like architects Howard Glazer, Ed Wagner, George Sheldon, and Bob Belcher, engineer Ogden Beeman, lawyer Charles Merten, and activists Betty Merten, Albert and Kayda Clark, Charlotte Beeman, Mary Pedersen, Ron Buel, and Allison Belcher articulated a vision oflivable neighborhoods that questioned highway engineers' auto-centered planning.
These activists represented The New Left. They were intellectual elites - experts, academics, and insiders - who were, in the words of C. Wright Mills, 3 Gregory Thompson, "Taming the Neighborhood Revolution: Planners, Power Brokers, and the Birth of Neotraditionalism in Portland, Oregon," Journal ofPlanning History, vol. 5 "agencies of historical change.,,4 Working from outside the system, they protested freeways and created a sense of civil unrest that leaders could not ignore.
Working from within the system to create neighborhood plans, they gave Portland's decision makers the opportunity to implement alternatives to the Highway Department's proposals. The emergence of citizen activism ultimately proved to be the most important element in halting urban interstates in Portland and replacing a doctrine of mobility with a more ephemeral vision of livability.