Assessing government's solutions for urban growth within a sustainable development approach, the case of Portland, Oregon

Abstract

A growing number of cities around the world have been chasing the Sustainable Development Model, balancing between economic health, environment resilience and social equity in an overall transparent governance. Given the demographic trend of cities, welcoming an increasing share of the world's population, urban planners and government officials are challenged by a growing Urban Density. With a significant population increase pace, Portland's leadership in Sustainability that the largest city of Oregon is claiming could be jeopardized by the effects of Urban Density. What should Portland's urban planners and policies makers do to overtake this challenging trend and remain in a leading position in Sustainability? Various solutions exist in different sectors. Using an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, this paper starts by developing a multi-perspective, multi-criteria model that will integrate Portland's specificities for a sustainable overtake of Urban Density. Then, by integrating to this model the proper expertise, the outputs of this model result in a ranked proposal of solutions which aim to give Portland's city planners and leaders an orientation as of which path to consider for preserving Sustainability in an increase urban density context based on both a qualitative input and a quantitative computation of expertise. While the experts' rankings reached a significantly low disagreement rate, B Corp incentive program was the preferred solution for all the panel. Therefore, tackling the Urban Density issue from the economic side was our recommendation.