Former Metro planning director Andy Cotugno is retiring this month after 37 years at Metro.
Most Oregonians know about the state’s iconic approach to planning for growth, but few know one of the guiding forces behind it: Andy Cotugno. Before retiring this month, Cotugno took time to reflect on 37 years working on transportation and land use at Metro – including the 2040 Growth Concept, a long-range vision for the future of the greater Portland area.
Q: When you look back, over your time at Metro, what do you think is the most difficult thing we’ve been able to pull off in this region?
AC: The two centerpieces are light rail and 2040.
Light rail itself is pretty big, but it’s more of a construction challenge than a policy challenge. Policy direction actually was fairly easy. It’s tough, because it’s expensive, to raise the money. And it’s tough because it’s just physically difficult to execute the construction.
But 2040 transcended that, because the sort of livability and prosperity visions that 2040 was reaching for simply used light rail as a tool. It’s just a hammer, you know? And same thing with open spaces. It’s a piece of the picture, it’s a piece of the equation. It’s not the centerpiece.
So, pulling off the 2040 plan, that really became an integration of so many different interests. Everyone worked together to say, “Will our decisions affect you next door?” Or, individual local plans don’t necessarily add up to something that’s good for the region as a whole. So we took people through the process of looking at different choices, and understanding the consequences of those choices – and adopting a plan that says, “you know, we really need to start with this bigger regional vision, and then modify the local plans to get to that bigger regional vision.” And that land use is inherently parochial and inherently local, down to the private property perspective of, “Don’t tell me what to do with my property.” Well that sort of adds up to a city saying, “Don’t tell me what to do with my land uses.” Having all of that get integrated into a regional vision, and having it be adopted unanimously, was pretty phenomenal.
The success of so much of this work does seem to depend on getting support from people with very different perspectives and very different politics. What is the most successful way to find common ground?
Always seek the win-win. (Longtime Tualatin Mayor) Lou Ogden commented at my retirement party, and he was able to describe some of my characteristics that I didn’t see for myself. He said that when a suburban mayor comes to Metro, they come into a place where they believe Metro is inherently city-of-Portland-based. And most of the staff lives in the city of Portland. Most of the staff supports the kind of policies the City of Portland is trying to implement. So that suburban mayor comes in feeling like they’re in sort of foreign territory.
But there’s something about what they’re trying to accomplish back in their jurisdiction that’s valid. And so how do we peel back and understand “What’s the core, valid concern that they’re bringing to the table that you don’t necessarily see from a Portland perspective – but we need to see, if we’re going to have the suburban interest get integrated with the central city interest?” And that’s what we did. We needed to understand the fundamental underpinnings of what they wanted and then get them to recognize they had to take on some burdens, not just have their cake and eat it, too.
What has been the most fun about this work?
The successes. This region looks remarkably different than other metropolitan areas. You don’t see the hard edge in other metropolitan areas, you see just sprawl that goes for miles. There’s nothing like it.
And I always say, the only place that’s done it better is Vancouver, B.C., because their (urban growth boundary) is harder than our UGB. Their UGB is the United States border on the south and the Puget Sound on the west. We don’t have an edge like that.
Our edge could go on for miles, and it doesn’t. You see from the air a distinct edge. And that’s just unheard of, in any other part of the country. And then, within that boundary, we’ve got a great region – and we’ve contributed quite a bit to that great region. And it’s as much the development patterns, housing, commercial, lifestyle patterns, as it is the open space that we also emphasized inside the boundary.
You’re probably able to go about your daily life in this region and know the stories behind places that other people would walk right past and not think anything of. Is there a place that people probably interact with all the time and really have no idea how it got there or why it’s that way?
One that’s close to home for me, I lived for 33 years one block off Hawthorne, at 35th. We helped the city land an air-quality grant, to create a Hawthorne Business District Association with the policy underpinning being, it’s an air-quality tool and it’s a transportation tool.
At the time, Portland was fighting the flight of middle-class households to the suburbs. Well how do you keep middle-class households in the city? One tool is, keep a close-by shopping district healthy, that they can live near and have access to those services. So you’re reducing driving, hanging onto the middle class and reducing vehicle emissions.
That was the start of the Hawthorne business district. Now there’s business districts for, you know, Alberta and Mississippi and Northwest 23rd and Belmont and Woodstock and all those other places just because that’s the best way to function.
I know you often meet with delegations visiting from other countries to learn about what we’ve done in the greater Portland region. What do you tell them about, and what do they seem to find most interesting about us?
I think they’re impressed with the degree of collaboration that goes on around the region. And it’s as true between the private sector and the public sector as it is between state, regional and local governments within the public sector. There’s just a lot of collaboration to accomplish, really, a common mission.
Portland has become such a hip place to move and visit over the past decade. You know, you can’t go a week without seeing us in the New York Times for something or other. Why do you think that is? And what are the best and worst things that come along with that kind of reputation?
Well, first of all, I do think that there is a direct connection between the plans that we’ve envisioned and then implemented and the popularity that we produce as a result. I mean, the great downtown would not be a great downtown if we did not have a UGB. The emphasis on walking in lots of different places is part of the popularity. The success of some of the redevelopments and particularly mixed-use areas, they’re just lively places. Well, that’s what we were trying to create were those kinds of lively places.
What are the advantages and disadvantages? I’d rather be in a prosperous place that’s attracting people because it’s livable and prosperous than the opposite. Every place in a very broad swath of the Midwest, except Chicago, is hollowing out.
I’d rather have our situation, where we have growing pains and challenges of, you know, neighbors complaining about house demolitions and stuff like that. I’d rather have a house demolition because someone wants to build something better than a house demolition because someone torched it because it had been sitting there, boarded up and vacant, for 10 years.
What are some things you wish we could’ve finished but we haven’t gotten to yet?
Affordable housing, I think. It’s such a challenging issue.
The issue that we didn’t pay attention to was displacement; I think that’s different than gentrification. If you live in a neighborhood that is sort of marginal, and you’re able to buy a house – you know, a decent house for a modest price – I’d rather see that neighborhood get better over time. I’d rather see my property value go up, because my neighbors are investing in their properties too, and therefore the whole place is rising. That’s gentrification. That’s the place getting better.
Displacement is another issue. Displacement is when people are pushed out of that neighborhood because you’ve not provided them affordable options. We should be providing them affordable options so they can stay in the neighborhood. Now, you want them to stay in the neighborhood in part because that’s where they live, but also in part because they should enjoy the benefits of why it’s becoming a better place.
I know one the hobbies you hope to focus on after you retire is wine-making. There’s an interesting connection to the land and to community.
Yeah. In fact the place that I go now to get my grapes is just east of Banks. There’s a big, south-facing hillside, and there’s a gravel driveway that goes to the top of the hill and then runs along the ridge, and there’s about six or seven houses up there.
They got their piece of rural paradise before the state land use laws changed. But if the state land use laws hadn’t protected the farmland, that pattern would have marched down the hill. And that hillside would have been full of houses, probably five-acre parcels. Instead, it’s full of grapes. And I like that.