Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast

Daily podcast for Friday, July 6th with Anastasia Global. A new Cato

policy analysis due out Monday July 9th aims to debunk the myth of Portland, Oregon

as a model of successful 21st century urban planning.

In today's podcast, I'm on the phone with the author of debunking Portland the city that doesn't work

Kata senior fellow Randall O'Toole whose new book the best laid plans how government planning harms your quality of life, your pocketbook, and your future

is due out soon.

Why do city planners always uphold Portland, Oregon as the pinnacle of their trade.

Well, Portland has great public relations, and planners tend to judge one another by their intentions,

not by their results.

And so Portland brings people out and says, look, we intend to have great transit

systems. We intend to get people to live in high densities and walk to work. And they never

happened to mention that transit ridership as a share of total travel is declining

and that people who live in these high-density developments are mostly driving.

So a combination of judging plans by their intentions and great PR is keeping Portland in the news.

Hasn City planning helped to bring down the problems with traffic congestion and housing costs that the city had been experiencing

No quite the opposite in fact that urban planning is what caused those problems

particularly housing prices.

Portland was a very affordable city a couple of decades ago,

but the urban growth boundary was tightening land and housing prices,

and planners said, hey, this this is great the higher prices go

than the more likely people will be to want to live in high density

...