Nolan Bradford was one of the first residents to move into a completely car-free community in the U.S. – Culdesac Tempe in Arizona. Bradford, a self-proclaimed urban planning enthusiast, jumped at the opportunity to live in the community after learning about it through social media. He sees this type of neighborhood as the future and wanted to be a part of that.
“You can see that it’s what a lot of cities are starting to push for. I think that within the next 20 years, this will absolutely become more commonplace,” said Bradford. “It’s just about changing the culture with all of that.”
Culdesac sits in a large, car-centric city. The innovative neighborhood, however, offers opportunities to use other means of transportation besides a car, as well as a number of amenities within walking distance. It has a restaurant, a bike shop, a grocery store, a coffee shop, office spaces, open space and a variety of housing options.
If this type of community is the future, then Oregon is already ahead of the curve. Bend is among the cities in Oregon creating walkable, connected communities, called Climate Friendly Areas, that allow people to live, work and meet most of their daily needs without having to rely on a car. This plan would give residents a chance to live in a complete community and work to reduce carbon emissions, helping the City and state meet its climate and housing goals.
Climate Goals
The City’s push to create CFAs comes out of the state’s Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities rules, adopted in 2022. CFEC sets new and amended rules that change how development and transportation gets built, attempting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The rules apply to Oregon cities with populations over 50,000, encouraging the creation of denser areas and safer mobility options to allow people to make their daily trips by walking, biking and riding public transit, resulting in fewer carbon emission from car travel.
According to the Department of Land Conservation and Development, nearly 36% of climate pollution comes from transportation. Kevin Young, senior urban planner with the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, said Oregon is off-track in its efforts to reduce how often and how far Oregonians need to drive to get around.
“Land use changes can be one of the most significant efficiencies that we can make — when you can create situations where people live and work in close proximity and are less dependent on the vehicle trips,” said Young. “That’s why this whole zoning initiative is an important part of the work.”
These changes, however, don’t happen overnight. Oregon cities are encouraged to find locations that will support walkable communities and amend building regulations. Changing what building type is allowed in a certain area will encourage CFA development, including taller buildings, higher-density housing, high-quality sidewalks and bike lanes and transit access.
Location, Location, Location
Bend is still in the early phases of this process, but City staff have identified 10 possible areas around the city to build one or multiple CFAs, according to Elyse Vukelich, an associate planner with the City of Bend’s Growth Management department. Some of the most viable areas, based on Bend’s study, include commercial areas in the central area of Bend.
Locations where a CFA could be most successful, according to Young, tend to be downtown areas or neighborhood centers with easy access to public transit. An area with good pedestrian and bicycle transit connectivity would make developing a CFA easier and more viable.
Examples of this in the city, Vukelich said, include downtown Bend and areas on the west side, such as the apartment complex The Hixon, which has a mix of uses including housing and commercial. Several areas currently in Bend meet a lot of CFA standards, allowing a mix of buildings in one area.
Developments already underway in Bend, such as the mixed-use apartment buildings near the Box Factory, and the Platform, where the old Les Schwab Tire location was located, help Bend increase this type of development.
“CFAs don’t make sense in your standard single-family neighborhood in Bend. They are supposed to be places that are destinations,” said Vukelich.
As part of the CFA requirement, the City of Bend drafted a CFA study report, assessing various locations for CFAs in the city. “When we started this process in November 2022, the process was really focused on data and community engagement,” said Vukelich. The City will continue to receive feedback from the public to determine the best area. The City held an open house on Nov. 7 and included several members of city boards and groups such as the Central Oregon Community College LatinX college prep program, Avanza, in its engagement process after conducting the study.
The study assessed 10 different areas in Bend, noting their strengths and weaknesses, looking at factors such as existing land use requirements and connectivity. The study also looked at the possibility of displacement in certain areas, pushing out lower-income residents due to development.
According to Vukelich, the CFEC rules built the consideration of displacement into its requirements. The City’s study mapped out areas most at risk of displacement. “We came up with a list of strategies that would promote housing city-wide, but a few that are specific to CFA that would ideally mitigate displacement,” said Vukelich.
Since CFAs are most suitable in areas with high commercial development, displacement may not be a major factor. This is because of how neighborhoods have traditionally been built across the country.
“We’re battling 50 years or more of single-use zoning, which has been kind of the standard practice in America for a long time,” said Young with ODLCD. These practices tend to spread out types of development, building residential neighborhoods in one area of a city and jobs, schools and services in another. It also forces people to be more dependent on cars, making them the most convenient way for people to get around. In 2019, Oregon took a big step toward ending this practice by passing House Bill 2001, eliminating exclusive single-family zoning across the state.
“I’m not saying that single family subdivisions all need to go away,” said Young. “What I think we’re trying to do is to navigate a change where we move away from that sort of monoculture of uses and kind of explore areas that allow for greater mix and for lifestyles that are less dependent on vehicle trips.”
An Emphasis on Equity
One of the state’s main goals in creating CFAs is to create more equitable communities, which includes the creation of more affordable housing. “We’ve got a housing crisis going on, too, and part of the reason is that we’ve gotten really good at building some of the most expensive housing products available, which are single family detached homes on larger lots,” said Young. “So, housing is less and less affordable.”
According to Young, the state is addressing this by encouraging a greater variety of housing types, ideally creating affordable home ownership and rental opportunities. CFA rules call for a mix of multifamily and attached single family housing, built close together, which Young said promotes affordability.
As much as cities hope to encourage affordability, it’s not always up to them. Vukelich noted that while Bend is focused on creating more affordable housing, it can’t control the private market. Therefore, developers have the ability to set the rent where they see fit, if they decide to build in an area.
Market forces also often dictate the speed at which commercial spaces get built. In northeast bend, people in the newly built Petrosa neighborhood were sold on a “complete community” with shops and a grocery store within walking distance. But, as the Source Weekly reported on Nov. 15, the commercial component of the development was stalled.
Walkable communities, like downtown areas, are also typically more expensive. Young brought up the Pearl District in Portland as a good example of a walkable, mixed-use area that isn’t affordable. A major reason for this is the cost of building parking, according to Timothy Smith with SERA Architects, a sustainable architecture and urban design and planning company based in Portland.
Parking options in less dense areas, near offices, shopping malls or houses, are much easier, since developers can build the cheapest kind of parking – surface level parking lots.
Walkable dense communities create the need for more expensive parking structures, like above or below-ground parking garages. “Somebody has to pay for those parking spaces and guess who it is — it’s people who are going to buy the house, so the cost goes up,” said Smith.
One of the CFEC requirements is to eliminate parking mandates, giving cities options when it comes to how much parking is required in a certain area. Bend adopted new parking minimum rules on Jan. 18. With these new rules, cities could build a walkable community with little to no parking, which according to Smith, would bring down the cost of housing.
By encouraging other means of transportation in a CFA, Smith argued it also can reduce cost of living, eliminating the need for a car or multiple cars, saving money by biking, walking or riding public transit.
A Walkable Future
The City of Bend will decide on a CFA location over the course of the next few years. According to Vukelich, 2025 is the earliest that would happen. The City has an online open house on its website, along with its full CFA study report, to allow people to provide input into selecting and developing a CFA.
On Dec. 20, City staff will present their findings from the study at a City Council work session. After that, they will submit the study to the state by Dec. 31.
“Oregon is really leading the nation in this kind of thinking, and there are many places that are waiting to see how it turns out here before they may even try it in their own state. We’re kind of like the pilot program,” said Smith.
The team at Culdesac, the first car-free community in the U.S., sees other states eventually following suit. The organization thinks car-free neighborhoods can suceed all over the country. While two projects may not look exactly the same, these developments create a variety of solutions, giving residents more mobility options.
According to a Culdesac representative, close to 60% of people want to live in a walkable neighborhood. At this point in time, only 8% do. The organization sees the demand in almost every sprawling city and hopes to see more development like this.
This article appears in Dec 13, 2023 – Dec 25, 2024.
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