ENST490_finalpaper

Urban Containment Policies as Sustainability Tools in U.S. Cities
Rachael Shook and Ben Campbell
ENST 490: Senior Seminar in Environmental Studies

Shook and Campbell 2
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..3
Defining the U.S City……………………………………………………………………………..6
Need for Sustainability within the U.S City………………………………………………...…...10
Likeliness to Adopt Sustainability………………………………………………………...……..13
Urban Containment Policies……………………………………………………………………..15
Is the UGB Sustainable in the U.S. City?......................................................................................18
Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………..…19
Case Study 1: Portland, Oregon………………………………………………………….………21
Case Study 2: Knoxville, Tennessee………………...…………………………………………...30
Discussion………………………………………………………………………………………..38
Conclusion: Sustainable Urban Planning and Climate Change………………………………….41
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………...43

Introduction
City planning is an important sustainability tool for cities worldwide. Because
researchers expect the Earth’s population to triple between 2000 and 2050, and the majority of
this growth to occur in cities (Stolman, 2012), it is imperative that cities implement strategies to
plan for future population growth through urban sustainability. The UN World Commission on
Environment and Development defines sustainability as the ability to “create development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs” (United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987).
Some of the least sustainable practices occur in the United States, including high rates of
suburbanization, personal automobile use, and low-density housing (Stolman, 2012), which lead
to high energy use and fossil fuel emissions. In fact, the United States’s energy use ranks second
globally only to China, whose population is three times that of the United States. However, many
cities in the United States are implementing strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One
such strategy is the urban containment policy (UCP), in which policymakers, “directly limit the
physical size of communities, significantly affect the growth and location of population and
economic activities, and influence the urban spatial structure at the regional level” (Woo &
Guldmann, 2011, p. 3512). In this paper, we will analyze how one type of UCP, the urban
growth boundary (UGB) reinforces sustainable city patterns in the United States. We will argue
that the UGB fosters city development that is more economically, socially, and ecologically
sustainable.
Our primary reason for choosing U.S. cities over other global cities is the element of
variation. Because of the size and cultural heterogeneity within the United States, there is great
regional variation within U.S. cities, especially when divided by the four U.S. Census Regions:

the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. Yet, there are also common themes throughout U.S.
cities that supercede this variation. These include high rates of homeownership, long commutes
and home-workplace separation, low residential density, socioeconomic distinction between the
central city and the suburbs, (Jackson, 1985), political fragmentation, and residential racial
segregation (Meyer, 2015). Urban planners characterize U.S. cities by underbounded cities and
battles over the division of political districts (Morgan & Mareschel, 1999), leading to rapid
increases in rates of urban sprawl. Suburbia creates a wide range of problems: several scholars
have cited the removal of population, jobs, and services from the central city (Woo & Guldmann,
2011; Jackson, 1985; Bengston, Fletcher, & Nelson, 2004). A declining central business district
results in a decreased tax base within the central city, putting serious financial strain on the city
and providing fewer jobs for inner city residents, many of whom are poor. Sprawl is reinforced
by low gas taxes, new road construction, and zoning policies that favor low-density, residential
areas (Woo & Guldmann, 2011). Thus, suburban land uses tend to be unsustainable.
Additionally, some scholars project that the U.S. city is undergoing fundamental
demographic changes. Ehrenhalt’s (2008) theory of demographic inversion describes a city
model where affluent, predominantly white residents are moving to the urban core, while the
poor are displaced to the city periphery. Ehrenhalt calls this model the Postmodern City. The
shift toward this model in large U.S. cities like Chicago and Atlanta adds complexity to the
problem of suburbia. The combination of a demographic inversion with increased urban sprawl
has serious implications for city sustainability. Although suburbia is literally greener, the central
city tends to be more metaphorically green. In cities, higher density development leads to more
efficient energy use. Many cities are reliant on walking, biking, and public transportation. If
more people flock to cities, as the Postmodern Model suggests, the carbon footprint of

individuals tends to decrease. However, there also arise problems with space as room: as land is
depleted in the central city, crowding could become a serious issue. This among other issues are
up for consideration in the future of U.S. city planning and policy.
However, the prevalent pattern in the present day is suburbanization. As urban sprawl
expands and the central city shrinks, metropolitan areas must decide how to address population
growth, as open land is becoming more scarce. Several metropolitan areas are tightening urban
growth restrictions through Urban Containment Policies (UCPs), which take three main forms:
greenbelts, Urban Service Areas (USAs), and Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) (Bengston et
al., 2004). Cities such as Portland and Knoxville have adopted policies focused on containing
urban spaces through the use of Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs), which Woo & Guldmann
(2011), define as “a line drawn around a municipality, with areas beyond the boundary not
allowed or discouraged to have new developments” (p. 3513). These policies have significant
effects on the morphology of the city, creating distinct patterns of urban and rural land use types.
Jun (2004) suggests that UGBs, “promote compact and contiguous development patterns that can
be officially served by public services and to preserve or protect open space, agricultural land,
and environmentally sensitive areas” (p. 1333).
In this paper, we analyze the sustainability of urban growth boundaries in the U.S. city
through the analytic lens of the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and
environmental. First, we highlight the need for sustainability in U.S. cities, bringing in elements
of environmental justice and ethics, and explain why some cities are more sustainable than
others. Second, we outline the characteristics of the Urban Growth Boundary, and make the case
for its use as a sustainability tool. Second, we explain our methodological approach for our two
case studies, Portland, Oregon, and Knoxville, Tennessee, and explain why we chose this

particular method of research. Fourth, we examine our case studies using Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) to assist us with analyzing the cities’ UGB policies through the lens
of various land uses. Fifth, we will discuss the results from our case studies in light of our
sustainability characterization, analyzing similarities and differences between Portland and
Knoxville. We will conclude by making final remarks about city sustainability through the case
of global climate change.
Defining the U.S. City
Central to our analysis is the idea of not only the city, but also the U.S. city. Before one
can understand how our analysis represents the city, it is important to note that the “U.S city” is
not merely vernacular in nature. The attempt to avoid ethnocentrism is central to our phrasing.
According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of ethnocentric is, “having or based on the idea
that your own group or culture is better or more important than others” (Merriam Webster,
2015). The use of the term “American” indicates that America itself belongs to people from the
United States, which ignores other North and South American cultures and nations. Thus, our
analysis will use the phrase “U.S city” to describe any city within the political boundaries of the
United States of America.
The Geographical and Political City
The difference between the geographical and political U.S. city is one of the most
significant phenomena in our analysis of the sustainability of the city. The central cleavage in the
distinction of these two forms is in the differences between de jure and de facto city boundaries.
De jure directly translates to ‘according to law’ and de facto translates to ‘in actuality’ Therefore,

the de jure U.S. city is that which is bounded by legal definition. In our analysis, this entails the
area contained within the political body, which is the city government in most cases. These areas
also have relatively high urbanness. a high population density, and a lots of built environment.
Subsequently, the de facto U.S, functional city includes suburbs and nearby communities
(Meyer, 2015).
Among the literature on the subject, the geographical city has close ties to what scholars
refer to as the metropolitan statistical area, or MSA. An MSA is defined as a region with a
relatively high population density at its core and with areas surrounding it that have close
economic ties (The White House, 2008). These areas are neither legally part of the city, nor
uniformly part of another political body. The areas outside of the political city are not necessarily
entire counties, towns, or any other political unit, but can be a composite of them. The White
House, classifies an MSA using four criteria. The territory must, 1) have at least one urbanized
area of 50,000 or more, 2) have adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic
integration, 3) have a core defined by commuting times, and 4) be defined in terms of whole
counties. However, our definition of the geographical city differs from the MSA because it is
limited to counties and census tracts that directly intersect and are outside of the political city. In
the case of Portland, OR, this includes portions of each of the 5 counties: Clackamas,
Washington, Yamhill, Columbia, and Multnomah. For Knoxville, TN, the entirety of Knox
County is considered the geographical city. Due to the limitations of our paper’s scope, the MSA
would be too large in scale to be used as a unit of analysis. In particular,the scope of the MSA
would not allow for emphasis on the differences of land use on either side of urban growth
boundaries. This furthers our justification for using the U.S. city: the complexity and variation

among political boundaries among states and localities serves as a useful comparison tool for
analyzing urban policies.
Characterization of the U.S City
The United States consists of thousands of cities, differing in size, history, culture, and
demography. Despite this variation, cities tend to follow certain patterns based on regional and
national influence, with some anomalies. In understanding these anomalies and trends, we apply
Meyer’s framework of the six social science themes for explaining U.S cities’ spatial patterns.
The first of these themes is sociology, which looks at the history of racial segregation. Racial
tensions have been prominent throughout U.S. history, and manifest themselves in interesting
and often unexpected ways, especially regionally. Take the South for example: de jure racial
segregation occurred well into the 1960’s, rooted in historical racism through the prevalence of
slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and white power groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. However, when
examining the top 50 most segregated U.S. cities, we see that both the Northeast and Midwest
have more racial segregation than the South and the West (Frey & Myers, 2000). The theory
behind this apparent anomaly is that the South utilizes class as a segregative measure, whereas
the Northeast and the Midwest use spatial distance. Additionally, Southern and Western cities
are newer than cities in the Northeast and Midwest, and many were founded after segregationist
policies were abolished. This brings us to the second social science theme, history. The
development of the U.S. city has occurred over a wide span of years, resulting in a wide range of
the way residents have understood and constructed cities across the United States with time and
place. Some of these factors include law, transportation, and infrastructure (Meyer, 2015).
Third, the anthropological tradition of individualism has been pervasive throughout U.S.
culture. U.S. home residents illustrate the tradition of individualism through habits such as high

rates of automobile and home ownership and low residential density (Jackson, 1985). According
to the Hofstede Individualism Index, which measures “the degree of interdependence a society
maintains among its members,” with higher scores signifying less interdependence, the United
States scores a 91 out of 100 (The Hofstede Centre, 2015). This is the highest individualism
score out of any country in the world. Fourth, the United States’ political institutions reinforce
political fragmentation, where smaller units have relatively high autonomy in comparison to the
authority of county or state governments. Fifth, the economics theme indicates that the United
States has lots of income inequality, despite it being a wealthy, first-world country. This
manifests in city patterns through the spatial concentration of the poor in low-income areas with
poor infrastructure and few government services. Lastly is geography, which suggests that the
United States has an anti-urban culture inherited from the English Anglo-Saxon dislike of
urbanness. This highlights phenomena such as long commuting times, single-family, detached
home distributions, and a preference for the suburbs over the central city (Meyer, 2015).
Needfor Sustainability within the U.S. City
Sustainability
In order to understand the implications for sustainability in U.S. cities, we must first
establish a working definition of sustainability. The UN World Commission on Environment and
Development defines sustainability as “the ability to create development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
(United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). This definition
focuses on weighting future consequences in our present policies and decisions. Applying this

definition of sustainability to cities, Mallach (2013) suggests that city sustainability depends on
“whether the city furthers democracy, diversity, and equity” (p. 141). Lorr (2012) states that key
aspects to a sustainable city, in addition to the sustainability of environmental resources, include
a functioning economy, social cohesion, and competitive workforce. According to Lorr, a
sustainable city is one with a comprehensive approach to sustainability including public
transportation access, efficient land and resource use, sustainable economies, and community
involvement. These definitions emphasize a multifaceted approach to sustainability regarding
three pillars: social, economic, and environmental. In these analyses, cities can only be
sustainable if they foster social, cultural, and economic well-being, and account for human
stresses onto the natural environment. Thus, land use planning must account for future needs and
account for the social and economic wellbeing of residents. This includes, but is not limited to,
economic diversification, land use stability, environmental justice concerns, transportation and
road access, and residential density.
Suburbanization
It is particularly important that the United States makes sustainability a priority in urban
development and policymaking, as U.S. cities are at particular risk to develop urban problems
that lead to negative social, economic, and environmental outcomes. U.S. cities tend to be
underbounded, meaning that “there are additional, immediately adjacent, densely built-up areas
outside the administrative boundary, such areas may be called suburbs”(United Nations
Population Division, 1974, p. 9). When population growth occurs in underbounded cities, it tends
to occur in urban “overspill” areas outside the political city. Thus, population growth in the
political city is not reflective of population in a geographical city. As a result, U.S. urban areas
are characterized by urban sprawl, or “low-density, noncontiguous, automobile dependent,

residential and nonresidential development that consumes relatively large amounts of farmland
and natural areas” (Bengston, Fletcher, & Nelson, 2004, p. 271).
Suburbanization can lead to various spatial patterns that have negative consequences for
sustainability. U.S. cities tend to exhibit high rates of single-family, detached homes. Although
these serve as a symbol of the “American dream,” they are highly unsustainable. These types of
homes tend to be energy inefficient, generating large amounts of energy on indoor heating and
cooling and outdoor lawn maintenance. They also have a history of being socially unjust. U.S.
suburbs have traditionally been created by affluent, white people to separate themselves from the
political city and gain more political power over their neighborhoods. This has led to
exclusionary zoning practices that have removed specific industries and ethnic groups from the
suburbs, reinforcing attitudes of NIMBYism (Not in My Backyard). The suburbs have a history
of zoning practices that have excluded low income and minority residents. They have also
historically been hubs for “white flight,” taking jobs away from the central political city and
moving them to the city periphery. This results in spatial mismatch, where jobs and economic
growth are spatially separated from low income and minority residents who need these jobs.
Lastly, U.S. cities are highly automobile dependent. This is especially the case for newer cities in
the South and West, which were created during the automobile age. This dependence leads to
higher fossil fuel emissions and greater rates of cancer and asthma. Highways and other vehicle
infrastructure can also disrupt habitats and biodiversity (Jackson, 1985).
Ethics and Sustainability
The need for sustainable development is not limited to the United States; it is shared by
all urbanized parts of the globe. Sustainability becomes increasingly complex when determining
how countries bear the moral responsibility of global problems. “A major expansion of

investment in modern, clean, and efficient infrastructure will be essential to attaining the growth
and sustainable development objectives that the world is setting for itself” (Bhattacharya, 2015).
Thus, “the seemingly global concerns of sustainable urban development must be addressed at
different scales” (Stoltman, 2012). However, one could argue that the United States, as a global
entity, has a particular ethical responsibility to develop sustainably. Fahlquist (2009) suggests
that despite the common perception that individuals bear the moral responsibility for
environmental problems, institutions have the greatest responsibility to act on environmental
crises. This is because institutions can either present or prevent reasonable alternatives to
environmentally unsustainable behavior. Thus, by reinforcing “green” behavior through city
planning, the United States can use sustainable patterns as a means to curb emissions at
institutional and individual scales.
One problem that hinders sustainable development in the United States is the question of
government scale. It is much easier for localities and states to enact sustainable urban policies
than it is for Congress to pass nationwide, top-down policies. As there is vast regional variation
within the United States, this makes sense: policies in the Northeast would not necessarily work
in the Pacific Northwest, because city patterns and urban problems are very different in these
regions. Yet, localities and states, especially poorer ones, are often reliant on federal funding for
sustainable development projects, such as public transit and green buildings, and many cities
lack the proper infrastructure on which to build a sustainable city. The issue of decaying
infrastructure has emerged onto the federal government agenda in recent years. However, it has
not made much progress in federal policy formation. Funding infrastructure development and
repair largely runs top to bottom, and,“the rise in federal interest payments, the increase in
entitlement spending, and the decline in traditional sources of government revenue, such as the

gasoline tax, mean that competition for limited resources is fierce”(Galston & Fuentes, 2015).
Thus, states are limited in their abilities to develop sustainably if federal funding does not enable
such behavior, resulting in uneven inter- and intra- city development.
Likeliness to Adopt Sustainability
The issues raised in the previous section raise an important question: what factors make a
city more likely to adopt sustainability? Quite a bit of research on the subject suggests that
community participation is a large factor in determining a city’s capacity to become sustainable.
According to Portney & Berry (2010), if a city implements sustainable policies, then it must do
so with a lot of support from its residents. In fact, “based on the experiences of Seattle and
Cambridge, MA, it is evident that community involvement can be a key factor in developing
tools for moving toward a more sustainable community” (Zachary,1995, p. 30). Participation
contributes to diminishing negative environmental, social, and economic externalities by
coercing regulatory policies and deliberative democracy to achieve consensus on the idea of
reducing those externalities. Portney & Berry (2010a) suggest that when cities adopt citizen
participation programs, widespread community interests can trump business interests, which are
often antagonistic to sustainability. They also determined that income was a weak factor in
determining the level of sustainability efforts. Furthermore, cities with the most advanced
sustainability policies were different than those with fewer sustainability efforts because levels of
participation are much higher in more sustainable cities (p. 120).
A final factor regarding a city’s capacity for sustainability is social capital. Portney et al.
(2010b) focused on urban advocacy groups within U.S. cities and their interaction with
government institutions. This study found that sustainability is most successful in cities where
there are low barriers to entry for government involvement; that is, neighborhood associations

and different group sectors have frequent and clear communication with the government. Thus,
more sustainable cities have more inclusive policy systems where both community and business
interests have social capital, and can contribute to policymaking. Using the Social Capital
Benchmark Survey, the authors identify 10 cities meet these criteria: Boulder, Chicago, Denver,
Grand Rapids, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Paul
(Portney et al., 2010b).
Urban Containment Policies
Concern about the environmental, social, and economic costs of sprawl has resulted in
public action toward preserving open spaces, primarily through smart growth public policy
implementation. Bengston et al. (2004) define growth management as “government actions to
guide the location, quality, and timing of development” (p. 273). In the United States, these
policies have traditionally been implemented at the local, regional, and state levels. Growth
management policies can take many forms, including public acquisition of land, regulation, and
incentivization (Bengston et al., 2004). One such regulatory approach for managing urban
growth is the urban containment policy.
There are three types of urban containment policies in the United States: greenbelts,
urban growth boundaries (UGBs), and urban service areas (USAs) (Bengston et al,, 2004). A
greenbelt is “an area of contiguous open land close to a city or village” (Daniels, 2010, p. 260)
that “is intended to be a permanent barrier to urban expansion” (Bengston et al,, 2004, p. 276).
The objective of greenbelts is to preserve open space and prevent the spread of urban
development within open, green areas. Greenbelts focus primarily on environmental
sustainability, but also facilitate the economic sustainability of agriculture and the social stability

of rural livelihoods. However, there are many obstacles in the United States that hinder greenbelt
development. Traditional U.S. land use and planning has promoted urban sprawl; as a result, it
often makes very little sense to place greenbelts within these already sprawled areas of
development. Thus, areas of farming and forestry are often no longer viable. Additionally, levels
of governance in major population areas are not conducive to greenbelt development. In the
Northeast and Midwest, zoning rights lie under the jurisdiction of village, city, and town entities,
rather than counties. As a result, local small governments often work against political
coordination between units, and seek to maintain individual autonomy (Daniels, 2010). This
makes the development of an entity such as a greenbelt difficult to implement within governance
in the Northeast and Midwest, thus impeding our ability to apply the greenbelt to many cities
within the United States.
Urban Service Areas are useful for preserving economic sustainability and continued
economic growth. The USA boundary limits the extension of utilities within city limits;
however, other types of development are still allowed outside of the line (Daniels, 2010). Thus,
the USA is more concerned with preserving the financial stability of the central city than
amending geographical problems associated with urban sprawl. Concentrating the economic base
within the central city also results in less “spatial mismatch.” The spatial mismatch theory is the
concept of job decentralization that results in different commute patterns for the central city and
suburban residents. Suburban residents, who tend to be middle and upper class, often commute
to the central city for good jobs, while low-income people living in the central city lack the
qualifications of those in the suburbs and cannot attain city jobs. Although there are more jobs
available in the suburbs, low-income, central city residents often lack the transportation and
monetary resources to commute (Kain, 1992). Although USAs implement economic

sustainability by centralizing job opportunities, they lack the concept of environmental
sustainability, as they do not necessarily hinder the development of urban sprawl. As we have
shown, urban sprawl has been historically unjust due to white flight to the suburbs, as well as
exclusionary policies limiting the poor and people of color from affluent, suburban
neighborhoods, thus inhibiting social sustainability. Furthermore, USAs are not well-rounded
sustainable growth policies, so we eliminated them from our research consideration.
The Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) is similar to the USA in principle, except with many
added features of government oversight and regulation. Woo & Guldmann (2011) define the
UGB as “a line drawn around a municipality, with areas not around the boundary not allowed or
discouraged to have new developments” (p. 3513). There are three elements of UGB
management: phased development inside the UGB, limited development outside the UGB, and
the flexible nature of the boundary (Jun, 2004). Daniels argues that, “to be effective, a growth
boundary must at least be combined with very-low-density zoning in the adjacent countryside to
discourage rural residential sprawl” (2010, p. 256). Like USAs, UGBs facilitate economic
development within the central city, but also promote social and environmental sustainability.
According to the American Planning Association, UGBs, “promote compact and contiguous
development patterns that can be officially served by public services and to preserve or protect
open space, agricultural land, and environmentally sensitive areas” (Jun, 2004, p. 1333). By
limiting the amount of open land that can be developed, UGBs limit environmentally destructive
practices and mitigate suburbanization. Of these three Urban Containment Policies, we decided
to choose the UGB because we felt that it best accommodated the needs of a diverse array of
cities within the United States. Rather than working against U.S. urban sprawl, the UGB works
within the given constraints of U.S. suburbanization and population growth to regulate land use.

Is the UGB Sustainable in the U.S. city?
We have chosen the urban growth boundary for our topic of analysis because we believe it
directly addresses many of the problems caused by U.S. suburbanization. UGBs reduce demand
for passenger travel, increase population densities, and decrease roadway kilometers, all of
which are cited as indicators for increased emissions (Mashayekh, 2012). However, what does
sustainability in the United States look like compared to other countries? According to Lorr, “in
the American City, greening, dominated by free market sustainability, means economic
development, creating green cities and brown suburbs, green gated urban communities, and
brown ghettoes. U.S. sustainability closely resembles a highly marketized ecological
modernization scheme” (2012, p. 21). In free market sustainability, we see the development of
branded green products, more profitable renewable resources, and decreased reliance on fuel that
is subject to volatile pricing. However, this type of sustainability tends to be shallow, and looks
more like a brand name than a plan to solve environmental problems. Thus, it is important for the
U.S. city to develop a deeper understanding of sustainability beyond just “green” branding and
advertising. We argue that the urban growth management policy goes beyond free market
sustainability greening, and, if expanded to more American states, could create an ethic of
sustainability in American cities.
However, not all scholars agree on the sustainability of UGBs. Some, such as O’Toole
(2000), suggest that UGBs worsen the problems they seek to amend. He criticizes the idea of
“smart growth,” which UGBs champion, by asserting that it increases congestion, concentrates
air pollution in the central city, increases housing costs, develops on open space, and diminishes
sense of community. Such concerns are rooted in a distrust in government and a preference for

private enterprise. If planners seek to amend past problems by implementing further planning
measures, how can we be certain that more planning is necessarily better? For example, the
origin of mass U.S. suburbanization was largely facilitated by the government after World War II
through “subsidized suburbanization” (Jackson, 1985). This has resulted in many unintended
problems and consequences, which we outlined earlier. Thus, it is plausible that government
action would continue to have unintended consequence, and the best option could be leaving
urban development to the free market, void of government intervention. We will explore these
critiques, as well as our hypothesis, in our next section.
Methodology
Land use
In our analysis of UGBs in Portland and Knoxville, we use land use as the primary
measure of sustainability. The choice of land use as our primary measurement is due to three
reasons: its relevance to UGBs, its applicability to sustainability, and the ease of use in GIS
applications. The relevance of land use to UGBs is uncomplicated; UGBs are a land use policy
meant to change the way cities use horizontal space. In addition, land use has many sustainability
applications. As we’ve mentioned earlier, urban sprawl and suburban expansion are large factors
in the sustainability of a city (Carlson & Dierwechter 2007), Therefore, not only is land use
relevant to UGB policy, but it is also integral to understanding the sustainability of a city.
Finally, land use stood out among measures of sustainability and UGBs in its ability to be
modeled in ArcMap with relative ease of use. In addition, the ease of display played an integral
role of conveying spatial patterns.
GIS Analysis

In using GIS to map the pattern of spatial data, methodology is not only integral to our
analysis, but also to the repeatability and comprehension of our results. One of the most
controversial methodologies in our paper is the heavy reliance on census tracts as a minimum
unit of analysis. Census tracts have advantages, such as ease of access, simplicity, and
availability of data. However, there are two main issues with using census tracts for GIS
analysis. The data set used in our analysis was from the American Community Survey (ACS),
which is only conducted every 5 years. Therefore, the data itself is not as accurate and up-to-date
as it could be. Second, census tracts are based on residency. Surveyors take all residence data
and aggregate it for the whole tract. This incorporates some inherent spatial error. In low-density
areas, the error is even higher because the tracts can be very large. This was an issue for both
case studies; however, it is an error that most affects the Knoxville case.
We focused on zoning measures in our GIS analysis of Portland. Using zoning data
instead of census data provided more accurate information; however, the meta data associated
with the zoning datasets was not very clear in describing the different land use codes.
Consequently, we had to omit several zone types based on ambiguity. Those zone codes omitted
were zones classified as mixed use, or in such a way that they were not easily to classify in
relation to one another as to their degree of sustainability (e.g. industrial campus and industrial
office). They were most common in residential, industry, and commercial zones. For Knoxville,
we were unable to obtain free of use access to greater GIS data. We obtained access to maps
from Knoxville’s government planning website (citation). Thus, there were severe limitations in
our GIS analysis for Knoxville, including map readability and available data. However, for the
purposes of this paper, they should still serve as a fairly reliable comparison with our Portland
data.

Policy Analysis
On the basis of U.S. city sustainability, we analyzed the effectiveness of U.S. urban
growth boundary policies in Portland and Knoxville. Our understanding of sustainability within
the urban context includes three elements. First, using the UN definition of sustainability, we test
whether or not our case study cities can accommodate for future generations, based on
population growth projections and land use patterns. Second, we apply Mallach’s definition of
sustainability, regarding “whether the city furthers democracy, diversity, and equity,” (2013, p.
141) by examining whether UGB decisionmaking has leaned toward top-down or bottom-up
policy formation. Finally, Lorr suggests that social cohesion, economic development, and a large
job market must be taken into consideration in concerns about sustainability. We argue that the
UGB mitigates We used the outcomes from our GIS work as indicators for policy success,
testing whether the outcomes of the UGBs aligned with these elements of sustainability.
Case Study 1: Portland
Portland UGB Policy
The Portland UGB policy was passed in 1973 by Republican Governor Tom McCall and
a coalition of urban, progressive, and agricultural interests. This bill created the Department of
Land Conservation and Development, under which cities are required to submit proposed UGBs
in accordance with 19 statewide planning goals, which aim at preserving agricultural lands and
open forests, promoting centralized economic activity, increasing density, and developing public
transit options. In 1979, a regional government, Metro, was enacted by voters to carry out the
UGB policy. Metro oversees Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties, which include
240 UGB districts that are required to adjust every five years to maintain a twenty year supply of
land set aside for future development (Senville, 2013). Metro has described its UGB as “a legal

boundary separating urbanizable land from urban land...the boundary controls urban land onto
farm, forest, and resource lands. At the same time, land, roads, utilities, and other urban services
are more efficiently distributed within the boundary” (Jun, 2004, p. 1334). Portland has also
championed other policy developments toward sustainability. The Greater Portland 2020 Plan is
a five year economic sustainability plan that aligns business, education, and civic leaders around
regional economic priorities. The program seeks to diversify Portland’s workforce, accommodate
transportation and infrastructure needs for a growing population, and create new markets for a
young population (Greater Portland Inc, 2015).
Some argue for the success of Portland’s sustainability through its UGB. It has facilitated
democratic decision making, resulted in more job security, and preserved green spaces.
However, others suggest that the use of the UGB has in fact made Portland less sustainable. Land
and home prices have increased substantially due to the high demand for the urban growth
boundary. For low-income and minority residents who are already at a financial disadvantage,
this could perpetuate further residential racial segregation, as well as home to work spatial
mismatch (Senville, 2013). We test both these accusations by conducting our own analysis of the
impacts of Portland’s UGB using the following indicators: 1) historical development of the
UGB, 2) racial segregation, 3) prevalence of single and multi-family homes, 4) commercial and
industrial zones, and 5) agricultural and rural zones.
Portland GIS Maps
Since the creation of Portland’s UGB policy in 1979, Metro has slowly expanded the
UGB in order to maintain boundary that encompasses a land area that can support 20 years worth
of growth. Each annexation over the past 36 years is difficult to map, as there have been dozens

of additions since the boundary has been established. Most annexations were fairly small,
totaling 20 acres or less.
Figure 1: History of Urban Growth, 1979-2014
Figure 1 shows UGB expansion from 1979 to 2014, illustrating general trends of
expansion. Two things to note from this map are the large expansions of the UGB and the almost
contiguous nature of the boundary. Although this map is limited in its ability to show small
parcel annexation, it is able to demonstrate eras with large annexations. The most notable of
those expansions were 1998 and 1999 (1993-1999 range), 2002 (2000-2006 range), and 2011
(Oregon Metro, 2015). With the exception of 2011, these additions have largely been

simultaneous but not contiguous parcels. However, these annexations have frequently been
attempts to achieve UGB contiguity, which the boundary has achieved with the exception of the
island-like parcel of land on the western part of Portland. Contiguity of both the UGB and the
non-urban areas surrounding the UGB is integral to the success of a UGB program. The
contiguity would normally dissuade or restrict property owners to sell land (Daniels, 2010).
However, due to Oregon’s statewide UGB policy that mandates these areas be either rural or
agricultural, this is less relevant to Portland.
In understanding where residents choose to live, it is important to identify industrial and
commercial land uses. Industry allows us to identify potential environmental hazards and
commercial areas as well as help determine the location of Portland’s central business district.
Figure 2 shows the zones that are designated for industrial and commercial zones. The map
demonstrates areas of concentrated heavy and light industrial in northeast Portland, north
Portland, and along the major water bodies of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. One
limitation of this map is that it doesn’t discern between specific types of industrial uses; for
example, distinguishing a recycling plant from a toxic waste facility. Such information would be
helpful when examining justice concerns about the location of environmental hazards.

Figure 2: Central Portland commercial and industrial zones
Although there no proven correlation between UGBs and the promotion of more racially
integrated cities, political fragmentation, which UGBs address, is considered to be highly
correlative to segregation. According to Morgan and Mareschel (1999), “for every increase in
one suburb per 1,000,000 people, black racial isolation increases by 2.01 units” (p. 589). Due to
Portland’s lack of political fragmentation from Metro and its UGB implementation, it is
reasonable to assume that racial segregation would be minimal. However, that does not appear to
be the case. Figure 3 shows areas of non-white racial concentration in west Portland, as well as
north and eastern Portland. Areas towards the fringe of east Portland, in central Portland, and
south Portland have very small minority populations. If we compare this map with Figure 2, then

we can see a loose correlation of heavy and light industrial zones within minority census tracts.
However, upon further analysis, the neighborhoods that appear to be significantly racialized also
appear to be highly desirable areas for all residents regardless of ethnicity. Without any further
research on neighborhood composition or access to amenities, our analysis is unable to determine
whether these racial distributions are due to congregation or segregation.
Figure 3: Racial Distribution
One of the primary goals of a UGB is the limit the effects of suburbanization, namely
urban sprawl (Woo and Guldmann 2011). However, a UGB that fails to contain sprawl either
through ineffective policy or a boundary that over-bounds the city too much, fails to achieve this

goal. One measure of observing whether a UGB is overbounding its city too much is through the
distribution of low-density, single-family, detached homes. Figure 4 displays the distribution of
single-family and multi-family homes as well as their densities based on city zoning codes.
Figure 4 shows a concentration of multi-family houses in central Portland interspersed with
single-family residential zoning, which creates an integrated housing pattern. However, a large
proportion of the rest of the city is dedicated to single-family, detached housing. Of those areas
zoned for single-family housing, the majority of those are high density with small lot sizes. The
areas of notable low-density housing are on the southern and southeast fringes of the city. This
pattern makes sense according to expected U.S. city patterns, as suburbia is typically located on
the city fringe. In addition, the Portland UGB has recently expanded into these areas, indicating
that a lower density is due to the lag of development. However, these areas consist of very low
minority populations as we identified earlier. In addition, they have a high concentration of light
industrial and office campus, as shown in Figure 2. According to these characteristics, it appears
that the over-boundedness of Portland’s UGB could be a very viable theory as identifiable
suburban patterns appear to have developed on portions of its fringe.
Figure 4: Single and Multi-Family Residential Distribution

In UGB policies, land use outside the boundary is as important as the land use within it.
In the case of Portland, statewide UGB policy has erased any concern over any rampant
development outside of city boundaries. Figure 5 displays the areas of the UGB zoned for
agricultural, rural residential, and undeveloped areas slated for expansion. Three things are
important to note here: the continuity of non-urban zoning, the areas where the political city
over-bounds the geographical, and the area where land isn’t zoned for urban development within
the UGB. The continuity of the non-urban areas is a result of a statewide UGB, confirming the
effectiveness of these types of policies. It is also interesting to note areas where Metro over-
bounds the UGB: they are governed and represented by Metro, but have yet to be extended the

services of areas within the UGB. The purpose of this over-bounding could be an indication of
future expansion of the UGB. The last point of interest is that there is an area within the UGB
that is zoned as rural residential or exclusive farm use. This is a result of the recent expansion of
the UGB to that area, as well as the latency of updating city zoning codes.
Figure 5: Rural residential, agricultural, and future urban zoning
.
Case Study 2: Knoxville
Knoxville UGB Policy

In 2001, Knoxville’s Metropolitan Planning Commission, (MPC) adopted the public
chapter 1101 which required city governments to prepare a 20-year growth plan and established
a statewide UGB policy. In this plan, the MPC established an annexation policy, which
“provides fair notice to anyone owning or contemplating purchase of property that annexation is
a real possibility, it is appropriate and desirable that the annexation be rational, predictable, and
reasonable” (Emmett, 2015). However, due to the southern tradition of small town governments,
there exist several traditional neighborhood zones that exist outside of the UGB. These zones
predated the UGB, and exist as anomalies, and because of this are not as relevant to our analysis
of the effectiveness of the UGB (Knoxville Farragut Knox County, 2000).
There is less literature citing either the success or failure of Knoxville’s UGB, so much of
this is a work in progress. As stated before, we could not obtain GIS data for Knoxville, so all
maps were retrieved from the KGIS maps linked from the Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan
Planning Commission website (2015). We use the following indicators to analyze the impacts of
the UGB on Knoxville’s city patterns: 1) UGB expansion 2) population density, 3) median
household income, 4) commute times, 5) racial segregation, and 6) current land uses.
Knoxville GIS Maps
Figure 6 demonstrates three explicit zones in Knoxville’s plan for UGB expansion:
urban, projected growth area (PGA), and rural. This map demonstrates that expansions to the
UGB are primarily planned for areas in between Farragut and in areas west and northwest of the
city. This map provides context for how the UGB is expanded upon in Knoxville, and the ways
that planners classify land use. To understand city and UGB expansion, however, we must
determine the“central city” of Knoxville. In order to understand a U.S. city pattern, it is
important to determine the central city. Unfortunately, the lack of free data to demonstrate the

central city forces our analysis to rely on population density to determine the central city. Using
Figure 7, we can determine that the most dense areas are in the western part of the geographical
area and the eastern part of the central city. Thus, we have determined this area to be the central
city. Using Figure 6, we can see that Knoxville also plans to expand and develop its central city
for the future.
Figure 6: UGB expansion plan

Figure 7: Population Density
Median household income is an important measure of a city’s economic well-being as it
takes into account households, not individuals, and takes median measures, which account for
any outliers. Figure 8 illustrates socioeconomic spatial patterns where the poor are concentrated
in the central city and the rich and middle class live on the city periphery. Most notable in Figure
8 is that fact that affluent tracts persist in rural tracts outside the UGB. According to the central
city established by Figure 7, the central city also closely correlates to areas of low median
household income.

Figure 8: Median Household Income
A key characteristic of the suburban U.S. city is an affluent, high-income periphery
population that commutes to the central city for work (Jackson, 1985). Figure 9 demonstrates
that in the case of Knoxville, this is partially true. We can see that people on the periphery have
longer home to work commutes. Unfortunately, the lack of data in Knox County does not allow
for a conclusive statement on whether the peripheries of the city and tracts outside the boundary
consist of suburban commuters. In addition, the lack of data makes it hard to determine any
relationship with the central city, except for that areas within the UGB tend to have commuting
times less than 30 minutes.
Figure 9: Percentage of Commuters Who Travel Less Than 30 Minutes

Another key aspect of the U.S. city model is the concentration of minorities in the inner
city (Jackson 1985). Furthering the evidence demonstrating suburban tendencies Knoxville’s
suburban tendency, Figure 10 demonstrates that there are significant concentration so minorities
in the central city of Knoxville. In addition to this high concentration, there are few minority
populations outside the UGB or in other areas within the UGB. Perhaps the most poignant
relationship between the central city and a city demographic is the correlation of the central city
and high minority populations. Minority populations in Knoxville almost exclusively reside in
central city.

Figure 10: Residential Racial Segregation
In order to understand any anomalies in the demographics displayed in figures 6-10,
Figure 11 shows all current forms of land use in Knoxville. Although Knoxville has a UGB,
there appear to be areas outside of that boundary that are used for development. These areas
include land uses such as landfills, public parks, rural residential, and single-family residential.
Of further note, land uses classified as “wholesale” tend to border arterial roads that lead outside
the city. This pattern of commercial development strings along highways is typically determined
as a form of urban sprawl, but in the case of Knoxville, sprawl lies within the UGB. This is due
to what looks like a purposeful extension of the UGB along those roadways. Finally, the
presence of single family housing and rural residential outside of the UGB indicates that

Tennessee’s regulations on development outside of the UGB are more lenient. Figure 12
provides the governmental classification of land uses seen in Figure 11. In addition, it clarifies
current and future intentions of zoning. This proves valuable in analysis of policy and
understanding the government’s role in shaping land use.

Figure 11: Current land use
Figure 12: Zoning

Discussion
According to our analysis, the Portland case study is consistent with our definition of city
sustainability. First, the history of UGB expansion proves that Portland’s boundary is flexible.
Second, Portland appears to have a less racially segregated city, where ethnic neighborhoods are
located near the central business district, mitigating spatial mismatch. Third, Portland supports a
dense mix of single family and multi-family residential neighborhoods. Finally, the city
demonstrates a strong and contiguous preservation of agricultural and rural land uses outside the
city boundary. However, our analysis also indicated that Portland has two noteworthy patterns
that indicate less sustainable land use. First, we noticed a correlation between minority census
tracts and industrial zones. This could indicate issues of environmental justice and environmental
racism. Secondly, despite housing diversity and high land use density, single-family residential
housing is the clear majority in the the mix of residential housing types, which we have
established as a socially and environmentally unsustainable land use. Both these issues indicate
that, although Portland is incredibly sustainable in land use policy, it still lacks certain elements
of social and environmental sustainability.
With the limited data available for Knoxville, its UGB policy does not seem to be
resisting many elements of the persistent suburban structure of the U.S. city. The concentration
of low-income residents and racial minorities in the most populated parts of the city, as well as a
periphery of commuting populations, directly parallel demographic suburban patterns observed
in Jackson’s characterization of the suburban United States (1985). In addition, the formation of
commercial areas on the highways leading outside the city is very reminiscent of urban sprawl.
Finally, the development of rural residential as well as single-family residential outside the UGB
indicates that suburbia can still exist, even with statewide UGB policies. However, Knoxville’s

UGB does seem to limit the growth of its cities by disallowing more environmentally destructive
urban land uses, such as industrial, to spill over the boundary. Overall, we find that Knoxville’s
UGB is not as successful as Portland at combating urban sprawl. Yet, its UGB is relatively new
compared to Portland’s, so it is possible that, with time, the Knoxville UGB will facilitate more
sustainable growth patterns.
Our comparison of these two case studies is limited by the disparity of data available for
each city. However, we can still draw connections between the cities’ UGB policies. Portland
and Knoxville share a few similarities, the biggest of which is that both of their states utilize
statewide UGB mandates. Woo & Guldmann (2011) suggest that statewide UGBs are more
conducive to sustainable development. Secondary to this is the use of explicit zoning codes to
determine what types of development occur outside the UGB. Portland used rural residential,
exclusive farm use, and future urban development outside the UGB, while Knoxville’s codes
implemented single family residential and rural residential land use patterns, as well as several
provisions for future use of different types of zones, such as commercial, residential, and
industrial.
Yet, Portland and Knoxville are vastly different cities. They are both extremely different
in terms of demographics, such as majority political party, minority composition, and median
household income. Portland is extremely progressive, while Knoxville is conservative, which
could account for the tighter government controls in Portland’s UGB policy. Demographic
distribution and development permeability of the UGB highlight the major differences between
both our case studies. Portland is a more diverse city with more evenly spatialy distributed
nonwhite and low-income populations than Knoxville. If there are any such concentrations in
Portland, those concentrations form in unique and not uniform ways. In addition, the policy of

development outside of Portland’s UGB seems to be a lot more restrictive. First, Portland has a
zone classification strictly for farm use, whereas Knoxville’s most similar zoning class is
agriculture and estate, which implies residential occupation. Second, Portland’s UGB maintains a
shape that seems to prioritize future population growth projections, whereas the pattern of
Knoxville’s UGB tends to reach out along highways that parallel the development of commercial
zoning. Finally, Portland’s UGB resists any sort of development outside of the UGB, while
Knoxville’s policy contains far more exceptions to land use outside the UGB.
In UGB policy, the success of a UGB relies on three techniques to be successful:
agricultural zoning of no more than one house per 10 hectares, the limiting of city services, and
government or city possession of development rights outside UGBs (Daniels 2010, p. 260). The
primary commonality of Portland and Knoxville is the fact that both cities with UGBs mandated
by state law. As we’ve outlined in the previous sections, this commonality has resulted in very
different cities in regards to land use. The implications of this comparison are dual. First, the
notion that state-mandated UGBs are a panacea to U.S. urban sprawl is naive: the framework
creating a UGB is integral to the success of the boundary. Second, in order to be sustainable,
UGBs require those three requirements outlined in Daniels (2010): agricultural zoning of no
more than one house per 10 hectares, the limiting of city services, and government or city
possession of development rights outside UGBs (p. 260). Even then, we will not necessarily
achieve the perfect sustainable city model. UGBs must align with inclusive policymaking that is
more strict on zoning developments outside the UGB. We see this in Portland more than
Knoxville.
Conclusion: Sustainable urban planning and climate change

City planning is not only important for individual cities with a microcosm of
environmental, social, and economic problems: the UGB is an example of how individual actions
contribute to long-term environmental processes. We understand that the definition of
sustainability is not static, and varies globally along with cultural and political norms. As a
result, we are not prescribing a one size fits all policy for U.S. cities, and certainly not global
cities; rather, we are suggesting that U.S. local and state governments with characteristics ideal
for UGB implementation could and should consider its usefulness for environmental, social, and
economic sustainability. The UGB is a broad sustainability tool that is adaptable to various
American cities and can serve as a tool for larger social and environmental issues. Overall, we
can see that Portland has been a successful case of the UGB policy, while Knoxville has a long
way to go in terms of implementation. However, like the physical processes such as climate
change that sustainable development seeks to address, this is a long term process, and we can’t
expect immediate results.
Arguably, the biggest issue of any kind in the 21st Century is climate change. With sea
level rise, environmental hazards, and the extensive burning of fossil fuels, it will soon become
impending that cities act on climate issues. Bulkeley & Betsill (2005) suggest three primary
reasons that cities have an important role to play in the pursuit of climate change mitigation and
protection. First, cities generate high amounts of energy consumption and waste, and must
determine how to best deal with the impacts of this. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, some
would argue that institutions have the moral obligation to enable individuals to engage in
sustainable behavior (Fahlquist, 2009). Local governments are the closest government agents to
communities, and thus have the power to enable sustainable practices and behavior. Second,
local authorities can help coordinate community action and involvement in ways that the federal

level cannot address. Local governments have firsthand experience with specific environmental
problems that impact cities, and understand the best practices for sustainability within a
particular locality. Finally, local governments have vast amounts of experience working with
environmental issues, and have developed mitigation strategies specific to their region. Even if
these efforts are small scale, such as waste cleanups and remediation efforts, such efforts are
needed locally to make a difference in global climate change mitigation.

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