I’m a bit irritated every time I receive a comment or e-mail that runs along these lines:

Fort Worth will never be New York, so get over it!

I’m irritated because that indicates that the author of said comment/e-mail has completely missed the point I’ve been trying to make about urban design since this site began, and has assumed that by “urban” I mean “skyscrapers” (and been rather rude about it).

So, I’m going to repeat this once again – “URBAN” DOES NOT MEAN “SKYSCRAPER.” Nobody’s saying that Fort Worth can ever be like New York, or that it should. It shouldn’t. That’s a rather preposterous thing to say. The model of Fort Worth’s future is absolutely not New York. Thing is, New York isn’t the only type of urbanity. You want to know what sort of urbanity I see in Fort Worth’s future if things go the way I want them to (and this is a vision shared by many of the city’s leaders, by the way)?

It’s simple: Portland, Oregon.

Portland and Fort Worth are alike in many ways. One of the ways that interests me is that Portland and Fort Worth share a fairly rare attribute in their city centers – the 200′ x 200′ block. Both of the cities use this small block design, which is unusual in major American cities. These small blocks dictate the scale of effective development, and tend to keep things much more human-scaled and modest than the gigantic blocks of most other American cities. They’re easier and more comfortable to pedestrians – in a given distance, you’ll pass by many more blocks and (ideally) many more lovely buildings and street-level retail spaces in Portland or Fort Worth than in cities with bigger blocks, and they’re often smaller and more intimate. You’ve got a lot more streets as well, making navigation a snap thanks to many more options.

These small blocks, along with a host of other similarities, mean that the sort of things that work in Portland tend to work in Fort Worth, and vice versa.

Like Fort Worth, Portland has a downtown that doesn’t have a gigantic, eye-piercing skyline, but which does have an excellent ground-level pedestrian experience. Also like Fort Worth, Portland has numerous urban neighborhoods around downtown that are experiencing a rebirth – Fort Worth has districts like the Near Southside and the Cultural District, Portland has places like the Pearl District and the South Waterfront.

Portland’s Pearl District

The indie spirit and anti-chain attitudes of Portland may not be all that common in Fort Worth, but they do exist, primarily in the Near Southside, which could easily end up being very, very similar to the Pearl District. The important thing to note is that some of Portland’s coolest urban neighborhoods, like the Pearl, are not crammed with skyscrapers and are not trying to be “New York,” the default “urban” comparison of people who don’t understand true urbanity. Parts of the Near Southside will look a lot like this one day, after more neighborhood-scaled infill development:

It’s important to note that Portland is like Fort Worth in another way – it also has neighborhoods of urban single family housing, similar to places in Fort Worth like the Fairmount neighborhood, thus proving again that you can be urban and still have your detached house with a back yard.

Another noteworthy item is Portland’s famed modern streetcar. This is what we’re basing the design of the Fort Worth modern streetcar on. With the number of similarities between the two cities, it’s not unrealistic to think that the Fort Worth interpretation of the system should also work very well (in fact, Portland’s population is *smaller* than Fort Worth’s, so if we continue to urbanize we should have the ridership with no difficulty).

There are some differences – Portland uses an Urban Growth Boundary, a line that the city shall not expand beyond. This has two benefits – it keeps suburban growth denser and more urban and prevents a lot of typical sprawl from being built (also making transit much more effective), and it protects the natural environment beyond the growth boundary. Fort Worth, unfortunately, still sprawls to the far reaches, and our natural environment is being consumed at an alarming rate. While I’m doubtful we could pass an urban growth boundary here, due to the usual attitudes about such things in this part of the country, it’s something I would definitely support.

So there you have it. When I’m talking about urbanizing Fort Worth, I’m not talking about New York. Fort Worth will never be New York. Fort Worth is pretty close to Portland, though, and it’s a model that should serve our city well as people such as myself work to increase the city’s urban qualities.