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The City of Portland retained a national team led by Dyett & Bhatia (D&B) to assist the Bureau of Planning in the Regulatory Rethink Project. Portland has only had three zoning codes since its inception. The two updates to the original zoning code, adopted in 1924, did not change the underlying general concepts. This project marked an attempt to look at zoning and other regulatory and non-regulatory tools from the ground up to better reflect the City’s goals, and to implement the City Council mandate to “update and improve city building and land use regulations that hinder desirable development.”
D&B evaluated the City’s current approach to regulating development and formulated alternative strategies to better achieve the City’s goals and applicable requirements of State and federal law. To inform the project with the best thinking on contemporary approaches to land use regulation, D&B worked with a national advisory council of experts (ACE) comprised of individuals with nationally recognized credentials who “brainstormed” alternatives, evaluated issues, and made recommendations regarding possible strategies and alternatives for revising the City’s regulatory framework. The Regulatory Rethink White Paper produced for the City included recommendations for approaches to make regulations easier to use, understand, and better address psychical concurrent studies of the Comprehensive Plan and the capital improvement programming process.