In 2017, after about a decade in the affordable housing and community development industry, my career took a turn and I landed in a position as a long range planner in the Portland region. One of the very first projects I worked on was codifying and adopting changes related to Oregon Senate Bill 1051 of 2017. SB 1051 required communities with more than 10,000 people to remove certain barriers to housing production, including giving regulated affordable housing projects priority in the land use
Land use planning has always faced scrutiny, but in recent years, the conversation has grown louder and more polarized. Social media and digital activism have brought more voices into the debate, leading to important discussions but also fueling misunderstandings about what planners do and the forces that shape our cities. Like many in my field, I became a planner to help create better places. In fact, very few of us enter the planning profession to defend outdated zoning, reinforce sprawl, or