A resident of Portland, I recently attended a planning board workshop to discuss Redfern Properties’ application for a zone change and text amendment for 165 Washington Avenue. This proposal was to usher in a tall, large and dense apartment building out of character with the fabric of the neighborhood and adjacent Eastern Promenade park. Wisely, the planning board tabled Redfern’s application until ReCode, on which the application was predicated, could be discussed and voted on by Portland City Council.

But at that meeting, Kevin Kraft, Portland’s new planning director, made a stunning statement. When asked by the board about the impact of the proposed zone change on Washington Avenue, which has been identified as a priority high-frequency transit corridor in Portland ReCode, Kraft said: “We are still exploring the entire corridor of Washington Avenue.”

ReCode has been in progress for the past seven years.

In early June of this year, the planning department held a series of public meetings on Phase II, and a planning board workshop. At the workshop on June 5, Kraft noted that Phase II marked the final draft of the ReCode project that will be sent to the Portland City Council for approval.

How can it be that the planning department is in the final phase of ReCode and yet it has not examined the concrete, physical, real-world impact of its own recommendations for an identified major transit corridor along Washington Avenue?

There are two plausible answers:

1. The planning department hasn’t looked at Washington Avenue because it was counting on the Redfern zone and text amendment, modeled on the proposed ReCode, to be approved, thus making any further analysis or public discussion moot.

2. Portland ReCode is driven by abstractions – broad concepts about climate resilience, transit corridors and housing density. While these are noble and necessary goals, they remain abstractions. They are the boilerplate of Camiros, the Chicago-based consultant who brought experience from projects in cities like Chicago, Bowling Green and Buffalo, large cities with little in common with Portland.

The goals of ReCode are important.

Members of the planning department, the planning board and Portland City Council need to get this right.

That means looking up from the abstractions on their computers, putting the city’s history and culture above the consultants’ figures, going beyond the agendas set by developers like Redfern, and getting out onto the streets and into the neighborhoods to understand the effects of what they are proposing.