A Study Of Portland's 1972 Downtown Plan

During 1960s to 1970s, American central cities suffered a decline and those downtowns began to lose their past prosperity. There were quite a lot of social problems, such as crowded transportation, house shortage, impoverishment, as well as racial conflicts, so on so forth. The further development of urban cities required badly a reconstruction and replanning under such situation, therefore the revival of downtowns became one of focuses people paid attention to.Portland was regarded as one of the ten suitable-for-living cities of America. Its Downtown Plan composed in 1972 is reputed as an excellent document to not only stop the deterioration of American cities' business crisis frequently found in other downtown, but in a measure, relieve those problems. On the basis of the detailed documents of Downtown Plan, this thesis focuses on the analysis of the Plan's contents, features, as well as its influences on cities, and then tries to conclude the Plan's instructive experience for other cities.This thesis can be divided into 5 parts as follows:The Introduction surveys the related academic literature on downtown development researches both from China and abroad. Part 1 first briefly introduces the city of Portland and the city planning history, paving a way for the arriving comparison between it and other Planning in 1970s (especially 1972 Downtown Plan). Part 2, based on a close reading of the document of 1972 Downtown Plan, analyzes the drawing process and the planning's specific contents, and summarizes the differences between 1972 Downtown Plan and those earlier ones. Part 3 analyzes the Planning's influence on Portland since 1972. Part 4, summarizes the instructive experiences as well as its lessons. The Conclusion, reemphasizes the lessons that a city in development needs to learn from, at the same time it restates the significance of Portland's rewarding experience for other cities' development.