News/Updates

 

The Gorham East-West Corridor Feasibility Study area is within Maine’s largest metropolitan area. By definition, a metropolitan area is anchored by one or more core communities with 50,000 or more population and includes the surrounding communities that are economically and socially tied to the core communities, as measured by commuting patterns.[1]

For the last century the overall pattern of settlement in the U.S., including Maine, has been described as a two-part “centralization-decentralization.” That is, there has been a continuous migration of population into metropolitan areas (centralization) as people leave job-depleted rural regions and move to metro areas where there are more economic opportunities. And then, within metropolitan areas, there has been a migration outward from the core communities into the suburbs and exurbs, typically within 30-45 minutes of the job centers (decentralization).

Both parts of this pattern are important to the Gorham East-West transportation study. The centralization of Maine’s population into metropolitan areas will continue to help drive economic and population growth in southern Maine. The amount of ongoing decentralization to the suburban and rural territories around the core communities will continue to shape transportation and other demands on the region and its communities.

The rapid geographical expansion of the Portland metropolitan area (now known as the municipally-based Portland-South Portland-Biddeford NECTA – see footnote 1) illustrates the decentralization of growth that has dominated the region for the last several decades. In 1970, the Portland metropolitan area consisted of 9 communities (Portland, South Portland, Westbrook, Falmouth, Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Yarmouth, Gorham, and Scarborough). By 1990, the boundaries encompassed 18 communities in Cumberland County and four in York County. And the 2000 Census showed Cumberland County and northern York County to be economically fused, and the metro area was expanded to 41 municipalities, including 23 in Cumberland County, 16 in York County, and two in Oxford County. 

This vast outward expansion of metropolitan boundaries is the hallmark of the pattern that between 1970 and 2000 came to be known as “sprawl.” During this period, within the Cumberland County portion of the metro area, 29% of all new housing units were built in the cities of Portland, South Portland, and Westbrook; 45% in the suburbs of Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Falmouth, Freeport, Gorham, Scarborough, Windham, and Yarmouth; and 25% in the next tier of suburban and exurban towns in the metro area (Baldwin, Casco, Gray, Naples, North Yarmouth, Pownal, Raymond, and Standish). The trend is clear.

Within the metropolitan area, the portion that is “urbanized” also has spread. “Urbanized” means an area that is settled at 1000 or more people per square mile plus any adjacent area settled at 500 or more people per square mile[2]. As of the 2000 Census, the Portland urbanized area consisted of portions of 15 cities and towns (Portland, South Portland, Westbrook, Cape Elizabeth, Biddeford, Cumberland, Falmouth, Freeport, Gorham, North Yarmouth, Old Orchard Beach, Saco, Scarborough, Windham and Yarmouth).[3] This urbanized area had a population of 188,080, or 56% of the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metro area’s total population of 333,624.

The accompanying map shows the Census-defined Portland urbanized area.

Conversely, fully 44% of the metro population – more than 145,000 -- lived outside of the urbanized area. Thus, even as the urbanized area was expanding, rural numbers were growing, setting up the next round of urbanization.

 

Through the first half of the 20^th Century, the metropolitan region was anchored by the central city of Portland, with smaller downtowns or village centers in many surrounding communities. Fairly compact neighborhoods – typically about 0.5-mile in diameter -- were clustered near transportation facilities (ports, trolley lines, intersections of major roads) or near factories, such as textile and paper mills. A majority of the population lived close to a range of everyday goods and services within the community they lived. Rural lands were largely intact. Downtown Portland served as the regional retail and distribution hub, while smaller downtowns or neighborhood centers in most communities served everyday needs. Workers were split between those who worked in manufacturing, agricultural, and other jobs in the same community where they lived and those who commuted into the central business district of Portland by trolley, bus or auto. 

For a variety of reasons, this pattern faded in the second half of the century. Traditional industries closed their doors; the economy shifted toward service production and national and global markets; incomes rose, as did the value of urban real estate; improved roads, auto-oriented shopping centers, and two-car families created the opportunities to open up a widening circle of rural lands to development; and automobile travel, already prevalent by the 1950s, became dominant. Bus service and ridership dropped precipitously.

The result is a spread-out pattern of settlement that depends less on either the core communities or traditional village centers for goods and services. Downtown Portland and other centers remain as identifiable places but had to adapt to the rising retail dominance of suburban and highway-oriented shopping centers. Beginning in the 1970s, zoning ordinances codified and helped perpetuate this spread-out pattern, often doubling and tripling the minimum lot size requirements for residential development. The table on the next page summarizes residential density requirements in 11 suburbs in the Portland region as of the 1990s and early 2000s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More recently, some communities have amended their ordinances to allow higher densities of residential development in specified districts, but it is too early to tell whether these changes –without a companion requirement to discourage development in rural districts – will alter patterns of settlement within communities.

Figure 2. Contemporary low density pattern of suburban development

  Commercial development outside of major downtowns has been of similar low intensity, usually at floor area ratios (FAR) of under 0.2 – meaning that for the typical suburban commercial development, the lot on which the development occurs has five times more land area than total building floor area (typically used for parking). The regional Maine Mall area has an FAR of 0.23. In contrast, the pattern in small town downtowns tends to be in the 0.6 to 0.8 range, or three to four times more intense than typical strip shopping centers; in downtown Portland, the overall average is about 2.3 – ten times more intense than the Maine Mall area. The low-intensity of suburban commercial centers has helped to spread out development and increase auto dependency.