Sy Adler, Faculty EmeritusI grew up in the Bronx, New York, a few blocks away from Yankee Stadium. Both of my parents were immigrants from Poland and were members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union all their working lives in the United States. Neither of them drove a car, and I grew up riding public transit and got to know the city by riding the subway to libraries all over town. Those were formative influences on me: I became deeply interested in urban transportation issues, and also in union activity, early on.
My undergraduate education at the University of Pittsburgh was in urban studies, a self-designed major that included social science and architecture classes. Then I studied planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and went on to get my PhD in 1980 at UC Berkeley, where my dissertation was about the planning of the San Francisco BART system, which launched in 1972 after more than two decades of discussion. I enjoyed academia but decided it would be useful to have hands-on experience as a practicing planner. I moved to Los Angeles, where I got a job with the LA County Department of Regional Planning. My focus was transportation planning, but I also worked on forecasting demographic and land-use changes and implementing an early version during 1980–1982 of a Geographic Information System to analyze the relationships between proposed land development projects and infrastructure capacity. LA was an amazing place to live and work—extremely diverse and dynamic.
While I enjoyed my work with LA County, I missed having time to think, research, and write. When I saw an ad for a faculty position at Portland State, I applied for it. I knew a little bit about Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) and the unique statewide land-use planning program it oversaw, and that Portland had experienced its own version of a freeway revolt and was building a light rail transit system. I also knew something about the regional government that was in place in the early 1980s in Portland—which is still a unique institution within the planning world. I was very interested in learning about those innovative things happening in Portland. In addition, Nohad Toulan, who came to PSU in 1972, had built the department on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology model, which combined urban studies and planning. The opportunity to have a scholarly outlet in urban studies as well as to teach in a professionally oriented practice program was very attractive, and I eagerly accepted his job offer.
I knew I had made the right decision when, on my way from Los Angeles to Portland during the summer of 1982, I saw a bumper sticker on an Oregon car in the parking lot near the California/Oregon border that said: “Poland has martial law / Oregon has LCDC.” Clearly, planning was taken very seriously in Oregon.
At a Changing Portland State
When I started teaching at PSU in 1982, Oregon was experiencing its deepest economic downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. The state had grown rapidly in the 1960s and early ’70s, which was a major factor that led to the establishment of the statewide land-use planning program. But during the early 1980s Oregon faced net out-migration and state budget cuts ensued. PSU experienced a severe financial crisis. Urban Studies and Planning was slated for faculty position cuts; as someone who was just hired, according to PSU’s collective bargaining contract, I would be the first fired.
Toulan protected my position during the financial crisis. He chose to take leave from PSU for two years to lead the development of a United Nations–sponsored regional plan for Makkah, in Saudi Arabia, a position he had previously declined to accept. In that context, he persuaded the PSU administration to maintain my position. His doing that, of course, had a deep and lasting impact on me personally, and on my commitment to the institutions he built: the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning (USP) and, more broadly, the College of Urban and Public Affairs.
Having survived that crisis, I became actively involved in the faculty union shortly thereafter. Union work allowed me to participate in multiple ways campus-wide and nationally, including collective bargaining, representing the union during budget, promotion and tenure, and shared governance discussions, advocating for PSU and higher education generally at the state level, and working with national union leaders on initiatives to strengthen local chapters. Considering my family history as the child of longstanding union members, that meant a great deal to me.
My Teaching Portfolio
PSU was a different kind of university than those I had attended. When I started in 1982, there were relatively few traditional-age students; many were older than I was. Undergraduate PSU students were mostly community college transfers; there were relatively few freshmen. Many were part-time—they were working and had families. Today, PSU students are a little younger, on average, and include many more freshmen. There are still many part-time students, though, many of whom juggle multiple responsibilities. Undergrad and grad students who shared directly related life experiences in my classrooms made teaching a rewarding activity for me.
At the undergraduate level, I taught Freshman Inquiry, a wide-ranging course about Portland, in the University Studies program for four years starting in Fall 2009. That was a challenge for me because I hadn’t even spoken with a freshman during the prior 27 years. In the mid-1990s, as a member of a committee convened by Dean Toulan, I was instrumental in creating a new undergraduate major in USP in Community Development, a major that would prepare students to be civic leaders/activists in the context of a liberal arts education, rather than train them for professional planning practice; the committee agreed the major would be a valuable addition both to USP and to the city.
At the graduate level, teaching History and Theory of Planning and co-instructing Planning Workshop have been highlights of my career, especially seeing evidence in workshop that students had learned the importance of situating their plan-making efforts and implementation proposals in relevant historical and theoretical contexts. It’s great to see former students in practice now, many in leadership positions in different types of organizations, and as elected officials. The opportunity to work with doctoral students, particularly as their dissertation committee chair, has also been a source of great satisfaction.
My Research Portfolio
I’ve endeavored to integrate urban studies and urban and regional planning perspectives into my research, and I’ve aimed to reach audiences beyond academics to include people who are engaged in planning: elected officials, people serving on commissions, advocates, neighborhood association members, and practicing professionals.
Examples of that effort include my books Oregon Plans: The Making of an Unquiet Land Use Revolution, published in 2012, which explores the origins and early evolution of the statewide land-use program as a whole, and Planning the Portland Urban Growth Boundary: The Struggle to Transform Trend City, published in 2022, which focuses on getting the original boundary between urban land and farmland approved by LCDC during the 1970s and its early implementation. I hope those books provide historical context for people confronting issues today that are both similar to and different than what people argued about back in the 1970s. The impact of 1000 Friends of Oregon has been an interesting part of the research. The critical role Friends has played in the evolution of how we think about and practice land use planning in Oregon has been and continues to be very important. My scholarship has benefitted enormously from collaboration with many current and former USP colleagues; they’ve made USP an extremely hospitable environment for me throughout my career.
A Few Current Challenges Confronting PSU
One extremely challenging issue confronting PSU is enrollment decline. Many PSU students have high financial need, and the university is committed to providing services that will support student success; however, PSU has never had a sizable endowment that generates income to be used for multiple purposes. It depends on tuition revenue and state support, which connect directly to enrollment.
A related challenge is the emergence of dramatically increased competition for students who are metropolitan area residents. PSU has been competing directly with Oregon State University’s Ecampus, as well as its physical presence in Portland. Now the University of Oregon also has a Portland campus and may bring programs to the city that will compete with PSU offerings. Private universities have also been stepping up their marketing efforts in the metropolitan area.
Final Comment
Keeping in mind my rough start 40-plus years ago, when I was nearly fired within months of starting at PSU, I’m acutely aware that having a tenured faculty position is a privilege enjoyed by a tiny percentage of the working population. Being able to engage with students, and with faculty and staff colleagues at PSU in a wide range of activities, and with people off-campus as well, have been experiences I will always cherish.