Both greater Seattle and Portland have been slowly getting more compact. At the time of the last Census, about a quarter of residents lived in compact communities in each city, up from about one in five a decade earlier (see statistics).

But Portland did a better job of curbing low-density sprawl. Over the decade, Greater Seattle experienced a net gain in the number of residents living in the most sprawling suburbs and exurbs; and Portland, like Eugene, saw an absolute decline in low-density and rural sprawl.

Portland has earned acclaim for its smart growth policies-and rightly so. An October 2004 study of Portland and 14 other US cities, including Seattle, showed that Portland exceled at protecting rural land and curbing low-density sprawl.

Again, Oregon's growth management policies likely accounted for this record. Another example: In the 1990s, Clark County, the part of greater Portland that lies in Washington, suffered far more exurban sprawl during the 1990s than did the rest of the metropolitan area (see map).

But Portland is still not as dense as many other cities in the western United States, and it does not hold a candle to the Northwest's clear leader in compact growth, Vancouver, BC (see map).

Greater Seattle shows some improvement: Washington's Growth Management Act, which took effect in the mid-1990s, is showing some success in containing sprawl. An analysis of greater Seattle's housing permits (see this map) shows that the share of permits issued for new dwellings outside the urban growth boundaries declined steadily over the last decade.

In 1991 more than one in four new housing units authorized in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties was outside what would later become the urban growth boundaries.

By 2001 that share had fallen to one in eight. King County, which contains Seattle, fared best, ending the decade with only 1 of each 20 new homes slated for construction outside the urban boundary.

Likewise, the share of new King County housing authorized in already-dense neighborhoods rose from 17 percent in 1991 to 29 percent in 2001. Such infill development reduces environmental impacts because it consumes little land and shows the greatest promise for making transit accessible and cost-effective for residents.

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Scorecard sprawl statistics