Is high density development even a good idea for Anchorage considering the possibility of a declining oil industry? Low density housing is obviously unsustainable if the city continues to grow, but if it tops out and starts to decline having high density housing seems like the ideal recipe for underoccupied slums.

Also just to try and compare what I know about Seattle to Anchorage, the trend is usually that its young single/couples professionals who choose to live in high density urban areas. Once people have kids the trend is to get the hell out of the "city" and get a house with a yard and shit. That and living in high density urban areas is just too expensive for average people on an average income, thus another push towards the suburbs. This is precisely why we live 15-25 miles from where we work.

I agree that Anchorage does not, and probably never will have the population density to support good mass transit. Yeah I agree that its really really great. Hell I love mass transit, if I'm not on my bike, I take the bus every single day to work. I drive to work maybe, 1 work day every two months... maybe? But even here in Seattle its hard to support the transit programs we have, and with the current rough economic times there have been a lot of cuts to transit and there will be a lot more till things start to turn around and revenues are up. Sadly a lot of the routes getting trimmed are the long hauls from the suburbs, because they're expensive, to save the urban routes in the city where people could damn well walk if they wanted... oh well.

Lastly, I have to disagree with Erik about poor urban planning. Anchorage was never meant to be a pedestrian city, so was never built like one, and it will never be changed to one. People moved there to have space, be freer, not have neighbors breathing down their necks, shit like that. Anchorage was a way different place before the oil fields were built. And even for that rapid expansion it has a pretty decent layout. Several good N-S lines and several good E-W lines. And its reasonable compact. Shit from my dads place to downtown is only 10 miles. That's nothing, seriously look at any major city and 10 miles ain't shit. With a little fearlessness you could bike anywhere you wanted in Anchorage in about an hour, and by fearlessness that just means getting your ass on the road instead of trying to roll the sidewalks. The real limitations are things like winter, and Hillside, oh and lights... lots and lots of lights but that's just living in a city.

It's impossible to compare Anchorage to a place like Portland. It would be awesome if that's what it could become, but realistically it can't with costing a lot of money. On the other hand, bitch how much you want about cost of living up there, Alaskans don't have much of a tax burden. The property tax rate in Anchorage isn't really all that high... where I live and am looking for a house has a quarter of the people but the same mill rate as anchorage, and you don't pay a single cent to the state. So you could buck up and actually start paying for your governent and still have those things, but the nature of most of the people who live in AK would probably balk at that idea.