Portland, Oregon took its initial growth as a port and regional metropolis serving the Columbia River basin and the Pacific Northwest. It remains a regional transportation, finance, and service center, to which has been added a substantial electronics industry. The city and its region are best known for innovative policy initiatives dealing with urban planning, regionalism, growth management, and community development and revitalization. The city-region is served by the only elected metropolitan government in the United States. That government, Metro, has authority to structure regional spatial planning and also administers an urban growth boundary to maintain compact and efficient urban form. Development within the City of Portland has been directed since the 1970s by an alliance of downtown business interests and older middle class neighborhoods that have benefitted from a strong urban core. Much of city policy and grassroots effort from the 1990s has focused on the challenge of extending the benefits of this alliance to lower-income neighborhoods through community development and affordable housing efforts.