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May 29, 2008
Portland Journal
Racial Shift in a Progressive City Spurs Talks
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
PORTLAND, Ore. - Not every neighborhood in this city is one of those Northwest destinations where passion for espresso, the environment and plenty of exercise define the cultural common ground. A few places are still described as frontiers, where pioneers move because prices are relatively reasonable, the location is convenient and, they say, they "want the diversity."
Yet one person's frontier, it turns out, is often another's front porch. It has been true across the country: gentrification, which increases housing prices and tension, sometimes has racial overtones and can seem like a dirty word. Now Portland is encouraging black and white residents to talk about it, but even here in Sincere City, the conversation has been difficult.
"I've been really upset by what I perceive to be Portland's blind spot in its progressivism," said Khaela Maricich, a local artist and musician. "They think they live in the best city in the country, but it's all about saving the environment and things like that. It's not really about social issues. It's upper-middle-class progressivism, really."
Ms. Maricich, 33, who is white, spoke after attending this month's meeting of Portland's Restorative Listening Project.
The goal of the project, which is sponsored by the city's Office of Neighborhood Involvement, is to have white people better understand the effect gentrification can have on the city's longtime black and other-minority neighborhoods by having minority residents tell what it is like to be on the receiving end.
Portland's support of cycling pays off
View from Jonathan Maus' bike in Portland traffic
According to Bicycling Magazine, Portland, Ore., has the highest number of bike commuters in the country. Ethan Lindsey reports on the industry that's grown up around all those riders.
Money - Grant-givers say people-hauling efficiency is their primary goal, not urban revitalization
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
DYLAN RIVERA
The Oregonian
In the Bush White House, the political appointees who set the nation's mass transit policies view Portland's streetcar system as an extravagance: A sweet way for a relatively few privileged urbanites to move about a city that prides itself on dense downtown development. Rapid bus lines, in the administration's view, would move more people from place to place at less expense.
That thinking could cost Portland, which is hoping to expand its streetcar line and become the first in the nation to be built with substantial federal money. The city has spent years building political and neighborhood consensus about the new route, which would cross the Broadway Bridge and go south to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, nearly completing a streetcar loop of the city's core.
But the project now navigates a political battlefield. Think tanks, Democrats in Congress and the White House are fighting over whether the federal government should help cities use streetcars to promote urban revitalization, or simply fund buses that move the most people over the greatest distances for the least amount of upfront money.
Call#: Lippincott Library HE5623 .D86 1998
DOI: 10.1177/1538513206297457
© 2007 SAGE Publications
Taming the Neighborhood Revolution: Planners, Power Brokers, and the Birth of Neotraditionalism in Portland, Oregon
Gregory L. Thompson
Florida State University
In the early 1970s, neighborhood-based movements arose in Portland, Oregon, against freeways, while networks of individuals championed a revival of rail transit. At decade's end, regional leaders rejected two interstate freeways, repudiated a freeway-based regional transportation plan, and agreed to build the beginning of a regional rail system. In seeming contradiction to their anti-auto actions, they also lobbied Congress to change federal law so that they could spend money from deleted interstate highway projects on noninterstate roads rather than on transit. This article documents how planners and power brokers in Portland negotiated among themselves to channel the energy from what began as a citizen- and neighborhood-based revolution into the beginnings of a new consensus about transit, road, and land use development by the end of the decade, one that implicitly recognized personal preference for mass mobility but that explicitly championed designs of transportation facilities to reflect local objectives.
Key Words: interstate transfer • light rail • TriMet • Neil Goldschmidt • Glenn Jackson • Gerard Drummond • Don Clark • neighborhood • antifreeway movement • Mt. Hood Freeway • Banfield Freeway
The Defeat of the Mt. Hood Freeway (Portland, Ore.)
In Oregon, a battle raged for nearly twenty years over the construction of a highway project known as the Mt. Hood Freeway. If approved, the Freeway would have removed more than 1% of all housing stock in Portland. In the mid 1970s, after the proposal's defeat, the city opted to build a mass transit infrastructure. The result is a more pedestrian-friendly and livable city.
TOPP videographer, Clarence Eckerson Jr., takes us to Portland to see the results and posits that his own neighborhood in Brooklyn might have benefited from similar forethought during the planning phase of the Robert Moses-designed Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
DOI: 10.1177/1078087406295828
© 2007 SAGE Publications
Notes
Reassessing Gentrification
Measuring Residents' Opinions Using Survey Data
Daniel Monroe Sullivan
Portland State University, Oregon
Qualitative studies have focused on the proponents and the opponents to gentrification but have not provided a clear picture of the opinions of a truly representative sample of residents. This article uses probability sampling and a large sample size to examine residents in two gentrifying neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon. The results suggest that the majority of residents-including owners and renters, Whites and minorities, newcomers and longtime residents, those college educated and not-like how their neighborhood has changed and think it will improve even more in the future. However, regression analysis reveals that renters and longtime Black residents are less likely to view these changes positively.
Key Words: gentrification • survey methods • race • social class • homeownership