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Seattle. Portland. Which one's better? You may say: "How can you choose? Each has their good points. It's like asking which religion is better." Guess what, asshole, that Negative Nellie attitude is the reason nobody ever asks for your fucking opinion. Jerk. To the debate! First up, it's a pro-Seattle opinion.
Seattle is better than Portland, by Jeremy "The Seatown Samurai" Barker
When I tell people that I think Portland's gone down the wrong road in the last twenty years or so, most of them think I'm crazy. It's the American capital of indie rock; even The New York Times will occasionally name-drop Portland as a major creative hub.
Here in Seattle, it's so second nature to assume that Portland does things better that both Seattle Weekly and The Stranger used Portland as a supporting example in their old high density vs. "lesser Seattle" debate/mud-slinging content.
Then as now, it was all terribly, terribly wrong.
Portland's various successes have come at a high social and economic cost. Seattleites may view Portland as more walkable, livable and "green" than Seattle, but mostly that's flim-flam. If your definition of a good city is the availability of strip clubs, music venues, and good beer, sure, Portland looks good—it's a frickin' hipster paradise. But if you want to talk sustainable development and affordability, it's far worse than Seattle.
A couple years back I took on most of these issues in an article on Portland's supposed achievement of being the first place on Earth to reach Kyoto Protocol compliance. The annotated version is that Portland has priced out most families by limiting new development with its Urban Growth Boundary, families who've fled north to Washington. The UGB radically accelerated all of the same bad processes we see in Seattle: gentrification, rising home prices, the destruction of more traditional communities, the loss of economic and ethnic diversity.
Portland's growth and income stats look great if you don't include Clark County, Wash. Their mass transit investments have primarily benefited urban-core dwellers, facilitating travel to suburban tech farms rather than cutting down on highway congestion. The rapacious gentrification in North Portland has displaced much of the African-American community. The Disneyfication of downtown eliminated the historic "Gay Triangle."
So what's so great about Portland? The reality is that Portland, like Seattle, allowed the market demands created by young professionals drawn in by the tech boom to drive development. The result was a rapidly renewed urban core that had all the play areas childless young workers with healthy disposable income wanted. But if the demographics change—if college educated people start marrying and breeding younger—will an urban playground of bars and clubs remain their intended destination? Will the housing prices still be affordable to them?
From a development perspective, we need to be looking to the future, not just building for the present. Portland's got just as little direction as Seattle, but it's going much, much faster.
Coming tomorrow: Katie Tiehen states the case for Portland.
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Nice saber.
Portland's fun to visit: great restaurants and breweries, for instance. But I'd rather live here in Seattle, where (though rent is higher) at least I can find a job.
I can see Jeremy's point, though I'm no expert on P-town. All the hipster neighborhoods I've seen down there have been outta town a bit, sorta like Columbia City from downtown Seattle. Whereas the Pearl District, which looks great and historic, was about as Nordy's a crowd as they come. And it's anecdotal, but the two friends of mine who live there now both telecommute to jobs out of town.
Interesting title choice, since you didn't really argue why Seattle is better as much as why Portland is worse. At any rate, having just been to Portland a couple weeks ago (first time I'd spent more than a day there), I have to say that in general it's a lot less fun than Seattle.
Also, people seem eager to cite the music scene in Portland, and these people are clearly not paying attention to what's going on in Seattle. Hip-hop is thriving, there's a handful of great hardcore and punk bands, and we have more than our share of indie bands. If music is the best argument people can come up with for why Portland's better, then they don't have a leg to stand on, in my opinion.
A few more points:
-Portland's Chinatown is a joke compared to our International District.
-Seattle's U District is much more vibrant than Portland's.
-We ate at about 20 different restaurants in the time we were there, and only 3 of them were good. Maybe we made bad choices, I dunno.
I know I sound a bit biased, but I just wasn't impressed with Portland. Though they are definitely ahead of us in the mass transit category.
@3, mass transit, not so much. Portland's rail is nice and shiny, but it's actually been losing commuter market share in recent years (defined as the % of commuters who use mass transit). Puget Sound agencies, in spite of having next to no fixed-rail transit, have been gaining market share.
Just back from a weekend in Portland and to me it feels very much like "Seattle-Lite". I like the city but if I was asked to choose 1 to live in I'd live in Seattle. Ask me in 20 years and I might want to move down to Portland!
"Portland's growth and income stats look great if you don't include Clark County, Wash. Their mass transit investments have primarily benefited urban-core dwellers, facilitating travel to suburban tech farms rather than cutting down on highway congestion."
FYI -- light rail across the Columbia was resoundingly defeated by Clark County voters when it was proposed 12 years ago. Traffic was bad even then, and voters defeated the proposal by a 2-to-1 margin.
#6--My apologies for being unclear: Portland's mass transit investments have primarily benefited its urban core dwellers, who live in Portland but commute to Gresham, Beaverton or Hillsboro for work. The two points are not related except as symptomatic of bad development policy. They didn't invest properly to cut down on pollution-heavy commute, while at the same time allowing a housing bubble to price out many families who moved to cheaper communities on the Washington side of the Columbia.
As for Clark County, I don't deny they vetoed their own Max line; however, this doesn't disprove my point. As Seattle can attest to, voters who by a plurality favor transit options will nevertheless be easily swayed to oppose one or another individual solution.
Twelve years ago was also twelve years ago. As I wrote in 2005, between 1990 and 2005 (linked in the post above), Clark County experienced higher population growth than any of the three Metro counties on the Oregon side of the river. Needs have changed substantially since 1995, and the trend accelerated after the turn of the century.
I lived in Portland for 11 years and Seattle the last 2 and you can keep Portland. They have a great PR team pushing it as a city but in the end its a small town. It looks good on paper but after a while it gets stale. Sure housing might be slightly cheaper there but good luck finding a worthwhile job that can support your mortgage payment. Its not even that cheap anymore, those fancy condos they are building are no cheaper than what you get here in Seattle and I would be more concerned about housing losing value in Portland where there are very few high paying jobs as opposed to many more white collar type job opportunities here. It's also a mecca for either extreme lefties or country club suburbanites so if you don't fit in either catagory you might feel kind of out of place. Don't get me started on the restaurant scene down there, no comparison to what Seattle has going for it in terms across the board from cheap and tasty ethnic food to high end establishments. And unlike Seattle where you can find people milling about at all hours of the day or night, its like a ghost town if you are out and about during a weekday or after midnight. The one thing Portland definitely has going for it is the lack of sales tax, I'm thankful I bought a new car in Portland before moving to Seattle.
WAIT Jeremy M Baker, you and I both forgot to mention the single best thing Portland has going for it that Seattle does NOT: Powells Books. Boy, we would feel stupid if the pro-Portland article came out and mentioned Powells and this thread hadn't even touched on it.
On the other hand, Seattle does have internet access, and we can order from Powells online. :) Plus the site has a ton of author interviews archived. Beat THAT, Amazon.com!
*cough* Barker *cough*
I will say this, from living in PDX for 6 months. Finding a job is next to impossible. As one of my PDX friends said "It's disgustingly and surprisingly an 'old boys' club down here."
Seattle does really nurture creativity. I had a practice with a friend of naming off companies born or HQ'd in the respective cities. We came up with 4 for Portland and we haven't stopped naming them for Seattle. I think last time I checked we were in the 20's (Fortune 500 companies).
However, I will say this for PDX. They love their street vendors. Seattle should (and I'm thinking of starting my own) really start having more street vending.
Having moved to Seattle from Atlanta two years ago after having been initially recruited to move to Portland, here's what I observed and noted:
Pros for Portland:
• Hip, yet small town feel
• Neato architecture
• Less traffic
• AWESOME city park system
• Amazing public transportation system
• Everyone is a beer lover
• More affordable
• Feels more friendly and welcoming (obviously very subjective)
• Powell's (I never miss a chance to go there when in Portland)
Pros for Seattle:
• Surrounded by lakes, bays and sounds vs. a couple of rivers
• Much closer to more "real" mountains (biased here- I'm a big climber and hiker and nothing beats the N. Cascades)
• Great skyline
• Better economy / wealth of job opportunities
• Greater investment in the arts (admittedly due simply to scale)
• 3 pro teams vs. 1
• Good (still not great) dining choices
• Ferries rock!
• Fast catching up to Portland when it comes to microbrews
Anyway, both are great cities. In the end, it really boiled down to a few key things:
• Desire to move to a city with a truly strong, diverse economy (what do you do when you get tired of working at Nike-- you move to Seattle or L.A., right?)
• Proximity to the ocean and mountains-- endless entertainment
• Recognition that Seattle would ultimately offer more "things to do" because of its size
• Portland really no cheaper to live in, despite it's smaler size
So that's my two cents. I still love ya Portland. Heck, I might even move there one day. For now though, I'm happy here in Seattle.
"FYI -- light rail across the Columbia was resoundingly defeated by Clark County voters when it was proposed 12 years ago. Traffic was bad even then, and voters defeated the proposal by a 2-to-1 margin."
FYI - the same north-south line was also defeated by Portland and Milwaukie voters at the time.
The truncated Yellow Line that rose from all the failed campaigns was built through the only part of former proposed route in Oregon where a clear majority had voted for light rail. And it never went before the public - TriMet used federal urban renewal funds and its own capital improvement budget.
As for the Clark County vote, there are so many myths about it that get propagated by the types who write for Portland newspapers (and usually moved to Portland c. 1999 or so), I'm not sure where to begin. Let me just say, that my father and the father of one of my friends were active in the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce at the time and they both were enormously bitter about the plan that had to be sold to voters in Clark County and then how the GVCC and others went about trying to sell it. And remember, special elections are for suckers when your rural hinterland is so opposed to their taxes going to the urban core that they've tried on several occasions to secede from the rest of the county!