Portland, Oregon.... "The City That Works"

That's the city slogan, painted on its trucks, etc., perhaps more accurately, it should be called, Portland "The City Without a Clue".

Snow Removal, while not that frequent, is second only to Colorado Springs, CO. in mediocrity. It should not take one week to clear 10 inches of snow from city streets. Three months latter, with no snow in all that time, folks still have their cleated tires on, clicking down the city streets. Back East, in the Snow Belt, plows work 24/7 until it's cleaned up. They plow every street and even alleys...oh yeah, Portland forgot those when they laid out the city, with the smallest city blocks in the USA.

Visitors to the "Rose City" can visit our cultural icons and parks, use our progressive public transportation system, while they circumvent the trash, urine smells, vomit, dog and human poop on the sidewalks, and thousands of bums, panhandlers, and teen runaways with Pit Bulls, and the hundreds of walking insane screaming at shadows. What a grand time for all. "When does my plane leave for home?"

With some luck & the sun is shinning, a visitor or local citizen may see blue sky, but due to the lack of building limitations, sunshine laws, construction setbacks, etc, the high rise buildings of 20+ stories and narrow little streets make it look like a canyon of concrete and glass boxes. Uniformity and maximum space for the buck, trumps architectural significance and design. Build a high rise condo building with sun and views of Mt Hood, only to have them blocked by the next high rise across the street. Most cities I have lived in would not allow zero set back buildings, will protect your right to sunshine (you know, solar power, roof gardens, etc.), require high rises to be "stepped"...like the Koin Tower and a few others. Lots of cities limit buildings to 5 stories for just those reasons above. Every other city requires off street parking, at least two spaces per unit, not use street parking. Building built to the edge of the property line don't even allow for trees! The ugliest area of the city, and a fine example of all the above, is the congested SW Waterfront area. Portland likes to reinvent the wheel on everything, it seems.

Sustainability, what it really means. Small cities like Boulder, CO or Ithaca, NY are good examples of real sustainable cities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

Obviously Portland only uses the term as a marketing gimmick to promote consumption and make people feel good about raping the environment. The sprout "buy locally" and have nice "Farmers markets".... that buy their produce fro the same California and Peruvian suppliers Safeway does. Sustainability essentially means using what you have locally and reusing waste, i.e., not growth or expansion or building high rise condos that don't sell, right on top of each other. Most of these building developers are not from Oregon, nor are the workers, or even the buyers...let alone all that metal and glass construction materials. Since Portland is one of the poorest cities in the USA of it's size, it is understandable that "outsiders" run things and the local politicians are in their pocket.

Speaking of Politicians, why on earth would anyone choose a flaming gay mayor? Only liberals, and families who pride themselves of having roots here since Lewis and Clark (make that no gumption to go elsewhere) want to "Keep Portland Weird". Congratulations you made it. Portland is officially a national joke.

Just when I thought I had run out of criticisms, I remembered a major one.....lack of shopping. In no city or state I've lived in, has shopping been such a chore. Forget I have no car, even with one, who wants to drive 5-10 miles to a Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy etc. This is a great example of the lack of planning. Perhaps the idea is the wealthy who reside in the $300,000 condos in the city core only shop at Macy's, let the riffraff ride the bus it Tigard.

Then there is the myth that Portland is bike city....not hardly. There are lots of irresponsible bikers, who run red lights and stop signs, weave in and out of traffic, go too fast on bridges, and ride on sidewalks when it suits them. I know of no city except Portland, that allows bikes on downtown sidewalks, let alone skateboards, but that is another ilk. Real bike advocate cities have dedicated bike paths (often abandoned rail road tracks), trails outside the urban core running on side streets, rules that are enforced etc. Portland isn't a bike city, just a city full of bikers. Probably because they don't own cars, or are too cheap to park one.

People, you know those people, whine about overpriced houses & rents in California...gee go look someplace else for a city of it's size and low incomes, look on the internet if you don't have the gumption to travel or move. Portland prices are outrageously high and taxes ridiculously low. If you can afford to pay $500,000 for some dumpy bungalow in the SE side of Portland that costs about 40-50% less East of the Mississippi, you can pay 1% for property taxes...that's $5,000+ per year, for the math challenged

Finally (ready to move to Kansas yet?) crime, gangs, & diversity. A few weeks ago there was an article in the Oregonian or some other local rag about how Portland, only 74% white, was not diverse enough. Now for many years I have realized that "diversity" was a white liberal term. People of color don't care about diversity, they want to be with their own kind. This is why there are ethnic neighborhoods in most cities. Portland is like "bussing"....remember that failed attempt back in the 60's to integrate schools? They put everyone in a big blender and mix them together. Section 8 housing in with the yuppie $350,000 condo owners, black and Hispanic gang bangers in with the Asian store owners and blue color whites. They also mix drug treat centers, homeless shelters, ex-con halfway housing with the seniors center and university day care schools., across the street from the $350,000 condos What fun, look how diverse we are!

But wait, Portland has crime, gang killings, drug offenders, perverts, child molesters, home invasions, robbery, muggings, and murder, oh and fires. What a wonderful community to move your little white bread family to. Sorry, your safer in Newark NJ, Saint Louis, or Detroit.