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Carl Abbott - Greater Portland: Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest

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Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title
It has been called one of the nations most livable regions, ranked among the best managed cities in America, hailed as a top spot to work, and favored as a great place to do business, enjoy the arts, pursue outdoor recreation, and make ones home. Indeed, years of cooperative urban planning between developers and those interested in ecology and habitability have transformed Portland from a provincial western city into an exemplary American metropolis. Its thriving downtown, its strong neighborhoods, and its pioneering efforts at local management have brought a steady procession of journalists, scholars, and civic leaders to investigate the Portland style that values dialogue and consensus, treats politics as a civic duty, and assumes that it is possible to work toward public good.
Probing behind the press clippings, acclaimed urban historian Carl Abbott examines the character of contemporary Portlandits people, politics, and public lifeand the regions history and geography in order to discover how Portland has achieved its reputation as one of the most progressive and livable cities in the United States and to determine whether typical pressures of urban growth are pushing Portland back toward the national norm.
In Greater Portland, Abbott argues that the city cannot be understood without reference to its place. Its rivers, hills, and broader regional setting have shaped the economy and the cityscape. Portlanders are Oregonians, Northwesteners, Cascadians; they value their city as much for where it is as for what it is, and this powerful sense of place nurtures a distinctive civic culture. Tracing the ways in which Portlanders have talked and thought about their city, Abbott reveals the tensions between their diverse visions of the future and plans for development.
Most citizens of Portland desire a balance between continuity and change, one that supports urban progress but actively monitors its effects on the regions expansive green space and on the communitys culture. This strong civic participation in city planning and politics is what gives greater Portland its unique character, a positive setting for class integration, neighborhood revitalization, and civic values. The result, Abbott confirms, is a region whose unique initiatives remain a model of American urban planning.

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GREATER PORTLAND
METROPOLITAN PORTRAITS Metropolitan Portraits explores the contemporary - photo 1
METROPOLITAN PORTRAITS
Metropolitan Portraits explores the contemporary metropolis in its
diverse blend of past and present. Each volume describes a North
American urban region in terms of historic experience, spatial configuration,
culture, and contemporary issues. Books in the series
are intended to promote discussion and understanding of metropolitan
North America at the start of the twenty-first century.
JUDITH A. MARTIN, SERIES EDITOR
GREATER PORTLAND
Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest
Copyright 2001 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved 10 9 8 7 6 - photo 2
Copyright 2001 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abbott, Carl
Greater Portland : urban life and landscape in the Pacific Northwest / Carl Abbott.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8122-3612-2 (cloth); ISBN 0-8122-1779-9 (pbk.) (Metropolitan Portraits)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. City planningOregonPortland Region. 2. Human geographyOregonPortland Region. 3. City and town lifeOregonPortland Region. 4. Urban landscape architectureOregonPortland Region. 5. Portland Region (Or.)Civilization. 6. Portland Region (Or.)Social conditions. I. Title.
F884.P85 A23 2001
307.1'416'0979549dc21
2001-018113
CONTENTS
Judith A. Martin
FOREWORD
JUDITH A. MARTIN
The Metropolitan Portraits Series seeks to understand and describe contemporary metropolitan regions in a fresh mannerone that is informed and informative. Carl Abbott was among the first to answer the call to become part of the Metropolitan Portraits series, and I am grateful for his belief in this effort. This book shares a common thematic structure that will suffuse the series: the inherited land and its contemporary reworking, the effects of important external events, and the power and importance of local cultures. As more volumes emerge, it is hoped that comparisons of many city regions will be possible, despite variations in data and in manner of presentation. Greater Portland stands as the latest in Abbotts authoritative work on Portland, this time including the whimsical view through childrens literature and through artistic representation.
Abbott shows a Portland being continually refashioned by interactions with present events. He describes the city-region as a destination of promise for people from the Plains and Mountain states, creating a still primarily native-born white residential base. This is a region where geography matters. Nestled within the confines of the Cascades and the Coast Range and shaped by its location at the base of the vast New Deal projects from Bonneville to Grand Coulee, Portland connects outward through the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. The regions early urban specialty of resource processing and export, based on the moist and mild climate for lumbering and farming, continues, while the new economy of electronics, services, and marketing layers on top. Surprisingly, the city regions edges of forest, river, and ocean are publicly controlled. Moreover, the steep hills and narrow valley of the city kept 1960s freeway building close to the old downtown, creating a dense and compact core for a western city.
Abbott organizes the books cultural analysis within the tension between environmentalism and urbanism, focusing on municipal government as the mediating institution. Portlands famed Urban Growth Boundary is the outside reference, but there is as well the vibrant mix of neighborhood consultation and metropolitan organization.
Abbott then gives us the Portland region as four distinct cultural environments. The first is the neighborhoods of progressive Portland, a base of civic activism formed on 1960s and early 70s battles against an Interstate highway and against urban renewal. Residents here share with other Portlanders an enthusiasm for urban life within the recreational world of bicycles, skis, backpacks, and campers. The second is the silicon suburbs, principally west of downtown, which most resemble the rest of metropolitan North America. Japanese and American chip and software firms located here now provide more than 61,000 jobs. But Portlands comparatively small size means that many suburbanites maintain a downtown orientation, with few competing new sub-centers.
The third environment is the neighborhoods of multiethnic poverty, some south and close to the river, but mainly concentrated in the north and northeast. These areas are more or less equally white and African American with smaller groups of immigrants, Hispanics, and Native Americans. These groups uncertain economic circumstances suggest an undercurrent of hard living in this progressive city-region. Finally, in the rural fringe settlements within the regions metropolitan boundaries, old ways and old attitudes, plus elements of Portlands early economy, embody an Old West go-your-own-way attitude. Abbott characterizes this tension as the Old West versus the New West.
This able analysis ends with a detailed narrative of Portlands 1970s and 80s political activism, which led to the now famous metropolitan growth boundary. Abbott views this planning experiment as a triumph of the Portland Way: a willingness to keep talking and a belief that the more inclusive the conversational circle the better. He sees this as a fragile circumstance, and refuses to predict the future.
Introduction
Portlands Historical Personality
In 1970 the City of Portland completed the Forecourt Fountain to local applause and national acclaim. Located in an urban renewal district near the southern edge of downtown, the fountain was a carefully crafted landscape that covered an entire city block. Although themselves outsiders to the city, designers Lawrence Halprin and Angela Danadjieva created a distinctive place that is emblematic of Portlands approach to city making, for it holds in tension the distinct values of environmentalism and urbanism.
Set between an office building and a parking garage, this oasis and refuge within the city anchors a series of open spaces that break the monotony of a high-rise urban renewal district. The fountains sloping contours transform a city block into an analogue of a Cascade Mountain stream. Shrubs and trees create tiny cool glades. Water gathers in narrow channels at the top, tumbles across concrete lips and plates, sloshes around artificial boulders, and plunges into a pool. As viewers drift toward the surging waters, the fountain echoes the Olmstedian goal of urban parks that draw their users away from the city.
The same space is also designed for intense urban use. It serves as a plaza for the Civic Auditorium. Especially in its early years, before growing vegetation began to block sight lines, it was a socially charged public space. Businessmen walked out of their way to see the water turned on at 11:00 A.M. Families brought picnics on summer weekends. Hippies bathed in the pools, smoked pot, and drove the city parks commissioner to distraction. The fountain has accommodated rock concerts, ballet performances, baptisms, and weddings.
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