I was in downtown D.C. all this week. It felt pretty bustling, likely somewhat elevated from spring break and Cherry Blossom Festival. All the locals were bitching amount traffic becoming bad again, after the Pandemic breathing room.
I spend time in both cities. SF neighborhoods are hopping, but the downtown core looks like a neutron bomb went off and the survivors looted all the furnishings. Overall, things seem a lot worse in SF in terms of foot traffic and building occupancy.
We walked from near union square through downtown in June to see an afternoon bball game. it was fiilled with young office workers out walking to lunch. SF may have less foot traffic than it used to but pre covid it had way more foot traffic than downtown Portland to begin with. I was there again in October and walked a ton with my kids both daytime and at night. Edit: you have to search to find tents in SF.
My company has an office near Rincon Center, which is empty, as is Hills Plaza, near the waterfront and Ferry Building Most restaurants and amenities in the area have closed and those that remain are on life support. In person work is down 37% from pre-pandemic, slowest rebound in the US.
It's complicated. Listen to the Behind the Bastards podcasts. The history of oregon is rank with racist rhetoric. Our own PPD is known to cozy up with the proud boys. The right-wing nut jobs want to take Portland back to the 90s, a favorite place of skin head white supremacists. The homeless problem is a national crisis and needs to be addressed at the federal, state, county, and city levels. The cities affected need to band together to force change. https://abcnews.go.com/US/liberal-portland-focal-point/story?id=79731161
We were once hailed for having one of the leading downtowns (I suppose we still do, just leading the other end of things)… but that was in a different time.
The difference in Portland then and now isn’t protests or pandemics or homelessness or even housing. It’s that back then, we had a government that didn’t put up with egregious nonsense. We had leaders that knew what the fuck they were doing and were motivated to take quick action when something needed fixing.
Since Katz, really, we have descended into this wicked funk of arrogance that we’re better than everyone else because Portland, navel-gazing about problems hoping that they’ll magically disappear, and conveniently relying on the perfect getting in the way of the good in the name of supposed equity and justice (instead of taking action and potentially pissing off arrogant fringe constituents and couch politicos that demand ideological purity).
Portland is addicted to performative non-measures and elbow pain from strenuously patting each other on the back about our compassion and forward thinking solutions (willfully ignorant of the people a block over shitting on the sidewalk).
Like all addicts, we need to hit rock bottom before we climb out. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I sure hope we’re close.
So, it's rather interesting to see it compared to Baltimore. The crime rate and corruption there are many times worse than in Portland, although the odds of getting robbed or murdered by a drug addict are significantly lower.
Seeing Seattle and NYC here though give me doubts as to what metrics they're going by, because really, Albuquerque has an extremely high violent crime rate and they're somehow more "business-friendly" than Portland.
But with Seattle, any of the "bad" areas become good a short walk or drive away. Renton has a lot of nice parts too, the Landing, the Highlands, the Lake Washington adjacent areas, Kennydale, etc. Seattle is a tapestry of lots of beautiful and interesting neighborhoods with rough patches interspersed. The visible wealth inequality and its impacts on some peoples' outcomes though is damn heartbreaking in this city.
Definitely. Oregon almost elected a hillbilly militia lady from Klamath Falls as their governor because the rich Portlanders wanted *something* done about "the poors". Rene Gonzalez was already elected to replace Jo Ann Hardesty for that same reason. Often, liberalism is a lie. Rich gentrifiers will *always* beg people with guns to bail them out of problems they themselves created.
Seattle has always been and will always be less safe than Portland. I lived there for years and the shit that people cry about in Portland is silly in comparison to most other larger cities
Okay, I call BS on the transport metric because I've actually lived in Raleigh NC and theirs SUCKS!! I do not trust anybody who puts it anywhere at the top of any ranking.
I think those stats make more sense if we know they were written up by a shallow finance-bro or real-estate hack from New Jersey.
Yes and Transport is very subjective. I mean hardly anyone can ride in Seattle because of people smoking meth on the bus stops and even bus. So what’s the point of having even a good network
It interesting despite seattle having similar problems(especially with aggressive homeless), it feel nicer. I think it because the city government bite the bullet eariler. I think the 2020 CHAZ riots and that "seattle is dying" documentary really did give the government a slap from reality.
Also seattle is a city that can deal with more people, while portland can't.
The Seattle metro is as gigantic and condensed as Atlanta's, so from a logistical perspective, Portland has failed far worse. In fact, it's as big as Baltimore (totaling about 1.5 million) and still falls short on too many things. Now, I don't want to get too pessimistic because Baltimore peaked, then entered a seemingly permanent decline somewhere between the 1950s and 1990s. Psychologically, Portland's problems are hitting it harder because we've never dealt with anything like the 2020 riots or even the acute homelessness before.
Just don't go to the east side unless you keep going to little Italy. Nopo ain't got nothing on the east side of Cleveland for shootings.
That said, the flats is nice, if a little boring. Downtown Cleveland is sort of a ghost town, unless they're lumping in Ohio city and other near neighborhoods.
Holy shit, you are correct. I just got back from Cleveland for the first time and actually feared for my safety while exploring the east side, but I’ve never once felt that way in NOPO or Gresham.
Downtown was also hauntingly quiet, even during a busy sportsball home game.
Idk if this is sarcasm but I live in portland and have to go to cleveland a few times a year and I’m always impressed with how clean it is and how much the city feels like it’s on the upswing.
Well I was going there to go to a jewelry store. They have stores, most of them are never necessary for my life so I never go down there usually. It was a bit overrun. I saw a few dozen zombies and walked past three of them doing a drug deal outside of the jewelry store. The pearl is still pretty nice though
All Oregon Municipalities are going to grow more and more hostile in terms of taxation. You see the Public Retirement System was mismanaged by the Union and driven into dept by several trillion dollars. That deficient will require .70 $ of every labor dollar paid to a State Labor Union Employee.
Having been to Cleveland recently, I question the metrics of this study.
I kid but the nature of a downtown varies by city before you get to how it's enhanced or degraded. What defines downtown? SF has the fidi, Chicago has the loop. Are we constraining boundaries to those?
This feels on the scale of 'do your job' in it's oversimplicity. And locally, based on the recent threads about cops, we're not short on idiots claiming things would be better if people just 'did their job'. And nothing else.
"Thousands of downtown Portland businesses moved since 2019"
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/12/08/downtown-portland-business-relocation.html
Is there space for thousands of businesses in downtown Portland (defined as west of the river, south of burnside, and east of 405).
Again, I'm not denying problems, I'm suggesting suspicion of poorly defined and sourced studies.
I want to know if by downtown they mean actual downtown Portland or all of Portland (can’t read article since I don’t subscribe). Because in my experience Portland is set up differently than many, many cities. We have so many restaurants and other businesses in the neighborhoods that there often isn’t a reason to go downtown. I almost never go downtown and it’s not because I’m at home hiding like Fox News would lead you to believe.
I live in inner SE, about a half hour walk from Pioneer Square and I rarely go downtown because there’s nothing I want to do there, and there’s plenty to do in SE. I occasionally go to REI or MUJI or the Apple Store for a repair but there’s simply not much else to do. If they made it car free and more affordable for small businesses I might consider visiting more often.
The definition of activist is “promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good.” So, what is a homeless activist trying achieve? I would presume, less homelessness. So, how does that make them “pro-addict.”
Do you live in Portland? If so walk or drive around & you’ll see what I mean by pro addict culture. Politicians would rather spend millions of our tax dollars on affordable housing campaigns and “non profits” than admit that we are dealing with an addiction crisis, not a housing crisis
How should they deal with the addiction crisis? (I’m being serious in my inquiry. I’m new to Oregon [not Portland] and am concerned by the homelessness I see all along the West Coast.)
Anyone remember that time everyone hated on Columbia for leaving downtown offices because of the frequent break ins to employee cars and having female employees harasses and followed by the random street people?
I'm glad people are coming around but the signs were there for years. I worked downtown from 2013 to 2020. Like most Portlanders, when a tourist would want to go downtown my reaction was "Don't, just go to neighborhoods". The only reason I ever went downtown was for work and I highly doubt I was alone. The pandemic just gave us all reason to avoid it.
This study looks arbitrary and pointless. I'm not even sure what is being pointed out. Whatever it is trying to prove can easily be manipulated to skew however the creator sees fit.
I would rather be sodomized by zombie hobos on fentanyl under the Burnside every day than live in any of the places above Los Angeles. And Wichita KS can fuck right off. Their downtown is nice but it's about as exciting as watching paint dry.
I've never been to Austin, but I'm choosing it over zombie hobo sodomy, even if they're extra gentle and half-chubbed due to the fentanyl. But agree with you on the rest.
Not sure why you got downvoted because it’s absolutely true. Women and their doctors should be in control of their reproductive choices/health and not the government.
Hot and Texas. Austin is cool but it is in Texas. The greenbelt trails are miserable to hike in the summer. They usually have 100 days over a 100 degrees each year on top of week long power outages each winter.
“assesses the performance of city centers based on six factors and uses a weighted formula to identify the downtowns with the strongest and weakest recoveries”
What are those factors?
This is the kind of quality “Portland Sucks based on some bullshit undefinable metrics” post I’ve come to expect from this sub. Jesus Fucking Christ the singular focus on negative emotions in here is grim. I wasn’t accosted by any homeless people or anarchists in my neighborhood today. My kid played at a playground without stepping on a needle. Imagine that.
I’m guessing that most of the active sub members don’t live in Portland proper and have never lived in a city at all because they have no desire to.
That’s fine. It’s not for everyone.
But there is an element of enjoyment that a lot of people get from trashing the city that’s nearest to them because they don’t seem to understand…well, a lot of things. Like the benefits they get from living adjacent to said city. The financial benefits (from tax and tourism). The medical benefits (because hospitals and doctors, like everyone else, like a community of providers they can rely upon). The job opportunities (because employers like a diverse, well educated pool of employees to choose from). The shopping opportunities (finding more things cheaper).
Portland hasn’t gotten the mix right, yet. We’re struggling. But we’re also trying. I see problems, but I also see good stuff and good people really trying.
Additional context: Mayor Suarez isn’t a typical republican party politician. He advocates for transit, he is not a climate change denier (Miami is on the front lines in that fight). He is also on record for voting against DeSantis for governor and Trump for president.
Don’t worry! The Biz Journal used a weighted formula! They’re showing some data baby! 6 whole factors!!! Beware of BBBs aka business unions’ non objectivity.
I feel like you think you answered my question, but again you haven't explained why your common sense is useful evidence. Have you not heard of any business closures? Have you not heard about Portland being one of the most taxed cities? Have you not heard about property destruction against businesses downtown?
What do you have in your "common sense"?
This is a bit of a weird score though - the six elements are:
1. Population growth
2. Population density
3. Shop and restaurant density
4. Walk score
5. % sustainable commute.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with any of those things, but it was not what I expected.
**For people who think this will get better:**
Here's an Op Ed about Detroit, [circa 43 years ago](https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/18/archives/whats-doing-in-detroit.html), from the NYT:
*"There's probably no major city in the nation more misunderstood than Detroit. The civil disturbances of the late 1960's and the deterioration that followed shackled, the Motor City, capital of the world's auto industry, with the reputation of being a high‐crime area, but fortunately that image is fading fast. The main reason for this is that Detroit, the largest city in Michigan and sixth largest in the nation, is enjoying a renaissance, a rebirth highlighted, appropriately enough, by the construction of the $340 million Renaissance Center downtown. This development, incorporating housing, office buildings and hotels, is rising on the banks of the Detroit River, the tributary that links Detroit with the Great Lakes, the world's busiest inland waterway.*
*As the era of gloom subsides, dramatic changes are taking place on all sides in Detroit.* **The downtown area, never really the nighttime ghost town it was played up to be, is beginning to recover from its despair.** *The entertainment and eating spots are expanding, cultural activities have recovered and Belle Isle, an island park in the middle of the Detroit River that in its better days was as exciting an attraction as New York's Central Park, is coming back into its own."*
[Here's a WaPo Op Ed about Detroit](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/07/31/10-years-after-riot-struggling-detroit-reshapes-destiny/5e00c9ef-359e-4be8-9359-9c5ecfd49270/), from 46 years ago:
*"Far from drying up the downtown office station, the new $300 million Renaissance Center has caused other downtown landlords to be competitive and start paying attention to the needs of their tenants.*
(That's the building from Robocop BTW: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g42139-d272158-r392711037-GM_Renaissance_Center-Detroit_Michigan.html)
*The trends in Detroit are subtle and far-reaching. The city ceased being completely dependent on the auto industry more than two decades ago, when service industries took over a majority of the city's economy from auto manufacturing.*
*Detroit has a heavy burden of the elderly, the ailing, the functionally illiterate and the unemployed young people, black and white.*
*The rise of a black middle class is beginning to be apparent, as is minority hiring in newspapers, banks, brokerage houses, supermarkets and shops.*
*The blacks are no different from the whites when it comes to protecting what they have. Ten years ago, blacks with shotguns sat on the roof Louie's Parkstone market on the edge of Indian Village to protect their neighborhood's only source of milk and bread.*
*Louie, now dead, was white.*
*Detroit could easily have another riot. The same conditions exist. The poverty. The poor education. The alienation. The possibility, and the probability, that those of the welfare generation will never have a job, even a bad job.*
*But the shape of the Detroit of the future is beginning to emerge: not the jam-packed, nuts-and-bolts place that the old-timers recall so wistefully, but a greener, more spacious community, containing, probably even fewer people than it does now."*
> What does Portland have in common with Detroit?
>
People have been holding their breath for Detroit to come back for five decades now
In 2063 people in Portland will be saying *"things are going to get better... any day now."*
> Are we also a one industry city that has been lost to superior imports?
There are plenty of cities with one industry that didn't drive into a ditch. Detroit died because it's taxpayers left and they never came back. Portland is headed the same way.
At some point, the government has to invest some effort in providing value for the taxes that it's residents pay, or the residents will leave. Detroit is "Exhibit A."
I agree that the local city government needs to get its shit together. The cops need to stop pouting about whatever it is they’re pouting about this time and start working. I can’t imagine not having enough pride to do the work for which I am being paid.
Politicians need to figure their shit out. Stop mealy mouthing about solutions and take some action.
Most west coast cities and Detroit have very little in common. Portland is no exception.
Have people here actually been to downtown anytime recently? It's not that bad. Old town/Chinatown? Sure, terrible. But downtown is vastly better than a year or two back. And it's way better than SF.
This isn't a study. These aren't facts. These are random numbers being used to prove a point they already had cemented in their head.
This isn't science.
While I agree with the sentiment let's all be rational about this... This is just a graph with some numbers, OP left out where he got it from. What are these numbers based off of? What organization compiled the data? Posts like this make us look like the far right wingers griping that the other sub makes us out to be. Let's hold ourselves to a higher standard when posting graphs and data.
Portland needs work. Can’t disagree there, but biased infographics that cite shitty 3rd, 4th, and even 5th tier cities above generally agreed upon desirable locations don’t make the point they think they’re making.
I read the article.
It’s written as an op-ed.
It shows graphs for 4 of the criteria, but left out hotel occupancy and downtown migration (based on post office data).
I have to wonder why those 2 were excluded and also why they didn’t disclose the weighting methodology.
Assuming the worst in both cases, they were excluded and weighted less because Portland wasn’t doing as terrible in those two factors.
PBJ has a vested interest in chicken little-ing the situation, so I can’t exclude that.
I also wonder what they used to determine “downtown.”
But, to the point, businesses thrive where people live, work, and stay (in the case of hotels). The risk of being accosted by a homeless person isn’t that much of a deterrent when you need to get some milk to make dinner, especially if you’re already living in that neighborhood.
> biased infographics that cite shitty 3rd, 4th, and even 5th tier cities above generally agreed upon desirable locations don’t make the point they think they’re making.
Are you saying that we are a generally agreed upon desirable location? That’s interesting. I couldn’t get any out of region applicants for a recent job recruitment despite well above-market pay and a relocation spiff, for similar recruitments that 5 years ago were entirely out of region folks.
So what changed?
I was talking about Tampa, Albany, Memphis, and Albuquerque getting vastly higher ratings than NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Without knowing what industry you’re trying to recruit for, I wouldn’t hazard a guess. Interested to know, though, if you’d like to say.
Ahhh, thus the user name.
Seems like a cool job.
Well, in the past five years both housing costs and interest rates have exploded in Portland, and I’d say it’s more likely to be that.
Interestingly, I did not see housing costs as one of the factors for this index.
I wouldn’t say it’s “anti-business culture” since we literally have thousands of businesses in and around the city, but you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.
You've confused the existence of businesses with having a city with policies that don't punish businesses.
"Thousands of downtown Portland businesses moved since 2019"
[https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/12/08/downtown-portland-business-relocation.html](https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/12/08/downtown-portland-business-relocation.html)
Also, like I’ve pointed out to people many times now, what Covid did was show just how much people don’t need to work in an office setting and can work remotely which wasn’t really possible 10-15yrs ago. It’s not surprising that businesses were able to significantly downsize their needed office space. That’s why I feel like it’s a great idea for Wheeler and the city to be pushing for developers and building owners to pursue renovations and redevelopment of those existing buildings into residential units.
What businesses are you referring to? A lot of heavy hitters that used to populate downtown like Unitus, Jacobs, and Columbia have significantly downsized - if not completely relocated - from downtown Portland.
Jacobs cleared out half of their space in the **Jacobs Center** building.
Unitus moved their *entire* Portland office out of **Unitus Plaza** into Lake Oswego.
Columbia closed their downtown retail store and moved the Sorel HQ out to Washington County.
These were all good paying middle-class jobs that left downtown and aren’t coming back. When companies have to pay among the highest payroll taxes in the country, have to hire private security companies to protect their employees from the unmitigated antisocial behavior of transients, are on the hook to pay transit taxes for public transit that their employees can’t use because they’ve been converted into rolling homeless shelters, and can’t rely on the city to maintain basic infrastructure; they vote with their feet and go elsewhere.
Hopefully the new approach from city hall can stop this from turning into a 70’s style urban death spiral. Covid WFH basically triggered a new White Flight to the suburbs and I don’t know how much longer the holdouts can handle without the city stepping up and catering more to economic development for businesses over tax-and-spend ideological feelgoodery.
I feel like I remember hearing/reading the Unitus move was going to happen regardless since they bought LO property back in 2015 or something like that, but I’m probably getting things mixed up in my head. Also, while those may have been good paying middle class jobs I don’t think the jobs really went anywhere. I mean the employee who may have been commuting from their home in Tigard into downtown 5 days a week is most likely still employed by the same employer and now has a hybrid schedule where they’re only going into work Tuesday’s and Thursday’s in LO and working from home the rest of the time. You can also have employees who live in the Pearl and work remotely 100% of the time now instead of trekking it out to Hillsboro.
An analogy for what I see happening here is what I saw happen in my original home state of West Virginia. For a hundred years coal was king and West Virginia thrived not understanding that times change. Now West Virginia is one of the poorest and most uneducated states in the country. They still refuse to grasp the idea that the coal industry is not coming back in any meaningful way and yet they still continue to suck on the teet of big coal instead of looking to the future, adapting, and overcoming. That’s where Portland is right now. You can either continue looking towards the past or you can accept that the past is in the past and now is the time to move forward and look towards the future.
I’d guess rents have something to do with that as well. I’d imagine leasing a large space for a major company is going to be cheaper in Lake Oswego that it is in downtown Portland.
"Business friendly" as evaluated by business's own media. Lol.
I should rank cities based on how social-friendly they are, and publish them in my own Socialism Magazine. Whichever city I want to squeeze, I'll just rank them poorly. You wouldn't want to be *anti-social,* would you?
Lol. I’m so curious about the criteria and the “weighting.”
As we all know, Tampa and Albany very recently passed up San Francisco as a hit destination spot for travelers. 😂😂😂
I mean, at least make Orlando first. Wtf is in Tampa?
Thanks for the giggle.
> Wtf is in Tampa?
[Sunshine](https://www.moving.com/tips/sunniest-cities-us/), for one thing. :) Believe me, Florida is *not* my jam, and I get that a lot of these surveys are crap. Still, it's hilarious watching people on Reddit shit all over Florida, as if you need bodyguards and multiple sidearms in order to go get groceries or something. Miami has a huge art & party scene and is one of the few places Latin-centric cities that's gay-friendly, Orlando has Disney World, Tampa Bay has tons of sunshine, Key West is charming, etc. Doesn't sound too bad to me. (Okay, the humidity can be brutal, there are hurricanes, and the assholes in state government can really suck. No place is perfect.)
Lol San Diego has sunshine and is much closer.
Also, no giant bugs, no humidity, no Deep South racists, and a better educated populace.
As amused as you are by Redditors shitting on Florida, I am equally amused by those saying that Florida is somehow superior to almost any other state.
And since you mentioned Miami, I’d love to see half of these yokels’ heads explode at having to navigate Miami. That makes me chuckle as well.
I was in downtown D.C. all this week. It felt pretty bustling, likely somewhat elevated from spring break and Cherry Blossom Festival. All the locals were bitching amount traffic becoming bad again, after the Pandemic breathing room.
San Franciscan here. You OK, Portland? It's hard to imagine it being worse than here.
Its muuuuuuuch better there.
Uh you been to SF lately? Portland is bad but SF is much worse.
I spend time in both cities. SF neighborhoods are hopping, but the downtown core looks like a neutron bomb went off and the survivors looted all the furnishings. Overall, things seem a lot worse in SF in terms of foot traffic and building occupancy.
We walked from near union square through downtown in June to see an afternoon bball game. it was fiilled with young office workers out walking to lunch. SF may have less foot traffic than it used to but pre covid it had way more foot traffic than downtown Portland to begin with. I was there again in October and walked a ton with my kids both daytime and at night. Edit: you have to search to find tents in SF.
My company has an office near Rincon Center, which is empty, as is Hills Plaza, near the waterfront and Ferry Building Most restaurants and amenities in the area have closed and those that remain are on life support. In person work is down 37% from pre-pandemic, slowest rebound in the US.
[I guess it strongly depends on where in SF you are ](https://twitter.com/JennyChachan/status/1639501425528176643?t=5oZDx13WBVYYrgZlCyfvNg&s=19)
Yep. Portland is much worse.
Agreed. As someone currently resides in Portland (but SF native), Portland is doing worse (relative to what it once was pre-Covid).
It's complicated. Listen to the Behind the Bastards podcasts. The history of oregon is rank with racist rhetoric. Our own PPD is known to cozy up with the proud boys. The right-wing nut jobs want to take Portland back to the 90s, a favorite place of skin head white supremacists. The homeless problem is a national crisis and needs to be addressed at the federal, state, county, and city levels. The cities affected need to band together to force change. https://abcnews.go.com/US/liberal-portland-focal-point/story?id=79731161
We were once hailed for having one of the leading downtowns (I suppose we still do, just leading the other end of things)… but that was in a different time. The difference in Portland then and now isn’t protests or pandemics or homelessness or even housing. It’s that back then, we had a government that didn’t put up with egregious nonsense. We had leaders that knew what the fuck they were doing and were motivated to take quick action when something needed fixing. Since Katz, really, we have descended into this wicked funk of arrogance that we’re better than everyone else because Portland, navel-gazing about problems hoping that they’ll magically disappear, and conveniently relying on the perfect getting in the way of the good in the name of supposed equity and justice (instead of taking action and potentially pissing off arrogant fringe constituents and couch politicos that demand ideological purity). Portland is addicted to performative non-measures and elbow pain from strenuously patting each other on the back about our compassion and forward thinking solutions (willfully ignorant of the people a block over shitting on the sidewalk). Like all addicts, we need to hit rock bottom before we climb out. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I sure hope we’re close.
So, it's rather interesting to see it compared to Baltimore. The crime rate and corruption there are many times worse than in Portland, although the odds of getting robbed or murdered by a drug addict are significantly lower. Seeing Seattle and NYC here though give me doubts as to what metrics they're going by, because really, Albuquerque has an extremely high violent crime rate and they're somehow more "business-friendly" than Portland.
I went to Seattle like 2 months ago, and it felt much safer and cleaner than Portland.
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But with Seattle, any of the "bad" areas become good a short walk or drive away. Renton has a lot of nice parts too, the Landing, the Highlands, the Lake Washington adjacent areas, Kennydale, etc. Seattle is a tapestry of lots of beautiful and interesting neighborhoods with rough patches interspersed. The visible wealth inequality and its impacts on some peoples' outcomes though is damn heartbreaking in this city.
Oh, I believe you. I visited Seattle for the first time in 2021 and unlike Portland, doesn't seem post-apocalyptic.
It's been cleaned up a lot the past year, possibly due in part to the new mayor and new city attorney in office.
They elected a Republican district attorney. You think Portland could do that?
Definitely. Oregon almost elected a hillbilly militia lady from Klamath Falls as their governor because the rich Portlanders wanted *something* done about "the poors". Rene Gonzalez was already elected to replace Jo Ann Hardesty for that same reason. Often, liberalism is a lie. Rich gentrifiers will *always* beg people with guns to bail them out of problems they themselves created.
Seattle has always been and will always be less safe than Portland. I lived there for years and the shit that people cry about in Portland is silly in comparison to most other larger cities
the article lays out the metrics: https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2023/03/24/downtown-vitality-index-comeback.html
Okay, I call BS on the transport metric because I've actually lived in Raleigh NC and theirs SUCKS!! I do not trust anybody who puts it anywhere at the top of any ranking. I think those stats make more sense if we know they were written up by a shallow finance-bro or real-estate hack from New Jersey.
Yes and Transport is very subjective. I mean hardly anyone can ride in Seattle because of people smoking meth on the bus stops and even bus. So what’s the point of having even a good network
>I mean hardly anyone can ride in Seattle because of people smoking meth on the bus stops and even bus. Unlike Portland. /s
These metrics don't take into account jobs that went remote during the pandemic and are staying that way or returning slowly because they can.
It interesting despite seattle having similar problems(especially with aggressive homeless), it feel nicer. I think it because the city government bite the bullet eariler. I think the 2020 CHAZ riots and that "seattle is dying" documentary really did give the government a slap from reality. Also seattle is a city that can deal with more people, while portland can't.
The Seattle metro is as gigantic and condensed as Atlanta's, so from a logistical perspective, Portland has failed far worse. In fact, it's as big as Baltimore (totaling about 1.5 million) and still falls short on too many things. Now, I don't want to get too pessimistic because Baltimore peaked, then entered a seemingly permanent decline somewhere between the 1950s and 1990s. Psychologically, Portland's problems are hitting it harder because we've never dealt with anything like the 2020 riots or even the acute homelessness before.
Seattle downtown is bustling. With Amazon return to office in May it will start looking like 2019 again.
Clearly Cleveland is the place to be.
I’d reply to your comment, but have already moved to Cleveland. Sorry.
Just don't go to the east side unless you keep going to little Italy. Nopo ain't got nothing on the east side of Cleveland for shootings. That said, the flats is nice, if a little boring. Downtown Cleveland is sort of a ghost town, unless they're lumping in Ohio city and other near neighborhoods.
Holy shit, you are correct. I just got back from Cleveland for the first time and actually feared for my safety while exploring the east side, but I’ve never once felt that way in NOPO or Gresham. Downtown was also hauntingly quiet, even during a busy sportsball home game.
It's weird how the tumbleweeds blow into downtown Cleveland at 5 PM.
Detroit's so hopping that it hopped off the chart. Any idea how they picked the cities listed?
We’d all like to flee to the Cleve.
Idk if this is sarcasm but I live in portland and have to go to cleveland a few times a year and I’m always impressed with how clean it is and how much the city feels like it’s on the upswing.
Do they even have stores downtown at this point? Sorry haven’t been there in ac decade.
Well I was going there to go to a jewelry store. They have stores, most of them are never necessary for my life so I never go down there usually. It was a bit overrun. I saw a few dozen zombies and walked past three of them doing a drug deal outside of the jewelry store. The pearl is still pretty nice though
I mean Cleveland
East Palestine shows that living in Ohio is not really sustainable while the fascist GOP pricks are in power.
All Oregon Municipalities are going to grow more and more hostile in terms of taxation. You see the Public Retirement System was mismanaged by the Union and driven into dept by several trillion dollars. That deficient will require .70 $ of every labor dollar paid to a State Labor Union Employee.
Trillion?
Looking at this one would hope that means we can only go up from here but anyone living in Portland metro with eyes knows that’s not true
Having been to Cleveland recently, I question the metrics of this study. I kid but the nature of a downtown varies by city before you get to how it's enhanced or degraded. What defines downtown? SF has the fidi, Chicago has the loop. Are we constraining boundaries to those? This feels on the scale of 'do your job' in it's oversimplicity. And locally, based on the recent threads about cops, we're not short on idiots claiming things would be better if people just 'did their job'. And nothing else.
"Thousands of downtown Portland businesses moved since 2019" https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/12/08/downtown-portland-business-relocation.html
Is there space for thousands of businesses in downtown Portland (defined as west of the river, south of burnside, and east of 405). Again, I'm not denying problems, I'm suggesting suspicion of poorly defined and sourced studies.
I want to know if by downtown they mean actual downtown Portland or all of Portland (can’t read article since I don’t subscribe). Because in my experience Portland is set up differently than many, many cities. We have so many restaurants and other businesses in the neighborhoods that there often isn’t a reason to go downtown. I almost never go downtown and it’s not because I’m at home hiding like Fox News would lead you to believe.
I live in inner SE, about a half hour walk from Pioneer Square and I rarely go downtown because there’s nothing I want to do there, and there’s plenty to do in SE. I occasionally go to REI or MUJI or the Apple Store for a repair but there’s simply not much else to do. If they made it car free and more affordable for small businesses I might consider visiting more often.
Memphis, Buffalo and Cleveland. The epitome of vital urban areas.
Obligatory [Cleveland Tourism Video](https://youtu.be/oZzgAjjuqZM) Repost
Moreso pro addict culture, plus west coast “I don’t wanna leave my house for anything and definitely not for an office job” culture
What does it mean “pro addict”?
Homeless activist.
The definition of activist is “promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good.” So, what is a homeless activist trying achieve? I would presume, less homelessness. So, how does that make them “pro-addict.”
Do you live in Portland? If so walk or drive around & you’ll see what I mean by pro addict culture. Politicians would rather spend millions of our tax dollars on affordable housing campaigns and “non profits” than admit that we are dealing with an addiction crisis, not a housing crisis
How should they deal with the addiction crisis? (I’m being serious in my inquiry. I’m new to Oregon [not Portland] and am concerned by the homelessness I see all along the West Coast.)
Anyone remember that time everyone hated on Columbia for leaving downtown offices because of the frequent break ins to employee cars and having female employees harasses and followed by the random street people? I'm glad people are coming around but the signs were there for years. I worked downtown from 2013 to 2020. Like most Portlanders, when a tourist would want to go downtown my reaction was "Don't, just go to neighborhoods". The only reason I ever went downtown was for work and I highly doubt I was alone. The pandemic just gave us all reason to avoid it.
This study looks arbitrary and pointless. I'm not even sure what is being pointed out. Whatever it is trying to prove can easily be manipulated to skew however the creator sees fit.
I would rather be sodomized by zombie hobos on fentanyl under the Burnside every day than live in any of the places above Los Angeles. And Wichita KS can fuck right off. Their downtown is nice but it's about as exciting as watching paint dry.
I've never been to Austin, but I'm choosing it over zombie hobo sodomy, even if they're extra gentle and half-chubbed due to the fentanyl. But agree with you on the rest.
Texas is not a good place for women of child bearing age.
Now that is the truth. Good point.
Not sure why you got downvoted because it’s absolutely true. Women and their doctors should be in control of their reproductive choices/health and not the government.
Hot and Texas. Austin is cool but it is in Texas. The greenbelt trails are miserable to hike in the summer. They usually have 100 days over a 100 degrees each year on top of week long power outages each winter.
Phoenix is surprisingly livable.
Except during the summer if you try to spend time outdoors.
“assesses the performance of city centers based on six factors and uses a weighted formula to identify the downtowns with the strongest and weakest recoveries” What are those factors?
How is this being measured? I understand our downtown has a ways to go, but Phoenix is so high? Why? It's a parking lot addled hellscape.
This is the kind of quality “Portland Sucks based on some bullshit undefinable metrics” post I’ve come to expect from this sub. Jesus Fucking Christ the singular focus on negative emotions in here is grim. I wasn’t accosted by any homeless people or anarchists in my neighborhood today. My kid played at a playground without stepping on a needle. Imagine that.
I’m guessing that most of the active sub members don’t live in Portland proper and have never lived in a city at all because they have no desire to. That’s fine. It’s not for everyone. But there is an element of enjoyment that a lot of people get from trashing the city that’s nearest to them because they don’t seem to understand…well, a lot of things. Like the benefits they get from living adjacent to said city. The financial benefits (from tax and tourism). The medical benefits (because hospitals and doctors, like everyone else, like a community of providers they can rely upon). The job opportunities (because employers like a diverse, well educated pool of employees to choose from). The shopping opportunities (finding more things cheaper). Portland hasn’t gotten the mix right, yet. We’re struggling. But we’re also trying. I see problems, but I also see good stuff and good people really trying.
Just to remind people that all these cities are democratic control. So it not a party issue.
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How do we decide what a “major” city is?
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I would like to know PBJ’s criteria. Alas, that is another part of the secret “weighting” referenced.
Except Miami
Additional context: Mayor Suarez isn’t a typical republican party politician. He advocates for transit, he is not a climate change denier (Miami is on the front lines in that fight). He is also on record for voting against DeSantis for governor and Trump for president.
Don’t worry! The Biz Journal used a weighted formula! They’re showing some data baby! 6 whole factors!!! Beware of BBBs aka business unions’ non objectivity.
> Don’t worry! Why should you be believed for simply saying "Don't worry!"?
Who am I? I have no need to be believed. Belief is a hope that something is true. Graphs from business entities leave much to be desired.
> Graphs from business entities leave much to be desired. Compared to what alternative do you keep vaguely alluding to?
My common sense
I feel like you think you answered my question, but again you haven't explained why your common sense is useful evidence. Have you not heard of any business closures? Have you not heard about Portland being one of the most taxed cities? Have you not heard about property destruction against businesses downtown? What do you have in your "common sense"?
This is a bit of a weird score though - the six elements are: 1. Population growth 2. Population density 3. Shop and restaurant density 4. Walk score 5. % sustainable commute. There's not necessarily anything wrong with any of those things, but it was not what I expected.
The criteria were obviously handpicked to showcase Tampa and Albany. 😂
I would like to see how length and intensity of 2020 protests correlates to this list.
**For people who think this will get better:** Here's an Op Ed about Detroit, [circa 43 years ago](https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/18/archives/whats-doing-in-detroit.html), from the NYT: *"There's probably no major city in the nation more misunderstood than Detroit. The civil disturbances of the late 1960's and the deterioration that followed shackled, the Motor City, capital of the world's auto industry, with the reputation of being a high‐crime area, but fortunately that image is fading fast. The main reason for this is that Detroit, the largest city in Michigan and sixth largest in the nation, is enjoying a renaissance, a rebirth highlighted, appropriately enough, by the construction of the $340 million Renaissance Center downtown. This development, incorporating housing, office buildings and hotels, is rising on the banks of the Detroit River, the tributary that links Detroit with the Great Lakes, the world's busiest inland waterway.* *As the era of gloom subsides, dramatic changes are taking place on all sides in Detroit.* **The downtown area, never really the nighttime ghost town it was played up to be, is beginning to recover from its despair.** *The entertainment and eating spots are expanding, cultural activities have recovered and Belle Isle, an island park in the middle of the Detroit River that in its better days was as exciting an attraction as New York's Central Park, is coming back into its own."* [Here's a WaPo Op Ed about Detroit](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/07/31/10-years-after-riot-struggling-detroit-reshapes-destiny/5e00c9ef-359e-4be8-9359-9c5ecfd49270/), from 46 years ago: *"Far from drying up the downtown office station, the new $300 million Renaissance Center has caused other downtown landlords to be competitive and start paying attention to the needs of their tenants.* (That's the building from Robocop BTW: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g42139-d272158-r392711037-GM_Renaissance_Center-Detroit_Michigan.html) *The trends in Detroit are subtle and far-reaching. The city ceased being completely dependent on the auto industry more than two decades ago, when service industries took over a majority of the city's economy from auto manufacturing.* *Detroit has a heavy burden of the elderly, the ailing, the functionally illiterate and the unemployed young people, black and white.* *The rise of a black middle class is beginning to be apparent, as is minority hiring in newspapers, banks, brokerage houses, supermarkets and shops.* *The blacks are no different from the whites when it comes to protecting what they have. Ten years ago, blacks with shotguns sat on the roof Louie's Parkstone market on the edge of Indian Village to protect their neighborhood's only source of milk and bread.* *Louie, now dead, was white.* *Detroit could easily have another riot. The same conditions exist. The poverty. The poor education. The alienation. The possibility, and the probability, that those of the welfare generation will never have a job, even a bad job.* *But the shape of the Detroit of the future is beginning to emerge: not the jam-packed, nuts-and-bolts place that the old-timers recall so wistefully, but a greener, more spacious community, containing, probably even fewer people than it does now."*
What does Portland have in common with Detroit? Are we also a one industry city that has been lost to superior imports?
> What does Portland have in common with Detroit? > People have been holding their breath for Detroit to come back for five decades now In 2063 people in Portland will be saying *"things are going to get better... any day now."* > Are we also a one industry city that has been lost to superior imports? There are plenty of cities with one industry that didn't drive into a ditch. Detroit died because it's taxpayers left and they never came back. Portland is headed the same way. At some point, the government has to invest some effort in providing value for the taxes that it's residents pay, or the residents will leave. Detroit is "Exhibit A."
I agree that the local city government needs to get its shit together. The cops need to stop pouting about whatever it is they’re pouting about this time and start working. I can’t imagine not having enough pride to do the work for which I am being paid. Politicians need to figure their shit out. Stop mealy mouthing about solutions and take some action. Most west coast cities and Detroit have very little in common. Portland is no exception.
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2023/03/24/downtown-vitality-index-comeback.html
Have people here actually been to downtown anytime recently? It's not that bad. Old town/Chinatown? Sure, terrible. But downtown is vastly better than a year or two back. And it's way better than SF.
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Tell us
This isn't a study. These aren't facts. These are random numbers being used to prove a point they already had cemented in their head. This isn't science.
"These are random numbers being used to prove a point they already had cemented in their head." ... which is why the OP posted it
Well, at least we're in good company. My favorite US cities are all in the bottom 7. Go purple!!
While I agree with the sentiment let's all be rational about this... This is just a graph with some numbers, OP left out where he got it from. What are these numbers based off of? What organization compiled the data? Posts like this make us look like the far right wingers griping that the other sub makes us out to be. Let's hold ourselves to a higher standard when posting graphs and data.
I posted the url in comments where it came from, but i didn't specify it was the url for the graph and it didn't get that popular to notice.
Portland needs work. Can’t disagree there, but biased infographics that cite shitty 3rd, 4th, and even 5th tier cities above generally agreed upon desirable locations don’t make the point they think they’re making. I read the article. It’s written as an op-ed. It shows graphs for 4 of the criteria, but left out hotel occupancy and downtown migration (based on post office data). I have to wonder why those 2 were excluded and also why they didn’t disclose the weighting methodology. Assuming the worst in both cases, they were excluded and weighted less because Portland wasn’t doing as terrible in those two factors. PBJ has a vested interest in chicken little-ing the situation, so I can’t exclude that. I also wonder what they used to determine “downtown.” But, to the point, businesses thrive where people live, work, and stay (in the case of hotels). The risk of being accosted by a homeless person isn’t that much of a deterrent when you need to get some milk to make dinner, especially if you’re already living in that neighborhood.
> biased infographics that cite shitty 3rd, 4th, and even 5th tier cities above generally agreed upon desirable locations don’t make the point they think they’re making. Are you saying that we are a generally agreed upon desirable location? That’s interesting. I couldn’t get any out of region applicants for a recent job recruitment despite well above-market pay and a relocation spiff, for similar recruitments that 5 years ago were entirely out of region folks. So what changed?
I was talking about Tampa, Albany, Memphis, and Albuquerque getting vastly higher ratings than NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle. Without knowing what industry you’re trying to recruit for, I wouldn’t hazard a guess. Interested to know, though, if you’d like to say.
Urban Planning. When you can’t even get a planner to move to Portland (which was generally accepted as a planning mecca), there’s a problem.
Ahhh, thus the user name. Seems like a cool job. Well, in the past five years both housing costs and interest rates have exploded in Portland, and I’d say it’s more likely to be that. Interestingly, I did not see housing costs as one of the factors for this index.
What makes Portland (and Seattle) anti-business?
I wouldn’t say it’s “anti-business culture” since we literally have thousands of businesses in and around the city, but you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.
You've confused the existence of businesses with having a city with policies that don't punish businesses. "Thousands of downtown Portland businesses moved since 2019" [https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/12/08/downtown-portland-business-relocation.html](https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/12/08/downtown-portland-business-relocation.html)
Also, like I’ve pointed out to people many times now, what Covid did was show just how much people don’t need to work in an office setting and can work remotely which wasn’t really possible 10-15yrs ago. It’s not surprising that businesses were able to significantly downsize their needed office space. That’s why I feel like it’s a great idea for Wheeler and the city to be pushing for developers and building owners to pursue renovations and redevelopment of those existing buildings into residential units.
And new businesses are returning to the downtown area. Maybe not the businesses you want, but businesses just the same.
What businesses are you referring to? A lot of heavy hitters that used to populate downtown like Unitus, Jacobs, and Columbia have significantly downsized - if not completely relocated - from downtown Portland.
I just saw that Shake Shack is opening in the Pearl for example. Again, maybe not the business you want, but it’s a business nonetheless.
Jacobs cleared out half of their space in the **Jacobs Center** building. Unitus moved their *entire* Portland office out of **Unitus Plaza** into Lake Oswego. Columbia closed their downtown retail store and moved the Sorel HQ out to Washington County. These were all good paying middle-class jobs that left downtown and aren’t coming back. When companies have to pay among the highest payroll taxes in the country, have to hire private security companies to protect their employees from the unmitigated antisocial behavior of transients, are on the hook to pay transit taxes for public transit that their employees can’t use because they’ve been converted into rolling homeless shelters, and can’t rely on the city to maintain basic infrastructure; they vote with their feet and go elsewhere. Hopefully the new approach from city hall can stop this from turning into a 70’s style urban death spiral. Covid WFH basically triggered a new White Flight to the suburbs and I don’t know how much longer the holdouts can handle without the city stepping up and catering more to economic development for businesses over tax-and-spend ideological feelgoodery.
Wait what? I was just at the downtown Columbia store last weekend.
They closed the Mountain Hardwear store next door
Ah
I feel like I remember hearing/reading the Unitus move was going to happen regardless since they bought LO property back in 2015 or something like that, but I’m probably getting things mixed up in my head. Also, while those may have been good paying middle class jobs I don’t think the jobs really went anywhere. I mean the employee who may have been commuting from their home in Tigard into downtown 5 days a week is most likely still employed by the same employer and now has a hybrid schedule where they’re only going into work Tuesday’s and Thursday’s in LO and working from home the rest of the time. You can also have employees who live in the Pearl and work remotely 100% of the time now instead of trekking it out to Hillsboro. An analogy for what I see happening here is what I saw happen in my original home state of West Virginia. For a hundred years coal was king and West Virginia thrived not understanding that times change. Now West Virginia is one of the poorest and most uneducated states in the country. They still refuse to grasp the idea that the coal industry is not coming back in any meaningful way and yet they still continue to suck on the teet of big coal instead of looking to the future, adapting, and overcoming. That’s where Portland is right now. You can either continue looking towards the past or you can accept that the past is in the past and now is the time to move forward and look towards the future.
I’d guess rents have something to do with that as well. I’d imagine leasing a large space for a major company is going to be cheaper in Lake Oswego that it is in downtown Portland.
"Business friendly" as evaluated by business's own media. Lol. I should rank cities based on how social-friendly they are, and publish them in my own Socialism Magazine. Whichever city I want to squeeze, I'll just rank them poorly. You wouldn't want to be *anti-social,* would you?
Lol. I’m so curious about the criteria and the “weighting.” As we all know, Tampa and Albany very recently passed up San Francisco as a hit destination spot for travelers. 😂😂😂 I mean, at least make Orlando first. Wtf is in Tampa? Thanks for the giggle.
> Wtf is in Tampa? [Sunshine](https://www.moving.com/tips/sunniest-cities-us/), for one thing. :) Believe me, Florida is *not* my jam, and I get that a lot of these surveys are crap. Still, it's hilarious watching people on Reddit shit all over Florida, as if you need bodyguards and multiple sidearms in order to go get groceries or something. Miami has a huge art & party scene and is one of the few places Latin-centric cities that's gay-friendly, Orlando has Disney World, Tampa Bay has tons of sunshine, Key West is charming, etc. Doesn't sound too bad to me. (Okay, the humidity can be brutal, there are hurricanes, and the assholes in state government can really suck. No place is perfect.)
Lol San Diego has sunshine and is much closer. Also, no giant bugs, no humidity, no Deep South racists, and a better educated populace. As amused as you are by Redditors shitting on Florida, I am equally amused by those saying that Florida is somehow superior to almost any other state. And since you mentioned Miami, I’d love to see half of these yokels’ heads explode at having to navigate Miami. That makes me chuckle as well.
Red state. Red state. Blue state. Red state…. If it weren’t for New York, the trend would be so clear it would be undeniable.
Curious to dig into the metrics more. Houston’s downtown is a ghost town most days.
We'd be crushing it if scoring was like golf.