The Everyday City: Portland's Changing Neighborhoods

Portland State University PDXScholar Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations Geography 1987 The Everyday City: Portland's Changing Neighborhoods Carl Abbott Portland State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/geog_fac Part of the Physical and Environmental Geography Commons, and the Urban Studies Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Citation Details Abbott, C. (1987). "The Everyday City: Portland's Changing Neighborhoods" in Larry W. Price (Ed.), Portland's Changing Landscape (pp. 69-85). This Article is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. The Everyday City: ;Portland's Changing Neighborhoods 69 Chapter 5 The Everyday City: Portland's Changing Neighborhoods Carl Abbott Department of Urban Studies and Planning Portland State University Americans like to keep tabs on the typical. Giant corporations search for average cities in which to run market tests for new brands of crunchos and fizzits. The targets tend to run to com fortable communities like Rochester, N.Y., Columbus, Ohio, or Des Moines, Iowa. Political commentators also feel the impulse to characterize typical Ameri cans. When political pundits Richard Outer Scammon and Ben Wattenberg a few Southeast years back pronounced that the average voter was a 40-year-old housewife liv ing in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, they were indulging in the national habit of carefully defining the middle Figure 5.1 Portland's residential districts American. as defined for the city's What about Portland and its Neighborhood Information neighborhoods? Does the city on the Profiles of s,maller neighbor Wi1lamette have its own equivalent of hoods (Portlarid Office Fiscal Administration, 1983). middle America - a community that offers average neighb(frs, average con venience, and average urban problems? to which each 'd\strict diverges from Data presented in the City of Port the middle (Table 5.1). land's annual Neighborhood Information It's no surprise that Downtown runs Profiles allow the definition of the most off the scale as a wildly atypical statistically typiCal of eight geographic neighborhood. The west side also dif districts within the city limits, each of fers sharply from the city wide aver which includes several neighborhoods ages. Closest to the norm is Inner (Figures 5.1, 5.2). The measures range Southeast, followed by Outer Southeast from basic demographics (age, race) to (Table 5.1). -Both districts are close to economic status (education, household the average in every category. As a sort income) and 'patterns of every day life of "middle Portlandia"" the southeast (transit, use, residential stability). Total area liaS' a life of its· own' at, the same ing' the absolute values of the devia time' that it is tied ,to the larger met tions (ignoring plus and minus signs) ropolis. Most of its workers find jobs gives a rough indication of the extent within the city, but only one in ten 70 The Everyday City: Portland's Changing Neighborhoods , Pleasa,nt Valley Figure 5.2 Portland neighborhood bound- I aries. The city recognizes' the last 75 years. By the early 1980's; neighborhood boundaries as the center of population was ·some defined by its independent where. in the eastern end of the Sun 'n~ighbor~90d associations nyside neighborhood near SOl.Jtheast (adapted from Abbott, 1983, p. Hawthorne Boulevard and 39th Av 190). enue, 2 112 miles e,ast and 112 'mile south of the historic .focal point of Port commute into downtown. Southeast lang's duwnto;wn at 5th and 'Morrison Hawthorne Boulevard is a rapidly re streets (Fetridayl' 1984, pp. 13-15; D~ vitalizing bu~iness street that attracts leuw Cather, 1971). custotners citywide, but many south~ In larger perspective, central south east businesses setve local markets .. east preserves· something 'of the com The -same area is also the geogtaplUc munity life of the 1920's and 1930's with center of population in, metropolitan an overlay from the 1980's. Within a Portland. Although the exact spot shifts mile of the metropolita.n population with every new subdivision 'on one side center we can finti three theaters that of 'the, city or the other, it has been still show clean movies (with Saturday somewhere on the southeast side for matinees). The.' upper middle Glass The Everyday' City: .Pprtland's Changing NeighborhoQqs 71 Tab~e 5.1:. "Portland neighborflOOd characteristics I percentage.. deviation'from city average (Portland Office of Fiscal Administration, 1983) inner Outer West! Inner Outer Down • North NE NE NW SW SE SE town Pe]cent White +2 -36 +7' +9 +12 +5 +9 -1· Percent College -59 -27 0 +45 +91 -9 -18 -5 graduat~s Percent 60+ +5 -10 +15 +45 -20 +10 +5 +65 years Median house 0 -9 +14 -32 +43 -14 +12 -62 hold income Percent Professional -41' -15 +23 +27 +50 -12 -15 +4 occupations Percent Houses +17 +11 +28 -69 +21 -25 +17 -90 owner occupied Per.cent Comrrmters 0 -6 -31 +13 +6 ....12 +13 +31 by bus ' Years in -25 +2 +9 -14 -15 -8 -1 -4~ neighborhood Median value -20 -18 ,..8 +94 +42 -11 -1 NA of houses Rate of -9 +18 -20 +7 -55 -1 -29 +550 Major crimes Total Deviation 179 15f 1'55' 355 355 107 120 940 (St;m of Absolute values) Laurelhurst neighborhood, built yvith deliberate policy choices. Portland's gracious curves an}! symbolic entrance' neighborhoods have been shaped by gates, shares the I area with working the same economic, social and class housing and wit~ upgrading technological forces that have molded neighborhoods where }~oung- families most other American cities. At the are r~cyclin9 ~ungalows and -boxy ,four same time, its "naturalf' neJgfiborhoods square houses from the. 1920's! 'One 'of from the late nineteenth century and the old transit shopping stre.ets has the first half of the twentieth have :been gone yupscale with trendy restaur~n{s reshaped by conscious ch6i<;E:s, first to and antique shops for. weekend brows encour~ge the outward shift of popula ing. Another is dofied with Chinese, tion and then to conserve the existing Vietnamese, and Filipino businesses. A urban fabric. The remainder of this third shows little change frOij1 the essay explores the impacts and interac 1950's. tion of markets and politics by (1) The neighborhood life and,neighbor sketching the evolution of Portland's hood patterns' that we see in the south neighborhoods ove'r the last century (2) east district" and elsewhere in 1'0rflana describing key patterns of social geog ~re the combined product of the gen raphy that have resulted and (3) analyz eral processes -pf urban growth and of ing the evolving goals and tools of 72 The Everyday City: Portland's Changing Neighborhoods neighborhood policy. It contains the confractea remnant" of The section 6f central Southeast Port the skId roadllodging housing di~trict' lanq meptioned abo~e includes exam tha! once stretched for a mile along the ples of thr~~ of PO,rtland's five basic city's waterfront. With cheap lodgings, neighborhood types. Over the decades, s~cond hand stores, missions, saloons, eompetition for space, view sites an.d brothels, and employment agencies, prestige have created four irregular the district served the needS of a trans..! rings around the central business dis ient labor force of lumberjacks, farm trict. Portland's downtown, its stopover workers, seamen, and railroad con neighborhoods, its everyday neighbor struction gangs who wintered oyer or hoods, its highlands and its automobile passed through Portland. At its height suburbs are each differentiated by his in the early twentieth century, the dis tory, housing type, social function, and trict may have housed between 5,000 social status (Figure 5.3). 10,000 men, giving Portland proportion As in many other cities, the central ately one of the largest skid roads in business district is simultaneously Port the nation (Sawyer, 1984, pp. 493-99). land's oldest and newest neighborhood. The remnant now at the north end· of AUS WASHINGTON CO . Central Business • District ~ Stopover B::tfjj Neighborhoods ~ Everyday ttt:tI Netghborhoods // ~~~ Highlands AUS Auromobile SubWbs Figure 5.3 Portland neighborhood fypes (from Abbott, 1983, p. 24). The-,Everyday City: P(.lrt1Clnd~s Changtng N eighborttoQd.s 73 Figure 5.4 South Portland in the 1920's was a bustling t'stopover u~versity has destt:oye9. significant neighborhood." This ,cotner at portions pf. Portlanq'S .stopover S. W. First and Caruthers was n~ighborhoods. In the early years of obliterated by the cQnstruc.tion the. century, these yveI;e Portland!s of the inner loop 1-405 (From Oregon Hisforical Sdclety, ne,arest equivalept to the large ethnic Negative No. 47144). communities of N~w yqrl< or Chicago. The crescent of lower land. around the, central business district below the West the central business district meets the Hills and the inner tier of east-side needs of ,a· few hundred transient.s and neighborhoods was lal'gely settled by another thousand or so residents of the. early years of the century (Figure single ,room occupancy hot~ls; 5.4). With minor exceptions, these Elsewhere in downtown PDrtland, r.ql areas offereq cheap housing Jor trans ticularly on the ,southern and western ient workers, European immigrants edges, a new' downtown cOq1.munity and th~ir children, orientals, and a scat has begun to form with mod,e,rate (!nd, tering of blacks. At the .start of the upper income hQusing for th~< elderly Great Depression, these areas housed in new or converted buildings.

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