Abstract
In 1992, the Atlantic Monthly sent me to Portland, Oregon, to find out how that city, in a span just short of twenty years, had turned a run-of-the-mill downtown into one most appealing in the nation. At that time, the city’s population had risen to 446,000 and was growing nearly 20 percent per decade, and Portland was on its way to becoming the star of American urban planning.
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Notes
- 1.
Philip Langdon, “How Portland Does It,” The Atlantic, Nov. 1992, pp. 134–41.
- 2.
Jane Comerford, A History of Northwest Portland: From the River to the Hills (Portland, OR: Dragonfly-Press-PDX, 2011), pp. 78, 82. Comerford reports that years after coining the Pearl District’s name, Thomas Augustine changed his story and claimed that the district was named for a world traveler from Ethiopia. Al Solheim, in a Sept. 21, 2014, e-mail to me, said that the Ethiopian story is “not correct.”
- 3.
Jeremiah Chamberlin, “Inside Indie Bookstores: Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon,” Poets & Writers, Mar.–Apr. 2010, http://www.pw.org/content/inside_indie_bookstores_powell_s_books_in_portland_oregon?article_page=2.
- 4.
Nigel Jaquiss, “Homer’s Odyssey,” Willamette Week, July 29, 2003, http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-2307-homers-odyssey.html.
- 5.
The affordability requirement appears in Exhibit D-2 of the amended contract of Mar. 12, 1999, http://www.pdc.us/Libraries/Document_Library/Hoyt_St_Property_Agreement_pdf.sflb.ashx.
- 6.
Ed Langlois, “Portland Organizing Project Seeks to Broaden Its Base of Influence, Concern,” Catholic Sentinel, Feb. 12, 1999, http://www.catholicsentinel.org/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=35&ArticleID=3562.
- 7.
Developer Homer Williams said that he and others worried that placing rocks and steps in Jamison Square would turn the park into a magnet for skateboarding teenagers. To avoid that, landscape architect Peter Walker added flowing water, which had the unintended consequence of making the park a busy play area for children. See Peter Korn, “Oops!,” Portland Tribune, Oct. 29, 2008, http://portlandtribune.com/component/content/article?id=77203.
- 8.
Charles Kelley, “Building Equity with the Creative Class in Portland and Orlando,” presentation to the American Planning Association, Phoenix, AZ, Mar. 29, 2016, https://www.dropbox.com/s/fy4e8rq0iog1o1x/APA_Innovation%20Presentation_3.29.16.pptx?dl=0. For another assessment of increased density, see Randy Gragg, “Reflecting on the Past, Present, and Future of Portland’s Pearl District,” Portland Monthly, Oct. 5, 2015, http://www.pdxmonthly.com/articles/2015/10/5/past-present-and-future-of-portlands-pearl-district.
- 9.
ECONorthwest, “Technical Memo—Portland Streetcar Development Impact Study,” Aug. 4, 2015, pp. 1, 5, 6. See also https://storage.googleapis.com/streetcar/files/Infographic-1-Final.pdf.
- 10.
“Tumblin’ Down: Lovejoy Viaduct a Casualty of Progress,” Daily Journal of Commerce, Aug. 19, 1999, http://djcoregon.com/news/1999/08/19/tumblin-down-lovejoy-viaduct-a-casualty-of-progress/.
- 11.
A spare-no-expense modernist design in one of the depot buildings is described in Randy Gragg, “Drawn to Perfection: A Townhouse Rehab Fuses Bold Design and Precise Workmanship,” The Oregonian, May 1, 2003, pp. 1, 20–29, http://www.fhzal.com/works/010402/gragg-030501.asp.
- 12.
Gragg, “Reflecting.”
- 13.
Brad Schmidt, “Hoyt Street Properties Fails to Deliver Enough Affordable Housing under Portland’s Pearl District Development Deal,” The Oregonian, Aug. 20, 2014, http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/08/hoyt_street_properties_fails_t.html.
- 14.
Jon Bell, “‘Deeply Affordable’ Housing Project Set to Rise in the Pearl,” Portland Business Journal, Oct. 14, 2015, http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/real-estate-daily/2015/10/deeply-affordable-housing-project-set-to-rise-in.html. The project has since been modified.
- 15.
Janie Har, “Is 20 Percent of Housing in Portland’s Pearl District Really Affordable?” PolitiFact Oregon, Nov. 18, 2011, http://www.politifact.com/oregon/statements/2011/nov/18/tom-hughes/20-percent-housing-portlands-pearl-district-really/.
- 16.
Andy Giegerich, “Affordable Pearl Isn’t a Fake,” Portland Business Journal, June 13, 2004, http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2004/06/14/story1.html.
- 17.
Craig Beebe, “Exploring Affordable Housing in NW Portland,” 1000 Friends of Oregon, June 26, 2012, https://www.friends.org/affordablehousingtour.
- 18.
Denis C. Theriault, “Landmark Housing Bill Wins Final Approval from Oregon Legislature,” The Oregonian, Mar. 3, 2016, http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/03/affordable_housing_mandates_wi.html. See also Luke Hammill, “Portland Signals Support for New Construction Excise Tax,” The Oregonian, June 16, 2016, http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/06/portland_signals_support_for_n.html.
- 19.
Andrew Theen, “Portland’s $258.4 Million Housing Bond Wins (Election Results),” The Oregonian, Nov. 8, 2016, http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/portlands_2584_million_housing.html. See also Bruce Stephenson, “$258 Million Affordable Housing Bond Will Be a Test for Portland (Opinion),” Oregon Live, July 5, 2016, http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/07/258_million_affordable_housing.html.
- 20.
“Pearl Lofts, Portland, Oregon,” Urban Land Institute Project Reference File 26, no. 6 (Apr.–June 1996).
- 21.
In 2015 and 2016, Stephenson produced a lively blog that examined many aspects of the Pearl District; see “Living New Urbanism: Stepping into Sustainability,” http://livingnewurbanism.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00–08:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00–08:00&max-results=19.
- 22.
Iain MacKenzie, “Going Tall: New Projects Complete the North Pearl District,” Portland Architecture blog, http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2015/10/going-tall-new-projects-complete-the-north-pearl-district.html.
- 23.
Michael Mehaffy, “Has Portland Lost Its Way?” Planetizen, May 25, 2016, http://www.planetizen.com/node/86508/has-portland-lost-its-way.
- 24.
Michael Mehaffy, “5 Key Themes Emerging from the ‘New Science of Cities,’” CityLab, Sept. 19, 2014, http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/09/5-key-themes-emerging-from-the-new-science-of-cities/380233/.
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Langdon, P. (2017). Redeveloping with Pedestrians in Mind: The Pearl District, Portland, Oregon. In: Within Walking Distance. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-773-5_6
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