James Howard Kunstler, the grim futurist, speaks of Portland, in the present and in the future:
Portland, on the other hand, has turned itself into one of the finest walkable cities in the USA and the Willamette River Valley is one of the most productive farming micro-regions in the world. Human beings will continue to live and thrive to some extent there.
Kunstler likes the city, and says he has fans for his bleak outlook there, but doesn't live there.
Nancy Rommelmann, a writer/journalist/equaintance who does live in Portland, reports that the future may be good, but the present is not great for young people in that enviro town.
She quotes an English journalist who moved to town a couple of years ago, named Matt Davis:
I'd heard that Portland was a "livable" place and had a sense from reading about it that it was energetic, on the cusp of some kind of breakthrough, especially where green job creation was concerned. When I arrived I found that "livability" was generally reserved for the majority of white people who score sweet government jobs and that most everyone else is either funding their existence with family money, working for Wieden+Kennedy or barely surviving.
That's the problem with the future, isn't it? You can't really live there.
Kit Stolz 