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All completely valid points, skiffrace. In the end, we decided to relocate to take a job opportunity in Bozeman, Montana. We're simply ready for a new adventure, we're yearning for a smaller community and more elbow room.
Moving to the burbs wasn't appealing either after living in Portland proper because it just would've meant more time in the car to get to work and shuttle kiddos around. And yes, we made a little bit of money on the sale of our home and are looking to buy a newer constructed home (read: no house projects!) with a couple of acres. And the best part is, we'll have plenty of money left over to keep in the bank.
Having said all that, I have told many younger people who are looking for their first house to strongly consider Milwaukie. They'll have MAX there next year and you get out of Multnomah County and the atrocious taxes. Also, Sellwood/Moreland shopping and dining is literally just a couple miles away. There are some nice pockets of houses over there and if a person can simply take MAX to work every day that would be a no-brainer in my opinion.
Bozeman? That is definitely quite a change from a big city to a small town, though Bozeman is definitely a great little Montana town to live in or near. It sounds like it will probably be a much better fit for you than Portland has been.
Also, I agree with you, Milwaukie is a great option for anyone looking to buy that is looking in the $150-250K range for a house. Plus the proximity to get to anywhere you want is very easy in Milwaukie. For my wife and I, Milwaukie is definitely an option when we finally start to look to buy depending on the price market we plan on looking at. Though with the MAX coming to downtown Milwaukie, I am really excited to see the changes that are gonna happen to their downtown.
Looks like a different kind of "white flight" may be in the offing for many cities, the gentrification of Portland and areas of Seattle, San Francisco, and other west coast havens of hi tech has come at a very high price. Now these folks will be heading to, Montana? Well, they will probably be caught up in what my Montana relatives call the "Californication" of a once beautiful area.
The OP's sentiments could well be an echo of the poor who have been displaced by the young moneyed techies of the new urban discontent. Bozeman, Missoula, Polson, and a host of other Montana towns will now be looked at as the last bastions for west coast seekers who've become disillusioned with their own version of utopia.
Those areas have seen an explosion of newcomers with more money than the old populace ever dreamed of, high housing prices have driven native Montanans to the far reaches of the state. When they return for visits they see a new kind of Montana, one that shouts money. The dream of urban renewal was nothing more than a social experiment in economic displacement, ironically, that same set of circumstances is driving many of the newcomers away in favor of those with even more money.
In Mike Davis's book, A Planet of Slums, he speaks to the extensive reach of the moneyed class with regard to the displacement of the worlds poor. In the book he points out the need for the worlds rural poor to be looking to the cities for sustenance, a phenomenon underway in America and gaining speed. Maybe we need a better spread of our industrial base in order that we can live in those uncrowded spaces without creating the animosity that usually goes along with the rise of a two tier economy.
Maybe we need a better spread of our industrial base in order that we can live in those uncrowded spaces without creating the animosity that usually goes along with the rise of a two tier economy.
We'd be better served to just spread the resulting wealth created.
Overlooking outsourcing entirely, 'dispersal' isn't really high on the list of what makes a functioning industrial sector. Access to labor, resources, transportation, etc. rank higher, and those things are often condensed.
And the reality of advancing tech is that we are likely to need relatively fewer, even if higher-skilled, factory workers. So even if you could disperse the jobs, it's not clear to me how deeply that would really improve people's lives anyway if we insist everyone labor in an economy that needs everyone to spend, but really doesn't need everyone to labor.
We'd be better served to just spread the resulting wealth created.
Overlooking outsourcing entirely, 'dispersal' isn't really high on the list of what makes a functioning industrial sector. Access to labor, resources, transportation, etc. rank higher, and those things are often condensed.
And the reality of advancing tech is that we are likely to need relatively fewer, even if higher-skilled, factory workers. So even if you could disperse the jobs, it's not clear to me how deeply that would really improve people's lives anyway if we insist everyone labor in an economy that needs everyone to spend, but really doesn't need everyone to labor.
I was referring to something that has been debated to death over the last fifty years or so, the domestic spread of work should have, and was to some extent, part of municipal planning done for purposes of national well being that instead was hijacked by big money interests doing it for their own gain. Work and all that it implies should have been part of a coherent national policy, and not the sole domain of private enterprise who did things that were convenient and simply put, good for their bottom line.
Domestic factories can always be part of our future remedial attempts to get the national economy rolling again, thinking that the current dilemma of international labor arbitrage is a kind of natural phenomena leads us to think in terms (spreading the wealth) that will never suffice in a democratic capitalistic society. This is why the offshoring and outsourcing was a disaster for the worlds largest consumer society, the nature of monetary circulation as it applies to nation states as opposed to corporate gain should be obvious to most but it isn't..
Looks like a different kind of "white flight" may be in the offing for many cities, the gentrification of Portland and areas of Seattle, San Francisco, and other west coast havens of hi tech has come at a very high price. Now these folks will be heading to, Montana? Well, they will probably be caught up in what my Montana relatives call the "Californication" of a once beautiful area.
The OP's sentiments could well be an echo of the poor who have been displaced by the young moneyed techies of the new urban discontent. Bozeman, Missoula, Polson, and a host of other Montana towns will now be looked at as the last bastions for west coast seekers who've become disillusioned with their own version of utopia.
Those areas have seen an explosion of newcomers with more money than the old populace ever dreamed of, high housing prices have driven native Montanans to the far reaches of the state. When they return for visits they see a new kind of Montana, one that shouts money. The dream of urban renewal was nothing more than a social experiment in economic displacement, ironically, that same set of circumstances is driving many of the newcomers away in favor of those with even more money.
In Mike Davis's book, A Planet of Slums, he speaks to the extensive reach of the moneyed class with regard to the displacement of the worlds poor. In the book he points out the need for the worlds rural poor to be looking to the cities for sustenance, a phenomenon underway in America and gaining speed. Maybe we need a better spread of our industrial base in order that we can live in those uncrowded spaces without creating the animosity that usually goes along with the rise of a two tier economy.
The old white flight from cities to suburbs is done. The new white flight is more complicated and isn't all white.
There is the flight of middle class white families who simply can't afford to live in the luxury city. There is the flight of affluent and rich whites, both techies and retirees into the urban core, which results in the first one in the preceding sentence. The luxury city, under the banner of new urbanism, has gentrified itself with sushi bars and yoga studios, but no place for families and kids. It is geared toward transient, young, white collar, and often childfree adults who want the "fun" as they have no responsibility. It's a paradise for dating the most beautiful and young.
The original working class people, including poor whites, immigrants, and minorities, are pushed out. These people are deemed tasteless in their choice of Apple Bees and big box shopping. Instead, rich whites shop morally at local stores and authentic Indian restaurants. These people are also deemed exnophobia and anti Immigrant, as they compete for a shrinking number of low skill jobs anyone can do. The rich whites cry that they are surrounded by anti immigrant rednecks, but hey the rich whites want to save on home services by using cheaper labor. They fully forget that a city like portland was built by working class folks, who may not understand wine but had a good heart. You, didn't build that!
What the op shows is the negative effects of perverted urbanism that serves developers and politicians in their pockets. As a nation, we no longer care about those in the middle. We no longer care about those raising our next generation. We no longer care about those who actually build the most important pillars of our society.
Our two political parties cater to their rich and their poor and squeeze the middle. The rich want a dependent poor class and the middle class pay the bills.
The old white flight from cities to suburbs is done. The new white flight is more complicated and isn't all white.
There is the flight of middle class white families who simply can't afford to live in the luxury city. There is the flight of affluent and rich whites, both techies and retirees into the urban core, which results in the first one in the preceding sentence. The luxury city, under the banner of new urbanism, has gentrified itself with sushi bars and yoga studios, but no place for families and kids. It is geared toward transient, young, white collar, and often childfree adults who want the "fun" as they have no responsibility. It's a paradise for dating the most beautiful and young.
The original working class people, including poor whites, immigrants, and minorities, are pushed out. These people are deemed tasteless in their choice of Apple Bees and big box shopping. Instead, rich whites shop morally at local stores and authentic Indian restaurants. These people are also deemed exnophobia and anti Immigrant, as they compete for a shrinking number of low skill jobs anyone can do. The rich whites cry that they are surrounded by anti immigrant rednecks, but hey the rich whites want to save on home services by using cheaper labor. They fully forget that a city like portland was built by working class folks, who may not understand wine but had a good heart. You, didn't build that!
What the op shows is the negative effects of perverted urbanism that serves developers and politicians in their pockets. As a nation, we no longer care about those in the middle. We no longer care about those raising our next generation. We no longer care about those who actually build the most important pillars of our society.
Our two political parties cater to their rich and their poor and squeeze the middle. The rich want a dependent poor class and the middle class pay the bills.
Well stated. The cities of today seem to have a large dis-inviting element among their populace. Portland of the sixties was a neat place with a huge racial/economic diversity that created the little enclaves of affordable housing and working class neighborhoods that university kids found to be an inviting choice for living. Older whites were leaving the city, and the old homes were now in the poor section of town, and affordable for those college kids.
Unfortunately, those same kids grew up and went on to making a ton of money, which they promptly utilized in the effort to gentrify and destroy the very thing they "discovered" in their youth. Today these old neighborhoods are every bit as exclusive as those in the posh burbs of their parent's day. The young and hip strolling along the Ave with their kids, sporting their ripped jeans and North Face jackets are being every bit the snobs they once felt a revulsion for. Urban irony..
Portland still has some of it's old charm, but it's slowly giving way to a new upscale crowd of entitled types who openly disdain those of the working class while happily exploiting them to rebuild their high end homes and repair their high end cars. This scene is being played out across America, no longer will we see a city as the melting pot of cultures and interests, it's reminiscent of the Who's lyrics, when I see these hipsters of the new order I can't help but think----"Meet the new boss".
Portland still has some of it's old charm, but it's slowly giving way to a new upscale crowd of entitled types who openly disdain those of the working class while happily exploiting them to rebuild their high end homes and repair their high end cars.
How are they really being "exploited"? Business is business and some of the more skilled guys in the trades working on new construction and repairing cars are probably making more money than a lot of the underemployed or unemployed transplants flocking here(for even professional class transplant with a job in hand and enough equity to buy a nice 100-year-old house there's probably five twenty somethings with a degree that end up working in a coffee shop or bar).
I can understand all the frustration and anger about what modern cities have become recently--though things change--and in part it's due to the fact that there's suddenly a lot of demand to live in certain types of cities--though for a long time in the US(and Canada) what was built in the post-war period wasn't those types of cities. To the extent that every early 20th century streetcar suburb looks like a candidate for re-development. The bourgiefication of cities isn't necessarily everyone's cup of tea--on the other hand though once manufacturing dried up in the inner cities and middle class residents starting leaving in the 1950s--cities promoted gentrification in the last 30 years themselves to repair their tax bases. It's sort like a quick fix of a drug for a lot of cities these days, though it's happened all over the western world at this point. I was just in London and England--and it's everywhere there as well.
Man, - a lot of you guys are a bunch of whiners and glass half empty types. For crying out loud - stop with the BS.
"Geez- There is $ coming into our town and making things worth more. Ohh noo."
Holy crap - what do you want? Detroit?? You can get a house cheap there - Go for it.
It is tiring to read the hysterical, end of world as we know it, clap trap streaming forth on this Portland site some days.
The world has more wealth, food, is safer, and less sickly that at any time in history. You live in a very nice city and probably have a lifestyle that 99.9% of the planet envies. Yet you sit on the computer and talk about how some other group is "destroying this" and "wrecking that."
Grow up.
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