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Originally Posted by AshbyQuin
Cost of Living: Philadelphia. Portland would be a "bargain" city by West Coast standards, although still more pricier than Philadelphia.
Walkability and Biking: Philadelphia by a mile, however, Portland's pre-annexed neighborhoods are pretty walkable/bikeable. One thing in Portland's favor is the urban tree canopy layout within its core, which makes for a better experience in the summers.
This is a thing of beauty. https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5195...8192?entry=ttu |
Yeah, wish there were more streets like that in our central business district (the residential portions of Center City have some of the best tree canopy in the city — which, I'm sorry to say, is a title that's easy to claim given our poor coverage). Northwest Philly, especially the three neighborhoods above the Wissahickon Creek — Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill — is also especially bosky.
There is a program called
TreePhilly that has as its aim improving the city's tree canopy. It distributes free street and yard trees to residents who request one. One roadblock standing in the way of progress on this front: Many rowhouse owners believe that trees damage water lines with their roots. The truth is, they do so only if the water pipe is leaking already. But still, between putting tree pits on the sidewalks, which are often as narrow as the streets, and worrying about overhead utility wires, which run over just about every main grid street outside Center City, the TreePhilly folks face some challenges in fulfilling their mission.
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Crime: Philadelphia, but you'll more than likely be fine should you use "street smarts" and that goes for any city including Portland.
Income: That's pretty vague. Do you mean which city would provide you with a higher disposable income? What is considered a livable income in each city?
Outdoor Activities: Pretty hard to beat the PNW so Portland, but Philadelphia holds its own, especially in the metro.
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A point I need to underscore regarding violent crime from someone who came close to being a victim:
If you live in most of the city and don't get involved in certain illicit activities, the odds of your becoming a victim of violent crime drop dramatically. Yes, you do have the occasional armed robbery, but they're not as frequent as the Negadelphians would have you believe. Most of the violent crime occurs in parts of North Central Philadelphia, Kensington and Southwest Philadelphia.
(Germantown, the neighborhood I call home, has issues with violent crime as well, but most of it occurs on its east side. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the neighborhood's northwest quadrant, which is also its most affluent section, to anyone. Something else to note about Philadelphia is that it has a patchwork-quilt quality: instead of vast swaths of one thing or another, you can find pockets of contrasting character (and demographics) cheek by jowl. One block north of me is a former low-income housing tower that got dynamited and replaced with low-income townhouses, while the block I live on is solidly middle-class. And three blocks east-northeast of me is a pocket of affluence in the middle of all this. And I neither hear sirens nor gunshots, nor do I come home to find the street blocked off by crime-scene tape, the way I did when I lived near the central intersection in East Germantown.)
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Originally Posted by fluffydelusions
Been to both cities many times and personally I prefer Portland but I am a very outdoorsy person who enjoys hiking/nature. If you are of a similar mindset, Portland would be the easy winner. The PNW is very hard to beat in terms of outdoor activities. There is an amazing park right inside the city that is 5200 acres called Forest Park and just minutes outside the city limits you have tons of trails and amazing hikes. In terms of crime you got it right, Portland has high property crime whilst Philly has high violent crime. There is an unwritten rule out here on the west coast and that is too not leave valuables in plain sight in your car. I'd say most of the property crime is peoples cars getting broken into. In terms of climate, Portland is much more similar to Amsterdam...Autumn through Spring is mostly overcast and rainy with mild temps...summer is a bit different however as it gets warm to hot with little to no rain. It's considered a Mediterranean climate while Philly is humid subtropical.
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I haven't been to Portland, but I do know the Philadelphia area and agree that Portland tops it for the outdoorsy stuff. But we do have some outdoor opportunities that I think go underappreciated.
One of them is in the category I boldfaced, and I can walk to it (its closest part is about one mile from where I live). This is
Wissahickon Valley Park, a 2,600-acre wilderness that splits Northwest Philadelphia in two. It was created in the 1820s as part of Fairmount Park, which in turn was established to protect the Schuylkill (River), which fed the Fairmount Water Works, from industrial development that would degrade the quality of the water. Except for a road leading to a parking lot next to the Valley Green Inn and the ford across Wissahickon Creek at Bell's Mill Road, the entire park is off-limits to automobile traffic, most notably Forbidden Drive, the wide, rocky road that parallels the creek. As noted in the Wikipedia article linked here, a huge protest in the 1920s thwarted the Fairmount Park Commission's plan to open the Wissahickon Turnpike to auto traffic. "Forbidden Drive" has remained forbidden ever since. Horseback riders, walkers and mountain bikers (the rocks on parts of the drive are too large for street bikes to handle) all love the road. Smaller trails, some of them challenging (there's a color-code system that indicates the level of difficulty), lace the smaller streams and ravines that feed the creek in the park.
A National Natural Landmark, Wissahickon Valley Park is also home to the site of the first paper mill in the United States,
Historic Rittenhouse Town. It's located along the banks of the Monoshone Creek, one of the Wissahickon's chief tributaries. Lincoln Drive follows its buried streambed, and it gives you a glimpse into what things would have been like had Forbidden Drive been opened to cars — which is to say, not terribly pleasant for everyone else.
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