With my niece in town attending Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, I’ve had the pleasure of accompanying her to camp each day via tried-and-true Tri-Met number 8. You step on at the Lloyd Center, then sit back to enjoy Portland’s premier socioeconomic bus tour. Beginning with upscale Irvington, the bus slowly meanders up to the more humble Woodlawn neighborhood. During this stroll, even the most inattentive and absentminded among us can notice the pressure of the recession (yeah, I tossed out the ‘R’ word) make greater impact the further you climb towards Dekum, then on to the Northern tip of MLK. Combined with this is the sweet-and-sour taste of gentrification as you hit Alberta.
As an auto-less person that cycles to work each day, I rarely get the opportunity to check-out the myriad of bus routes available to me, so this has been both a pain and a pleasure. I get so darned caught-up in the simplicity and joy of my daily 3.5-mile commute through inner NE and SE, that I fail to remember how the recession, combined with gentrification, has affected so many Portlanders. Yes, there are people like me on the 8-line, who really can’t afford to own/drive a car; but I suspect that there are also a lot of people on that bus who can barely afford to make their rent. This is a pressure that I don’t have to face every day. Bushco policies and urban gentrification are making the issue ever more complex, twisting the vice one high-priced-boutique-turn at a time.
One of my favorite papers discussed the issue of a city’s attractiveness and the associated effects of gentrification in a recent article, which drives home an issue that’s been impacting Portland, quietly, for years. San Francisco’s Mission district saw a massive backlash during the dot com boom that held the baton of the gentrification surge. Portland hasn’t seen this, yet. With the economy pulling a Titanic, steam starts to fill the cooker. What happens next is either the birth of an amazing meal, or a potentially big mess. A mess that’ll affect us all.
This is an issue we should all be concerned about. Yeah, I’d love to have access to a Pix and Laughing Planet in all of my favorite neighborhoods (no offense to Pix and Laughing Planet), but it comes with a price. Is this price a good thing? Is it inevitable? Or is it the sign of something else?
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It is what it is my friend.
Let’s look at it from a different perspective. You are getting to know your neighbors maybe by having small businesses open in your neighborhood. These small boutiques and businesses allow me to leave my car in the driveway all the time because I can walk or ride my bike to the local brewpub or store. Isn’t that a good thing? I see the changes not as the negative side of gentrification, but as the positive side. N. Mississippi used to be a boarded up crack den. Now they host some of the most amazing neighborhood events Portland has seen in years. All of this took place in the last 8 years. Is that a bad thing? I think not.
excellent perspective –exactly the type of visibility i’m looking for. i agree to a great extent, but i think there’s a lot more here… i’m just not sure which layer of the onion to peel back next.
I used to drive that 8 bus, over 5 years ago.
It is a fascinating route from a socioeconomic point of view. The people were pretty nice overall.(except for the snoots up at the hospital)
HOWEVER, I think it is one of the worst bus routes to be stuck with from a bus drivers point of view.
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