Is Portland now such a hot destination for young people to move to that the city’s in danger of losing its soul? Has Portland earned a reputation as the whitest major city in America by forcing African Americans out to the margins, while gentrification transformed such boulevards as Alberta Street and Mississippi Avenue into boutique havens? Those are just some of the questions raised in CNN’s “United Shades of America,” comedian and commentator W. Kamau Bell’s documentary series. In the Sunday, May 29 episode, titled “Is it Cool to be Hip?” Bell spends time in Portland, talking with community members about the changing face of the Rose City.
It seems one of the silliest existential questions I’ve attempted to puzzle my way through: “Is Portland too cool for its own good?” The good news is that we’re still not Cleveland, but there’s little doubt Puddletown is experiencing some significant changes and accompanying growing pains.
The debate of over whether Portland is still “cool” or “hip” is something I’ll leave to those with a much better chance than I of actually being either of those things. Having lived here off and on for 33 years, I can attest to the reality that today’s Portland is not the same city I arrived in straight out of college. The buzzword these days is “density,” and as you drive around the Rose City, you’ll see a plethora of new apartment buildings under construction. It’s become kind of a running joke to locals, because it seems everywhere one turns there’s another apartment building going up. The rental market in Portland is pretty tight these days- the vacancy rate hovers around 4%- which means that many new apartments are rented as soon as they’re completed…if not before. Making matters even more difficult is that Portland rents are ridiculous. The cost of housing here may not be what it is in San Francisco…but it’s not a stretch to argue that Portland’s heading in that direction.
Combine the frenzied apartment building with creeping gentrification, and one can understand how and why Portland is becoming even Whiter, younger, and more affluent than it already is.
“Gentrification is an issue that affects every major city,” Bell says. Exploring the topic through Portland’s experience made sense, Bell said in a recent phone conversation.
“I’ve sort of struggled with my own feelings about Portland,” says Bell, who has performed here several times, at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival and in venues around town.
“This is a major city, and yet I’ll be onstage at a comedy event, and it’s all white people in the audience. The hipsters of Portland get really testy about that: ‘It’s not my fault!’”
But saying “it’s not my fault,” Bell adds, just means running away from thinking about Portland’s overwhelming whiteness, and what it means.
If you want to see what “progress” looks like up close, Portland could serve as a laboratory for observing the changes wrought by economic forces generated by a continued influx of wealth. As neighborhoods are rebuilt and gentrified, opportunity looks for new places to land. In Portland, the inexorable gentrification process has moved into older neighborhoods, driving up housing prices and eventually forcing lower-income (and in many cases, long-term) residents to move on. As is true with any city impacted by gentrification, the communities most adversely impacted are minorities. Never renowned for diversity, Portland is becoming even less diverse as market forces gentrify neighborhoods, drive up the cost of living, and price residents out.
IS Portland too cool? Too hip? Are we in danger of losing our soul? I suppose that depends on one’s perspective and definition of those terms, but things have and will certainly continue to change. Such is the way of the world…though the city of Portland and its people could do a much better job of taking into account those most impacted by Puddletown’s evolving socioeconomic landscape. Change may be inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it can’t and shouldn’t be managed to mitigate its more adverse impacts.
Then again, the Rose City has always excelled at looking ahead and taking care of those with money, power, and White skin. Money talks, right??
