Joseph White shares The View From Ecotopia, or Portland, Oregon:
Portland is a green place, surrounded by temperate, Douglas fir rainforests and dotted with lush gardens. Portland is also Green in the political sense, at least, more so than Detroit. Years ago, Portland’s political leaders blocked construction of a freeway through the heart of downtown, and took other measures designed to limit suburban sprawl and put the automobile in its place as a servant rather than a master. In 1993, Portland was the first American city to craft a global-warming action plan, Mayor Tom Potter recently told a congressional committee. Mayor Potter said that per capita greenhouse gas emissions have dropped, and that since 1990, Portland’s local greenhouse gas emissions are down 1%.Portland isn’t the Garden of Eden. I spent a half hour or so stuck in rush hour traffic, negotiating my way through a maze of intersecting highways where the freeways that ring Portland’s downtown interconnect. Portland’s streets have plenty of cars, and despite the complex land-use rules the region adopted to limit sprawl, there seemed to be no shortage of big-box stores and shopping centers along Highway 26 west of town. From the local press, it’s clear there’s tension between Portlanders who fit the city’s Green image and those who want more freedom to do what they want with their property, including develop parking lots or office complexes.
Still, Portlanders who so choose can spend more of their time outside the confines of a car than I can as a resident of Metro Detroit. The city has a light-rail system that connects various neighborhoods to downtown offices and to the airport. At quitting time on a weekday, the MAX light rail connecting downtown to the neighborhoods west of town was full. The system has reported rising ridership. That said, the main highways are still jammed during rush hours. Portland has a long way to go to get the bulk of commuters to give up that “alone-time” in the car.
Portland’s efforts to limit sprawl have helped to sustain the value of properties in the city’s old neighborhoods, which in turn has encouraged people to renovate older homes and apartments within walking or biking distance of downtown businesses. To a tourist from Detroit, Portland feels like a super-sized college town, not a city as I know it. But guess what? Even Detroit is trying to revive the “walk to work” lifestyle, encouraging conversion of abandoned downtown buildings into loft apartments. Just last week, General Motors entered a partnership to develop residences along the city’s riverfront, within walking distance of GM’s headquarters.
In Suburbia, the nation where so many Americans live, homes and businesses are usually segregated. That segregation is viewed as desirable, even though it can turn a routine shopping trip into a 20-minute drive. The Ecotopian urbanite, by contrast, accepts that within walking distance of home there could be: A world-class bookstore, three coffee shops, a liquor mart, a grocery store, an art gallery, a service station, a chummy neighborhood restaurant, a concert hall, a designer furniture outlet and a sex-toy shop. That’s a sample of what I found walking around my downtown hotel. The answer to your next question is: Because the shop had clever, PG-rated window displays facing the street, just like an old fashioned department store.
In this Ecotopian lifestyle, the car becomes an occasional means of escape to adventure, not a daily commuting appliance. I found my way, by rented Subaru Legacy sedan, to a walk on the beach, a roadside record store housed in a barn packed floor to ceiling with vinyl LPs and Elvis memorabilia, and a stand that sold elk jerky for $10 a package. I probably burned $20 or so of gas on this semi-authorized fact-finding mission for a new travel column for the Blackberry set, “Out of Office Assistant,” that I intend to pitch to my editors some day.