don't bother, you've lost any credibility you might have ever had. no one cares what you have to say. you are a fool

go bother your wife

And good morning to you!

ugh.
No one cares what you have to say anymore Matt...don't you get it????
You are a one trick pony with the race card held high....boooooring....I think you have done it to death already.
If anyone needs a lesson in racial equality/disparity I hope they don't look to you for education...*gulp*.
condolences to your better half.

ha ha. "go away" and "over it" you obviously care enough to read this post and comment on it...at 7 in the morning.

Actually what baffles me more than anything else is how you could be interested in this topic and manage to write a post that doesn't actually reference a singe specific from Portland's history of urban renewal and subjects such as race.

You can actually find a fair amount of stuff about it online if you look.

(Although, for the record, "ethnic cleansing" isn't a synonym for "moving the colored people" -- it's a synonym for "genocide", so the joking use of the term in this context is rather extraordinarily and hyperventilatingly over the top.)

Did you live here before 2000? The Pearl wasn't an ethnic neighborhood—it was a post-industrial wasteland. Acres of empty warehouses and rubble, with a few brave artists and mechanics scattered around. Regardless of how you feel about its current life as a yuppie playground, it's still an improvement on what it was before: a "neighborhood" so frightening that we built the Lovejoy ramp over it so no one would have to see it.

matt davis= white guilt

Wow, are people actually lining up to be piss ants this morning? Keep on reading and learning, Matt. Good for you.
(Really… you people.)

Nice clip from The Mighty Boosh. Well played, Matt.

Mr. Davis has earned his own place of disrespect. Let him lie on his own bed, along with his green card donating wife.

My, don't we have a lot to thank her for.

"go away," who said I donated the green card? Matt paid me for it, fair and square.

Bravo Ben.

Heaven forbid one do any actual real community based research. You know, talking to people who've been here longer than 15 minutes.

Because CLEARLY all we might ever need to know about this subject is contained in a BOOK which isn't even ABOUT THIS CITY.

But I can see why you choose not to do so. Well, that might totally undermine this flimsy argument. Shocking.

I am seriously worried. Cesar Chavez has made me a Mercury junkie.

Matt, research the Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal. It exposes how a large employer destroyed their own backyard and the homes of many employees.

Six months after the I-5 freeway took houses from many elderly immigrants, they were dead. It felt like a funeral a week at St. Stanislaus and Blessed Sacrament (BS, for us wool stocking protestants ;-}

China Town....well the city leaders have done a good job leveraging that real estate.

The Del Monte raid took North Portland families away in one afternoon. We lost pta members, we lost a mom who worked swing shift and also volunteered everyday at school, we lost my child's playmate. Here one day and gone the next. The media attention given the Cesar Chavez Blvd. issue has families scared of another raid.

In my neighborhood an apartment building was converted into condos and we lost eight families; two white, two latino, two black americans, one asian and one african family; 29 children. They could not find housing within our school boundaries.

Many of us know we are next. I couldn't afford to buy a house in my neighborhood at the current prices and when I get older the property taxes will force me out. Or the city, wanting higher density for light rail will rezone my family home to high density. If I stay put they will build around me.

So the city has been screwing my neighborhood for decades. I thank the powers that be that PDC jerks were too afraid to stand on the corner of Mississippi and Shaver or they would have screwed that up also.

Dear "Go Away." You don't like Matt. We get it. Now either add something of substance to this conversation, or follow the advice of your "name". Seriously.

Many communities in Portland have been destroyed in the name of "progress".
In 1959, the newly formed Portland Development Commission began its first major project, the South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project. The idea was to get rid of the “blight” in the downtown SW area from Sheridan street down to Front and over to Market and from First through Fourth Streets. This encompassed the Italian and Jewish districts.
The once vibrant center of the Italian and Jewish community effectively vanished, as residents and businesses were forced to scatter throughout the city and assimilate into other neighborhoods.

Matt, when did you move to Portland? Last month? People know this stuff. I understand that you're trying to catch up on Portland history, and that's cool, but the message comes across as patronizing and uninformed when your general attitude is that just because you're unaware of Oregon's dubious past then, by extension, everyone else must be unaware too, so in your mind you need to take it upon yourself to educate and show the lowly local yokels how to truly be tolerant. Ugh. Try putting the shoe on the other foot and see how ridiculous your posts come across.

Portland actually hired Robert Moses as a consultant in the 1950’s and is responsible for most of Portland’s urban renewal. His proposals included almost every freeway in Portland (and some which were not built such as the Mt. Hood Freeway). As well as the South Auditorium District which took out Portland’s version of the Lower East Side, however part of this area still remains around Lair Hill Park and there is a very old wood synagogue there as well as the Failing school where Jewish immigrant kids went to learn English. He also ripped up most of Old Town which once had the most cast iron buildings in the US outside of New York and proposed to tear down union station. Emanuel Hospital and the Fremont Bridge overpass destroyed most of Portland’s African American community (and now yuppies and hipsters seem to be finishing the job).

Robert Moses’ legacy is actually being revisited due to a major exhibition on him in New York this past summer. Some critics now feel that he actually saved New York by modernizing its transit, providing decent housing for hundreds of thousands of people, and building thousands of acres of parks and swimming pools which are actually quit beautiful and innovative. I guess the same argument could be made for Portland.

I would recommend you read the Power Broker by Robert Caro, a biography of Moses, and the Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue which deals with the larger issues around Urban Renewal such as white flight, deindustrialization, and housing policy.

My previous comment about the Pearl aside, "urban renewal" has long been a tool for crushing minority populations in this town (see Albina, the first two incarnations of China Town, the aforementioned Jewish and Italian neighborhoods, and Vanport). But that doesn't mean it's inherently evil--just hamfisted and incompetently executed. The PDC didn't want to kill chinatown, but they didn't stop to think that tearing up all the streets for two years might make everybody move out.

If urban renewal projects are handled gracefully (as in the Pearl and, soon, in Old Town), everybody benefits. Portland and other cities just haven't been to good at that thus far.

".....planners made sure that the ethnic neighborhood got transformed into something more congenial to their dreams of social engineering"

Matt,

Any time you read a statement of support for a theory that includes the words "social engineering" (like the phrase above) I guarantee you that you are not reading an objective analysis, but the words of a dogmatist who has no interest in sharing anything but their own ideology. "Social engineering" is pure propaganda. It's a clichéd phrase, a red herring so-to-speak, that seeks to pre-emptively dumb-down any objective or meaningful analysis of the topic. By all means, read the book. I like that you have an interest in the relationship between urban planning and race, but please take what you read with a grain of salt.

That being said, throughout this whole Cesar Chavez fiasco and accusations of racism (true or not), my thoughts keep coming back to one specific incident: In 1991 Overlook Neighborhood (81% white, 9% black, 4% hispanic at the time) fought and succeeded in closing the Failing Street Pedestrian Bridge that connected Overlook with Boise (68% black, 34.5% white, 4% hispanic at the time). It was felt by the residents of Overlook that crimes being committed in the neighborhood were caused due to an undesirable element coming over from Boise who would then "escape" back to Boise via the pedestrian bridge. Whether statistics supported this belief, I do not know and cannot confirm. I will say in all honesty that there were parts of Boise that I felt uncomfortable going to, however there were also parts of Overlook I was also uncomfortable in. Nevertheless, by the year 2003, Boise (by now 41.8% black, 34.5% white, 14% hispanic according to the 2000 census) was re-connected to Overlook (now 69.5% white, 9% black, 9% hispanic) when the residents considered Boise to now be safe.

I am not saying that Overlook residents were or are racists, nor do I have the knowledge to judge that race was a factor in this occurrence I've related. Nevertheless, I am now also a resident of Overlook. I know nearly all of the neighbors around me, and we are a racially diverse lot. My experience in Overlook has been that neighbors here are more involved, caring, and friendly with each other than in ANY neighborhood I've ever lived at in Portland (that includes all quadrants of the city except NW), and I can't imagine that any of my neighbors harbor any negative thoughts on individuals of different ethnicities. Thus, from my subjective experience living in Overlook, I am led to believe that race really has not been a factor in the Cesar Chavez/Interstate issue.

However, I do know that when people talk about Interstate Avenue and Cesar Chavez, my thoughts strangely and inevitably go to the Failing Street pedestrian bridge and it does raise un-resolved questions in my mind.

Lastly, Please note: I believe there is a common assumption among many, and probably even you Matt, that our neighborhood is becoming more "white" due to Portland's urban planning practices. This is simply not true. Overlook is more diverse than it used to be and this is a factor that should not be overlooked.

Caro on Moses is good, but far afield.

Probably somewhere in the PSU library is Joe Uris' text on the Emanuel Hospital urban renewal program. While you're there, drop by and see Carl Abbott, author of Portland: Planning, Politics and Growth in a Twentieth Century City. Carl will give you a book list of all sorts such as Thomas Vaughan and Kimbark McCall, and point you towards the excellent dissertation by Chris Sawyer on Skid Road. Then go get Jewel Lansing for local politics and finish off with Jane Adams for an elevated perspective. Finally, telephone books at the OHS and the poetry of Walt Curtis.

Its great to see Walt Curtis still strolling around the old Pine Street Theater (La Luna) neighborhood on a near regular basis. Not everything, or everybody, has disappeared.
Jewell Lansing's book was great too, btw.

Thanks for all your reading recommendations. I've been in Portland since April 2006, and as a reporter I think it's my responsibility to brush up on these issues. This blog seems like a good place to do it, because I can get your opinions and feedback on my perceptions. I appreciate them.

While some of my perceptions may be old news to some, they're still news to people like me, who've just come here for the "livability" or whatever else, and now, we're starting to like it in the city. Except, there's some weird stuff going on in the background that makes us a little uncomfortable. I appreciate it when people help me get a better handle on things, so thanks again.

And my wife forced me to read The Power Broker already. Fascinating book.

Urban Planning, like rock and roll music or the internet can be used for good or evil.

Ditto the Carl Abbott book, and I in fact have an extra copy I will give you.

Cheers,

And as hard as it is to believe, some people have actually moved here since Matt did!! I know.... So, J.A. don't assume everyone here is old-school PDX and knows the history as well as you do.

A bit of history from my point of view:
In the late 50's and early 60's, the freeway divided Boise and Overlook Neighborhoods. Both neighborhoods lobbied very hard for the Failing Pedestrian overpass. It was not in the original plan. At that time, my family shopped mostly on Mississippi. Many merchants on Mississippi did business the old way. They carried credit and knew their customers personally. The Butcher was one shop, the bakery, fish house, miliner, general store and pharmacy. All separate inderpendent businesses. We even had a casket maker.
The breakdown of ethnicity in Dan's post, does not examine the percentage of whites who were 1st generation immigrants. Neighbors who spoke with an accent, even if they were white, would be refused service, denied the purchase of a house or not hired. When redlining became illegal the ability to live anywhere in the city was very tempting for everyone that had been denied choice. Banks found new ways to deny credit to people and other nationalities covertly, i.e.not to loaning on older homes, poor wiring, non-permitted additions. Even if a Bank would give a mortgage, many required 50% down. The banks really put the hooks into the African American community in an awful way. World War II had opened up economic opportunities and NOBODY wanted to go backwards. Families from both sides of the freeway started moving out. But, we were hit hardest by the loss of the middle class more affluent Black families that left. The suburbs and a better life were calling everybody.
In June of 1969 three of the old businesses were burned to the ground on Mississippi Ave. North Catholic High School burned. We had riots at Jefferson.
Things were not going to be the same for a long time.
Ask Mayor Potter if he was Captain of North Precinct when Failing Street overpass closed. I am sure he remembers the riots. In 1991, many Portland police officers rode alone. If someone (of any race, we have our share of white trash) committed a crime on the west side of I-5 it was an easy escape to run the overpass. I remember an officer pursued someone, leaving the patrol car unattended and somebody stole the cruiser. The East side of the freeway wanted nothing to do with the prostitution that was pretty darn rampant up and down Interstate. Captain Tom Potter was instrumental in working with the neighborhood, motel owners and ladies of questionable repute. And he was an honest cop, a quality that my neighbors invested a huge amount of trust and support in. Honest cops were not the norm. He was very good at listening to all sides, clearing out the cultural/economic disparities and identifying common goals. He wasn't the only one bringing people together, but he was a stake holder. Things started to move forward.
When the overpass was opened up again, it was time. Working through the Albina Community plan had added another layer of understanding. Neighbors started to filter the many factors that impact the livability of a community. People on both sides of I-5 recognized the freeway was an unwanted physical divide. We wanted to reconnect. In 1991, Mississippi Ave. was a very intimidating place but the overpass was reopened.
This is the way I remember things. Please remember that my perception of events and their impact on society changes with time. I submit this simply as a point of conversation. Respectfully, Herein1956

I'm just going to echo Dan's comment above. And, since Mr. Davis has chosen to somewhat arbitrarily bring Lents into this conversation, I'll point out that Lents is steadily becoming one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city.