It was quite the nice autumn in Portland this year, with what felt like above average sunshine and nice temps. I'm amazed I managed to capture any of it based on the fact I'm a third-year architecture student now. This will be the second to last photothread of 2013; the final one will be really quite something special. Until then, enjoy a taste of fall in the City of Roses.
Gorgeous, gorgeous North American-style city. It's cities like Portland that make me think maybe we didn't completely **** up everything after ditching old European style.
__________________ Note to self: "The plural of anecdote is not evidence."
It doesn't have the intense density that cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia have.. but what it does have is incredible bike infrastructure (by American standards) and well-planned mass transit.
I usually don't care for PDX skyline shots b/c in the past the downtown has tended to resemble a big suburban office park, but I have to say after seeing this set I'm really impressed with how much the core has densified. There seems to be a lot more mid-rises and the city just looks overall much more mature and vibrant. THank you for sharing.
Many of those pics were taken in Portland's Goose Hollow neighborhood, which belies the idea that Portland is a kind of yuppie paradise too chi-chi for the urban big leagues. In fact, like so much of Portland, the density in Goose Hollow comes with its own grit - the homeless, the working poor, and some obviously wacked-out personalities. It's not San Francisco by a long shot since the balance favors the middle class (and upper middle) over the downtrodden. But to walk down Burnside is to be aware that this is, for the moment at least, a real city in ways most other American cities have long ceased to be. This is not gentrified monotony. This is how America really looked 50 years ago before urban renewal, white flight, and the the evisceration of authentic streetscapes. Portland may grow more prosperous but I suspect it will always have its urban instincts front and center before our amazed eyes.
I always look forward to your Portland photo threads. Awesome.
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"You need both a public and a private position." --Hillary Clinton, speaking behind closed doors to the National Multi-Family Housing Council, 2013
The city always has this really capitivating aesthetic to it in pictures, something I can't ever quite put into words. It puts of this kind of we-keep-to-ourselves-and/but-we-know-what-we're-doing isolation vibe, like a little town that grew up in the woods and continues to progress with little mind for what's going on anywhere else.
Great shots.
__________________ Where the trees are the right height