Portland gentrification/infill (#0474)

This series of pictures are used to provide discussion on gentrification/infill in the neighborhood areas of Portland.

Though I’ve been in Portland many times over the past 20 years, almost all of that time was for the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association which meets there about every 3 years. Since the Portland meetings are in a downtown hotel, most of my exposure to Portland was to downtown and nearby areas on the west side of the Williamette. I’ve always found Portland to be a very enjoyable city to visit and have been impressed by its efforts to keep a sustainable and pedestrian/transit/bike friendly environment. Considering its ‘green’ focus, I was surprised a number of years ago to see the spread of development in the downtown and nearby areas – the amount of older buildings that were being converted into what appeared to be higher income housing and retail, and the increase in tall, multi-story housing complexes. What I did not know was what was happening in the neighborhoods.

On this trip for that same meeting, I stayed further out. Part of the reason for staying further out was simply economics – being retired I now have to pay all of the costs to go to the conference (which is still worth it). Also, though, with retirement I’ve expanded my interest in how architecture and infrastructure are related to social environment, so I’m enjoying exploring further.

These pictures are taken in the Eliot neighborhood, which I discovered while looking for a grocery store near my motel. From what I could see in my explorations of other parts of the Portland metropolitan area, the sorts of gentrification/infill that was happening in Eliot were happening all over the area, though probably more densely in Eliot since it is relatively close to downtown.

What is of interest in this photo is the sense of openness from this particular point. Not seen but on my right are a number of older homes, across the street an older retail/housing building with nicely upgraded retail space and apparently apartments above, a green section past (north) it which is a block of older homes (see next picture), and then newer housing/retail space further north.