http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=121987190940181100

Having lived in other parts of the country I think you’re missing the big picture. Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are in the same league because they broadly have weather and a little eco-culture in common. That’s all random people in Dallas or Philadelphia know or care. My extended family can’t even keep straight which city is in which state.

Port of Seattle ranks as 5th or 6th in terms of volume of containers handled annually, trading places with Tacoma, and following NY/NJ, LA, Long Beach, and Oakland.

Oh, and your whole “economic might” diatribe is pointless. The issue was if Seattle had a brain it would make better decisions regarding land use, which you yourself acknowledge Portland excels at improving their livability. And for the hope that Seattle will follow and learn from our neighbors to the north and south… yeah, don’t hold your breath

I lived in Portland for a year and a half and I agree with your sentiment. I found it so damn hard to find a job that paid well, and I found it even harder to find people who wanted to work hard. I love to go back and visit often and I do miss the cyclist, walker and transit friendliness of the city. But deep down I like to work hard and have purpose in my life. Seattle for me thanks.

For the longest time I couldn’t say why. All the arguments as to why Portland was a better city made perfectly logical sense, but for some reason I just couldn’t articulate, I never for a moment wanted to move there over Seattle. After living here for a year I finally have an answer:

Portland, culturally, economically, politically, is a very big town. Seattle is a city. Seattle (combined with Tacoma) has the third largest container port in the United States (behind #1, LA and #2, NYC). We are a global city with a global presence, heavily connected to the global economy.

Microsoft and Boeing are the hubs of two major high tech industries that concentrate here in Seattle. Portland’s major multinationals (Nike etc.) are fewer and are far less influential on a global scale.

Seattle has the University of Washington, which is an institution of global significance as well. Portland doesn’t even have the flagship of Oregon’s university system (U of O is in Eugene). Portland State is a well dressed community college in comparison.

Anyone in this country can pick the Seattle skyline out of a photo lineup (owing to our iconic monument), Portland looks like any of several dozen river cities.

Finally, I will add something which we can take little credit for, but is ours nonetheless. In case you haven’t looked out your window recently, we live in one of the most incredible natural settings of any city on earth, with snowcapped mountains to the east and the west and surrounded on three sides by water (if you count the ship canal and lake union). Portland has the river and you can see the Cascades in the distance, but it’s a far cry from Seattle.

So I agree with the comments made by cjh (with a little less vitriol), but I also agree with the sentiment of this blog post. Given our assets as a city (industry, university, Space Needle, port, natural environment, etc.) How is it that we are even in the same league as Portland? Or, more appropriately, how is it that Portland is in our League?

The simple answer is that in a number of ways, Portland has done better with their relatively meager endowment and we have in many ways squandered ours. The progressive pro-urban policies have made their town very livable, enough so to win them some national attention that really should have been ours.

But I believe that we will, in a short time rise up and reclaim the fame and glory that we have allowed to pass us by due to a lack of vision, ambition and courage. We’ve had thirty years to watch Portland and Vancouver experiment with progressive urban policy. We are in a position now to pick up their best practices and leave their mistakes.

Perhaps I am being optimistic. Perhaps it’s because I’m relatively new and haven’t yet had the hope beaten out of me by the cynicism of Seattle politics, but I think something is changing under our feet right at this very moment, and that the Seattle of 2028 will look very different from what we see today. Portland in 2028 will likely look very much the same.