{"id":14037,"date":"2017-10-26T17:22:20","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T21:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=14037"},"modified":"2017-10-26T17:22:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T21:22:20","slug":"the-ultimate-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/the-ultimate-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Smackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 2017 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve earned our 18 hours of fame.<\/span><\/h3>\n

By Colin W. Sargent<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Nov17-The-Ultimate-Smackdown\"The 18-Hour City. It\u2019s a nifty investment handle, though it has yet to crack into caf\u00e9 society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Will it become the lingua franca<\/em> of commercial-real-estate gurus? How better to describe emerging cultural capitals like Portland, Maine!<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re not too urban, like Manhattan\u2013a nerve-jangling \u201824-hour city.\u2019 We\u2019re walkable and suburban, yet we still enjoy the illusion of a skyline, though our proportions are so bijou gulls and eagles can rest on our tallest buildings. <\/span><\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t \u2018renaissanced\u2019 in such a mercantile way that everyone\u2019s sick of us, and (I\u2019ll drop to a whisper) we\u2019re just a shade too genuine to be hipster. Oh, yeah, Portland, Maine. For many visitors, we beckon like the last drink they\u2019ve never tried.<\/span><\/p>\n

After all, Brooklyn\u2019s so 2014. Ditto for Portland, Oregon, with 10 times our population but a fraction of our originality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Barringer of The Muskie School is interested in the concept and its origins. \u201cIt started with the 24-hour city, with real-estate types. The first time I heard of the 24-hour city was from a developer in Boston in the 1980s, before Boston became a 24-hour city. I feel that yes, Portland is evolving into an 18-hour city, with exceptions. There\u2019s the fragmentation of effort, and the absence of a coherent strategy for moving forward\u2013not just a haphazard response to immediate real-estate opportunities. Right now, there\u2019s the absence of a really commanding sense of public transportation here, because the age of the automobile is coming to a crashing end, I hope, as a public transportation solution.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The attraction of an 18-hour city seems to dovetail with the new study \u201cGreater Portland Tomorrow: Choices for Sustained Prosperity,\u201d Fall 2017.\u00a0 <\/span>This report, the work of a team led by Barringer, is available electronically at digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just like the 18-hour city criteria, the need for new workers coming to Portland is a driver. Consider this variable, addressed by graphs in the study: \u201cImagine if no one moved to Portland for 16 years, not a soul. What would happen to the economy and labor force? What about taxes for public schools and needed public infrastructure? Then, imagine that 1,500 young adults move to Portland each year. How would this change the labor force and economy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Because Huffington<\/em> Post financial writer Rebecca Lake helped conceptualize the 18-Hour City and legitimized it with her definition of the term in Investopedia<\/em>, here\u2019s how she breaks this \u201cviable investment alternative\u201d down: \u201cAn 18-Hour City is a second-tier city with above-average urban population growth that offers a lower cost of living and lower cost of doing business than first-tier cities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lake identifies the \u201cbig six\u201d as first tier: \u201cBoston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s an 18-hour city, then? \u201cCharlotte, Denver and Portland, for example, have become target for Millennials [the word emphasized in click-thru blue] whose goal is launching or advancing their career. Eighteen-hour cities are often characterized by the availability of recreation and entertainment opportunities that extend beyond what the typical suburban city affords.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Whoops, she means the \u2018other\u2019 Portland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paradoxically, I feel Charlotte, Denver, and the \u2018other\u2019 Portland are so obviously 18-hour cities that they aren\u2019t really 18-hour cities anymore. Why would (I use Lake\u2019s term) Millennials target these destinations if their older brothers and sisters have already tried them on and pushed them to the back of the closet (along with that velour hoodie you were sure would change everything)?<\/span><\/p>\n

Sorry, Portland, Oregon, but PDX is so 2011. PWM is the rising commodity. Just look at the Yahoo smackdown between the two Portlands online. Portlandia<\/em> is in its last season. That says it all. This is the year of PWM rising (we have much better sculptures at our airport than Denver). Oh, and by the way, the proper pronunciation of \u201cKeep Portland Weird\u201d is \u2018WEE-ID.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November 2017
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