[jeffbee]

I go to Portland regularly just so I can enjoy a city that's much nicer than San Francisco. And Seattle recently hit another record population, it is significantly larger than it was before COVID and will soon pass SF.

I suspect the person denigrating the West Coast cities is doing so from their basement in East Prolapse, Kentucky, as a way to rationalize their life choices.

[lotsofpulp]

The financial numbers paint a grimmer picture of Portland than they do of the other west coast cities.

The city, the county, and the state all spend increasing proportions on debt service, and the rewards for earning a lot of money are much less than the neighboring state.

The total fertility rate is also one of the lowest in the country. And Portland lacks a flagship university to bring in young talent.

It might be a nice place to visit during the summer months, but I don’t foresee many high paying jobs or highly profitable businesses being made there.

[insane_dreamer]

If OSHU could expand to a serious biotech research uni that could maybe fill the gap and kickstart something. That’s where I would start. But I don’t know if it could eve happen. Portland definitely hurt by not having OSU or OU - compared with Seattle/UW, Austin/UT, Madison/UW etc.

[amanaplanacanal]

I don't know how good the school is, but Portland State University is right next to downtown.

[anon291]

It's a decent school, but beset by the same 'Portland problems' that ruin it for the people who would be starting businesses. For example, during the last riot in Portland, the PSU library was taken over and rendered unusable for several quarters. If you were using this public space to do research or to work with friends to start a business... good luck... It's just gone in a day, and the university does nothing, and even encouraged the rioters.

[nxobject]

I agree that Portland does need public space to co-work and to be close to research. Unfortunately that would take investment… and that’s not forthcoming, not even public $.

That being said, as someone who took a few graduate stats courses at PSU, I don’t think the library would have been the right place anyway - it always couched itself as a commuter access school that relied heavily on transfers from community college, and the library reflected that. It’s definitely not a well-resourced research institution, and with the retrenchment of federal funding for research and financial aid I’m not sure what it’ll focus on.

[insane_dreamer]

Not known for its tech-related offerings. OSU has the edge in engineering but it’s out in the boonies (for historical reasons).

[anon291]

I'm not denigrating Portland... I live here. I live two miles from downtown. People need to stop being sensitive

I am a critical person and Portland is currently deserving of much criticism in order to fulfill its potential. No one got anywhere by patting themselves on the back reassuring themselves they had already made it.

[nxobject]

+1 to this. As someone who still believes that everything that made Oregon attractive is still there, and won’t be taken from Oregon soon - nature, laid-back culture, quality of life - we can’t deny that Oregon is deindustrializing more broadly. Reasonable people can disagree on the essence and details of the issues - I say this as someone who came here because of the youth culture, and still doesn’t have a family! Even we might agree on many things (as Portlanders usually do.)

But we all agree the state is seriously going to have to think hard about how to attract new business to both I-5 corridor and rural areas - whether it’s through investing in OSU upstream, or attracting more downstream manufacturing jobs.

[anon291]

De-industrialization is the right word. We are buoyed almost entirely by intel. Without Intel, the state is essentially cottage / mom-n-pop industries.

[selimthegrim]

Paging noduerme, surely they have some thoughts on the matter

[thebigman433]

Portland has some major advantages over SF, but as someone who also goes there regularly (~5 weeks/year), I still prefer living in SF at the moment. Not considering the amount of tech jobs there (which is a major factor for me), the city in general just isnt quite there yet. There are also some very major fiscal problems that have to be sorted before I'd consider moving.

Great place though, definitely might end up there one day