Very nice piece, tend to agree. No surprise that a boom town like Bend
would get them during a recession.

Knute, take I-5 South. You can be there in no time.

Oregon is great, it's my favorite state but if I were looking for a job I don't think I'd bother looking in Oregon.

Portland is fantastic in ambiance, walkability, and small coffee shops. I love the trains.

However among the Seattle/Vancouver/Portland trio, its transit use is by far the lowest (measured by commute trips), it's by far the least ethnically diverse, and it has very little urban density at its core (though its surburbs and inner single-family neighborhoods are reasonably dense for those types). It lacks international flavor and international connections, whether organizations or air routes.

I love it, and would be happy to live there. But comparatively....

Knute,

You must have missed the continuous pan-handling at the MAX stations, the take-over of Pioneer Courthouse Square by young and aggressive (homeless?) people, the blocks of death wagon food purveyors in the parking lots. Of course, many Portlanders apparently believe the food wagons are a mark of Northwest urbanity, rather than a destroyer of the near-by restaurant trade or a ticket to a stomach pump.

"The hype and hip-factor surrounding Portland are mostly manmade, not the consequence of dramatic surroundings."

Au contrare. I think of Portland as "womanmade". By that rationale, Portland is built closer to nature with more parks, street trees, and restored natural settings than Seattle whose built environment is more "manmade", having much less connection to its natural and scenic surroundings.

Womanade Portland also caters to gentile pedestrians, unlike manmade Seattle which instead caters to maniacal motorists. Portland reclaims road space for sidewalks and crosswalks. Seattle builds parking garages and commercial buildings that reduce sidewalk space.

Portland's transit system is designed to be intuitive and convenient. Seattle's transit system seems to be designed by automobile-related interests who don't want transit to become a viable alternative to AutoMatonomobiles, the most manmade of all things manmade.

It’s worth remembering that the Willamette Valley was settled before the Civil War by New Englanders who brought their civic culture with them. The Puget Sound region, on the other hand, was settled by entrepreneurs looking for opportunities to make a quick buck. Seattle started out as “New York Alki” and still seems to be chasing after the Next Big Thing.

I'd love to have some of those food carts up here. It's a travesty that we don't. Even in the heart of the CBD, there are too few takeout places for lunch. A place might be packed every lunchtime, but to afford rent that's often not enough, so we get banks and other retail instead.

Yeah, y'all don't want to move here. There's no jobs and we'll tax the hell outta ya anyway. And the fashion sense... ugh!

Nice piece, Knute. Seattle can learn good stuff by comparing itself now and then to Portland and Vancouver, two cities of comparable size with similar geography, climate and economy. The main differences are historical, and political. I've heard the explanation that Portland was settled earlier and by stable New Englanders, but I can't blame all those pioneer Norwegians, with strong men and above-average kids, for the city's mistakes. Seattle's screwups were conscious errors of omission by
Seattle people -- the decisions a century ago not to develop downtown parks proposed by the Olmsteads and the Bogue Plan, and repeated rejections of rapid transit back when it could have been done without breaking the bank. Those two factors alone make our sister cities north and south far more livable.

Well, Seattle bought the naming rights, but last time I checked, Mt. Rainier was squarely in Pierce County.

I enjoyed Knute's observations. I find Portland a cute little dull city that can be best compared to Tacoma.

Knute--
Nice piece with good insights. A few things you left out. During the dot com boom when WA was focused on creating 'information worker' jobs Oregon had a mix of both those and 21st century blue collar jobs (i.e. chip manufacturing and wind farm production) that WA is just catching on to. Since my son moved to Portland after graduation from WWU so I've gotten to know the inner beauty of Portland--its neighborhoods. Your comment about The Pearl only shows your ignorance of the amazing vibrance of Portland's many neighborhoods which outdo Seattle. Check out Hawthorne, and Alberta (among others). Plus you can die there with dignity!
BTW--name a female Seattle mayor?

It's easy to find the dirt on your own boots, while looking past the color photos in your hand. Sure The population is close: 600,000 in Seattle 560,000 in Portland, but you are comparing apples to Christmas ornaments when you consider the population of the county: 1,900,000 to 720,000. There are so many more competing interests with so many more people, Portland is just able to think egocentrically small town. I remember taking a lunch break at work in Portland with nine Oregonians in their 20's at the table, three of them had never crossed the Interstate Bridge to the big scary state of Washington!

Bobo: Bertha Knight Landes.

dstellwagen, county lines are even less relevant than city limits when you're comparing cities. Suffice to say that the Seattle area is significantly larger than the Portland area, possibly half or two-thirds larger. There are many legitimate ways to attempt a semi-reasonable comparison, such as CSA, UA....

Sculpture Park is idiotic. The best view of Puget Sound wasted on egocentric sculpture. "Oh, a giant traffic cone. How clever! Oh, a metal tree! Oh, a flourescent orange and stylized container crane, dubbed An Eagle. Oh, a land-scarring plow, dubbed A Wave." Who cares about the sight of the Olympic Range when manmade sculptures are hyped on permanent display? Manmade moh impohtant! Convenient parking! Handy orange chairs to observe those boring mountains if anyone cares. Seattle is the armpit of the Pacific Northwest, caked with toxic deodorant.

dtstellwagen, mhays: a number of counties bisect Portland. proving hays right about relevancy. So how than is 600,00 people "significantly larger" than 560,000 people, assuming those numbers are correct.
"Area" generally refers to geography not people. Is the point that Portland is denser than Seattle or what?

Think.

Jan: double shame on you.

BlueLight: "If you're rooted to place, you have to make where you are work, especially the schools and city hall. That sometimes means digging deeper to keep a good thing going..."

afreeman, I mean that city limits population comparisons aren't very telling either. You can draw city limits anywhere. However if you want to talk density within city limits, Seattle is substantially denser too. Portland has a lot of good small lot SRF areas but not much of Seattle's six-story density.

Of course this is all a tangent off the main subject.

I'm sorry about going overboard with my Sculpture Park critique. The point could've been made less crudely. Basicly, the attraction to highlight is the view, not surrealistic, 'manmade' sculpture. I'd rather the park surface were planted with trees and shrubbery, with lots more seating. Use landscaping to obscure the sculpture which pale compared to the view.

OSP could use a lot of big trees for shade and ambiance. It's kind of stark right now.

On hot summer days, you see people sitting on the grass....the #1 prime spot seems to be the tiny windows of shade provided by "Eagle".

Clinging to shade is a Seattle summertime standard. Go up the Space Needle during a festival sometime, and look down at the grassy amphitheater. Every time I've done this, if the temp is over about 75, the crowd is thick in the shade and sparse in the sun. It's uncanny.

Yet the design community will do anything to flood large areas with sunlight and minimize shade. I don't get it. Seattleites like sun to a point, but a lot of us don't want to hang out in it.

Comparing the size of the cities now kinda misses the point. Seattle (and all of Pugetropolis) chose to get as big as possible as fast as possible. Portland decided that making wads of cash in real estate and construction just wasn't the most important thing on the planet. I wouldn't live in Seattle again if you paid me. You messed up big time.

A lot of people I know look wistfully at Portland too and I couldn't agree agree more that in 2010 it is 10 times more of a Northwest soul than Seattle. We could stand some looking in the mirror and learning to like ourselves enough as we are. We could stand to lay off our lopsided quest to become international or world class for a while and try being regional again. Seattle has been having an identity crisis for a good long time, always needing encouragement and nods from taste-makers elsewhere. Portland doesn't seem to need to sell herself repeatedly at bargain rate to the lowest out of town bidders to be what she is. Stumptown is definitely a better nod to our collective roots than whatever we are calling Seattle this year, I'm really glad they are so close.

That being all well and fine, Portland has no equal to the neighbors Seattle does. No Bellevue, no Tacoma, no Everett, no West Sound, and no Islands. Seattle sits between Portland and Vancouver, neither of those two cities share the 360 degrees of constant competition Seattle does. It is almost impossible to compare everything equally between the two communities. What would Portland do if it was in Seattle?

I don't see Seattle attempting to grow or raise its profile per se. We want a healthy economy, we want to grow sustainably up/in rather than out, and we want to improve our quality of life. We might even care whether tourists enjoy themselves. Aside from making better decisions on rail in past decades, and aside from Vancouver not having inner-city freeways, we're not that different in how we've envisioned ourselves.

The biggest difference is that Seattle has several massive and prominent companies. This makes us feel "corporate" and brings a larger number of rich people, including spinoffs. The UW gives us a large research sector. The military is huge around our metro fringes unlike the others, adding another dimension. The simple fact of our size means we end up in the media more. Plus, since we have a "brand" that appeals to many people, there are usually a couple current TV shows set here, and more people are starting to think of us as a tourist destination.

Portland's and Vancouver's great ambience is partially due to great streets in their greater downtowns. Their streets are narrower and often lower-traffic than ours. This is possible in part because Portland routes its through-traffic onto a circle of freeways around its downtown, and Vancouver's downtown is a peninsula aside from a narrow, moderate-traffic bridge to the north. Due to Vancouver having many workers who live downtown and Portland's relative lack of office space, neither has a lot of commuters coming in to begin with, and they do well with transit in terms of percentage of commuters using it (I believe Downtown Portland's percentage is a bit higher than Seattle's, while it's the inverse when you count regional commute mode shares.) Long story short, it rarely feels like cars overwhelm a street in Portland or Vancouver.

We all(?) love quiet bunglow neighborhoods with lots of trees. But some of us prefer higher density, not just in our own buildings but on a larger scale. In my ideal city you can walk several miles and always be within dense urban neighborhoods...you can do this in Vancouver easily, Seattle is getting close, but you can't do it in Portland. It has great dense spots, but aside from an excellent two-mile stretch Downtown, the density is very small scale. As much as I love Portland, it just doesn't offer enough urbanity for me. Vancouver on the other hand...

I've lived in Portland and Seattle and love both.

Oregonians made decisions a number of years ago that serve them well: State income taxes are more fair to low and middle income taxpayers than Washington's regressive sales taxes. Land use laws sometimes limit sprawl and preserve farmland. Recycling fees keep metal and glass containers off the roadsides. Portland MAX lightrail is many years ahead of Seattle's. Oregon's beaches are public land. Portland has a very walkable downtown and more parks than most cities its size. Its topography makes it easier to build roads in and out of its center. Moving I-5 to the east side of the Willamette River was a brilliant way to open the downtown waterfront to parks and people.

In Seattle, access to and views of the mountain, sound and islands are fabulous. The arts communities in both cities are wonderful, but Seattle's Opera and Theaters are among the best in the nation. Both cities have good schools and universities and high quality, accessible, not-for-profit healthcare. Both cities have educated, involved citizens... although Portland's leaders seem to be able to bring minds together to make decisions in a more timely manner. Washington's representatives in the other Washington appear to be better at bringing home bacon.... but I'm not sure that's really something to brag about.

All that to say, the two cities don't need to compete. They need to learn from their successes and failures. The citizens of each need to know, understand and appreciate each other. One great way to do that is to hop on Amtrak or a bus and enjoy the trip.

"Its gem is a hidden Pearl District"

I disagree with this. The Pearl is a collection of overpriced condos, stores and restaurants with no sense of community. The real gem in Portland is the collective of close knit neighborhoods throughout NE & SE who share community gardens, coops, local non-chain restaurants and pubs

Oregon is a economic backwater. A good place to live if you work for a non-profit or off the government teet. If you want to work in the private sector, go across the Columbia or head to the mountain states.

I've lived in Portland, and have been raised in Seattle, and am glad to live here full time. Many of the observastions in Knute's story are accurate, as many of the comments. However they don't tell the full story. This discussion and self reflection rarely occurs in Portland, in my experience Portlanders can't see beyond their neighborhood or the Columbia River. Portland is more like Tacoma in its civic culture, there are approximately 10-20 families who own everything in town, an established power structure that comfortably has obscured any critical outside view, or internal self reflection (Mayor, then Governor, Niel Goldschmitt and his "afair" with a 16 year old). Seattle is a boom town, Portland really is afraid of any kind of growth it can't control (good or bad), and Portland is really hard to get out of familiar circles culturally.

One thing Seattle and Portland have in common: both are full of pretentious pricks who are mostly from the East Coast.