Anarchists on North Mississippi are eating our children !

It's amazing to note how the simplistic thinking demonstrated by the writer of the repost, can muddy clear understanding of specific problems related to the proposed loft design, as cited by mississippi avenue residents objecting to them.

As an outside observer, I've noted the objections of neighborhood critics to the proposed design are confined almost exclusively to the overwhelming height and length of the building in relation to existing long term buildings on the avenue.

Another subsequent objection has been to the reduction in avenue width to accomodate, if I remember correctly, a loading zone in front of the complex, rather than in the back, so as not to compromise the number of parking spaces the developers are required to provide based on the size of the structure.

Residents are not opposed to a mixed use structure, or a green technology building.

What is likely to happen though, as the kind of buildings the developers of the proposed MAL are built, is that a new kind of resident will begin to move in: excessively wealthy people such as those that became the market for new housing in the pearl. That is the market responsible for driving up housing costs, and the one that is thereby likely to methodically displace a lot of lower income people from the neighborhood.

A former resident of the neighborhood who is only able to lay
responsibility for the departure of drugs and prostitution from the neighborhood, a change welcomed by established residents, to influx of money represented by developers courting wealthy future condo owners, is one with a very selective and inacurate memory.

It was established residents of the neighborhood together with people like those from the collective across from Fresh Pot that accomplished that positive. Developers played no role whatsoever in that part of the neighborhood's transformation.
The reason for the depar

The Mississippi Lofts would be another link in the chain that is shackling Portland renters to ridiculous housing costs. You cannot ignore the fact that people are living collectively not just because it's fun (maybe it is, maybe it isn't) but because the Portland economy sucks and rents are too high! Doesn't look like much of a "choice", now, does it?

The definition of "affordable" housing here is still way out of reach for a large percentage of Portlanders. Homelessness here has not been solved.

Only people moving here from other cities, where they recently sold their California houses for a fortune, are in a position to buy.

Genrification is tearing Portland neighborhoods apart- does every corner of Portland have to turn into a playgound for tourists and rich people? That's what's happening on Mississippi. It's become a destination street, and lacks basic services for neighbors. Are there any photocopy shops on N. Mississippi? Any banks?
Shoe repair? Barber? Opticians? Health clinic? Library?
No, there's just lots of coffee and a lot of expensive restaurants.

Whose vision of a neighborhood is Mississippi, anyway? Good bet that the developers and real estate men had a big, fat, hand in it!

Nobody gets their shoes repaired any more, and your logic is silly. The businesses on Mississippi street are thriving because the community supports them, the people that live in the neigborhood go to them. I know it's not perfect, and some folks are getting screwed, but can you point to a single neighborhood in the country that had developed better than Mississippi (except Alberta st)?

Furthermore, your comment about rents is ignorent, rents have not risen appreciably in Portland for 6 years--certian neighborhoods, yes, but not accross the board. The cost of buying a house is getting outragous, but rents are pretty damn reasonable in this city compared to most of the country.

I wish some of these critics would try thier hand at creation, please explain what would be a better path--and no points for ideas that couldn't actually happen.

>> Nobody gets their shoes repaired any more, and your logic is silly

Really, nobody? I could swear that myself and many of the people I know have had shoes and boots repaired in the not to distant past. No point in responding to the ad hominem.

>> I wish some of these critics would try thier hand at creation, please explain what would be a better path--and no points for ideas that couldn't actually happen.

You don't have to wish; you just have to listen. People have been making a myriad of suggestions, for the MAL it's mostly been "smaller and cheaper", and I tend to concur. Though I am not a resident of that neighborhood, I suspect I would feel similarly about projects in my neighborhood. I'd like to see the developers offer the places for 1/2 what they're planning on charging as a way to help Portland residents buy something. They'll still make a fortune, just not as much as they would like. I wish that wasn't such a stumbling block for some...

It doesn't really help that a raise in rents from what they've been in a given neighborhood allows them to still fall in a "reasonable" range, if residents of that neighborhood can no longer pay them from wages earned at the jobs they've been working for years and years.

When speculators and developers do decide to turn an older neighborhood like mississippi avenue into a kind of west coast coney island for spoiled middle class people with excess disposable income to burn, it would be an extraordinary and welcome change if they put some consideration into ensuring that good residents to whom the neighborhood had been home for years, would have some certainty of being able to continue living there rather than being obliged to resort to some other place that hasn't yet been targeted by speculators.

It would be decent and reasonable if speculators and developers would at least make an effort to modify the design of their structures with regards to the quality of life that established residents of the neighborhood, fortunate enough to be able to figure out some way of continuing to live there, hope to continue deriving from that neighborhood.

This is as simple as, in the MAL project for example, lowering the maximum height of the building 20-25 percent, and breaking up the 150' length of the structure.

Everyone realizes multi-family housing in greater quantities is inevitable for this street. The issues have to do with the character of their design, the manner in which they are brought to the neighborhood, and the impact they will have on present and future residents. Developers and speculators have so far proven to be calously indifferent to the concerns of the former.

> Recently, the anarchist collective, who have a coop across the street from the Frest Pot on Shaver and Mississippi,
> have esentially taken over the neighborhood association by swarming the meetings and electing themselves in charge.

I suppose when business owners who don't even live in the neighborhood do this, it's not a problem, though?

> They have made the choice to live collectively, which is admirable,
> but they are trying to forcefully impose their views on everyone else.

If "everyone else" disagreed, they could show up to the meetings and "elect" somebody else "in charge," couldn't they. If one anarchist house can disrupt the Mississippi establishment's little political sandbox, it doesn't sound like it had much neighborhood support in the first place, does it?

I get really sick of the false dilemma that's constantly stated: if we don't allow oversized, ugly projects into our neighborhoods, then we'll lose the farms and forests. Guess what, guy? We already are losing the farms and forests, in pace with the quality of life and open spaces we're losing in the city. Go take a drive in the 'burbs outside of Portland and see with your own eyes! We're not getting less sprawl--we're just getting more dense sprawl, worse than the sprawl I grew up witnessing in the Detroit area.

Never once have the developers been given limits on how much land they can chew up--we've already bumped to the edges of what can be built, and they're still champing at the bit for more. Development is about getting better, not bigger. It's about improving the quality of life and the economy, not making it bigger. Making it bigger just creates more unemployment (the policy is deliberately to keep unemployment at no less than 5 percent, so more people at 5 percent reported unemployment means more actual unemployed people), more concentration of wealth in fewer hands, and less nature, less of what we need to survive.

"Having it both ways" means to say you are green when you are actually not.

> I get really sick of the false dilemma that's constantly stated: if we don't allow
> oversized, ugly projects into our neighborhoods, then we'll lose the farms and forests.

How about wall-to-wall four-storey neo-Victorian townhouses with parking on the ground floor, like they have all over San Francisco? Would that be pretty enough for you?

If that's too dense for you, then you don't want to live in a city. One single-family housing unit per lot with "yards" on four sides is not an urban environment, it's suburbia with a Portland zip code, a scam to convince ordinary people their interests are the same as Nike's because we're all "landowners."

If a given project is "ugly," replace it with a better-looking one. If it's "oversized," welcome to the fucking twenty-first century already. Twice as many people means twice as big buildings, or else you're back to bulldozing the farms and forests. That's not a "false dilemma," that's reality.

Hello guys and gals. I wrote this post on skyscraper page. I lived near Mississippi before it was fashonable. We had no Fresh Pot.

I would also be very upset if Mississippi were to in any way resemble the Pearl, but so far it hasnīt. The majority of new homeowners moving to the neighborhood when I left were hardly wealthy people, but working people--many school teachers, nurses, social workers, etc. Mississippi has hardly become a beacon for the wealthy. Property prices have risen dramatically city-wide and nation-wide--and much of this has to do with a heightened sense of demand associated with low-interest rates.

Fact is, a lot of people are moving to the city of Portland, and why not. Itīs a great city. Thatīs why you all moved there, right? As a current resident of a European city (though only for another few weeks), I can attest that high density projects will hardly destroy a city. If anything, higher density increases the tax base, will facilitate a need for more and better public transport, and introduce into an area living options that did not exist before--such as owner-occupied apartments--or condos as they are called in the US. Unfortunately, that word is generally associated with wealth in the US--but it shouldnīt be. Itīs how most of the working-class developed world lives.

Itīs interesting to note that Mississippi lacks general service-oriented businesses, but itīs also interesting to note that it has been many years since it has had them. Historically, MLK has been more of a service-oriented street. If the neighbors wish to have a bank in the area, then why not form a credit union for the North Portland region.

I apologize if my comments sounded reactionary toward the collective. I donīt personally know any of those people as they moved to the neighborhood after I did.

I had problems registering with skyscraper page, so I couldn't directly offer them any response to the points they were discussing there about missi ave and issues related to new construction.

Much of what seems to be going on in the heads of the people commenting on the linked page indicates ignorance or indifference to real life dynamics of neighborhoods such as missi ave.

Those commenting on that page are typically disposed to aparrently imagined conclusions that residents objecting to the proposed loft project reject multi-family housing on missi ave. That's nonsense. Rather, objections have been based on very specifically stated dimensional parameters and perhaps certain aesthetic characteristics of the proposed structure. Everybody realizes that more people wish to live in the neighborhood. The issue is who will be able to afford to, and whether they'll be doing so in a building that conserves existing, positive attributes of the neighborhood.

Are any of the speculators and developers responsible for the design and construction of such structures aware of or even remotely concerned about negative effects upon area residents occurring directly as a result of the realization of these new projects? Of those commenting on the linked page, one talks of an associate who faces giving up a project on a lot he owns on the avenue because it won't "pencil out". Do any of these people think about or even care for even one moment about the impact their projects will have on people who have called this neighborhood their home for years?

Being able to mount a substantial money making project and not have to suffer the negative consequences from that project as a continuing resident of the neighborhood where such projects can rapidly rise and surround established residents gives way to this sort of contemptuous indifference.

With the type of development being planned for missi ave comes increased traffic and rapidly increasing property valuations, taxes and rents that dramatically and directly impact established low income area residents, all considerations that people expressing themselves on the linked page seem to have absolutely no concerns about whatsoever.

Missi ave is currently wonderful in part because it has rather low buildings and open lots. Must every quality of life aspect derived from this current state be subordinated to the flimsy argument that such projects as the lofts are really solving housing availability problems?

If multi-family housing such as the proposed lofts genuinely attempted to address the issue of housing availability in the city and the neighborhood, by accomodating those with income levels representative of established neighborhoood residents, and those of the income levels speculators and developers eagerly welcome, under the same roof, reaction from the neighborhood might be far more in the project backers favor.

Of course the chances of that happening are quite unlikely. What's the likelyhood that comparatively wealthy people would be willing, or prepared to live across the hall from comparatively poor people from the neighborhood? So all that charming talk about earnestly responding to housing shortages is just disengenuous fluff.


I took a picture last night of the proposed loft site. The view is roughly to the southeast at 9:15pm. It attempts to show the angle of the sun over the current one story warehouse into the backyards to the east of the proposed loft site. The new lofts, at 50' will be nearly as tall as the big tree to the south of the cinder block building. Obviously, any reduction in height of the structure will be of considerable benefit to those residents east of it.

Mississippi Avenue still has a coin-op laundromat. How long will that be able to hold on? Of course the Black Rose collective and bookshop is on borrowed time.

There seems to be no real means by which the residents of a neighborhood can directly and with authority, have a hand in determining the design concept for the renewal of their neighborhood. This at least seems to have been the situation on missi. Design concept renewal realization there has, as is often the case in such situations, been accomplished primarily at the whim of speculators and developers. They have been obliged to answer, for the most part, only to technical codes in place to avoid safety hazards.

Mississippi Avenue currently still has some of the feeling of a small town mainstreet, or even a small country town mainstreet. Take a walk the length of this street and that becomes quite aparrent.

Because of the way it's situated on the bluff above above the Willamette River with with land to the west on a gentle downhill grade, gets a lot of light. the effect brings to mind sleepy beach towns, even though no beach is anywhere close to this one. Compare the effect though, to that of Downtown Portland when the sun has gone behind the west hills and the many tall buildings in downtown.

Is it possible to completely conserve this unique and beneficial character through successfully persuading speculators and developers to slightly scale back the proportions of their buildings? Probably not. But wouldn't truly visionary persons in their capacity as specultors and developers make conservation of these beneficial and currently existing natural and small town qualities a fundamental priority as the avenue is progressively built up?

I know there is likely many people in the Portland area who are completely unaware of mississippi avenues transformation over the last 6 years of so. Just last night, when I told someone I went walking there, they responded with alarm that I would go there, because they still remembered it's sordid days, when it could be a dangerous place to walk. They, and many others like them are completely unaware of the avenues current transformed state.

25 years ago, NW 23rd avenue had some of the ambience of missi avenue today. Not as much light, a busier street, but it still had a kind of quiet, relaxing, thoughtful quality about it. No longer, because money has won out, to the loss of far more than have gained. It seems so very wrong, and even tragic that Mississippi Avenue, the heart of another quiet, quality neighborhood, affording housing for moderately low income people would be turned over to the jarring kind of retail transformation existing on NW 23rd today.

With vision, and a mutual inclination to co-operate from residents, speculators, and developers on the realization of Mississippi Avenue's design renewall realization, they together can do much better than that and truly create an example for others to aspire to and enjoy.

How about this for an idea. The Boise neighborhood buys the existing 1 story warehouse building and lot, maybe Peter Wilcox and his partner Brigdet Bayer would be interested in being part of a community building project. And we as a community,with the help from the cooperative development community,build and manage our own grocery cooperative,bringing healthy,nourishing,affordable food to the community, bringing much needed jobs to our community. We could look into utilizing the existing structure,yes cinder blocks can be used and incorporated into natural building techniques, maybe we could look into building a second floor, maybe even a 3rd, with some affordable apartments ?. The parking area can be turned into a green space community gathering spot, with local Jazz,folk, soul artists playing on summer evenings, an outside farmers market once a week, with booths for local backyard growers to bring their extra produce to either trade or sell. The cooperative store could offer gardening help to low to no income folx, working with the established Growing Gardens project. If there are other people in the community that are interested in seeing a vision like this happen,please get in touch and let's start a community discussion. I still have a strong back, hyper active energy and ideas, but have an aversion to dealing with the money side of things, but as collective member/ owner of The Mississippi cooperative has found out, if communities work together cooperatively, dreams can become a reality, and we have a collective home and community business,The Blackrose Collective Bookstore to show for our 10 years of committment to our neighbors and the Boise community.

> the flimsy argument that such projects as the lofts are really solving housing availability problems

Ah yes, "housing houses people," what bullshit. "More units house more people"? Utterly irrelevant. What's really important is the quality of life the you get from "low buildings" and "open lots" -- lots much too small to function as wildlife habitat or anything, but look at all that grass!

I was in the Blackrose Collective Bookstore at 4038 N.Mississippi Avenue a few weeks ago, goinf through the free book section. When a title on one of the spins jumped out at me. "The City Club Of Portland Report- Affordable Housing In Portland 2002. Excited, and it being a wonderful sunny day, I sat in the park, just south of the Mississippi Co-op, where you can right now hear the wonderful sound of children & elders playing and socializing. Unfortunately this community treasure will also be lost very soon to a building development on it. Anyway I sat for hours and read the whole report.I have posted the complete pdf. There were parts like below which I found very interesting, because there was very little community discussion facilitated either by the Boise neighborhood Association, or by the PDC representive, Janet Bower about the fact that the city had concerns over the revitalization/gentrification of the community. I recognize it is a complex issue.And unfortunately the community is under pressure to make fast decisions without really getting all the information as to possible negative affects on our livability. Business moves very fast, and can, like the residents of NW 23rd have found out, can quickly take over and engulf a community. Enjoy the reading.

"We read of the city's concern that the Interstate Urban Renewal District might accelerate gentrification, adding to the on-going exodus of low income residents from that area. We also noted the report released by the Portland Public Schools forecasting a sharp decline in enrollments because families with school age children are not settling in Portland."

AFFORDABLEHOUSING IN PORTLAND 1 I. INTRODUCTION Over the past decade, Portland has gone from being one of the most affordable housing markets in the nation to being one of the least affordable. Most of our low-income citizens who need affordable housing do not find it. They face a choice between unsafe or unhealthy units, overcrowding or cutting back on food, heat, and medicine to pay for rent. They live in substandard housing, such as slums, attics and basements, or crowded in with relatives or friends. Or they find decent housing by paying more than 30 percent of their meager incomes. In fact, many of the residents of so called "affordable housing" projects pay more, often much more, than 30 percent of their income—the current generally accepted definition of housing affordability. Our existing "affordable housing system" assists only one-third to one-half of the people who need help in Portland. The problem is becoming worse. In the late 1990s, the Portland region's economy experienced unprecedented growth. At the same time, three trends worked together to significantly reduce the affordability of housing to lower-income households in our community:

What you are presenting yourself is a false dilemma: "If you think it's bad here, try SF." In case you haven't lived here long, we have the fake Victorians with parking garages below all over here. And our density is also on the march, without the relief of a corresponding increase of open space acreages for inner city residents, as an ecocity would provide. But that's besides the point. Comparing one bad or worsening circumstance to one that is worse does not improve the former and does nothing to show a way out for the city with the former.

Yes, a particular proposed project will be oversized and ugly if it is built, but rather than wait until it has been built and failed our community, residents are working to halt its construction and point the way towards a project that will be beautiful, healthy, and harmonious with both human and Earth needs. That's the way out of the false dilemma that you defend. Your answer to my stating the fact is to state the false dilemma once again as fact. Understand that our population has been growing only as a result of concerted, tax-payer funded (to the tune of TENS of BILLIONS of DOLLARS) effort to bring people here over the past two decades, a marketing and subsidy campaign that continues full bore today. And, once again, I suggest that you take a journey into the suburbs and outlying areas of Portland in order to witness with your own eyes the vast amount of extremely dense sprawl that is occurring unabated on our farm fields and forests. The Metro commissioners and other government officials have deftly pulled the wool over most everyone's eyes, having us believe that by accepting constantly increased density and less wildlands and greenspaces in the city we are doing a service to the planet and the people, when in fact we are doing the opposite.

Would you have all the historic single-family houses removed to make way for tall, bland boxes just to provide for... more profit for developers, more growth for the sake of growth?? Just what is YOUR point, other than that a city is supposed to be an unpleasant environment and if you can't handle it, get out?

Perhaps you'd like to read Lewis Mumford's City in History, which provides insight into how beautiful and harmonious cities are meant to be.


constantly stated because they're true
link


> I get really sick of the false dilemma that's constantly stated: if we don't allow
> oversized, ugly projects into our neighborhoods, then we'll lose the farms and forests.

How about wall-to-wall four-storey neo-Victorian townhouses with parking on the ground floor, like they have all over San Francisco? Would that be pretty enough for you?

If that's too dense for you, then you don't want to live in a city. One single-family housing unit per lot with "yards" on four sides is not an urban environment, it's suburbia with a Portland zip code, a scam to convince ordinary people their interests are the same as Nike's because we're all "landowners."

If a given project is "ugly," replace it with a better-looking one. If it's "oversized," welcome to the fucking twenty-first century already. Twice as many people means twice as big buildings, or else you're back to bulldozing the farms and forests. That's not a "false dilemma," that's reality.

I love this whole argument about,"if we don't allow high density housing,we'll loose the forest and farms", which is presented as an eventuality. We are also being told that million of people are going to be moving to Portland, which I guess then we will also be facing the inevitability that we will of course be loosing our forest and farms, because the city will burst the Urban Growth Boundry (UGB),no amount of city density housing is going to be able to stop it, plus aren't we loosing them already, to play areas for the wealthier, there are more ski area's planned. More land up around Mt Hood, is being sold off for weekend condos and summer houses ? You talk about the suburbs of Portland. Those were once farming areas,yes the country and farms, and they were annexed, and the agricultural workforce,who were living in small rural communties, all of a sudden were forced to move from small affordable housing units, to pay higher taxes to live in the greater city of Portland,and to live in higher priced apt buildings. But still work on farms that do not pay a living wage. So the agricultural workforce has moved to construction, which as you will see,if you take a trip out to the " urban suburbs" is going on everywhere, and even businesses like New Season's are locating their new stores into these new urban sub-divisions.
And let's take a short look at the high density living situation. Usually high priced small apartments,attracting either single proffessionals with high paying jobs, or dinks (double income no kids). Being forced to work high paying,stressful jobs, that traditionally survive on the exploitation of someone around the globe. They will use these apartments, until kid number 1 comes along, then the reality hits, "we cannot not afford to live here if we are not both working ?" So they start looking for "affordable housing", like was available in the Boise neighborhood about 3 years ago, or they start moving out of the city into rural areas (not wanting to settle into urban suburbs,because traditionally this is where the poorer,less privileged classes end up, but close to main highway arteries to communte to their job.And where are the jobs,kind of funny that there's this push for high urban density living, but people are being forced to communte out to find the higher paying jobs to sustain,this economically unsustainable lifestyle choice, take a commute out on 26 one morning ?....So let's start talking about the taboo subject of,ZERO POPULATION GROWTH

If we really want a high rise community. The lets just expand the Pearl District up into Forest Park,there is 5000 acres we could build on that is close in to the city center ?.

Housing and Living Facilities

Negro Housing

In general, houses owned or rented by Negroes are old. This results from the practice of restricting sale of houses to Negroes to older districts of the city from which other races have moved out. No new housing is available to the Negro buyer unless it is located in the segregated or concentration area. Land values in this area are high, thus discouraging building. No mortgage firms were found to be interested in soliciting or financing loans to Negroes for building.

There are a very few apartments in the city available to Negroes. Such as are offered for rent to Negroes are small two to four-room apartments owned by Negroes. A few are houses which have been converted into apartments.

Representatives of the Apartment House Owners' Association said they had no policy prohibiting renting to Negroes, claimed they had received no applications from Negroes for rent of apartments, agreed that Negro occupants would not be welcomed unless in a segregated project.

One private apartment house owner stated that the tenants of his apartments are chosen on the basis of character and reputation in the community regardless of race, color or creed.

The local Housing Authority reports 271 Negro families registered as desiring housing as of May 1, 1945.

As indicated in section on Negro population, a large portion of the Negroes now living in this area are housed in the several war housing projects in structures of a very temporary nature, which if permitted to be used as Negro housing following the war, would soon deteriorate into very undesirable slum areas.

Attitude of Real Estate Interests

Interviews with representatives of the Portland Realty Board and prominent realtors disclose the existence of a policy of restricted sale of property to Negroes. Such restriction confines the sale by any member of the Realty Board to Negroes to the segregated area, described in the Negro population section of this report, with limited sale in Woodlawn, Alberta, and Waverly Heights areas. This policy being more fully set forth in the Portland Realty Board's Code of Ethics, Part III, Article 34, and By-Laws Article III, Sections 3 and 5 quoted as follows:

Part III. Article 34-CODE OF ETHICS.-A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.

Article III. Section 4-BY-LAWS.-Duty of Members to the Public: It shall be an unethical practice for any member to be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or use, occupancy or ownership of property, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood. No instruction from any client or customer, except such as shall be applicable to changes of zone under the Zoning Ordinance of the City of Portland, shall relieve the member from his responsibility strictly to observe this Article. Complaints for violations of this Article shall not be considered unless filed with Portland Realty Board within ninety (90) days after the introduction into a neighborhood of the character of property, use, occupancy, or ownership of property, member of the race or nationality, or individuals, to which objection is made. The Board of Directors shall have power to make all needful rules and regulation, no inconsistent herewith, to effectuate the object of this Section.

The real estate men interviewed expressed a willingness to adopt a policy of unrestricted sale of property to Negroes as soon as the public would permit it being carried out. These men also expressed the feeling that the Negroes who do buy homes are making an earnest effort to improve their property, take pride in ownership, and that the improvements made had advanced the value of property in the segregated districts. Still, the argument of depreciation of property values with introduction of Negro ownership is advanced to justify continuation of a policy of segregation. It is probable that depreciation of property values results from white owners lowering the price of their property as Negroes come into their neighborhood.

It is difficult to account for the presence of a few Negroes in sixty of the sixty-three districts shown on the Portland map in light of existing policies of real estate men, excepting as they may be there because of either of the following reasons: Negro ownership in the particular district before that district was built up, or due to Negroes buying direct from owner without a realtor entering into the deal.

Most transactions of this type occur in areas where few Negroes reside. It is felt that present policies of realtors in handling sale of real property to Negroes will ten to increase direct sales by owners. In no instance of direct sale has there been evidence of "spite selling". Usually the sale has involved an owner who disapproved the restricted sales policy.

To: "And you're restating it all over again". Very well put. If a greater segment of the general public could just see the extent to which the network of government functionaries, speculators, and developers have converted vast areas of living, breathing land supporting those inhabiting it, to the mean, angry asphalt and concrete racetrack it often becomes, they might begin to recognize their right to determine and sustain an infrastructural urban design that successfully provided a healthy, equally accessible place to live.

The life and memory of many people is short lived. 50-60 years can be a long time for many people to recollect or even know of the events ocurring over such a time span. In that timespan in the Willamette Valley, many thousands of acres have been built over under the delusion that doing so really addressed the need for housing in the form of a better way of living. In the short term, for some, there is truth in this, but ultimately, the quality of life for everyone has declined severely.

Where people accept the "lesser of evils" rationale, this continues to happen. A lot of people don't even go to announced planning meetings for lack of time, energy, or because they're thoroughly resigned to the course of events set in motion by the powers that be. Thereby, the thoughts and ideas of people whose participation in the planning of the community may be the most important of all, aren't even factored into accepted design realization.

Speculators and developers have just kicked up their heels in glee over the years in this largely unmanaged situation. Investible cash and unaware buyers have been the driving force behind the mess we daily continue to create in the metro area.

Somebody offers a suggestion to an unproven conclusion: "If we really want a high rise community. The(n) lets just expand..." into Forest Park beyond the pearl district, they go on to say. Do people really want a high rise community? Maybe rich people do, to have a high rise apartment in such a structure, as one, numbered among their other residences; beach house, mountain chalet, lakefront cottage, big sky ranchhouse, etc. Would they live in it though, as their only residence, especially if people struggling to make ends meet on $10,000 a year were living across the hall from them?

But why build in Forest Park? Since the pearl has already resigned itself to highrises, and the market for them appears to have been good, if people really want the kind of urban retail experience offered in the pearl, it would seem to make sense to build highrises in that district much higher than they have been to date. Much, much higher. Double, or triple.

This would answer the argument suppporting the construction of proposed projects such as the MAL's as a response to housing shortage, and would at least slow down horizontal sprawl over open land. Why destroy the quality of life afforded currently by mississippi avenue's present, modestly developed state when the height of pearl highrises could be increased to address the concerns city functionaries, speculators and developers express in regards to housing shortages?

Staking taller rises in the Pearl District will only add to greater energy consumption, increased waste stream and traffic, reduced resources, and generally crowded conditions. As "Shooting Blanks-Vasectomy" puts it, ending population growth is the solution. The ill-informed or willfully obsfucating amongst us will state the old saw "you can't keep people out," but the fact is that population growth continues here because of the intense marketing campaign and heavy subsidies. End them both and suddenly, no growth!

We will not achieve sustainability until we bring our population under the carrying capacity of our bioregion, the Columbia-Willamette Watershed. Any talk of sustaining otherwise is pure myth.

More and More Americans Being Pushed to Fringes Along the Color Line
By Manning Marable Ph.D.

Millions of Americans are deeply worried about their economic futures. The signs of the economic crisis ahead are literally everywhere, if one bothers to look at the statistical evidence.

The first, and most important indicator, is the unprecedented concentration of wealth within American society. According to USA Today columnist Yolanda Young, in 1970 the bottom one-third of all U.S. households (today, about 96 million people) "earned 10 times that of the top 1 percent" of all households. By 2004, the upper 1 percent "made as much as the bottom third of Americans."

The vast destruction of millions of manufacturing jobs and outsourcing of U.S. businesses have pushed growing millions of Black, Brown and working-class Whites into what can be described as "the fringe economy." Over half of all Americans, according to Young, now "live from paycheck to paycheck."

Hundreds of multibillion-dollar companies are reneging on their past promises to workers to cover health care, transferring those costs to their employees, past and present. On March 15, for example, Ford Motor Corp. announced that it would "charge the spouses of its workers to participate in its health care plan, if another health care plan is available." The new fees for spouses, $110 per month, will force hundreds of thousands of Ford retirees to make hard decisions between their health care and mortgage payments, food and college savings for their children.|

The same day, Chrysler Corp. announced that it would eliminate 10 to 15 percent of its salaried employees in the United States. Starting in 2006, Chrysler employees must come up with 31 percent of their total health coverage costs based on their salaries.

About 56 million Americans, nearly one-fifth of the total population, are unable to afford maintaining a checking account. On payday, millions of low-income Americans cash their paychecks at thousands of check cashing stores that are located today in most urban neighborhoods.

The check-cashing establishments normally charge 3 percent of a check's total value as a service fee. For a check worth $800, for instance, the check-cashing company would skim off $24. Those exorbitant transactions generate millions of dollars daily for financial institutions and banks, taking unfair advantage of the poor.

What practical political measures can be initiated to reduce the economic insecurity of low-wage, working families? Maryland's Legislature came up with one excellent solution, when in January it passed a state law requiring employers with 10,000 or more workers to pay at least 8 percent of their payroll toward their employees' health care coverage. The only corporation in Maryland with at least 10,000 employees is Wal-Mart — a corporation that has 1.3 million workers across the United States, over one-half of whom have no health insurance.

In New York State, the progressive Working Families Party proposed in early March an even more ambitious health care proposal than Maryland's. Called the "Fair Share For Health Bill," it would tax all employers with more than 100 employees the equivalent of $3 per hour per worker, unless they provide health coverage worth that much. Similar legislation has also been proposed in New Jersey and in more than 20 other states.

These progressive health care reforms indicate that the economic crisis for the working poor has become so intense that even the established political parties are finally addressing — in modest ways — aspects of the human misery which affects millions of uninsured Americans. It also indicates that a new political agenda could be constructed around a "social insecurity index."

Because, if you have no health insurance, no checking or savings account, no home ownership, no pension or individual retirement account, you are economically relegated to the edge of society.

Manning Marable, Ph.D., is a professor of history, politics and African American studies at Columbia University.

To: "You're also buying into the false dilemma". Well, no, I actually don't buy the argument that the need for affordable housing can only be met by building ever more multifamily dwellings, be they 4 story structures or 400 story structures.

I think that population reduction is a key means of reducing housing shortages. The problem is, to which you refer, those who unquestioningly accept the idea that no reasonable means of managing population growth can be conceived. So, they don't even try to approach ideas that could reasonbly accomplish this.

Just a facetious reference in regards to ever taller towers in the pearl. Of course, this type of urban housing has seriously been considered in the past. I'm not not well enough read to throw out the right designer names, but the movie Metropolis built on that idea.

It makes some sense in a certain way, because domestic living is concentrated vertically, avoiding the need to pave over living breathing land. Those kind of structures could probably be highly energy efficient because energy expended on time and travel to work, school, and play, would be minimized. All of those activities could be centralized in one complex. Nobody probably really wants to live in such a place unless it's on Mars. The idea though, is that country doesn't have to be asphalt bombed, leaving it be the great gem it is, for exploration, discovery, retreat, and so forth.

My guess though, is that if speculators and developers thought the public would go for them, with regard for no other aesthetic, or human needs considerations, they would immediately throw together plans to build ever taller residency towers. They can, and has history has shown, have been that mindlessly superficial.

I'm going to take another look down missi ave soon. I'd like to take a direct look at the artists rendering of the proposed lofts. In view of residents legitimate concerns about new structures blending in and so forth, I'm trying to understand where the architect inspiration for some of these newer buildings; pearl, SoWa, have come from. The MAL drawing seen on the indy site looks amazing bland, and doesn't appear to evoke anything remotely suggestive of the local dialect. What are those people thinking?

The proposed lofts appear to simply be an efficient to construct, glass and steel rectilinear stack structure. There's no ornamentation, no cornices, no reference to hip roof design of single family dwellings on the street, no facade decor, no stucco, no terra cotta. I'll check out the MAL loft site. Maybe I'm completely wrong about all this.

When you walk the pearl, a lot of the older warehouse and service buildings that were basically box shaped structures, had quite a lot of detailing, ornamentation, and creativity inspiring their designs.

Lately, architects seem to building a lot of these efficient buildings, probably for no other reason that they can be made to come under budget.