The anti-Californians also see Portland expanding outward; Suburbs with awful names are filled with square-box homes and nasty chain-malls. Home owners associations beat every ounce of personality from some of these neighborhoods and hint that someday this Cascadian utopia may look like everyday America - one vast subdivision. Portland is dynamic and forward-thinking in containing its growth, so the community grows upward. What they could never control is that outside communities took advantage of this, and some say that the attempts to contain sprawl have actually made it worse.
Despite all that, despite its failures, we can still say that at least Portland has tried to build itself upwards, not outwards. Things are changing; even in a city that considers itself apart, the suburbs are catching up on Portland.
My brother Hans was at the airport, and explained to me the significance of Portland's forest park - a giant grant of land in the middle of the city; a pacific northwest rain forest. At the beginning of the 20th century, a giant housing community was being paved on the band of hills running through the middle of Portland. But a cunning ecologist convinced the city that they would regret it. Today, Forest Park sets Portland apart: a giant wooded park uninterrupted by roads, running right through the city, the largest urban forest park in the country.
He explained that a few had already owned private property in Forest Park before the land was made public. This, naturally, was where Hans lived: A solitary converted garage up a long dirt driveway in the middle of the thick cedars.
Hans' cabin is all copper wires, jars of hops and barley and grains, a vat and a keg and dozens of beer bottles along the shelf. Where's the television? And the radio? Hans has learned to brew beer, and make his own bread and jam, and to distill his own water. There is little else in the fridge. I asked him if this is an inspiration from our older brother, Andre, who lives in a cabin in a cornfield.
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