Geography 368: Field Seminar

Day 9 | "Day in the Life" of Portland Activity & Metro Portland GIS

For our last full day in Oregon, Ezra split us up into three families, and gave us a pretend home address for the day. With the pretend home address, the goal was to have us get around town like we lived at that address. We had to assess where the nearest school, coffee shop, hardware store, grocery store, and park was in relation to our address, to see what life would be like living at our given addresses.

The Manthei’s, consisting of momma Emily, papa Andrew, daugher Kat, and the family pet Caroline (she wanted to be the dog), lived in central Portland. The neighborhood itself consisted of older homes--probably built pre-1950--and we felt we didn’t even need a car where we lived. Walkability was a 10/10; the school and park were only a couple of blocks away, and there were coffee shops within a 10 minute walk. The grocery and hardware stores were a little bit farther, however the public transportation system was so smooth and efficient that getting there did not take much time at all.

After we found everything we needed to find, we decided the best place for us to go was a bookstore, then thrift shops. We first went to the local Goodwill, however when we couldn’t find anything there we stumbled upon a local thrift store called Village Merchants. Loving every square inch of the store, each member of the Manthei family found some cool article of clothing or artifact, with the highlights being a Damian Lillard jersey, and a flag of the great nation of Cascadia. After thrifting, we ate some much needed brunch at Sckavone’s right across the street, then slowly made our way back to meet up with the rest of the Oregon crew. But not before stopping at VooDoo doughnuts.

The Manthei Family

The Manthei's waiting for the bus (left) and Voodoo Doughnuts (right). Photos by Katlyn Wettberg and Caroline Saksefski

The Roth Family

Krista, Chase, Haley, and Rachel made up the Roth Family. We lived at 2939 NE Davis Street, which is located in East Portland in the Laurelhurst neighborhood. Our little green house was built in 1902, and most of the surrounding homes were built around the same time. Once we found our house, we took a short walk to a cool Southeast Asian coffee shop called Kopi Coffee House. From there we went to the only grocery store close to our house: Whole Foods. Although only a three-minute walk from our house, we agreed that it was a little inconvenient to have a fairly expensive store be the most spatially convenient grocery store. There weren’t any pharmacies or hardware stores within walking distance of our house, but we found an elementary school and a huge park just ten minutes away.

After taking the bus to a couple of thrift stores and getting lunch at Holman’s Bar & Grill, we went to Laurelhurst Park. It’s right in the middle of a seemingly upper-class neighborhood with huge brick houses. The park was huge and beautiful. While we were walking around, we met an older man named Randy, who gave us a tour around the park with his dog, Tasmania. We had to cut our tour short to catch a bus to meet up with the rest of the group. We missed our stop on the way, but we got to see some cool street art during the extra walking time.

From left: Krista, Haley, Rachel, and Chase outside their Dewey Street home

Photo by Chase Mohrman

Kopi Coffee House

Photo by Krista Emery

The Brooklyn Family

Group members that traveled to more on the outskirts of the urban city center of Portland included Adria, Kayla, Carrie, and Paul. 3555 Brooklyn St. was the given address to our ‘home’ for the day this location ended up making the group travel along one of the longest bus line routes to get there compared to the other two families. Leaving from the hostel, the route to Brooklyn St. consisted of three different bus routes and one transfer taking a total of 45 minutes. Even though there was a re-route in our travelling period and the group had to walk the last length of the outbound trip, the bus line was still very direct all things considered.

Roughly an hour later around 10:00 am we got to see what our local family’s residence was like and how the surrounding neighborhood’s accommodations could support a full community of people within the outer suburbs of Portland. Immediately the first thing that was striking to us all was that almost every household within this one block Brooklyn St. neighborhood encompassing 3555 had solar panels installed for efficient energy production. This was a sudden sign that these housing complexes were recently developed or installed within the past five to ten years and the architecture also had evidence of recent construction with near perfect siding, trim, landscape work, etc. Another observation that the group noticed just in the vicinity of our family’s home which pointed to more recent redevelopment was just across the street from the 3555 block were older and more traditional American homes possibly out of the 90’s, 80’s or even earlier.

Setting off from 3555 Brooklyn St. our group was cold, wet, and in need of coffee so we decided to head to the closest commercial block within the radius of our family home to warm up. On our way out of the direct neighborhood we happened to stumble upon the nearest elementary school, Richmond Language Immersion School. At first we didn’t know what kind of specialization this institution had and only realized after researching the name that this was a highly recognized school receiving national awards for excellence in the early 2000’s. The recognition of Richmond’s success is so high in fact that the enrollment process for new students is done by a lottery system due to an over-saturation of applying parents. With this institution located just .7 miles from our family’s home, the observed educational standards for the community are evident.

The commercial district where we ended up stopping for coffee and lunch was SE Division St. that was a short ten-minute walk from the household with accessible dining options, theatre entertainment, and some convenient stores. The only definitive hardware store we found for the assignment was on this street and was really only oriented towards saw materials. It should be noted that 3555 Brooklyn St. is bordered by two of these commercial streets on either side of its neighborhood, SE Division St. and SE Powell Blvd. while both districts have similar options for food and shopping. Some final components of our assignment included locating the nearest park(s) for recreation purposes and also pinpointing a grocery store for the family. Finding park spaces around the area didn’t prove to be difficult at all since there were multiple within short walking distance of our household. Ivon Field was roughly four blocks from 3555 along with Piccolo City Park. A bit farther north past SE Division was a larger park, Sewallcrest, and to the south there’s the Cleveland High School Track & Sports Field for more organized events. The only real negative aspect of our family’s immediate location was that there was no corporate grocery store within walking distance and one would likely have to take a car closer into the city to pick up food products.

The Brooklyn Family pictured outside their family home, slightly soaked from the Portland Rain.

Photo taken by Adria Slade

Stella Taco, the afternoon pit stop where the group went for lunch.

Photo taken by Carrie Dowden

Metro

After finishing up our day in the life as a Portlander, we met with Al Mowbray and Godfrey Yeung at Oregon Metro, which is a regional government based in Portland that focuses on regional planning and development. They have jurisdiction over 24 cities and three counties in the Portland region. They also manage over 17,000 acres of parks and natural areas.

One of the main purposes for Portland Metro is to assess the “urban growth boundary” for the area. Under Oregon law, each city and municipality is required to have a “urban growth boundary” based on future predictors of urban expansion. They are required to estimate where urban expansion will be in 20 years, to protect farms and forests from urban sprawl. The agency conducts their data collection with iPads by using the Collector application to collect points in the field. The application is synced with the agency’s public web map so data can be updated quickly. One of the projects that Al and Godfrey shared with us was the creation of a natural area over a landfill. The landfill is no longer in use, so Metro wanted to find a way to continue to use the space. One of the issues they encountered with this project was that the landfill still produces a substantial amount of methane. The solution was to construct a system of pipes to direct the methane to a cement factory where it can be used for electricity. To sum things up, Al and Godfrey gave us some advice on finding jobs after graduation and making ourselves more marketable.