Portland Oregon, Music Scenes, and Change: A Cultural Approach to Collective Strategies of Empowerment

Abstract

This article highlights the role of the independent music culture of Portland, Oregon, in establishing a productive culture of consumption and spaces that contribute to the place character of the city. Derived from an ethnographic research project of urban culture and social change in Portland, Oregon, guided interviews and extended participant observation helped to bring to light the cultural economy that artists and musicians make for the city. The cultural production of Portlanders in the indie music community, and those who work and produce in neighborhood settings, has served the city in the most recent period of rapid gentrification. Many scholars have focused on the way bohemian concentrations have led to gentrification; others have highlighted the contingent labor that art makers provide. What I argue here is as the city develops in these ways, artisanal workers and music makers work to use their established networks and situated meaning in the city to fend off these processes and extend their presence in space. Through these collective strategies of empowerment, culture and music move into political discourse and affect political action on the city level.

Sustainable Cycling for all? Race and Gender–Based Bicycling Inequalities in Portland, Oregon

“…By 1999, the racial composition of the previous stronghold of the Black community saw Black residents owning 53 percent fewer homes in the area than just a decade before (Gibson 2007). As long-term residents of Black neighborhoods were pushed out, more affluent White residents moved in (Bates 2013;London 2017;Shaw and Sullivan 2011). Goodling et al (2015) have noted that years of such uneven development contributed to today's spatial concentration of Portland's most vulnerable residents to East Portland where access to robust transit choices and other amenities remain limited.…”

Misrecognition in a Sustainability Capital: Race, Representation, and Transportation Survey Response Rates in the Portland Metropolitan Area

“…Survey administrators and even some transportation planners may not have much ability or authority to intervene into the unsustainable and inequitable distribution of transportation amenities in the Portland area. However, transportation surveyors and planners should be aware of the consequences of their seemingly race-neutral actions [2], and the important sociological insight that racial categories, identities, processes, and outcomes within and beyond the Portland, Oregon transportation sector are not reducible to social class [1,2,10,11,28,29,48,[50][51][52][53]55,56,[58][59][60][61][62]68,69,72,81,83]. Indeed, racial misrecognition in the 2011 OHAS occurred even when the samples were weighted to make them more representative of socioeconomic factors in the metropolis.…”

“…However, a recession followed by a tax-activist lawsuit halted the city's efforts before the project was completed. These developments contributed to increasing housing costs that pushed POCs-particularly Black and Latinx renters-to the urban periphery with limited access to transit and other amenities [25,[57][58][59][60][61]. These new urban development projects coincided with a period of increased police surveillance, which disproportionately targeted and harmed Black residents [62].…”

“…Within Portland, sustainability fixes have primarily manifested through bike lanes, light rail, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, and infill construction [25,58]. Portland's sustainability fixes also include the promotion of farmers' markets and urban agriculture [28], and the arts and creative industries [59,61,83]. Figure 7 also shows the north-south corridor of 82nd avenue, which has emerged from Portland's history of racial exclusion and socially unsustainable development as an important symbolic and material boundary that demarcates the devalued, racially diverse, and low-income East Portland suburbs from Portland's gentrifying, increasingly White, and "sustainable" urban core [25,28,58,59].…”

“…Portland's sustainability fixes also include the promotion of farmers' markets and urban agriculture [28], and the arts and creative industries [59,61,83]. Figure 7 also shows the north-south corridor of 82nd avenue, which has emerged from Portland's history of racial exclusion and socially unsustainable development as an important symbolic and material boundary that demarcates the devalued, racially diverse, and low-income East Portland suburbs from Portland's gentrifying, increasingly White, and "sustainable" urban core [25,28,58,59]. Indeed, the bulk of Portland's sustainability fixes since the 1990s have been concentrated west of 82nd Avenue, while much of the area east of 82nd avenue during that time span has been subjected to various commercial, housing, transportation, public safety, and planning "revitalization" efforts per Portland's Outer Southeast Community Plan Area [58,80,84].…”