Transportation
Bike Lane Backlash, Even in Portland
The gentrification vs. bicycle infrastructure debate in one of the country's most bike-friendly cities
Donna Maxey’s family lost its home in Portland, Ore., to the bulldozers of “urban renewal” back in 1961. She was only 12 years-old, but she still remembers every detail of that house – the pocket doors, the built-in china cupboards, the towering English walnut trees in the yard. “I would dream about that house until I was in my 50s,” says Maxey.
It wasn’t just the house that was lost, it was an entire neighborhood: the thriving African-American enclave of Albina, home to legendary jazz clubs and countless businesses, all within walking distance. “It was a model neighborhood,” says Lisa Loving, who wrote about the destruction of Albina for Portland’s African American paper, The Skanner News. “What people had then was what people want now.”