Housing
In Defense of Portland's Orenco Station
A rebuttal to a recent Atlantic Cities story on the shortcomings of the New Urbanist community in Oregon
By American standards, Portland has a great reputation as a sustainable city. But the region's dirty little secret is that its suburbs – home to over two-thirds of the area's population – suffer from the same kind of car-dependent sprawl that surrounds virtually every U.S. city. In that light, the most important question for Portland is not what to do about the city, but rather how to fix the suburbs.