You, Too, Can Create Portland's New Council Districts

4097

This last election, the citizens of the City of Portland (or at least a majority thereupon) at long  last deemed it time to move off the old city commission format for the City Council and evolve into district-based representation.

The system that is replacing our old at-large Council is kind of surprising. Portland likes to take chances, and chances were, we were going to find ourselves in a city made of representative districts eventually. A city of more than 650,000 needs a more sophisticated approach than a council suited to a much smaller town can provide. 

If someone had told me we'd be dividing the city into four districts each sending three representatives to the city's legislature, I'd have told you you knew not what of you spake. Well, history has called me the fool. Ranked-choice voting, too! Daring, even for this place.

But, as the throught-terminating cliche goes, it is what it is. And, now, that's what it is. So, let's lean in. And the CoP has those of us in mind: I just found out that the city has a web app that lets you take a crack at it. 

Go to the page the Independent District Commission's put up at https://www.portland.gov/transition/districtcommission/districts. You'll find yourself at the Submit A District Map page and there are a number of options to explore, If you want to jump in and try your hand, go straight to OPTION 3: Draw & submit your own district map and get your apportionment on. The web mapping app "Districtr" is employed, and it's pretty easy to figure out; the most exciting thing about it is that you 'paint' areas with a brush that assumes the shapes of the census tracts as you go, and you can adjust the width of that brush with a slider in the upper right. 

If it seems non-intuitive, don't fret; there are simple tutorial PDFs available via links that can be found.

I gave it a try, and here's what I got:

Each one of those districts holds about 163,000 Portlanders. The bare and direct way about it is just to create districts with approximately-equal population. By providing access to data on ethnic population and other things, it invites you to explore the various communities in Portland and how one might group and/or divide. 

This sort of thing has been done before. Back in 2013, I investigated Washington DC's city government's "Redistricting The District" game, and it was quite informative. Given then-current population figures, one reapportions ward boundaries and explores the same things.

In Portland's implementation of Districtr you can not only play with districting Portland but also save and post your results, link to them, and even submit your ideas to the Independent District Commission.

It's a great deal of fun, and it's the sort of fun you can have again and again.

[pdx] A Review of UKL's The Lathe Of Heaven 45 Years In The Making

3321.

One of the more interesting sorts of literary critiques is from those who come to the work late.

The Lathe of Heaven is Ursula K. LeGuin's 1971 masterpiece, a subtext-laden love letter to Oregon and the nature of existence and human affection and love, and the most Portland novel ever written. It clothes its story so well in its setting ... A now-alternate-past version of Portland and northwestern Oregon ... that it's hard to believe that LeGuin wasn't a native Oregonian. It's the novel that caused me to fall in love with her writing, and the way she looks at the world.

At the blog Biblioklept, posted last October, review Edwin Turner posts an intriguing and accessible interpretation of his experience reading the novel for the first time, making a solid case that it's Heather Lelache, not George Orr or Dr. Haber who is the pivotal character of the story. He ends his review thus:

The Lathe of Heaven is a propulsive and intriguing read. I can’t believe I hadn’t read it before now. Great stuff.

To which we say, better late than never.

Read the review at https://biblioklept.org/2015/10/28/a-review-of-ursula-k-le-guins-novel-the-lathe-of-heaven/. 

Portland's Address System in 1928 (Updated)

1791.

NB, Tuesday 20 Jan 2008: I noticed a lot of referrals here. If you have a few minutes, could you leave a comment saying where you came from and what got you here ... or at least where you came from? If this information helped you, then that's made my day Thanks!)

Today, we return to the 1928 Portland Hibernia Map to get another closer look. This time, we go back to Address Nerd territory.

One of the things that originally fired my interest in Portland geography was the complex (from my Silvertonian point of view) address grid. It was pleasing to the eye and easy on the ear: for some reason, saying Southeast Stark Street is intriguing to me in the way that simply saying Stark Street isn't. I like the way the letters S and W look when sitting next to each other on a street sign. Order in a directional quadranted grid is aesthetically pleasing to me.

But the idea of NE/SW/SE/NW/N had the air of an after-the-fact overlay, an artefact. So I started down the road of asking why. Eventually, I happened upon Snyder, and my questions were answered in the main, but knowing the basics I wanted to know more.

Eventually, after enough chipping away, old maps came my way in the cosmic way such things do. I learned about Portland geography before and after the Great Renaming.

As covered here before, Portland before 1933 was ordered in a different way, a thing that evolved from the merger of Portland, East Portland, and Albina in 1890 to form the modern City government and the need to bring a real wild-West style of naming (where developers got to name the streets in their new subdivisions whatever they wanted regardless of what names already existed elsewhere) under control. Names were duplicated willy-nilly across the entire city.

The plan that evolved formed the skeleton of the one we recognize today, but the nomenclature was different:

1. All streets south of today's Burnside and west of the river were simply streets, with no directionals.


2. All named streets north of today's Burnside and west of the river had no directionals; numbered streets were suffixed "North"


3. The exception to 1 and 2 above was Broadway, which began life as Seventh Street and adopted the Broadway name after the Broadway Bridge was constructed and the street was extended over. North Broadway was Broadway north of Burnside; Broadway south of Burnside was South Broadway.


4. Named streets on the east side were prefixed "East", but only if they had a counterpart on the west side. Downtown's "Stark Street" was called "East Stark Street". Named east side streets that had no west side counterpart had no directional (e.g. Thompson Street instead of NE Thompson St. Broadway was simply Broadway because the east side had it first; see number 3 above).


5. Numbered streets on the east side were also prefixed East. What we today call SE 12th Avenue, for example, was known as East 12th Street.


6. Numbered streets on the east side north of Burnside were, as on the west side, suffixed North, but still carried the East prefix for differention. What we today call NE 12th Avenue was known, therefore as East 12th Street North.


7. There were 20 house numbers to the block, rather than the standard 100 that we know today. Between Front Street and First Street (no directionals, therefore the west side south of Burnside) the addresses rand 1-20. You didn't get to the 100 block until Fifth Street.

Now, for a couple of pictures. The truly exciting thing about the Hibernia Map other than its sheer age is that it contains information on how the addresses ran. Here's a section of the middle:

(surf this link to see it bigly in the Photobucket album). If you look closely, you'll see faded bold number in a sort of teal. Look near Lovejoy Street at the Broadway Bridge and you'll see the number "200". Near where Westover Road intersects Burnside, you'll see the number "800". This is how the address system ran in Portland in those days. An address in the 2400 Block of NW Marshall Street today would have been in the 800-820s on an un-directionalled Marshall Street. The Oregonian, at today's address of 1320 SW Broadway, would have been at about 280 South Broadway (speaking of location, of course; the actual Oregonian Building during those days was considerably farther north, in the middle of downtown).

Examining the map in full we find the highest address ranged only easterly into the 2200s (in the Montavilla area, around E. 82nd and E. Stark), southerly to about 1700 (Sellwood) and north along Union Avenue (today's MLK) in the 1500s. We assume that the addres schema increased going up the north Portland Peninusula into Saint Johns after descending to zero somwhere between Williams Avenue and Interstate Avenue, but the map is sadly silent on this point.

Now I did say that the address scheme was uniform thoughout the city. I'm afraid I told a little lie there. A curious thing can be found if we turn our attention south of Division and east of E. 41st, in the Holgate Blvd/Powell Blvd/Woodstock Blvd area:

(you'll definitely want to look at the embiggened version by clicking here to Photobucket). Moving down from the top we see E. Harrison, E. Lincoln, E. Grant, E. Sheridan, E. Caruthers (these streets perforce extended names from the westisde core area), Division (no Division on the west side, remember, so no "E. Division", and then ... all names are replaced by numbers. And that's not all; the numbered streets run north and south whereas the numbered avenues run east-west (in 100% contrast to the modern Portland Avenue/Street pattern). And not just that, but this area shows awareness that, despite the house numbers, Holgate Avenue (for example ... today's SE Holgate Blvd) is 45 blocks south of Burnside, and therefore would be 45th Street SE (also showing awareness that the area is south and east of the address origin point.

There is very little written about this area or why just that area had the SE directional applied as a suffix. The only hint we have comes from pages 59-61 of Snyder, who relates that during the years when those who cared about such things were trying to dice out the rationalization of city addresses, particulary in the year 1910, City Engineer J.W. Morris advanced the following plan:

1. All Street names to be replaced by numbers.


2. Avenues to run east-west, Streets North-south.


3. Burnside, the principal street divider, to be called Central Avenue. We surmise that the other divisions would likely be the ones we recognize today


4. 100 numbers to the city block.

The plan was met with round disapproval by people who were conversant with, were fond of, and understood the sense of history inherent in the current street names. An editorial form the 24 April 1910 Oregonian had it thus:

Some people evidently don't know that there ever were pioneers! They would abolish the names on streets, and subsititute bare numbers. But a large number of citizens will not sanction this change.

We wonder if that outer southeast area was envisioned as a sort of a pilot program for this scheme. We do know that it was actually implemented: the curbstone at SE 53rd Avenue and Woodstock Boulevard serves as evidence for that (old street names are left in many areas of town preserved thusly. Next time youre at a streetcorner, look down. You might be surprised at what you'll find there (in the good way!).

It does speak for the merits of the plan that the basics of the thing – address quadrants, 100-numbers-to-the-block, and numbered ordered avenues radiating from the origin point – did actually form the basis of the current plan-on-the-ground that we all know and use daily. We don't know about our readers, but we rather prefer that names were kept on the streets, though, noting the latter-day compulsion of some to change names to honor notable historic figures, we wonder if going with the all-number system would have had a benefit of removing the pain we've seen in the news. After all, renaming 65th Avenue NE to Rosa Parks Way or 15th Street North to Cesar Chavez Boulevard would hadve turned out to a welcome change.

All the illustrations I've been using for this posting series can be seen in the Photobucket album, here.

Tags: Address_Nerd, SE portland, portland addresses, Portland maps, Portland history, 1928 Hibernia map

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[street_blades, info_design] New Portland Overhead Signs, and a New Street

1164. If you've been looking up and forward whilst waiting at any light in the Portland corporate area latterly, you'll have seen a sign bound to the overhead like this:

The City is, at last, addressing a real need in road signage. Most other larger towns up and down the valley (and across the Columbia too) have large signs denoting the street name on the traffic signal arm. Any driver who's been saved from having to frantically scan about on the corners to see what street they're crossing don't need to be told how good this is.

The standard has seemed to have been set; the iconic representation of the "Portland Rose", the red rose with three green leaves, and a simple representation of the street name at cross.

The notation on this particular sign deserves some explanation. For the past several months, a major realignment of the connection between Killingsworth Street and Columbia Boulevard has been becoming reality. The old Columbia Boulevard opening, a two-lane underpass under the railroad tracks, is a bottleneck. This old T intersection is being deprecated (and looks like it's being closed completely) in favor of a new higher-capacity, split access to a short road which is apparently being called Columbia Parkway, which goes frm NE 89th Avenue and Killingsworth Street over to Columbia Boulevard at the Holiday Inn Airport.

The (SB) denotes the split access–Columbia Pkwy splits into separated Northbound lanes and Southbound lanes.

The old part of Columbia Blvd east of that new intersection (which is also fully signalled) appears headed to a destiny as a dead-end stub.

Technorati Tags: pdx pdx geography,sign design,information design,Street Blades

[design, urban design] The New Sellwood Bridge?

1153. (Via BikePortland) We've seen the future of the old Sellwood Bridge, and we like what we see.

There are some gorgeous design thoughts happening, everything from cable-stayed to through-arch for the higher-priced options to a beguiling delta-frame bridge and a simple box-girder design that, while relatively plain next to the other glamour-pusses, is still elegantly-designed. Here's the rundown of concept imagery, nicked wholesale from the Sellwood Bridge Project's site:


The Sellwood Bridge Project is running a survey right now on these visual design options. The BikePortland blog suggests we take it, and we endorse that suggestion. Just go the home page there and look for the splash graphic at the top of the right sidebar. It won't take long.

[pdx] Which Portland Is This, Then?

1149. This Portland has a few things in common with our Portland; there is a Portland Harbor on the north side; it's about the same latitude; It has an island that's not quite an island, and it is famous for being a certain color of gray, and at the end of it all, just like property taxes, you have a bill. And, speaking of ends, this Portland is Sine qua non.

Which Portland is this?

UPDATE: Stan gets the award: The correct answer is the Isle of Portland, in Dorset, in England.

The Sine qua non comes from the inference that most other Portlands were either named for this (Portland, Maine) or named for something that was named for it (Portland, Oregon). The famous Portland cement has nothing to do with our fair city (despite there once being a local firm called Oregon Portland Cement), but was in fact called such because the color was reminiscent of the color of the stone on the Isle. Quizzically, there is no actual city of Portland there. The nearest city of size is Weymouth on the Dorset shore, across the Portland Harbour from the Isle.

This island is physically an island but is also connected by a long sand spit called Chesil Beach, which, in geographic parlance is called a tombolo. Shaped like a great comma, pointing southwest, the cape at the end is called Portland Bill, which seems right when you look at the shape of the land, and inspired a popular BBC children's show whose star was called–of course–Portland Bill.

Technorati Tags: pdx,Portland,Which Portland

[pdx] Bike Maps for Free

1146. I love the map Bike There, which is now in a new edition, and $6.00 isn't a big price to pay for the info on how to get around Portland on your two-wheeler. But, odd as it may seem, in this economy, sometimes you don't even have the $6. What to do?

The City of Portland has good information available at the city's website, Portland Online, specifically, going to this page will take you directly to the page that not only has Portland cycling maps but also maps for surrounding cities.

They are free for downloading but, if you look in the middle of the page you'll find a link where you can put in a mail request. They'll gather up a handful of the maps you want, throw in a couple of pamphlets and a cool bumpersitcker or two, and send it off to you just for the asking.

That's right, basic good biking info for the asking. The above photo shows you what you'll get if you ask for the whole banana. And I suggest it; what with fuel prices being what they are, I think that people will more and more be taking to people power in the next few years to get round this town.

Technorati Tags: pdx,Portland,Map design,bicycling,Portland bicycling

[pdx] So, Which Portland Is This?

1145. Okay, folks, you've been quick and sharp so far. But I have another Portland here.

it has about 24,000 people to it,

It's served by rail.

it has a connection to a certain Lt. Dan.

Most importantly, it's not called Portland anymore.

What it its current name?

UPDATE: Stan guessed correctly. This Portland is known as Blue Island, IL. More, as they say, to come.

Technorati Tags: pdx,Portland,Which Portland

[pdx] Okay, Which Portland Is This?

1143. This Portland sits on a major waterway, and in two counties. Of Portland's corprorate area, 27% of it is in one of the two counties, moreover, that 27% is 100% in that neighboring county.

We'll bet people grow roses there too, but chances are, they may be some sunny shade of yellow.

Which Portland is this?

UPDATE: Pril knocked this one out of the park; it's Portland, Texas. More riddles to come.

Tags: pdx, Portland, Which Portland

[pdx, pdx_politik] The Chavez Revolutions

1140. What was amazing about is that it all fell down like a house of cards. According to Witigonen and the Merc:

1. Mayor Tom's proposal to rename Interstate Avenue went down, 3-2.
2. Saltzman moved to table the process-revision vote in favor of settlling the SW 4th renaming issue.
3. Council approved the tabling.
4. Unanimous rejection of the proposal to rename SW 4th on reconsideration.

The discussion has been rebooted, if we care to have it. The only things we aren't getting back are the time and energy expended in arguing over it (and we still can't tell if the lesson was learned that processes are there for a good reason, and taking shortcuts only breaks people's hearts in the end).

Personally, the lesson I think we've all learned here is: There's a Commissioner Saltzman here? That dude's so quiet, I forgot about him.

Technorati Tags: pdx,pdx_politik,Cesar Chavez Blvd,terrior,pdx_geography

[pdx, pdx_politik] Commish Randy Swaps Out The Chavez Gameboard

1116. The most notable thing about Portland politics is that, sometimes, it isn't over even if it's over, as witness the strange turn in the "let's name something after Cesar Chavez" slo-mo train wreck

It's by now old news that Commissioner Randy Leonard not only sprang on us all the prospect of renaming the street City Hall is on SW Cesar E Chavez Blvd in favor of doing it to N Interstate Avenue. It's kind of become a game that the board gets changed out randomly. At first, it was some sort of strange cross between poker and "I've Got a Secret". Now, it's suddenly chess.

In suggesting not only a major downtown Avenue but the one that City Hall is located on, Commish Randy has not only changed the gameboard but, somewhat, the terms of the conversation. In this chess game, he's put the city's King on SW 4th in a way that the rename-Interstate advocates have to answer. And, in having the support of four out of five of the City Commission (save, of course, Mayor Tom), he's positioned his pieces well to support his move.

Quoted by The Big O:

It's the address of City Hall. There's a lot of symbolic value, and I think it reflects the pride the council has in wanting to honor Cesar Chavez

So he not only has the support of an overwhelming majority on Council, he's also putting the City's prestige on the line as well, which, politically speaking, is a master stroke. While all this is a surprising turn, this is perhaps the logical ultimate expression of the realipolitik involved in the quest to rename Interstate Avenue embodied in ramrodding through the process with no regard to existing policy and, at best, disdain for the feelings of the neighborhood involved.

I'm not in favor of renaming any of our streets any more, actually. It's not out of any fear of a name like "North Cesar E Chavez Blvd" (or "SW Cesar E Chavez Blvd" if it come to that), and, actually, ultimately, it wouldn't bother me much if one of them were renamed. I have no fear of a brown planet (or black, or what have you; our policy is to be as nice as possible to other people, in as much as other people outnumber us over 6 Billion to one).

I'm not in favor of renaming any of our streets in favor of anyone right now because, after the MLK renaming, the City devised a careful, methodical process that does its best to make sure that if a street does get renamed, it doesn't happen unless a majority of the people involved are on board with it, but latterly, if someone in City government gets the proverbial wild hair, it gets utterly and completely ignored, rendering the lessons we all learned about uniting community in the wake of the MLK renaming irrelevant.

If Mayor Tom promised renaming advocates that they could have thier way without going through the process, then that was a promise he never should have made.

That this and the last few renamings (Naito Blvd, Rosa Parks Way) were to honor people who were all about community (Naito about building the physical community, and Rosa Parks about the fact that we've all got to be respectful of each other – a lesson we probably haven't learnt after all), are in honor of people whose lives were about building and reinforcing the things that make us a human community just adds a great deal of irony to the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: pdx,Portland,Interstate Avenue,Cesar Chavez,Interstate Avenue Renaming,Cesar Chavez Blvd

[liff, pdx] Apple Is To Orange As...

1106.


Your choice, Hobson.

(NE Killingsworth Street just east of the new Columbia Blvd connection)

Technorati Tags: pdx,Portland Landscapes,road signs,Portland signs,Portland geography

[pdx] For A Member of the Economic Underclass, My Calendar Is Surprisingly Full

1093. Today we need to drop off our ballots (we miss the days of polling places, so we wait til the last minute to get some of that election-day mojo that used to be accompanied by a VOTE HERE! sign), but the dance card is simply bursting–at least it is for us...

Tonight, The Wife™ and I are going to put in an appearance at the KEX-Sam Adams Domain Name Party. At last, Yours Truly, Cult Member 583, gets to meet "The Guys". And, yah, that Sam person.

Tomorrow there's going to be a Jeff Merkley blogger get-together over at the new Laurelwood Brewery on NE Sandy.

Pictures to follow

Technorati Tags: Sam Adams,Samuel Adams,Commissioner Sam Adams,The Great Brew-HaHa,KEX,Mark Mason,Dave Anderson,Jeff Merkley,Blogger Meetup,PDX Bloggers

[pdx] Mt Tabor From Rocky Butte at Sunset

1076. To kick off NaBloPoMo, here's another view from our sunset photo series, the first of which was published in this entry the other day:


Oh, those Boring Volcanics...

That hillock in the distance is Mount Tabor, which means we're looking southeast from the stoneworks at the summit of Rocky Butte (the aforementioned Joseph Wood Hill Park).

Portland at sunset is gorgeous, no?