Gentrification is more apparent on â?¨two wheels
By Thomas Ngo
Commuting by bike is not only a sustainable and fun way to get around. It helps you realize many things around your environment that you typically wouldnâ?TMt notice by car.â?©The first thing you may notice is the weather, which has been mostly great for the last few months. You feel the breeze on your face and the tires rolling on the road.â?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©Ã¢?©It also becomes a lesson in social demographics.â?©Iâ?TMm less rushed on residential streets, so I have more time to observe and think about things. Iâ?TMm always amazed when I commute inbound from my home near Interstate 205. I transition from seedy motels and strip malls to the estate-like houses in Laurelhurst and liberal hot-spots like the Citybike Workersâ?TM Cooperative.â?©Another transition has taken longer to notice. That has to do with where people are moving. Closer to campus, much of North and Northeast Portland has predominantly black residents. But the times, they are a-changinâ?TM.â?©Property values have skyrocketed in the last decade with improvements like the construction of TriMetâ?TMs MAX Yellow Line and money from the Portland Development Commission pumped to revitalize areas like North Mississippi Avenue.â?©This is gentrification.â?©While drug deals were replaced with coffee shops, families have been displaced to other areas of Portland.â?©On bike, Iâ?TMve frequented great restaurants like Pix Patisserie and the Albina Press. On my way to school on the North Williams Avenue bike lane, I notice old single-family houses go down for fancy medium-density housing like Wygant Lofts.â?©Biking south from my house toward John Marshall High School, I notice Chinese, Vietnamese, Hispanic and Russian businesses that have popped up along Southeast 82nd Avenue. Closer to my alma mater in â?oeFelony Flats,â?? an area where Iâ?TMm used to seeing pretty much 100 percent white, blue collar, IROC-driving folks, I saw something else. â?©Little black and brown faces frolicking on front yards. Then I realized that I started seeing these faces when I started biking last summer, but they werenâ?TMt as many as there are now.â?©Black families are moving to East Portland and Gresham because they can no longer afford to live where their parents and grandparents used to live. Those homes are now populated by many of my friends who are creative professionals.â?©One of the many draws for my friends is that itâ?TMs easy to get around. Itâ?TMs no wonder that Chris Walla, guitarist and producer for the band Death Cab for Cutie, relocated to Northeast Portland from Seattle because of its â?oewalkability,â?? according to an article on the front page of this Sundayâ?TMs Oregonian.â?©For the disadvantaged, it means more time in the automobile just to get around. The car-dependent lifestyle places extra stress on these individuals that arenâ?TMt as healthy to begin with. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to die from diabetes and nearly 30 percent more likely to die from heart disease.â?©Unequal access to walkable, livable streets is similar to environmental racism in the Bronx, where hazardous waste sites are located in the ghetto. â?©The irony is that the MAX Yellow Line was built to improve the conditions of predominantly black families who already sufferred a blow when Interstate 5 plowed through their neighborhoods in the 1950s and 60s.â?©These patterns of social stratification should be troubling to a city that values sustainability and equity. We cannot expect people to live a less carbon-intensive lifestyle when they cannot afford it. â?©Local leaders should place greater emphasis on ensuring that the socioeconomically disadvantaged have the same transit and health amenities as those in the Pearl District and the South Waterfront.â?© â?©Thomas Ngo is Opinions Editor â?©for The Beacon.â?©
