west by northwest (by midwest)

a tale of two developments no. 2

In an earlier post, I started a series about two urban renewal projects that focuses on train stations, one in Portland and one in Salt Lake City. This post continues the series.

When my husband and I lived at the Yards at Union Station in Portland, Oregon, I walked every morning down NW 5th Avenue, all the way to Burnside, where I crossed into the downtown.  From there, NW 5th became SW 5th, and I could finally relax my shoulders, stand taller, catch my breath, stop clenching my fists inside my coat pockets.  As soon as I reached the US Bank Tower, the city opened up for me. I found myself looking up into skyscraper windows as I walked, watching tiny people shuffle paperwork or answer phones; or peering down alleys to enjoy the patterns of sunlight on piles of leaves or crumbling brick walls.  It was always - always - a relief to have made it that far.

The walk between Union Station and Burnside took me through a sector of the city known as Old Town/China Town, an area known for drug deals, assaults, and theft.  The crime, though, was not the main reason I clenched my fists.  Crime could happen anywhere; a quick glance at online crime maps made that clear.  But in Old Town, I felt an undercurrent of tension - of rage, even - that threatened to yank me under with every step.

Old Town provided homes to several social service agencies, halfway houses, and free or low-cost medical clinics, which meant that any given moment, some of the most impoverished and vulnerable citizens of the city streamed into or out of the area.  This alone created a certain tension between transients and residents, but when gentrification was factored in, tension quickly flared into something akin to a turf war.

Once, a man covered in open, oozing sores limped toward me, stretched out his hand, and tried to grab my shoulder before I ducked away.  “Hey, white girl,” he mumbled. His friends sitting on a nearby bench laughed. “Surely you got …”  He jerked his head toward the Yards, indicating he saw me walk over the pedestrian bridge from the apartments. “Change for the bus?”

The truth was, I didn’t. “Sorry,” I said, and continued on my way.

“Bullshit,” he screamed after me. “These fuckers move in here …”

That was all I heard before a bus rushed past and blocked his voice.

Many of the residents at the Yards struggled to make ends meet, too. But that hardly mattered. As one of the Portland Development Commission’s urban renewal projects, the Yards had become a symbol of creeping gentrification - of a city policy that defined livability almost exclusively in terms of middle and upper-class needs.  Sure, many renewal projects included “affordable” housing, but that did not mean affordable food, energy, entertainment, health care, or anything else. Where developments like the Yards sprang up, chi-chi boutiques usually followed (although not near the Yards, which remained a dead zone on the edge of the city). More importantly, long-time residents (or in the case of Old Town, long-time loiterers) ofen felt forced out.

That gesture - nodding toward the Yards - became common, almost like sign language, or maybe even a reflex, when strangers asked for money.  I interpreted it as a subtle reminder of who really owned these city blocks.  After all, Old Town had long stood as one of the few places where the impoverished, homeless, paroled, and probationed were actually welcomed - if not with open arms, at least with open rooms in a halfway house or free clinic.  In all of Portland, it was the one sector this population could claim as their own. We - the residents of the Yards - were the real thieves, stealing city blocks right out from under their rightful owners.

I haven’t felt a similar feeling in the Gateway District in Salt Lake City, but since I do not live there, I wonder if I am too far on the outside the sense it.  In Portland, people often thought my reaction to Old Town seemed unbalanced - over the top, even - but none of those people actually lived there or walked regularly through the streets. This leads me to think an experiment might be in order: walking every day through the Gateway area for at least two weeks, to get a sense of how it feels when people recognize me.