Obituaries for Portland Are Premature. But What Will Become of Its Most Important Neighborhood?
The image of downtown Portland is painted on plywood.
The murals on boarded-up shop windows portray the kind of city Portland wants to be: just, equitable, harmonious.
The need for those boards reveals who we are now: acrimonious, divided, fearful of each other and our future.
Portland is nearing the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic descending on the city. It is also engaged in an increasingly desperate conversation about whether, even after the plywood comes down, downtown can thrive again.
No other part of Portland has been so obviously altered. In March, most of the city's largest employers sent their office workers home, leaving towers empty. Few of them have asked employees to return.
Read more: https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/02/17/obituaries-for-portland-are-premature-but-what-will-become-of-its-most-important-neighborhood/
(Williamette Week)