UNDERSTANDING PHOENIX FROM PORTLAND OREGON

Understanding Phoenix is easier if you have some kind of reference. Call it an urban reference. Phoenix is Big City big, but it’s more than that.

Phoenix is the focal point of Arizona the way Portland is in Oregon. Not everyone enjoys that status, mostly those who don’t live in Portland or Phoenix.

You’re either a fan of the sprawl with a central core, or not.

I’m a fan. It started young.

As a young boy on the Oregon Coast, everything was brand new. I must have sounded like the family moron when we drove through Empire, Oregon and I asked where the Empire State Building was.

I admit it would have looked out of place in a small town of single story buildings, but I was still looking.

Twenty-odd years later the Empire State Building was the only tower I wanted to visit in NYC. And I did. I looked west toward Empire, Oregon.

To get there I took the train to NYC out of the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia for a view of the city from afar. Between 1975-76 I made about twenty runs and each one showed a glowing vision of mankind’s work. Some called it dump.

I liked the long view going in because it made me wonder what the heck was happening in there and who was doing what. Then I’d walk out of Penn Station and find out.

Start spreading the news.

Big City Down To Size

Philadelphia had a good view coming in on the Schuylkill Expressway. It’s similar to the view of Portland coming in on Hwy 30 from Sauvie Island where the industrial landscape changes to urban in a good way.

Drive into Portland on 84 and the city jumps into view full frame. From Hwy 26 we used to see Mt. Hood out of the tunnel. Now it’s just the KOIN Tower. I-5 headed north shows South Portland as a warm up for the core.

With the same goal,I took the 101 loop around Phoenix to see it from as many angles as possible. I went up high. I went down low. I saw it from the high vantage point like Portland’s Mt. Scott and the low view like rolling down Hawthorne on the east side.

From that angle, understanding Phoenix got easier. It started looking like a city instead of a blister on the boiling skin of an earthen oven.

 Phoenix is the capital and most populous city in Arizona, with 1,680,992 people (as of 2019). It is also the fifth–most populous city in the United States, the largest state capital by population, and the only state capital with a population of more than one million residents.

That’s some heavy consolidation.

Understanding Phoenix With Big Credentials

Phoenix is in on the Big Dream.

They welcomed the NFL from St. Louis, expanded MLB with the Diamondbacks, and is home to the NBA Suns.

Portland has the Trail Blazers, the ’77 NBA World Champion Portland Trail Blazers, working for a baseball team, and has no chance for an NFL team.

Phoenix is living life on a grand scale; Portland is working its way back from rolling out the welcome mat for people passing through. Except the people didn’t pass through, they stayed, home or no home.

Tents and trash piles showed up on downtown streets and under bridges while the city leaders work for a better outcome for visitors.

Phoenix rises out of the desert, Portland rises from the banks of the Willamette River. From the images in this post Phoenix looks almost as green as Portland. Trees instead of cactus.

Recently parts of Oregon got a tryout as the New Idaho. If you’ve driven out of eastern Oregon and across southern Idaho, you’ve seen the view.

It looks a lot like Arizona outside Phoenix, but without the mountains.

If the weather takes the expected turn we’ve been hearing about in Climate Change, we’ll all be living in a Phoenix.

Pass the sunscreen, please.