Citizenship

I have a home, now a rental, in Portland, Oregon, about six miles and a half hour from city center. The best-known name of the general area is Gateway. That home was built in 1955 by my dear Uncle Russell Richardson, and my oldest brother, Donald Norman. Uncle Russell and Aunt Irene (my father's sister) were our magnet bringing us off a not-successful turkey farm in Pelican Rapids, MN, in Winter of 1950. This home was the ultimate best of Russel's, as a builder of about two dozen homes in the neighborhood, his family home then and the site of my fondest childhood memories. The house stayed in family ownership, inherited by my sister Irene and kept as a diminishing rental ultimately to me in 1993. Over time I improved the home to fully-modern, energy efficient and safe. The location is convenient to public transportation and shopping, way above-average in this, of living in USA. Yet, value of the home is challenged by public policy of neglect of East-side suburbs. I challenge that public policy, to treasure and improve Gateway, as a vibrant hub, yet with greater respect of a natural state.

As I update this page, in Spring-2020 Covid-19 lockdown, I live in Lake Oswego, a desirable Southwest-Portland suburb. Here, I hold onto concerns for Portland, and Gateway in particular. I add new activism of ever-broader scope. I'm proud of my original bumper sticker and protest banner: No Respect for the Groper and Thief.

Where I have learned to live in quite-urban Portland, Oregon, I have appreciation for life in settings far more urban, and far less. At links here please find satellite photos at same scale, of other urban areas, to see how people concentrate , with differing constraints,

Pelican Rapids, MN Born here in 1944! Exemplary least-urban, without growth of population anytime soon.

Portland, OR Destined to become ever more urban and sprawling, but with near surroundings that will forever remain wilderness.

Hartford, CT Statically urban, expecting little growth of population. Just West of Hartford, I found desirable very rural living. So much less urban than Portland, in part from rugged features of land rising into the Berkshire Mountains.

Seattle, WA Constrained urban. Needing to live within water boundaries.

San Francisco, CA Constrained urban. Needing to live within water boundaries.

Denver, CO

New York City, NY

Philadelphia, PA

Atlanta, GA

London, UK Many European cities might be studied as example of what USA cities can be for livability decades from now, where if we have survived the twenty feet rise of sea level and the Big One, we have been inspired at last to economies through robust rail transit. I suggest that London's Stratford neighborhood to the East, is what might be wished for my Gateway neighborhood.

At an extreme of development, this might be the look of Gateway Transit Center ten miles from a city center. And, in all that dense living, green space is preserved. See a rather wasteful park destined to become a low maintenance forest. I think we would do better with our treasured Gateway Park, as a center of activity and inspiration of value to our entire Metro region, and our State and Nation.