روش محلی برای مقابله با طرح گسترده تر؟ فقر شهری در پورتلند، اورگان

A model U.S. city, Portland Oregon's progressive policies are often credited with making it highly livable, with a vibrant urban core. Yet these policies have not protected Portland from broader trends that have increased urban poverty over the past several decades in the U.S., including social welfare cuts and the shift in the economy to the service sector. In terms of poverty dynamics and social policies, we argue that while regional planning and other progressive policies have helped protect Portland from extremely high concentrated poverty present in many large U.S. cities, it has still experienced growing social dislocations associated with national and macro-level social and economic factors. These trends suggest both the possibilities and limits of local policy, regional planning, and activism for ameliorating the deleterious consequences of social welfare retrenchment and franchise capitalism for vulnerable urban populations, and highlight the importance of the broader social policy context and economic change for understanding urban poverty and the experiences of the urban poor.

In research literature and popular media, Portland, Oregon is often described in glowing terms – especially for the city's participatory approaches to regional development (Abbott, 2001, Kunstler, 1993, Orfield, 2002, Ozawa, 2004 and Rusk, 1995). Of the 25 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, Portland consistently ranks among the top five most livable.1 For social well-being and sustainability indices, access to amenities and services, progressive policy, engaged citizenry, and responsive local governance, Portland is known as an U.S. urban success story. We argue that poverty in Portland, while mitigated somewhat by local or regional conditions, reflects broad urban American patterns within the context of social welfare retrenchment and macro-economic transformations.