Put a Bird on It: Mythologies of Portland(ia)

Abstract

Portland, Oregon is a city in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Portlandia is a television show produced by the Independent Film Company (IFC); both mythologize place. Portland is lauded by popular media as well as planning and design professionals as a model city. Portlandia satirizes this celebrated model urbanism orchestrated by artisanal values and hipster ethics. This essay examines how both Portland the city and Portlandia the show between them fabricate a model for twenty-first-century urbanism.

Keywords:

• mythologies
• Portland
• urban design
• revitalization
• model city
• gentrification
• new urbanism

Notes

¹ “Portlandia: Can the Left Laugh at Itself?,” Salon (January 20, 2011). Available online: http://www.salon.com/2011/01/20/portlandia/ (accessed July 11, 2014). The title of this essay, “Put a Bird on It,” does not refer to this particular chicken sketch, but to yet another now seminal Portlandia moment where the phrase refers to the placing of an avian image on any item to assert its handcrafted quality.

² Ibid.

³ “Complete List of Recipients of the 71st Annual Peabody Awards,” The University of Georgia (April 4, 2012). Available online: http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/71st-annual-peabody-awards-winners-announced/ (accessed April 13, 2012).

⁴ The term “America” is used here to establish an ideological construct.

⁵ David Lowenthal, “Fabricating Heritage,” History & Memory, 10, no. 1 (1998): 18; also Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972).

⁶ John Egan, “Infographic: Portland vs. Austin – Which One is the Weirdest?,” (March 14, 2014). Available online: http://blog.sparefoot.com/5625-portland-vs-austin-weird-infographic/ (accessed July 1, 2014); “America’s 50 Greenest Cities,” Popular Science (February 8, 2008) (accessed on December 23, 2012); “15 Green Cities,” Grist (July 20, 2007) (accessed on December 23, 2012); Paul Toscano, “America’s Best Cities for Happy Hour,” CNBC (September 8, 2010) (accessed on September 29, 2010); “TV: Food Network Awards: Food Network Awards Winners: Food Network,” Foodnetwork.com (archived from the original on September 19, 2008); “North America's Most Vegetarian-Friendly Cities in 2006,” “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” (accessed on January 11, 2013) http://www.peta.org/features/2006-vegetarian-friendly-cities/; Kristin Belz, “New York Parks Rank No. 2 in a Survey of 50 U.S. Cities,” Portland Monthly Magazine (June 12, 2013) (accessed on July 18, 2013); Mary Judetz, “Portland: Largest U.S. City with Openly Gay Mayor,” Associated Press, The Seattle Times (January 2, 2009) (accessed on January 11, 2013); Zack O’Malley Greenburg, “America’s Favorite Cities 2012: Quality of Life and Visitor Experience: Public Transportation and Pedestrian-Friendliness,” Travel & Leisure (October 26, 2009) (accessed on March 6, 2013).

⁷ Erin Keane, “Put a Bird on It: The Aftermath,” Salon (October 24, 2011). Available online: http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/can_a_portlandia_comedy_sketch_destroy_a_fashion_trend/ (accessed on July 1, 2014).

⁸ David Daley, “Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein: ‘I Want to Poke and Prod and Prick People,’” Salon (March 6, 2014). Available online: http://www.salon.com/2014/03/07/portlandias_carrie_brownstein_i_want_to_poke_and_prod_and_prick_people/ (accessed July 1, 2014).

⁹ Marc Spitz, “It Isn’t Easy Being Twee: Why the Wes Anderson Aesthetic is Good for Everyone,” Salon (March 25, 2014). Available online: http://www.salon.com/2014/03/25/it_isnt_easy_being_twee_why_the_wes_anderson_aesthetic_is_good_for_everyone/ (accessed July 1, 2014).

¹⁰ Daley, “Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein.”

¹¹ Philip Bess, “Communitarianism and Emotivism: Two Rival Views of Ethics and Architecture,” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965–1995, ed. Kate Nesbitt (New York: Princeton Architectural, 1996), 370–83.

¹² The Republic of Plato, trans., notes and interpretive essay by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, (1968), rev. 1991).

¹³ Bret Weber and Amanda Wallace, “Revealing the Empowerment Revolution: A Literature Review of the Model Cities Program,” Journal of Urban History, 38, no. 1 (2012): 173–92. Also the dissertation written by former Model Cities Director Mark Tigan, “Citizen Participation in United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Programs: From the Great Society to the New Federalism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 2005).

¹⁴ Weber and Wallace, “Revealing the Empowerment Revolution,” 180. Also Albert K. Karnig and Susan Welch, Black Representation and Urban Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); George Brager and Harry Specht, Community Organizing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); and George J. Washnis, Community Development Strategies: Case Studies of Major Model Cities (New York: Praeger, 1974).

¹⁵ David R. Goldfield, “Black Political Power in the Urban South,” in Urban Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Raymond A. Mohl (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 165.

¹⁶ Weber and Wallace, “Revealing the Empowerment Revolution,” 186.

¹⁷ Dennis West, “A Case Study of the Planning Process in the Portland, Oregon, Model Cities Program” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate School and University Center, 1970), 2. Also Carl Abbott, Portland: Planning Politics, and Growth in a Twentieth-Century City (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 183–206.

¹⁸ West, “Case Study of the Planning Process,” 71–2. Also City of Portland, Oregon, Planning Grant Application, Comprehensive City Demonstration Program (Portland: City of Portland, Oregon, April 26, 1967), Pt III, 42.

¹⁹ West, “Case Study of the Planning Process,” 74. Also US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Model Cities Administration, Office of the Regional Administrator, Region VI, “Discussion Paper – Portland, Oregon” (San Francisco, n.d.), 3.

²⁰ Abbott, Portland, 183.

²¹ Ibid., 184.

²² James Q. Wilson, “The War on Cities,” in A Nation of Cities: Essays on America’s Urban Problems, ed. Robert A. Goldwin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), 18.

²³ Edward C. Banfield, “Why Government Cannot Solve the Urban Problem,” Daedalus, 97 (Fall 1968): 1233.

²⁴ William Dietrich, “A Tale of Three Cities. Portland and Vancouver Get Going while Seattle Stalls,” The Seattle Times (February 2, 2003). Available online: http://seattletimes.com/pacificnw/2003/0202/cover.html (accessed December 1, 2014).

²⁵ The Museum of the City website details the transformation of the Pearl District. Available online: http://www.museumofthecity.org/pearl-district-transformation/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

²⁶ The Pearl District Neighborhood Association, Website. Available online: http://www.pearldistrict.org/about-the-pearl-district/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

²⁷ Brad Schmidt, “Hoyt Street Properties Fails to Deliver enough Affordable Housing Under Portland’s Pearl District Development Deal,” The Oregonian (August 20, 2014). Available online: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/08/hoyt_street_properties_fails_t.html/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

²⁸ Alan Ehrenhalt, “Suburbs with a Healthy Dose of Fantasy,” The New York Times (July 19, 2000). Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/09/opinion/suburbs-with-a-healthy-dose-of-fantasy.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (accessed December 1, 2014); Rachel Levin, “Best New Burb: Orenco Station,” Sunset (March 2, 2008). Available online: http://www.sunset.com/sunset/home/article/0,20633,1145608,00.html/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

²⁹ Ehrenhalt, “Suburbs with a Healthy Dose.” Also Eric Jaffe, “The Limits of New Urbanism in Portland’s Orenco Station,” The Atlantic (October 10, 2011). Available online: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2011/10/has-new-urbanism-failed-portland/275/ (accessed December 1, 2014). Jaffe’s study makes detailed reference to Bruce Podohnik, “The Social and Environmental Achievements of New Urbanism – Evidence from Orenco Station,” draft of a paper submitted for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Department of Sociology, Lewis and Clark College, July 15, 2009. Available online: http://media.oregonlive.com/news_impact/other/podobnik_asa09.pdf/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

³⁰ B.D. Wortham-Galvin, “Mythologies of Placemaking,” Places, 20, no. 1 (2008): 32–9, 35.

³¹ Ehrenhalt, “Suburbs with a Healthy Dose.” Also Wortham-Galvin, “Mythologies of Placemaking,” 34–8.

³² See Metro’s official website. Available online: http://www.oregonmetro.gov/2040-growth-concept and http://www.oregonmetro.gov/urban-growth-boundary/ (accessed December 1, 2014). For example, see Brian Campbell, “How New Urbanism affected Portland City Planning” (posted August 29, 2012). Available online: http://djcoregon.com/dailyblog/2012/08/29/how-new-urbanism-affected-portland-city-planning/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

³³ Transcribed from the opening scene of The Truman Show, written by Andrew Niccol, directed by Peter Weir (DVD, 1998).

³⁴ Metro’s 2040 Growth Concept.

³⁵ Gibson, “Bleeding Albina,” 3.

³⁶ Ibid., 8.

³⁷ Nikole Hannah-Jones, “In Portland’s Heart, 2010 Census Shows Diversity Dwindling,” The Oregonian (April 30, 2011). Available online: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2011/04/in_portlands_heart_diversity_dwindles.html/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Gibson, “Bleeding Albina,” 6.

⁴⁰ Here are some of the more astounding statistics: with 12,000 acres of park in Portland only 1700 acres are in East Portland and some of those are inaccessible, forty percent of the city’s children live here while only twenty-five percent of the city’s population does, nine pedestrian fatalities in the last two and half years; B.D. Wortham-Galvin, “East of 205 Workshop,” Exhibition and Talk, Mercy Corps, Portland (April 11, 2014); Oregon Public Broadcast. Available online: http://www.opb.org/news/series/east-of-82nd-a-closer-look-at-east-portland/.

⁴¹ Julie Lasky, “Four Square Blocks: Portland,” The New York Times (December 10, 2014). Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/garden/four-square-blocks-portland.html?_r=1/ (accessed December 1, 2014).

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Portlandia has shot several scenes on Mississippi Avenue; so too did the television shows Leverage and Grimm and the films Wild (2014) and Feast of Love (2007).

⁴⁴ Lasky, “Four Square Blocks: Portland.”

⁴⁵ Gibson“Bleeding Albina,” 8, 19.

⁴⁶ Richard Morrill, “New Urbanist Cities, Class and Children,” New Geography (September 5, 2008). Available online: http://www.newgeography.com/content/00219-new-urbanist-cities-class-and-children (accessed December 1, 2014).

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ The phrase “domain of tradition” is taken from Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, intro. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), 217.

⁴⁹ For example, Jean Baudrillard, America, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, (1986) 1988).

⁵⁰ Ernesto Pascucci, “Intimate (Tele)visions,” in Architecture of the Everyday, ed. Steven Harris and Deborah Berke (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), 39–54.

⁵¹ B.D. Wortham-Galvin, “Making the Familiar Strange: Understanding Design Practice as Cultural Practice,” in The Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs, ed. Sonia Hirt (New York: Routledge, 2012), 238.

⁵² Willa Paskin, “The Portlandia Star Cops to Occasionally Consuming Non-Locally Sourced Coffee, among Other Un-P.C. Transgressions,” Salon (December 30, 2012). Available online: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/carrie_brownstein_a_lot_of_these_characters_are_permutations_of_myself/ (accessed June 30, 2014).

⁵³ D.W. Meinig, “Symbolic Landscapes: Models of American Community,” in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, ed. D.W. Meinig (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

⁵⁴ Paskin, “Portlandia Star Cops.”

⁵⁵ Ari Shapiro, quoted in Adrienne Jeffries, “A Twee Grows in Brooklyn,” The New York Observer (July 26, 2011); reprinted as Adrienne Jeffries, “The Portlandification of Brooklyn,” Willamette Week (August 10, 2011). Available online: http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17831-the_portlandification_of_brooklyn.html?current_page=1/ (accessed August 15, 2011).

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Lowenthal, “Fabricating Heritage,” 7.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 9.

⁵⁹ Donna Merwick, “‘Comment’ on J. Hijawa, ‘Why the West Is Lost,’” William & Mary Quarterly, 51 (1994): 736–9.

⁶⁰ Gibson, “Bleeding Albina,” 4.

⁶¹ Zukin is quoted in Jeffries, “Twee Grows in Brooklyn.”

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Paskin, “Portlandia Star Cops.”

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Lowenthal, “Fabricating Heritage,” 19.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

B.D. Wortham-Galvin

B.D. Wortham-Galvin, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture and Faculty Fellow for the Center for Public Interest Design and the Institute for Sustainable Solution at Portland State University. She teaches a variety of subjects including architecture and cultural history and theory, adaptive reuse, urban design and theory, cultural sustainability, and community-engaged processes. Her scholarship focuses on how theories of cultural sustainability and the everyday can be applied to the design and stewardship of the built environment, with a particular focus on how tactics can become strategies, and on those people and places left out of traditional design and development decisions.