November 8, 2004
DEPOPULATE THE CITIES (via John Resnick):
VOTING IN A BUBBLE (EDWARD WALSH and JEFF MAPES, , November 07, 2004, The Oregonian)
The political gap between Multnomah County and the rest of Oregon has never been greater than it was in Tuesday's election, and that divide is growing as Portland and other U.S. urban centers continue to trend more liberal and Democratic than the suburbs and rural areas.Democrat Sen. John Kerry won nearly 72 percent of the vote in Portland and surrounding Multnomah County, a whopping 24 percentage points higher than his national showing. That's the biggest gap ever between the national vote and the Democratic vote in Multnomah County -- a gap that didn't exist just a generation ago.
Kerry's margin was so lopsided, and Multnomah County accounts for so much of the Oregon vote, that it was enough to deliver a statewide victory. Without the county, President Bush would have won Oregon and its seven electoral votes by more than 80,000 votes.
Kerry ran 21 points better in Multnomah than he did statewide, another record reflecting the county's significant shift to the left in the past 30 years
Take a Ride to Exurbia (DAVID BROOKS, 11/09/04, NY Times)
About six months ago I came out with a book on the booming exurbs - places like the I-4 corridor in central Florida and Henderson, Nev. These are the places where George Bush racked up the amazing vote totals that allowed him to retain the presidency.Posted by Orrin Judd at November 8, 2004 8:53 PMMy book started with Witold Rybczynski's observation that America's population is decentralizing faster than any other society's in history. People in established suburbs are moving out to vast sprawling exurbs that have broken free of the gravitational pull of the cities and now exist in their own world far beyond.
Ninety percent of the office space built in America in the 1990's was built in suburbia, usually in low office parks along the interstates. Now you have a tribe of people who not only don't work in cities, they don't commute to cities or go to the movies in cities or have any contact with urban life. You have these huge, sprawling communities with no center. Mesa, Ariz., for example, has more people than St. Louis or Minneapolis.
Bush is working on it. See your post at
www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/015355.html
By grouping Boston with lower-rent cities in a housing voucher plan, the Bush administration is inviting poor people to move out of Boston and into a suburb
Posted by: Kevin Colwell at November 9, 2004 2:43 AMDoesn't that just make the suburbs more Democrat?
Posted by: Bart at November 9, 2004 6:30 AMNo, that's the beauty of it.
Posted by: oj at November 9, 2004 7:30 AMI used to live and work in Multnomah County. It was fun and I enjoyed living there, I was right out of law school and I was single (needless to say, I didn't have a family).
I am older and I have a family and responsibilities. I pay more taxes and I have a mortgage. I am concerned about my children's education. I would never want to live in Multnomah County, they seriously need an infusion of adults. The city of Portland is run by a bunch of infants.
Posted by: pchuck at November 9, 2004 9:54 AMI would never want to live in Multnomah County, they seriously need an infusion of adults. The city of Portland is run by a bunch of infants.
I second that. I used to be on a mailing list where this one young guy from Portland was always ragging on us Californians and copping a Moral Superiority attitude about our traffic, our cars, everything.
"I don't wanna grow up,
I'm a Baby Boom kid..."