Right 2 Root, a community-created plan, offers a blueprint for pushing back against displacement and disinvestment Portland, Oregon, is a city celebrated for its urbanism and charm. From its natural beauty and bikeability to the Portlandia brand of over-earnest hipness, Portland has plenty of reasons to be listed among the most livable cities in the country. Alt-weekly Willamette Week spoofed the city?s international fame with an article earlier this year, ?Portland is Still No. 1 in Semifactual Superlatives.? (?Reason no. 23 to love Portland right now?).
While Portland is lauded for its livability, historian Karen Gibson asks ?livability for whom"? Gibson?s 2007 paper, ?Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940?2000,? remains a canonical text for exploring the city?s small African-American community, and how its members have suffered from accelerated gentrification and subsequent displacement. Considered one of the least racially diverse major U.S cities?Portland is 77.7 percent white and only 5.7 percent African American according to recent Census data?its black community has often found itself priced out of the Albina area, its historical home in the northeast section of the city. Of the roughly 38,000 black Portlanders who lived there a decade ago, 10,000 have been pushed to other parts of the city.
?Portland is an exemplar of an urban real estate phenomenon impacting black communities across the nation,? Gibson writes, arguing that the f...