You’re kidding, right? Of COURSE they have to do with demographics. White flight and suburbanization have everything to do with demographics. The only reason that Portland can get away with what it gets away with is that SWPLs don’t need to separate themselves from African Americans. They can utilize public transportation because they don’t have to rub elbows with AAs. And they can be open, because everyone is a SWPL themselves.

It all works because there is no African American underclass.

Funny thing about Portland as “the future”. The local joke is the NY Times is stalking us, they write about our city so much. I suspect the reason some right-wingers attack us is that we’ve become so visible in the media they love to hate.

But on your other point, you’re mistaking ethnicity and race for class. Portland is around 79% non-Hispanic white according to the census, which doesn’t mean there’s not an underclass, just that a higher proportion of the poor are white than in say, Detroit. Portland is pretty average in terms of poverty and crime for an American city. Right now we’ve got higher than national average unemployment.

Second, many of the policies Portland gets lauded for have to do with land use (actually state law, not city), transit and openness, which aren’t much related to demographics.

But as we saw in that WSJ article last week, Portland is pretty unique, demographically. It is way whiter than any other major US city. You can do a lot of things if you don’t have an underclass and if your city attracts highly educated SWPLs (even if there aren’t any jobs for them!).

Funny how some of the Right rails against cities while extolling capitalism because modern capitalism was born in Renaissance cities, when the largely rural dark ages came to an end. Under feudalism the rich were landowners whose serf/workers tilled the soil, a very uninnovative society. Then as cities developed again along came people like the Medici’s who weren’t nobility but got rich from trade and financing industry. Modern accounting was developed in Renaissance Florence to handle complex wealth that was not tied to land or gold in the basement, but moving capital.

People like Jane Jacobs and Robert Lucas have shown how cities are the hub of innovation and economic growth.

You’re joking, right?

“Riding the aforementioned wave to Portland, which liberals hope is a harbinger of America’s future, has long been their aerobic activity of choice. But LaHood is a Republican, for Pete’s sake, the party (before it lost its bearings) of ‘No, we can’t’ and ‘Actually, we shouldn’t’ and ‘Not so fast’ and ‘Let’s think this through.’ Now he is in full ‘Yes we can!’ mode. Et tu, Ray?”

I didn’t pick up on the hatin’. I think Krugman missed Will point because he had his own point to make. These commmontator types often talk past each other.