December 29, 2003

Gragg On South Waterfront, 'New Urban Immigrants'

This weekend's Randy Gragg column in The Sunday Oregonian takes a tour of what's ahead for the South Waterfront development, first attempting to explain just what these so-called "New Urban Immigrants" might possibly be:

NUIs (let's get straight to the acronym) are the people who will make or break the district. Oregon Heath & Science University may be building a campus at South Waterfront, but it's the NUIs who will turn it into a neighborhood, living there and paying the property taxes that will leverage the urban renewal bonds to pay for roads, utilities and amenities such as the greenway along the Willamette River.

...

Now, aspirations are meeting the harsh realities of budget, time and politics -- and the question, if we build it, will the NUIs come?

According to a local design and branding firm, says Gragg, the area "will attract the usual empty nesters, young professionals and single parents ... [but] the richest target market ... will be of a more a pioneering character -- the NUIs."

NUIs imagine a better life than they have today, lower on obligations, higher on play and escape. They are innovators and self-actualizers. They want the bustle, diversity and connectivity of a real city. But they also want to be able to easily escape it.

What's more, they are dubious of the theming, or branding, typically used to market new development.

Gragg goes on to describe continuing issues with the aerial tram (including its already-spiking cost estimates and somewhat disturbing engineering issues); debates over where to route an extension of the Portland Streetcar (stuck in the mire of squabbling with the Schnitzer family); differences of opinion between environmentalists, developers, and architects over the proposed greenway; and the question of "buildings versus architecture" (don't get me started again on how the proposed Vancouver-like approach will stick out like a sore thumb just up the Willamette from downtown Portland's skyline).

Actually, let's go back to the beginning: As if I needed yet another reason to cringe over this project, anything that apparently requires people to learn YAAA (Yet Another Annoying Acronym) just can't spell out anything but trouble.

For what it's worth, the top hits via Google for a search on "new urban immigrants" are all about people who immigrated from Korea. So not only are they trying to sell us on a new acronym for a new kind of city-dweller, they stole a term that already existed for other purposes.

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