Urbanists, what is "livability" now? Portland was "once hailed as one of the most livable U.S. cities," AP says, as though we no longer are ... 1/ https://apnews.com/b57315d97dd2146c4a89b4636faa7b70

We are far from perfect. The violence around the edges of the demonstrations is a livability problem. Being used as a stage by far-right gun-toting activists who mostly don't live here is a livability problem. And we have plenty of other livability problems, like every city. 2/

What is "livability" at this moment? Yes, a degree of stability and protection from violence is part of it. But does livability imply protection from history, and protection from rage about injustice? 3/

After all, Portland has been protesting for far longer than it's been bragging about being livable. [My mother took this photo in 1970. Geeky bonus points if you know not just where this was taken, but what the giant neon sign at the end of the street said.] 4/

The official line is that Portland's livability was constructed by planners working with a tight group of developers and skilled, visionary elected officials -- almost all of them White, fortunate, and spectacularly well-intentioned. This is what I grew up in. 5/

But Portland's livability was also constructed by my angry parents, angry about Vietnam and yes, angry about the racism of their time. They explained the redlining of Albina to me when I was 8 years old. They took me to every protest, carefully avoiding the violent edges. 6/

Now I recognize that all those decades of anger, none of which you'll see in an architect's rendering of our livable city -- that's livability too. Without that anger, almost all peacefully expressed, we wouldn't be livable. We'd just be boring. 7/7