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 Portland was listed as the
Money
Magazine's No. 1 Choice of "The Best Places To Live" in an article in the December 2000 issue of the magazine. The following excerpts have been taken from that article.
Ask nearly anyone who lives in Portland what makes it great, and you'll be listening for a very long time. Portlanders are deeply passionate about their city-an rightly so. There's plenty to be proud of, especially the city's successful transformation from old timber town to high-tech hub. Portland is home to more than 1,200 technology companies, from Intel-the largest private sector employer with 11,000 workers-to Hewlett-Packard, Epson, NEC and scores of small software firms. That's made it one of the best job markets in the country. The region ranks in the top 20% of all metro areas in recent job growth and is expected to see a 26% increase in jobs in the next 10 years.
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If all this tech talk makes it sound a bit like San Francisco, well, it is, but without the hassles and expense. That put Portland high on our list, yet there's so much more that makes it this year's best place to live. Let's start with the great character of the city itself. Three decades of keen planning have reined in urban sprawl and given rise to a mini-metropolis with short, easy-to-stroll blocks renowned for java joints, brewpubs and bookstores. A superb light rail network and a new streetcar system are helping to make it a cinch to get around. There's loads of culture, from the Portland Art Museum to local rock clubs.
Then there is the other major reason to recommend Portland: its stellar location in the heart of the beautiful Pacific Northwest. It's an area of unparalleled natural beauty, abundant with recreational opportunities, from skiing at majestic Mount Hood to windsurfing at the Columbia River Gorge and white-water rafting on the Clackamas River. Overall, there are 9,500 acres of parkland in the region, twice as many as in Denver. Not enough fun for you? Oregon's wine country is a hop away, as are rugged Pacific Ocean beaches. "Within an hour of the city you can be on a mountain, at the beach, in the desert or in the middle of a forest," says Portland native Matthew Subotnick, 28, creative services director for KXL radio. "You can't beat it."
(Money Magazine, December
2000, pp. 150-151)
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