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Originally Posted by eribrav
I get these ads in the mail for jobs all the time.
Many of them hit you right up front with "rapidly growing metro area" or some analogous chatter. They go directly in the garbage. In the U.S. at least that's code for "endless suburban sprawl, traffic, and McMansions in an area with no soul".
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I think you'd find Portland is the one exception to that theory. Portland has long espoused a theory of smart growth. We have an urban growth boundary in place that keeps most growth in check--any development outside of the boundary has to go before the Metro council. Approval is hard to get--Metro would rather encourage the redevelopment of older, faltering areas than add more square miles to the mass of the Portland area. I like that idea--compared to Seattle, Portland undergoes more urban and suburban renewal more often. It also encourages more up growth versus outgrowth, resulting in more greenspaces (also something important to Metro), and an easy proximity to wide open spaces despite being a metro area. Don't get me wrong--we have our fair share of problems: traffic being the biggest, I think.