Portland’s Weird Economy: Boise’s Future?

By Shea Andersen, 10-13-05

Admittedly, comparing Boise to Portland is a long shot.

Population differences, location differences, and political differences are all too significant to ignore.

But consider, for the week and maybe the weekend, an article in last week's Willamette Week, Portland's Pulitzer-prize-winning weekly newspaper.

The cover story for the week ponders Portland's weird economy. Unemployment is on the rise, incomes are on the wane, real estate is expensive, and people are locating there in droves.

To do... what? the article asks.

Again, Boise's trends are different here, too: our incomes are on the rise, companies like it here, and real estate, while spendy, isn't outrageous. Yet.

So where do I get off raising an eyebrow at Portland (my hometown) and trying to compare it to Boise?

Read through that article in WW and you'll find more than a few similarities to The City of Trees. You've got your latte-sippers here, your recent transplants (guilty!) and your highly-educated newbies, all here to get a piece of the action before it becomes overdone.

A quote from Zach Dundas's article:

"Not only is Portland attracting people, it's attracting some of the most economically desirable people alive. Ever since Richard Florida's 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, cities everywhere have obsessed over luring young, smart, mobile professionals. In that respect, Portland is kicking butt, attracting hordes of college-educated 24- to 35-year-olds at a time when that group is shrinking nationally.

'They're like the spotted owl,' says local economist Joe Cortright, whose study of these phenomena is gospel among Portland boosters. 'If they're leaving, you've got a problem. If they're coming, you're doing something right.'"

Yeahp, we're gettin' them folks.

The things that made me ponder this article are as follows: Our economy is definitely changing, like Portland's: Hewlett-Packard's presence is on the wane, as is Albertson's. Micron is charging hard, but I'll go out on a pessimistic limb and say it can't be long before they're snapped up and changed by a larger multinational. The big businesses that we see as the anchor of Boise's economy aren't always going to be here, or not in the same robust manner they are now.

All of which means that the economy will be a very different animal in the next five to ten years. We'll always be the capital city, and I don't see other cities in Idaho taking over on the energy, but the transition away from "company town" to the next thing is a murky one. Because no one seems to know what "the next thing" is. [End of article]