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Results of a survey conducted this spring show a close correlation between how often Portlanders venture downtown and their views on whether the city is moving in the right direction.
Between May 17 and June 18, the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center asked 1,114 Portland residents about their views of the city and what results they wanted to see in the upcoming city election that will upend the structure of local government.
The survey asked how Portlanders felt about the quality of services the city provided, the performance of the current City Council, and what issues would be most important during the election of a new government in November.
Two of the questions were about the direction of the city: Do you think that Portland is off on the wrong track or moving in the right direction? Thinking of more recently, in the last few months, do you see any signs that things are getting worse or improving?
When researchers from OBVC cross-tabulated the answers, they noticed how Portlanders answered those two questions seemed to be related to how respondents answered another: How often do you visit downtown?
The results, shown below, reveal that people who said they never visited downtown Portland also were much more likely to answer that they believed the city was on the wrong track and getting worse. Only 5 percent of the people who never visit downtown said they thought Portland was moving in the right direction, compared to the 34 percent of the people who visit downtown almost every day who think that the city is moving in the right direction.
“There’s a relationship between how often people are going downtown, how they feel about the city’s direction and how they feel about whether things are improving or getting worse,” says Amaury Vogel, executive director of OVBC. “We don’t necessarily know that this is causing people to feel a certain way, but it is correlated with certain feelings.”
In April, pollsters at DHM Research conducted a similar survey of 600 Portland voters. A staggering 78% of respondents said they have negative impressions of downtown, with 50% saying their impressions were strongly negative. The Oregonian, which commissioned the poll, found those impressions grew more negative among people who hadn’t been downtown recently.
The new OBVC survey is of all Portland residents, not just likely voters. But both surveys show a correlation between how often people visit downtown and whether they think Portland is recovering. The new poll, however, suggests people who avoid visiting downtown have a gloomy perception of the city’s overall direction, not just downtown recovery.
“There is a little bit of a chicken or the egg situation here: Do people that never go downtown think that things are on the wrong track and they’re getting a lot worse because they never go downtown, or do they never go downtown because they believe those things?” Vogel says. “The reality is, it could be a little bit of both.”