After an evening of messing around on Google, it has come to my attention that Portland has a larger land mass [[145.4 sq miles) then Detroit [[143 sq miles) while Detroit has a population of 100,000+ more people. Currently one of the leading ideas on how to save Detroit is to downsize the city and consolidate the remaining population into a list of selected neighborhoods to make the city more manageable. However Portland seems to show it is not only possible to run a city with 140+ sq miles with a population of under 1 million, but that it can be done with 145 sq miles and still be considered a wonderful place to live. So my question is: what is Portland doing so right with there land use that Detroit cant get right?
EDIT: for sake of argument i posted this on Portland's Reddit page to get their reaction which was fairly interesting and worth a read http://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/15wt4s/portland_vs_detroit_a_question_of_land_use/
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