As Director of Business and Strategic Planning for Sports and Fitness at Nike, a job I had reporting to the President, I had a chance to think about Portland and Oregon in a global context. More recently, I have been the founder of two start-ups here in Portland, and that has given me more food for thought.

First, I believe Portland and Oregon are at a critical juncture that will determine our ability to compete economically with Washington and California, and with other important Pacific Rim countries -- Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and the countries emerging into the second world -- The Phillipines,Thailand and Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, for example.

We must choose which path we want to go down. We must recognize that we cannot compete for manufacturing jobs with Asia and Central & South America in terms of what we must pay our workers. We are NOT going to be an industrial economy. Nor are our natural resources inexhaustible -- mining, forestry and farming are not the path to prosperity for Oregon in the 21st century.

So we must choose -- either we are going to be largely a service economy with jobs in retail, warehousing, construction, landscaping, and so forth, in which case we will fall even further behind our competitors in the U.S. and the Pacific Rim in all of the factors on your economic dashboard; Or, we are going to develop our base in the knowledge economy of the future. But this choice of going after the Knowledge Economy Jobs requires leadership at the State and Local levels that Oregon has not had over the last 20 years. We must, first and foremost, build centers of excellence in our K-12 schools and in our community colleges and public universities. Particularly, Portland State here in the State's largest City, and the Portland Public Schools. We need a center for academic research right here in the City. OHSU cannot carry us outside of Biotech. We need a program like the University of Washington that supports the transition of knowledge into entrepreneurial enterprises. We are so far behind in the educational arena, I despair of catching up. But it is essential to our future. Where is the leadership -- by the Governor, by the State Legislature, by the Mayor and Council?

Secondly, the City must learn to compete with the Suburbs. At this point in time the Central City has about 20% of the region's jobs. But it has been losing ground steadily to the suburbs in that percentage. Surely, the Central City is most attractive to the college-educated 21-35 year olds who Joe Cortright says are moving here in droves. But we have to find ways to get the Creative, Knowledge-based jobs headquartered in Portland's Central City. Washington County has been growing these jobs at twice the rate of the Central City for some time now.

That's why I am so excited that Sam Adams is taking over Portland Transportation, because Transportation is one key to making the Central City work for the Knowledge Economy.

1) People like to work near where they live, especially knowledge-economy workers, and particularly workers in the Creative Sector. If we can get the Eastbank Freeway off the Willamette River, preferably in a tunnel under the Central Eastside, we can build housing in at least 18 blocks there in the Central City. If we build "workforce housing" on what is now federal and state owned land under the Freeway -- that's housing for workers who earn within 60% to 140% of the average wage (not the kind we built in the Pearl and elsewhere in NW, which is largely aimed at wealthier empty-nesters). We can build this new housing right next to the booming creative knowledge economy in the what used to be called the Central Eastside Industrial Sanctuary. That way we can leave the land for jobs in the rest of the Central eastside out to 12th, over to OMSI and over to the Banfield.
This project would kick in just about the time that the South Waterfront is built out (Thank God for Homer Williams in NW and the South Waterfront -- we are so lucky to have what he has done for the Central City).

But taking down the Marquam and putting the Eastbank Freeway underground to the Rose Garden so that we can build workforce housing for young knowledge workers is not the only answer for building a healthy Central City.

It's important that people of the region can travel through the Central City by automobile as they do today. But we must want the Central City to be more than an interchange. If we want a great City, we must follow the lead of great cities around the globe -- we must de-emphasize the automobile and increase housing density and serve the Central City with transit, pedestrian amenities and the bicycle.

Instead, the City is going backward -- it is putting light rail on the bus mall, creating conflict with light rail, buses and automobiles in the Central City. It already takes 23 minutes to go across the Central City from East to West on light rail, and with these changes, that is going to get even longer. As traffic grows on the West Side Light Rail line (averaging 8% growth a year since start-up) our requirement for growing no larger than two-car trains on light rail because of the lack of grade separation and our short blocks in PDX, means that we are going to be at capacity going through the tunnel into the City within 10 years. We need to build a subway so we can increase speed to make light rail competitive with the auto, so that we can increase capacity coming into the City, and so that we don't turn our Central City into an interchange for the automobile. Where's the planning for this? It's essential to making the Central City work. Where's the Vision? Where's the willingness to compete with the suburbs for Jobs by making transit work and building workforce housing in the Central City?

Please post my name -- Ronald A. Buel