Author: Alex Mierjeski

After months of seeking solutions for the projected $12 million budget shortfall for the 2012–13 fiscal year, TriMet announced its final budget proposal on April 11. Still citing a stagnant economy, a dip in federal operating funds and continued problems negotiating the Amalgamated Transit Union 757 contract, TriMet scaled back some of the initial service cuts contained in the earlier budget proposals. However, the proposal retains some of the more drastic changes ever seen to the overall service the agency offers.

On the corner of Southwest 5th Avenue and Montgomery Street sits the undeveloped site of the Oregon Sustainability Center, a project that since its inception has had its followers and detractors divided over one issue: funding.

When she was invited to testify before Congress on the issue of contraception, Sandra Fluke couldn’t have predicted the nation’s most prominent right-wing commentator would attack her character and set off a storm of media attention.

The materialization of the Oregon Sustainability Center, what would be the nation’s first “living building,” hit a wall last month when the Oregon Legislature denied essential state bonds to help finance it. However, the team leading the project hasn’t lost hope of seeing it come to life.

With the identity of the city as a mecca of hipness and forward thinking, it sounds like fiction to hear that before the 1970s, Portland—the land of hipsters, urban farming and bicycles—was characterized by a relatively provincial conservatism. To locals who can claim more than a 30-year residence, though, it puts Portland’s historical trajectory from conservative to hip in perspective.

With the identity of the city as a mecca of hipness and forward thinking, it sounds like fiction to hear that before the 1970s, Portland—the land of hipsters, urban farming and bicycles—was characterized by a relatively provincial conservatism. To locals who can claim more than a 30-year residence, though, it puts Portland’s historical trajectory from conservative to hip in perspective.

Boston College Professor Juliet Schor has an intimate knowledge of social economy—two decades worth of research, 17 years teaching economics at Harvard University, and New York Times best-selling books are testament to this. She has given lectures all over the U.S. and in cities like Paris and London, speaking about the economics of consumer society and the roles that environment, work, family and financial status play in consumer consciousness. On Friday, Feb. 24, Schor will be in Portland, delivering a lecture titled “Jobs, Markets and True Wealth.”