Just when I thought I wasn't blogging, the Thousand Enemies of Oregon had to send me a newsletter touting this bit of self-referential nonsense.
The surface story here is nice: Portland, Oregon is ranked the #2 "most sustainable" U.S. city by an outfit called SustainLane. Yay us.
One problem: the methodology (which hardly deserves the name) shows that Portland isn't necessarily "sustainable" at all. Rather, the ranking was a composite of a bunch of other studies that share the same unproven assumptions of the Portland Planning Plutocracy, the People's Church of Smart Growth and the New Urbanist Evangelical Mission.
Tainted inputs include the dishonestly reported ridership numbers of Tri-Met and light rail, and of course multiple rankings from Smart Growth America.
Oh, and the definition of "sustainable"? There isn't one. Apparently it's a Revealed Truth only accessible to true believers.
I'm not saying they're definitely wrong - they don't give enough information to tell. But it clearly smacks of self-referential feelgoodism, of the sort that appeals to people who want to be told what they want to hear. In other words, the Portland liberal elite.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment