Since moving to Oregon in August 2008, I have had the extreme good fortune to spend my birthday celebrations with friends and family, mostly in pursuit of wine and food.

This year, Darby and I motored to Seattle early on the 4th. After a morning business meeting and a light lunch on Capitol Hill, we checked in to Hotel Vintage Park (one of three Kimpton properties in the city), before walking over to Seattle Art Museum during First Thursday proceedings. Soon thereafter, the Newmans swooped in to pick us up for the much anticipated birthday dinner in Ballard.

By the way, it is a real honor to travel to another great American city and enjoy a birthday dinner for eight.

When we got to The Walrus and the Carpenter, a tiny room for Seattle’s most popular oyster bar, we were told the wait would be two hours. Normally, that means one hour. On this night the hostess was a woman of her word. It took two hours and fifteen minutes to get seated. Thankfully, an accommodating bar up the historic Ballard street hosted us while we waited to dine on local edibles from the sea.

Writing about Seattle as a Portland resident is kind of like writing about your beautiful “Prom Queen” sister. You either come off as adoring, or bitter.

A year ago, at another fine dining establishment in San Francisco, Darby and I had a great time with three NorCal friends. Our friend Andy spoke about how “abundance mentality” is prevalent in California, while “scarcity mentality” tends to preside in Oregon. The conversation has stayed with me ever since.

Seattle clearly weighs in as an abundance heavyweight. It is an opulent city on seven hills. Part Minneapolis high design, another part San Francisco funky. I have heard mention of the “Seattle freeze,” but I do not encounter cold shoulders there. I find the people friendly and willing to engage in frank discussion, which of course, I appreciate immensely.

I suspect the very things that make Seattle attractive to me, are the things many Portlanders and Oregonians reject outright. As one good friend here told me last week, “Oregonians don’t want (that kind of) progress.” Right. And this is what makes Portland, Portland and Oregon, Oregon. Unlike Seattle and San Francisco, Portland is tucked away, 60 miles upriver from the coast and the world beyond. The city is also nestled in a valley and protected by a wall of western hills and Forest Park green space. To say Portlanders have a fortress mentality may be a bit extreme, but it is also true to some degree.

Of course, Portlanders and Oregonians do have something to protect. Few would argue otherwise. My interest here, in this geo-cultural exploration of three West Coast cites, is mostly about alignment and how we might reposition ourselves as a community. The “G” word, Growth, is seen as an impolite intrusion in Oregon — a reduction of green space and an increase in traffic, pollution and noise. Yet, growth simply is. There’s no way to stop it, and even with an urban growth boundary, there’s no way to maintain a psychic gate around this precious place. The question is how might Oregonians better align themselves with this planetary force?

Urban planners, economists, engineers and politicians have some good answers, but no one group of thinkers or doers has all the answers. The problem however is well documented. The median income for a Seattle family – $91,300 – is nearly half as much more than the family income in Portland of $63,400. To me, that’s a startling difference for two cites 167 miles apart from each other. Also, one in 20 Seattle homes is valued at more than $1 million. In Portland, the ratio is 1 in 100.

If we are to believe the management guru and best-selling author, Steven Covey, “abundance mentality” is something we can choose to consciously manage for personal gain. It stands to reason then, that the people of a city or state might also invite abundance into their lives for the betterment of the community. Too bad there’s no on-off switch to go from scarcity to abundance in a flash. Like most good things, it’s a process that takes commitment, a plan of action and time.

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We moved from NE Portland to West Linn at the end of May and ever since we have been busy learning the area. I like to call it the South Shore, although I may be alone in that. Anyway, one of the things that stands out is the fact that West Linn and Oregon City, just across the river, both benefit from historic roots. In fact, it’s what keeps these towns from being suburbs, in the classic “municipalities made possible by Eisenhower-era freeways” sense.

Oregon City, of course, is the oldest city in Oregon. It’s where the Oregon Trail reached its end, and the place where white settlers filed their land claims in the new American territory. Today, more than 60 buildings in downtown Oregon City are eligible for the National Historic Register. But it’s clear that Oregon City needs help, as in economic development and urban renewal. It’s times like these that it would pay to be a multimillionaire, because the opportunities to usher in a new era of responsible growth and revitalization are immense.

There’s also significant pressure to make Oregon City a town of malls and planned communities, a move which strips some of the grit and character from the place. In my quest to understand the players and the details of the South Shore drama, I’ve been reading up on the Mayor, the City Commissioners, and plans for two massive projects–Clackamas Cove, a mixed use development on 109 acres, and The Rivers, a proposed 650,000-square-foot mall that would be built on a former landfill.

Oregon City Mayor, Doug Neely, is for the developments, but Commissioner James Nicita isn’t so sure. Nicita, a lawyer with an urban planning degree, wants to let taxpayers decide, and the developers aren’t happy about possible citizen roadblocks.

Steve Mayes of The Oregonian has been following the story. In June, Mayes reported that CenterCal, the company developing The Rivers, broke off negotiations with the city, citing a “deep division” among city commissioners, in particular two newly elected commissioners, James Nicita and Rocky Smith Jr., who both campaigned against the project.

According to Mayes, the project has been dogged by political clashes between those who see a mall as a way to turn an eyesore into a destination retail center and those who question the need for a $17.6 million subsidy. Now, negotiations between the land owner, Park Place Development, and CenterCal are at a standstill. City Manager David Frasher said, “You don’t have a project if the developer doesn’t have the land.”

Personally, I don’t think the Portland area needs another mall. You can find one a short drive in any direction from Oregon City.

Plus, a modern cookie-cutter mall is far from the only solution that will grow jobs and the tax base. What would be truly exciting is to see the organic growth of historic revitalization projects in the core of Oregon City’s downtown. That way, Oregon City remains a unique and vital place to work, live and visit. Naturally, this is the more complicated solution, one that depends on the actions of hundreds of individual investors, versus the swift moves of one or two adept developers.

I have my own ideas about what might work in Oregon City, and what I’d love to see happen there. After visiting Walla Walla last April, I can see how the urban tasting rooms model that makes Walla Walla such a desirable and walkable wine destination, might also work in Oregon City.

Why would the state’s wine industry make that kind of commitment to Oregon City, which isn’t known for producing wine? Access to the large wine-drinking population of Portland and its visitors, and cheap rents for historic properties, are two reasons why.

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