IT’S A TOTAL MYSTERY HOW THIS COULD HAVE HAPPENED! “At Jan. 5 budget meeting for the city’s Bureau of Development Services, economists advising the bureau on the outlook for new construction presented dismal news: Portland has gone from one of the most desirable locations in the country just four years ago to near the bottom of an 80-city ranking.”

Naturally, Portlandia is taking all that “creative destruction” in stride: Readers Respond to Portland Plummeting Down the List of Desirable Cities. “Is this such a bad thing? We have been complaining about the growth rate for years.”

Which is vaguely reminiscent of another quote regarding the destruction of a socialist-oriented city:

“After the destruction of beautiful Dresden, we almost breathe a sigh of relief. It is over now. In focusing on our struggle and victory we are no longer distracted by concerns for the monuments of German culture. Onward!…Now we march toward the German victory without any superfluous ballast and without the heavy spiritual and material bourgeois baggage.”

—Robert Ley, National Socialist Labor Front Leader, as quoted by historian Frederick Taylor in Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945.