Portland’s #1 to Travel + Leisure (at least in some categories)

one I’m not an Oregon native myself, and I know lots of other transplants who now call Portland home. One of the common denominators I’ve found is that we all have a tendency to gush a bit when we talk about the reasons we love it here. When you choose to live in a place, that can mean you have the ability to drive everyone who’s tired of hearing about “how great it is here” completely nuts. Which is why I’m warning anyone who’s sick of people gushing about Portland to avert their eyes now.

Portland is one of the cities which was included in Travel & Leisure Magazine’s survey of “America’s Favorite Cities 2007.” And out of 25 cities on the list, we come out on top (or in the top three) of so many of the categories, it’s hard not to gush about it. Here are the categories where we’re number 1:

Overall Characteristics
Overall Cityscape
Environmental Awareness
Ease of Getting Around/Public Transportation
Access to Outdoors
Pedestrian Friendliness
Public Parks/Spaces

Pretty cool, huh? And then when you throw in the categories where we come in 2nd or 3rd, you’ve got a list as long as your arm – and a lot of proud Portlanders.

Of course, there are some areas where we don’t rank so highly – such as the clubbing scene, the number of big-name restaurants, the shopping scene for jewelry or luxury boutiques, and the ideal city to take a sports fan’s vacation. But I’m not going to let the low rankings in those categories get me down, no siree. I’m going to focus on the things where we outshine the vast majority of the competition and grin smugly.

View the complete list of Portland’s rankings here, and see how the other cities in the survey fared here.