It has been on my to do list to write about Paul Graham's essay on Cities and Ambition. Paul Graham is a great thinker on topics of concern to makers and inventors. The Cities essay is one of my favorites of his. His thesis is great cities attract ambitious people of a similar kind which results in the whole town having a unique and unmistakeable buzz. In hundreds of subtle ways the buzz is saying “you could do more, you should try harder.” He expands on New York, Boston, and Silicon Valley as exemplars of Great Cities, each with its unique buzz. There are two somewhat open questions to the essay. 1) Do all cities have a buzz? 2) What is my city's buzz about?

The answer to the first question is easiest, only Great Cities have a buzz. Having lived in a number of lesser cities and towns I will grant almost every place has a tone. But a tone should not be confused with a buzz. Only Great Cities with their self-selecting immigration by ambitious people have a buzz, a relentless reminder that “you could be doing more, you should be trying harder.”

I'll take a short-cut here, Portland is a Great City. Indisputably. As such, I'll save us the effort of arguing why it is.

Thus the more interesting question is, what is Portland's buzz about? It's probably NOT what you may first think. Give it some thought. I'll have my thoughts on the answer next week.