downtown

The Oregonian headline Sunday ran, "Downtown confronts its fears" - this referring of course to downtown Portland - but it raised some wonders. Is downtown that fearful?
The story didn't really seem to back up the idea of deep-seated fear. I've wandered around downtown Portland on a number of occasions, sometimes at night, and never felt particularly fearful, and it didn't seem as if many other people felt very differently. Last week, walking around the perimeter of downtown Seattle, the story was a little different; there were a few spots where I felt less than comfortable. But even there it was limited. Portland? Not so much. (And certainly not in smaller cities like Boise, where you also hear occasional fearful talk about walking around at night.)
That doesn't mean problems don't exist, and Mayor Tom Potter's community crackdown approach seems on a good track for fixing "broken windows" before things do get worse. There have been a few shootings, and some crime; but in the context of a big-city downtown, Portland seems relatively safe.
Downtowns generally seem to have developed a bad reputation for safety in recent years. Without dismissing the very real problems many of them have (and Portland's has some too), a great deal of this seems undeserved.