maybe if they weren't so vulnerable to climate change. My money is on Portland. Good climate projects, tons of natural resources, strong urban growth boundry restricting sprawl. If the state ever figures it's shit out Portland would boom.
Plus, houses are already getting quite expensive here, largely due to that UGB you mention. Unless we're willing to compromise on that (and as a long-time resident who appreciates being able to reach something like wilderness pretty easily, I hope we do not) then pretty quickly we are going to have SF-level housing problems.
I honestly love portland, but it doesnt want to be an urban area.
Man, developers always say that, and it's simply never been true. There's so much undeveloped land still within the UGB, and so many opportunities to build densely close into city limits--a lot of which is happening, but a lot more of which could still happen.
Portland does have a big housing problem, it's true, but the solution isn't in opening up the UGB--it's in getting more good jobs, and encouraging more entrepreneurship, so that folks can actually afford to buy the condos going up all over that city.
Portland is ~80 miles inland from the pacific ocean - and the odds of a tsunami coming up the columbia river from the pacific, and still having much destructive power to do more than just flood, is again, basically nil - it would literally need to be a perfect storm for it to work.
So even the biggest tsunami the world has witnessed wouldn't come close.
I'm not sure there's such a thing as a city that's not vulnerable to at least one climate change or natural disaster threat.
Denver seems pretty safe. No earthquakes, safe from rising seas, no hurricanes or tsunamis.
Of the unpredictable and rapid vertical and horizontal kind?