My friends in Portland are all intentionally dismissive about it and for that reason I'd never suggest Portland to anybody I care about as a place to live.
When the big one does hit though, there's definitely a long list of people who are going to be totally entitled to a good "I told you so".
The suburbs can't escape cars, but I bet we can make Portland proper a utopia for pedestrians.
I already barely use cars. It's wonderful compared to Orlando (where I happened to grow up).
The city has a growth boundary and there are a ton of national parks and awesome nature. There is nowhere to expand to, so we have to use the land we have available to us.
I moved out of PDX because of both, still return a month a year but man, the traffic is so awful.