Should Portland change?

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

You might think that this could be quite an odd question to come from some body coming from outside the United States and maybe a little angering, but I could say to justify myself that I really appreciate this city and that's why I decided to move here 4 years ago. When I lived in Europe this city was really unknown for me, when I heard the word Portland the only things that passed through my mind were cement and The Simpsons (this one because I was a Simpsons fan). Portland is really unknown in Europe, even thought many Portlandeese companies are much known in Europe like Nyke, Columbia and Oregon Scientific. The city of Portland caught my attention about 6 years ago when saw a documentary about Oregon dunes, they showed some images of Portland that really caught my eye. The environmental friendliness that characterizes Portland, its post-modern charm, its revolutionary character, and its love for freedom really made me fall in love with this city.
The first time I arrived to Portland, I remember that I was looking at the city from the airplane, and I was just amazed by it's massiveness, I never saw a city that big in my entire life, then when I landed every thing looked to me as so weird and impressive at the same time, The train that suddenly entered the street and went trough the downtown, the endless and monotonous suburbs, the smallness of the downtown, the very tall buildings, the enormous rivers, the gigantic volcano, the enormous forests, and many more things that were impressive and shocking to the average European I was, but then after while I got more used to this differences and I started to see what Portland had in common with Europe. For example the climate, Portland's climate is very similar to the climate in North Western Spain, with cool cloudy rainy winters (Basque people call it sirimiri) and warm dry sunny summers, also the architecture of the old buildings that surround the pioneer square remembered me Barcelona, the low-rise buildings of the Pearl district made me think on the city of Santander, and the buildings around old town and the tram remembered me the city of Brussels. Portland gave me a sweet-bitter taste, on one hand I had Portland’s character, its excellent downtown architecture, its nice summers and its natural beauty, and in the other hand there are the ugly highways in the middle of the downtown, its boring suburbs and its awful parking lots. I think that Portland is a superve city, and that it should keep its particular characteristics at any cost, but i also wish that it could have some changes like increasing the size and density of its downtown, that it got rid of the downtown highways, I also wish that it could have more low-rise buildings, that it had less parking lots and denser suburbs. Now I would like to know what your reactions about my ideas are and what ideas would you have for Portland’s future.