Wilsonville, Oregon is the southern most town in the Portland, Oregon metro area. It however, is not a part of the official Portland area metro area. (I wrote this line 20 years ago: Wilsonville is by many (but not all) accounts considered part of the Portland Metro area).
At one time, before I was around, Wilsonville was a pretty little rural town on the Willamette River. When Portland started growing, Wilsoville became a suburb of Portland.
When Portland and its suburbs got together and formed Metro, the nations first regional governing body, Wilsonville was too far out of the area to be included. Thus, Wilsonville does not have to follow the rest of the rules that the Portland area does, which are either:
- Draconian measures designed by pompous social engineers that take away people's property rights
or
- Forward thinking environmentally sensitive measures made by citizens protecting their quality of life.
The upshot of all of this, is that despite the fact that Wilsonville probably tends to be in the upper income bracket, it is still one of the crappiest areas in Portland. All of the ugly suburban stuff, like strip malls and 20 acre corporate parks end up filling up Wilsonville. And there is no bus service there. And the city seems to cluster around I-5.
I don't mean to slam on Wilsonville, but this has been my personal experience with it.
(Also 20 years later: a bit harsh, wasn't I? And yes, there is currently bus service there, and even a train. But I had a point, in my youth).