Why Old Town Chinatown faces sewage backup risk
Old Town Chinatown’s age profile is different from every other area on this list — we treat it that way.
Old Town Chinatown is documented as Portland’s oldest platted neighborhood.
The area retains some of the city’s oldest surviving commercial building stock.
Buildings commonly mix ground-floor commercial space with upper-floor residential units.
The oldest building stock in the city sits atop likely the oldest municipal sewer segments, and dense ground-floor-commercial-to-upper-floor-residential buildings add complexity to diagnosing where a backup originates.