Downtown
Goose Hollow and King's Hill
Northwest Portland
Riverplace
South Waterfront
The Pearl District
Alberta
Beaumont-Wilshire
Hollywood District
Irvington
Lloyd District
Mississippi
St. Johns
University Park
Hawthorne District
Ladd's Addition
Laurelhurst
Sellwood
Woodstock
Beaverton
Lake Oswego
Orenco Station
Tanasbourne
Tualatin Town Center
Vancouver, WA
Johns Landing
Multnomah Village

Navigating Portland
Portland Public Transit: Trains, Buses, Streetcars
Living in Portland Without A Car
Finding an Apartment or Rental in Portland
Where in Portland should I live?
Random Facts and Portland Trivia
Portland Frequently Asked Questions
Portland Grocery Stores
Top 5 Things To Do Before Renting a Place in Portland

Beaverton itself is a huge, sprawling area - very residential, suburban. There is a tiny downtown Beaverton, near Beaverton High School. If you walk around SW Broadway in Beaverton, you can guess what the old downtown might have looked like 50 years ago, but it's long gone now (an old movie theater is now occupied by the Beaverton Bakery). There are a few blocks of old-time downtown stores but that's about it. South of there, though, is a terrific library and a tiny bit of "downtown area." Otherwise, it's busy suburbia with lots of cars. Even the busy streets have bike paths, though.

The Beaverton Transit Center, an important transit point for buses, the MAX train, and the WES train (to Wilsonville), is close to the center of Beaverton. If you happen to live near this, you'd have easy transit access to downtown Portland and even the Portland airport (long ride though) because both the Blue and Red MAX trains serve the transit center. Plus there are lots of buses including direct rush hour buses to places like OHSU. If you aren't taking the buses or trains, though, the area is fairly high traffic.

The MAX train runs past the transit center through northern Beaverton, serving the Tektronix and Nike campuses, and west to Hillsboro (Intel campuses) east to downtown Portland and eventually Gresham. In 2009, the Westside Express Service (WES) train service opened from Beaverton Transit Center south to Tigard, Tualatin, and Wilsonville (weekday rush-hours only).

You could get away without a car living in downtown Beaverton near the Beaverton TC but it's not exactly quaint. One of the MAX stops, Beaverton Central, is surrounded by The Round, a little complex of loft apartments and restaurants and even a 24 Hour Fitness gym; this is walking distance to the Beaverton TC as well (buses and more frequent MAX) and there is a lot of retail nearby. If you live in this area, though, your friends who live in Portland would want you to visit them and would probably not want to visit you in Beaverton, since it's basically suburbia.

Downtown Beaverton suffers from horrible car traffic and not just at rush hour. Two busy roads, marked on a map as Oregon Highway 8 and Oregon Highway 10 (the original roads into Portland before freeways) run through Beaverton. No one calls them 8 and 10, however. Highway 8 changes names east to west from Canyon Road to Tualatin Valley Highway (aka "TV Highway") in downtown Beaverton, and Highway 10 changes names east to west from Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway to Farmington Road in Beaverton. (Don't call them 8 and 10 when conversing with locals, people will not know what you are talking about). In any case, both clog up with traffic frequently. TV Highway especially is a mecca of suburban sprawl, with strip malls, car dealerships, chain stores, and seemingly endless stoplights, a not-very-fun drive to downtown Hillsboro even if it looks quick on a map.

The 217 Freeway (people do call it "217") connects the Sunset Highway (Highway 26) to the I-5 freeway, a west-side bypass of downtown Portland. 217 is a busy freeway too but usually it's the most convenient way to get south of Portland, to Tigard, Tualatin, or Wilsonville.

There is plenty of retail in downtown Beaverton, largely but not all chain stores and restaurants. North of downtown Beaverton, Ceder Hills Blvd and Hall Blvd. intersect at Cedar Hills Crossing, a complex of small box stores and restaurants, including a Century Theatres multiplex movie theater (a notch better than Regal Cinemas, the local movie chain that dominates the rest of the Portland area). Cedar Hills Crossing is an upgraded version of what was once called Beaverton Mall. There's now a Best Buy as well as some other box stores. Great grocery store options range from the budget grocery Winco Foods to a New Seasons (a sort of local version of Whole Foods). There is a Trader Joe's and a Fred Meyer (decent grocery/mini department store) nearby too at Beaverton Town Center. A highlight of the Cedar Hills Crossing area, though, is a sizable Beaverton branch of the popular Powell's Books. There's also a Border's Books a half mile away, so living near hear isn't so bad if you love books.

Just north of Beaverton Transit Center, along Center Street, there are a bunch of generic large apartment complexes (mostly build in the 70s) that range from a bit run down to modestly nice, and you'd be able to walk to the Transit Center to catch the MAX or an express bus to OHSU for commuting. It's not the most exciting area - suburbs for sure - but a bit cheaper than living in Portland and great transit options for the suburbs, a location that could work well for some, as long as you know the trade-offs.