The City of Portland recently published the results of its 2024 Insights Survey, an effort to assess community experiences, priorities, and perceptions of City services—and ultimately inform policy and budget decisions to better serve all communities. A collaboration with Portland University’s Research Institute for Human Services, the survey is conducted every two years.

The Office of Arts & Culture is pleased to share that among the 2024 survey’s robust findings, Portland residents expressed the highest degree of satisfaction with the City’s outdoor and natural areas, amenities, and arts and culture offerings. Specifically, more than 66% of Portlanders say they’re pleased with the City of Portland’s arts and culture events, activations, performances, and more—with 25.9% of respondents being extremely satisfied. 

“We know that the work of Portland’s artists, creatives, and cultural nonprofits is essential to the region’s economic vitality, but it’s also critical to promoting a sense of well-being and belonging,” says Arts & Culture Director Chariti Montez. 

Montez continues, “The arts can assist with our community’s most pressing issues. Those benefits to our city and our region, while more difficult to measure [than economic impacts], are just as important. The Insights Survey’s findings do start to get to some of those benefits as experienced by our neighbors—fellow Portlanders.” 

Translated across six languages, the 2024 survey was initially sent to 20,000 households across Portland. Additional outreach was done in partnership with community-based organizations to incorporate feedback from communities that have been historically underrepresented in City decision-making.  

Looking ahead, these and other key results from the 2024 Portland Insights Survey will be included in Performance Portland, a pilot project that will track trends related to City services and their impacts, as well as broader trends affecting Portlanders. Dashboards will show key indicators like housing cost burden and crime rates, alongside performance measures on how the City is serving residents, such as people served at shelters, emergency response times, and water quality.