Rose Quarter: Death throes of a bloated boondoggle For years, we've been following the tortured Oregon Department of Transportation Plans to widen a 1.5 mile stretch of I-5 near downtown Portland. The past few months show this project is in serious trouble. Here's a su... → By Joe Cortright 31.8.2023
Red states are now the red zone for Covid-19 Covid-19 now disproportionately affects rural America, and is hitting red states harder than blue ones. Rural counties have 14 percent of US population and 21 percent of new Covid-19 cases. The nation's largest, densest... → By Joe Cortright 13.10.2020
Covid-19 is now a rural and red state pandemic Covid-19 now disproportionately affects rural America, and is hitting red states harder than blue ones. OK, reporters, we're waiting for the stories about rural Americans decamping to cities (or suburbs) and from red st... → By Joe Cortright 16.9.2020
How the g-word poisons public discourse on making cities better We're pleased to publish this guest post from Akron's Jason Segedy. It originally appeared on his blog Notes from the Underground. Drawing on his practical experience in a rust-belt city, he offers a compelling new insig... → By Joe Cortright 21.12.2017
Cultural appropriation: Theft or Smorgasbord? If it weren't for cultural appropriation, would America have any culture at all? In Portland, two women opened a food cart business--Kook's Burritos--selling burritos based on ones that they'd seen and tasted during a ... → By Joe Cortright 12.6.2017
Integration and social interaction: Evidence from Intermarriage Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Change doesn't happen fast, but it happens more frequently and more quickly when we have integrated communi... → By Joe Cortright 4.4.2019
Integration and social interaction: Evidence from Intermarriage Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Yesterday, we took a close and critical look at Derek Hyra's claim that mixed-income, mixed-race communitie... → By Joe Cortright 1.6.2017
Socioeconomic mixing is essential to closing the Kumbaya gap Integrated neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don't automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? Our recent report, America's Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods identifies ... → By Joe Cortright 25.6.2018
Integration and the Kumbaya gap Gentrifying neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don't automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? In one idealized view of the world, economically integrated neighborhoods would ... → By Joe Cortright 31.5.2017
Volunteering as a measure of social capital Volunteering is one of the hallmarks of community; here are the cities with the highest rates of volunteerism The decline of the civic commons, the extent to which American's engage with one another in the public realm,... → By Joe Cortright 15.5.2017
Migration is making counties more diverse Migration, especially by young adults, is increasing racial and ethnic diversity in US counties As we related last week, a new report from the Urban Institute quantifies the stark economic costs of racial and income seg... → By Joe Cortright 5.4.2017
Getting to critical mass in Detroit Last month, we took exception to critics of Detroit's economic rebound who argued that it was a failure because the job and population growth that the city has enjoyed has only reached a few neighborhoods, chiefly those in... → By Joe Cortright 21.3.2017
Cursing the candle How should we view the early signs of a turnaround in Detroit? Better to light a single candle than simply curse the darkness. The past decades have been full of dark days for Detroit, but there are finally signs of a t... → By Joe Cortright 23.2.2017
What makes America great, as always: Immigrants Happy Independence Day, America! All Americans are immigrants (Even the Native American tribes trace their origins to Asians who migrated over the Siberian-Alaskan land bridge during the last ice age). And this nation o... → By Joe Cortright 4.7.2018
Openness to immigration drives economic success Last Friday, President Trump signed an Executive Order effectively blocking entry to the US for nationals of seven countriesâIraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. We'll leave aside the fearful, xenophobic ... → By Joe Cortright 31.1.2017
The constancy of change in neighborhood populations Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There's a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic a... → By Joe Cortright 30.5.2019
The constancy of change in neighborhood populations Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There's a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic a... → By Joe Cortright 9.10.2017
Constant change and gentrification A new study of gentrification sheds light on how neighborhoods change. Â Here are the takeaways: The population of urban neighborhoods is always changing because moving is so common, especially for renters. There's... → By Joe Cortright 26.1.2017
How urban geometry creates neighborhood identity Does geometry bias our view of how neighborhoods work? Imagine a neighborhood that looks like this: On any given block, there might be a handful of small apartment buildingsâthree-flatsâwhich are usually clus... → By Daniel Hertz 23.1.2017
More evidence for peer effects: Help with homework edition There's a large a growing body of research that shows the importance of peer effects on lifetime economic success of kids. Â For example, while the education level your parents is a strong determinant of your level of educ... → By Joe Cortright 15.12.2016
How diverse are the neighborhoods white people live in? Overall, America is becoming more diverse, but in many places the neighborhoods we live in remain quite segregated. The population of the typical US metropolitan area has a much more ethnically and racially mixed compositi... → By Joe Cortright 9.1.2017
You are where you eat. The Big Idea: Many metro areas vie for the title of âbest food city.â But what cities have the most options for grabbing a bite to eat -- and what does that say about where you live? There are plenty of competin... → By Joe Cortright 14.12.2016
Cities and Elections It's election day, 2016. Here's some of what we know about cities and voting. Well, at last. Today is election day. While weâre all eagerly awaiting the results of the vote, we thought weâd highlight a few things we... → By Joe Cortright 8.11.2016
Market timing and racial wealth disparities One of the enduring features of American inequality is the wide disparity in homeownership rates between white Americans and Latinos and African-Americans. And because homeownership has -- or at least was, historically -- ... → By Joe Cortright 3.11.2016
Are integrated neighborhoods stable? More American neighborhoods are becoming integratedâand are staying that way It's rare that some obscure terminology from sociology becomes a part of our everyday vernacular, but "tipping point" is one of those terms.... → By Joe Cortright 18.1.2018
Are integrated neighborhoods stable? Its rare that some obscure terminology from sociology becomes a part of our everyday vernacular, but "tipping point" is one of those terms. Famously, Thomas Schelling used the tipping point metaphor to explain the dynamics... → By Joe Cortright 5.10.2016
Where are African-American entrepreneurs? Entrepreneurship is both a key driver of economic activity and an essential path to economic opportunity for millions of Americans. Historically, discrimination and lower levels of wealth and income have been barriers to e... → By Joe Cortright 26.9.2016
Homeownership can exacerbate inequality In yesterday's post, we described why homeownership is such a risky financial proposition for low income households, who tend to be disproportionately people of color. From a wealth-building standpoint, lower income house... → By Joe Cortright 19.7.2016
Three challenges for the civic commons In Philadelphia last week, the Gehl Institute convened Act Urbanâa global group of leaders and practitioners in the field of the civic commons. After three days of fieldwork and observation, expert presentations and inte... → By Joe Cortright 30.6.2016
Neighborhood change in Philadelphia Last week, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a fascinating report detailing neighborhood change in Philadelphia over the past decade and a half. âPhiladelphiaâs Changing Neighborhoodsâ combines a careful, region-wid... → By Joe Cortright 3.6.2016
Schools and economic integration Thereâs a growing body of evidence that economic integrationâavoiding the separation of rich and poor into distinct neighborhoodsâis an important ingredient in promoting widely shared opportunity. The work of Raj Che... → By Joe Cortright 1.6.2016
How we did the Storefront Index Weâve received many questions on how we did the analysis behind our Storefront Index. This post will describe our dataset, our method, and how we created our visualizations. We hope that this will spur future research an... → By Dillon Mahmoudi 23.5.2016
Sprawl, segregation, and mobility This is the fourth in an ongoing series of posts about income segregation, urban planning, and economic opportunity. In the first, we examined three different ways of looking at income segregation: the proportion of people... → By Daniel Hertz 16.5.2016
How economically integrated is your city? Last week, we looked at some of the growing body of academic evidence that shows that mixed income neighborhoods play a key role in helping create an environment where kids from poor families can achieve economic success. ... → By Joe Cortright 22.8.2016
The positive feedback loop of integration Yesterday, we critiqued a study that claimed to show that the benefits of putting low-income housing in very low-income neighborhoods greatly exceeded the benefits of putting it in higher-income neighborhoodsâespecially ... → By Daniel Hertz 10.5.2016
The rising tide of economic segregation Last week, we argued that the problem called âincome segregationâ is actually several problems, and broke it down with the help of different measurements designed to capture different aspects of the issue. In partic... → By Daniel Hertz 12.5.2016
Income segregation along the whole spectrum Yesterday, we introduced three kinds of economic segregation, and how you might measure each: the proportion of people in high-income neighborhoods; the proportion of people in low-income neighborhoods; and the proportion ... → By Daniel Hertz 4.5.2016
There’s more than one kind of income segregation Much of the conversation about urban inequality todayâfrom Raj Chettyâs work on intergenerational economic mobility, to issues of concentrated poverty and gentrificationâis framed in terms of economic segregation. Bu... → By Daniel Hertz 3.5.2016
Successful cities and the civic commons At City Observatory, weâve been bullish on cities. Thereâs a strong economic case to be made that successful cities play an essential role in driving national economic prosperity. As we increasingly become a ... → By Joe Cortright 20.9.2016
Our infographic for thinking about the civic commons City Observatory is about cities, and while much of the discussion of urban policy surrounds the physical and built environment, ultimately cities are about people. When cities work well, they bring people together. Conver... → By Joe Cortright 25.10.2016
What it means to be in common When we talk about the costs and consequences of car-dependent urban development, we often talk about hard economics and climate science. Spread-out neighborhoods divided by big, pedestrian-hostile roads force people to sp... → By Daniel Hertz 2.5.2016
An infographic summarizing neighborhood change One of City Observatoryâs major reports is âLost in Place,â which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, youâll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... → By Joe Cortright 9.11.2016
A new look at neighborhood change One of City Observatoryâs major reports is âLost in Place,â which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, youâll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... → By Joe Cortright 21.4.2016
Daytime and nighttime segregation In cities, youâll sometimes hear people talk about a âdaytime populationâ: not how many people live in a place, but how many gather there regularly during their waking hours. So while 1.6 million people may actually ... → By Joe Cortright 14.11.2016
How great cities enable you to live longer Low income people live longer in dense, well-educated, immigrant-friendly cities Some of the most provocative social science research in the past decade has come from the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Stanford... → By Joe Cortright 9.1.2018
A surprising message about the connection between place and life expectancy There arenât many economists whose research findings are routinely reported in the New York Times and Washington Post. But Raj Chettyâand his colleagues around the countryâhave a justly earned reputation for clearly ... → By Joe Cortright 13.4.2016
Why mixed-income neighborhoods matter: lifting kids out of poverty Thereâs a hopeful new sign that how we build our cities, and specifically, how good a job we do of building mixed income neighborhoods that are open to everyone can play a key role in reducing poverty and promoting equit... → By Joe Cortright 29.3.2016
The Storefront Index As Jane Jacobs so eloquently described it in The Death and Life of American Cities, much of the essence of urban living is reflected in the âsidewalk balletâ of people going about their daily errands, wandering along t... → By Joe Cortright 26.4.2016
What is an “unequal” city? Why does economic inequalityâas opposed to just povertyâmatter? There are a lot of reasons, but a big one is that higher levels of inequality make it harder to improve your economic position. As Federal Reserve Chair J... → By Daniel Hertz 26.1.2016
Engaged communities, civic participation, and democracy Today we're publishing an edited version of a speech given by Carol Coletta, VP of Community and National Initiatives at the Knight Foundation, last month in Portland, OR. Informed and engaged communities are fundam... → By Daniel Hertz 1.12.2015
What’s really going on in gentrifying neighborhoods? Yesterday, we wrote about the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, which is in the unique position of being one of the wealthiest urban communities in the nation, and also having almost a third of its housing be public or ot... → By Daniel Hertz 28.10.2015
Higher-inequality neighborhoods reduce inequality A few weeks ago, in a post about what income inequality means in an urban (rather than national) context, we contrasted images of a lower Manhattan neighborhood with a Dallas suburb. The Manhattan street had subsidized hou... → By Daniel Hertz 27.10.2015
Our birthday wish: Cities for everyone Two years and two days ago--on October 15th, 2014--we launched City Observatory, a data-driven voice on what makes for successful cities.  Since then, we've weighed in daily on a whole series of policies issues set in an... → By Joe Cortright 17.10.2016
Talent, opportunity, and engagement are essential to successful cities We're very excited to spread the news that this fall, our partners and supporters at the Knight Foundation are reprising their wildly successful "Knight Cities Challenge." Last year, Knight chose 32 winners out of more tha... → By Daniel Hertz 7.10.2015
One of the biggest myths about cities: Crime is rising There's a lot happening in American cities these days, which means that there's a lot to read about! Even for those of us at City Observatory, sometimes good, important articles slip through the cracks. In recognition of t... → By Joe Cortright 1.10.2015
What do we know about neighborhood change, gentrification, and displacement? In last Fridayâs The Week Observed, we flagged an exhaustive literature review from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, summarizing what we know about gentrification and neighborhood change over about 40 pages. We... → By Daniel Hertz 9.9.2015
Looking at housing injustice requires a broad lens What does it mean for someone to be displaced by gentrification? And in a just world, what do our citiesâ neighborhoods look like? As reported by Next City, a team of researchers at the University of California-Berkel... → By Daniel Hertz 31.8.2015
New Orleans’ missing black middle class Washed away? Or moved to the suburbs? At FiveThirtyEight, Ben Casselman writes: âKatrina Washed Away New Orleans's Black Middle Class.â It's a provocative piece showing the sharp decline in the black population of... → By Joe Cortright 27.8.2015
Are racial “tipping points” overblown? Why are Americaâs neighborhoods so segregated? For a lot of people, the answer requires reaching deep into history: explaining the rise of the subsidized mortgage market and redlining; racial violence in towns from Cicer... → By Daniel Hertz 24.8.2015
The way we measure housing affordability is broken This week, we're running a three-part series on the flawed way that we measure housing affordability. This post looks at exactly what's wrong with one of the most common ways we determine what "affordable" means. Tomorro... → By Daniel Hertz 20.7.2015
Playing together is getting harder to do In our CityReport, Less in Common, we explored a key symptom of the decline in social capital: Americans seem to be spending less time playing together. One major driver of this trend is a dramatic privatization ... → By Joe Cortright 12.6.2015
Playing Apart Our City Observatory report, Less in Common, catalogs the ways that we as a nation have been growing increasingly separated from one another. Changes in technology, the economy and society have all coalesced to create mo... → By Joe Cortright 22.2.2017
Is gentrification a rare big city malady? Gentrification is a big issue in a few places, and not an issue at all elsewhere. Big cities with expensive housing are the flashpoint for gentrification. The city-policy-sphere is rife with debate on gentrificatio... → By Joe Cortright 8.6.2015
New evidence on integration and economic mobility It's unusual to flag an economics article as a âmust-readâ for general audiences: but if you care about cities and place, and about the prospects for the American Dream in the 21st Century, you owe it to yourself to re... → By Joe Cortright 21.5.2015
The Civic Commons & City Success Why we wrote "Less in Common," our latest CityReport. Weâve come increasingly to understand the role of social capital in the effective function of cities and urban economies. Â The success of both local and natio... → By Joe Cortright 9.6.2015
Baltimore’s problems belong to 2015, not 1968 Think riots destroyed #Baltimore? Entire blocks boarded up. pic.twitter.com/OKSnHXMb9f— Michael Kaplan (@MichaelD_Kaplan) May 1, 2015 Look what the riots did to Baltimore! Oh wait no...These were taken before th... → By Daniel Hertz 14.5.2015
On Baltimore: Concentrated Poverty, Segregation, and Inequality Yet again, a black citizen dies at the hands of the police. This event and the ensuing riots in Baltimore are a painful reminder of the deep divisions that cleave our cities. There's little we can add to this debate, exc... → By Joe Cortright 28.4.2015
How we measure segregation depends on why we care Segregation is complicated and multi-dimensional, and measuring it isn't easy In 2014, NYU's Furman Center hosted a roundtable of essays on "The Problem of Integration." Northwestern sociologist Mary Pattillo kicked it ... → By Daniel Hertz 17.4.2017
Want to close the Black/White Income Gap? Work to Reduce Segregation. Nationally, the average black household has an income 42 percent lower than average white household. But that figure masks huge differences from one metropolitan area to another. And though any number of factors ... → By Joe Cortright 16.4.2015
How important is proximity to jobs for the poor? More jobs are close at hand in cities. And on average the poor live closer to jobs than the non-poor. One of the most enduring explanations for urban poverty is the "spatial mismatch hypothesis" promulgated by John Ka... → By Joe Cortright 27.3.2015
On the Road Again The last few months have witnessed a notable rebound in vehicle miles traveled. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that for the year ended December, 2014, Americanâs drove 3.015 trillion miles, up about 1.7 pe... → By Joe Cortright 16.3.2015
Has the Tide Turned? Last month, City Observatory released a new reportâSurging City Center Job Growthâchronicling a widespread rebound in city center jobs. For the first time in decades, job growth in city centers around the country has s... → By Joe Cortright 6.3.2015
Any Port in a Storm? Over the past few weeks, thereâs been a fair amount of media furor over the slowdown in container traffic handling on the West Coast as dockworkers and shipping companies negotiated the new terms of a labor deal. You ... → By Joe Cortright 27.2.2015
What does it mean to be a âSmart City?â The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Â Many have embraced the Smart City banner. Â But it seems each observer defines â... → By Joe Cortright 3.3.2015
Who’s Vulnerable to Retail Retrenchment? This week comes news that Target is laying off 1,700 workers at its Minneapolis headquarters, looking to become leaner and more efficient. Itâs just the latest move in a shifting retail landscape in the United States. ... → By Joe Cortright 13.3.2015
How much could US retail shrink? And where? The first quarter of 2017 has marked a parade of announced store closures. The long awaited axe has fallen on 68 more Macy's stores around the country. J.C. Penney has announced it will close another 138 stores. Other maj... → By Joe Cortright 20.3.2017
What does it mean to be a âSmart City?â Cities are organisms, not machines; So a smart city has to learn and not be engineered The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long ov... → By Joe Cortright 27.4.2017
âSmart Citiesâ have to be about much more than technology A framework for thinking about smart cities Cities are organisms, not machines The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Â ... → By Joe Cortright 10.9.2019
The Perils of Conflating Gentrification and Displacement: A Longer and Wonkier Critique of Governingâs Gentrification Issue Itâs telling that Governing calls gentrification the âg-wordââitâs become almost impossible to talk about neighborhood revitalization without objections being raised almost any change amounts to gentrification. W... → By Joe Cortright 20.2.2015
Floridaâs Biotech Bet For more than a decade, one of the hottest trends in economic development has been pursuing biotechnology. Cities and states around the nation have made considerable investments in biotech research, ranging from California... → By Joe Cortright 5.3.2015
Jobs Return to City Centers (This post coincides with the newly released report, Surging City Center Job Growth. The report and more details are found here.) For decades, urban economists have chronicled the steady decentralization of employment in... → By Joe Cortright 23.2.2015
How is economic mobility related to entrepreneurship? (Part 2: Small Business) We recently featured a post regarding how venture capital is associated with economic mobility. We know that these are strongly correlatedâand that, if we are concerned with the ability of children today to obtain âThe... → By Joe Cortright 11.2.2015
Urban Employment: How does your city compare? As chronicled in our report here and commentary here, we are seeing evidence of a shift in employment back to city centers. We believe that this is driven by a number of forces, including the increasing preference of young... → By CityObservatory Guest 25.2.2015
Less in Common The essence of cities is bringing peopleâfrom all walks of lifeâtogether in one place. Â Social interaction and a robust mixing of people from different backgrounds, of different ages, with different incomes and intere... → By Joe Cortright 9.6.2015
Surging City Center Job Growth For over half a century, American cities were decentralizing, with suburban areas surpassing city centers in both population and job growth. It appears that these economic and demographic tides are now changing. Over the p... → By Joe Cortright 23.2.2015
How Governing got it wrong: The problem with confusing gentrification and displacement Hereâs a quick quiz:Â Which of the following statements is true? a) Gentrification can be harmful because it causes displacement b) Gentrification is the same thing as displacement c) Gentrification is a totally diff... → By Joe Cortright 6.2.2015
Lost in Place Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty--not gentrification--is our biggest urban challenge. A close look at population change in our poorest urban neighborhoods over the past four decades sh... → By Joe Cortright 9.12.2014
America’s Most Diverse Mixed Income Neighborhoods In a nation increasingly divided by race and economic status, where our life prospects are increasingly de ned by the wealth of our zip codes, some American neighborhoods are bucking the trend. These neighborhoods... → By Joe Cortright 18.6.2018
How is economic mobility related to entrepreneurship? (Part 1: Venture Capital) The work of Raj Chetty and his colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity project has spurred intense interest in the extent of economic mobility, measured by the likelihood that children born to low-income parents achieve ... → By Joe Cortright 11.2.2015
Best Bar Cities Great public spaces make great cities. But so do great private spaces. They provide opportunities for people to socialize, and provide the character that make a city more livable and unique. We have already talked about ho... → By CityObservatory Guest 13.2.2015
One tip for a prosperous city economy Local media over the course of the last several months have asked us variations on one question repeatedly: if our city wants to do better â be more productive, retain more young people, reduce povertyâhow can it do th... → By Joe Cortright 27.1.2015
How segregation limits opportunity The more segregated an metro area is, the worse the economic prospects of the poor and people of color Our City Observatory report, Lost in Place, closely tracks the growth of concentrated poverty in the nationâs citi... → By Joe Cortright 27.3.2018
New Findings on Economic Opportunity (that you should know) Our recent report, Lost in Place, closely tracks the growth of concentrated poverty in the nationâs cities; this is particularly important because of the widespread evidence of the permanent damage high-poverty neighborh... → By Joe Cortright 3.2.2015
Why integration matters Socioeconomic mixing, in neighborhoods that are diverse in race, ethnicity and income, benefits everyone To some extent, we take for granted that integration and equal opportunity should be valued for their own sake. Bu... → By Joe Cortright 14.6.2018
Consuming the city: Ranking restaurants per capita The number of eating places per capita is a key measure of a city's livability Cities are great places for consumers. They provide an abundance and variety of choices, especially in the form of experiences. While our ... → By Joe Cortright 11.12.2018
You are where you eat. The Big Idea: Many metro areas vie for the title of âbest food city.â But what cities have the most options for grabbing a bite to eat -- and what does that say about where you live? There are plenty of competin... → By Joe Cortright 22.1.2015
How productive is your city? Which metropolitan economies are the most productive? Â Our broadest measure of economic output is gross domestic product -- the total value of goods and services produced by our economy. Â Economists usually compare the p... → By Joe Cortright 29.1.2015
Keeping it Weird:Â The Secret to Portland’s Economic Success Note:Â This article appeared originally in the February 13, 2010, edition of The Oregonian. Forgive any anachronistic references. These are tough economic times. Although economists tell us the recession is officially o... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2015
Is life really better in Red States (and cities)? The red state/blue state divide is a persistent feature of American politics. Political differences among states are also associated with important economic differences, and a similar patterns hold across and within metro ... → By Joe Cortright 14.1.2015
Where are the food deserts? One of the nationâs biggest health problems is the challenge of obesity: Â since the early 1960s the number of Americanâs who are obese has increased from about 13 percent to 35 percent. The problem is a complex, de... → By Joe Cortright 5.1.2015
Tracking Neighborhood Change: How we made “Lost In Place” In this post, we'll go over the data and mapping steps that were used to create our Lost In Place report on the concentration of poverty and the interactive web map. This post is one of several commentary posts that accomp... → By Dillon Mahmoudi 20.1.2015
How Poverty Has Deepened (part 2) Recently, we discussed the growth in the number of urban high-poverty neighborhoods, which we illustrated by examining the distribution of poverty rates among census tracts. This analysis showed that high poverty neighborh... → By CityObservatory Guest 16.1.2015
How Should Portland Pay for Streets? For the past several months, Portlandâs City Council has been wrestling with various proposals to raise additional funds to pay for maintaining and improving city streets. After considering a range of ideas, including fe... → By Joe Cortright 8.1.2015
City Report: Lost in Place Here's a summary of our latest CityReport: Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty--not gentrification--is our biggest urban challenge. Lost in Place traces the history of high poverty neig... → By Joe Cortright 4.12.2014
How Poverty Has Deepened (part 1) Many talk about povertyâits causes, its effects, and its possible remedies. There is literature on this issue from almost every social science, and no one can summarize it all in one blog post. However, thereâs one asp... → By CityObservatory Guest 12.1.2015
Understanding Your Cityâs Distinctiveness Through Occupational Data At City Observatory, weâve come the conclusion that every city has its own unique characteristics that both define its identity and which play a key role in shaping its economic opportunities. Â These distinctive traits ... → By Joe Cortright 29.12.2014
City Report: America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods Today we're releasing our latest CityReport: America's Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods. In this report, we use Census data to identify those neighborhoods that have the highest levels of both racial/ethnic and ... → By Joe Cortright 18.6.2018
How we build our cities: What’s at stake Guest Commentary by Carol Coletta Itâs a glorious moment to be in the business of promoting the built environment. I use âbuilt environmentâ to encompass the way we build our buildings, arrange our neighborhoods a... → By CityObservatory Guest 24.12.2014
Is your city or neighborhood poorer than 40 years ago? We recently released our latest report, Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated povertyânot gentrificationâis our biggest urban challenge. It speaks to a national trend thatâs been largely ignor... → By CityObservatory Guest 17.12.2014
How “anti-social” capital varies by city The number of security guards is a good measure of a city's level of "anti-social" capital We thought we'd take an updated look at one of our favorite indicators of "social-capital"--the number of private security guard... → By Joe Cortright 29.5.2024
Measuring “anti-social” capital The number of security guards is a good measure of a city's level of "anti-social" capital In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term âsocial capital.â Putnam also developed a clever series of sta... → By Joe Cortright 5.2.2019
The varying thickness of the blue line Cops per capita: An indicator of "Anti-social" capital?"Â Why do some cities have vastly fewer police officers relative to their population than others? In the 1966 film "The Thin Blue Line" director William Friedki... → By Joe Cortright 2.3.2020
Anti-Social Capital? In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term âsocial capital.â Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can ... → By Joe Cortright 13.2.2017
Anti-Social Capital? In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term âsocial capital.â Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can ... → By Joe Cortright 15.12.2014
Ten More you should read about Gentrification, Integration and Concentrated Poverty Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects. Â In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. Â Here we offer ten more of the m... → By Joe Cortright 9.12.2014
Are suburbs really happier? A few months back our friends at CityLab published the results of a survey looking at differences in attitudes about cities and suburbs under the provocative headline, âOverall, Americans in the suburbs are still the hap... → By Joe Cortright 25.11.2014
Ten things you should read about Gentrification, Integration and Concentrated Poverty Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects. Â In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. Â Here we offer a bakerâs dozen... → By Joe Cortright 4.12.2014
Metroâs âWhy Botherâ Climate Change Strategy If you've hung around enough espresso joints, you've probably heard someone order a âtall, non-fat decaf latte.â This is what baristas often call a "why bother?" That would also be a good alternate description for the ... → By Joe Cortright 1.12.2014
Our Shortage of Cities: Portland Housing Market Edition The big idea: housing in desirable city neighborhoods in getting more expensive because the demand for urban living is growing. The solution? Build more great neighborhoods. To an economist, prices are an important signa... → By Joe Cortright 11.11.2014
The four biggest myths about cities – #1 Cities aren’t safe for children If your impression of cities came entirely from watching the evening news, you might think that cities are saddled with ever-increasing traffic congestion and rising crime rates. From talking to your Great Aunt Ida at Than... → By Joe Cortright 23.10.2014
The four biggest myths about cities – #4: Traffic is getting worse The Myth: Traffic congestion is getting worse The Reality: Congestion has declined almost everywhere Itâs a common movie trope â a busy commuter rushes out of his downtown office at 5pm, hoping to get only to... → By Joe Cortright 3.11.2014
Boo! The annual Carmaggedon scare is upon us. A new report detailing the âcostsâ of congestion twists the data to become little more than talking points for the highway lobby. For transportation geeks, Halloween came early this year. A new report claims ... → By CityObservatory Guest 17.10.2014
Parking: The Price is Wrong One of the great ironies of urban economies is the wide disparity between the price of parking and the price of housing in cities. Almost everyone acknowledges that we face a growing and severe problem of housing affordabi... → By Joe Cortright 15.11.2016
Parking: The Price is Wrong There is a central and unacknowledged problem in urban transportation: The price is wrong. Underlying traffic congestion, unaffordable housing, and the shortage of great urban places is the key fact that we charge the wron... → By Joe Cortright 6.11.2014
Economic Opportunity A key measure of economic success has to be whether we provide widely shared opportunities for economic advancement. → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
Metro Economics Metropolitan areas are the fundamental organizational units of our global, knowledge-based economy. → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
Urban Form & Transportation Density, land use patterns and the transportation system interact to determine how well cities fulfill their fundamental task of bringing people together. → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
Questioning Congestion Costs It's frequently claimed that traffic congestion imposes high and rising costs on the economy. But is that true? → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
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Rose Quarter: Death throes of a bloated boondoggle
For years, we've been following the tortured Oregon Department of Transportation Plans to widen a 1.5 mile stretch of I-5 near downtown Portland. The past few months show this project is in serious trouble. Here's a su... →
Red states are now the red zone for Covid-19
Covid-19 now disproportionately affects rural America, and is hitting red states harder than blue ones. Rural counties have 14 percent of US population and 21 percent of new Covid-19 cases. The nation's largest, densest... →
Covid-19 is now a rural and red state pandemic
Covid-19 now disproportionately affects rural America, and is hitting red states harder than blue ones. OK, reporters, we're waiting for the stories about rural Americans decamping to cities (or suburbs) and from red st... →
How the g-word poisons public discourse on making cities better
We're pleased to publish this guest post from Akron's Jason Segedy. It originally appeared on his blog Notes from the Underground. Drawing on his practical experience in a rust-belt city, he offers a compelling new insig... →
Cultural appropriation: Theft or Smorgasbord?
If it weren't for cultural appropriation, would America have any culture at all? In Portland, two women opened a food cart business--Kook's Burritos--selling burritos based on ones that they'd seen and tasted during a ... →
Integration and social interaction: Evidence from Intermarriage
Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Change doesn't happen fast, but it happens more frequently and more quickly when we have integrated communi... →
Integration and social interaction: Evidence from Intermarriage
Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Yesterday, we took a close and critical look at Derek Hyra's claim that mixed-income, mixed-race communitie... →
Socioeconomic mixing is essential to closing the Kumbaya gap
Integrated neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don't automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? Our recent report, America's Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods identifies ... →
Integration and the Kumbaya gap
Gentrifying neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don't automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? In one idealized view of the world, economically integrated neighborhoods would ... →
Volunteering as a measure of social capital
Volunteering is one of the hallmarks of community; here are the cities with the highest rates of volunteerism The decline of the civic commons, the extent to which American's engage with one another in the public realm,... →
Migration is making counties more diverse
Migration, especially by young adults, is increasing racial and ethnic diversity in US counties As we related last week, a new report from the Urban Institute quantifies the stark economic costs of racial and income seg... →
Getting to critical mass in Detroit
Last month, we took exception to critics of Detroit's economic rebound who argued that it was a failure because the job and population growth that the city has enjoyed has only reached a few neighborhoods, chiefly those in... →
Cursing the candle
How should we view the early signs of a turnaround in Detroit? Better to light a single candle than simply curse the darkness. The past decades have been full of dark days for Detroit, but there are finally signs of a t... →
What makes America great, as always: Immigrants
Happy Independence Day, America! All Americans are immigrants (Even the Native American tribes trace their origins to Asians who migrated over the Siberian-Alaskan land bridge during the last ice age). And this nation o... →
Openness to immigration drives economic success
Last Friday, President Trump signed an Executive Order effectively blocking entry to the US for nationals of seven countriesâIraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. We'll leave aside the fearful, xenophobic ... →
The constancy of change in neighborhood populations
Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There's a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic a... →
The constancy of change in neighborhood populations
Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There's a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic a... →
Constant change and gentrification
A new study of gentrification sheds light on how neighborhoods change. Â Here are the takeaways: The population of urban neighborhoods is always changing because moving is so common, especially for renters. There's... →
How urban geometry creates neighborhood identity
Does geometry bias our view of how neighborhoods work? Imagine a neighborhood that looks like this: On any given block, there might be a handful of small apartment buildingsâthree-flatsâwhich are usually clus... →
More evidence for peer effects: Help with homework edition
There's a large a growing body of research that shows the importance of peer effects on lifetime economic success of kids. Â For example, while the education level your parents is a strong determinant of your level of educ... →
How diverse are the neighborhoods white people live in?
Overall, America is becoming more diverse, but in many places the neighborhoods we live in remain quite segregated. The population of the typical US metropolitan area has a much more ethnically and racially mixed compositi... →
You are where you eat.
The Big Idea: Many metro areas vie for the title of âbest food city.â But what cities have the most options for grabbing a bite to eat -- and what does that say about where you live? There are plenty of competin... →
Cities and Elections
It's election day, 2016. Here's some of what we know about cities and voting. Well, at last. Today is election day. While weâre all eagerly awaiting the results of the vote, we thought weâd highlight a few things we... →
Market timing and racial wealth disparities
One of the enduring features of American inequality is the wide disparity in homeownership rates between white Americans and Latinos and African-Americans. And because homeownership has -- or at least was, historically -- ... →
Are integrated neighborhoods stable?
More American neighborhoods are becoming integratedâand are staying that way It's rare that some obscure terminology from sociology becomes a part of our everyday vernacular, but "tipping point" is one of those terms.... →
Are integrated neighborhoods stable?
Its rare that some obscure terminology from sociology becomes a part of our everyday vernacular, but "tipping point" is one of those terms. Famously, Thomas Schelling used the tipping point metaphor to explain the dynamics... →
Where are African-American entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurship is both a key driver of economic activity and an essential path to economic opportunity for millions of Americans. Historically, discrimination and lower levels of wealth and income have been barriers to e... →
Homeownership can exacerbate inequality
In yesterday's post, we described why homeownership is such a risky financial proposition for low income households, who tend to be disproportionately people of color. From a wealth-building standpoint, lower income house... →
Three challenges for the civic commons
In Philadelphia last week, the Gehl Institute convened Act Urbanâa global group of leaders and practitioners in the field of the civic commons. After three days of fieldwork and observation, expert presentations and inte... →
Neighborhood change in Philadelphia
Last week, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a fascinating report detailing neighborhood change in Philadelphia over the past decade and a half. âPhiladelphiaâs Changing Neighborhoodsâ combines a careful, region-wid... →
Schools and economic integration
Thereâs a growing body of evidence that economic integrationâavoiding the separation of rich and poor into distinct neighborhoodsâis an important ingredient in promoting widely shared opportunity. The work of Raj Che... →
How we did the Storefront Index
Weâve received many questions on how we did the analysis behind our Storefront Index. This post will describe our dataset, our method, and how we created our visualizations. We hope that this will spur future research an... →
Sprawl, segregation, and mobility
This is the fourth in an ongoing series of posts about income segregation, urban planning, and economic opportunity. In the first, we examined three different ways of looking at income segregation: the proportion of people... →
How economically integrated is your city?
Last week, we looked at some of the growing body of academic evidence that shows that mixed income neighborhoods play a key role in helping create an environment where kids from poor families can achieve economic success. ... →
The positive feedback loop of integration
Yesterday, we critiqued a study that claimed to show that the benefits of putting low-income housing in very low-income neighborhoods greatly exceeded the benefits of putting it in higher-income neighborhoodsâespecially ... →
The rising tide of economic segregation
Last week, we argued that the problem called âincome segregationâ is actually several problems, and broke it down with the help of different measurements designed to capture different aspects of the issue. In partic... →
Income segregation along the whole spectrum
Yesterday, we introduced three kinds of economic segregation, and how you might measure each: the proportion of people in high-income neighborhoods; the proportion of people in low-income neighborhoods; and the proportion ... →
There’s more than one kind of income segregation
Much of the conversation about urban inequality todayâfrom Raj Chettyâs work on intergenerational economic mobility, to issues of concentrated poverty and gentrificationâis framed in terms of economic segregation. Bu... →
Successful cities and the civic commons
At City Observatory, weâve been bullish on cities. Thereâs a strong economic case to be made that successful cities play an essential role in driving national economic prosperity. As we increasingly become a ... →
Our infographic for thinking about the civic commons
City Observatory is about cities, and while much of the discussion of urban policy surrounds the physical and built environment, ultimately cities are about people. When cities work well, they bring people together. Conver... →
What it means to be in common
When we talk about the costs and consequences of car-dependent urban development, we often talk about hard economics and climate science. Spread-out neighborhoods divided by big, pedestrian-hostile roads force people to sp... →
An infographic summarizing neighborhood change
One of City Observatoryâs major reports is âLost in Place,â which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, youâll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... →
A new look at neighborhood change
One of City Observatoryâs major reports is âLost in Place,â which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, youâll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... →
Daytime and nighttime segregation
In cities, youâll sometimes hear people talk about a âdaytime populationâ: not how many people live in a place, but how many gather there regularly during their waking hours. So while 1.6 million people may actually ... →
How great cities enable you to live longer
Low income people live longer in dense, well-educated, immigrant-friendly cities Some of the most provocative social science research in the past decade has come from the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Stanford... →
A surprising message about the connection between place and life expectancy
There arenât many economists whose research findings are routinely reported in the New York Times and Washington Post. But Raj Chettyâand his colleagues around the countryâhave a justly earned reputation for clearly ... →
Why mixed-income neighborhoods matter: lifting kids out of poverty
Thereâs a hopeful new sign that how we build our cities, and specifically, how good a job we do of building mixed income neighborhoods that are open to everyone can play a key role in reducing poverty and promoting equit... →
The Storefront Index
As Jane Jacobs so eloquently described it in The Death and Life of American Cities, much of the essence of urban living is reflected in the âsidewalk balletâ of people going about their daily errands, wandering along t... →
What is an “unequal” city?
Why does economic inequalityâas opposed to just povertyâmatter? There are a lot of reasons, but a big one is that higher levels of inequality make it harder to improve your economic position. As Federal Reserve Chair J... →
Engaged communities, civic participation, and democracy
Today we're publishing an edited version of a speech given by Carol Coletta, VP of Community and National Initiatives at the Knight Foundation, last month in Portland, OR. Informed and engaged communities are fundam... →
What’s really going on in gentrifying neighborhoods?
Yesterday, we wrote about the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, which is in the unique position of being one of the wealthiest urban communities in the nation, and also having almost a third of its housing be public or ot... →
Higher-inequality neighborhoods reduce inequality
A few weeks ago, in a post about what income inequality means in an urban (rather than national) context, we contrasted images of a lower Manhattan neighborhood with a Dallas suburb. The Manhattan street had subsidized hou... →
Our birthday wish: Cities for everyone
Two years and two days ago--on October 15th, 2014--we launched City Observatory, a data-driven voice on what makes for successful cities.  Since then, we've weighed in daily on a whole series of policies issues set in an... →
Talent, opportunity, and engagement are essential to successful cities
We're very excited to spread the news that this fall, our partners and supporters at the Knight Foundation are reprising their wildly successful "Knight Cities Challenge." Last year, Knight chose 32 winners out of more tha... →
One of the biggest myths about cities: Crime is rising
There's a lot happening in American cities these days, which means that there's a lot to read about! Even for those of us at City Observatory, sometimes good, important articles slip through the cracks. In recognition of t... →
What do we know about neighborhood change, gentrification, and displacement?
In last Fridayâs The Week Observed, we flagged an exhaustive literature review from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, summarizing what we know about gentrification and neighborhood change over about 40 pages. We... →
Looking at housing injustice requires a broad lens
What does it mean for someone to be displaced by gentrification? And in a just world, what do our citiesâ neighborhoods look like? As reported by Next City, a team of researchers at the University of California-Berkel... →
New Orleans’ missing black middle class
Washed away? Or moved to the suburbs? At FiveThirtyEight, Ben Casselman writes: âKatrina Washed Away New Orleans's Black Middle Class.â It's a provocative piece showing the sharp decline in the black population of... →
Are racial “tipping points” overblown?
Why are Americaâs neighborhoods so segregated? For a lot of people, the answer requires reaching deep into history: explaining the rise of the subsidized mortgage market and redlining; racial violence in towns from Cicer... →
The way we measure housing affordability is broken
This week, we're running a three-part series on the flawed way that we measure housing affordability. This post looks at exactly what's wrong with one of the most common ways we determine what "affordable" means. Tomorro... →
Playing together is getting harder to do
In our CityReport, Less in Common, we explored a key symptom of the decline in social capital: Americans seem to be spending less time playing together. One major driver of this trend is a dramatic privatization ... →
Playing Apart
Our City Observatory report, Less in Common, catalogs the ways that we as a nation have been growing increasingly separated from one another. Changes in technology, the economy and society have all coalesced to create mo... →
Is gentrification a rare big city malady?
Gentrification is a big issue in a few places, and not an issue at all elsewhere. Big cities with expensive housing are the flashpoint for gentrification. The city-policy-sphere is rife with debate on gentrificatio... →
New evidence on integration and economic mobility
It's unusual to flag an economics article as a âmust-readâ for general audiences: but if you care about cities and place, and about the prospects for the American Dream in the 21st Century, you owe it to yourself to re... →
The Civic Commons & City Success
Why we wrote "Less in Common," our latest CityReport. Weâve come increasingly to understand the role of social capital in the effective function of cities and urban economies. Â The success of both local and natio... →
Baltimore’s problems belong to 2015, not 1968
Think riots destroyed #Baltimore? Entire blocks boarded up. pic.twitter.com/OKSnHXMb9f— Michael Kaplan (@MichaelD_Kaplan) May 1, 2015 Look what the riots did to Baltimore! Oh wait no...These were taken before th... →
On Baltimore: Concentrated Poverty, Segregation, and Inequality
Yet again, a black citizen dies at the hands of the police. This event and the ensuing riots in Baltimore are a painful reminder of the deep divisions that cleave our cities. There's little we can add to this debate, exc... →
How we measure segregation depends on why we care
Segregation is complicated and multi-dimensional, and measuring it isn't easy In 2014, NYU's Furman Center hosted a roundtable of essays on "The Problem of Integration." Northwestern sociologist Mary Pattillo kicked it ... →
Want to close the Black/White Income Gap? Work to Reduce Segregation.
Nationally, the average black household has an income 42 percent lower than average white household. But that figure masks huge differences from one metropolitan area to another. And though any number of factors ... →
How important is proximity to jobs for the poor?
More jobs are close at hand in cities. And on average the poor live closer to jobs than the non-poor. One of the most enduring explanations for urban poverty is the "spatial mismatch hypothesis" promulgated by John Ka... →
On the Road Again
The last few months have witnessed a notable rebound in vehicle miles traveled. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that for the year ended December, 2014, Americanâs drove 3.015 trillion miles, up about 1.7 pe... →
Has the Tide Turned?
Last month, City Observatory released a new reportâSurging City Center Job Growthâchronicling a widespread rebound in city center jobs. For the first time in decades, job growth in city centers around the country has s... →
Any Port in a Storm?
Over the past few weeks, thereâs been a fair amount of media furor over the slowdown in container traffic handling on the West Coast as dockworkers and shipping companies negotiated the new terms of a labor deal. You ... →
What does it mean to be a âSmart City?â
The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Â Many have embraced the Smart City banner. Â But it seems each observer defines â... →
Who’s Vulnerable to Retail Retrenchment?
This week comes news that Target is laying off 1,700 workers at its Minneapolis headquarters, looking to become leaner and more efficient. Itâs just the latest move in a shifting retail landscape in the United States. ... →
How much could US retail shrink? And where?
The first quarter of 2017 has marked a parade of announced store closures. The long awaited axe has fallen on 68 more Macy's stores around the country. J.C. Penney has announced it will close another 138 stores. Other maj... →
What does it mean to be a âSmart City?â
Cities are organisms, not machines; So a smart city has to learn and not be engineered The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long ov... →
âSmart Citiesâ have to be about much more than technology
A framework for thinking about smart cities Cities are organisms, not machines The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Â ... →
The Perils of Conflating Gentrification and Displacement: A Longer and Wonkier Critique of Governingâs Gentrification Issue
Itâs telling that Governing calls gentrification the âg-wordââitâs become almost impossible to talk about neighborhood revitalization without objections being raised almost any change amounts to gentrification. W... →
Floridaâs Biotech Bet
For more than a decade, one of the hottest trends in economic development has been pursuing biotechnology. Cities and states around the nation have made considerable investments in biotech research, ranging from California... →
Jobs Return to City Centers
(This post coincides with the newly released report, Surging City Center Job Growth. The report and more details are found here.) For decades, urban economists have chronicled the steady decentralization of employment in... →
How is economic mobility related to entrepreneurship? (Part 2: Small Business)
We recently featured a post regarding how venture capital is associated with economic mobility. We know that these are strongly correlatedâand that, if we are concerned with the ability of children today to obtain âThe... →
Urban Employment: How does your city compare?
As chronicled in our report here and commentary here, we are seeing evidence of a shift in employment back to city centers. We believe that this is driven by a number of forces, including the increasing preference of young... →
Less in Common
The essence of cities is bringing peopleâfrom all walks of lifeâtogether in one place. Â Social interaction and a robust mixing of people from different backgrounds, of different ages, with different incomes and intere... →
Surging City Center Job Growth
For over half a century, American cities were decentralizing, with suburban areas surpassing city centers in both population and job growth. It appears that these economic and demographic tides are now changing. Over the p... →
How Governing got it wrong: The problem with confusing gentrification and displacement
Hereâs a quick quiz:Â Which of the following statements is true? a) Gentrification can be harmful because it causes displacement b) Gentrification is the same thing as displacement c) Gentrification is a totally diff... →
Lost in Place
Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty--not gentrification--is our biggest urban challenge. A close look at population change in our poorest urban neighborhoods over the past four decades sh... →
America’s Most Diverse Mixed Income Neighborhoods
In a nation increasingly divided by race and economic status, where our life prospects are increasingly de ned by the wealth of our zip codes, some American neighborhoods are bucking the trend. These neighborhoods... →
How is economic mobility related to entrepreneurship? (Part 1: Venture Capital)
The work of Raj Chetty and his colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity project has spurred intense interest in the extent of economic mobility, measured by the likelihood that children born to low-income parents achieve ... →
Best Bar Cities
Great public spaces make great cities. But so do great private spaces. They provide opportunities for people to socialize, and provide the character that make a city more livable and unique. We have already talked about ho... →
One tip for a prosperous city economy
Local media over the course of the last several months have asked us variations on one question repeatedly: if our city wants to do better â be more productive, retain more young people, reduce povertyâhow can it do th... →
How segregation limits opportunity
The more segregated an metro area is, the worse the economic prospects of the poor and people of color Our City Observatory report, Lost in Place, closely tracks the growth of concentrated poverty in the nationâs citi... →
New Findings on Economic Opportunity (that you should know)
Our recent report, Lost in Place, closely tracks the growth of concentrated poverty in the nationâs cities; this is particularly important because of the widespread evidence of the permanent damage high-poverty neighborh... →
Why integration matters
Socioeconomic mixing, in neighborhoods that are diverse in race, ethnicity and income, benefits everyone To some extent, we take for granted that integration and equal opportunity should be valued for their own sake. Bu... →
Consuming the city: Ranking restaurants per capita
The number of eating places per capita is a key measure of a city's livability Cities are great places for consumers. They provide an abundance and variety of choices, especially in the form of experiences. While our ... →
You are where you eat.
The Big Idea: Many metro areas vie for the title of âbest food city.â But what cities have the most options for grabbing a bite to eat -- and what does that say about where you live? There are plenty of competin... →
How productive is your city?
Which metropolitan economies are the most productive? Â Our broadest measure of economic output is gross domestic product -- the total value of goods and services produced by our economy. Â Economists usually compare the p... →
Keeping it Weird:Â The Secret to Portland’s Economic Success
Note:Â This article appeared originally in the February 13, 2010, edition of The Oregonian. Forgive any anachronistic references. These are tough economic times. Although economists tell us the recession is officially o... →
Is life really better in Red States (and cities)?
The red state/blue state divide is a persistent feature of American politics. Political differences among states are also associated with important economic differences, and a similar patterns hold across and within metro ... →
Where are the food deserts?
One of the nationâs biggest health problems is the challenge of obesity: Â since the early 1960s the number of Americanâs who are obese has increased from about 13 percent to 35 percent. The problem is a complex, de... →
Tracking Neighborhood Change: How we made “Lost In Place”
In this post, we'll go over the data and mapping steps that were used to create our Lost In Place report on the concentration of poverty and the interactive web map. This post is one of several commentary posts that accomp... →
How Poverty Has Deepened (part 2)
Recently, we discussed the growth in the number of urban high-poverty neighborhoods, which we illustrated by examining the distribution of poverty rates among census tracts. This analysis showed that high poverty neighborh... →
How Should Portland Pay for Streets?
For the past several months, Portlandâs City Council has been wrestling with various proposals to raise additional funds to pay for maintaining and improving city streets. After considering a range of ideas, including fe... →
City Report: Lost in Place
Here's a summary of our latest CityReport: Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty--not gentrification--is our biggest urban challenge. Lost in Place traces the history of high poverty neig... →
How Poverty Has Deepened (part 1)
Many talk about povertyâits causes, its effects, and its possible remedies. There is literature on this issue from almost every social science, and no one can summarize it all in one blog post. However, thereâs one asp... →
Understanding Your Cityâs Distinctiveness Through Occupational Data
At City Observatory, weâve come the conclusion that every city has its own unique characteristics that both define its identity and which play a key role in shaping its economic opportunities. Â These distinctive traits ... →
City Report: America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods
Today we're releasing our latest CityReport: America's Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods. In this report, we use Census data to identify those neighborhoods that have the highest levels of both racial/ethnic and ... →
How we build our cities: What’s at stake
Guest Commentary by Carol Coletta Itâs a glorious moment to be in the business of promoting the built environment. I use âbuilt environmentâ to encompass the way we build our buildings, arrange our neighborhoods a... →
Is your city or neighborhood poorer than 40 years ago?
We recently released our latest report, Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated povertyânot gentrificationâis our biggest urban challenge. It speaks to a national trend thatâs been largely ignor... →
How “anti-social” capital varies by city
The number of security guards is a good measure of a city's level of "anti-social" capital We thought we'd take an updated look at one of our favorite indicators of "social-capital"--the number of private security guard... →
Measuring “anti-social” capital
The number of security guards is a good measure of a city's level of "anti-social" capital In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term âsocial capital.â Putnam also developed a clever series of sta... →
The varying thickness of the blue line
Cops per capita: An indicator of "Anti-social" capital?"Â Why do some cities have vastly fewer police officers relative to their population than others? In the 1966 film "The Thin Blue Line" director William Friedki... →
Anti-Social Capital?
In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term âsocial capital.â Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can ... →
Anti-Social Capital?
In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term âsocial capital.â Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can ... →
Ten More you should read about Gentrification, Integration and Concentrated Poverty
Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects. Â In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. Â Here we offer ten more of the m... →
Are suburbs really happier?
A few months back our friends at CityLab published the results of a survey looking at differences in attitudes about cities and suburbs under the provocative headline, âOverall, Americans in the suburbs are still the hap... →
Ten things you should read about Gentrification, Integration and Concentrated Poverty
Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects. Â In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. Â Here we offer a bakerâs dozen... →
Metroâs âWhy Botherâ Climate Change Strategy
If you've hung around enough espresso joints, you've probably heard someone order a âtall, non-fat decaf latte.â This is what baristas often call a "why bother?" That would also be a good alternate description for the ... →
Our Shortage of Cities: Portland Housing Market Edition
The big idea: housing in desirable city neighborhoods in getting more expensive because the demand for urban living is growing. The solution? Build more great neighborhoods. To an economist, prices are an important signa... →
The four biggest myths about cities – #1 Cities aren’t safe for children
If your impression of cities came entirely from watching the evening news, you might think that cities are saddled with ever-increasing traffic congestion and rising crime rates. From talking to your Great Aunt Ida at Than... →
The four biggest myths about cities – #4: Traffic is getting worse
The Myth: Traffic congestion is getting worse The Reality: Congestion has declined almost everywhere Itâs a common movie trope â a busy commuter rushes out of his downtown office at 5pm, hoping to get only to... →
Boo! The annual Carmaggedon scare is upon us.
A new report detailing the âcostsâ of congestion twists the data to become little more than talking points for the highway lobby. For transportation geeks, Halloween came early this year. A new report claims ... →
Parking: The Price is Wrong
One of the great ironies of urban economies is the wide disparity between the price of parking and the price of housing in cities. Almost everyone acknowledges that we face a growing and severe problem of housing affordabi... →
Parking: The Price is Wrong
There is a central and unacknowledged problem in urban transportation: The price is wrong. Underlying traffic congestion, unaffordable housing, and the shortage of great urban places is the key fact that we charge the wron... →
Economic Opportunity
A key measure of economic success has to be whether we provide widely shared opportunities for economic advancement. →
Metro Economics
Metropolitan areas are the fundamental organizational units of our global, knowledge-based economy. →
Urban Form & Transportation
Density, land use patterns and the transportation system interact to determine how well cities fulfill their fundamental task of bringing people together. →
Questioning Congestion Costs
It's frequently claimed that traffic congestion imposes high and rising costs on the economy. But is that true? →