How we did the Storefront Index We’ve 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
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 “sidewalk ballet” of people going about their daily errands, wandering along t... → By Joe Cortright 26.4.2016
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
Misleading Medians & the McMansion Mirage A story published by the Washington Post’s Wonkblog last week made the headline claim that “The McMansion is back, and bigger than ever.” The article says that new homes are an average of 1,000 feet larger than in ... → By Joe Cortright 9.3.2015
Any Port in a Storm? Over the past few weeks, there’s 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 “Smart City?” The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Many have embraced the Smart City banner. But it seems each observer defines ... → By Joe Cortright 3.3.2015
What does it mean to be a “Smart City?” 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
“Smart Cities” 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. ... → By Joe Cortright 10.9.2019
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
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
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 – be more productive, retain more young people, reduce poverty—how can it do th... → By Joe Cortright 27.1.2015
How productive is your city? Which metropolitan economies are the most productive? Our broadest measure of economic output is gross domestic product -- the total value of goods and services produced by our economy. Economists usually compare the p... → By Joe Cortright 29.1.2015
Keeping it Weird: The Secret to Portland’s Economic Success Note: 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
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, Portland’s 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
How Poverty Has Deepened (part 1) Many talk about poverty—its 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, there’s one asp... → By CityObservatory Guest 12.1.2015
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 poverty–not gentrification–is our biggest urban challenge. It speaks to a national trend that’s 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 “social capital.” 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?" 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 “social capital.” 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 “social capital.” 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
Gender Differences in Unemployment To celebrate the Census Bureau’s release of the 5-year American Community Survey estimate, we decided to do a quick analysis of some of its information. So for some light Friday afternoon reading, we present you with an ... → By CityObservatory Guest 5.12.2014
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, “Overall, Americans in the suburbs are still the hap... → By Joe Cortright 25.11.2014
Why Black Friday Just Isn’t Worth It If you’ve ever contemplated getting up at 3, 4, or 5 am only to brave large crowds to fight over scarce merchandise, well, think again. Instead of looking into census data this Thanksgiving, we thought we’d look at mor... → By CityObservatory Guest 26.11.2014
Metro’s “Why Bother” Climate Change Strategy If you've hung around enough espresso joints, you've probably heard someone order a “tall, non-fat decaf latte.” 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
Data At CityObservatory, we strive to make data the driving force behind our operations. We know that many of you share our keen interest in digging through the data, and we strongly believe that everyone benefits when data sou... → By Dillon Mahmoudi 23.2.2015
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 – #3: Crime is rising in cities The Myth: Crime in cities is on the rise The Reality: Cities are getting safer For decades, the common perception about cities is that they were dangerous, dirty, and crowded. A look at the facts tells a differen... → By Joe Cortright 30.10.2014
The four biggest myths about cities – #2: Cities are dirty The Myth: Cities are polluted and have dirty air The Reality: Urban air quality has improved dramatically since 1990 For decades, the common perception about cities is that they were dangerous, dirty, and crowded... → By Joe Cortright 26.10.2014
Boo! The annual Carmaggedon scare is upon us. A new report detailing the “costs” 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
Placemaking & the Consumer City The quality of life in cities is an essential ingredient and contributor to economic prosperity. → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
Is Portland really where young people go to retire? Forget the quirky, slacker stereotype, the data show people are coming to Portland to start businesses. A recent New York Times magazine article “Keep Portland Broke,” echoed a meme made popular by the satirical... → By Joe Cortright 14.10.2014
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How we did the Storefront Index
We’ve 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... →
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 “sidewalk ballet” of people going about their daily errands, wandering along t... →
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... →
Misleading Medians & the McMansion Mirage
A story published by the Washington Post’s Wonkblog last week made the headline claim that “The McMansion is back, and bigger than ever.” The article says that new homes are an average of 1,000 feet larger than in ... →
Any Port in a Storm?
Over the past few weeks, there’s 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 “Smart City?”
The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Many have embraced the Smart City banner. But it seems each observer defines ... →
What does it mean to be a “Smart City?”
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... →
“Smart Cities” 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. ... →
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... →
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... →
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 – be more productive, retain more young people, reduce poverty—how can it do th... →
How productive is your city?
Which metropolitan economies are the most productive? Our broadest measure of economic output is gross domestic product -- the total value of goods and services produced by our economy. Economists usually compare the p... →
Keeping it Weird: The Secret to Portland’s Economic Success
Note: 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 ... →
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, Portland’s 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... →
How Poverty Has Deepened (part 1)
Many talk about poverty—its 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, there’s one asp... →
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 poverty–not gentrification–is our biggest urban challenge. It speaks to a national trend that’s 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 “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of sta... →
The varying thickness of the blue line
Cops per capita: An indicator of "Anti-social" capital?" 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 “social capital.” 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 “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can ... →
Gender Differences in Unemployment
To celebrate the Census Bureau’s release of the 5-year American Community Survey estimate, we decided to do a quick analysis of some of its information. So for some light Friday afternoon reading, we present you with an ... →
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, “Overall, Americans in the suburbs are still the hap... →
Why Black Friday Just Isn’t Worth It
If you’ve ever contemplated getting up at 3, 4, or 5 am only to brave large crowds to fight over scarce merchandise, well, think again. Instead of looking into census data this Thanksgiving, we thought we’d look at mor... →
Metro’s “Why Bother” Climate Change Strategy
If you've hung around enough espresso joints, you've probably heard someone order a “tall, non-fat decaf latte.” This is what baristas often call a "why bother?" That would also be a good alternate description for the ... →
Data
At CityObservatory, we strive to make data the driving force behind our operations. We know that many of you share our keen interest in digging through the data, and we strongly believe that everyone benefits when data sou... →
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 – #3: Crime is rising in cities
The Myth: Crime in cities is on the rise The Reality: Cities are getting safer For decades, the common perception about cities is that they were dangerous, dirty, and crowded. A look at the facts tells a differen... →
The four biggest myths about cities – #2: Cities are dirty
The Myth: Cities are polluted and have dirty air The Reality: Urban air quality has improved dramatically since 1990 For decades, the common perception about cities is that they were dangerous, dirty, and crowded... →
Boo! The annual Carmaggedon scare is upon us.
A new report detailing the “costs” 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... →
Placemaking & the Consumer City
The quality of life in cities is an essential ingredient and contributor to economic prosperity. →
Is Portland really where young people go to retire?
Forget the quirky, slacker stereotype, the data show people are coming to Portland to start businesses. A recent New York Times magazine article “Keep Portland Broke,” echoed a meme made popular by the satirical... →