Hiding the growing cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement The cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) is going up: But we won't tell you how much . . . And we're not going to tell you until a year from now, after the 2025 Legislature adjourns In January, 2024, IBR o... → By Joe Cortright 24.7.2024
Strawberries and economic prosperity Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences I pity you, dear reader. You likely have no idea what a real strawberry tastes like. Unless you spend the three weeks around the Summe... → By Joe Cortright 24.6.2024
Cargo Cult Comeback: Cost–$30 million a year Portland's $30 Million Container Shipping Folly Cargo cults are a well-documented sociological phenomenon: Cargo cults were religious movements that emerged among indigenous people in Melanesia during the early to mid-... → By Joe Cortright 20.5.2024
Oregon DOT can and should mitigate past damage from highways The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has proposed a $1.9 billion freeway widening project for Portland's Rose Quarter. The agency proposes to cover a portion of the freeway in what it calls "restorative justice... → By Joe Cortright 16.5.2024
The Interstate Bridge Replacement is Two Years Behind Schedule The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Project is two years behind schedule IBR's Draft SEIS was supposed to be complete in December 2022—It now won't be done before December 2024. This two-year delay means the environ... → By Joe Cortright 6.5.2024
Bye Containers, Again Once again, Portland loses container service: the economic effects will be minimal. Economic development has long been obsessed with "cargo cult" thinking: the idea that economic prosperity is caused by ports and hi... → By Joe Cortright 17.4.2024
Another thing IBR doesn’t want you to know: 30 seconds over Portland The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project will save the average commuter just 30 seconds in daily commute time IBR officially determined that "leaking" the project EIS would result in "negative public react... → By Joe Cortright 2.4.2024
What IBR doesn’t want you to know The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project is afraid of what you'll find out when they release their Environmental Impact Statement IBR officially determined that "leaking" the project EIS would result in "n... → By Joe Cortright 26.3.2024
A yawning chasm: Patterns of neighborhood distress in US metros There's a yawning chasm of neighborhood level economic distress across US metro areas. While about 1 in 6 US neighborhoods is classed as distressed, some metro areas have large concentrations of distress, while others ha... → By Joe Cortright 6.3.2024
Freeway covers are an expensive way to create new urban land Wouldn't it be nice if we could create valuable new urban land by decking over freeways? Turns out, its massively uneconomical, and doesn't eliminate many of the most negative effects of urban freeways Its massively ... → By Joe Cortright 20.3.2024
Inventing a “commitment” to freeway cost overruns How ODOT is trying to re-write history to create a commitment to freeway cost overruns. The 2017 Legislature authorized zero funding for the I-205 Bridge project In 2024, ODOT now falsely claims that the I-205 projec... → By Joe Cortright 17.6.2024
Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study There are good reasons to be dubious of claims that trucks are being over-charged for the use of Oregon roads. The imbalance between cars and trucks seems to stem largely from the Oregon Department of Transportation''s ... → By Joe Cortright 6.2.2024
Bad data: Not a decline in travel An imagined decline in trip-making is the result of bad data analysis USDOT counted fewer trips in 2022, because it used a different, and less reliable survey method USDOT's social media created a false perception th... → By Joe Cortright 21.12.2023
Down is not up: The truth about traffic, congestion and trucking A central message of the highway building sales pitch is that traffic is ever-growing and ever worsening, and that we have no choice but to throw more money at expanded capacity. The Oregon Department of Transportation ... → By Joe Cortright 4.12.2023
Lying about climate: A 5 million mile a day discrepancy Metro's Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) claims it will meet state and regional climate objectives by slashing vehicle travel more than 30 percent per person between now and 2045. Meanwhile, its transportation plan ac... → By Joe Cortright 16.11.2023
Rose Quarter’s Killer Ramps The proposed re-design of the I-5 Rose Quarter Project now includes two deadly hairpin freeway off-ramps. Just last week, Brandon Coleman was killed at a similar hairpin highway ramp in downtown Portland The Oregon... → By Joe Cortright 1.11.2023
Doubling down on climate fraud in Metro’s RTP Earlier, we branded Portland Metro's proposed Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) a climate fraud because in falsely claimed the region was reducing greenhouse gases, and falsely claimed its transportation investments were ... → By Joe Cortright 25.10.2023
ODOT Snow Job: Give us more money, or we’ll stop plowing your roads Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) says it doesn't have enough money to maintain roads, fix potholes or even plow snow. This is a Big Lie: Mega-projects and their cost-overruns, not maintenance, are the cause ... → By Joe Cortright 8.11.2023
Exaggerated Benefits, Omitted Costs: The Interstate Bridge Boondoggle A $7.5 billion highway boondoggle doesn't meet the basic test of cost-effectiveness The Interstate Bridge Project is a value-destroying proposition: it costs more to build than it provides in economic benefits Fede... → By Joe Cortright 14.12.2023
Britain’s Caste System of Transportation UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proclaims the primacy of drivers "We are a nation of drivers" Those who don't own cars, or can't, or choose not to drive, are second class citizens The transportation culture war is f... → By Joe Cortright 9.10.2023
Gentrification and Housing Supply New York lost more than 100,000 homes due to the combination of smaller, more affordable apartments into larger, more luxurious homes When rich people can't buy new luxury housing, they buy up, and combine small apartme... → By Joe Cortright 7.9.2023
The ten lane freeway hiding in Rose Quarter Plans Secret ODOT plans obtained by City Observatory show ODOT is planning a ten-lane freeway through the Rose Quarter Though the agency claims its "just adding one auxiliary lane" in each direction, the I-5 Rose Quarter proj... → By Joe Cortright 1.12.2023
Metro’s Climate-Denying Regional Transportation Plan Portland Metro's Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) does nothing to prioritize projects and expenditures that reduce greenhouse gases Metro falsely asserts that because its overall plan will be on a path to reduce GHGs ... → By Joe Cortright 23.8.2023
The climate fraud in Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan Metro's Regional Transportation Plan rationalizes spending billions on freeway expansion by publishing false estimates and projections of greenhouse gas emissions Transportation is the number one source of greenhouse ga... → By Joe Cortright 17.8.2023
Rose Quarter: So expensive because it’s too damn wide The cost of the $1.9 billion Rose Quarter freeway is driven by its excessive width ODOT is proposing to more than double the width of the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway through the Albina neighborhood ODOT could easily str... → By Joe Cortright 12.7.2023
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
ODOT’s I-205 Bridge: 1/10th of 1 Percent for Black Contractors The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged business enterprises One-tenth of one percent of I-205 contracts went to Black construction firms ODO... → By Joe Cortright 20.7.2023
Who sold out the HAAB? The members of ODOT's "Historic Albina Advisory Board" (HAAB) are hopping mad. As related by Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland, they feel board betrayed by a decision to postpone construction of the $1.6 billion I-5 Rose Qu... → By Joe Cortright 11.7.2023
Testimony to the Oregon Transportation Commission On June 28, 2023, City Observatory's Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Transportation Commission about the agency's dire financial situation. Background: The Oregon Department of Transportation is pushing a multi-... → By Joe Cortright 1.7.2023
Scratch one flat top! Oregon freeway fighters chalk up a key victory—but the fight continues On June 26, the Oregon Department of Transportation finally bowed to reality that it simply lacks the funds to pay for a seven-mile long widening ... → By Joe Cortright 29.6.2023
What Cincinnati’s Brent Spence Bridge can tell Portland There's plenty of time to fix the Interstate Bridge Project Contrary to claims made by OregonDOT and WSDOT officials, the federal government allows considerable flexibility in funding and re-designing, especially shrink... → By Joe Cortright 9.5.2023
Bus on shoulder: Stalking horse for freeway widening ODOT isn't giving buses the shoulder, it's giving transit the finger. IBR is planning a transitway for the new $7.5 billion interstate bridge that can't be used by buses. It's sketching in a "bus on shoulder" option ... → By Joe Cortright 25.1.2024
Why can’t ODOT tell the truth? The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) can't tell the truth about the width of proposed $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project ODOT is more than doubling the width of the bridge from its existing 77 ... → By Joe Cortright 1.5.2023
A blank check for the highway lobby: HB 2098-2 The HB 2098 "-2" amendments are perhaps the most fiscally irresponsible legislation ever to be considered by the Oregon Legislature. They constitute an open-ended promise by the Oregon Legislature to pay however much m... → By Joe Cortright 20.4.2023
IBR’s plan to sabotage the moveable span option IBR officials are planning to sabotage the analysis of a moveable span options as part of the Interstate Bridge Project The Coast Guard has said a replacement for the existing I-5 bridges would need a 178 foot navigatio... → By Joe Cortright 5.4.2023
The Color of Money: Bailing out highways with flexible federal funds ODOT grabs a billion dollars that could be used for bikes, pedestrians and transit, and allocates it to pay highway bills. Oregon highways are out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the cost of ... → By Joe Cortright 30.3.2023
Houston’s I-45: Civil rights or repeated wrongs? Editor's Note: For the past two year's the Federal Highway Administration has been investigating a civil rights complaint brought against the proposed I-45 freeway expansion project in Houston. This week, FHWA and TxDO... → By Kevin DeGood 10.3.2023
Why does a $500 million bridge replacement cost $7.5 billion? The "bridge replacement" part of the Interstate Bridge Replacement only costs $500 million, according to new project documents So why is the overall project budget $7.5 billion? Short answer: This is really a massi... → By Joe Cortright 8.3.2023
More induced travel denial Highway advocates deny or minimize the science of induced travel Induced travel is a well established scientific fact: any increase in roadway capacity in a metropolitan area is likely to produce a proportional increa... → By Joe Cortright 27.2.2023
The Case Against the Interstate Bridge Replacement Here are our 16 top reasons Oregon and Washington need to re-think the proposed Interstate Bridge Replacement Project. The bloated size of the project and its $7.5 billion cost, and the availability of better alternative... → By Joe Cortright 10.4.2023
What new computer renderings really show about the IBR The Interstate Bridge Project has released—after years of delay—computer graphic renderings showing possible designs for a new I-5 bridge between Vancouver and Portland. But what they show is a project in real troubl... → By Joe Cortright 1.6.2023
IBR floats new bridge design, proving critics right For four years, the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been pushing a revival of the failed multi-billion dollar I-5 Columbia River Crossing. Their key sales pitch is that the size and design of the project c... → By Joe Cortright 18.2.2023
Why should Oregonians subsidize suburban commuters from another state? Oregon is being asked to pay for half of the cost of widening the I-5 Interstate Bridge. Eighty percent of daily commuters, and two-thirds of all traffic on the bridge are Washington residents. On average, these commut... → By Joe Cortright 18.4.2023
CEVP: Non-existent cost controls for the $7.5 billion IBR project Oregon DOT has a history of enormous cost overruns, and just told the Oregon and Washington Legislatures that the cost of the I-5 Bridge Replacement Program (IBR) had ballooned 54 percent, to as much as $7.5 billion. To... → By Joe Cortright 7.2.2023
Another flawed Inrix Congestion Cost report Sigh. Here we are again, another year, and yet another uninformative, and actively misleading congestion cost report from Inrix. More myth and misdirection from highly numerate charlatans. Burying the lede: Traffic... → By Joe Cortright 10.1.2023
It looks like the Interstate Bridge Replacement could cost $9 billion Just 13 months after raising the price of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project by more than 50 percent, the state DOTs ay it will cost even more We estimate project costs are likely to increase 20 percent or ... → By Joe Cortright 4.1.2024
Blame inflation now: Lying about the latest IBR Cost Overrun The price of the I-5 "bridge replacement" project just increased by more than 50 percent, from $4.8 billion to $7.5 billion ODOT and WSDOT are blaming "higher inflation" for IBR cost overruns As we've noted, the Oreg... → By Joe Cortright 14.12.2022
Why won’t ODOT tell us how wide their freeway is? After more than three years of public debate, ODOT still won't tell anyone how wide a freeway they're planning to build at the Rose Quarter ODOT's plans appear to provide for a 160-foot wide roadway, wide enough to acco... → By Joe Cortright 1.12.2022
ODOT doesn’t care about covers, again ODOT's Supplemental Environmental Analysis shows it has no plans for doing anything on its vaunted freeway covers It left the description of cover's post-construction use as "XXX facilities" in the final, official Suppl... → By Joe Cortright 8.12.2022
Driving between Vancouver and Wilsonville at 5PM? ODOT plans to charge you $15 Under ODOT's toll plans, A driving from Wilsonville to Vancouver will cost you as much as $15, each-way, at the peak hour. Drive from Vancouver to a job in Wilsonville? Get ready to shell out as much as $30 per day. ... → By Joe Cortright 11.2.2023
ODOT: Our I-5 Rose Quarter safety project will increase crashes A newly revealed ODOT report shows the redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project will: creates a dangerous hairpin turn on the I-5 Southbound off-ramp increase crashes 13 percent violate the agency's own highw... → By Joe Cortright 19.11.2022
The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve? The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from a Interstate 5 Is ODOT's supposed "safety" project really creating a new "Deadman's Curve" at the Moda Center? Bike riders wi... → By Joe Cortright 15.11.2022
Flat Earth Sophistry The science of induced travel is well proven, but state DOTs are in utter denial Widening freeways not only fails to reduce congestion, it inevitably results in more vehicle travel and more pollution The Oregon Depar... → By Joe Cortright 30.12.2022
The IBR project: Too much money for too many interchanges The real expense of the $5 billion I-5 bridge replacement project isn't actually building a new bridge over the Columbia River: It's widening miles of freeway and rebuilding every intersection north and south of the rive... → By Joe Cortright 18.12.2022
Pricing works better than spending $1.45 billion to fix I-5 traffic A recently disclosed ODOT memo shows that congestion pricing would do a better job of fixing I-5 congestion than spending $1.45 billion widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter Congestion pricing would would be more... → By Joe Cortright 9.12.2022
ODOT’s “Fix-it first” fraud ODOT claims that its policy is "fix-it first" maintaining the highway system. But it is spending vastly less on maintenance and restoration than is needed to keep roads and bridges from deteriorating It blames the Le... → By Joe Cortright 28.7.2022
A bridge too low . . . again Ignoring the Coast Guard dooms the I-5 Bridge Project to yet another failure The Oregon and Washington DOTs have again designed a I-5 bridge that's too low for navigation In their rush to recycle the failed plans for... → By Joe Cortright 12.7.2022
Oregon and Washington DOTs plan too low a bridge–again. The Coast Guard has told Oregon and Washington that a new I-5 bridge must have a 178-foot vertical clearance for river navigation--vastly higher than the 116-foot clearance the state's have proposed A fixed span with th... → By Joe Cortright 5.7.2022
ODOT’s Reign of Error: Chronic highway cost overruns Nearly every major project undertaken by the Oregon Department of Transportation has ended up costing at least double its initial estimate As ODOT proposes a multi-billion dollar series of highway expansions, its estima... → By Joe Cortright 9.6.2022
How ODOT & WSDOT are hiding real plans for a 10- or 12-lane I-5 Bridge Project Ignore the false claims that the Oregon and Washington highway departments are making about the number of lanes on their proposed I-5 project: its footprint will be 164 feet—easily enough for a 10- or 12-lane roadway. ... → By Joe Cortright 11.5.2022
Ten unanswered questions about the IBR Boondoggle In the next month or two, regional leaders in Portland are going to be asked to approve the "modified locally preferred alternative" for the I-5 Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project, an intentionally misnamed, $5 billion, 5 mi... → By Joe Cortright 5.5.2022
What are they hiding? Why highway builders won’t show their $7.5 billion freeway Oregon and Washington are being asked to spend $7.5 billion on a giant bridge: Why won't anyone show pictures of what it would look like? The Oregon and Washington highway departments are using an old Robert Moses tri... → By Joe Cortright 28.3.2023
Sprawl and Tax Evasion: Driving forces behind freeway widening Sprawl and tax evasion are the real forces fueling the demand for wider freeways Highway widening advocates offer up a a kind of manifest destiny storyline: population and traffic are ever-increasing, and unless we ac... → By Joe Cortright 18.4.2022
A Universal Basic income . . . for Cars California is the first in the nation to establish a Universal Basic Income . . . for cars One of the most widely discussed alternatives for tackling poverty and inequality head-on is the idea of a "Universal Basic Inco... → By Joe Cortright 14.4.2022
Flying blind: Why public leaders need an investment grade analysis Portland and Oregon leaders shouldn't commit to a $5 billion project without an investment grade analysis (IGA) of toll revenues Not preparing an IGA exposes the state to huge financial risk: It will have to make up tol... → By Joe Cortright 1.6.2022
Which metros are vulnerable to gas price hikes? Green cities will be less hurt by higher gas prices; Sprawling cities are much more vulnerable to gas price hikes. In sprawling metros like Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Nashville and Oklahoma City, higher gas prices will c... → By Joe Cortright 22.3.2022
A reporter’s guide to congestion cost studies Reporters: read this before you write a "cost of congestion" story. Congestion cost studies are a classic example of pseudo-science: Big data and bad assumptions produce meaningless results Using this absurd meth... → By Joe Cortright 9.1.2023
More Congestion Pseudo Science A new study calculates that twenty percent of all time "lost" in travel is due to traffic lights Finally, proof for the Lachner Theorem: Traffic signals are a major cause of traffic delay Another classic example o... → By Joe Cortright 26.5.2022
Freeway widening for whomst? Widening freeways is no way to promote equity. The proposed $5 billion widening of I-5 between Portland and Vancouver is purportedly being undertaken with "an equity lens," but widening Portland's I-5 freeway serves high... → By Joe Cortright 23.2.2022
Biased statistics: Woke-washing the I-5 Boondoggle The Oregon and Washington transportation departments are using a biased, unscientific survey to market their $5 billion I-5 freeway widening project. The survey over-represents daily bridge users by a factor of 10 compa... → By Joe Cortright 7.3.2022
The I-5 bridge “replacement” con Oregon and Washington highway builders have re-branded the failed Columbia River Crossing as a "bridge replacement" project: It's not. Less than 30 percent of the cost of the nearly $5 billion project is actually for ... → By Joe Cortright 7.2.2022
Portland: Don’t move or close schools to widen freeways Adah Crandall is a sophomore at Grant High School. She is the co-lead of Portland Youth Climate Strike and an organizer with Sunrise PDX's Youth Vs ODOT campaign, a biweekly series of rallies fighting for the decarboniza... → By Adah Crandall 27.1.2022
Transportation trends and disparities If you aren't talking about our two-caste transportation system, you're not really addressing equity. Portland's regional government is looking forward at trends in the transportation system and their implications for e... → By Joe Cortright 13.1.2022
Metro’s “Don’t Look Up” Climate Policy Metro, Portland's regional government, says it has a plan to reduce transportation greenhouse gases But in the 8 years since adopting the plan, the agency hasn't bothered to look at data on GHGs—which have increased 2... → By Joe Cortright 20.1.2022
ODOT’s forecasting double standard Oregon's highway agency rigs its projections to maximize revenue and downplay its culpability for climate challenge ODOT has two different standards for forecasting: When it forecasts revenue, it says it will ignore a... → By Joe Cortright 17.2.2022
Why the proposed $5 billion I-5 bridge is a climate disaster The plan to spend $5 billion widening the I-5 Bridge Over the Columbia River would produce 100,000 additional metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, according to the induced travel calculator Metro's 2020 transporta... → By Joe Cortright 4.1.2022
How to solve traffic congestion: A miracle in Louisville? Louisville charges a cheap $1 to $2 toll for people driving across the Ohio River on I-65. After doubling the size of the I-65 bridges from six lanes to 12, tolls slashed traffic by half, from about 130,000 cars per... → By Joe Cortright 10.11.2021
Louisville’s financial disaster: Deep in debt for road capacity that will never be used Louisville's I-65 bridges: A huge under-used roadway and hundreds of millions in debt for their kids—who will also have to cope with a climate crisis. Their financial plan kicked the can down the road, saddling futu... → By Joe Cortright 15.12.2021
The opposite of planning: Why Metro should stop I-5 Bridge con Portland's Metro regional government would be committing planning malpractice and enabling lasting fiscal and environmental damage if it goes along with state highway department freeway widening plans The proposed $5 ... → By Joe Cortright 2.11.2021
Oregon, Washington advance I-5 bridge based on outdated traffic projections The Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation are advancing their $5 billion freeway widening plan based on outdated 15-year-old traffic projections. No new projections have been prepared since the 2007 estimates... → By Joe Cortright 4.1.2022
Here’s what’s wrong with Oregon DOT’s Rose Quarter pollution claims 10 reasons not to believe phony DOT claims that widening highways reduces pollution We know that transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, and that our car dependent transportation syst... → By Joe Cortright 12.10.2021
Climate efforts must be cost effective Portland's $60 million a year clean energy fund needs climate accountability Any grant writer can spin a yarn that creates the illusion that a given project will have some sort of climate benefits, but if you're actuall... → By Joe Cortright 2.9.2021
A net zero blind spot Stanford claims its campus will be 100 percent solar powered . . . provided you ignore cars. A flashy news release caught our eye this week. Stanford University is reporting that its campus will be 100 percent powered... → By Joe Cortright 25.8.2021
Insurance and the Cost of Living: Homeowners Insurance Yesterday, we explored the differences in car insurance premiums in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Today, we will take a look at homeowners insurance rates. Unlike car insurance, homeowners insurance is not... → By Eli Molloy 18.8.2021
Insurance and the Cost of Living: Auto Insurance Everyone loves to compare the affordability of different cities, and most of the attention gets focused on differences in housing prices and rents. Clearly, these are a major component of living costs, and they vary su... → By Eli Molloy 17.8.2021
BIB: The bad infrastructure bill Four lamentations about a bad infrastructure bill From the standpoint of the climate crisis, the infrastructure bill that passed the Senate is, at a minimum, a tremendous blown opportunity. Transportation, especially ... → By Joe Cortright 12.8.2021
To solve climate, we need electric cars—and a lot less driving Electric vehicles will help, but we need to do much more to reduce driving Editor's Note: City Observatory is pleased to offer this guest commentary by Matthew Lewis. Matthew is Director of Communications for Califor... → By Matthew Lewis 10.8.2021
Burn, baby, burn: ODOT’s climate strategy The Oregon Department of Transportation is in complete denial about climate change Oregon DOT has drafted a so-called "Climate Action Plan" that is merely perfunctory and performative busywork. The devastation of cli... → By Joe Cortright 29.7.2021
Miami’s E-Scooters: Revisiting the Double Standard In Miami, e-scooters pay four to 50 times as much to use the public roads as cars If we want to encourage greener, safer travel, we should align the prices we charge with our values Florida is home to some of the... → By Eli Molloy 6.7.2021
The Bum’s Rush The $800 million project transitions from "nothing has been decided" to "nothing can be changed" There's a kind of calculated phase-shift in the way transportation department's talk about major projects. For a long, l... → By Joe Cortright 21.6.2021
How highways finally crushed Black Tulsa Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood survived the 1921 race massacre, only to be ultimately destroyed by a more unrelenting foe: Interstate highways Black Tulsans quickly rebuilt Greenwood in the 1920s, and it flourished for ... → By Joe Cortright 2.6.2021
Single-Family Zoning and Exclusion in L.A. County: Part 1 Single-family zoning, a policy that bans apartments, is widespread in Los Angeles County. The median city bans apartments on 80% of its land for housing. Cities with more widespread single-family zoning have higher medi... → By Anthony Dedousis 24.5.2021
Single-Family Zoning and Exclusion in L.A. County: Part 2 Single-family zoning, a policy that bans apartments, is widespread in Los Angeles County. The median city bans apartments on 80% of its land for housing. Cities with more widespread single-family zoning have higher whit... → By Anthony Dedousis 27.5.2021
State DOTs can and should build housing to mitigate highway impacts If OregonDOT is serious about "restorative justice" it should mitigate highway damage by building housing Around the country, states are subsidizing affordable housing to mitigate the damage done by highway projects ... → By Joe Cortright 25.5.2021
The real “I-5” project: $5 billion, 5 miles, $5 tolls The intentionally misleading re-brand of the failed Columbia River Crossing conceals the key fact that it is a 12-lane wide, 5 mile long freeway that just happens to cross a river, not a "bridge replacement." It's vastl... → By Joe Cortright 3.5.2021
Getting real about restorative justice in Albina Drawings don't constitute restorative justice ODOT shows fancy drawings about what might be built, but isn't talking about actually paying to build anything Just building the housing shown in its diagrams would requi... → By Joe Cortright 26.4.2021
The NIMBYs made $6 trillion last year In 2021, US residential values increased by $6.9 trillion, almost entirely due to price appreciation Those gains went disproportionately to older, white, higher income households Capital gains on housing in 2021 were... → By Joe Cortright 6.4.2022
Who got trillions? We found the real speculators profiting from higher housing costs In 2020, US residential values increased by $2.2 trillion Those gains went disproportionately to older, white, higher income households Capital gains on housing in 2020 were more than three times larger than the tota... → By Joe Cortright 5.5.2021
ODOT’s peer review panel admits it didn’t validate Rose Quarter travel forecasts ODOT has claimed a "peer review panel" vindicated its air pollution analysis Now the panel says they didn't look into the accuracy of ODOT's travel forecast Travel forecasts are critical, because they determine air a... → By Joe Cortright 14.4.2021
The freight fable: Moving trucks is not longer the key to economic prosperity It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair It's even harder to get a trucking industry lobbyist or a highway department booster to un... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2021
Driving stakes, selling bonds: ODOT’s freeway boondoggle plan The Oregon Department of Transportation is launching a series of boondoggle freeways, with no idea of their ultimate cost, and issuing bonds that will obligate the public to pay for expensive and un-needed highways. Fut... → By Joe Cortright 26.1.2023
Wholly Moses: Pave now, pay later Oregon legislation goes whole hog on highways HB 3065 would launch a whole new round of freeway boondoggles, and plunge the state into debt to pay for them The classic Robert Moses scam: Drive stakes, sell bonds ... → By Joe Cortright 6.4.2021
An open letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission For years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has concealed its plans to build a ten lane freeway through Portland's Rose Quarter We're calling on the state to do a full environmental impact statement that assesses... → By Joe Cortright 18.3.2021
Is the pandemic driving rents down? Or up? Since Covid started, rents are down in some cities, but up in most "Superstar" cities have experienced the most notable declines; the demographics of renters in these cities are different than elsewhere. Rent decline... → By Alan Mallach 16.3.2021
Taking Tubman: ODOT’s plan to build a freeway on school grounds ODOT's proposed I-5 Rose Quarter project would turn a school yard into a freeway The widened I-5 freeway will make already unhealthy air even worse Pollution from high volume roads has been shown to lower student ac... → By Joe Cortright 13.4.2021
Revealed: ODOT’s Secret Plans for a 10-Lane Rose Quarter Freeway For years, ODOT has been planning to build a 10 lane freeway at the Rose Quarter, not the 6 lanes it has advertised. Three previously undisclosed files show ODOT is planning for a 160 foot wide roadway at Broadway-Weidl... → By Joe Cortright 24.2.2021
Wile E. Coyote hits bottom: Portland’s inclusionary zoning Portland's inclusionary zoning requirement is a slow-motion train-wreck; apartment permits are down by sixty percent in the City of Portland, while apartment permitting has more than doubled in the rest of the region In... → By Joe Cortright 6.4.2023
Inclusionary Zoning: Portland’s Wile E. Coyote moment has arrived Portland's inclusionary zoning requirement is a slow-motion train-wreck; apartment completions are down by two-thirds, and the development pipeline is drying up This will lead to slower housing supply growth and increas... → By Joe Cortright 9.3.2021
The Fundamental, Global Law of Road Congestion Studies from around the world have validated the existence of induced demand: each improvement to freeway capacity in urban areas generates more traffic. The best available science worldwide—in Europe, Japan and Nor... → By Joe Cortright 1.3.2021
Oregon’s I-5 bridge costs just went up $150 million Buried in an Oregon Department of Transportation presentation earlier this month is an acknowledgement that the I-5 bridge replacement "contribution" from Oregon will be as much as $1 billion—up from a maximum of $850 mi... → By Joe Cortright 22.2.2021
Equitable Carbon Fee and Dividend An equitable carbon fee and dividend should be set to a price level necessary to achieve GHG reduction goals; kicker payment should be set so 70% of people receive a net income after paying carbon tax or at least break eve... → By Garlynn Woodsong 18.2.2021
How ODOT destroyed Albina: The I-5 Meat Axe Interstate 5 "Meat Axe" slashed through the Albina Neighborhood in 1962 This was the second of three acts by ODOT that destroyed housing and isolated Albina Building the I-5 freeway led to the demolition of housing ... → By Joe Cortright 30.3.2021
How ODOT destroyed Albina: The untold story I-5 wasn't the first highway that carved up Portland's historically black Albina Neighborhood. Seventy years ago, ODOT spent the equivalent of more than $80 million in today's dollars to cut the Albina neighborhood off ... → By Joe Cortright 22.3.2021
How freeways kill cities Freeways slash population in cities, and prompt growth in suburbs Within city centers, the closer your neighborhood was to the freeway, the more its population declined. In suburbs, the closer your neighborhood was t... → By Joe Cortright 15.2.2021
Covid Migration: Temporary, young, economically insecure There's relatively little migration in the wake of Covid-19 Most Covid-related migration is temporary, involves moving in with friends or relatives, and not leaving a metro area It's not professionals fleeing cities:... → By Joe Cortright 16.2.2021
Albina Then and Now Albina then and now Basically, Albina was wiped out by Interstate Ave 99E (ODOT) 1951 Memorial Coliseum (City) 1958 I-5 1962 Emmanuel Hospital (PDC) 1970s Blanchard Center (PPS) 1980 Convention Center 1990... → By Joe Cortright 1.2.2021
How housing segregation reduces Black wealth Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas There's a strong correlation between metropolitan segregation and black-white housing wealth dispari... → By Joe Cortright 9.2.2021
America’s K-shaped housing market Home prices are soaring, rents are falling The disparate impact of the recession on high income and low income households in driving the housing market in two directions at once. Job losses have been concentrated amo... → By Joe Cortright 3.2.2021
Calculating induced demand at the Rose Quarter Widening I-5 at the Rose Quarter in Portland will produce an addition 17.4 to 34.8 million miles of vehicle travel and 7.8 to 15.5 thousand tons of greenhouse gases per year. These estimates come from a customized cal... → By Joe Cortright 1.2.2021
Congestion Pricing: ODOT is disobeying an order from Governor Brown More than a year ago, Oregon Governor Kate Brown directed ODOT to "include a full review of congestion pricing" before deciding whether or not to do a full environmental impact statement for the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter... → By Joe Cortright 8.2.2021
Why parking should pay its way instead of getting a free ride Hartford Connecticut considers a pioneering move to make parking pay its way A higher parking tax works much like a "lite" version of land value taxation (LVT) Surface parking lots are highly subsidized polluters ... → By Joe Cortright 14.1.2021
A regional green new deal for Portland by Garlynn Woodsong Editor's note:City Observatory is pleased to publish this commentary by Garlynn Woodsong. Garlynn is the Managing Director of the planning consultancy Woodsong Associates, and has more than 20 years ... → By Garlynn Woodsong 6.1.2021
Portland carbon tax should apply to all big polluters By all means, Portland should adopt its proposed healthy climate fee, a $25 ton carbon tax But make sure it applies to the biggest and fastest growing sources of greenhouse gases in the region The healthy climate fee... → By Joe Cortright 5.1.2021
Building more housing lowers rents for everyone A new study from Germany shows that added housing supply lowers rents across the board A 1 percent increase in housing is associated with a 0.4 to 0.7 percent decrease in rents Housing policy debates are tortured by ... → By Joe Cortright 14.12.2020
The only reason some people drive is because we pay them to Here's an insight from tolling: A substantial portion of the people driving on our roadways are only there because we're subsidizing the cost of their trip. When we charge a toll to use a road, suddenly many of those ... → By Joe Cortright 7.12.2020
The truth about Oregon DOT’s Rose Quarter MegaFreeway The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) desperately wants to build a mega-freeway through NE Portland, and is planning to double the freeway from 4 lanes to 8 or 10 lanes. But it has hidden its true objective, by ... → By Joe Cortright 19.12.2022
Phoenix: Climate Hypocrisy You can't be a climate mayor—and your city can't be a climate city — if you're widening freeways Phoenix says it's going to reduce greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050, but the city's transportation greenhouse gases ... → By Joe Cortright 1.12.2020
Why—and where—Metro’s $5 billion transportation bond measure failed Portland voters resoundingly defeated a proposed multi-billion dollar payroll tax to pay for transportation projects The two areas slated for the biggest benefits voted against the measure: The Southwest Corridor and ... → By Joe Cortright 11.11.2020
Frog Ferry: The slow boat to nowhere A proposed Portland area ferry makes no economic or transportation sense. Why the Frog Ferry is a slow boat to nowhere A ferry between Vancouver and Portland would take 20 minutes longer than existing bus service ... → By Joe Cortright 27.4.2022
Equity and Metro’s $5 Billion Transportation Bond Advocates for a $5 billion transportation bond that Portland area voters will be deciding in November are making a specious argument about it being an equity measure. Its largest single project, a multi-billion dollar l... → By Joe Cortright 26.10.2020
The Great Disconnect: The perverse rhetoric of gentrification The Great Disconnect By Jason Segedy City Observatory is pleased to publish this guest commentary from Akron's Jason Segedy. It originally appeared on his blog. As this decade draws to a close, the story... → By Joe Cortright 29.9.2020
Parking and equity in cities The average price of a monthly parking permit in cities is $2.25, compared to $70.00 for a transit pass. Everything you need to know about equity and privilege in urban transportation is reflected in how much we charge ... → By Joe Cortright 22.9.2020
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
City Beat: Another sketchy claim of Covid-driven urban flight Again: It's anecdotes, not data that are fueling claims of an urban exodus due to Covid-19 The virus is now deadlier in the nation's rural areas than it is in cities, undercutting the basis for the urban flight theo... → By Joe Cortright 8.12.2020
City Beat: No flight to Portland’s suburbs Another anecdote-fueled, data-starved article repeats the "suburban flight" meme, this time for Portland. Actual market data show the central city's market remains strong Janet Eastman, writing in the Portland, Orego... → By Joe Cortright 17.9.2020
Lived segregation in US cities We're much less segregated during the day, and when we're away from home Commercial and public spaces are important venues for interaction with people from other racial/ethnic groups Patterns of experienced segregati... → By Joe Cortright 15.9.2020
Why this Portland transit veteran is voting no on Metro’s bond Editor's Note: City Observatory is pleased to present this guest commentary from GB Arrington, longtime veteran of Portland's transit and land use planning systems, explaining why he's against a proposed $5 billion transpo... → By Joe Cortright 10.9.2020
More performative pedestrian infrastructure Houston's "Energy Corridor" gets a pedestrian makeover, but just one thing seems to be missing. Bollards and better landscaping can't offset the increased danger from wider, faster slip lanes. Most "pedestrian" infra... → By Joe Cortright 25.1.2021
The myth of pedestrian infrastructure in a world of cars Big money "pedestrian" projects are often remedial and performative; their real purpose is to serve faster car traffic. One of the biggest lies in transportation planning is calling something "multi-modal." When someb... → By Joe Cortright 3.9.2020
Is there anything “smart” about smart cities? Big data and new technology make bold promises about solving urban problems, but not only fall well short of solutions, but actually can end up making things worse. Why we're skeptical of the "smart city" movement. Y... → By Joe Cortright 7.9.2020
The case against Metro’s $5 billion transportation bond Metro's proposed $5 billion transportation measure makes no sense for the region, for transportation, for our economy, for our kids and for our planet. Portland's regional government, Metro, will be asking voters in Nov... → By Joe Cortright 25.8.2020
America’s least (and most) segregated metro areas: 2020 The latest Census data show that Black/White segregation is decreasing in large metro areas. Racial segregation still prevails in most American cities, but varies widely across the nation. Portland is one of America'... → By Joe Cortright 20.10.2021
America’s least (and most) segregated cities. Racial segregation still prevails in most American cities, but varies widely across the nation. Portland is the nation's least segregated large city. The murder of George Floyd by police has reignited national intere... → By Joe Cortright 17.8.2020
Is it random, or is it Zumper? Pay no attention to Zumper's claims about rent trends Zumper claims rents for one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments are moving in opposite directions in about a fifth of all markets There's a lot of hyperventilation... → By Joe Cortright 3.8.2020
A world of fewer cars and less driving Auto industry consultants KPMG see fewer cars and less driving in our future That may be bad for the car business, but good for the environment and cities One clear implication: hold off building new road capacity ... → By Joe Cortright 29.7.2020
The amazing disappearing urban exodus The greatest urban myth of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fear of density has triggered an exodus from cities. US Post Office data show that the supposed urban exodus was just a trickle, and Americans moved even less in ... → By Joe Cortright 19.10.2020
The Exodus that never happened The greatest urban myth of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fear of density has triggered an exodus from cities. The latest data show an increase in interest in dense urban locations. At City Observatory, we've regularl... → By Joe Cortright 21.7.2020
The toxic flood of cars, not just the freeway, crushed Albina Restorative Justice & A Viable Neighborhood What destroyed the Albina community? What will it take to restore it? It wasn't just the freeway, it was the onslaught of cars, that transformed Albina into a bleak a... → By Joe Cortright 16.9.2020
“Let them drive Teslas” is not a climate or a justice plan Portland's climate emergency efforts are tarnished by an inability to plainly speak the facts about climate change But the tragic fact is that the city is utterly failing to meet even its own previous goals, and more al... → By Joe Cortright 11.8.2020
CityBeat: NPR’s suburban flight story Yet another entry in the trumped-up pandemic-fueled suburban flight narrative Anecdotes aside, there's no data that people are fleeing cities to avoid the Coronavirus The data show young, well-educated adults moving ... → By Joe Cortright 8.7.2020
What about reparations for people? ODOT proudly spends road funds on mitigating the impact of its highways: if you're an invertebrate. The highway department mitigates noise pollution, rebuilds jails, and even compensates neighborhoods But if we rep... → By Joe Cortright 20.5.2021
Dominos falling on Rose Quarter freeway widening Last week, over the space of about 24 hours, the prospects for Portland's proposed the Rose Quarter freeway widening dimmed almost to extinction. Leaders of Portland's African-American community have concluded that the ... → By Joe Cortright 14.7.2020
Portland awards itself a participation trophy for climate Portland is utterly failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but not to worry, its ticking lots of boxes in its bureaucratic check-list. The city walks away from its 2015 Climate Action Plan after... → By Joe Cortright 30.7.2020
Whitewashing the freeway widening A so-called "peer review" panel was kept in the dark about critiques of the highway department's flawed projections This is a thinly veiled attempt These are the products of a hand-picked, spoon-fed group, asked by ODOT... → By Joe Cortright 4.6.2020
Memo to the Governor: Recovering from Covid-19 Some advice on economic policy for states looking to rebound from the pandemic City Observatory's Joe Cortright has served as Chair of the Oregon Governor's Council of Economic Advisers under three Governors. The Coun... → By Joe Cortright 2.6.2020
City Beat: Why Portland is not like NYC when it comes to Covid Once again, there's a naive and unsubstantiated association between urbanism and the pandemic Portland and Multnomah County have some of the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases of any large metro area The big drivers of Cov... → By Joe Cortright 26.5.2020
Is the pandemic worse in cities or suburbs? Using county-level data, it depends on who's classification system you use Counties may not be the right basis for diagnosing the contributors to Covid. One of the oft-repeated claims in the pandemic is the notion th... → By Joe Cortright 21.5.2020
City Beat: No evidence that people are fleeing to the suburbs Today's misleading and incomplete take on cities: There isn't any evidence that people are fleeing cities for the suburbs; plus it wouldn't help them avoid the virus if they did. We've addressed the claim that t... → By Joe Cortright 13.5.2020
Don’t make “equity” the enemy of improving cities for people Invoking concerns about equity to block providing more street space for people is destructive A cautionary tale from Chicago, with some keen insight from Greg Shill. Let's begin by stipulating one thing: Ther... → By Joe Cortright 5.5.2020
Oregon DOT: The master of three-card monte The highway department's claims it doesn't have enough for maintenance are a long-running con You've all seen the classic street con three-card monte. All you have to do to double your money is follow one of three cards... → By Joe Cortright 7.5.2020
What is urban? Shape of the urban/suburban divide: Views differ There's a lot of debate about the relative merits and performance of cities and suburbs. You'll read that the migration to cities has come to a halt, that suburbs are g... → By Joe Cortright 19.5.2020
The Covid Corridor: The pandemic is worst in the NE Corridor The incidence of reported Covid-19 cases, and their daily growth is higher in the metros of NE corridor than the rest of the country. The Northeast Corridor has all four of the cities with the highest rate of newly repo... → By Joe Cortright 19.4.2020
Regional Pandemic Hotspots: NE Corridor and Great Lakes Originally published April 12; Revised and Corrected April 14 The Covid-19 pandemic is hitting two regions in the US much harder than others: The NE Corridor and the Great Lakes Metro areas in these regions have th... → By Joe Cortright 12.4.2020
Who’s flattening the curve? Evidence from Seattle & San Jose Seattle and San Jose had the first outbreaks of Covid-19 but now have the slowest rates of growth of any large US metro area Their progress seems closely related to the fact that they've cut back on travel more than nea... → By Joe Cortright 8.4.2020
Staying at home: Estimates for large metro areas How well are "stay at home" and "shelter in place" policies working in different metro areas? "Big data" from smartphones gives us a picture of how we're dialing back on travel in response to "stay-at-home" orders to co... → By Joe Cortright 7.4.2020
Understanding the geography of Covid-19 What maps and charts can--and can't--tell us about the spread of the pandemic National dashboards now have county data We need to shift our focus to changes in rates of growth at smaller geographies South Korea ... → By Joe Cortright 23.3.2020
Cities and coronavirus: Some thoughts The Coronavirus pandemic is already worse in several American states than anywhere in China outside Hubei Province The pandemic is all about geography, and we need to do more to pinpoint hotspots and contagion The ve... → By Joe Cortright 17.3.2020
Widening I-5 at the Rose Quarter will increase greenhouse gases Adding more freeway capacity at the Rose Quarter will thousands of tons to the region's greenhouse gas emissions If you say you believe in science, and you take climate change seriously, you can't support spending $800... → By Joe Cortright 26.1.2021
Anatomy of a rental marketplace A new report from the DC Policy Center shows the inner-workings of the shadow rental market that is a key to housing affordability Too often, our debates about housing policy are shaped by inaccurate pictures of how the... → By Joe Cortright 3.4.2020
Declining bus ridership is no mystery We know what's responsible for declining bus ridership: Cheap gas And now, its about to get worse, thanks to $30 a barrel oil Prices matter. Last Friday's New York Times has a nice data-driven article by the pap... → By Joe Cortright 15.3.2020
Cheaper gas: Bad for climate and safety Gasoline prices will drop 50 cents per gallon in the next week or so, and cheap gas will fuel more bad results: more air pollution, more greenhouse gases and more road deaths Now is the perfect time to put a carbon tax ... → By Joe Cortright 13.3.2020
Equity and Homelessness What's equitable about spending six times as much per homeless person in the suburbs as in the city? The "equity" standard that's guiding the division of revenue for Metro's housing initiative is based on politics, not ... → By Joe Cortright 21.2.2020
Mapping Walkable Density Walkable density mapped for the nation's largest metropolitan areas by DW Rowlands Editor's Note: We're pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands. DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student at the U... → By Joe Cortright 19.2.2020
Understanding Walkable Density A new way of measuring urban density that explicitly considers walkability by DW Rowlands Editor's Note: We're pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands. DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student a... → By Joe Cortright 19.2.2020
Fighting Climate Change is Inherently Equitable Happy Earth Day, Everyone! If we care about equity, we need to make rapid progress on climate change Equity needs to be defined by substantive outcomes, not vacuous rhetoric and elaborate process. Ultimately equit... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2021
Lying about safety to sell freeway widening ODOT's lies about safety at the Rose Quarter are so blatant they can be seen 400 miles away. Freeway widening isn't about deaths or injuries, but "motorist inconvenience" according to this safety expert, making this $80... → By Joe Cortright 10.2.2020
Memo to the Oregon Transportation Commission: Don’t Dodge Climate change? Not our job. We're just following orders. The Oregon Transportation Commission is on the firing line for its plans to build a $800 million I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project in Northeast Portlan... → By Joe Cortright 6.2.2020
In the bag: Pricing works Denver's new bag fee is another object lesson on how to use economics to achieve environmental objectives. Now do it for greenhouse gases Starting this month, you'll have to pay 10 cents for each disposable paper o... → By Joe Cortright 7.7.2021
Bags, bottles and cans: Pricing works Oregon's new mandatory bag fee harnesses market forces to promote environmental objectives Now do it for greenhouse gases On January 1, a new law went into effect in Oregon, which mostly bans single use plastic groce... → By Joe Cortright 5.2.2020
Freeway deja vu all over again: The freeway builders ignore school kids The Oregon Department of Transportation has a decades long-tradition of ignoring Portland Public Schools when it comes to freeway projects So here's our story so far. The Oregon Department of Transportation, ODOT, is ... → By Joe Cortright 9.12.2019
Alexa: What is Cascadia Vision 2050? A tech-centered vision of the future of the Pacific Northwest envisions creating a series of new urban centers 40 to 100 miles away from the region’s current largest cities—Seattle, Vancouver and Portland. The answ... → By Ethan Seltzer 28.4.2021
Want more housing? Build a landlord. If we're going to have a lot more missing middle housing; we're also going to have a lot more landlords Accessory dwellings, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes are suited to "mom-and-pop" landlords, but tough tenants ri... → By Joe Cortright 19.11.2019
Climate crisis: Cities are the solution A new report shows how cities are central to any strategy to fight climate change Cities have the "3 C's: Clean, compact, connected National government policies need to support cities Let's describe a low carbon f... → By Joe Cortright 11.2.2020
Here’s what climate change denial looks like Pretending that climate change can be solved by widening roads to keep cars from idling in traffic is dishonest and reprehensible, yet that's exactly what Portland's regional government is doing. A new poll in Portland ... → By Joe Cortright 31.10.2019
Bartik: The verdict on business tax incentives Political rationalizations and exceptionalism will always be used to justify giveaway policies With the possible exception of Greg LeRoy (who tracks state and local incentives for Good Jobs Now) and Amazon's site locati... → By Joe Cortright 30.10.2019
Does walkability promote economic mobility? A new study shows a tantalizing connection between more walkable places and intergenerational economic mobility City Observatory readers will be familiar with the findings of Raj Chetty and his colleagues in the Equalit... → By Joe Cortright 22.10.2019
Reduced demand: Tolling or restricting cars reduces traffic We have urban traffic congestion because we heavily subsidize people driving in cities. Reducing subsidies and lowering road capacity reduces traffic and congestion. Why are we building highway capacity for users wh... → By Joe Cortright 15.10.2019
What if we regulated cars like we do houses? What if we regulated new car ownership the same way we do new housing? A recent story about Singapore caught our eye: In Singapore, you can't even buy a car without a government issued "certificate"—and the number o... → By Joe Cortright 4.10.2023
A modest proposal: An EIS for the DMV Many states subject housing approval to environmental reporting requirements; what if we extended this same principle to car registrations. Back in the early days of the environmental movement--the late sixties and earl... → By Joe Cortright 1.10.2019
Why economic diversification is a poor guide to local strategy Too much economic development policy is based on a naive analogy to portfolio theory Cities looking to strengthen their economies should concentrate on building upon and extending current specializations One of the... → By Joe Cortright 24.9.2019
A lack of nearby jobs doesn’t cause urban poverty There's scarcely any evidence that proximity to jobs matters for escaping poverty. One of the most popular and persistent theories of urban poverty is that the poor are poor because they don't live particularly close to... → By Joe Cortright 24.9.2019
Portland’s Climate Fail: More Driving Carbon emissions from transportation in Portland increased 6 percent last year In the one are where city policy can make the most difference, greenhouse gas emissions are increasing Portland has long prided itself in... → By Joe Cortright 19.9.2019
How Ecotopia is failing its biggest test West Coast political leaders talk a good greenhouse gas game, but actions speak louder Throughout Ecotopia, carbon emissions are rising due to more driving, yet the region's leaders are throwing even more money at subsi... → By Joe Cortright 13.9.2019
Inclusive urbanism comes to the presidential race Beto O'Rourke brings a strong urbanist, inclusive message to the presidential campaign The 2020 Democratic presidential race has been remarkable for addressing both climate change and housing policy issues that have long ... → By Joe Cortright 9.9.2019
Seeing red We're killing more people because more people are ignoring traffic signals We've charted the ominous increase in road deaths in the past several years, and now there's a new bit of evidence of just how bad the problem h... → By Joe Cortright 3.9.2019
The Week Observed, September 27, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. Why diversification is a simplistic, often flawed economic strategy. When it comes to personal investment everyone understands (or certainly should understand) the concept of portfol... → By Joe Cortright 27.9.2019
The Week Observed, September 20, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. What super-commuters really mean. Media coverage of super-commuters--people who travel more than 90 minutes each way to and from work--is invariably sympathetic, treating these fol... → By Joe Cortright 20.9.2019
2019: The Year Observed What City Observatory did in 2019 We spent a lot of time this year addressing Portland's proposed half-billion dollar Rose Quarter freeway widening project. You may have thought Portland put its freeway fights behind it i... → By Joe Cortright 6.1.2020
The Week Observed, January 10, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. 2019: The Year Observed. We take a look back at 2019 and review some of the most important City Observatory commentaries, interesting stories and valued research. Our most read pos... → By Joe Cortright 10.1.2020
The Week Observed, January 24, 2020 What City Observatory did this week Remembering Dr. King. We were reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech about the pronounced tendency in public policy to prescribe socialism for the rich and rugged, free market ca... → By Joe Cortright 24.1.2020
The Week Observed, January 12, 2024 What City Observatory did this week The pernicious myth of "Naturally Occurring" Affordable Housing. One of the most dangerous and misleading concepts in housing reared its ugly head in the form a a new publication from... → By Joe Cortright 12.1.2024
The Week Observed, January 26, 2024 What City Observatory this week Robert Moses strikes again: One of the most infamous decisions of "The Power Broker" was to build the overpasses on the Long Island Expressway too low to allow city buses to use the roadw... → By Joe Cortright 26.1.2024
The Week Observed, January 19, 2024 What City Observatory this week Why does it take four years and $200 million for consultants to serve up a warmed-over version of the Columbia River Crossing? The Interstate Bridge Replacement Project’s director admit... → By Joe Cortright 19.1.2024
The Week Observed, January 15, 2024 What City Observatory this week 1. The Urban Institute gets inclusion backwards. The Urban Institute has released an updated set of estimates that purport to measure which US cities are the most inclusive. The report i... → By Joe Cortright 15.1.2021
The Week Observed, January 22, 2021 What City Observatory this week Institutionalized housing discrimination. A recent study of housing discrimination in Detroit came to a seemingly surprising conclusion: Fair housing complaints were less likely to be fil... → By Joe Cortright 22.1.2021
The Week Observed, January 29, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Why Portland's Rose Quarter Freeway widening will increase greenhouse gas emissions. The Oregon Department of Transportation hashas falsely claimed its $800 million freeway widening pr... → By Joe Cortright 29.1.2021
The Week Observed, February 5, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Calculating induced travel. Widening freeways to reduce traffic congestion in dense urban areas inevitably fails because of the scientifically demonstrated problem of induced demand; som... → By Joe Cortright 5.2.2021
The Week Observed, February 12, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. How housing segregation reduces Black wealth. Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas. There's a st... → By Joe Cortright 12.2.2021
The Week Observed, February 19, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Covid migration: Disproportionately young, economically stressed and people of color. Data shows the moves prompted by Covid-19 are more reflective of economic distress for the vulne... → By Joe Cortright 19.2.2021
The Week Observed, February 26, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Revealed: Oregon Department of Transportation's secret plans for a ten-lane I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter. For years, ODOT has been claiming that its $800 million freeway widening pr... → By Joe Cortright 26.2.2021
The Week Observed, April 2, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. How the Oregon Department of Transportation destroyed a Portland neighborhood, Part 2: The Moses Meat Axe. We continue our historical look at the role that freeway construction (and ... → By Joe Cortright 2.4.2021
The Week Observed, April 9, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. How ODOT destroyed Albina: Part 3 the Phantom Freeway. Even a freeway that never got built played a key role in demolishing part of Portland's Albina neighborhood. In parts 1 and 2... → By Joe Cortright 7.3.2021
The Week Observed, April 16, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Taking Tubman: The Oregon Department of Transportation is planning to widen the Interstate 5 freeway in Portland into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School. The $800 million w... → By Joe Cortright 16.4.2021
The Week Observed, April 30, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Restorative justice without funding is a sham. Portland's Albina neighborhood was decimated by the construction of three Oregon Department of Transportation highway projects in the 195... → By Joe Cortright 30.4.2021
The Week Observed, April 23, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Fighting climate change is inherently equitable. While there's a growing recognition of the existential threat posed by climate change, it's becoming increasingly frequent to pit equity ... → By Joe Cortright 23.4.2021
The Week Observed, May 7, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. It's not a bridge replacement, it's a 5 mile long, 12 lane wide freeway that just happens to cross a river. The Oregon and Washington highway departments are trying to revive the faile... → By Joe Cortright 7.5.2021
The Week Observed, May 14, 2021 What City Observatory this week Don't be fooled again. The Oregon and Washington state highway departments are up to their old tricks in trying to push a multi-billion dollar highway building boondoggle in the POrtland ... → By Joe Cortright 14.5.2021
The Week Observed, May 21, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Needed: A bolder, better building back. In response to an invitation from its authors, we take a look at a "grand bargain" proposed by Patrick Doherty and Chris Leinberger for breaki... → By Joe Cortright 21.5.2021
The Week Observed, July 16, 2021 What City Observatory did this week An open letter to Secretary Pete Buttigieg on his visit to Oregon. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg came to Oregon this week to look at some local transportation innovations. ... → By Joe Cortright 16.7.2021
The Week Observed, July 30, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Oregon Department of Transportation's Climate Fig-Leaf. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in Oregon, and the state's Department of Transportation is—yet again... → By Joe Cortright 30.7.2021
The Week Observed, September 17, 2021 What City Observatory did this week The cost of Oregon DOT's Rose Quarter project has nearly tripled to $1.25 billion. Just four years ago, the Oregon Department of transportation sold its mile-and-a-half long I-5 freew... → By Eli Molloy 17.9.2021
The Week Observed, September 10, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Talkin' 'bout my gentrification. Jerusalem Demsas of Vox has a thoughtful synthesis of what we know about gentrification. If we're concerned about poverty and inequality, gentrifi... → By Joe Cortright 10.9.2021
The Week Observed, April 1, 2022 What City Observatory did this week The Cappuccino Congestion Index. Media reports regularly regurgitate the largely phony claims about how traffic congestion costs travelers untold billions of dollars in wasted time. ... → By Joe Cortright 1.4.2022
The Week Observed, April 15, 2022 What City Observatory did this week A universal basic income . . . for cars. One of the most widely discussed alternatives for tackling poverty and inequality head on is the idea of a "Universal Basic Income"--a payment... → By Joe Cortright 15.4.2022
The Week Observed, April 22, 2022 What City Observatory did this week How sprawl and tax evasion are driving demands for wider freeways. The Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation are proposing to spend roughly $5 billion to widen a 5 mile ... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2022
The Week Observed, April 29, 2022 What City Observatory did this week The folly of the frog ferry. One bane of transportation policy discussions is the tendency to believe that miracle technical fixes—self-driving cars, personal aircraft, the Segway, ... → By Joe Cortright 2.5.2022
The Week Observed, May 6, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Ten questions that deserve answers before making a multi-billion dollar decision. The Portland metro area is being asked by the Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation to gi... → By Joe Cortright 6.5.2022
The Week Observed, May 13, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Just Say "No" to freeway widening zealots. George Santayana meet David Bragdon: Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat the failures of the past. A year ago, we pu... → By Joe Cortright 13.5.2022
The Week Observed, May 20, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Another exploding whale: The cost of the I-205 bridge project doubles in four years. Famously in the 1960s, the Oregon State Highway Department tried to dispose of the carcass of a wh... → By Joe Cortright 20.5.2022
The Week Observed, June 10, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Oregon DOT's "reign of error"—chronic cost overruns on highway projects. The Oregon Department of Transportation is moving forward with a multi-billion dollar freeway expansion plan... → By Joe Cortright 10.6.2022
The Week Observed, June 17, 2022 What City Observatory did this week There's nothing green about free parking, no matter how many solar panels you put on the garage. The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory brags about its sus... → By Joe Cortright 28.5.2022
The Week Observed, June 24, 2022 What City Observatory did this week The economics of fruit, time, and place. It's berry time in Portland, and that got us thinking about how special local products are in defining quality of life. Recently, Paul Krugm... → By Joe Cortright 24.6.2022
The Week Observed, July 1, 2022 Must read The most gas guzzling states. The sting of higher gas prices depends on where you live, not so much because of the variation in prices, but because in some states, you just have drive a lot more. The website Q... → By Joe Cortright 28.5.2022
The Week Observed, July 15, 2022 What City Observatory did this week A Bridge too low. The Oregon DOT is fundamentally misrepresenting the process and legal standards for setting the height of a proposed new multi-billion dollar I-5 bridge across the C... → By Joe Cortright 28.5.2022
The Week Observed, July 22, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Failing to learn from the failure of the Columbia River Crossing. Last week, Portland's Metro Council voted 6-1 to wave on the Oregon Department of Transportation's plan for a multi-b... → By Joe Cortright 28.5.2022
The Week Observed, July 29, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Fix it Last. The Oregon Department of Transportation claims that it has a "Fix-it" first policy--prioritizing spending funds to preserve existing roads and bridges. But their actual... → By Joe Cortright 29.7.2022
The Week Observed, November 18, 2022 What City Observatory did this week The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve? The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from Interstate 5. This supposed ... → By Joe Cortright 21.11.2022
The Week Observed, November 11, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges. The Oregon and Washington highway departments are blundering ahead with a $5 billion plan to widen I-5 between Portland and Vancouver, and are making many of the same m... → By Joe Cortright 11.11.2022
The Week Observed, February 3, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Groundhog's Day for Climate. So you think you're not Bill Murray in the classic "Groundhog's Day?" Oregonians, ask yourself: are we anywhere closer to seriously addressi... → By Joe Cortright 3.2.2023
The Week Observed, January 27, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Driving stakes, selling bonds, overdosing on debt. The Oregon Department of Transportation is following a well trodden path to push the state toward a massive highway expans... → By Joe Cortright 27.1.2023
The Week Observed, March 10, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Why does a $500 million bridge replacement cost $7.5 billion? For the past several years, the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been pushing for construction of somet... → By Joe Cortright 10.3.2023
The Week Observed, March 17, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Why does a $500 million bridge cost $7.5 billion? For almost two decades the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been saying they want to replace the I-5 bridges over t... → By Joe Cortright 17.3.2023
The Week Observed, March 23, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Oregon's transportation finance in crisis: Testimony to the Joint Ways and Means Committee. On March 16, City Observatory's Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Legislature's b... → By Joe Cortright 24.3.2023
The Week Observed, March 31, 2023 What City Observatory did this week What are they hiding? Oregon and Washington are being asked to spend $7.5 billion on a giant bridge: Why won’t anyone show pictures of what it would look like? The Oregon ... → By Joe Cortright 31.3.2023
The Week Observed, April 7, 2023 What City Observatory did this week IBR's plan to sabotage the "moveable span" alternative. The proposed $7.5 billion Portland area freeway widening project is supposedly looking at a moveable span option to avoid i... → By Joe Cortright 7.4.2023
The Week Observed, April 14, 2023 What City Observatory did this week The case against the Interstate Bridge Project. We offer 16 reasons why Oregon and Washington lawmakers should question the current plans for the proposed $7.5 billion I-5 freeway... → By Joe Cortright 14.4.2023
The Week Observed, June 30, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Scratch one flat top! That was the famous cry of US Naval aviators, when, early in World War II they chalked up their first victory, sinking the Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho. Por... → By Joe Cortright 30.6.2023
The Week Observed, September 15, 2023 What City Observatory did this week This is what victory looks like. Freeway fighting is hard, drawn-out work. StateDOTs and their allies have vast funding for public relations campaigns to sell giant projects; citize... → By Joe Cortright 15.9.2023
The Week Observed, October 6, 2023 What City Observatory did this week What if we regulated new car ownership the same way we do new housing? Getting a building permit for a new house is difficult, expensive, and in some places, simply impossible. In c... → By Joe Cortright 8.9.2023
The Week Observed, October 20, 2023 Must Read Portland: Four Floors and Corner Stores--Upzoning for urban development and housing affordability. A coalition of community, enviornmental and social justice groups is advocating for a YIMBY strategy for mor... → By Joe Cortright 8.9.2023
The Week Observed, October 13, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Britain's Caste system of transportation. In a cynical ploy to revive the Conservative Party's flagging electoral hopes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has engaged in some blatant pro-mot... → By Joe Cortright 8.9.2023
The Week Observed, April 12, 2024 Must Read The high, high cost of "affordable housing." The Voice of San Diego takes a look at the pricetag of several affordable housing projects in California and finds they're pushing and breaking through the million-... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2024
The Week Observed, May 3, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week Beware of phony claims that highway projects are "On-time and Under-Budget." For highway departments, the key to being on-time and under-budget is Orwellian double-speak. Oregon ... → By Joe Cortright 3.5.2024
The Week Observed, July 19, 2024 Must Read Denser cities = Less expensive infrastructure. A new study from New Zealand confirms one of the fundamental intuitions about cities: Places with higher levels of residential density have lower per capita and... → By Joe Cortright 18.7.2024
The Week Observed, August 30, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week There's no evidence of a housing bubble. Strong Towns Chuck Marohn has a recent blog post proclaiming that the US housing market is the midst of another bubble, similar to 2008. But... → By Joe Cortright 30.8.2024
The Week Observed, August 23, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week How Metro's RTP illegally favors driving and violates state climate rules. Oregon's planning rules require Portland area transportation plans to prioritize investments that reduce ve... → By Joe Cortright 23.8.2024
The Week Observed, August 16, 2024 Must Read Portland advocates sue to block Rose Quarter Freeway widening. There's a new chapter in the long-running battle to block the Oregon Department of Transportation's I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project, a 1... → By Joe Cortright 7.8.2024
The Week Observed, August 2, 2024 Must Read Induced Demand and Climate Denial. As we've long said, the favorite folk tale of state DOTs and highway boosters is the idea that the primary solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is lowering the amoun... → By Joe Cortright 29.7.2024
The Week Observed, July 26, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week The cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) is going up: But we won't tell you how much . . . And we're not going to tell you until a year from now, after the 2025 Legislatur... → By Joe Cortright 28.7.2024
The Week Observed, July 12, 2024 Must Read The problem with elevators in America. Market Urbanism's Stephen Smith has an op-ed in the New York Times opening up a new front in the YIMBY effort to expand housing supply in the US. Smith argues that th... → By Joe Cortright 8.7.2024
The Week Observed, June 28, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week Unique Local Experiences: The Hidden Value in Urban Economies. An often-overlooked aspect of urban economics: the value of unique, local, and seasonal experiences. We take as an example... → By Joe Cortright 28.6.2024
The Week Observed, June 21, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week Inventing a "commitment" to megaproject cost-overruns. Oregon's Department of Transportation is is trying to re-write history to create a commitment to unapproved freeway s and massi... → By Joe Cortright 21.6.2024
The Week Observed, June 14, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week The Oregon Department of Transportation's (ODOT) Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project is facing significant delays of up to 18 months. The culprit? Flawed traffic model... → By Joe Cortright 12.6.2024
The Week Observed, June 7, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week We grade the city clean energy scorecard. A new scorecard tires to measure how cities are promoting energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gases—a laudable goal. But the scorecar... → By Joe Cortright 7.6.2024
The Week Observed, May 24, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week A costly cargo cult in Portland: A proposal to spend $30 million per year subsidizing the revival of container shipping operations at the Port of Portland is misguided effort based on... → By Joe Cortright 24.5.2024
The Week Observed, May 17, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week The Oregon Department of Transportation can and should mitigate the negative impacts of its highway construction projects, including social and economic impacts. ODOT's massive $1.9 b... → By Joe Cortright 17.5.2024
The Week Observed, May 10, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week Another Oregon Department of Transportation exploding whale.* The cost of one of OregonDOT's megaprojects, the expansion of the I-205 Abernethy Bridge over the Willamette River south ... → By Joe Cortright 10.5.2024
The Week Observed, April 26, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week Earth Day: Oregon is spending billions to widen freeways in a move that will only worsen the increase in greenhouse gases from transportation. Transportation is the leading source of ... → By Joe Cortright 26.4.2024
The Week Observed, April 19, 2024 What City Observatory Did This Week A teachable moment: Free Ice Cream Day. Traffic was lined up around the block last Tuesday at your local Ben and Jerry's, for the same reason roadways are clogged most weekday afterno... → By Joe Cortright 19.4.2024
The Week Observed, April 5, 2024 What City Observatory did this week Thirty seconds over Portland: Spending $7.5 billion on a freeway widening project will save the typical affected commuter about 30 seconds a day, according to the Interstate Bridge Re... → By Joe Cortright 5.4.2024
The Week Observed, March 29, 2024 What City Observatory did this week What the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project doesn't want you to know. The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project is afraid of what you’ll find out when they release ... → By Joe Cortright 29.3.2024
The Week Observed, March 22, 2024 What City Observatory did this week The high cost of covering freeways. The latest fashion in highway urbanism is "capping" freeways. In theory, highway builders claim that capping freeways will repair past damage and... → By Joe Cortright 22.3.2024
The Week Observed, March 15, 2024 What City Observatory did this week Abandoning road pricing monkey-wrenches state transportation, traffic reduction and climate plans. This week, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek terminated Oregon's Regional Mobility Pricing ... → By Joe Cortright 15.3.2024
The Week Observed, March 8, 2024 What City Observatory did this week A yawning chasm in neighborhood distress among metro areas. Almost every metropolitan area has some neighborhoods that face serious economic distress, but the patterns of distress vary ... → By Joe Cortright 8.3.2024
The Week Observed, March 1, 2024 What City Observatory Did this Week Is it time to address the problem of "Missing Massive" housing? This past week marked the latest convening of YIMBYTown, this year, held in Austin, Texas. One of the perennial topic... → By Joe Cortright 1.3.2024
The Week Observed, February 16, 2024 Must Read The freeway cap mirage. Don't like freeways? Let's just cover up the problem. It's increasingly popular to try to repair the damage done to urban neighborhoods by "capping" freeways: building a cover so ... → By Joe Cortright 14.2.2024
The Week Observed, February 9, 2024 What City Observatory did this week Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study. Some of the most important policy decisions are buried deep in seemingly technocratic documents. Case-in-point: Oregon's... → By Joe Cortright 9.2.2024
The Week Observed, February 2, 2024 Must Read How CalTrans cheated on its environmental reporting. Some months back, former Deputy Director of CalTrans,Jeanie Ward-Waller blew the whistle on the agency's effort to evade environmental laws and illegally us... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2024
The Week Observed, January 5, 2024 What City Observatory did this week A $9 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project? Just 13 months after raising the price of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project by more than 50 percent, the Oregon and W... → By Joe Cortright 4.1.2024
The Week Observed, December 22, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Bad data. What appears, at first glance, to be a big decline in trip-making is really an object lesson in failing to read the footnotes. Every five years or so, the US Department of... → By Joe Cortright 22.12.2023
The Week Observed, December 15, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Exaggerated Benefits, Omitted Costs: The Interstate Bridge Boondoggle. A $7.5 billion highway boondoggle doesn’t meet the basic test of cost-effectiveness. The Interstate Bridge... → By Joe Cortright 15.12.2023
The Week Observed, December 8, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Tolling i-5 will produce massive traffic diversion. The proposed I-5 Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project will be paid for in part by $2.80 to $4.30 tolls charged to travelers... → By Joe Cortright 8.12.2023
The Week Observed, December 1, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Secret plans show ODOT is planning a 10-lane freeway in the Rose Quarter. City Observatory has obtained previously un-released plans showing that the $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter pro... → By Joe Cortright 1.12.2023
The Week Observed, November 17, 2023 What City Observatory did this week 5 million miles wide of the mark.Portland's regional government Metro, has proposed a regional transportation plan (RTP) that purports to achieve state and regional policies to reduce g... → By Joe Cortright 16.11.2023
The Week Observed, November 10, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Snow-Job: Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) threatens to slash snow-plowing and other safety maintenance unless it is given more money, while spending billions on a handful o... → By Joe Cortright 10.11.2023
The Week Observed, November 3, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Killer off-ramps. The Oregon Department of Transportation's $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter widening has been repeatedly (and falsely) portrayed as a "safety" project, but the latest re... → By Joe Cortright 3.11.2023
The Week Observed, October 27, 2023 What City Observatory did this week More climate fraud in Portland Metro's proposed regional transportation plan. We branded Metro's proposed Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) a climate fraud because in falsely claimed... → By Joe Cortright 8.9.2023
The Week Observed, September 8, 2023 What City Observatory did this week What apartment consolidation in New York tells us about housing markets and gentrification. A new study shows that over the past several decades, New York City lost more than 100,000 ... → By Joe Cortright 8.9.2023
The Week Observed, September 1, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Rose Quarter: Death throes of a bungled 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 do... → By Joe Cortright 28.8.2023
The Week Observed, August 25, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Metro's Climate-Denial Regional Transportation Plan. Portland's regional governtment, Metro, has published a draft Regional Transportation Plan, outlining priorities for transportatio... → By Joe Cortright 24.8.2023
The Week Observed, August 18, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Climate fraud in the Portland Metro RTP. Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan rationalizes spending billions on freeway expansion by publishing false estimates and projections of gr... → By Joe Cortright 18.8.2023
The Week Observed, August 11, 2023 Must Read Some Texas-sized greenwashing for highway widening in Austin. TXDOT is aiming to spend close to $5 billion to widen I-35 through downtown Austin, and to sweeten the deal, they're producing project renderings s... → By Joe Cortright 11.8.2023
The Week Observed, August 4, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Eating local: Why independent, local restaurants are a key indicator of city vitality. Jane Jacobs noted decades ago that“The greatest asset a city can have is something that is d... → By Joe Cortright 4.8.2023
The Week Observed, July 28, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Myth-busting: Idling and greenhouse gas emissions. Highway boosters are fond of claiming that they can help fight climate change by widening highways so that cars don't have to spen... → By Joe Cortright 28.7.2023
The Week Observed, July 21, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Few highway construction dollars for Black-owned firms in Oregon. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged bu... → By Joe Cortright 23.7.2023
The Week Observed, July 14, 2023 What City Observatory did this week We have an in-depth series of reports on the Oregon Department of Transportation's imploding I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project. The cost of the I-5 Rose Quarter project has n... → By Joe Cortright 14.7.2023
The Week Observed, July 7, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Yet another exploding whale: One of the Internet's most popular videos shows employees of the Oregon Department of Transportation blowing up a dead whale carcass stranded on an Ocean ... → By Joe Cortright 7.7.2023
The Week Observed, June 23, 2023 What City Observatory did this week We took the week off to celebrate the Summer Solstice and gorge on Hood strawberries! We'll be back next week. Must Read The amazing non-appearance of Carmageddon. Echoing th... → By Joe Cortright 21.6.2023
The Week Observed, June 16, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Carmageddon does a no-show in Philly. A tanker truck caught fire and the ensuing blaze caused a section of I-95 in Philadelphia to collapse. This key roadway may be out of commissio... → By Joe Cortright 16.6.2023
The Week Observed, June 9, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Guest contributor Miriam Pinski observes that getting the prices right could produce dramatic improvements in how US transportation systems perform. New York is on the verge of implem... → By Joe Cortright 9.6.2023
The Week Observed, June 2, 2023 What City Observatory did this week What computer renderings really show about the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project: It's in trouble. The Interstate Bridge Project has released—after years of delay—computer gra... → By Joe Cortright 5.6.2023
The Week Observed, May 26, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Pricing is a better, cheaper fix for congestion at the I-5 Rose Quarter. The Oregon Department of Transportation is proposing to squander $1.45 billion to widen about a mile and a hal... → By Joe Cortright 26.5.2023
The Week Observed, May 19, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Rose Quarter tolls: Available, but not foreseeable? There's a glaring--and illegal--contradiction in the planning for the Oregon Department of Transportation's $1.45 billion Rose Qu... → By Joe Cortright 19.5.2023
The Week Observed, May 12, 2023 What City Observatory did this week There’s plenty of time to fix the Interstate Bridge Project. Contrary to claims made by OregonDOT and WSDOT officials, the federal government allows considerable flexibility in fundin... → By Joe Cortright 12.5.2023
The Week Observed, May 5, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Why can't Oregon DOT tell the truth? Oregon legislators asked the state transportation department a simple question: How wide is the proposed $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacem... → By Joe Cortright 5.5.2023
The Week Observed, April 21, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Why should Oregonians subsidize suburban commuters from another state? Oregon is being asked to pay for half of the cost of widening the I-5 Interstate Bridge. Eighty percent of daily c... → By Joe Cortright 24.4.2023
The Week Observed, April 28, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Testifying on the Oregon Transportation Finance. City Observatory director Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Legislature on HB 2098, a bill being proposed to fund bloated free... → By Joe Cortright 17.3.2023
The Week Observed, March 3, 2023 What City Observatory did this week More induced travel denial. Highway advocates deny or minimize the science of induced travel. We offer our rebuttal to a reason column posted at Planetizen, attempting to minimize... → By Joe Cortright 7.3.2023
The Week Observed, February 24, 2023 What City Observatory did this week IBR admits its bridge is too steep. After 15 years of telling the region that the only feasible alternative for crossing the Columbia River was a pair of side-by-side double-decker br... → By Joe Cortright 24.2.2023
The Week Observed, February 17, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Driving between Vancouver and Wilsonville at 5PM? ODOT plans to charge you $15. Under ODOT’s toll plans, A driving from Wilsonville to Vancouver will cost you as much as $15, each-w... → By Joe Cortright 17.2.2023
The Week Observed, February 10, 2023 What City Observatory did this week CEVP: Non-existent cost controls for the $7.5 billion IBR project. Oregon DOT has a history of enormous cost overruns, and just told the Oregon and Washington Legislatures that the co... → By Joe Cortright 10.2.2023
The Week Observed, January 20, 2023 What City Observatory did this week Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. We're reminded this year of Dr. Martin Luther King's observation that our cities, and the public p... → By Joe Cortright 18.1.2023
The Week Observed, January 13, 2023 What City Observatory did this week A reporter's guide to congestion cost studies. For more than a decade, we and others have been taking a close, hard and critical look at congestion cost reports genera... → By Joe Cortright 13.1.2023
The Week Observed, January 6, 2023 What City Observatory did this week The case against the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening. This week marked the end of public comment on the Supplemental Environmental Assessment for the Oregon Department of Tr... → By Joe Cortright 6.1.2023
The Week Observed, December 16, 2022 Editor's Note: Public Comment on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Project Between now and January 4, 2023, the public will be asked to weigh in with its comments on the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project. ... → By Joe Cortright 15.12.2022
The Week Observed, December 2, 2022 Editor's Note: Public Comment on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Project In the next month, the public will be asked to weigh in with its comments on the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project. If you're inte... → By Joe Cortright 2.12.2022
The Week Observed, November 4, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges: If you're going to spend several billion dollars, you might want to get some independent expert advice. Oregon and Washington are on the verge of committing 5 billion d... → By Joe Cortright 4.11.2022
The Week Observed, October 28, 2022 What City Observatory did this week A toll policy primer for Oregon. The Oregon Department of Transportation is proposing to finance billions in future road expansions with tolling. While we're enamored of road pricin... → By Joe Cortright 29.10.2022
The Week Observed, October 21, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Using phony safety claims to sell a billion dollar freeway widening. This past week, Sarah Pliner, a promising young Portland chef was killed when she and her bike were crushed by a t... → By Joe Cortright 21.10.2022
The Week Observed, October 14, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Two of the three candidates for Oregon Governor are Climate Deniers. Oregon will elect a new Governor next month, and two of the three candidates for the job insist on repeating the dis... → By Joe Cortright 14.10.2022
The Week Observed, July 8, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Building a bridge too low--again. In their effort to try to revive the failed Columbia River Crossing (a $5 billion freeway widening project between Portland and Vancouver) the Oregon... → By Joe Cortright 28.5.2022
The Week Observed, May 27, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Our apologies to City Observatory readers for our website outage on 19-22 May. More meaningless congestion pseudo science. A new study from the University of Maryland claims that... → By Joe Cortright 27.5.2022
The Week Observed, March 4, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Oregon crosses the road-pricing Rubicon. Starting this spring, motorists will pay a $2 toll to drive Oregon's historical Columbia River Gorge Highway. Instead of widening t... → By Joe Cortright 4.3.2022
The Week Observed, March 25, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Who's most vulnerable to high gas prices? Rising gas prices are a pain, but they hurt most if you live in a sprawling metro where you have to drive long distances to work, sho... → By Joe Cortright 25.3.2022
The Week Observed, March 18, 2022 Must read The problem with the "reckless driver" narrative. Strong Towns Chuck Marohn eloquently points out the deflection and denial inherent in the emerging "reckless driver" explanation for increasing car crashes and... → By Joe Cortright 17.3.2022
The Week Observed, March 11, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Freeway widening for whomst: Woke-washing the survey data. Highway builders are eager to cloak their road expansion projects in the rhetoric of equity and have become adep... → By Joe Cortright 11.3.2022
The Week Observed, February 25, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Freeway widening for whomst? Woke-washing is all the rage among those pushing highway projects these days, and there's no better example that Portland's I-5 "bridge replacem... → By Joe Cortright 28.2.2022
The Week Observed, January 7, 2022 What City Observatory did this week 1. Metro's failing climate strategy. Portland Metro’s Climate Smart Strategy, adopted in 2014, has been an abject failure. Portland area transportation greenhouse gasses a... → By Joe Cortright 7.1.2022
The Week Observed, January 14, 2022 What City Observatory did this week What does equity mean when we have a caste-based transportation system? Transportation and planning debates around the country increasingly ponder how we rectify long-standin... → By Joe Cortright 14.1.2022
The Week Observed, January 21, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Metro's "Don't look up" climate strategy. In the new film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play scientists who find that the nation's leaders simply refuse to take s... → By Joe Cortright 21.1.2022
The Week Observed, January 28, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Why Portland shouldn't be moving elementary and middle schools to widen freeways. We're pleased to publish a guest commentary from Adah Crandall, a high school sophomore and... → By Joe Cortright 5.1.2022
The Week Observed, February 4, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Climate and our Groundhog Day Doom Loop. It's Groundhog Day—again—and we're stuck in exactly the same place when it comes to climate policy. Scientists are regularly... → By Joe Cortright 4.2.2022
The Week Observed, February 11, 2022 What City Observatory did this week The "replacement" bridge con. It's telling that perhaps the largest single consulting expense for Oregon and Washington transportation departments' efforts to revive the fai... → By Joe Cortright 11.2.2022
The Week Observed, February 18, 2022 What City Observatory did this week Oregon's highway agency rigs its projections to maximize revenue and downplay its culpability for climate challenge. ODOT has two different standards for forecasting: When it... → By Joe Cortright 18.2.2022
The Week Observed, December 17, 2021 What City Observatory did this week The financial fallout from Louisville's I-65 boondoggle. As we showed earlier, Kentucky and Indiana both wasted a billion dollars on doubling the capacity of I-65 across the... → By Joe Cortright 17.12.2021
The Week Observed, December 10, 2021 What City Observatory did this week 1. ODOT's real climate strategy: Pollution as usual. Oregon's highway builders are keeping two sets of books, one claiming that it cares about climate issues, the other shows that i... → By Joe Cortright 10.12.2021
The Week Observed, December 3, 2021 What City Observatory did this week How Portland powered Oregon's economic success. After decades of lagging the nation, Oregon's income now exceeds the national average. While some seem to think its a mystery: I... → By Joe Cortright 3.12.2021
The Week Observed, November 19, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Why we shouldn't be whining about higher gas prices. Gas prices are going up, and it’s annoying to have to pay more, but let’s take a closer look at how much we’re paying for... → By Joe Cortright 19.11.2021
The Week Observed, November 12, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Has this city discovered how to solve traffic congestion? Why aren't they telling everyone else how this works? A miracle in Louisville. [caption id="attachment_12554" al... → By Joe Cortright 15.11.2021
The Week Observed, November 5, 2021 What City Observatory did this week The Opposite of Planning: Why Portland's Metro government needs to turn down the highway department request for more money to plan future freeway widenings. On paper, and to admirer... → By Joe Cortright 5.11.2021
The Week Observed, October 22, 2021 What City Observatory did this week America's least and most segregated metro areas: Evidence from Census 2020. Racial segregation remains a chronic problem in US metropolitan areas. Data from Census 2020 provides a... → By Joe Cortright 22.10.2021
The Week Observed, October 15, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Ten reasons you can't trust DOT claims that widening highways reduces pollution. Highway departments are fond of ginning up traffic projections and air quality analyses claiming... → By Joe Cortright 15.10.2021
The Week Observed, September 24, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Freeway-widening grifters: Woke-washing, fraud and incompetence. The Oregon Department of Transportation has been trying to sell its $1.25 billion freeway widening project as a ... → By Joe Cortright 24.9.2021
The Week Observed, September 3, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Portland's Clean Energy Fund needs accountability. Portland voters approved a ballot measure creating a $60 million annual fund to invest in community-based clean energy projects, par... → By Joe Cortright 3.9.2021
The Week Observed, August 27, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Is the campus 100 percent clean energy? (Only if you don't count the cars and parking lots). Stanford University announced that its near to realizing a goal to move all of its campu... → By Joe Cortright 27.8.2021
The Week Observed, August 20, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Cost of Living and Auto Insurance. We often compare the affordability of different cities with a clear focus on housing prices and rents. This week at City Observatory we are interest... → By Joe Cortright 20.8.2021
The Week Observed, August 13, 2021 What City Observatory did this week 1. Tackling climate change will require electric cars, and a lot less driving. We're pleased to publish a guest commentary from CalYimby's Matthew Lewis looking at the challenge of ad... → By Joe Cortright 9.8.2021
The Week Observed, August 6, 2021 What City Observatory did this week America's berry best cities. It's the height of the summer fruit season and berries are ripening across the country. Nothing beats a fresh local berry in season. We've ranked the na... → By Joe Cortright 2.8.2021
The Week Observed, July 23, 2021 What City Observatory did this week Selling Oregon into highway bondage. Oregon is moving ahead with plans to issue hundreds of millions—and ultimately billions of dollars of debt to widen Portland-area freeways. An... → By Joe Cortright 23.7.2021
The Week Observed, July 9, 2021 What City Observatory did this week 1. Miami's double standard for charging road users. The City of Miami is hoping to make their streets a safer place for bikes and scooters by building protected lanes along three mile... → By Joe Cortright 9.7.2021
The Week Observed, July 2, 2021 What City Observatory did this week 1. The Texas Transportation Institute is back, and it's still wrong about traffic congestion. Every year or so, a group of researchers at Texas A&M University produce report purpo... → By Joe Cortright 3.7.2021
The Week Observed, June 25, 2021 What City Observatory did this week 1. Cars kill city neighborhoods. Across the nation, America's cities have been remade to accomodate the automobile. Freeways have been widened through city neighborhoods, demolishin... → By Eli Molloy 25.6.2021
The Week Observed, June 18, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Race and economic polarization. In the past several decades, racial segregation in the US has attenuated, but economic segregation has increased. This is nowhere more apparent than... → By Joe Cortright 17.6.2021
The Week Observed, June 4, 2021 What City Observatory this week What ultimately destroyed Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood: Highways. This past week marked the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. In 1921, a racist mob attacked and destroyed the B... → By Joe Cortright 4.6.2021
The Week Observed, May 28, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. Why highway departments can and should build housing to mitigate road damage. For decades, American cities have been scarred and neighborhoods destroyed by highway construction project... → By Joe Cortright 28.5.2021
The Week Observed, March 26, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. How ODOT destroyed Albina. Urban freeways have been lethal to neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods of color, in cities throughout the nation. While the construction of Interstate ... → By Joe Cortright 26.3.2021
The Week Observed, March 19, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. An open letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission. For more than two years, City Observatory and others have been shining a bright light on the Oregon Department of Transportation... → By Joe Cortright 19.3.2021
The Week Observed, March 12, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. The failure of Vision Zero. Like many regions, the Portland metropolitan area has embraced the idea of Vision Zero; a strategy of planning to take concrete steps over time to reduce th... → By Joe Cortright 7.3.2021
The Week Observed, March 5, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. The fundamental global law of traffic congestion. For years, urbanists have stressed the concept of induced demand, based on the nearly universal observation that widening urban roadwa... → By Joe Cortright 5.3.2021
The Week Observed, January 8, 2021 What City Observatory this week 1. 2021 is when we have to get real about tackling climate change. We've boiled our analysis of the climate challenge down to four key points: Pledges alone won't accomplish anything... → By Joe Cortright 8.1.2021
The Week Observed, March 6, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. The thickness of the blue line. Robert Putnam popularized the notion of social capital in his book "Bowling Alone," which he illustrated with a number of indicators of social interconnec... → By Joe Cortright 6.3.2020
The Week Observed, March 13, 2020 What City Observatory this week Exploding whales and cost overruns. For years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has been pushing a mile-and-a-half long freeway widening project at Portland's Rose Quarter, telling t... → By Joe Cortright 13.3.2020
The Week Observed, April 3, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. Counting Covid- Cases in US Metro Areas. We've been updating our metro area tabulations of the number of reported Covid-19 cases on a daily basis. You can find our latest tabulations... → By Joe Cortright 3.4.2020
The Week Observed, April 17, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. Regional Patterns of Covid-19 Incidence. The pandemic has struck every corner of the nation, but has clearly hit some areas harder than others. We've focused on those metro areas, like... → By Joe Cortright 17.4.2020
The Week Observed, April 24, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. What the Covid-19 Shutdown teaches us about freeways. Everyone knows that speeds are up on urban roadways around the nation because of the stay-at-home orders to fight the pandemic. But ... → By Joe Cortright 24.4.2020
The Week Observed, June 12, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 rates are spiking in five cities. Stay-at-home policies and social distancing have dramatically slowed the spread of the pandemic in the US, but as many state's begin re-op... → By Joe Cortright 12.6.2020
The Week Observed, June 19, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Youth Movement: Our latest CityReport. America's urban revival is being powered by the widespread and accelerating movement of well-educated young adults to the densest, most central... → By Joe Cortright 19.6.2020
The Week Observed, September 25, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Why free parking is one of the most inequitable aspect of our transportation system. There's a lot of well-founded anger over the inequitable aspects of transportation: the burdens... → By Joe Cortright 25.9.2020
The Week Observed, October 2, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Carmaggedon never comes, Portland edition. It's a favored myth that any reduction in road capacity will automatically trigger gridlock, and highway engineers regularly inveigh agains... → By Joe Cortright 2.10.2020
The Week Observed, October 9, 2020 What City Observatory did this week Let's fight congestion with a PR campaign. For decades, when pressed to do something to improve road safety, city and state transportation officials have responded with . . . marketin... → By Joe Cortright 9.10.2020
The Week Observed, October 16, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 is now worst in rural areas and red states. Early on in the pandemic, it seemed like everyone attributed the spread of the Coronavirus to big cities and density. It turns ou... → By Joe Cortright 16.10.2020
The Week Observed, December 18, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Want lower rents? Build more housing! A new study from Germany provides more evidence that the fundamentals of economics are alive and well in the housing market. The study looks... → By Joe Cortright 18.12.2020
The Week Observed, December 11, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. The only reason many people drive is because we pay them to. There's an important insight from recent applications of tolling to urban highways. When asked to pay even a modest amoun... → By Joe Cortright 11.12.2020
The Week Observed, November 6, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Achieving equitable transportation: Reallocate road space and price car travel. New York has recorded a kind of "Miracle on 14th Street." By largely banning through car traffic, its ... → By Joe Cortright 6.11.2020
The Week Observed, November 13, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Seven reasons you should be optimistic about cities in a post-pandemic world. There's widespread pessimism about the future of cities. With the pandemic-induced advent of work-at-hom... → By Joe Cortright 13.11.2020
The Week Observed, November 30, 2020 What City Observatory did this week Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Gridlock Tuesday? The day after a nation celebrates its socially distanced "Zoom Thanksgiving" we'll look to see how the pandemic affects the traditional "... → By Joe Cortright 20.11.2020
The Week Observed, October 23, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Now we are six. We marked City Observatory's sixth birthday this week, and took a few moments to reflect back on the journey, and to thank all those who helped us on our way, and to ... → By Joe Cortright 23.10.2020
The Week Observed, October 30, 2020 What City Observatory did this week Equity and Metro's $5 billion transportation bond. This week, Portland residents are voting on a proposed $5 billion payroll tax/bond measure to fund a range of transportation projects.... → By Joe Cortright 25.9.2020
The Week Observed, September 18, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Lived segregation in US cities. Our standard measure of urban segregation, whether people reside in different neighborhoods, doesn't really capture the way people from different raci... → By Joe Cortright 18.9.2020
The Week Observed, September 11, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Manufacturing consent for highway widening. In the early days of freeway battles, state highway departments were power blind and tone-deaf, and citizen activists often triumphed in... → By Joe Cortright 4.9.2020
The Week Observed, September 4, 2020 What City Observatory did this week Why most pedestrian infrastructure is really car infrastructure. One of the most misleading terms you'll hear in transportation is "multi-modal" which in practice means a highway for ca... → By Joe Cortright 4.9.2020
The Week Observed, August 28, 2020 What City Observatory did this week The case against Metro's $5 billion transportation bond. Portland's regional government, Metro, is asking voters to approve a $5 billion package of transportation improvements, to be fu... → By Joe Cortright 28.8.2020
The Week Observed, August 21, 2020 What City Observatory did this week America's most and least segregated cities. Residential racial segregation is a fundamental and persistent aspect of system racism in the United States. Segregation cuts of disfavored g... → By Joe Cortright 21.8.2020
The Week Observed, August 7, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Is it random, or is it Zumper? Are rents going up or down in your city? Listicles showing which places have the biggest jumps (or declines) in rents are a perennial media favorite,... → By Joe Cortright 7.8.2020
The Week Observed, July 31 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. The abject failure of Portland's Climate Action Plan. Last month, Portland issued the final report on its 2015 Climate Action Plan. It emphasizes that the city took action on three-q... → By Joe Cortright 31.7.2020
The Week Observed, July 24 2020 What City Observatory did this week The exodus that never happened. You've probably seen stories bouncing around the media for the past few months claiming that fears that density makes people more susceptible to the pand... → By Joe Cortright 21.7.2020
The Week Observed, July 17, 2020 What City Observatory did this week Dominos falling on Portland's Rose Quarter freeway widening project. In the space of just a few hours two weeks ago, local political support for an $800 million freeway widening project... → By Joe Cortright 18.7.2020
The Week Observed, July 10, 2020 What City Observatory did this week CityBeat: NPR urban flight story. The pack animals of the media have settled on a single, oft-repeated narrative about cities and Covid-19; that fear of the virus will lead people to mo... → By Joe Cortright 10.7.2020
The Week Observed, June 26, 2020 What City Observatory did this week When NIMBYs win, everyone loses. Two land use cases from different sides of the country are in the news this week. In both cases, local opponents of new housing development have succeed... → By Joe Cortright 26.6.2020
The Week Observed, June 5, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 and Cities: An uneven pandemic. We've been following the progress of the Covid-19 virus in the nation's metropolitan areas for the past three months, and with the benefit ... → By Joe Cortright 5.6.2020
The Week Observed, May 29, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. LA Covid correlates with overcrowding and poverty, not density. City Observatory is pleased to publish a guest analysis and commentary from Abundant Housing LA's Anthony Dedousis.... → By Joe Cortright 29.5.2020
The Week Observed, May 22, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. Postcards from the Edges: Looking at the relationship between density and the pandemic. There's a widely circulating meme associating urban density with the spread of the Covid-19 viru... → By Joe Cortright 22.5.2020
The Week Observed, May 15, 2020 What City Observatory did this week 1. City Beat: We push back on a New York Times story claiming that people are decamping New York City on account of pandemic fears. You can always find an anecdote about someone lea... → By Joe Cortright 15.5.2020
The Week Observed, May 1, 2020 What City Observatory this week Our updated analysis of the prevalence of Covid-19 in US metro areas. It continues to be the case that the pandemic is most severe in the Northeast Corridor. The New York Metro area is ... → By Joe Cortright 1.5.2020
The Week Observed, April 10, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. What cities are showing us about the progression of the Covid-19 pandemic. In an important sense, each large US metro area is a separate test case of the path of the Covid-19 virus. By... → By Joe Cortright 10.4.2020
The Week Observed, March 20, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. Cheap gas means more pollution and more road deaths. Russia and Saudi Arabia have engineered a big decline in oil prices in the past few weeks, and as a result, US gas prices are now exp... → By Joe Cortright 20.3.2020
The Week Observed, March 27, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. The Geography of Covid-19. A week ago, we issued a call to get much more granular with our statistical analysis of the pandemic's spread. In just the past few days, a number of new l... → By Joe Cortright 27.3.2020
The Week Observed, February 28, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. The inequity built into Metro's proposed homeless strategy. Portland's Metro is rushing forward with a plan asking voters to approve $250 million per year in income taxes to fight homele... → By Joe Cortright 28.2.2020
The Week Observed, February 21, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. Local flavor: Which cities have the most independent restaurants. Local eateries are one of the most visibly distinctive elements of any city. As Jane Jacobs said, the most important... → By Joe Cortright 21.2.2020
The Week Observed, February 7, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. Talent drives economic development. We know the single most important factor determining metropolitan economic success: It's determined by the education level of your population. The l... → By Joe Cortright 7.2.2020
The Week Observed, January 31, 2020 What City Observatory this week 1. A massive regional transportation spending plan that does nothing for climate change. Portland's leaders are in the process of crafting a $3 billion plus regional transportation packag... → By Joe Cortright 31.1.2020
The Week Observed, December 13, 2019 What City Observatory this week 1. Oregon DOT repeats its idle lie about emissions. It's every highway builder's go-to response to climate change: we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we could just keep cars from... → By Joe Cortright 10.12.2019
The Week Observed, December 20, 2019 What City Observatory this week 1. Portland's progress (or lack thereof) on climate. Portland likes to present itself as a climate leader, but the latest data on transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions shows that ... → By Joe Cortright 20.12.2019
The Week Observed, December 6, 2019 What City Observatory did the past couple of weeks 1. Using seismic scare stories to sell freeways. The Pacific Northwest is living on the edge; sometime (possibly tomorrow, possible several hundred years from now) we'll ... → By Joe Cortright 6.12.2019
The Week Observed, November 22, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. No Deposit, No Return: Another lie to try and sell the $3 billion Columbia River Crossing. The state's of Oregon and Washington spent nearly $200 million planning the failed Columbia... → By Joe Cortright 22.11.2019
The Week Observed, November 15, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. Copenhagen's cycling success hinges on tax policy and pricing, not just bike lanes. The New York Times offers up yet another postcard view of cycling in Copenhagen, where riding ... → By Joe Cortright 15.11.2019
The Week Observed, November 8, 2019 What City Observatory did this week A two cent solution to climate change? Around the world, plastic bags are an environmental scourge, both in the form a litter (a nuisance) and as a threat to wildlife. In response, ma... → By Joe Cortright 8.11.2019
The Week Observed, November 1, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. Tim Bartik explains business incentives. States and cities spend about $50 billion a year on tax breaks and other incentives to try to influence business location decisions. The na... → By Joe Cortright 1.11.2019
The Week Observed, October 18, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. Our 5th Anniversary. October 17 marked 5 years since we started publishing our research and commentary at City Observatory. We reflect back on five years of work, and thank all tho... → By Joe Cortright 18.10.2019
The Week Observed, October 11, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. Transportation for America won't be fooled again.. After years of getting rolled by the freeway lobby, it appears that T4America has finally said "Enough." Transit and active tra... → By Joe Cortright 11.10.2019
The Week Observed, October 4, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. We debunk the Wall Street Journal's claim of an exodus of young adults from cities. Last week, the Wall Street Journal trumpeted an "exodus" of 25 to 39 year old adults from cities... → By Joe Cortright 4.10.2019
The Week Observed, August 30, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. 20 Reasons to ignore the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Report. It's back. After a four-year hiatus Texas A&M University's transportation institute trotted out... → By Joe Cortright 30.8.2019
The Week Observed, September 13, 2019 What City Observatory did this week 1. Beto O'Rourke brings a strong inclusive urbanist message to the Presidential contest. While its been great to see housing affordability and climate change grow in prominence on the... → By Joe Cortright 13.9.2019
Highway to Hell: Climate denial at the TRB The Transportation Research Board, nominally an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is engaged in technocratic climate arson with its call for further highway expansion and more car travel. The planet is in immin... → By Joe Cortright 15.12.2020
Highway to Hell: Climate denial at the TRB The Transportation Research Board, nominally an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is engaged in technocratic climate arson with its call for further highway expansion and more car travel. The planet is in immin... → By Joe Cortright 4.9.2019
Its back, and its still wrong: the Urban Mobility Report After a four year hiatus, the Texas Transportation Institute has once again generated its misleading Urban Mobility Report--and its still wrong. The UMR has been comprehensively debunked--it has never been peer-reviewed... → By Joe Cortright 22.8.2019
Devaluation of housing in black neighborhoods, Part 2: Appreciation Are home prices appreciating more or less in black neighborhoods? Is that a good thing? Today, in part 2 of our analysis of the home price gap between majority black and predominantly white neighborhoods we look at the ... → By Joe Cortright 24.7.2019
Portland’s food cart pod is dead, long live Portland’s food cart pods! How food carts illustrate the importance of dynamic change in cities. There's a tension in the city between the permanent (or seemingly permanent) and the fleeting, between the immutability of the built environment and ... → By Joe Cortright 19.8.2019
How gentrification benefits long-time residents of low income neighborhoods The new Philadelphia Fed study of gentrification is the best evidence yet that gentrification creates opportunity and promotes integration To many "gentrification" is intrinsically negative. When wealthier, whiter peopl... → By Joe Cortright 19.7.2019
Why homeownership is frequently a bad bet Home buying is a risky bet: There's a 30% chance your house will be worth less in five years It's a widely agreed that promoting homeownership is a key means to help American households build wealth. But as we and oth... → By Joe Cortright 15.7.2019
Why are US drivers killing so many pedestrians? US drivers are killing 50 percent more pedestrians, European drivers are killing a third fewer If anything else--a disease, terrorists, gun-wielding crazies--killed as many Americans as cars do, we'd regard it as a nati... → By Joe Cortright 27.6.2019
Has Falling Crime Invited Gentrification? – NYU Furman Center http://furmancenter.org/research/publication/has-falling-crime-invited-gentrification → By Joe Cortright 1.7.2019
The devaluation of black neighborhoods: Part 1. Lingering racism holds down property values in majority black neighborhoods For most American households, their home is their largest financial asset; how valuable that asset is, and whether it appreciates has a profoun... → By Joe Cortright 23.7.2019
It’s official: I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening is a boondoggle Frontier Group and USPIRG's annual report on highway boondoggles calls out the Oregon DOT's wasteful, ineffective I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project as a national level boondoggle. Portland is famous for making t... → By Joe Cortright 18.6.2019
Fruit and economics: Local goods Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences I pity you, dear reader. You likely have no idea what a real strawberry tastes like. Unless you spend the three weeks around ... → By Joe Cortright 23.6.2022
Fruit and economics: Riffing on Krugman Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences Friday night on Twitter, Paul Krugman waxed poetic about fruit and economic theory. Krugman is back from Europe, and thirsting for summe... → By Joe Cortright 10.6.2019
A solution for displacement: TIF for affordable housing The case for using tax increment financing for affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods The problem with gentrification is that rising property values may make it expensive or impossible for lower and moderate in... → By Joe Cortright 11.6.2019
Electric vehicle subsidies: Inefficient & Inequitable Subsidizing electric vehicle purchases is an expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, and mostly subsidizes rich households who would have bought electric vehicles anyhow There's a new study from the National Bureau of... → By Joe Cortright 5.6.2019
Another housing myth debunked: Neighborhood price effects of new apartments New research shows new apartments drive down rents in their immediate neighborhood, disproving the myth of "induced demand" for housing If you're a housing supply skeptic, there's one pet theory that you've been able to... → By Joe Cortright 4.6.2019
Who bikes? Workers in low income households rely more on bikes for commuting, but the data show people of all income levels cycle to work There's a lot of hand-wringing and harrumphing about the demographics of cycling. Some worry... → By Joe Cortright 28.5.2019
Will upzoning ease housing affordability problems? More housing supply denialism--debunked It appears that we have been a bit premature in calling the housing supply debate over. Last week's urbanist Internet was all a flutter with the latest claim of an academic study ... → By Joe Cortright 15.5.2019
Let’s have an honest discussion about the Rose Quarter freeway widening project Good decisions result only if state officials are transparent and honest City Observatory has been closely following the proposal to spend $500 million widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter in Portland. In the pr... → By Joe Cortright 23.4.2019
Our updated list from A to Z of everything that causes gentrification Gentrification: Here's your all-purpose list, from artists to zoning, of who and what's to blame We first published this list in 2019, but the search for scapegoats has expanded, and now includes little libraries and ... → By Joe Cortright 14.1.2020
Everything that causes gentrification, from A to Z Gentrification: Here's your all-purpose list, from artists to zoning, of who and what's to blame When bad things happen, we look around for someone to blame. And when it comes to gentrification, which is loosely def... → By Joe Cortright 16.4.2019
The case against the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening Portland is weighing whether to spend as much as $1.45 billion dollars widening a mile-long stretch of the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter near downtown. We've dug deeply into this idea at City Observatory, and we've publi... → By Joe Cortright 2.1.2023
25 reasons not to widen Portland freeways Portland is weighing whether to spend half a billion dollars widening a mile-long stretch of the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter near downtown. We've dug deeply into this idea at City Observatory, and we've published 25 co... → By Joe Cortright 3.4.2019
More Orwell from the Oregon Department of Transportation We have always been at war with Eastasia. Concealing and lying about key facts regarding the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway widening process is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and a betrayal of publi... → By Joe Cortright 2.4.2019
ODOT consultant: Pricing is a better fix for the Rose Quarter Oregon DOT's own consultants say congestion pricing would be a better way to fix congestion at the I-5 Rose Quarter than spending $800 million. Pricing would improve traffic flow and add capacity equal to another full l... → By Joe Cortright 27.4.2021
Congestion pricing is a better solution for the Rose Quarter Congestion pricing is a quicker, more effective and greener way to reduce congestion at the Rose Quarter than spending $500 million on freeway widening. Failing to advance pricing as an alternative in the environmental ... → By Joe Cortright 26.3.2019
Safety last: What we’ve learned from “improving” the I-5 freeway. Expanding freeway capacity on I-5 hasn’t reduced crashes in Woodburn, but did triple in cost Today, we’re pleased to offer a guest commentary from Naomi Fast. Naomi currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon. Previously, ... → By Joe Cortright 21.3.2019
The Lemming Model of Traffic Highway planners use a deeply flawed "lemming" model of traffic that rationalizes highway widenings The traffic projections made as part of the Environmental Assessment for the $500 million Rose Quarter I-5 widening pro... → By Joe Cortright 28.3.2019
Distorted images: Freeway widening is bad for pedestrians The proposed I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project creates a bike- and pedestrian-hostile environment The Oregon Department of Transportation has crafted distorted images that exaggerate pedestrian use by a factor o... → By Joe Cortright 14.3.2019
The Rose Quarter: ODOT’s Phony safety claims There's no evidence that widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter will reduce crashes. ODOT used a model that doesn't work for freeways with ramp-meters When ODOT widened I-5 lanes and shoulders near Victory Boul... → By Joe Cortright 11.3.2019
The Hidden Rose Quarter MegaFreeway ODOT is really building an 8-lane mega-freeway at the Rose Quarter You can tell from the tortured rhetoric about "auxiliary" lanes that the Oregon Department of Transportation is falling all over itself to make the free... → By Joe Cortright 13.3.2019
Traffic is declining at the Rose Quarter: ODOT growth projections are fiction ODOT's own traffic data shows that daily traffic (ADT) has been declining for 25 years, by -0.55 percent per year The ODOT modeling inexplicably predicts that traffic will suddenly start growing through 2045, growing by... → By Joe Cortright 22.12.2022
The black box: Hiding the facts about freeway widening State DOT officials have crafted an Supplemental Environmental Assessment that conceals more than it reveals The Rose Quarter traffic report contains no data on "average daily traffic" the most common measure of vehicle... → By Joe Cortright 28.11.2022
The black box: Hiding the facts about freeway widening `State DOT officials have crafted an Environmental Assessment that conceals more than it reveals In theory, the National Environmental Policy Act is all about disclosing facts. But in practice, that isn't always how it ... → By Joe Cortright 12.3.2019
Why do poor school kids have to clean up rich commuter’s pollution? The fundamental injustice of pollution from urban freeways Item: In the past two years, Portland Public Schools has spent nearly $12.5 million of its scarce funds to clean up the air at Harriet Tubman Middle School. ... → By Joe Cortright 6.3.2019
Orwellian freeway-widening What pretends to be an environmental assessment is actually a thinly-veiled marketing brochure In theory, an environmental impact statement is supposed to be a disclosure document. The idea behind the National Environme... → By Joe Cortright 5.3.2019
There’s a $3 billion bridge hidden in the Rose Quarter Project EA ODOT hid its plans to build a $3 billion Columbia River Crossing in the Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Environmental Assessment The carefully crafted marketing campaign for the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project i... → By Joe Cortright 27.3.2019
Why Portland shouldn’t be widening freeways Why Portland's freeway fight is so important to the future of cities everywhere The plan to widen the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway in Portland, at a cost of $500 million, is a tragic error for one city, and an object lesson... → By Joe Cortright 11.3.2019
Widening the I-5 Freeway will add millions of miles of vehicle travel We can calculate how much added freeway lanes will induce additional car travel The takeaway: the I-5 freeway widening project in Portland lead to 10 to 17 million more miles of vehicle travel annually, which will in ... → By Joe Cortright 4.3.2019
Freeway widening for whomst? There's a huge demographic divide between those who use freeways and neighbors who bear their costs When it comes time to evaluate the equity of freeway widening investments, it's important to understand that there are ... → By Joe Cortright 6.3.2019
Angie’s List: The problem isn’t ride hailing, it’s the lack of road pricing Streetsblogger extraordinaire Angie Schmidt is not happy with Uber and Lyft. They're not really the ones to blame. Are Uber and Lyft to blame for growing urban transportation problems? Streetsblog's Angie Schmit makes a... → By Joe Cortright 7.2.2019
Backfire: How widening freeways can make traffic congestion worse Widening I-5 in Portland apparently made traffic congestion worse Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) is proposing to spend half a billion dollars to add two lanes to Interstate 5 at the Rose Quarter in Portl... → By Joe Cortright 26.2.2019
Rose Quarter freeway widening won’t reduce congestion Spending half a billion dollars to widen a mile of I-5 will have exactly zero effect on daily congestion. The biggest transportation project moving forward in downtown Portland isn't something related to transit, or cyc... → By Joe Cortright 6.2.2019
More driving, more dying: Dangerous by Design, 2019 More driving and our car-oriented transportation system killed 50,000 pedestrians in the past decade Each year, Smart Growth America produces its annual report Dangerous by Design looking at pedestrian deaths and injuri... → By Joe Cortright 30.1.2019
Economists & Scientists agree: To save the planet, we have to price carbon One thing economists agree about: pricing carbon is essential to saving the planet; but if you don't believe economists, you ought to believe Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Economists are famous for disagreeing with one ano... → By Joe Cortright 30.7.2019
The high cost of low house prices Low house prices signify problems, not affordability There's a presumption that low housing prices are a sign of affordability, and a related belief that if housing prices rise, that its "a bad thing" because it must me... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2019
Housing: Missing Middle or Missing Massive? Gradually, more people and elected leaders are admitting that more housing density is needed if we're to tackle housing affordability, and provide equitable opportunities to live in great cities and neighborhoods. But l... → By Joe Cortright 27.2.2024
You’re going to need a bigger boat Eliminating exclusively single-family zones won't provide enough density: Recognizing the limits of "missing middle" as a solution to urban affordability At City Observatory, we're excited as anyone that there seems t... → By Joe Cortright 7.1.2019
No deal: Why a CRC revival is going nowhere Reviving the Columbia River Crossing will never happen: the two sides have incompatible aims There are continued rumblings in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area about reviving the abandoned plan to spend $3 bill... → By Joe Cortright 15.1.2019
Ten things more inequitable than road pricing Don't decry congestion pricing as inequitable until after you fix, or at least acknowledge, these ten other things that are even more inequitable about the way we pay for transportation. There's a growing interest in us... → By Joe Cortright 8.1.2019
How tax evasion fuels traffic congestion in Portland Tax free shopping in Oregon saves the typical Southwest Washington household $1,000 per year Cross border shopping accounts for 10-20 percent of all trips across the I-5 and I-205 bridges Tax avoidance means we're ... → By Joe Cortright 15.3.2019
A tool kit for value capture policies Harnessing the value of public assets to support the civic commons It's widely recognized that public assets, like parks, libraries and community centers, generate important and tangible benefits for their neighborhoods... → By Joe Cortright 12.12.2018
You can’t feel ’em, if you can’t see ’em We can't have empathy for those we can't encounter due to the way our cities are built Editor's Note: Last month, our friend Carol Coletta spoke to the Kinder Institute in Houston about the critical role that place play... → By Joe Cortright 14.11.2018
The long tail of the housing bust Adjusted for inflation, US home prices are still lower than in 2006 For most US households, the home they own is their biggest financial asset. After the housing bust of 2007, when collectively about $7 trillion in home... → By Joe Cortright 19.11.2018
Cities, talent and prosperity America's economy is increasingly driven by the concentration of talent in cities The Economic Innovation Group (aka EIG, a DC-based think tank) has been compiling some interesting data on the relative economic performa... → By Joe Cortright 22.10.2018
Get out! Why economic mobility might mean leaving home Part of the disparity in intergenerational economic mobility may stem from a willingness to leave home Raj Chetty, Nate Hendren and their colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity Project have crafted a rich picture of ... → By Joe Cortright 31.10.2018
The limits of job creation Whether at the neighborhood or metropolitan level, more job growth doesn't seem to improve economic mobility There's a seemingly un-questioned (and unquestionable) truth among economic development practitioners that mor... → By Joe Cortright 18.10.2018
Exit, Hope and Loyalty: The fate of neighborhoods How neighborhood stability hinges on expectations: If people don't believe things are going to get better, many will leave One of the most perplexing urban problems is neighborhood decline. Once healthy, middle-class ... → By Joe Cortright 20.5.2019
Does your neighborhood help kids succeed? The Opportunity Atlas: Stunning neighborhood maps of economic opportunity Some of the most important research findings of the past decade have come from the work of Raj Chetty and his colleagues at the Equality of Oppor... → By Joe Cortright 4.10.2018
Does new construction lead to displacement? A careful study of evictions in San Francisco says "No." There's a widespread belief among some neighborhood activists that building new housing triggers displacement. We-and most economists are highly skeptical of that... → By Joe Cortright 11.9.2018
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 4: Metropolitan context Part 4. Are racially and economically homogeneous cities and suburbs in a segregated metro "inclusive?" Looking only at disparities within cities misses the often far larger disparities across cities within in single m... → By Joe Cortright 20.9.2018
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 3: Annexing growth Part 3. Do annexations and mergers constitute economic growth? Not adjusting city job growth estimates for changes in city boundaries produces misleading estimates, especially when used for comparing and ranking cities.... → By Joe Cortright 19.9.2018
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 2: The limits of city limits Part 2. Are city boundaries the right way to measure inclusion? Municipal boundaries produce a myopic and distorted view of inclusion; the boundaries themselves were often drawn to create exclusion (Editor's note: Th... → By Joe Cortright 18.9.2018
The Urban Institute gets inclusion backwards, again The Urban Institute has released an updated set of estimates that purport to measure which US cities are the most inclusive. The report is conceptually flawed, and actually gets its conclusions backwards, classifying som... → By Joe Cortright 11.1.2021
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part I Inclusiveness is a worthy policy goal, but in practice turns out to be devilishly hard to measure. A recent report from the Urban Institute shows some of the pitfalls: looking just within city boundaries ignores metropoli... → By Joe Cortright 17.9.2018
Does increased housing supply improve affordability? Why a recent Fed study tells us very little about supply and affordability The takeaway: A recent Federal Reserve study which seems to show that building more housing won't improve affordability has little rel... → By Joe Cortright 29.8.2018
Is St. Louis Gentrifying? Gentrification Debates Without Gentrification? By Todd Swanstrom Editor's note: We're pleased to offer a guest commentary from Todd Swanstrom. Todd is the Des Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Pol... → By Joe Cortright 14.8.2018
Whither small towns? Wither small towns? Rural and small town America faces some tough odds In an article entitled: "How to save the Troubled American Heartland," Bloomberg's very smart Noah Smith shares his thoughts on how to revive the smaller towns of rural... → By Joe Cortright 15.8.2018
The limited allure of small towns A few knowledge workers decamp to rural America as they age, but cities are the key It's an oft-told tale: talented professionals grow weary of the stress and high cost of city-living, and decamp with their spouses, chi... → By Joe Cortright 25.7.2018
Race and economic polarization The growth of concentrated poverty has been fueled by the secession of successful African Americans David Rusk has summarized his research on race and economic polarization in a series of three commentaries on "The Grea... → By Joe Cortright 14.6.2021
More evidence of declining rents in Portland Zillows data shows Portland rents have dropped 3.5 percent in the past year A couple of weeks ago, we published the latest data from ApartmentList.com on the decline in rents in the Portland metropolitan area. Their b... → By Joe Cortright 7.8.2018
We disagree with the Washington Post about housing economics Contrary to what you think you may have read in last week's Washington Post, rental housing markets at all levels still conform to the laws of supply and demand Monday's Washington Post ran a provocative headline: "In e... → By Joe Cortright 13.8.2018
Portland rents are going down More supply is driving down rents in the Rose City According to Apartment List.com, rents for one bedroom apartments in Portland have declined 3 percent in the past year. It's a solid vindication of the standard predict... → By Joe Cortright 23.7.2018
Philadelphia’s urban policy harmonic convergence Philly's University City: The urban challenge in a nutshell The knowledge economy . . . tax breaks . . . NIMBYism . . . gentrification . . . Amazon's HQ2 . . . high speed rail . . . university economic development? Al... → By Joe Cortright 20.8.2018
Where we embrace socialism in the US: Parking Lots How we embrace socialism for car storage in the public right of way Florida Senator Marco Rubio has denounced President Biden's $3.5 trillion spending program as un-American socialism. Rubio claims: In the end, Ameri... → By Joe Cortright 30.9.2021
Parking: Where we embrace socialism in the US How we embrace socialism for car storage in the public right of way Comrades, rejoice: In the face of the counter-revolutionary neo-liberal onslaught, there's at least one arena where the people's inalienable rights r... → By Joe Cortright 17.7.2018
IoT: The Irrelevance of Thingies People and social interaction, not technology, is the key to the future of cities Smart city afficianado's are agog at the prospects that the Internet of Things will create vast new markets for technology that will disr... → By Joe Cortright 21.8.2018
The increasing centralization of urban economies: New York Prime working age adults are increasingly clustering in the center of the nation's largest metro area City Observatory has long been following the movement of people and jobs back to cities. Our inaugural study on the... → By Joe Cortright 4.6.2018
The persistence of residential segregation How slow growth and industrial decline perpetuate racial segregation As regular readers of City Observatory know, we think that the continuing racial and economic segregation of the nation's metropolitan areas is at the... → By Joe Cortright 5.6.2018
State government as an anchor industry Eds and Meds . . . and Capitol Domes? I recently participated as a part of an expert panel reviewed Sacramento’s economic development strategy. You can learn more about the city’s “Project Prosper” here. It ... → By Joe Cortright 21.5.2018
Cities as selection environments Being cheaper may not be an advantage at all in a dynamic, knowledge based economy It's axiomatic in the world of local economic development that the sure-fire way to stimulate growth is to make it as cheap and easy as ... → By Joe Cortright 7.5.2018
No exit from housing hell Distrust and empowering everyone to equally be a NIMBY is a recipe for perpetual housing problems The recent defeat of SB 827--California State Senator Scott Wiener's bill that would have legalized apartment constructio... → By Joe Cortright 3.5.2018
City as theme park There's no critique more cutting than saying that development is turning an urban neighborhood into a theme park. The irony of course, is that cities like Dubrovnik and Venice represent a profoundly obsolete, ... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2018
A critical look at suburban triumphalism The "body count" view of suburban population misses the value people attach to cities Lately, we've seen a barrage of comments suggesting that the era of the city is over, and that Americans, including young adults, are... → By Joe Cortright 12.4.2018
Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods Maps This page contains maps showing the nation's most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, and those with the highest levels of income mixing. for City Observatory's Diverse, Inclusive Neighborhood report. These we... → By Joe Cortright 23.3.2018
Inclusionary Zoning’s Wile E. Coyote moment You won't know that your inclusionary zoning program is wrecking the housing market until it's too late to fix. How lags and game theory monkey wrench inclusionary zoning. One of the toughest problems in economics an... → By Joe Cortright 13.5.2019
Moving the goalposts The key to being on-time and under-budget: Orwellian double-speak Oregon DOT projects are always on-time and under budget--because the agency simply disappears its original schedules and budgets. Delayed, half-fini... → By Joe Cortright 30.4.2024
Portland doesn’t really want to make housing affordable Actions speak louder than words; blocking new housing will drive up rents Nominally, at least, the Portland City Council is all about housing affordability. They've declared a housing emergency. In the last general el... → By Joe Cortright 12.3.2018
Housing reparations for Northeast Portland Attention freeway builders! Want to make up for dividing the community and destroying neighborhoods? How about replacing the homes you demolished? One of the carefully crafted talking points in the sales pitch for the $... → By Joe Cortright 16.4.2018
Barack Obama on Gentrification . . . we want more economic activity in this community, because that’s what creates opportunity and with more economic opportunity it does mean that there’s going to be more demand for all kinds of amenities in the com... → By Joe Cortright 6.3.2018
Cloaking a weak argument in big—but phony—numbers Journalists: Stop repeating phony congestion cost estimates. They're just weak arguments disguised with big numbers. This month The Economist has an excellent special report exploring the prospects for autonomous vehic... → By Joe Cortright 14.3.2018
Junk food America elected its president The states with the worst diets voted disproportionately for Donald Trump A powerful new study from uses big data to shine a powerful light on our eating habits. Using data from grocery store scanner records, Hunt All... → By Joe Cortright 5.3.2018
Road pricing for all vehicles, not just ride-hailed ones The problem isn't the ride-hailed vehicles, it's the under-priced street It really looks like we're on the cusp of a major change in transportation finance. Cities around the country are actively studying real time road... → By Joe Cortright 1.3.2018
Gentrification & integration in DC Gentrification is producing more diverse schools and growing enrollment In Washington DC, gentrification is producing higher levels of integration and increasing the total number of kids–black and white–attending sc... → By Joe Cortright 25.3.2018
What drives ride-hailing: Parking, Drinking, Flying, Peaking, Pricing Ride-hailing is growing: We distill a new report into 5 key factors that explain its growth A good reporter is always supposed to ask five questions: "who, what, when, where and why?" A new report on ride-hailing provid... → By Joe Cortright 19.2.2018
The emperor’s new infrastructure plan Politics and the President's wheeler-dealer background suggest the infrastructure plan is a mirage If there's been one shred of hope for bi-partisan progress in this politically polarized time, its been the idea that so... → By Joe Cortright 20.2.2018
The limits of localism Overselling localism is becoming an excuse to shed and shred federal responsibility Our friend, and director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, Amy Liu, weighs in with a timely commentary on the... → By Joe Cortright 10.9.2018
Qualms about the new localism: Cities need the national government to do its job well We like cities, but localism can only flourish with a competent, generous, fair federal government As our name City Observatory suggests, we're keen on cities. We believe they're the right frame for tackling many of o... → By Joe Cortright 5.2.2018
Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 2: The limits of ethnography City Observatory has long challenged the popular narrative about the nature and effects of gentrification. This is the second installment of a three-part commentary by our friend and colleague Alex Baca. You can read parts... → By Alex Baca 13.2.2018
Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 3: Cultural Displacement City Observatory has long challenged the popular narrative about the nature and effects of gentrification. Today, we are pleased to offer the final installment of a three-part commentary by our friend and colleague Alex Ba... → By Alex Baca 14.2.2018
Sprawl, stagnation, and NIMBYism: Animated maps of metro change A picture of metropolitan growth: Sprawl then, stagnation now. We're in awe of Issi Romem's prodigious data skills. Romem is the economist and big data guru BuildZoom, the web-based marketplace for construction profes... → By Joe Cortright 1.2.2018
2017 Year-in-review: More driving, more dying We're driving more, and more of us are dying on the roads. Four days before Christmas, on a Wednesday morning just after dawn, Elizabeth Meyers was crossing Sandy Boulevard in Portland, near 78th Avenue, just about a bl... → By Joe Cortright 16.1.2018
A modest proposal: Extend the Americans with Disabilities Act to highways Let's require that highways really be accessible to those who can't drive: State highway departments should provide bus service on state roads for the disabled The Americans with Disabilities Act was landmark legislat... → By Joe Cortright 29.7.2019
Cities continue to attract smart young adults The young and restless are continuing to move to the nation's large cities One trend that highlights the growing demand for city living is the increasing tendency of well-educated young adults to live in the close-in ur... → By Joe Cortright 2.1.2018
Diverging diamond blues A key design element of the supposedly pedestrian friendly Rose Quarter freeway cover is a pedestrian hostile diverging diamond interchange One of the main selling points of the plan to spend nearly half a billion dolla... → By Joe Cortright 19.12.2017
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
Is inequality over? After a long, slow recovery, wages are finally rising for the lowest-paid workers, but we're no where close to rectifying our inequality problem; in fact, it's going to get worse. The very smart Jed Kolko, who now write... → By Joe Cortright 8.12.2017
The great freeway cover-up Concrete covers are just a thinly-veiled gimmick for selling wider freeways As you've read at City Observatory, and elsewhere (CityLab, Portland Mercury, Willamette Week), Portland is in the midst of a great freeway war... → By Joe Cortright 13.12.2017
The death of Flint Street A proposed freeway widening project will tear out one of Portland's most used bike routes At City Observatory, were putting a local Portland-area proposed freeway widening project under a microscope, in part because we ... → By Joe Cortright 5.12.2017
Remember: There’s no such thing as a “Free” way Congestion pricing is a win-win strategy and the only way to truly reduce traffic congestion The urban transportation problem is a hardy perennial: no matter how many lanes we add to urban freeways, traffic congestion i... → By Joe Cortright 30.11.2017
Renters move up-market What to make of the high credit scores of new renters in some markets: alarm bell or success signal? RentCafe–one arm of Yardi Matrix, a real estate data and services firm–has a very interesting new data series on t... → By Joe Cortright 13.11.2017
Uber and Lyft: A dynamic duo(poly)? Will two firms produce enough effective competition to benefit consumers? The use ride-hailing services continues to grow in the US, and while there are a range competitors in some markets, like New York, in most places... → By Joe Cortright 20.11.2017
Kevin Bacon & musical chairs: How market rate housing increases affordability Building more market rate housing sets off a chain reaction supply increase that reaches low income neighborhoods Households moving into new market rate units move out of other, lower cost housing, making it available t... → By Joe Cortright 15.4.2019
The end of the housing supply debate (maybe) Slowly, the rhetorical battle is being won, as affordable housing advocates acknowledge more supply matters There's been a war of words about what kind of housing policies are needed to address the nation's affordabilit... → By Joe Cortright 8.11.2017
Using Yelp to track economic growth We review Yelp's new index for rating local economies: It's a good start For a long time, the only comprehensive and reliable means we've had of tracking and comparing economic activity across state and regional econo... → By Joe Cortright 15.11.2017
Winners and losers from rent control A new study of San Francisco's rent control shows it raises rents for some Rent control is a perennially contentious issue. Many housing activists see it as a logical and direct way to make housing more affordable. Econ... → By Joe Cortright 30.10.2017
Signs of the times "For Rent" signs are popping up all over Portland, signaling an easing of the housing crunch and foretelling falling rents A year ago, in the height of the political season in deep blue Portland (in a county which voted... → By Joe Cortright 26.10.2017
Metro economies pulling away nationally Unemployment rates are down in cities, especially for those with less education One of the trends we've been following at City Observatory has been the increasing shift of the driving forces of the nation's economy to l... → By Joe Cortright 5.10.2017
Portland’s Inclusionary Zoning Law: Waiting for the other shoe to drop Developers stampeded to get grandfathered before new requirements took hold, will the pipeline run dry? In December, Portland's City Council adopted one of the nation's most sweeping inclusionary zoning requirements. ... → By Joe Cortright 25.9.2017
Transportation equity, part 2: the Subaru and the Suburban Flat per vehicle registration fees charge lower rates to wealthier households with more road damaging vehicles The prospect of shifting from using a combination of vehicle registration fees, fuel taxes and general reven... → By Joe Cortright 3.10.2017
Transportation equity: Why peak period road pricing is fair Peak hour car commuters have incomes almost double those who travel by transit, bike and foot The Oregon Legislature has directed the state's department of transportation to come up with a value pricing system for inter... → By Joe Cortright 27.9.2017
Racial wealth disparities: How housing widens the gap The wealth of black families lags far behind whites, and housing markets play a key role There's a great article from The New York Times' Emily Badger about a new study that shows just how much Americans (especially wh... → By Joe Cortright 20.9.2017
Cities lead national income growth, again Average household income in cities is increasing twice as fast as in their suburbs Earlier this week, the Census Bureau released its latest estimates of national income based on the annual Current Population Survey. The... → By Joe Cortright 13.9.2017
Cognitive dissonance on the Potomac How can a city be named the first "LEED Platinum" city and be building freeways in its suburbs? Submitted for your approval: Two recent news items from our nation's capital. In the first, Washington DC proudly announc... → By Joe Cortright 7.9.2017
An affogato theory of transportation Coffee and ice cream and jam (or traffic jams) Just once, we are going to sugar-coat our commentary. [caption id="attachment_5029" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Affogato (1912Pike.com)[/caption] At City Observa... → By Joe Cortright 6.9.2018
Inequality in three charts: Piketty, the picket fence and Branko’s elephant Rising inequality in the US isn't new; Declining inequality globally is. Scratch just beneath the surface of many daily problems, and you'll find income inequality is a contributing factor, if not the chief culprit. W... → By Joe Cortright 28.8.2017
What Dallas, Houston, Louisville & Rochester can teach us about widening freeways: Don’t! Portland is thinking about widening freeways; other cities show that doesn't work Once upon a time, Portland held itself out as a national example of how to build cities that didn't revolve (so much) around the private ... → By Joe Cortright 23.8.2017
Uber’s Movement: A peek at ride-hailing data Uber's lifting the veil--just a little--to provide data on urban transportation performance Uber's new Movement tool provides valuable new source of data about travel times in urban environments. We've gotten an early l... → By Joe Cortright 30.8.2017
Housing Policy Lessons from Vienna, Part II Allowing multi-family housing in all residential zones, and aggressively promoting private bidding lowers housing costs We’re pleased to welcome a guest commentary from Mike Eliason of Seattle. Mike is a passivhaus de... → By Joe Cortright 24.7.2017
A Nobel Prize with a solution for climate change Let's put a price on using the atmosphere as a garbage dump for carbon Earlier this week, Yale economist William Nordhaus was announced as this year's co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics (along with Paul Romer,... → By Joe Cortright 10.10.2018
Climate Change: A 2-cent solution Let's put a price on using the atmosphere as a garbage dump for carbon It works for plastic bags; let's use the same idea for carbon Consider the plastic bag: It's a highly visible environmental problem, one that w... → By Joe Cortright 7.11.2019
Climate Change: A 2-cent solution Let's put a price on using the atmosphere as a garbage dump for carbon For almost six months, Chicago has been charging shoppers a 7 cent fee for using disposable plastic grocery bags. Rather than banning the bags outri... → By Joe Cortright 10.7.2017
Pity the poor Super Commuter About 2 percent of all car commuters travel 90 minutes to work, same as a decade ago. We've always been clear about our views on mega commuters, those traveling an hour and a half or more to work daily. As we said last ... → By Joe Cortright 28.6.2017
Prices Matter: Parking and Ride Hailing Pricing parking drives demand for ride hailing services Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft have been highly reluctant to share data about their services with cities. In California, the state Public Utilities Comm... → By Joe Cortright 27.6.2017
Sisyphus meets Bob the Builder Why traffic engineers really aren't interested in reducing traffic congestion We now know with a certainty that investments in additional highway capacity in dense urban environments simply trigger additional travel, wh... → By Joe Cortright 13.6.2018
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
Your college degree pays off more if you live in a city The more education you have, the bigger the payoff to living in a city It's a well-understood fact that education is a critical determinant of earnings. On average, the more education you've attained, the higher your le... → By Joe Cortright 11.1.2018
Cities and the returns to education The more education you have, the bigger the payoff to living in a city A recent Wall Street Journal article painted the nation's rural areas as its new inner cities, with high rates of poverty, limited economic opportun... → By Joe Cortright 30.5.2017
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
Just ahead: Road pricing? Trump's infrastructure package would let states pursue road pricing A trillion dollars for infrastructure. That's been the headline talking point for months about the Trump Administration's policy agenda, but the detail... → By Joe Cortright 25.5.2017
Back at the ranch What the ranch house teaches us about house prices and filtering. Back in the heyday of the post-war housing boom, back when the baby boomers were babies, America was building ranch houses–millions of them. In its pri... → By Joe Cortright 31.10.2017
Dirt cheap. Why we're very skeptical about urban farming. At City Observatory, we don't tend to have a lot of content about agriculture. Farming is not an urban activity. But every so often, we read techno-optimistic stories about ... → By Joe Cortright 22.5.2017
Let’s use a marketing campaign to solve traffic congestion Here's a thought: Let's fight traffic congestion using the same techniques DOT's use to promote safety. Let's have costumed superheroes weigh in against congestion, and spend billions on safety, instead of the other... → By Joe Cortright 6.10.2020
Hagiometry: Fawning flatterers with an economic model It's no longer fashionable to get an unrealistically flattering portrait painted, but you can get an economist to do it with numbers. You've no doubt heard the term "hagiography" an unduly flattering biography or other ... → By Joe Cortright 26.4.2017
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Widening Freeways Kills the Planet! Despite legal pledges to reduce greenhouse gases to address climate change, Portland's transportation greenhouse gas emissions are going up, not down. State, regional and city governments have adopted climate goals t... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2024
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Waste Billions Widening Freeways! If you're serious about dealing with climate change, the last thing you should do is spend billions widening freeways. The Oregon Department of Transportation is hell-bent on widening freeways and destroying the planet ... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2022
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Widen Some Freeways! If you're serious about dealing with climate change, the last thing you should do is spend billions widening freeways. April 22 is Earth Day, and to celebrate, Oregon is moving forward with plans to drop more than a bil... → By Joe Cortright 22.4.2018
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Widen Some Freeways! Four decades after the city earned national recognition for tearing out a downtown freeway, it gets ready to build more April 22 is Earth Day, and to celebrate, Oregon's Legislature is on the verge of considering a tran... → By Joe Cortright 20.4.2017
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
Key to prosperity: Talent in the “traded sector” of the economy "Traded sector" businesses that employ well-educated workers mark a prosperous region At City Observatory, we regularly stress the importance of education and skills to regional economic success. Statistically, we can e... → By Joe Cortright 10.5.2017
The pernicious myth of “naturally occurring” affordable housing Housing doesn't "occur naturally" Using zoning to preserve older, smaller homes doesn't protect affordability There's no such thing as "Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing"--older, smaller homes become affordable ... → By Joe Cortright 11.1.2024
The myth of naturally occurring affordable housing Block that metaphor! There's nothing "natural" about "naturally occurring affordable housing." There's a new term that's gaining currency in some housing policy circles: "naturally occurring affordable housing." It ev... → By Joe Cortright 10.10.2017
Has Portland’s rent fever broken? More evidence that supply and demand are at work in housing markets In early 2016, Portland experienced some of the highest levels of rent inflation of any market in the US. According to Zillow's rental price estimate... → By Joe Cortright 11.4.2017
New York City isn’t hollowing out; It’s growing You can't leave out births and deaths when you examine population trends The release of the latest census population estimates has produced a number of quick takes that say that cities are declining. The latest is Derek... → By Joe Cortright 6.4.2017
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
A teachable moment: Ben & Jerry’s seminar in transportation economics They'll be lined up around the block because the price is too low–just like every day on urban roads Your highway department is broke, and thinks it needs much bigger roads because it gives its produce away for free e... → By Joe Cortright 16.4.2024
Time for the annual Ben & Jerry’s seminar in transportation economics They'll be lined up around the block because the price is too low–just like every day on urban roads You can learn everything you need to know about transportation economics today, just by helping yourself to a free i... → By Joe Cortright 9.4.2019
The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics What one day of free ice cream teaches us about traffic congestion Today's that day, folks. Ben and Jerry are giving away free ice cream to everyone who comes by their stores. Whether you're hankering for Cherry Garcia ... → By Joe Cortright 4.4.2017
The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics They'll be lined up around the block because the price is too low–just like every day on urban roads Today's that day, folks. Ben and Jerry are giving away free ice cream to everyone who comes by their stores. Whether... → By Joe Cortright 10.4.2018
Carmaggedon does a no-show in Portland Once again, Carmaggedon doesn't materialize; Shutting down half of the I-5 Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River for a week barely caused a ripple in traffic It's a teachable moment if we pay attention: traffic ad... → By Joe Cortright 28.9.2020
Carmaggedon does a no-show in Seattle, again Once again, Carmaggedon doesn't materialize; this time when Seattle started asking motorists to pay a portion of the cost of their new highway tunnel Initial returns suggest that tolling reduced congestion by reducing t... → By Joe Cortright 12.11.2019
Why Carmaggedon never comes (Seattle edition) Why predicted gridlock almost never happens and what this teaches us about travel demand Seattle has finally closed its aging Alaskan Way viaduct, a six-lane double-decker freeway that since the 1940s has been a concret... → By Joe Cortright 16.1.2019
Carmaggedon stalks Atlanta Why predicted gridlock almost never happens and what this teaches us about travel demand It had all the trappings of a great disaster film: A spectacular blaze last week destroyed a several hundred foot-long sectio... → By Joe Cortright 3.4.2017
The High Cost of Segregation A new report from the Urban Institute shows the stark costs of economic and racial segregation Long-form white paper policy research reports are our stock in trade at City Observatory. We see dozens of them every month,... → By Joe Cortright 29.3.2017
Autonomous vehicles: Peaking, parking, profits & pricing 13 propositions about autonomous vehicles and urban transportation It looks more and more like autonomous vehicles will be a part of our urban transportation future. There's a lot of speculation about whether their effe... → By Joe Cortright 27.3.2017
Breaking Bad: Why breaking up big cities would hurt America New York Times columnist Russ Douthat got a lot of attention a few days ago for his Johnathan Swiftian column–"Break up the liberal city"–suggesting that we could solve the problems of lagging economic growth in rural ... → By Joe Cortright 28.3.2017
The hamster wheel school of transportation policy Going faster doesn't mean your city gets anywhere more quickly, and it doesn't make you happier One of the key metrics guiding transportation policy is speed: how quickly can you get from point A to point B. But is go... → By Joe Cortright 24.10.2017
Going faster doesn’t make you happier; you just drive farther Speed doesn't seem to be at all correlated to how happy we our with our local transportation systems. If there's one big complaint people seem to have about the transportation system its that they can't get from place... → By Joe Cortright 27.11.2018
Going faster doesn’t make you happier; you just drive farther Speed doesn't seem to be at all correlated to how happy we our with our local transportation systems. Yesterday, we presented some new estimates of the average speed of travel in different metropolitan areas developed... → By Joe Cortright 16.3.2017
Are restaurants dying, and taking city economies with them? Alan Ehrenhalt is alarmed. In his tony suburb of Clarendon, Virginia, several nice restaurants have closed. It seems like an ominous trend. Writing at Governing, he's warning of "The Limits of Cafe' Urbanism." Cafe Urbanis... → By Joe Cortright 14.3.2017
What Travis Kalanick’s meltdown tells us about Uber As has been well chronicled in the media, it's been a tough month for Uber. The company's CEO, Travis Kalanick was vilified in the press for the company's tolerance for sexual harassment of its female employees, and deride... → By Joe Cortright 2.3.2017
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
The implications of shrinking offices The amount of office space allotted to each worker is shrinking. What does that mean for cities? Last week a new report from real estate analytics firm REIS caught our eye. Called "The Shrinking Office Footprint" this w... → By Joe Cortright 6.3.2017
What we know about rent control Today, partly as a public service, we're going to dig into the academic literature on an arcane policy topic: rent control. We also have a parochial interest in the subject: the Oregon Legislature is considering legislatio... → By Joe Cortright 7.3.2017
Houston (Street), we have a problem. A lesson in the elasticity of demand, prices and urban congestion. It looks like Uber, Lyft and other ride sharing services are swamping the capacity of New York City streets Every day, we're being told, we're on the ve... → By Joe Cortright 28.2.2017
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
The Geography of Independent Bookstores Which cities have the strongest concentrations of independent bookstores? Last week, we explored what we called the "mystery in the bookstore." There's a kind of good news/bad news set of narratives about bookselling in... → By Joe Cortright 8.5.2017
What patents tell us about America’s most innovative cities Patents rates are a useful indicator of innovative activity The US is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based economy, and as a result, the markers of wealth are shifting from the kinds of tangible assets that character... → By Joe Cortright 3.5.2017
Visions of the City Part III: You don’t own me What kind of future do we want to live in? While that question gets asked by planners and futurists in an abstract and technical way, some of the most powerful and interesting conversations about our future aspirations are... → By Joe Cortright 9.2.2017
Envisioning the way we want to live in cities The biggest challenge for creating great cities is imagination, not technology There's a definite technological determinism to how we approach future cities. Some combination of sensors, 5G Internet, sophisticated compu... → By Joe Cortright 2.7.2018
Visions of the City Part II: A Perfect Day Yesterday we took a close look at Ford's vision for the future of cities. Our take: Ford's preferred narrative of the places we'll live is all about optimizing city life for vehicles. But is that the narrative that should ... → By Joe Cortright 8.2.2017
The enduring effect of education on regional economies One of the themes we stress at City Observatory is the large and growing importance of talent (the education and skills of the population) to determining regional and local economic success. As we shift more and more to a ... → By Joe Cortright 6.2.2017
Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and transortation greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant ... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2024
Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2023
Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2022
Again, it’s Groundhog’s Day, again Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2021
With climate change, it’s always Groundhog’s Day Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... → By Joe Cortright 30.1.2020
It’s Groundhog’s Day yet again, Oregon: How’s your climate change strategy working? Another year later, and we're still stuck with the same hypocrisy on climate change If it seems like you've read this post before at City Observatory, you're not wrong. For the past couple of years, every Groundhog's Da... → By Joe Cortright 31.1.2019
It’s Groundhog’s Day again, Oregon: How’s your climate change strategy working? A year later, and we're still stuck with the same hypocrisy on climate change The 1993 movie, Groundhog's day has been a cultural touchstone for the endless do-loop of futility. Bill Murray finds himself waking up every... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2018
Happy Groundhog’s Day, Oregon Climate change gets lip service, highways get billions. Like many states and cities, Oregon has been a leader in setting its own local goals for reducing greenhouse gases. In a law adopted in 2007, the state set the goa... → By Joe Cortright 2.2.2017
Happy Birthday America; Thanks Immigrants! We celebrate the fourth of July by remembering that a nation composed overwhelmingly of immigrants owes them a special debt. [caption id="attachment_4083" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Lighting the way to a stronger ... → By Joe Cortright 4.7.2019
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 countries—Iraq, 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. 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 buildings—three-flats—which are usually clus... → By Daniel Hertz 23.1.2017
Louisville’s experiment in transportation economics As we pointed out yesterday, there's some initial visual evidence–from peak hour traffic cameras–suggesting that Louisville's decision to toll its downtown freeway bridges but leave a parallel four-lane bridge un-toll... → By Joe Cortright 19.1.2017
Postcard from Louisville: Tolls Trump Traffic Tolls cut traffic levels on I-65 in half; So did we really need 6 more lanes? Last month, we wrote about Louisville's newly opened toll bridges across the Ohio River. As you may recall, Ohio and Indiana completed a ma... → By Joe Cortright 15.2.2017
The latest from the Louisville traffic experiment Even with the free alternative closed, traffic is very light on the new I-65 bridges Time for one of our periodic check-ins on our real world transportation pricing experiment in Louisville, Kentucky. As you recall, w... → By Joe Cortright 24.4.2017
Who pays the price of inclusionary zoning? Requiring inclusionary housing seems free, but could mean less money for schools and local services Last month, the Portland City Council voted 5-0 to adopt a sweeping new inclusionary housing requirement for new apartm... → By Joe Cortright 12.1.2017
Has Louisville figured out how to eliminate traffic congestion? Louisville is in the transportation world spotlight just now. It has formally opened two big new freeway bridges across the Ohio River, and also rebuilt its famous (or infamous) "spaghetti junction" interchange in downto... → By Joe Cortright 18.1.2017
Housing supply is catching up to demand As Noah Smith observed, economists invariably encounter monumental resistance to the proposition that increasing housing supply will do anything meaningful to address the problem of rising rents–especially because new un... → By Joe Cortright 11.1.2017
Pollyanna’s ride-sharing breakthrough A new study says ride-sharing apps cut cut traffic 85 percent. We're skeptical We've developed a calloused disregard for the uncritical techno-optimism that surrounds most media stories about self-driving cars and how f... → By Joe Cortright 5.1.2017
Beer and cities: A toast to 2017 Celebrating the new year, city-style, with a local brew Champagne may be the traditional beverage for ringing in the new year, but we suspect that a locally brewed ale may be the drink of choice for many urbanists today... → By Joe Cortright 2.1.2017
Our ten most popular posts of 2016 As 2016 draws to a close, we look back at our most popular commentaries of the year. Hear they are, in reverse order: #10. Introducing the sprawl tax #9. Urban myth busting: New rental housing and median income hou... → By Joe Cortright 29.12.2016
Denver backs away from inclusionary zoning At the top of most housing activist wish-lists is the idea that cities should adopt inclusionary housing requirements: when developers build new housing, they ought to be required to set-aside some portion of the units--... → By Joe Cortright 21.12.2016
Irony Squared: Inclusionary Zoning Edition Minneapolis is considering inclusionary zoning (IZ), but has qualms based on Portland's experience. Ironically, a non-existent Minneapolis IZ program was a key part of the argument for adopting Portland's IZ law in Decembe... → By Joe Cortright 26.2.2018
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. 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 “best food city.” 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
Urban Transportation’s Camel Problem There's a lot of glib talk about how technology--ranging from ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, to instrumented Smart Cities and, ultimately, autonomous vehicles--will fundamentally reshape urban transportation. We... → By Joe Cortright 12.12.2016
Does rent control work? Evidence from Berlin As housing affordability becomes an increasingly challenging and widespread problem in many US cities, there are growing calls for the imposition of rent control. While there's broad agreement among economists that rent ... → By Joe Cortright 28.11.2016
The growth of global neighborhoods As the US grows more diverse, so too do its urban neighborhoods. A new paper—“ Global Neighborhoods: Beyond the Multiethnic Metropolis”--published in Demography by Wenquan Zhang and John Logan traces out the chang... → By Joe Cortright 21.11.2016
Your guide to the debate over the Trump Infrastructure Plan There's a lot of ink being spilled -- or is it pixels rearranged? -- over the size, shape, merits and even existence of a Trump Administration infrastructure plan. Infrastructure was one of just a handful of substantive po... → By Joe Cortright 22.11.2016
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 we’re all eagerly awaiting the results of the vote, we thought we’d 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
Affordable Housing: Not just for a favored few As we all know, 2016 is the year that reality television made its way to the national political stage. Less well noticed is how another idea from reality television has insinuated its way into our thinking about housing po... → By Joe Cortright 2.11.2016
Lies, damn lies, and (on-line shopping) statistics. Here’s an eye-catching statistic: “people in the US buying more things online than in brick-and-mortar stores.” This appears in the lead of a story published this week by Next City. There’s one problem with this... → By Joe Cortright 27.10.2016
Cities and the price of parking What the price of parking shows us about urban transportation Yesterday, we rolled out our parking price index, showing the variation in parking prices among large US cities. Gleaning data from ParkMe, a web-based d... → By Joe Cortright 19.10.2016
The new mythology of rich cities and poor suburbs There’s a new narrative going around about place. Like so many narratives, it's based on a perceptible grain of truth, but then has a degree of exaggeration that the evidence can’t support. [caption id="attachment_3... → By Joe Cortright 20.10.2016
The most interesting neighborhood in the world Where are the most interesting streetscapes and popular destinations in your city? Even among your friends and colleagues, there might be some lively disagreement about that question. But recently, search giant Google weig... → By Joe Cortright 12.10.2016
The price of parking How much does it cost to park a car in different cities around the nation? Today, we're presenting some new data on a surprisingly under-measured aspect of cities and the cost of living: how much it costs to park a car... → By Joe Cortright 18.10.2016
Memo to Stockholm Next Monday, very early, before anyone in North America is out of bed, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the name of the 2016 Nobel Laureate in economic sciences. No doubt the decision has already long si... → By Joe Cortright 6.10.2016
Paul Romer is awarded the Economics Nobel Why the leading economist of innovation sees a central role for cities Two years ago, in 2016, we did our best to nudge the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to give the Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences to Paul Romer... → By Joe Cortright 9.10.2018
Are integrated neighborhoods stable? More American neighborhoods are becoming integrated–and 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
The price of autonomous cars: why it matters If you believe the soothsayers--including the CEO of Lyft--our cities will soon be home to swarms of autonomous vehicles that ferry us quietly, cleanly and safely to all of our urban destinations. The technology is develop... → By Joe Cortright 29.9.2016
What price for autonomous vehicles? It's easy to focus on technology, but pricing will determine autonomous vehicles impact. Everyone's trying hard to imagine what a future full of autonomous cars might look like. Sure, there are big questions about wheth... → By Joe Cortright 18.9.2017
How much will autonomous vehicles cost? Everyone's trying hard to imagine what a future full of autonomous cars might look like. Sure, there are big questions about whether a technology company or a conventional car company will succeed, whether the critical fac... → By Joe Cortright 28.9.2016
Cities are powering the rebound in national income growth Behind the big headlines about an national income rebound: thriving city economies are the driver. As economic headlines go, it was pretty dramatic and upbeat news: The US recorded an 5.2 percent increase in real hous... → By Joe Cortright 15.9.2016
Counting women entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship is both a key driver of economic activity and an essential path to economic opportunity for millions of Americans. For much of our history, entrepreneurship has been dominated by men. But in recent decades... → By Joe Cortright 6.9.2016
McMansions Fading Away? Just a few months ago we were being told--erroneously, in our view--that the McMansion was making a big comeback. Then, last week, there were a wave of stories lamenting the declining value of McMansions. Bloomberg publish... → By Joe Cortright 12.9.2016
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
Who patronizes small retailers? Urban developers regularly wax eloquent over the importance of local small businesses. But ultimately, businesses depend on customer support. So, in what markets do customers routinely support small businesses?... → By Joe Cortright 29.8.2016
The Economic Value of Walkability: New Evidence One of the hallmarks of great urban spaces is walkability--places with lots of destinations and points of interest in close proximity to one another, buzzing sidewalks, people to watch, interesting public spaces--all these... → By Joe Cortright 30.8.2016
More Driving, More Dying (2016 First Half Update) More grim statistics from the National Safety Council: The number of persons fatally injured in traffic crashes in the first half of 2016 grew by 9 percent. That means we're on track to see more than 38,000 persons die... → By Joe Cortright 25.8.2016
The Week Observed: Aug. 12, 2016 What City Observatory did this week 1. The national party platforms on transit. In November, most Americans will be choosing between a party whose platform offers the barest details and seemingly little understanding of ... → By Michael Andersen 12.8.2016
Back to school: Three charts that make the case for cities Its early September, and most of the the nation's students are (or shortly will be) back in the classroom. There may be a few key academic insights that are no longer top of mind due to the distractions of summer, so as go... → By Joe Cortright 7.9.2016
The Summer Driving Season & The High Price of Cheap Gas Cheaper gas comes at a high price: More driving, more dying, more pollution. We're at the peak of the summer driving season, and millions of Americans will be on the road. While gas prices are down from the highs of jus... → By Joe Cortright 15.8.2016
The Week Observed: Aug. 5, 2016 What City Observatory did this week 1. The case for more Ubers. From mobile phones to microchips, it's clear that even mega-companies must act in consumer interest when competition forces them to. When Uber and Lyft can p... → By Michael Andersen 5.8.2016
Reversed Polarity: Bay Area venture capital trends The greater San Francisco Bay area has been a hotbed of economic activity and technological change for decades, bringing us ground-breaking tech companies from Hewlett-Packard and Intel, to Apple and Google, to AirBNB and ... → By Joe Cortright 26.10.2016
The triumph of the City and the twilight of nerdistans This is a story about the triumph of the City—not “the city” that Ed Glaeser has written about in sweeping global and historic terms—but the triumph of a particular city: San Francisco. For decades, the San Fran... → By Joe Cortright 28.7.2016
Let a thousand Ubers bloom Why cities should promote robust competition in ride sharing markets We’re in the midst of an unfolding revolution in transportation technology, thanks to the advent of transportation network companies. By harnessing ch... → By Joe Cortright 1.8.2016
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 Urban—a 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
Equity and Parks Last week, our friend and colleague, Carol Coletta delivered a "master talk" to the 66th Annual Conference of the International Downtown Association. Carol is President & CEO, Memphis River Parks Partnership, and a ... → By Joe Cortright 14.10.2020
Why cities need to embrace change This is the text of a speech delivered in Detroit to the Congress for New Urbanism conference by Carol Coletta, a senior fellow at the Kresge Foundation's American Cities Practice. Could there be a more apt place to... → By Joe Cortright 8.10.2018
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. “Philadelphia’s Changing Neighborhoods” combines a careful, region-wid... → By Joe Cortright 3.6.2016
Schools and economic integration There’s a growing body of evidence that economic integration—avoiding the separation of rich and poor into distinct neighborhoods—is 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 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
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 neighborhoods—especially ... → By Daniel Hertz 10.5.2016
The rising tide of economic segregation Last week, we argued that the problem called “income segregation” 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 today—from Raj Chetty’s work on intergenerational economic mobility, to issues of concentrated poverty and gentrification—is framed in terms of economic segregation. Bu... → By Daniel Hertz 3.5.2016
Successful cities and the civic commons At City Observatory, we’ve been bullish on cities. There’s 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 Observatory’s major reports is “Lost in Place,” which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, you’ll 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 Observatory’s major reports is “Lost in Place,” which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, you’ll 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, you’ll sometimes hear people talk about a “daytime population”: 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 aren’t many economists whose research findings are routinely reported in the New York Times and Washington Post. But Raj Chetty—and his colleagues around the country—have a justly earned reputation for clearly ... → By Joe Cortright 13.4.2016
Why mixed-income neighborhoods matter: lifting kids out of poverty There’s 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 “sidewalk ballet” of people going about their daily errands, wandering along t... → By Joe Cortright 26.4.2016
What is an “unequal” city? Why does economic inequality—as opposed to just poverty—matter? 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
Mystery in the Bookstore Signs of a rebound in independent bookstores, but not in the statistics Lately, there've been a spate of stories pointing to a minor renaissance of the independent American bookstore. After decades of glum news and clos... → By Joe Cortright 1.5.2017
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 Friday’s 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 cities’ 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: “Katrina Washed Away New Orleans's Black Middle Class.” It's a provocative piece showing the sharp decline in the black population of... → By Joe Cortright 27.8.2015
Growing e-commerce means less urban traffic The takeaway: Urban truck traffic is flat to declining, even as Internet commerce has exploded. More e-commerce will result in greater efficiency and less urban traffic as delivery density increases We likely are o... → By Joe Cortright 25.8.2015
Are racial “tipping points” overblown? Why are America’s 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 difficulty of applying inequality measurements to cities Earlier this year, our friends at the Brookings Institution released a new tabulation of Census data on levels of inequality in the nation’s largest cities. Inequality, in this case, is measured by dividing the income of... → By Joe Cortright 30.7.2015
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
Show Your Work: Getting DOT Traffic Forecasts Out of the Black Box Traffic projections used to justify highway expansions are often wildly wrong The recent Wisconsin court case doesn’t substitute better models, but it does require DOTs to show their data and assumptions instead of ... → By Joe Cortright 3.6.2015
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 “must-read” 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. We’ve come increasingly to understand the role of social capital in the effective function of cities and urban economies. 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
More evidence of surging city job growth In February, we released our latest CityReport Surging City Center Job Growth, presenting evidence showing employment growing faster in the city centers of the nation's largest metros since 2007. Another set of analysts ha... → By Joe Cortright 2.4.2015
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 Racial Segregation Leads to Income Inequality Less Segregated Metro Areas Have Lower Black/White Income Disparities Income inequality in the United States has a profoundly racial dimension. As income inequality has increased, one feature of inequality has remained... → By Joe Cortright 3.8.2016
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
The Cappuccino Congestion Index April First falls on Saturday, and that's a good reason to revisit an old favorite, the Cappuccino Congestion Index We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue ... → By Joe Cortright 30.3.2017
The Cappuccino Congestion Index The Cappuccino Congestion Index shows how you can show how anything costs Americans billions and billions We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue up for any... → By Joe Cortright 31.3.2022
The Cappuccino Congestion Index The Cappuccino Congestion Index shows how you can show how anything costs Americans billions and billions We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue up for any... → By Joe Cortright 1.4.2021
The Cappuccino Congestion Index The Cappuccino Congestion Index shows how you can show how anything costs Americans billions and billions We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue up for any... → By Joe Cortright 2.4.2018
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, American’s drove 3.015 trillion miles, up about 1.7 pe... → By Joe Cortright 16.3.2015
The Cappuccino Congestion Index City Observatory, April 1. 2015 A new City Observatory analysis reveals a new and dangerous threat to the nation’s economic productivity: costly and growing coffee congestion. Yes, there’s another black fluid... → By Joe Cortright 31.3.2015
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
Has the Tide Turned? Last month, City Observatory released a new report—Surging City Center Job Growth—chronicling 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, 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
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. It’s 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 “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
The Perils of Conflating Gentrification and Displacement: A Longer and Wonkier Critique of Governing’s Gentrification Issue It’s telling that Governing calls gentrification the “g-word”—it’s 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
Florida’s 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 correlated—and that, if we are concerned with the ability of children today to obtain ‘The... → 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 people—from all walks of life—together in one place. 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 Here’s a quick quiz: 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 – be more productive, retain more young people, reduce poverty—how 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 nation’s 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 nation’s 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 “best food city.” 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? 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
Where are the food deserts? One of the nation’s biggest health problems is the challenge of obesity: since the early 1960s the number of American’s 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, 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
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 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
Understanding Your City’s Distinctiveness Through Occupational Data At City Observatory, we’ve 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. 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 It’s a glorious moment to be in the business of promoting the built environment. I use “built environment” to encompass the way we build our buildings, arrange our neighborhoods a... → By CityObservatory Guest 24.12.2014
Young and Restless The Young and Restless—25 to 34 year-olds with a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education—are increasingly moving to the close-in neighborhoods of the nation’s large metropolitan areas. This migration is ... → By Joe Cortright 19.10.2014
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 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
How distinct is your city? Every city has its own unique characteristics. We know that industrial and occupational specializations can be measured using standard economic tools like location quotients. But some of the more intangible characteristics... → By CityObservatory Guest 10.12.2014
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
Ten More you should read about Gentrification, Integration and Concentrated Poverty Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects. In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. 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, “Overall, 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. In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. Here we offer a baker’s dozen... → By Joe Cortright 4.12.2014
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 – #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 – #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
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 It’s a common movie trope – 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 “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
And the Talent Dividend Prize Winner is . . . Akron, Ohio! With a 20.2 percent increase in post-secondary degrees awarded over the past three years, Akron outpaced the 56 other metro areas entered in the Talent Dividend Prize contest. As the winner of the Talent D... → By Joe Cortright 29.10.2014
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
Young and Restless: How is your city doing? We just released our first CityReport looking at the "Young and Restless," detailing where young talent is going in the U.S.- and why it matters. (Download the report here.) Here we show how the nation's largest cities do ... → By CityObservatory Guest 20.10.2014
Talent & Prosperity Talent drives city success: The biggest single factor explaining urban economic success is human capital. → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
Housing Markets The creation and allocation of living space within a metropolitan area shapes our well-being and the regional economy. → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
Innovation & Entrepreneurship Generating new ideas and creating new businesses drives city economies and national economic growth. → 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
Distinctiveness Every city has its own unique character and strengths which shape its economic opportunities. → By CityObservatory Guest 14.10.2014
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
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
Search Results for: how will i know when to buy cheap airline tickets phone number 1-800-299-7264
Hiding the growing cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement
The cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) is going up: But we won't tell you how much . . . And we're not going to tell you until a year from now, after the 2025 Legislature adjourns In January, 2024, IBR o... →
Strawberries and economic prosperity
Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences I pity you, dear reader. You likely have no idea what a real strawberry tastes like. Unless you spend the three weeks around the Summe... →
Cargo Cult Comeback: Cost–$30 million a year
Portland's $30 Million Container Shipping Folly Cargo cults are a well-documented sociological phenomenon: Cargo cults were religious movements that emerged among indigenous people in Melanesia during the early to mid-... →
Oregon DOT can and should mitigate past damage from highways
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has proposed a $1.9 billion freeway widening project for Portland's Rose Quarter. The agency proposes to cover a portion of the freeway in what it calls "restorative justice... →
The Interstate Bridge Replacement is Two Years Behind Schedule
The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Project is two years behind schedule IBR's Draft SEIS was supposed to be complete in December 2022—It now won't be done before December 2024. This two-year delay means the environ... →
Bye Containers, Again
Once again, Portland loses container service: the economic effects will be minimal. Economic development has long been obsessed with "cargo cult" thinking: the idea that economic prosperity is caused by ports and hi... →
Another thing IBR doesn’t want you to know: 30 seconds over Portland
The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project will save the average commuter just 30 seconds in daily commute time IBR officially determined that "leaking" the project EIS would result in "negative public react... →
What IBR doesn’t want you to know
The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project is afraid of what you'll find out when they release their Environmental Impact Statement IBR officially determined that "leaking" the project EIS would result in "n... →
A yawning chasm: Patterns of neighborhood distress in US metros
There's a yawning chasm of neighborhood level economic distress across US metro areas. While about 1 in 6 US neighborhoods is classed as distressed, some metro areas have large concentrations of distress, while others ha... →
Freeway covers are an expensive way to create new urban land
Wouldn't it be nice if we could create valuable new urban land by decking over freeways? Turns out, its massively uneconomical, and doesn't eliminate many of the most negative effects of urban freeways Its massively ... →
Inventing a “commitment” to freeway cost overruns
How ODOT is trying to re-write history to create a commitment to freeway cost overruns. The 2017 Legislature authorized zero funding for the I-205 Bridge project In 2024, ODOT now falsely claims that the I-205 projec... →
Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study
There are good reasons to be dubious of claims that trucks are being over-charged for the use of Oregon roads. The imbalance between cars and trucks seems to stem largely from the Oregon Department of Transportation''s ... →
Bad data: Not a decline in travel
An imagined decline in trip-making is the result of bad data analysis USDOT counted fewer trips in 2022, because it used a different, and less reliable survey method USDOT's social media created a false perception th... →
Down is not up: The truth about traffic, congestion and trucking
A central message of the highway building sales pitch is that traffic is ever-growing and ever worsening, and that we have no choice but to throw more money at expanded capacity. The Oregon Department of Transportation ... →
Lying about climate: A 5 million mile a day discrepancy
Metro's Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) claims it will meet state and regional climate objectives by slashing vehicle travel more than 30 percent per person between now and 2045. Meanwhile, its transportation plan ac... →
Rose Quarter’s Killer Ramps
The proposed re-design of the I-5 Rose Quarter Project now includes two deadly hairpin freeway off-ramps. Just last week, Brandon Coleman was killed at a similar hairpin highway ramp in downtown Portland The Oregon... →
Doubling down on climate fraud in Metro’s RTP
Earlier, we branded Portland Metro's proposed Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) a climate fraud because in falsely claimed the region was reducing greenhouse gases, and falsely claimed its transportation investments were ... →
ODOT Snow Job: Give us more money, or we’ll stop plowing your roads
Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) says it doesn't have enough money to maintain roads, fix potholes or even plow snow. This is a Big Lie: Mega-projects and their cost-overruns, not maintenance, are the cause ... →
Exaggerated Benefits, Omitted Costs: The Interstate Bridge Boondoggle
A $7.5 billion highway boondoggle doesn't meet the basic test of cost-effectiveness The Interstate Bridge Project is a value-destroying proposition: it costs more to build than it provides in economic benefits Fede... →
Britain’s Caste System of Transportation
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proclaims the primacy of drivers "We are a nation of drivers" Those who don't own cars, or can't, or choose not to drive, are second class citizens The transportation culture war is f... →
Gentrification and Housing Supply
New York lost more than 100,000 homes due to the combination of smaller, more affordable apartments into larger, more luxurious homes When rich people can't buy new luxury housing, they buy up, and combine small apartme... →
The ten lane freeway hiding in Rose Quarter Plans
Secret ODOT plans obtained by City Observatory show ODOT is planning a ten-lane freeway through the Rose Quarter Though the agency claims its "just adding one auxiliary lane" in each direction, the I-5 Rose Quarter proj... →
Metro’s Climate-Denying Regional Transportation Plan
Portland Metro's Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) does nothing to prioritize projects and expenditures that reduce greenhouse gases Metro falsely asserts that because its overall plan will be on a path to reduce GHGs ... →
The climate fraud in Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan
Metro's Regional Transportation Plan rationalizes spending billions on freeway expansion by publishing false estimates and projections of greenhouse gas emissions Transportation is the number one source of greenhouse ga... →
Rose Quarter: So expensive because it’s too damn wide
The cost of the $1.9 billion Rose Quarter freeway is driven by its excessive width ODOT is proposing to more than double the width of the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway through the Albina neighborhood ODOT could easily str... →
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... →
ODOT’s I-205 Bridge: 1/10th of 1 Percent for Black Contractors
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged business enterprises One-tenth of one percent of I-205 contracts went to Black construction firms ODO... →
Who sold out the HAAB?
The members of ODOT's "Historic Albina Advisory Board" (HAAB) are hopping mad. As related by Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland, they feel board betrayed by a decision to postpone construction of the $1.6 billion I-5 Rose Qu... →
Testimony to the Oregon Transportation Commission
On June 28, 2023, City Observatory's Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Transportation Commission about the agency's dire financial situation. Background: The Oregon Department of Transportation is pushing a multi-... →
Scratch one flat top!
Oregon freeway fighters chalk up a key victory—but the fight continues On June 26, the Oregon Department of Transportation finally bowed to reality that it simply lacks the funds to pay for a seven-mile long widening ... →
What Cincinnati’s Brent Spence Bridge can tell Portland
There's plenty of time to fix the Interstate Bridge Project Contrary to claims made by OregonDOT and WSDOT officials, the federal government allows considerable flexibility in funding and re-designing, especially shrink... →
Bus on shoulder: Stalking horse for freeway widening
ODOT isn't giving buses the shoulder, it's giving transit the finger. IBR is planning a transitway for the new $7.5 billion interstate bridge that can't be used by buses. It's sketching in a "bus on shoulder" option ... →
Why can’t ODOT tell the truth?
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) can't tell the truth about the width of proposed $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project ODOT is more than doubling the width of the bridge from its existing 77 ... →
A blank check for the highway lobby: HB 2098-2
The HB 2098 "-2" amendments are perhaps the most fiscally irresponsible legislation ever to be considered by the Oregon Legislature. They constitute an open-ended promise by the Oregon Legislature to pay however much m... →
IBR’s plan to sabotage the moveable span option
IBR officials are planning to sabotage the analysis of a moveable span options as part of the Interstate Bridge Project The Coast Guard has said a replacement for the existing I-5 bridges would need a 178 foot navigatio... →
The Color of Money: Bailing out highways with flexible federal funds
ODOT grabs a billion dollars that could be used for bikes, pedestrians and transit, and allocates it to pay highway bills. Oregon highways are out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the cost of ... →
Houston’s I-45: Civil rights or repeated wrongs?
Editor's Note: For the past two year's the Federal Highway Administration has been investigating a civil rights complaint brought against the proposed I-45 freeway expansion project in Houston. This week, FHWA and TxDO... →
Why does a $500 million bridge replacement cost $7.5 billion?
The "bridge replacement" part of the Interstate Bridge Replacement only costs $500 million, according to new project documents So why is the overall project budget $7.5 billion? Short answer: This is really a massi... →
More induced travel denial
Highway advocates deny or minimize the science of induced travel Induced travel is a well established scientific fact: any increase in roadway capacity in a metropolitan area is likely to produce a proportional increa... →
The Case Against the Interstate Bridge Replacement
Here are our 16 top reasons Oregon and Washington need to re-think the proposed Interstate Bridge Replacement Project. The bloated size of the project and its $7.5 billion cost, and the availability of better alternative... →
What new computer renderings really show about the IBR
The Interstate Bridge Project has released—after years of delay—computer graphic renderings showing possible designs for a new I-5 bridge between Vancouver and Portland. But what they show is a project in real troubl... →
IBR floats new bridge design, proving critics right
For four years, the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been pushing a revival of the failed multi-billion dollar I-5 Columbia River Crossing. Their key sales pitch is that the size and design of the project c... →
Why should Oregonians subsidize suburban commuters from another state?
Oregon is being asked to pay for half of the cost of widening the I-5 Interstate Bridge. Eighty percent of daily commuters, and two-thirds of all traffic on the bridge are Washington residents. On average, these commut... →
CEVP: Non-existent cost controls for the $7.5 billion IBR project
Oregon DOT has a history of enormous cost overruns, and just told the Oregon and Washington Legislatures that the cost of the I-5 Bridge Replacement Program (IBR) had ballooned 54 percent, to as much as $7.5 billion. To... →
Another flawed Inrix Congestion Cost report
Sigh. Here we are again, another year, and yet another uninformative, and actively misleading congestion cost report from Inrix. More myth and misdirection from highly numerate charlatans. Burying the lede: Traffic... →
It looks like the Interstate Bridge Replacement could cost $9 billion
Just 13 months after raising the price of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project by more than 50 percent, the state DOTs ay it will cost even more We estimate project costs are likely to increase 20 percent or ... →
Blame inflation now: Lying about the latest IBR Cost Overrun
The price of the I-5 "bridge replacement" project just increased by more than 50 percent, from $4.8 billion to $7.5 billion ODOT and WSDOT are blaming "higher inflation" for IBR cost overruns As we've noted, the Oreg... →
Why won’t ODOT tell us how wide their freeway is?
After more than three years of public debate, ODOT still won't tell anyone how wide a freeway they're planning to build at the Rose Quarter ODOT's plans appear to provide for a 160-foot wide roadway, wide enough to acco... →
ODOT doesn’t care about covers, again
ODOT's Supplemental Environmental Analysis shows it has no plans for doing anything on its vaunted freeway covers It left the description of cover's post-construction use as "XXX facilities" in the final, official Suppl... →
Driving between Vancouver and Wilsonville at 5PM? ODOT plans to charge you $15
Under ODOT's toll plans, A driving from Wilsonville to Vancouver will cost you as much as $15, each-way, at the peak hour. Drive from Vancouver to a job in Wilsonville? Get ready to shell out as much as $30 per day. ... →
ODOT: Our I-5 Rose Quarter safety project will increase crashes
A newly revealed ODOT report shows the redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project will: creates a dangerous hairpin turn on the I-5 Southbound off-ramp increase crashes 13 percent violate the agency's own highw... →
The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve?
The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from a Interstate 5 Is ODOT's supposed "safety" project really creating a new "Deadman's Curve" at the Moda Center? Bike riders wi... →
Flat Earth Sophistry
The science of induced travel is well proven, but state DOTs are in utter denial Widening freeways not only fails to reduce congestion, it inevitably results in more vehicle travel and more pollution The Oregon Depar... →
The IBR project: Too much money for too many interchanges
The real expense of the $5 billion I-5 bridge replacement project isn't actually building a new bridge over the Columbia River: It's widening miles of freeway and rebuilding every intersection north and south of the rive... →
Pricing works better than spending $1.45 billion to fix I-5 traffic
A recently disclosed ODOT memo shows that congestion pricing would do a better job of fixing I-5 congestion than spending $1.45 billion widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter Congestion pricing would would be more... →
ODOT’s “Fix-it first” fraud
ODOT claims that its policy is "fix-it first" maintaining the highway system. But it is spending vastly less on maintenance and restoration than is needed to keep roads and bridges from deteriorating It blames the Le... →
A bridge too low . . . again
Ignoring the Coast Guard dooms the I-5 Bridge Project to yet another failure The Oregon and Washington DOTs have again designed a I-5 bridge that's too low for navigation In their rush to recycle the failed plans for... →
Oregon and Washington DOTs plan too low a bridge–again.
The Coast Guard has told Oregon and Washington that a new I-5 bridge must have a 178-foot vertical clearance for river navigation--vastly higher than the 116-foot clearance the state's have proposed A fixed span with th... →
ODOT’s Reign of Error: Chronic highway cost overruns
Nearly every major project undertaken by the Oregon Department of Transportation has ended up costing at least double its initial estimate As ODOT proposes a multi-billion dollar series of highway expansions, its estima... →
How ODOT & WSDOT are hiding real plans for a 10- or 12-lane I-5 Bridge Project
Ignore the false claims that the Oregon and Washington highway departments are making about the number of lanes on their proposed I-5 project: its footprint will be 164 feet—easily enough for a 10- or 12-lane roadway. ... →
Ten unanswered questions about the IBR Boondoggle
In the next month or two, regional leaders in Portland are going to be asked to approve the "modified locally preferred alternative" for the I-5 Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project, an intentionally misnamed, $5 billion, 5 mi... →
What are they hiding? Why highway builders won’t show their $7.5 billion freeway
Oregon and Washington are being asked to spend $7.5 billion on a giant bridge: Why won't anyone show pictures of what it would look like? The Oregon and Washington highway departments are using an old Robert Moses tri... →
Sprawl and Tax Evasion: Driving forces behind freeway widening
Sprawl and tax evasion are the real forces fueling the demand for wider freeways Highway widening advocates offer up a a kind of manifest destiny storyline: population and traffic are ever-increasing, and unless we ac... →
A Universal Basic income . . . for Cars
California is the first in the nation to establish a Universal Basic Income . . . for cars One of the most widely discussed alternatives for tackling poverty and inequality head-on is the idea of a "Universal Basic Inco... →
Flying blind: Why public leaders need an investment grade analysis
Portland and Oregon leaders shouldn't commit to a $5 billion project without an investment grade analysis (IGA) of toll revenues Not preparing an IGA exposes the state to huge financial risk: It will have to make up tol... →
Which metros are vulnerable to gas price hikes?
Green cities will be less hurt by higher gas prices; Sprawling cities are much more vulnerable to gas price hikes. In sprawling metros like Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Nashville and Oklahoma City, higher gas prices will c... →
A reporter’s guide to congestion cost studies
Reporters: read this before you write a "cost of congestion" story. Congestion cost studies are a classic example of pseudo-science: Big data and bad assumptions produce meaningless results Using this absurd meth... →
More Congestion Pseudo Science
A new study calculates that twenty percent of all time "lost" in travel is due to traffic lights Finally, proof for the Lachner Theorem: Traffic signals are a major cause of traffic delay Another classic example o... →
Freeway widening for whomst?
Widening freeways is no way to promote equity. The proposed $5 billion widening of I-5 between Portland and Vancouver is purportedly being undertaken with "an equity lens," but widening Portland's I-5 freeway serves high... →
Biased statistics: Woke-washing the I-5 Boondoggle
The Oregon and Washington transportation departments are using a biased, unscientific survey to market their $5 billion I-5 freeway widening project. The survey over-represents daily bridge users by a factor of 10 compa... →
The I-5 bridge “replacement” con
Oregon and Washington highway builders have re-branded the failed Columbia River Crossing as a "bridge replacement" project: It's not. Less than 30 percent of the cost of the nearly $5 billion project is actually for ... →
Portland: Don’t move or close schools to widen freeways
Adah Crandall is a sophomore at Grant High School. She is the co-lead of Portland Youth Climate Strike and an organizer with Sunrise PDX's Youth Vs ODOT campaign, a biweekly series of rallies fighting for the decarboniza... →
Transportation trends and disparities
If you aren't talking about our two-caste transportation system, you're not really addressing equity. Portland's regional government is looking forward at trends in the transportation system and their implications for e... →
Metro’s “Don’t Look Up” Climate Policy
Metro, Portland's regional government, says it has a plan to reduce transportation greenhouse gases But in the 8 years since adopting the plan, the agency hasn't bothered to look at data on GHGs—which have increased 2... →
ODOT’s forecasting double standard
Oregon's highway agency rigs its projections to maximize revenue and downplay its culpability for climate challenge ODOT has two different standards for forecasting: When it forecasts revenue, it says it will ignore a... →
Why the proposed $5 billion I-5 bridge is a climate disaster
The plan to spend $5 billion widening the I-5 Bridge Over the Columbia River would produce 100,000 additional metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, according to the induced travel calculator Metro's 2020 transporta... →
How to solve traffic congestion: A miracle in Louisville?
Louisville charges a cheap $1 to $2 toll for people driving across the Ohio River on I-65. After doubling the size of the I-65 bridges from six lanes to 12, tolls slashed traffic by half, from about 130,000 cars per... →
Louisville’s financial disaster: Deep in debt for road capacity that will never be used
Louisville's I-65 bridges: A huge under-used roadway and hundreds of millions in debt for their kids—who will also have to cope with a climate crisis. Their financial plan kicked the can down the road, saddling futu... →
The opposite of planning: Why Metro should stop I-5 Bridge con
Portland's Metro regional government would be committing planning malpractice and enabling lasting fiscal and environmental damage if it goes along with state highway department freeway widening plans The proposed $5 ... →
Oregon, Washington advance I-5 bridge based on outdated traffic projections
The Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation are advancing their $5 billion freeway widening plan based on outdated 15-year-old traffic projections. No new projections have been prepared since the 2007 estimates... →
Here’s what’s wrong with Oregon DOT’s Rose Quarter pollution claims
10 reasons not to believe phony DOT claims that widening highways reduces pollution We know that transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, and that our car dependent transportation syst... →
Climate efforts must be cost effective
Portland's $60 million a year clean energy fund needs climate accountability Any grant writer can spin a yarn that creates the illusion that a given project will have some sort of climate benefits, but if you're actuall... →
A net zero blind spot
Stanford claims its campus will be 100 percent solar powered . . . provided you ignore cars. A flashy news release caught our eye this week. Stanford University is reporting that its campus will be 100 percent powered... →
Insurance and the Cost of Living: Homeowners Insurance
Yesterday, we explored the differences in car insurance premiums in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Today, we will take a look at homeowners insurance rates. Unlike car insurance, homeowners insurance is not... →
Insurance and the Cost of Living: Auto Insurance
Everyone loves to compare the affordability of different cities, and most of the attention gets focused on differences in housing prices and rents. Clearly, these are a major component of living costs, and they vary su... →
BIB: The bad infrastructure bill
Four lamentations about a bad infrastructure bill From the standpoint of the climate crisis, the infrastructure bill that passed the Senate is, at a minimum, a tremendous blown opportunity. Transportation, especially ... →
To solve climate, we need electric cars—and a lot less driving
Electric vehicles will help, but we need to do much more to reduce driving Editor's Note: City Observatory is pleased to offer this guest commentary by Matthew Lewis. Matthew is Director of Communications for Califor... →
Burn, baby, burn: ODOT’s climate strategy
The Oregon Department of Transportation is in complete denial about climate change Oregon DOT has drafted a so-called "Climate Action Plan" that is merely perfunctory and performative busywork. The devastation of cli... →
Miami’s E-Scooters: Revisiting the Double Standard
In Miami, e-scooters pay four to 50 times as much to use the public roads as cars If we want to encourage greener, safer travel, we should align the prices we charge with our values Florida is home to some of the... →
The Bum’s Rush
The $800 million project transitions from "nothing has been decided" to "nothing can be changed" There's a kind of calculated phase-shift in the way transportation department's talk about major projects. For a long, l... →
How highways finally crushed Black Tulsa
Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood survived the 1921 race massacre, only to be ultimately destroyed by a more unrelenting foe: Interstate highways Black Tulsans quickly rebuilt Greenwood in the 1920s, and it flourished for ... →
Single-Family Zoning and Exclusion in L.A. County: Part 1
Single-family zoning, a policy that bans apartments, is widespread in Los Angeles County. The median city bans apartments on 80% of its land for housing. Cities with more widespread single-family zoning have higher medi... →
Single-Family Zoning and Exclusion in L.A. County: Part 2
Single-family zoning, a policy that bans apartments, is widespread in Los Angeles County. The median city bans apartments on 80% of its land for housing. Cities with more widespread single-family zoning have higher whit... →
State DOTs can and should build housing to mitigate highway impacts
If OregonDOT is serious about "restorative justice" it should mitigate highway damage by building housing Around the country, states are subsidizing affordable housing to mitigate the damage done by highway projects ... →
The real “I-5” project: $5 billion, 5 miles, $5 tolls
The intentionally misleading re-brand of the failed Columbia River Crossing conceals the key fact that it is a 12-lane wide, 5 mile long freeway that just happens to cross a river, not a "bridge replacement." It's vastl... →
Getting real about restorative justice in Albina
Drawings don't constitute restorative justice ODOT shows fancy drawings about what might be built, but isn't talking about actually paying to build anything Just building the housing shown in its diagrams would requi... →
The NIMBYs made $6 trillion last year
In 2021, US residential values increased by $6.9 trillion, almost entirely due to price appreciation Those gains went disproportionately to older, white, higher income households Capital gains on housing in 2021 were... →
Who got trillions? We found the real speculators profiting from higher housing costs
In 2020, US residential values increased by $2.2 trillion Those gains went disproportionately to older, white, higher income households Capital gains on housing in 2020 were more than three times larger than the tota... →
ODOT’s peer review panel admits it didn’t validate Rose Quarter travel forecasts
ODOT has claimed a "peer review panel" vindicated its air pollution analysis Now the panel says they didn't look into the accuracy of ODOT's travel forecast Travel forecasts are critical, because they determine air a... →
The freight fable: Moving trucks is not longer the key to economic prosperity
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair It's even harder to get a trucking industry lobbyist or a highway department booster to un... →
Driving stakes, selling bonds: ODOT’s freeway boondoggle plan
The Oregon Department of Transportation is launching a series of boondoggle freeways, with no idea of their ultimate cost, and issuing bonds that will obligate the public to pay for expensive and un-needed highways. Fut... →
Wholly Moses: Pave now, pay later
Oregon legislation goes whole hog on highways HB 3065 would launch a whole new round of freeway boondoggles, and plunge the state into debt to pay for them The classic Robert Moses scam: Drive stakes, sell bonds ... →
An open letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission
For years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has concealed its plans to build a ten lane freeway through Portland's Rose Quarter We're calling on the state to do a full environmental impact statement that assesses... →
Is the pandemic driving rents down? Or up?
Since Covid started, rents are down in some cities, but up in most "Superstar" cities have experienced the most notable declines; the demographics of renters in these cities are different than elsewhere. Rent decline... →
Taking Tubman: ODOT’s plan to build a freeway on school grounds
ODOT's proposed I-5 Rose Quarter project would turn a school yard into a freeway The widened I-5 freeway will make already unhealthy air even worse Pollution from high volume roads has been shown to lower student ac... →
Revealed: ODOT’s Secret Plans for a 10-Lane Rose Quarter Freeway
For years, ODOT has been planning to build a 10 lane freeway at the Rose Quarter, not the 6 lanes it has advertised. Three previously undisclosed files show ODOT is planning for a 160 foot wide roadway at Broadway-Weidl... →
Wile E. Coyote hits bottom: Portland’s inclusionary zoning
Portland's inclusionary zoning requirement is a slow-motion train-wreck; apartment permits are down by sixty percent in the City of Portland, while apartment permitting has more than doubled in the rest of the region In... →
Inclusionary Zoning: Portland’s Wile E. Coyote moment has arrived
Portland's inclusionary zoning requirement is a slow-motion train-wreck; apartment completions are down by two-thirds, and the development pipeline is drying up This will lead to slower housing supply growth and increas... →
The Fundamental, Global Law of Road Congestion
Studies from around the world have validated the existence of induced demand: each improvement to freeway capacity in urban areas generates more traffic. The best available science worldwide—in Europe, Japan and Nor... →
Oregon’s I-5 bridge costs just went up $150 million
Buried in an Oregon Department of Transportation presentation earlier this month is an acknowledgement that the I-5 bridge replacement "contribution" from Oregon will be as much as $1 billion—up from a maximum of $850 mi... →
Equitable Carbon Fee and Dividend
An equitable carbon fee and dividend should be set to a price level necessary to achieve GHG reduction goals; kicker payment should be set so 70% of people receive a net income after paying carbon tax or at least break eve... →
How ODOT destroyed Albina: The I-5 Meat Axe
Interstate 5 "Meat Axe" slashed through the Albina Neighborhood in 1962 This was the second of three acts by ODOT that destroyed housing and isolated Albina Building the I-5 freeway led to the demolition of housing ... →
How ODOT destroyed Albina: The untold story
I-5 wasn't the first highway that carved up Portland's historically black Albina Neighborhood. Seventy years ago, ODOT spent the equivalent of more than $80 million in today's dollars to cut the Albina neighborhood off ... →
How freeways kill cities
Freeways slash population in cities, and prompt growth in suburbs Within city centers, the closer your neighborhood was to the freeway, the more its population declined. In suburbs, the closer your neighborhood was t... →
Covid Migration: Temporary, young, economically insecure
There's relatively little migration in the wake of Covid-19 Most Covid-related migration is temporary, involves moving in with friends or relatives, and not leaving a metro area It's not professionals fleeing cities:... →
Albina Then and Now
Albina then and now Basically, Albina was wiped out by Interstate Ave 99E (ODOT) 1951 Memorial Coliseum (City) 1958 I-5 1962 Emmanuel Hospital (PDC) 1970s Blanchard Center (PPS) 1980 Convention Center 1990... →
How housing segregation reduces Black wealth
Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas There's a strong correlation between metropolitan segregation and black-white housing wealth dispari... →
America’s K-shaped housing market
Home prices are soaring, rents are falling The disparate impact of the recession on high income and low income households in driving the housing market in two directions at once. Job losses have been concentrated amo... →
Calculating induced demand at the Rose Quarter
Widening I-5 at the Rose Quarter in Portland will produce an addition 17.4 to 34.8 million miles of vehicle travel and 7.8 to 15.5 thousand tons of greenhouse gases per year. These estimates come from a customized cal... →
Congestion Pricing: ODOT is disobeying an order from Governor Brown
More than a year ago, Oregon Governor Kate Brown directed ODOT to "include a full review of congestion pricing" before deciding whether or not to do a full environmental impact statement for the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter... →
Why parking should pay its way instead of getting a free ride
Hartford Connecticut considers a pioneering move to make parking pay its way A higher parking tax works much like a "lite" version of land value taxation (LVT) Surface parking lots are highly subsidized polluters ... →
A regional green new deal for Portland
by Garlynn Woodsong Editor's note:City Observatory is pleased to publish this commentary by Garlynn Woodsong. Garlynn is the Managing Director of the planning consultancy Woodsong Associates, and has more than 20 years ... →
Portland carbon tax should apply to all big polluters
By all means, Portland should adopt its proposed healthy climate fee, a $25 ton carbon tax But make sure it applies to the biggest and fastest growing sources of greenhouse gases in the region The healthy climate fee... →
Building more housing lowers rents for everyone
A new study from Germany shows that added housing supply lowers rents across the board A 1 percent increase in housing is associated with a 0.4 to 0.7 percent decrease in rents Housing policy debates are tortured by ... →
The only reason some people drive is because we pay them to
Here's an insight from tolling: A substantial portion of the people driving on our roadways are only there because we're subsidizing the cost of their trip. When we charge a toll to use a road, suddenly many of those ... →
The truth about Oregon DOT’s Rose Quarter MegaFreeway
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) desperately wants to build a mega-freeway through NE Portland, and is planning to double the freeway from 4 lanes to 8 or 10 lanes. But it has hidden its true objective, by ... →
Phoenix: Climate Hypocrisy
You can't be a climate mayor—and your city can't be a climate city — if you're widening freeways Phoenix says it's going to reduce greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050, but the city's transportation greenhouse gases ... →
Why—and where—Metro’s $5 billion transportation bond measure failed
Portland voters resoundingly defeated a proposed multi-billion dollar payroll tax to pay for transportation projects The two areas slated for the biggest benefits voted against the measure: The Southwest Corridor and ... →
Frog Ferry: The slow boat to nowhere
A proposed Portland area ferry makes no economic or transportation sense. Why the Frog Ferry is a slow boat to nowhere A ferry between Vancouver and Portland would take 20 minutes longer than existing bus service ... →
Equity and Metro’s $5 Billion Transportation Bond
Advocates for a $5 billion transportation bond that Portland area voters will be deciding in November are making a specious argument about it being an equity measure. Its largest single project, a multi-billion dollar l... →
The Great Disconnect: The perverse rhetoric of gentrification
The Great Disconnect By Jason Segedy City Observatory is pleased to publish this guest commentary from Akron's Jason Segedy. It originally appeared on his blog. As this decade draws to a close, the story... →
Parking and equity in cities
The average price of a monthly parking permit in cities is $2.25, compared to $70.00 for a transit pass. Everything you need to know about equity and privilege in urban transportation is reflected in how much we charge ... →
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... →
City Beat: Another sketchy claim of Covid-driven urban flight
Again: It's anecdotes, not data that are fueling claims of an urban exodus due to Covid-19 The virus is now deadlier in the nation's rural areas than it is in cities, undercutting the basis for the urban flight theo... →
City Beat: No flight to Portland’s suburbs
Another anecdote-fueled, data-starved article repeats the "suburban flight" meme, this time for Portland. Actual market data show the central city's market remains strong Janet Eastman, writing in the Portland, Orego... →
Lived segregation in US cities
We're much less segregated during the day, and when we're away from home Commercial and public spaces are important venues for interaction with people from other racial/ethnic groups Patterns of experienced segregati... →
Why this Portland transit veteran is voting no on Metro’s bond
Editor's Note: City Observatory is pleased to present this guest commentary from GB Arrington, longtime veteran of Portland's transit and land use planning systems, explaining why he's against a proposed $5 billion transpo... →
More performative pedestrian infrastructure
Houston's "Energy Corridor" gets a pedestrian makeover, but just one thing seems to be missing. Bollards and better landscaping can't offset the increased danger from wider, faster slip lanes. Most "pedestrian" infra... →
The myth of pedestrian infrastructure in a world of cars
Big money "pedestrian" projects are often remedial and performative; their real purpose is to serve faster car traffic. One of the biggest lies in transportation planning is calling something "multi-modal." When someb... →
Is there anything “smart” about smart cities?
Big data and new technology make bold promises about solving urban problems, but not only fall well short of solutions, but actually can end up making things worse. Why we're skeptical of the "smart city" movement. Y... →
The case against Metro’s $5 billion transportation bond
Metro's proposed $5 billion transportation measure makes no sense for the region, for transportation, for our economy, for our kids and for our planet. Portland's regional government, Metro, will be asking voters in Nov... →
America’s least (and most) segregated metro areas: 2020
The latest Census data show that Black/White segregation is decreasing in large metro areas. Racial segregation still prevails in most American cities, but varies widely across the nation. Portland is one of America'... →
America’s least (and most) segregated cities.
Racial segregation still prevails in most American cities, but varies widely across the nation. Portland is the nation's least segregated large city. The murder of George Floyd by police has reignited national intere... →
Is it random, or is it Zumper?
Pay no attention to Zumper's claims about rent trends Zumper claims rents for one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments are moving in opposite directions in about a fifth of all markets There's a lot of hyperventilation... →
A world of fewer cars and less driving
Auto industry consultants KPMG see fewer cars and less driving in our future That may be bad for the car business, but good for the environment and cities One clear implication: hold off building new road capacity ... →
The amazing disappearing urban exodus
The greatest urban myth of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fear of density has triggered an exodus from cities. US Post Office data show that the supposed urban exodus was just a trickle, and Americans moved even less in ... →
The Exodus that never happened
The greatest urban myth of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fear of density has triggered an exodus from cities. The latest data show an increase in interest in dense urban locations. At City Observatory, we've regularl... →
The toxic flood of cars, not just the freeway, crushed Albina
Restorative Justice & A Viable Neighborhood What destroyed the Albina community? What will it take to restore it? It wasn't just the freeway, it was the onslaught of cars, that transformed Albina into a bleak a... →
“Let them drive Teslas” is not a climate or a justice plan
Portland's climate emergency efforts are tarnished by an inability to plainly speak the facts about climate change But the tragic fact is that the city is utterly failing to meet even its own previous goals, and more al... →
CityBeat: NPR’s suburban flight story
Yet another entry in the trumped-up pandemic-fueled suburban flight narrative Anecdotes aside, there's no data that people are fleeing cities to avoid the Coronavirus The data show young, well-educated adults moving ... →
What about reparations for people?
ODOT proudly spends road funds on mitigating the impact of its highways: if you're an invertebrate. The highway department mitigates noise pollution, rebuilds jails, and even compensates neighborhoods But if we rep... →
Dominos falling on Rose Quarter freeway widening
Last week, over the space of about 24 hours, the prospects for Portland's proposed the Rose Quarter freeway widening dimmed almost to extinction. Leaders of Portland's African-American community have concluded that the ... →
Portland awards itself a participation trophy for climate
Portland is utterly failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but not to worry, its ticking lots of boxes in its bureaucratic check-list. The city walks away from its 2015 Climate Action Plan after... →
Whitewashing the freeway widening
A so-called "peer review" panel was kept in the dark about critiques of the highway department's flawed projections This is a thinly veiled attempt These are the products of a hand-picked, spoon-fed group, asked by ODOT... →
Memo to the Governor: Recovering from Covid-19
Some advice on economic policy for states looking to rebound from the pandemic City Observatory's Joe Cortright has served as Chair of the Oregon Governor's Council of Economic Advisers under three Governors. The Coun... →
City Beat: Why Portland is not like NYC when it comes to Covid
Once again, there's a naive and unsubstantiated association between urbanism and the pandemic Portland and Multnomah County have some of the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases of any large metro area The big drivers of Cov... →
Is the pandemic worse in cities or suburbs?
Using county-level data, it depends on who's classification system you use Counties may not be the right basis for diagnosing the contributors to Covid. One of the oft-repeated claims in the pandemic is the notion th... →
City Beat: No evidence that people are fleeing to the suburbs
Today's misleading and incomplete take on cities: There isn't any evidence that people are fleeing cities for the suburbs; plus it wouldn't help them avoid the virus if they did. We've addressed the claim that t... →
Don’t make “equity” the enemy of improving cities for people
Invoking concerns about equity to block providing more street space for people is destructive A cautionary tale from Chicago, with some keen insight from Greg Shill. Let's begin by stipulating one thing: Ther... →
Oregon DOT: The master of three-card monte
The highway department's claims it doesn't have enough for maintenance are a long-running con You've all seen the classic street con three-card monte. All you have to do to double your money is follow one of three cards... →
What is urban?
Shape of the urban/suburban divide: Views differ There's a lot of debate about the relative merits and performance of cities and suburbs. You'll read that the migration to cities has come to a halt, that suburbs are g... →
The Covid Corridor: The pandemic is worst in the NE Corridor
The incidence of reported Covid-19 cases, and their daily growth is higher in the metros of NE corridor than the rest of the country. The Northeast Corridor has all four of the cities with the highest rate of newly repo... →
Regional Pandemic Hotspots: NE Corridor and Great Lakes
Originally published April 12; Revised and Corrected April 14 The Covid-19 pandemic is hitting two regions in the US much harder than others: The NE Corridor and the Great Lakes Metro areas in these regions have th... →
Who’s flattening the curve? Evidence from Seattle & San Jose
Seattle and San Jose had the first outbreaks of Covid-19 but now have the slowest rates of growth of any large US metro area Their progress seems closely related to the fact that they've cut back on travel more than nea... →
Staying at home: Estimates for large metro areas
How well are "stay at home" and "shelter in place" policies working in different metro areas? "Big data" from smartphones gives us a picture of how we're dialing back on travel in response to "stay-at-home" orders to co... →
Understanding the geography of Covid-19
What maps and charts can--and can't--tell us about the spread of the pandemic National dashboards now have county data We need to shift our focus to changes in rates of growth at smaller geographies South Korea ... →
Cities and coronavirus: Some thoughts
The Coronavirus pandemic is already worse in several American states than anywhere in China outside Hubei Province The pandemic is all about geography, and we need to do more to pinpoint hotspots and contagion The ve... →
Widening I-5 at the Rose Quarter will increase greenhouse gases
Adding more freeway capacity at the Rose Quarter will thousands of tons to the region's greenhouse gas emissions If you say you believe in science, and you take climate change seriously, you can't support spending $800... →
Anatomy of a rental marketplace
A new report from the DC Policy Center shows the inner-workings of the shadow rental market that is a key to housing affordability Too often, our debates about housing policy are shaped by inaccurate pictures of how the... →
Declining bus ridership is no mystery
We know what's responsible for declining bus ridership: Cheap gas And now, its about to get worse, thanks to $30 a barrel oil Prices matter. Last Friday's New York Times has a nice data-driven article by the pap... →
Cheaper gas: Bad for climate and safety
Gasoline prices will drop 50 cents per gallon in the next week or so, and cheap gas will fuel more bad results: more air pollution, more greenhouse gases and more road deaths Now is the perfect time to put a carbon tax ... →
Equity and Homelessness
What's equitable about spending six times as much per homeless person in the suburbs as in the city? The "equity" standard that's guiding the division of revenue for Metro's housing initiative is based on politics, not ... →
Mapping Walkable Density
Walkable density mapped for the nation's largest metropolitan areas by DW Rowlands Editor's Note: We're pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands. DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student at the U... →
Understanding Walkable Density
A new way of measuring urban density that explicitly considers walkability by DW Rowlands Editor's Note: We're pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands. DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student a... →
Fighting Climate Change is Inherently Equitable
Happy Earth Day, Everyone! If we care about equity, we need to make rapid progress on climate change Equity needs to be defined by substantive outcomes, not vacuous rhetoric and elaborate process. Ultimately equit... →
Lying about safety to sell freeway widening
ODOT's lies about safety at the Rose Quarter are so blatant they can be seen 400 miles away. Freeway widening isn't about deaths or injuries, but "motorist inconvenience" according to this safety expert, making this $80... →
Memo to the Oregon Transportation Commission: Don’t Dodge
Climate change? Not our job. We're just following orders. The Oregon Transportation Commission is on the firing line for its plans to build a $800 million I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project in Northeast Portlan... →
In the bag: Pricing works
Denver's new bag fee is another object lesson on how to use economics to achieve environmental objectives. Now do it for greenhouse gases Starting this month, you'll have to pay 10 cents for each disposable paper o... →
Bags, bottles and cans: Pricing works
Oregon's new mandatory bag fee harnesses market forces to promote environmental objectives Now do it for greenhouse gases On January 1, a new law went into effect in Oregon, which mostly bans single use plastic groce... →
Freeway deja vu all over again: The freeway builders ignore school kids
The Oregon Department of Transportation has a decades long-tradition of ignoring Portland Public Schools when it comes to freeway projects So here's our story so far. The Oregon Department of Transportation, ODOT, is ... →
Alexa: What is Cascadia Vision 2050?
A tech-centered vision of the future of the Pacific Northwest envisions creating a series of new urban centers 40 to 100 miles away from the region’s current largest cities—Seattle, Vancouver and Portland. The answ... →
Want more housing? Build a landlord.
If we're going to have a lot more missing middle housing; we're also going to have a lot more landlords Accessory dwellings, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes are suited to "mom-and-pop" landlords, but tough tenants ri... →
Climate crisis: Cities are the solution
A new report shows how cities are central to any strategy to fight climate change Cities have the "3 C's: Clean, compact, connected National government policies need to support cities Let's describe a low carbon f... →
Here’s what climate change denial looks like
Pretending that climate change can be solved by widening roads to keep cars from idling in traffic is dishonest and reprehensible, yet that's exactly what Portland's regional government is doing. A new poll in Portland ... →
Bartik: The verdict on business tax incentives
Political rationalizations and exceptionalism will always be used to justify giveaway policies With the possible exception of Greg LeRoy (who tracks state and local incentives for Good Jobs Now) and Amazon's site locati... →
Does walkability promote economic mobility?
A new study shows a tantalizing connection between more walkable places and intergenerational economic mobility City Observatory readers will be familiar with the findings of Raj Chetty and his colleagues in the Equalit... →
Reduced demand: Tolling or restricting cars reduces traffic
We have urban traffic congestion because we heavily subsidize people driving in cities. Reducing subsidies and lowering road capacity reduces traffic and congestion. Why are we building highway capacity for users wh... →
What if we regulated cars like we do houses?
What if we regulated new car ownership the same way we do new housing? A recent story about Singapore caught our eye: In Singapore, you can't even buy a car without a government issued "certificate"—and the number o... →
A modest proposal: An EIS for the DMV
Many states subject housing approval to environmental reporting requirements; what if we extended this same principle to car registrations. Back in the early days of the environmental movement--the late sixties and earl... →
Why economic diversification is a poor guide to local strategy
Too much economic development policy is based on a naive analogy to portfolio theory Cities looking to strengthen their economies should concentrate on building upon and extending current specializations One of the... →
A lack of nearby jobs doesn’t cause urban poverty
There's scarcely any evidence that proximity to jobs matters for escaping poverty. One of the most popular and persistent theories of urban poverty is that the poor are poor because they don't live particularly close to... →
Portland’s Climate Fail: More Driving
Carbon emissions from transportation in Portland increased 6 percent last year In the one are where city policy can make the most difference, greenhouse gas emissions are increasing Portland has long prided itself in... →
How Ecotopia is failing its biggest test
West Coast political leaders talk a good greenhouse gas game, but actions speak louder Throughout Ecotopia, carbon emissions are rising due to more driving, yet the region's leaders are throwing even more money at subsi... →
Inclusive urbanism comes to the presidential race
Beto O'Rourke brings a strong urbanist, inclusive message to the presidential campaign The 2020 Democratic presidential race has been remarkable for addressing both climate change and housing policy issues that have long ... →
Seeing red
We're killing more people because more people are ignoring traffic signals We've charted the ominous increase in road deaths in the past several years, and now there's a new bit of evidence of just how bad the problem h... →
The Week Observed, September 27, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. Why diversification is a simplistic, often flawed economic strategy. When it comes to personal investment everyone understands (or certainly should understand) the concept of portfol... →
The Week Observed, September 20, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. What super-commuters really mean. Media coverage of super-commuters--people who travel more than 90 minutes each way to and from work--is invariably sympathetic, treating these fol... →
2019: The Year Observed
What City Observatory did in 2019 We spent a lot of time this year addressing Portland's proposed half-billion dollar Rose Quarter freeway widening project. You may have thought Portland put its freeway fights behind it i... →
The Week Observed, January 10, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. 2019: The Year Observed. We take a look back at 2019 and review some of the most important City Observatory commentaries, interesting stories and valued research. Our most read pos... →
The Week Observed, January 24, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Remembering Dr. King. We were reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech about the pronounced tendency in public policy to prescribe socialism for the rich and rugged, free market ca... →
The Week Observed, January 12, 2024
What City Observatory did this week The pernicious myth of "Naturally Occurring" Affordable Housing. One of the most dangerous and misleading concepts in housing reared its ugly head in the form a a new publication from... →
The Week Observed, January 26, 2024
What City Observatory this week Robert Moses strikes again: One of the most infamous decisions of "The Power Broker" was to build the overpasses on the Long Island Expressway too low to allow city buses to use the roadw... →
The Week Observed, January 19, 2024
What City Observatory this week Why does it take four years and $200 million for consultants to serve up a warmed-over version of the Columbia River Crossing? The Interstate Bridge Replacement Project’s director admit... →
The Week Observed, January 15, 2024
What City Observatory this week 1. The Urban Institute gets inclusion backwards. The Urban Institute has released an updated set of estimates that purport to measure which US cities are the most inclusive. The report i... →
The Week Observed, January 22, 2021
What City Observatory this week Institutionalized housing discrimination. A recent study of housing discrimination in Detroit came to a seemingly surprising conclusion: Fair housing complaints were less likely to be fil... →
The Week Observed, January 29, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Why Portland's Rose Quarter Freeway widening will increase greenhouse gas emissions. The Oregon Department of Transportation hashas falsely claimed its $800 million freeway widening pr... →
The Week Observed, February 5, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Calculating induced travel. Widening freeways to reduce traffic congestion in dense urban areas inevitably fails because of the scientifically demonstrated problem of induced demand; som... →
The Week Observed, February 12, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. How housing segregation reduces Black wealth. Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas. There's a st... →
The Week Observed, February 19, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Covid migration: Disproportionately young, economically stressed and people of color. Data shows the moves prompted by Covid-19 are more reflective of economic distress for the vulne... →
The Week Observed, February 26, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Revealed: Oregon Department of Transportation's secret plans for a ten-lane I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter. For years, ODOT has been claiming that its $800 million freeway widening pr... →
The Week Observed, April 2, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. How the Oregon Department of Transportation destroyed a Portland neighborhood, Part 2: The Moses Meat Axe. We continue our historical look at the role that freeway construction (and ... →
The Week Observed, April 9, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. How ODOT destroyed Albina: Part 3 the Phantom Freeway. Even a freeway that never got built played a key role in demolishing part of Portland's Albina neighborhood. In parts 1 and 2... →
The Week Observed, April 16, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Taking Tubman: The Oregon Department of Transportation is planning to widen the Interstate 5 freeway in Portland into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School. The $800 million w... →
The Week Observed, April 30, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Restorative justice without funding is a sham. Portland's Albina neighborhood was decimated by the construction of three Oregon Department of Transportation highway projects in the 195... →
The Week Observed, April 23, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Fighting climate change is inherently equitable. While there's a growing recognition of the existential threat posed by climate change, it's becoming increasingly frequent to pit equity ... →
The Week Observed, May 7, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. It's not a bridge replacement, it's a 5 mile long, 12 lane wide freeway that just happens to cross a river. The Oregon and Washington highway departments are trying to revive the faile... →
The Week Observed, May 14, 2021
What City Observatory this week Don't be fooled again. The Oregon and Washington state highway departments are up to their old tricks in trying to push a multi-billion dollar highway building boondoggle in the POrtland ... →
The Week Observed, May 21, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Needed: A bolder, better building back. In response to an invitation from its authors, we take a look at a "grand bargain" proposed by Patrick Doherty and Chris Leinberger for breaki... →
The Week Observed, July 16, 2021
What City Observatory did this week An open letter to Secretary Pete Buttigieg on his visit to Oregon. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg came to Oregon this week to look at some local transportation innovations. ... →
The Week Observed, July 30, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Oregon Department of Transportation's Climate Fig-Leaf. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in Oregon, and the state's Department of Transportation is—yet again... →
The Week Observed, September 17, 2021
What City Observatory did this week The cost of Oregon DOT's Rose Quarter project has nearly tripled to $1.25 billion. Just four years ago, the Oregon Department of transportation sold its mile-and-a-half long I-5 freew... →
The Week Observed, September 10, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Talkin' 'bout my gentrification. Jerusalem Demsas of Vox has a thoughtful synthesis of what we know about gentrification. If we're concerned about poverty and inequality, gentrifi... →
The Week Observed, April 1, 2022
What City Observatory did this week The Cappuccino Congestion Index. Media reports regularly regurgitate the largely phony claims about how traffic congestion costs travelers untold billions of dollars in wasted time. ... →
The Week Observed, April 15, 2022
What City Observatory did this week A universal basic income . . . for cars. One of the most widely discussed alternatives for tackling poverty and inequality head on is the idea of a "Universal Basic Income"--a payment... →
The Week Observed, April 22, 2022
What City Observatory did this week How sprawl and tax evasion are driving demands for wider freeways. The Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation are proposing to spend roughly $5 billion to widen a 5 mile ... →
The Week Observed, April 29, 2022
What City Observatory did this week The folly of the frog ferry. One bane of transportation policy discussions is the tendency to believe that miracle technical fixes—self-driving cars, personal aircraft, the Segway, ... →
The Week Observed, May 6, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Ten questions that deserve answers before making a multi-billion dollar decision. The Portland metro area is being asked by the Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation to gi... →
The Week Observed, May 13, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Just Say "No" to freeway widening zealots. George Santayana meet David Bragdon: Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat the failures of the past. A year ago, we pu... →
The Week Observed, May 20, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Another exploding whale: The cost of the I-205 bridge project doubles in four years. Famously in the 1960s, the Oregon State Highway Department tried to dispose of the carcass of a wh... →
The Week Observed, June 10, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Oregon DOT's "reign of error"—chronic cost overruns on highway projects. The Oregon Department of Transportation is moving forward with a multi-billion dollar freeway expansion plan... →
The Week Observed, June 17, 2022
What City Observatory did this week There's nothing green about free parking, no matter how many solar panels you put on the garage. The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory brags about its sus... →
The Week Observed, June 24, 2022
What City Observatory did this week The economics of fruit, time, and place. It's berry time in Portland, and that got us thinking about how special local products are in defining quality of life. Recently, Paul Krugm... →
The Week Observed, July 1, 2022
Must read The most gas guzzling states. The sting of higher gas prices depends on where you live, not so much because of the variation in prices, but because in some states, you just have drive a lot more. The website Q... →
The Week Observed, July 15, 2022
What City Observatory did this week A Bridge too low. The Oregon DOT is fundamentally misrepresenting the process and legal standards for setting the height of a proposed new multi-billion dollar I-5 bridge across the C... →
The Week Observed, July 22, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Failing to learn from the failure of the Columbia River Crossing. Last week, Portland's Metro Council voted 6-1 to wave on the Oregon Department of Transportation's plan for a multi-b... →
The Week Observed, July 29, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Fix it Last. The Oregon Department of Transportation claims that it has a "Fix-it" first policy--prioritizing spending funds to preserve existing roads and bridges. But their actual... →
The Week Observed, November 18, 2022
What City Observatory did this week The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve? The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from Interstate 5. This supposed ... →
The Week Observed, November 11, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges. The Oregon and Washington highway departments are blundering ahead with a $5 billion plan to widen I-5 between Portland and Vancouver, and are making many of the same m... →
The Week Observed, February 3, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Groundhog's Day for Climate. So you think you're not Bill Murray in the classic "Groundhog's Day?" Oregonians, ask yourself: are we anywhere closer to seriously addressi... →
The Week Observed, January 27, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Driving stakes, selling bonds, overdosing on debt. The Oregon Department of Transportation is following a well trodden path to push the state toward a massive highway expans... →
The Week Observed, March 10, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Why does a $500 million bridge replacement cost $7.5 billion? For the past several years, the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been pushing for construction of somet... →
The Week Observed, March 17, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Why does a $500 million bridge cost $7.5 billion? For almost two decades the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been saying they want to replace the I-5 bridges over t... →
The Week Observed, March 23, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Oregon's transportation finance in crisis: Testimony to the Joint Ways and Means Committee. On March 16, City Observatory's Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Legislature's b... →
The Week Observed, March 31, 2023
What City Observatory did this week What are they hiding? Oregon and Washington are being asked to spend $7.5 billion on a giant bridge: Why won’t anyone show pictures of what it would look like? The Oregon ... →
The Week Observed, April 7, 2023
What City Observatory did this week IBR's plan to sabotage the "moveable span" alternative. The proposed $7.5 billion Portland area freeway widening project is supposedly looking at a moveable span option to avoid i... →
The Week Observed, April 14, 2023
What City Observatory did this week The case against the Interstate Bridge Project. We offer 16 reasons why Oregon and Washington lawmakers should question the current plans for the proposed $7.5 billion I-5 freeway... →
The Week Observed, June 30, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Scratch one flat top! That was the famous cry of US Naval aviators, when, early in World War II they chalked up their first victory, sinking the Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho. Por... →
The Week Observed, September 15, 2023
What City Observatory did this week This is what victory looks like. Freeway fighting is hard, drawn-out work. StateDOTs and their allies have vast funding for public relations campaigns to sell giant projects; citize... →
The Week Observed, October 6, 2023
What City Observatory did this week What if we regulated new car ownership the same way we do new housing? Getting a building permit for a new house is difficult, expensive, and in some places, simply impossible. In c... →
The Week Observed, October 20, 2023
Must Read Portland: Four Floors and Corner Stores--Upzoning for urban development and housing affordability. A coalition of community, enviornmental and social justice groups is advocating for a YIMBY strategy for mor... →
The Week Observed, October 13, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Britain's Caste system of transportation. In a cynical ploy to revive the Conservative Party's flagging electoral hopes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has engaged in some blatant pro-mot... →
The Week Observed, April 12, 2024
Must Read The high, high cost of "affordable housing." The Voice of San Diego takes a look at the pricetag of several affordable housing projects in California and finds they're pushing and breaking through the million-... →
The Week Observed, May 3, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week Beware of phony claims that highway projects are "On-time and Under-Budget." For highway departments, the key to being on-time and under-budget is Orwellian double-speak. Oregon ... →
The Week Observed, July 19, 2024
Must Read Denser cities = Less expensive infrastructure. A new study from New Zealand confirms one of the fundamental intuitions about cities: Places with higher levels of residential density have lower per capita and... →
The Week Observed, August 30, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week There's no evidence of a housing bubble. Strong Towns Chuck Marohn has a recent blog post proclaiming that the US housing market is the midst of another bubble, similar to 2008. But... →
The Week Observed, August 23, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week How Metro's RTP illegally favors driving and violates state climate rules. Oregon's planning rules require Portland area transportation plans to prioritize investments that reduce ve... →
The Week Observed, August 16, 2024
Must Read Portland advocates sue to block Rose Quarter Freeway widening. There's a new chapter in the long-running battle to block the Oregon Department of Transportation's I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project, a 1... →
The Week Observed, August 2, 2024
Must Read Induced Demand and Climate Denial. As we've long said, the favorite folk tale of state DOTs and highway boosters is the idea that the primary solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is lowering the amoun... →
The Week Observed, July 26, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week The cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) is going up: But we won't tell you how much . . . And we're not going to tell you until a year from now, after the 2025 Legislatur... →
The Week Observed, July 12, 2024
Must Read The problem with elevators in America. Market Urbanism's Stephen Smith has an op-ed in the New York Times opening up a new front in the YIMBY effort to expand housing supply in the US. Smith argues that th... →
The Week Observed, June 28, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week Unique Local Experiences: The Hidden Value in Urban Economies. An often-overlooked aspect of urban economics: the value of unique, local, and seasonal experiences. We take as an example... →
The Week Observed, June 21, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week Inventing a "commitment" to megaproject cost-overruns. Oregon's Department of Transportation is is trying to re-write history to create a commitment to unapproved freeway s and massi... →
The Week Observed, June 14, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week The Oregon Department of Transportation's (ODOT) Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project is facing significant delays of up to 18 months. The culprit? Flawed traffic model... →
The Week Observed, June 7, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week We grade the city clean energy scorecard. A new scorecard tires to measure how cities are promoting energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gases—a laudable goal. But the scorecar... →
The Week Observed, May 24, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week A costly cargo cult in Portland: A proposal to spend $30 million per year subsidizing the revival of container shipping operations at the Port of Portland is misguided effort based on... →
The Week Observed, May 17, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week The Oregon Department of Transportation can and should mitigate the negative impacts of its highway construction projects, including social and economic impacts. ODOT's massive $1.9 b... →
The Week Observed, May 10, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week Another Oregon Department of Transportation exploding whale.* The cost of one of OregonDOT's megaprojects, the expansion of the I-205 Abernethy Bridge over the Willamette River south ... →
The Week Observed, April 26, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week Earth Day: Oregon is spending billions to widen freeways in a move that will only worsen the increase in greenhouse gases from transportation. Transportation is the leading source of ... →
The Week Observed, April 19, 2024
What City Observatory Did This Week A teachable moment: Free Ice Cream Day. Traffic was lined up around the block last Tuesday at your local Ben and Jerry's, for the same reason roadways are clogged most weekday afterno... →
The Week Observed, April 5, 2024
What City Observatory did this week Thirty seconds over Portland: Spending $7.5 billion on a freeway widening project will save the typical affected commuter about 30 seconds a day, according to the Interstate Bridge Re... →
The Week Observed, March 29, 2024
What City Observatory did this week What the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project doesn't want you to know. The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project is afraid of what you’ll find out when they release ... →
The Week Observed, March 22, 2024
What City Observatory did this week The high cost of covering freeways. The latest fashion in highway urbanism is "capping" freeways. In theory, highway builders claim that capping freeways will repair past damage and... →
The Week Observed, March 15, 2024
What City Observatory did this week Abandoning road pricing monkey-wrenches state transportation, traffic reduction and climate plans. This week, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek terminated Oregon's Regional Mobility Pricing ... →
The Week Observed, March 8, 2024
What City Observatory did this week A yawning chasm in neighborhood distress among metro areas. Almost every metropolitan area has some neighborhoods that face serious economic distress, but the patterns of distress vary ... →
The Week Observed, March 1, 2024
What City Observatory Did this Week Is it time to address the problem of "Missing Massive" housing? This past week marked the latest convening of YIMBYTown, this year, held in Austin, Texas. One of the perennial topic... →
The Week Observed, February 16, 2024
Must Read The freeway cap mirage. Don't like freeways? Let's just cover up the problem. It's increasingly popular to try to repair the damage done to urban neighborhoods by "capping" freeways: building a cover so ... →
The Week Observed, February 9, 2024
What City Observatory did this week Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study. Some of the most important policy decisions are buried deep in seemingly technocratic documents. Case-in-point: Oregon's... →
The Week Observed, February 2, 2024
Must Read How CalTrans cheated on its environmental reporting. Some months back, former Deputy Director of CalTrans,Jeanie Ward-Waller blew the whistle on the agency's effort to evade environmental laws and illegally us... →
The Week Observed, January 5, 2024
What City Observatory did this week A $9 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project? Just 13 months after raising the price of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project by more than 50 percent, the Oregon and W... →
The Week Observed, December 22, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Bad data. What appears, at first glance, to be a big decline in trip-making is really an object lesson in failing to read the footnotes. Every five years or so, the US Department of... →
The Week Observed, December 15, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Exaggerated Benefits, Omitted Costs: The Interstate Bridge Boondoggle. A $7.5 billion highway boondoggle doesn’t meet the basic test of cost-effectiveness. The Interstate Bridge... →
The Week Observed, December 8, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Tolling i-5 will produce massive traffic diversion. The proposed I-5 Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project will be paid for in part by $2.80 to $4.30 tolls charged to travelers... →
The Week Observed, December 1, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Secret plans show ODOT is planning a 10-lane freeway in the Rose Quarter. City Observatory has obtained previously un-released plans showing that the $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter pro... →
The Week Observed, November 17, 2023
What City Observatory did this week 5 million miles wide of the mark.Portland's regional government Metro, has proposed a regional transportation plan (RTP) that purports to achieve state and regional policies to reduce g... →
The Week Observed, November 10, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Snow-Job: Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) threatens to slash snow-plowing and other safety maintenance unless it is given more money, while spending billions on a handful o... →
The Week Observed, November 3, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Killer off-ramps. The Oregon Department of Transportation's $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter widening has been repeatedly (and falsely) portrayed as a "safety" project, but the latest re... →
The Week Observed, October 27, 2023
What City Observatory did this week More climate fraud in Portland Metro's proposed regional transportation plan. We branded Metro's proposed Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) a climate fraud because in falsely claimed... →
The Week Observed, September 8, 2023
What City Observatory did this week What apartment consolidation in New York tells us about housing markets and gentrification. A new study shows that over the past several decades, New York City lost more than 100,000 ... →
The Week Observed, September 1, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Rose Quarter: Death throes of a bungled 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 do... →
The Week Observed, August 25, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Metro's Climate-Denial Regional Transportation Plan. Portland's regional governtment, Metro, has published a draft Regional Transportation Plan, outlining priorities for transportatio... →
The Week Observed, August 18, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Climate fraud in the Portland Metro RTP. Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan rationalizes spending billions on freeway expansion by publishing false estimates and projections of gr... →
The Week Observed, August 11, 2023
Must Read Some Texas-sized greenwashing for highway widening in Austin. TXDOT is aiming to spend close to $5 billion to widen I-35 through downtown Austin, and to sweeten the deal, they're producing project renderings s... →
The Week Observed, August 4, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Eating local: Why independent, local restaurants are a key indicator of city vitality. Jane Jacobs noted decades ago that“The greatest asset a city can have is something that is d... →
The Week Observed, July 28, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Myth-busting: Idling and greenhouse gas emissions. Highway boosters are fond of claiming that they can help fight climate change by widening highways so that cars don't have to spen... →
The Week Observed, July 21, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Few highway construction dollars for Black-owned firms in Oregon. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged bu... →
The Week Observed, July 14, 2023
What City Observatory did this week We have an in-depth series of reports on the Oregon Department of Transportation's imploding I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project. The cost of the I-5 Rose Quarter project has n... →
The Week Observed, July 7, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Yet another exploding whale: One of the Internet's most popular videos shows employees of the Oregon Department of Transportation blowing up a dead whale carcass stranded on an Ocean ... →
The Week Observed, June 23, 2023
What City Observatory did this week We took the week off to celebrate the Summer Solstice and gorge on Hood strawberries! We'll be back next week. Must Read The amazing non-appearance of Carmageddon. Echoing th... →
The Week Observed, June 16, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Carmageddon does a no-show in Philly. A tanker truck caught fire and the ensuing blaze caused a section of I-95 in Philadelphia to collapse. This key roadway may be out of commissio... →
The Week Observed, June 9, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Guest contributor Miriam Pinski observes that getting the prices right could produce dramatic improvements in how US transportation systems perform. New York is on the verge of implem... →
The Week Observed, June 2, 2023
What City Observatory did this week What computer renderings really show about the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project: It's in trouble. The Interstate Bridge Project has released—after years of delay—computer gra... →
The Week Observed, May 26, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Pricing is a better, cheaper fix for congestion at the I-5 Rose Quarter. The Oregon Department of Transportation is proposing to squander $1.45 billion to widen about a mile and a hal... →
The Week Observed, May 19, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Rose Quarter tolls: Available, but not foreseeable? There's a glaring--and illegal--contradiction in the planning for the Oregon Department of Transportation's $1.45 billion Rose Qu... →
The Week Observed, May 12, 2023
What City Observatory did this week There’s plenty of time to fix the Interstate Bridge Project. Contrary to claims made by OregonDOT and WSDOT officials, the federal government allows considerable flexibility in fundin... →
The Week Observed, May 5, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Why can't Oregon DOT tell the truth? Oregon legislators asked the state transportation department a simple question: How wide is the proposed $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacem... →
The Week Observed, April 21, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Why should Oregonians subsidize suburban commuters from another state? Oregon is being asked to pay for half of the cost of widening the I-5 Interstate Bridge. Eighty percent of daily c... →
The Week Observed, April 28, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Testifying on the Oregon Transportation Finance. City Observatory director Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Legislature on HB 2098, a bill being proposed to fund bloated free... →
The Week Observed, March 3, 2023
What City Observatory did this week More induced travel denial. Highway advocates deny or minimize the science of induced travel. We offer our rebuttal to a reason column posted at Planetizen, attempting to minimize... →
The Week Observed, February 24, 2023
What City Observatory did this week IBR admits its bridge is too steep. After 15 years of telling the region that the only feasible alternative for crossing the Columbia River was a pair of side-by-side double-decker br... →
The Week Observed, February 17, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Driving between Vancouver and Wilsonville at 5PM? ODOT plans to charge you $15. Under ODOT’s toll plans, A driving from Wilsonville to Vancouver will cost you as much as $15, each-w... →
The Week Observed, February 10, 2023
What City Observatory did this week CEVP: Non-existent cost controls for the $7.5 billion IBR project. Oregon DOT has a history of enormous cost overruns, and just told the Oregon and Washington Legislatures that the co... →
The Week Observed, January 20, 2023
What City Observatory did this week Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. We're reminded this year of Dr. Martin Luther King's observation that our cities, and the public p... →
The Week Observed, January 13, 2023
What City Observatory did this week A reporter's guide to congestion cost studies. For more than a decade, we and others have been taking a close, hard and critical look at congestion cost reports genera... →
The Week Observed, January 6, 2023
What City Observatory did this week The case against the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening. This week marked the end of public comment on the Supplemental Environmental Assessment for the Oregon Department of Tr... →
The Week Observed, December 16, 2022
Editor's Note: Public Comment on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Project Between now and January 4, 2023, the public will be asked to weigh in with its comments on the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project. ... →
The Week Observed, December 2, 2022
Editor's Note: Public Comment on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Project In the next month, the public will be asked to weigh in with its comments on the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project. If you're inte... →
The Week Observed, November 4, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges: If you're going to spend several billion dollars, you might want to get some independent expert advice. Oregon and Washington are on the verge of committing 5 billion d... →
The Week Observed, October 28, 2022
What City Observatory did this week A toll policy primer for Oregon. The Oregon Department of Transportation is proposing to finance billions in future road expansions with tolling. While we're enamored of road pricin... →
The Week Observed, October 21, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Using phony safety claims to sell a billion dollar freeway widening. This past week, Sarah Pliner, a promising young Portland chef was killed when she and her bike were crushed by a t... →
The Week Observed, October 14, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Two of the three candidates for Oregon Governor are Climate Deniers. Oregon will elect a new Governor next month, and two of the three candidates for the job insist on repeating the dis... →
The Week Observed, July 8, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Building a bridge too low--again. In their effort to try to revive the failed Columbia River Crossing (a $5 billion freeway widening project between Portland and Vancouver) the Oregon... →
The Week Observed, May 27, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Our apologies to City Observatory readers for our website outage on 19-22 May. More meaningless congestion pseudo science. A new study from the University of Maryland claims that... →
The Week Observed, March 4, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Oregon crosses the road-pricing Rubicon. Starting this spring, motorists will pay a $2 toll to drive Oregon's historical Columbia River Gorge Highway. Instead of widening t... →
The Week Observed, March 25, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Who's most vulnerable to high gas prices? Rising gas prices are a pain, but they hurt most if you live in a sprawling metro where you have to drive long distances to work, sho... →
The Week Observed, March 18, 2022
Must read The problem with the "reckless driver" narrative. Strong Towns Chuck Marohn eloquently points out the deflection and denial inherent in the emerging "reckless driver" explanation for increasing car crashes and... →
The Week Observed, March 11, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Freeway widening for whomst: Woke-washing the survey data. Highway builders are eager to cloak their road expansion projects in the rhetoric of equity and have become adep... →
The Week Observed, February 25, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Freeway widening for whomst? Woke-washing is all the rage among those pushing highway projects these days, and there's no better example that Portland's I-5 "bridge replacem... →
The Week Observed, January 7, 2022
What City Observatory did this week 1. Metro's failing climate strategy. Portland Metro’s Climate Smart Strategy, adopted in 2014, has been an abject failure. Portland area transportation greenhouse gasses a... →
The Week Observed, January 14, 2022
What City Observatory did this week What does equity mean when we have a caste-based transportation system? Transportation and planning debates around the country increasingly ponder how we rectify long-standin... →
The Week Observed, January 21, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Metro's "Don't look up" climate strategy. In the new film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play scientists who find that the nation's leaders simply refuse to take s... →
The Week Observed, January 28, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Why Portland shouldn't be moving elementary and middle schools to widen freeways. We're pleased to publish a guest commentary from Adah Crandall, a high school sophomore and... →
The Week Observed, February 4, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Climate and our Groundhog Day Doom Loop. It's Groundhog Day—again—and we're stuck in exactly the same place when it comes to climate policy. Scientists are regularly... →
The Week Observed, February 11, 2022
What City Observatory did this week The "replacement" bridge con. It's telling that perhaps the largest single consulting expense for Oregon and Washington transportation departments' efforts to revive the fai... →
The Week Observed, February 18, 2022
What City Observatory did this week Oregon's highway agency rigs its projections to maximize revenue and downplay its culpability for climate challenge. ODOT has two different standards for forecasting: When it... →
The Week Observed, December 17, 2021
What City Observatory did this week The financial fallout from Louisville's I-65 boondoggle. As we showed earlier, Kentucky and Indiana both wasted a billion dollars on doubling the capacity of I-65 across the... →
The Week Observed, December 10, 2021
What City Observatory did this week 1. ODOT's real climate strategy: Pollution as usual. Oregon's highway builders are keeping two sets of books, one claiming that it cares about climate issues, the other shows that i... →
The Week Observed, December 3, 2021
What City Observatory did this week How Portland powered Oregon's economic success. After decades of lagging the nation, Oregon's income now exceeds the national average. While some seem to think its a mystery: I... →
The Week Observed, November 19, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Why we shouldn't be whining about higher gas prices. Gas prices are going up, and it’s annoying to have to pay more, but let’s take a closer look at how much we’re paying for... →
The Week Observed, November 12, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Has this city discovered how to solve traffic congestion? Why aren't they telling everyone else how this works? A miracle in Louisville. [caption id="attachment_12554" al... →
The Week Observed, November 5, 2021
What City Observatory did this week The Opposite of Planning: Why Portland's Metro government needs to turn down the highway department request for more money to plan future freeway widenings. On paper, and to admirer... →
The Week Observed, October 22, 2021
What City Observatory did this week America's least and most segregated metro areas: Evidence from Census 2020. Racial segregation remains a chronic problem in US metropolitan areas. Data from Census 2020 provides a... →
The Week Observed, October 15, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Ten reasons you can't trust DOT claims that widening highways reduces pollution. Highway departments are fond of ginning up traffic projections and air quality analyses claiming... →
The Week Observed, September 24, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Freeway-widening grifters: Woke-washing, fraud and incompetence. The Oregon Department of Transportation has been trying to sell its $1.25 billion freeway widening project as a ... →
The Week Observed, September 3, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Portland's Clean Energy Fund needs accountability. Portland voters approved a ballot measure creating a $60 million annual fund to invest in community-based clean energy projects, par... →
The Week Observed, August 27, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Is the campus 100 percent clean energy? (Only if you don't count the cars and parking lots). Stanford University announced that its near to realizing a goal to move all of its campu... →
The Week Observed, August 20, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Cost of Living and Auto Insurance. We often compare the affordability of different cities with a clear focus on housing prices and rents. This week at City Observatory we are interest... →
The Week Observed, August 13, 2021
What City Observatory did this week 1. Tackling climate change will require electric cars, and a lot less driving. We're pleased to publish a guest commentary from CalYimby's Matthew Lewis looking at the challenge of ad... →
The Week Observed, August 6, 2021
What City Observatory did this week America's berry best cities. It's the height of the summer fruit season and berries are ripening across the country. Nothing beats a fresh local berry in season. We've ranked the na... →
The Week Observed, July 23, 2021
What City Observatory did this week Selling Oregon into highway bondage. Oregon is moving ahead with plans to issue hundreds of millions—and ultimately billions of dollars of debt to widen Portland-area freeways. An... →
The Week Observed, July 9, 2021
What City Observatory did this week 1. Miami's double standard for charging road users. The City of Miami is hoping to make their streets a safer place for bikes and scooters by building protected lanes along three mile... →
The Week Observed, July 2, 2021
What City Observatory did this week 1. The Texas Transportation Institute is back, and it's still wrong about traffic congestion. Every year or so, a group of researchers at Texas A&M University produce report purpo... →
The Week Observed, June 25, 2021
What City Observatory did this week 1. Cars kill city neighborhoods. Across the nation, America's cities have been remade to accomodate the automobile. Freeways have been widened through city neighborhoods, demolishin... →
The Week Observed, June 18, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Race and economic polarization. In the past several decades, racial segregation in the US has attenuated, but economic segregation has increased. This is nowhere more apparent than... →
The Week Observed, June 4, 2021
What City Observatory this week What ultimately destroyed Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood: Highways. This past week marked the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. In 1921, a racist mob attacked and destroyed the B... →
The Week Observed, May 28, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. Why highway departments can and should build housing to mitigate road damage. For decades, American cities have been scarred and neighborhoods destroyed by highway construction project... →
The Week Observed, March 26, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. How ODOT destroyed Albina. Urban freeways have been lethal to neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods of color, in cities throughout the nation. While the construction of Interstate ... →
The Week Observed, March 19, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. An open letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission. For more than two years, City Observatory and others have been shining a bright light on the Oregon Department of Transportation... →
The Week Observed, March 12, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. The failure of Vision Zero. Like many regions, the Portland metropolitan area has embraced the idea of Vision Zero; a strategy of planning to take concrete steps over time to reduce th... →
The Week Observed, March 5, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. The fundamental global law of traffic congestion. For years, urbanists have stressed the concept of induced demand, based on the nearly universal observation that widening urban roadwa... →
The Week Observed, January 8, 2021
What City Observatory this week 1. 2021 is when we have to get real about tackling climate change. We've boiled our analysis of the climate challenge down to four key points: Pledges alone won't accomplish anything... →
The Week Observed, March 6, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. The thickness of the blue line. Robert Putnam popularized the notion of social capital in his book "Bowling Alone," which he illustrated with a number of indicators of social interconnec... →
The Week Observed, March 13, 2020
What City Observatory this week Exploding whales and cost overruns. For years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has been pushing a mile-and-a-half long freeway widening project at Portland's Rose Quarter, telling t... →
The Week Observed, April 3, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Counting Covid- Cases in US Metro Areas. We've been updating our metro area tabulations of the number of reported Covid-19 cases on a daily basis. You can find our latest tabulations... →
The Week Observed, April 17, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Regional Patterns of Covid-19 Incidence. The pandemic has struck every corner of the nation, but has clearly hit some areas harder than others. We've focused on those metro areas, like... →
The Week Observed, April 24, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. What the Covid-19 Shutdown teaches us about freeways. Everyone knows that speeds are up on urban roadways around the nation because of the stay-at-home orders to fight the pandemic. But ... →
The Week Observed, June 12, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 rates are spiking in five cities. Stay-at-home policies and social distancing have dramatically slowed the spread of the pandemic in the US, but as many state's begin re-op... →
The Week Observed, June 19, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Youth Movement: Our latest CityReport. America's urban revival is being powered by the widespread and accelerating movement of well-educated young adults to the densest, most central... →
The Week Observed, September 25, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Why free parking is one of the most inequitable aspect of our transportation system. There's a lot of well-founded anger over the inequitable aspects of transportation: the burdens... →
The Week Observed, October 2, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Carmaggedon never comes, Portland edition. It's a favored myth that any reduction in road capacity will automatically trigger gridlock, and highway engineers regularly inveigh agains... →
The Week Observed, October 9, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Let's fight congestion with a PR campaign. For decades, when pressed to do something to improve road safety, city and state transportation officials have responded with . . . marketin... →
The Week Observed, October 16, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 is now worst in rural areas and red states. Early on in the pandemic, it seemed like everyone attributed the spread of the Coronavirus to big cities and density. It turns ou... →
The Week Observed, December 18, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Want lower rents? Build more housing! A new study from Germany provides more evidence that the fundamentals of economics are alive and well in the housing market. The study looks... →
The Week Observed, December 11, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. The only reason many people drive is because we pay them to. There's an important insight from recent applications of tolling to urban highways. When asked to pay even a modest amoun... →
The Week Observed, November 6, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Achieving equitable transportation: Reallocate road space and price car travel. New York has recorded a kind of "Miracle on 14th Street." By largely banning through car traffic, its ... →
The Week Observed, November 13, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Seven reasons you should be optimistic about cities in a post-pandemic world. There's widespread pessimism about the future of cities. With the pandemic-induced advent of work-at-hom... →
The Week Observed, November 30, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Gridlock Tuesday? The day after a nation celebrates its socially distanced "Zoom Thanksgiving" we'll look to see how the pandemic affects the traditional "... →
The Week Observed, October 23, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Now we are six. We marked City Observatory's sixth birthday this week, and took a few moments to reflect back on the journey, and to thank all those who helped us on our way, and to ... →
The Week Observed, October 30, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Equity and Metro's $5 billion transportation bond. This week, Portland residents are voting on a proposed $5 billion payroll tax/bond measure to fund a range of transportation projects.... →
The Week Observed, September 18, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Lived segregation in US cities. Our standard measure of urban segregation, whether people reside in different neighborhoods, doesn't really capture the way people from different raci... →
The Week Observed, September 11, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Manufacturing consent for highway widening. In the early days of freeway battles, state highway departments were power blind and tone-deaf, and citizen activists often triumphed in... →
The Week Observed, September 4, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Why most pedestrian infrastructure is really car infrastructure. One of the most misleading terms you'll hear in transportation is "multi-modal" which in practice means a highway for ca... →
The Week Observed, August 28, 2020
What City Observatory did this week The case against Metro's $5 billion transportation bond. Portland's regional government, Metro, is asking voters to approve a $5 billion package of transportation improvements, to be fu... →
The Week Observed, August 21, 2020
What City Observatory did this week America's most and least segregated cities. Residential racial segregation is a fundamental and persistent aspect of system racism in the United States. Segregation cuts of disfavored g... →
The Week Observed, August 7, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Is it random, or is it Zumper? Are rents going up or down in your city? Listicles showing which places have the biggest jumps (or declines) in rents are a perennial media favorite,... →
The Week Observed, July 31 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. The abject failure of Portland's Climate Action Plan. Last month, Portland issued the final report on its 2015 Climate Action Plan. It emphasizes that the city took action on three-q... →
The Week Observed, July 24 2020
What City Observatory did this week The exodus that never happened. You've probably seen stories bouncing around the media for the past few months claiming that fears that density makes people more susceptible to the pand... →
The Week Observed, July 17, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Dominos falling on Portland's Rose Quarter freeway widening project. In the space of just a few hours two weeks ago, local political support for an $800 million freeway widening project... →
The Week Observed, July 10, 2020
What City Observatory did this week CityBeat: NPR urban flight story. The pack animals of the media have settled on a single, oft-repeated narrative about cities and Covid-19; that fear of the virus will lead people to mo... →
The Week Observed, June 26, 2020
What City Observatory did this week When NIMBYs win, everyone loses. Two land use cases from different sides of the country are in the news this week. In both cases, local opponents of new housing development have succeed... →
The Week Observed, June 5, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 and Cities: An uneven pandemic. We've been following the progress of the Covid-19 virus in the nation's metropolitan areas for the past three months, and with the benefit ... →
The Week Observed, May 29, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. LA Covid correlates with overcrowding and poverty, not density. City Observatory is pleased to publish a guest analysis and commentary from Abundant Housing LA's Anthony Dedousis.... →
The Week Observed, May 22, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Postcards from the Edges: Looking at the relationship between density and the pandemic. There's a widely circulating meme associating urban density with the spread of the Covid-19 viru... →
The Week Observed, May 15, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. City Beat: We push back on a New York Times story claiming that people are decamping New York City on account of pandemic fears. You can always find an anecdote about someone lea... →
The Week Observed, May 1, 2020
What City Observatory this week Our updated analysis of the prevalence of Covid-19 in US metro areas. It continues to be the case that the pandemic is most severe in the Northeast Corridor. The New York Metro area is ... →
The Week Observed, April 10, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. What cities are showing us about the progression of the Covid-19 pandemic. In an important sense, each large US metro area is a separate test case of the path of the Covid-19 virus. By... →
The Week Observed, March 20, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Cheap gas means more pollution and more road deaths. Russia and Saudi Arabia have engineered a big decline in oil prices in the past few weeks, and as a result, US gas prices are now exp... →
The Week Observed, March 27, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. The Geography of Covid-19. A week ago, we issued a call to get much more granular with our statistical analysis of the pandemic's spread. In just the past few days, a number of new l... →
The Week Observed, February 28, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. The inequity built into Metro's proposed homeless strategy. Portland's Metro is rushing forward with a plan asking voters to approve $250 million per year in income taxes to fight homele... →
The Week Observed, February 21, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Local flavor: Which cities have the most independent restaurants. Local eateries are one of the most visibly distinctive elements of any city. As Jane Jacobs said, the most important... →
The Week Observed, February 7, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Talent drives economic development. We know the single most important factor determining metropolitan economic success: It's determined by the education level of your population. The l... →
The Week Observed, January 31, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. A massive regional transportation spending plan that does nothing for climate change. Portland's leaders are in the process of crafting a $3 billion plus regional transportation packag... →
The Week Observed, December 13, 2019
What City Observatory this week 1. Oregon DOT repeats its idle lie about emissions. It's every highway builder's go-to response to climate change: we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we could just keep cars from... →
The Week Observed, December 20, 2019
What City Observatory this week 1. Portland's progress (or lack thereof) on climate. Portland likes to present itself as a climate leader, but the latest data on transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions shows that ... →
The Week Observed, December 6, 2019
What City Observatory did the past couple of weeks 1. Using seismic scare stories to sell freeways. The Pacific Northwest is living on the edge; sometime (possibly tomorrow, possible several hundred years from now) we'll ... →
The Week Observed, November 22, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. No Deposit, No Return: Another lie to try and sell the $3 billion Columbia River Crossing. The state's of Oregon and Washington spent nearly $200 million planning the failed Columbia... →
The Week Observed, November 15, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. Copenhagen's cycling success hinges on tax policy and pricing, not just bike lanes. The New York Times offers up yet another postcard view of cycling in Copenhagen, where riding ... →
The Week Observed, November 8, 2019
What City Observatory did this week A two cent solution to climate change? Around the world, plastic bags are an environmental scourge, both in the form a litter (a nuisance) and as a threat to wildlife. In response, ma... →
The Week Observed, November 1, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. Tim Bartik explains business incentives. States and cities spend about $50 billion a year on tax breaks and other incentives to try to influence business location decisions. The na... →
The Week Observed, October 18, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. Our 5th Anniversary. October 17 marked 5 years since we started publishing our research and commentary at City Observatory. We reflect back on five years of work, and thank all tho... →
The Week Observed, October 11, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. Transportation for America won't be fooled again.. After years of getting rolled by the freeway lobby, it appears that T4America has finally said "Enough." Transit and active tra... →
The Week Observed, October 4, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. We debunk the Wall Street Journal's claim of an exodus of young adults from cities. Last week, the Wall Street Journal trumpeted an "exodus" of 25 to 39 year old adults from cities... →
The Week Observed, August 30, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. 20 Reasons to ignore the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Report. It's back. After a four-year hiatus Texas A&M University's transportation institute trotted out... →
The Week Observed, September 13, 2019
What City Observatory did this week 1. Beto O'Rourke brings a strong inclusive urbanist message to the Presidential contest. While its been great to see housing affordability and climate change grow in prominence on the... →
Highway to Hell: Climate denial at the TRB
The Transportation Research Board, nominally an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is engaged in technocratic climate arson with its call for further highway expansion and more car travel. The planet is in immin... →
Highway to Hell: Climate denial at the TRB
The Transportation Research Board, nominally an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is engaged in technocratic climate arson with its call for further highway expansion and more car travel. The planet is in immin... →
Its back, and its still wrong: the Urban Mobility Report
After a four year hiatus, the Texas Transportation Institute has once again generated its misleading Urban Mobility Report--and its still wrong. The UMR has been comprehensively debunked--it has never been peer-reviewed... →
Devaluation of housing in black neighborhoods, Part 2: Appreciation
Are home prices appreciating more or less in black neighborhoods? Is that a good thing? Today, in part 2 of our analysis of the home price gap between majority black and predominantly white neighborhoods we look at the ... →
Portland’s food cart pod is dead, long live Portland’s food cart pods!
How food carts illustrate the importance of dynamic change in cities. There's a tension in the city between the permanent (or seemingly permanent) and the fleeting, between the immutability of the built environment and ... →
How gentrification benefits long-time residents of low income neighborhoods
The new Philadelphia Fed study of gentrification is the best evidence yet that gentrification creates opportunity and promotes integration To many "gentrification" is intrinsically negative. When wealthier, whiter peopl... →
Why homeownership is frequently a bad bet
Home buying is a risky bet: There's a 30% chance your house will be worth less in five years It's a widely agreed that promoting homeownership is a key means to help American households build wealth. But as we and oth... →
Why are US drivers killing so many pedestrians?
US drivers are killing 50 percent more pedestrians, European drivers are killing a third fewer If anything else--a disease, terrorists, gun-wielding crazies--killed as many Americans as cars do, we'd regard it as a nati... →
Has Falling Crime Invited Gentrification? – NYU Furman Center
http://furmancenter.org/research/publication/has-falling-crime-invited-gentrification →
The devaluation of black neighborhoods: Part 1.
Lingering racism holds down property values in majority black neighborhoods For most American households, their home is their largest financial asset; how valuable that asset is, and whether it appreciates has a profoun... →
It’s official: I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening is a boondoggle
Frontier Group and USPIRG's annual report on highway boondoggles calls out the Oregon DOT's wasteful, ineffective I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project as a national level boondoggle. Portland is famous for making t... →
Fruit and economics: Local goods
Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences I pity you, dear reader. You likely have no idea what a real strawberry tastes like. Unless you spend the three weeks around ... →
Fruit and economics: Riffing on Krugman
Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences Friday night on Twitter, Paul Krugman waxed poetic about fruit and economic theory. Krugman is back from Europe, and thirsting for summe... →
A solution for displacement: TIF for affordable housing
The case for using tax increment financing for affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods The problem with gentrification is that rising property values may make it expensive or impossible for lower and moderate in... →
Electric vehicle subsidies: Inefficient & Inequitable
Subsidizing electric vehicle purchases is an expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, and mostly subsidizes rich households who would have bought electric vehicles anyhow There's a new study from the National Bureau of... →
Another housing myth debunked: Neighborhood price effects of new apartments
New research shows new apartments drive down rents in their immediate neighborhood, disproving the myth of "induced demand" for housing If you're a housing supply skeptic, there's one pet theory that you've been able to... →
Who bikes?
Workers in low income households rely more on bikes for commuting, but the data show people of all income levels cycle to work There's a lot of hand-wringing and harrumphing about the demographics of cycling. Some worry... →
Will upzoning ease housing affordability problems?
More housing supply denialism--debunked It appears that we have been a bit premature in calling the housing supply debate over. Last week's urbanist Internet was all a flutter with the latest claim of an academic study ... →
Let’s have an honest discussion about the Rose Quarter freeway widening project
Good decisions result only if state officials are transparent and honest City Observatory has been closely following the proposal to spend $500 million widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter in Portland. In the pr... →
Our updated list from A to Z of everything that causes gentrification
Gentrification: Here's your all-purpose list, from artists to zoning, of who and what's to blame We first published this list in 2019, but the search for scapegoats has expanded, and now includes little libraries and ... →
Everything that causes gentrification, from A to Z
Gentrification: Here's your all-purpose list, from artists to zoning, of who and what's to blame When bad things happen, we look around for someone to blame. And when it comes to gentrification, which is loosely def... →
The case against the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening
Portland is weighing whether to spend as much as $1.45 billion dollars widening a mile-long stretch of the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter near downtown. We've dug deeply into this idea at City Observatory, and we've publi... →
25 reasons not to widen Portland freeways
Portland is weighing whether to spend half a billion dollars widening a mile-long stretch of the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter near downtown. We've dug deeply into this idea at City Observatory, and we've published 25 co... →
More Orwell from the Oregon Department of Transportation
We have always been at war with Eastasia. Concealing and lying about key facts regarding the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway widening process is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and a betrayal of publi... →
ODOT consultant: Pricing is a better fix for the Rose Quarter
Oregon DOT's own consultants say congestion pricing would be a better way to fix congestion at the I-5 Rose Quarter than spending $800 million. Pricing would improve traffic flow and add capacity equal to another full l... →
Congestion pricing is a better solution for the Rose Quarter
Congestion pricing is a quicker, more effective and greener way to reduce congestion at the Rose Quarter than spending $500 million on freeway widening. Failing to advance pricing as an alternative in the environmental ... →
Safety last: What we’ve learned from “improving” the I-5 freeway.
Expanding freeway capacity on I-5 hasn’t reduced crashes in Woodburn, but did triple in cost Today, we’re pleased to offer a guest commentary from Naomi Fast. Naomi currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon. Previously, ... →
The Lemming Model of Traffic
Highway planners use a deeply flawed "lemming" model of traffic that rationalizes highway widenings The traffic projections made as part of the Environmental Assessment for the $500 million Rose Quarter I-5 widening pro... →
Distorted images: Freeway widening is bad for pedestrians
The proposed I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project creates a bike- and pedestrian-hostile environment The Oregon Department of Transportation has crafted distorted images that exaggerate pedestrian use by a factor o... →
The Rose Quarter: ODOT’s Phony safety claims
There's no evidence that widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter will reduce crashes. ODOT used a model that doesn't work for freeways with ramp-meters When ODOT widened I-5 lanes and shoulders near Victory Boul... →
The Hidden Rose Quarter MegaFreeway
ODOT is really building an 8-lane mega-freeway at the Rose Quarter You can tell from the tortured rhetoric about "auxiliary" lanes that the Oregon Department of Transportation is falling all over itself to make the free... →
Traffic is declining at the Rose Quarter: ODOT growth projections are fiction
ODOT's own traffic data shows that daily traffic (ADT) has been declining for 25 years, by -0.55 percent per year The ODOT modeling inexplicably predicts that traffic will suddenly start growing through 2045, growing by... →
The black box: Hiding the facts about freeway widening
State DOT officials have crafted an Supplemental Environmental Assessment that conceals more than it reveals The Rose Quarter traffic report contains no data on "average daily traffic" the most common measure of vehicle... →
The black box: Hiding the facts about freeway widening
`State DOT officials have crafted an Environmental Assessment that conceals more than it reveals In theory, the National Environmental Policy Act is all about disclosing facts. But in practice, that isn't always how it ... →
Why do poor school kids have to clean up rich commuter’s pollution?
The fundamental injustice of pollution from urban freeways Item: In the past two years, Portland Public Schools has spent nearly $12.5 million of its scarce funds to clean up the air at Harriet Tubman Middle School. ... →
Orwellian freeway-widening
What pretends to be an environmental assessment is actually a thinly-veiled marketing brochure In theory, an environmental impact statement is supposed to be a disclosure document. The idea behind the National Environme... →
There’s a $3 billion bridge hidden in the Rose Quarter Project EA
ODOT hid its plans to build a $3 billion Columbia River Crossing in the Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Environmental Assessment The carefully crafted marketing campaign for the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project i... →
Why Portland shouldn’t be widening freeways
Why Portland's freeway fight is so important to the future of cities everywhere The plan to widen the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway in Portland, at a cost of $500 million, is a tragic error for one city, and an object lesson... →
Widening the I-5 Freeway will add millions of miles of vehicle travel
We can calculate how much added freeway lanes will induce additional car travel The takeaway: the I-5 freeway widening project in Portland lead to 10 to 17 million more miles of vehicle travel annually, which will in ... →
Freeway widening for whomst?
There's a huge demographic divide between those who use freeways and neighbors who bear their costs When it comes time to evaluate the equity of freeway widening investments, it's important to understand that there are ... →
Angie’s List: The problem isn’t ride hailing, it’s the lack of road pricing
Streetsblogger extraordinaire Angie Schmidt is not happy with Uber and Lyft. They're not really the ones to blame. Are Uber and Lyft to blame for growing urban transportation problems? Streetsblog's Angie Schmit makes a... →
Backfire: How widening freeways can make traffic congestion worse
Widening I-5 in Portland apparently made traffic congestion worse Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) is proposing to spend half a billion dollars to add two lanes to Interstate 5 at the Rose Quarter in Portl... →
Rose Quarter freeway widening won’t reduce congestion
Spending half a billion dollars to widen a mile of I-5 will have exactly zero effect on daily congestion. The biggest transportation project moving forward in downtown Portland isn't something related to transit, or cyc... →
More driving, more dying: Dangerous by Design, 2019
More driving and our car-oriented transportation system killed 50,000 pedestrians in the past decade Each year, Smart Growth America produces its annual report Dangerous by Design looking at pedestrian deaths and injuri... →
Economists & Scientists agree: To save the planet, we have to price carbon
One thing economists agree about: pricing carbon is essential to saving the planet; but if you don't believe economists, you ought to believe Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Economists are famous for disagreeing with one ano... →
The high cost of low house prices
Low house prices signify problems, not affordability There's a presumption that low housing prices are a sign of affordability, and a related belief that if housing prices rise, that its "a bad thing" because it must me... →
Housing: Missing Middle or Missing Massive?
Gradually, more people and elected leaders are admitting that more housing density is needed if we're to tackle housing affordability, and provide equitable opportunities to live in great cities and neighborhoods. But l... →
You’re going to need a bigger boat
Eliminating exclusively single-family zones won't provide enough density: Recognizing the limits of "missing middle" as a solution to urban affordability At City Observatory, we're excited as anyone that there seems t... →
No deal: Why a CRC revival is going nowhere
Reviving the Columbia River Crossing will never happen: the two sides have incompatible aims There are continued rumblings in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area about reviving the abandoned plan to spend $3 bill... →
Ten things more inequitable than road pricing
Don't decry congestion pricing as inequitable until after you fix, or at least acknowledge, these ten other things that are even more inequitable about the way we pay for transportation. There's a growing interest in us... →
How tax evasion fuels traffic congestion in Portland
Tax free shopping in Oregon saves the typical Southwest Washington household $1,000 per year Cross border shopping accounts for 10-20 percent of all trips across the I-5 and I-205 bridges Tax avoidance means we're ... →
A tool kit for value capture policies
Harnessing the value of public assets to support the civic commons It's widely recognized that public assets, like parks, libraries and community centers, generate important and tangible benefits for their neighborhoods... →
You can’t feel ’em, if you can’t see ’em
We can't have empathy for those we can't encounter due to the way our cities are built Editor's Note: Last month, our friend Carol Coletta spoke to the Kinder Institute in Houston about the critical role that place play... →
The long tail of the housing bust
Adjusted for inflation, US home prices are still lower than in 2006 For most US households, the home they own is their biggest financial asset. After the housing bust of 2007, when collectively about $7 trillion in home... →
Cities, talent and prosperity
America's economy is increasingly driven by the concentration of talent in cities The Economic Innovation Group (aka EIG, a DC-based think tank) has been compiling some interesting data on the relative economic performa... →
Get out! Why economic mobility might mean leaving home
Part of the disparity in intergenerational economic mobility may stem from a willingness to leave home Raj Chetty, Nate Hendren and their colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity Project have crafted a rich picture of ... →
The limits of job creation
Whether at the neighborhood or metropolitan level, more job growth doesn't seem to improve economic mobility There's a seemingly un-questioned (and unquestionable) truth among economic development practitioners that mor... →
Exit, Hope and Loyalty: The fate of neighborhoods
How neighborhood stability hinges on expectations: If people don't believe things are going to get better, many will leave One of the most perplexing urban problems is neighborhood decline. Once healthy, middle-class ... →
Does your neighborhood help kids succeed?
The Opportunity Atlas: Stunning neighborhood maps of economic opportunity Some of the most important research findings of the past decade have come from the work of Raj Chetty and his colleagues at the Equality of Oppor... →
Does new construction lead to displacement?
A careful study of evictions in San Francisco says "No." There's a widespread belief among some neighborhood activists that building new housing triggers displacement. We-and most economists are highly skeptical of that... →
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 4: Metropolitan context
Part 4. Are racially and economically homogeneous cities and suburbs in a segregated metro "inclusive?" Looking only at disparities within cities misses the often far larger disparities across cities within in single m... →
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 3: Annexing growth
Part 3. Do annexations and mergers constitute economic growth? Not adjusting city job growth estimates for changes in city boundaries produces misleading estimates, especially when used for comparing and ranking cities.... →
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 2: The limits of city limits
Part 2. Are city boundaries the right way to measure inclusion? Municipal boundaries produce a myopic and distorted view of inclusion; the boundaries themselves were often drawn to create exclusion (Editor's note: Th... →
The Urban Institute gets inclusion backwards, again
The Urban Institute has released an updated set of estimates that purport to measure which US cities are the most inclusive. The report is conceptually flawed, and actually gets its conclusions backwards, classifying som... →
Why inclusive is so elusive, Part I
Inclusiveness is a worthy policy goal, but in practice turns out to be devilishly hard to measure. A recent report from the Urban Institute shows some of the pitfalls: looking just within city boundaries ignores metropoli... →
Does increased housing supply improve affordability?
Why a recent Fed study tells us very little about supply and affordability The takeaway: A recent Federal Reserve study which seems to show that building more housing won't improve affordability has little rel... →
Is St. Louis Gentrifying?
Gentrification Debates Without Gentrification? By Todd Swanstrom Editor's note: We're pleased to offer a guest commentary from Todd Swanstrom. Todd is the Des Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Pol... →
Whither small towns? Wither small towns?
Rural and small town America faces some tough odds In an article entitled: "How to save the Troubled American Heartland," Bloomberg's very smart Noah Smith shares his thoughts on how to revive the smaller towns of rural... →
The limited allure of small towns
A few knowledge workers decamp to rural America as they age, but cities are the key It's an oft-told tale: talented professionals grow weary of the stress and high cost of city-living, and decamp with their spouses, chi... →
Race and economic polarization
The growth of concentrated poverty has been fueled by the secession of successful African Americans David Rusk has summarized his research on race and economic polarization in a series of three commentaries on "The Grea... →
More evidence of declining rents in Portland
Zillows data shows Portland rents have dropped 3.5 percent in the past year A couple of weeks ago, we published the latest data from ApartmentList.com on the decline in rents in the Portland metropolitan area. Their b... →
We disagree with the Washington Post about housing economics
Contrary to what you think you may have read in last week's Washington Post, rental housing markets at all levels still conform to the laws of supply and demand Monday's Washington Post ran a provocative headline: "In e... →
Portland rents are going down
More supply is driving down rents in the Rose City According to Apartment List.com, rents for one bedroom apartments in Portland have declined 3 percent in the past year. It's a solid vindication of the standard predict... →
Philadelphia’s urban policy harmonic convergence
Philly's University City: The urban challenge in a nutshell The knowledge economy . . . tax breaks . . . NIMBYism . . . gentrification . . . Amazon's HQ2 . . . high speed rail . . . university economic development? Al... →
Where we embrace socialism in the US: Parking Lots
How we embrace socialism for car storage in the public right of way Florida Senator Marco Rubio has denounced President Biden's $3.5 trillion spending program as un-American socialism. Rubio claims: In the end, Ameri... →
Parking: Where we embrace socialism in the US
How we embrace socialism for car storage in the public right of way Comrades, rejoice: In the face of the counter-revolutionary neo-liberal onslaught, there's at least one arena where the people's inalienable rights r... →
IoT: The Irrelevance of Thingies
People and social interaction, not technology, is the key to the future of cities Smart city afficianado's are agog at the prospects that the Internet of Things will create vast new markets for technology that will disr... →
The increasing centralization of urban economies: New York
Prime working age adults are increasingly clustering in the center of the nation's largest metro area City Observatory has long been following the movement of people and jobs back to cities. Our inaugural study on the... →
The persistence of residential segregation
How slow growth and industrial decline perpetuate racial segregation As regular readers of City Observatory know, we think that the continuing racial and economic segregation of the nation's metropolitan areas is at the... →
State government as an anchor industry
Eds and Meds . . . and Capitol Domes? I recently participated as a part of an expert panel reviewed Sacramento’s economic development strategy. You can learn more about the city’s “Project Prosper” here. It ... →
Cities as selection environments
Being cheaper may not be an advantage at all in a dynamic, knowledge based economy It's axiomatic in the world of local economic development that the sure-fire way to stimulate growth is to make it as cheap and easy as ... →
No exit from housing hell
Distrust and empowering everyone to equally be a NIMBY is a recipe for perpetual housing problems The recent defeat of SB 827--California State Senator Scott Wiener's bill that would have legalized apartment constructio... →
City as theme park
There's no critique more cutting than saying that development is turning an urban neighborhood into a theme park. The irony of course, is that cities like Dubrovnik and Venice represent a profoundly obsolete, ... →
A critical look at suburban triumphalism
The "body count" view of suburban population misses the value people attach to cities Lately, we've seen a barrage of comments suggesting that the era of the city is over, and that Americans, including young adults, are... →
Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods Maps
This page contains maps showing the nation's most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, and those with the highest levels of income mixing. for City Observatory's Diverse, Inclusive Neighborhood report. These we... →
Inclusionary Zoning’s Wile E. Coyote moment
You won't know that your inclusionary zoning program is wrecking the housing market until it's too late to fix. How lags and game theory monkey wrench inclusionary zoning. One of the toughest problems in economics an... →
Moving the goalposts
The key to being on-time and under-budget: Orwellian double-speak Oregon DOT projects are always on-time and under budget--because the agency simply disappears its original schedules and budgets. Delayed, half-fini... →
Portland doesn’t really want to make housing affordable
Actions speak louder than words; blocking new housing will drive up rents Nominally, at least, the Portland City Council is all about housing affordability. They've declared a housing emergency. In the last general el... →
Housing reparations for Northeast Portland
Attention freeway builders! Want to make up for dividing the community and destroying neighborhoods? How about replacing the homes you demolished? One of the carefully crafted talking points in the sales pitch for the $... →
Barack Obama on Gentrification
. . . we want more economic activity in this community, because that’s what creates opportunity and with more economic opportunity it does mean that there’s going to be more demand for all kinds of amenities in the com... →
Cloaking a weak argument in big—but phony—numbers
Journalists: Stop repeating phony congestion cost estimates. They're just weak arguments disguised with big numbers. This month The Economist has an excellent special report exploring the prospects for autonomous vehic... →
Junk food America elected its president
The states with the worst diets voted disproportionately for Donald Trump A powerful new study from uses big data to shine a powerful light on our eating habits. Using data from grocery store scanner records, Hunt All... →
Road pricing for all vehicles, not just ride-hailed ones
The problem isn't the ride-hailed vehicles, it's the under-priced street It really looks like we're on the cusp of a major change in transportation finance. Cities around the country are actively studying real time road... →
Gentrification & integration in DC
Gentrification is producing more diverse schools and growing enrollment In Washington DC, gentrification is producing higher levels of integration and increasing the total number of kids–black and white–attending sc... →
What drives ride-hailing: Parking, Drinking, Flying, Peaking, Pricing
Ride-hailing is growing: We distill a new report into 5 key factors that explain its growth A good reporter is always supposed to ask five questions: "who, what, when, where and why?" A new report on ride-hailing provid... →
The emperor’s new infrastructure plan
Politics and the President's wheeler-dealer background suggest the infrastructure plan is a mirage If there's been one shred of hope for bi-partisan progress in this politically polarized time, its been the idea that so... →
The limits of localism
Overselling localism is becoming an excuse to shed and shred federal responsibility Our friend, and director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, Amy Liu, weighs in with a timely commentary on the... →
Qualms about the new localism: Cities need the national government to do its job well
We like cities, but localism can only flourish with a competent, generous, fair federal government As our name City Observatory suggests, we're keen on cities. We believe they're the right frame for tackling many of o... →
Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 2: The limits of ethnography
City Observatory has long challenged the popular narrative about the nature and effects of gentrification. This is the second installment of a three-part commentary by our friend and colleague Alex Baca. You can read parts... →
Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 3: Cultural Displacement
City Observatory has long challenged the popular narrative about the nature and effects of gentrification. Today, we are pleased to offer the final installment of a three-part commentary by our friend and colleague Alex Ba... →
Sprawl, stagnation, and NIMBYism: Animated maps of metro change
A picture of metropolitan growth: Sprawl then, stagnation now. We're in awe of Issi Romem's prodigious data skills. Romem is the economist and big data guru BuildZoom, the web-based marketplace for construction profes... →
2017 Year-in-review: More driving, more dying
We're driving more, and more of us are dying on the roads. Four days before Christmas, on a Wednesday morning just after dawn, Elizabeth Meyers was crossing Sandy Boulevard in Portland, near 78th Avenue, just about a bl... →
A modest proposal: Extend the Americans with Disabilities Act to highways
Let's require that highways really be accessible to those who can't drive: State highway departments should provide bus service on state roads for the disabled The Americans with Disabilities Act was landmark legislat... →
Cities continue to attract smart young adults
The young and restless are continuing to move to the nation's large cities One trend that highlights the growing demand for city living is the increasing tendency of well-educated young adults to live in the close-in ur... →
Diverging diamond blues
A key design element of the supposedly pedestrian friendly Rose Quarter freeway cover is a pedestrian hostile diverging diamond interchange One of the main selling points of the plan to spend nearly half a billion dolla... →
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... →
Is inequality over?
After a long, slow recovery, wages are finally rising for the lowest-paid workers, but we're no where close to rectifying our inequality problem; in fact, it's going to get worse. The very smart Jed Kolko, who now write... →
The great freeway cover-up
Concrete covers are just a thinly-veiled gimmick for selling wider freeways As you've read at City Observatory, and elsewhere (CityLab, Portland Mercury, Willamette Week), Portland is in the midst of a great freeway war... →
The death of Flint Street
A proposed freeway widening project will tear out one of Portland's most used bike routes At City Observatory, were putting a local Portland-area proposed freeway widening project under a microscope, in part because we ... →
Remember: There’s no such thing as a “Free” way
Congestion pricing is a win-win strategy and the only way to truly reduce traffic congestion The urban transportation problem is a hardy perennial: no matter how many lanes we add to urban freeways, traffic congestion i... →
Renters move up-market
What to make of the high credit scores of new renters in some markets: alarm bell or success signal? RentCafe–one arm of Yardi Matrix, a real estate data and services firm–has a very interesting new data series on t... →
Uber and Lyft: A dynamic duo(poly)?
Will two firms produce enough effective competition to benefit consumers? The use ride-hailing services continues to grow in the US, and while there are a range competitors in some markets, like New York, in most places... →
Kevin Bacon & musical chairs: How market rate housing increases affordability
Building more market rate housing sets off a chain reaction supply increase that reaches low income neighborhoods Households moving into new market rate units move out of other, lower cost housing, making it available t... →
The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)
Slowly, the rhetorical battle is being won, as affordable housing advocates acknowledge more supply matters There's been a war of words about what kind of housing policies are needed to address the nation's affordabilit... →
Using Yelp to track economic growth
We review Yelp's new index for rating local economies: It's a good start For a long time, the only comprehensive and reliable means we've had of tracking and comparing economic activity across state and regional econo... →
Winners and losers from rent control
A new study of San Francisco's rent control shows it raises rents for some Rent control is a perennially contentious issue. Many housing activists see it as a logical and direct way to make housing more affordable. Econ... →
Signs of the times
"For Rent" signs are popping up all over Portland, signaling an easing of the housing crunch and foretelling falling rents A year ago, in the height of the political season in deep blue Portland (in a county which voted... →
Metro economies pulling away nationally
Unemployment rates are down in cities, especially for those with less education One of the trends we've been following at City Observatory has been the increasing shift of the driving forces of the nation's economy to l... →
Portland’s Inclusionary Zoning Law: Waiting for the other shoe to drop
Developers stampeded to get grandfathered before new requirements took hold, will the pipeline run dry? In December, Portland's City Council adopted one of the nation's most sweeping inclusionary zoning requirements. ... →
Transportation equity, part 2: the Subaru and the Suburban
Flat per vehicle registration fees charge lower rates to wealthier households with more road damaging vehicles The prospect of shifting from using a combination of vehicle registration fees, fuel taxes and general reven... →
Transportation equity: Why peak period road pricing is fair
Peak hour car commuters have incomes almost double those who travel by transit, bike and foot The Oregon Legislature has directed the state's department of transportation to come up with a value pricing system for inter... →
Racial wealth disparities: How housing widens the gap
The wealth of black families lags far behind whites, and housing markets play a key role There's a great article from The New York Times' Emily Badger about a new study that shows just how much Americans (especially wh... →
Cities lead national income growth, again
Average household income in cities is increasing twice as fast as in their suburbs Earlier this week, the Census Bureau released its latest estimates of national income based on the annual Current Population Survey. The... →
Cognitive dissonance on the Potomac
How can a city be named the first "LEED Platinum" city and be building freeways in its suburbs? Submitted for your approval: Two recent news items from our nation's capital. In the first, Washington DC proudly announc... →
An affogato theory of transportation
Coffee and ice cream and jam (or traffic jams) Just once, we are going to sugar-coat our commentary. [caption id="attachment_5029" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Affogato (1912Pike.com)[/caption] At City Observa... →
Inequality in three charts: Piketty, the picket fence and Branko’s elephant
Rising inequality in the US isn't new; Declining inequality globally is. Scratch just beneath the surface of many daily problems, and you'll find income inequality is a contributing factor, if not the chief culprit. W... →
What Dallas, Houston, Louisville & Rochester can teach us about widening freeways: Don’t!
Portland is thinking about widening freeways; other cities show that doesn't work Once upon a time, Portland held itself out as a national example of how to build cities that didn't revolve (so much) around the private ... →
Uber’s Movement: A peek at ride-hailing data
Uber's lifting the veil--just a little--to provide data on urban transportation performance Uber's new Movement tool provides valuable new source of data about travel times in urban environments. We've gotten an early l... →
Housing Policy Lessons from Vienna, Part II
Allowing multi-family housing in all residential zones, and aggressively promoting private bidding lowers housing costs We’re pleased to welcome a guest commentary from Mike Eliason of Seattle. Mike is a passivhaus de... →
A Nobel Prize with a solution for climate change
Let's put a price on using the atmosphere as a garbage dump for carbon Earlier this week, Yale economist William Nordhaus was announced as this year's co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics (along with Paul Romer,... →
Climate Change: A 2-cent solution
Let's put a price on using the atmosphere as a garbage dump for carbon It works for plastic bags; let's use the same idea for carbon Consider the plastic bag: It's a highly visible environmental problem, one that w... →
Climate Change: A 2-cent solution
Let's put a price on using the atmosphere as a garbage dump for carbon For almost six months, Chicago has been charging shoppers a 7 cent fee for using disposable plastic grocery bags. Rather than banning the bags outri... →
Pity the poor Super Commuter
About 2 percent of all car commuters travel 90 minutes to work, same as a decade ago. We've always been clear about our views on mega commuters, those traveling an hour and a half or more to work daily. As we said last ... →
Prices Matter: Parking and Ride Hailing
Pricing parking drives demand for ride hailing services Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft have been highly reluctant to share data about their services with cities. In California, the state Public Utilities Comm... →
Sisyphus meets Bob the Builder
Why traffic engineers really aren't interested in reducing traffic congestion We now know with a certainty that investments in additional highway capacity in dense urban environments simply trigger additional travel, wh... →
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 ... →
Your college degree pays off more if you live in a city
The more education you have, the bigger the payoff to living in a city It's a well-understood fact that education is a critical determinant of earnings. On average, the more education you've attained, the higher your le... →
Cities and the returns to education
The more education you have, the bigger the payoff to living in a city A recent Wall Street Journal article painted the nation's rural areas as its new inner cities, with high rates of poverty, limited economic opportun... →
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 ... →
Just ahead: Road pricing?
Trump's infrastructure package would let states pursue road pricing A trillion dollars for infrastructure. That's been the headline talking point for months about the Trump Administration's policy agenda, but the detail... →
Back at the ranch
What the ranch house teaches us about house prices and filtering. Back in the heyday of the post-war housing boom, back when the baby boomers were babies, America was building ranch houses–millions of them. In its pri... →
Dirt cheap.
Why we're very skeptical about urban farming. At City Observatory, we don't tend to have a lot of content about agriculture. Farming is not an urban activity. But every so often, we read techno-optimistic stories about ... →
Let’s use a marketing campaign to solve traffic congestion
Here's a thought: Let's fight traffic congestion using the same techniques DOT's use to promote safety. Let's have costumed superheroes weigh in against congestion, and spend billions on safety, instead of the other... →
Hagiometry: Fawning flatterers with an economic model
It's no longer fashionable to get an unrealistically flattering portrait painted, but you can get an economist to do it with numbers. You've no doubt heard the term "hagiography" an unduly flattering biography or other ... →
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Widening Freeways Kills the Planet!
Despite legal pledges to reduce greenhouse gases to address climate change, Portland's transportation greenhouse gas emissions are going up, not down. State, regional and city governments have adopted climate goals t... →
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Waste Billions Widening Freeways!
If you're serious about dealing with climate change, the last thing you should do is spend billions widening freeways. The Oregon Department of Transportation is hell-bent on widening freeways and destroying the planet ... →
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Widen Some Freeways!
If you're serious about dealing with climate change, the last thing you should do is spend billions widening freeways. April 22 is Earth Day, and to celebrate, Oregon is moving forward with plans to drop more than a bil... →
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Widen Some Freeways!
Four decades after the city earned national recognition for tearing out a downtown freeway, it gets ready to build more April 22 is Earth Day, and to celebrate, Oregon's Legislature is on the verge of considering a tran... →
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,... →
Key to prosperity: Talent in the “traded sector” of the economy
"Traded sector" businesses that employ well-educated workers mark a prosperous region At City Observatory, we regularly stress the importance of education and skills to regional economic success. Statistically, we can e... →
The pernicious myth of “naturally occurring” affordable housing
Housing doesn't "occur naturally" Using zoning to preserve older, smaller homes doesn't protect affordability There's no such thing as "Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing"--older, smaller homes become affordable ... →
The myth of naturally occurring affordable housing
Block that metaphor! There's nothing "natural" about "naturally occurring affordable housing." There's a new term that's gaining currency in some housing policy circles: "naturally occurring affordable housing." It ev... →
Has Portland’s rent fever broken?
More evidence that supply and demand are at work in housing markets In early 2016, Portland experienced some of the highest levels of rent inflation of any market in the US. According to Zillow's rental price estimate... →
New York City isn’t hollowing out; It’s growing
You can't leave out births and deaths when you examine population trends The release of the latest census population estimates has produced a number of quick takes that say that cities are declining. The latest is Derek... →
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... →
A teachable moment: Ben & Jerry’s seminar in transportation economics
They'll be lined up around the block because the price is too low–just like every day on urban roads Your highway department is broke, and thinks it needs much bigger roads because it gives its produce away for free e... →
Time for the annual Ben & Jerry’s seminar in transportation economics
They'll be lined up around the block because the price is too low–just like every day on urban roads You can learn everything you need to know about transportation economics today, just by helping yourself to a free i... →
The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics
What one day of free ice cream teaches us about traffic congestion Today's that day, folks. Ben and Jerry are giving away free ice cream to everyone who comes by their stores. Whether you're hankering for Cherry Garcia ... →
The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics
They'll be lined up around the block because the price is too low–just like every day on urban roads Today's that day, folks. Ben and Jerry are giving away free ice cream to everyone who comes by their stores. Whether... →
Carmaggedon does a no-show in Portland
Once again, Carmaggedon doesn't materialize; Shutting down half of the I-5 Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River for a week barely caused a ripple in traffic It's a teachable moment if we pay attention: traffic ad... →
Carmaggedon does a no-show in Seattle, again
Once again, Carmaggedon doesn't materialize; this time when Seattle started asking motorists to pay a portion of the cost of their new highway tunnel Initial returns suggest that tolling reduced congestion by reducing t... →
Why Carmaggedon never comes (Seattle edition)
Why predicted gridlock almost never happens and what this teaches us about travel demand Seattle has finally closed its aging Alaskan Way viaduct, a six-lane double-decker freeway that since the 1940s has been a concret... →
Carmaggedon stalks Atlanta
Why predicted gridlock almost never happens and what this teaches us about travel demand It had all the trappings of a great disaster film: A spectacular blaze last week destroyed a several hundred foot-long sectio... →
The High Cost of Segregation
A new report from the Urban Institute shows the stark costs of economic and racial segregation Long-form white paper policy research reports are our stock in trade at City Observatory. We see dozens of them every month,... →
Autonomous vehicles: Peaking, parking, profits & pricing
13 propositions about autonomous vehicles and urban transportation It looks more and more like autonomous vehicles will be a part of our urban transportation future. There's a lot of speculation about whether their effe... →
Breaking Bad: Why breaking up big cities would hurt America
New York Times columnist Russ Douthat got a lot of attention a few days ago for his Johnathan Swiftian column–"Break up the liberal city"–suggesting that we could solve the problems of lagging economic growth in rural ... →
The hamster wheel school of transportation policy
Going faster doesn't mean your city gets anywhere more quickly, and it doesn't make you happier One of the key metrics guiding transportation policy is speed: how quickly can you get from point A to point B. But is go... →
Going faster doesn’t make you happier; you just drive farther
Speed doesn't seem to be at all correlated to how happy we our with our local transportation systems. If there's one big complaint people seem to have about the transportation system its that they can't get from place... →
Going faster doesn’t make you happier; you just drive farther
Speed doesn't seem to be at all correlated to how happy we our with our local transportation systems. Yesterday, we presented some new estimates of the average speed of travel in different metropolitan areas developed... →
Are restaurants dying, and taking city economies with them?
Alan Ehrenhalt is alarmed. In his tony suburb of Clarendon, Virginia, several nice restaurants have closed. It seems like an ominous trend. Writing at Governing, he's warning of "The Limits of Cafe' Urbanism." Cafe Urbanis... →
What Travis Kalanick’s meltdown tells us about Uber
As has been well chronicled in the media, it's been a tough month for Uber. The company's CEO, Travis Kalanick was vilified in the press for the company's tolerance for sexual harassment of its female employees, and deride... →
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... →
The implications of shrinking offices
The amount of office space allotted to each worker is shrinking. What does that mean for cities? Last week a new report from real estate analytics firm REIS caught our eye. Called "The Shrinking Office Footprint" this w... →
What we know about rent control
Today, partly as a public service, we're going to dig into the academic literature on an arcane policy topic: rent control. We also have a parochial interest in the subject: the Oregon Legislature is considering legislatio... →
Houston (Street), we have a problem.
A lesson in the elasticity of demand, prices and urban congestion. It looks like Uber, Lyft and other ride sharing services are swamping the capacity of New York City streets Every day, we're being told, we're on the ve... →
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... →
The Geography of Independent Bookstores
Which cities have the strongest concentrations of independent bookstores? Last week, we explored what we called the "mystery in the bookstore." There's a kind of good news/bad news set of narratives about bookselling in... →
What patents tell us about America’s most innovative cities
Patents rates are a useful indicator of innovative activity The US is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based economy, and as a result, the markers of wealth are shifting from the kinds of tangible assets that character... →
Visions of the City Part III: You don’t own me
What kind of future do we want to live in? While that question gets asked by planners and futurists in an abstract and technical way, some of the most powerful and interesting conversations about our future aspirations are... →
Envisioning the way we want to live in cities
The biggest challenge for creating great cities is imagination, not technology There's a definite technological determinism to how we approach future cities. Some combination of sensors, 5G Internet, sophisticated compu... →
Visions of the City Part II: A Perfect Day
Yesterday we took a close look at Ford's vision for the future of cities. Our take: Ford's preferred narrative of the places we'll live is all about optimizing city life for vehicles. But is that the narrative that should ... →
The enduring effect of education on regional economies
One of the themes we stress at City Observatory is the large and growing importance of talent (the education and skills of the population) to determining regional and local economic success. As we shift more and more to a ... →
Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and transortation greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant ... →
Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... →
Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... →
Again, it’s Groundhog’s Day, again
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... →
With climate change, it’s always Groundhog’s Day
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we're driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zer... →
It’s Groundhog’s Day yet again, Oregon: How’s your climate change strategy working?
Another year later, and we're still stuck with the same hypocrisy on climate change If it seems like you've read this post before at City Observatory, you're not wrong. For the past couple of years, every Groundhog's Da... →
It’s Groundhog’s Day again, Oregon: How’s your climate change strategy working?
A year later, and we're still stuck with the same hypocrisy on climate change The 1993 movie, Groundhog's day has been a cultural touchstone for the endless do-loop of futility. Bill Murray finds himself waking up every... →
Happy Groundhog’s Day, Oregon
Climate change gets lip service, highways get billions. Like many states and cities, Oregon has been a leader in setting its own local goals for reducing greenhouse gases. In a law adopted in 2007, the state set the goa... →
Happy Birthday America; Thanks Immigrants!
We celebrate the fourth of July by remembering that a nation composed overwhelmingly of immigrants owes them a special debt. [caption id="attachment_4083" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Lighting the way to a stronger ... →
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 countries—Iraq, 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. 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 buildings—three-flats—which are usually clus... →
Louisville’s experiment in transportation economics
As we pointed out yesterday, there's some initial visual evidence–from peak hour traffic cameras–suggesting that Louisville's decision to toll its downtown freeway bridges but leave a parallel four-lane bridge un-toll... →
Postcard from Louisville: Tolls Trump Traffic
Tolls cut traffic levels on I-65 in half; So did we really need 6 more lanes? Last month, we wrote about Louisville's newly opened toll bridges across the Ohio River. As you may recall, Ohio and Indiana completed a ma... →
The latest from the Louisville traffic experiment
Even with the free alternative closed, traffic is very light on the new I-65 bridges Time for one of our periodic check-ins on our real world transportation pricing experiment in Louisville, Kentucky. As you recall, w... →
Who pays the price of inclusionary zoning?
Requiring inclusionary housing seems free, but could mean less money for schools and local services Last month, the Portland City Council voted 5-0 to adopt a sweeping new inclusionary housing requirement for new apartm... →
Has Louisville figured out how to eliminate traffic congestion?
Louisville is in the transportation world spotlight just now. It has formally opened two big new freeway bridges across the Ohio River, and also rebuilt its famous (or infamous) "spaghetti junction" interchange in downto... →
Housing supply is catching up to demand
As Noah Smith observed, economists invariably encounter monumental resistance to the proposition that increasing housing supply will do anything meaningful to address the problem of rising rents–especially because new un... →
Pollyanna’s ride-sharing breakthrough
A new study says ride-sharing apps cut cut traffic 85 percent. We're skeptical We've developed a calloused disregard for the uncritical techno-optimism that surrounds most media stories about self-driving cars and how f... →
Beer and cities: A toast to 2017
Celebrating the new year, city-style, with a local brew Champagne may be the traditional beverage for ringing in the new year, but we suspect that a locally brewed ale may be the drink of choice for many urbanists today... →
Our ten most popular posts of 2016
As 2016 draws to a close, we look back at our most popular commentaries of the year. Hear they are, in reverse order: #10. Introducing the sprawl tax #9. Urban myth busting: New rental housing and median income hou... →
Denver backs away from inclusionary zoning
At the top of most housing activist wish-lists is the idea that cities should adopt inclusionary housing requirements: when developers build new housing, they ought to be required to set-aside some portion of the units--... →
Irony Squared: Inclusionary Zoning Edition
Minneapolis is considering inclusionary zoning (IZ), but has qualms based on Portland's experience. Ironically, a non-existent Minneapolis IZ program was a key part of the argument for adopting Portland's IZ law in Decembe... →
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. 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 “best food city.” 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... →
Urban Transportation’s Camel Problem
There's a lot of glib talk about how technology--ranging from ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, to instrumented Smart Cities and, ultimately, autonomous vehicles--will fundamentally reshape urban transportation. We... →
Does rent control work? Evidence from Berlin
As housing affordability becomes an increasingly challenging and widespread problem in many US cities, there are growing calls for the imposition of rent control. While there's broad agreement among economists that rent ... →
The growth of global neighborhoods
As the US grows more diverse, so too do its urban neighborhoods. A new paper—“ Global Neighborhoods: Beyond the Multiethnic Metropolis”--published in Demography by Wenquan Zhang and John Logan traces out the chang... →
Your guide to the debate over the Trump Infrastructure Plan
There's a lot of ink being spilled -- or is it pixels rearranged? -- over the size, shape, merits and even existence of a Trump Administration infrastructure plan. Infrastructure was one of just a handful of substantive po... →
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 we’re all eagerly awaiting the results of the vote, we thought we’d 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 -- ... →
Affordable Housing: Not just for a favored few
As we all know, 2016 is the year that reality television made its way to the national political stage. Less well noticed is how another idea from reality television has insinuated its way into our thinking about housing po... →
Lies, damn lies, and (on-line shopping) statistics.
Here’s an eye-catching statistic: “people in the US buying more things online than in brick-and-mortar stores.” This appears in the lead of a story published this week by Next City. There’s one problem with this... →
Cities and the price of parking
What the price of parking shows us about urban transportation Yesterday, we rolled out our parking price index, showing the variation in parking prices among large US cities. Gleaning data from ParkMe, a web-based d... →
The new mythology of rich cities and poor suburbs
There’s a new narrative going around about place. Like so many narratives, it's based on a perceptible grain of truth, but then has a degree of exaggeration that the evidence can’t support. [caption id="attachment_3... →
The most interesting neighborhood in the world
Where are the most interesting streetscapes and popular destinations in your city? Even among your friends and colleagues, there might be some lively disagreement about that question. But recently, search giant Google weig... →
The price of parking
How much does it cost to park a car in different cities around the nation? Today, we're presenting some new data on a surprisingly under-measured aspect of cities and the cost of living: how much it costs to park a car... →
Memo to Stockholm
Next Monday, very early, before anyone in North America is out of bed, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the name of the 2016 Nobel Laureate in economic sciences. No doubt the decision has already long si... →
Paul Romer is awarded the Economics Nobel
Why the leading economist of innovation sees a central role for cities Two years ago, in 2016, we did our best to nudge the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to give the Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences to Paul Romer... →
Are integrated neighborhoods stable?
More American neighborhoods are becoming integrated–and 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... →
The price of autonomous cars: why it matters
If you believe the soothsayers--including the CEO of Lyft--our cities will soon be home to swarms of autonomous vehicles that ferry us quietly, cleanly and safely to all of our urban destinations. The technology is develop... →
What price for autonomous vehicles?
It's easy to focus on technology, but pricing will determine autonomous vehicles impact. Everyone's trying hard to imagine what a future full of autonomous cars might look like. Sure, there are big questions about wheth... →
How much will autonomous vehicles cost?
Everyone's trying hard to imagine what a future full of autonomous cars might look like. Sure, there are big questions about whether a technology company or a conventional car company will succeed, whether the critical fac... →
Cities are powering the rebound in national income growth
Behind the big headlines about an national income rebound: thriving city economies are the driver. As economic headlines go, it was pretty dramatic and upbeat news: The US recorded an 5.2 percent increase in real hous... →
Counting women entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship is both a key driver of economic activity and an essential path to economic opportunity for millions of Americans. For much of our history, entrepreneurship has been dominated by men. But in recent decades... →
McMansions Fading Away?
Just a few months ago we were being told--erroneously, in our view--that the McMansion was making a big comeback. Then, last week, there were a wave of stories lamenting the declining value of McMansions. Bloomberg publish... →
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... →
Who patronizes small retailers?
Urban developers regularly wax eloquent over the importance of local small businesses. But ultimately, businesses depend on customer support. So, in what markets do customers routinely support small businesses?... →
The Economic Value of Walkability: New Evidence
One of the hallmarks of great urban spaces is walkability--places with lots of destinations and points of interest in close proximity to one another, buzzing sidewalks, people to watch, interesting public spaces--all these... →
More Driving, More Dying (2016 First Half Update)
More grim statistics from the National Safety Council: The number of persons fatally injured in traffic crashes in the first half of 2016 grew by 9 percent. That means we're on track to see more than 38,000 persons die... →
The Week Observed: Aug. 12, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. The national party platforms on transit. In November, most Americans will be choosing between a party whose platform offers the barest details and seemingly little understanding of ... →
Back to school: Three charts that make the case for cities
Its early September, and most of the the nation's students are (or shortly will be) back in the classroom. There may be a few key academic insights that are no longer top of mind due to the distractions of summer, so as go... →
The Summer Driving Season & The High Price of Cheap Gas
Cheaper gas comes at a high price: More driving, more dying, more pollution. We're at the peak of the summer driving season, and millions of Americans will be on the road. While gas prices are down from the highs of jus... →
The Week Observed: Aug. 5, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. The case for more Ubers. From mobile phones to microchips, it's clear that even mega-companies must act in consumer interest when competition forces them to. When Uber and Lyft can p... →
Reversed Polarity: Bay Area venture capital trends
The greater San Francisco Bay area has been a hotbed of economic activity and technological change for decades, bringing us ground-breaking tech companies from Hewlett-Packard and Intel, to Apple and Google, to AirBNB and ... →
The triumph of the City and the twilight of nerdistans
This is a story about the triumph of the City—not “the city” that Ed Glaeser has written about in sweeping global and historic terms—but the triumph of a particular city: San Francisco. For decades, the San Fran... →
Let a thousand Ubers bloom
Why cities should promote robust competition in ride sharing markets We’re in the midst of an unfolding revolution in transportation technology, thanks to the advent of transportation network companies. By harnessing ch... →
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 Urban—a global group of leaders and practitioners in the field of the civic commons. After three days of fieldwork and observation, expert presentations and inte... →
Equity and Parks
Last week, our friend and colleague, Carol Coletta delivered a "master talk" to the 66th Annual Conference of the International Downtown Association. Carol is President & CEO, Memphis River Parks Partnership, and a ... →
Why cities need to embrace change
This is the text of a speech delivered in Detroit to the Congress for New Urbanism conference by Carol Coletta, a senior fellow at the Kresge Foundation's American Cities Practice. Could there be a more apt place to... →
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. “Philadelphia’s Changing Neighborhoods” combines a careful, region-wid... →
Schools and economic integration
There’s a growing body of evidence that economic integration—avoiding the separation of rich and poor into distinct neighborhoods—is an important ingredient in promoting widely shared opportunity. The work of Raj Che... →
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... →
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 neighborhoods—especially ... →
The rising tide of economic segregation
Last week, we argued that the problem called “income segregation” 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 today—from Raj Chetty’s work on intergenerational economic mobility, to issues of concentrated poverty and gentrification—is framed in terms of economic segregation. Bu... →
Successful cities and the civic commons
At City Observatory, we’ve been bullish on cities. There’s 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 Observatory’s major reports is “Lost in Place,” which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, you’ll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... →
A new look at neighborhood change
One of City Observatory’s major reports is “Lost in Place,” which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, you’ll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... →
Daytime and nighttime segregation
In cities, you’ll sometimes hear people talk about a “daytime population”: 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 aren’t many economists whose research findings are routinely reported in the New York Times and Washington Post. But Raj Chetty—and his colleagues around the country—have a justly earned reputation for clearly ... →
Why mixed-income neighborhoods matter: lifting kids out of poverty
There’s 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 “sidewalk ballet” of people going about their daily errands, wandering along t... →
What is an “unequal” city?
Why does economic inequality—as opposed to just poverty—matter? 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... →
Mystery in the Bookstore
Signs of a rebound in independent bookstores, but not in the statistics Lately, there've been a spate of stories pointing to a minor renaissance of the independent American bookstore. After decades of glum news and clos... →
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 Friday’s 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 cities’ 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: “Katrina Washed Away New Orleans's Black Middle Class.” It's a provocative piece showing the sharp decline in the black population of... →
Growing e-commerce means less urban traffic
The takeaway: Urban truck traffic is flat to declining, even as Internet commerce has exploded. More e-commerce will result in greater efficiency and less urban traffic as delivery density increases We likely are o... →
Are racial “tipping points” overblown?
Why are America’s 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 difficulty of applying inequality measurements to cities
Earlier this year, our friends at the Brookings Institution released a new tabulation of Census data on levels of inequality in the nation’s largest cities. Inequality, in this case, is measured by dividing the income of... →
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 ... →
Show Your Work: Getting DOT Traffic Forecasts Out of the Black Box
Traffic projections used to justify highway expansions are often wildly wrong The recent Wisconsin court case doesn’t substitute better models, but it does require DOTs to show their data and assumptions instead of ... →
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 “must-read” 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. We’ve come increasingly to understand the role of social capital in the effective function of cities and urban economies. 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 ... →
More evidence of surging city job growth
In February, we released our latest CityReport Surging City Center Job Growth, presenting evidence showing employment growing faster in the city centers of the nation's largest metros since 2007. Another set of analysts ha... →
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 Racial Segregation Leads to Income Inequality
Less Segregated Metro Areas Have Lower Black/White Income Disparities Income inequality in the United States has a profoundly racial dimension. As income inequality has increased, one feature of inequality has remained... →
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... →
The Cappuccino Congestion Index
April First falls on Saturday, and that's a good reason to revisit an old favorite, the Cappuccino Congestion Index We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue ... →
The Cappuccino Congestion Index
The Cappuccino Congestion Index shows how you can show how anything costs Americans billions and billions We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue up for any... →
The Cappuccino Congestion Index
The Cappuccino Congestion Index shows how you can show how anything costs Americans billions and billions We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue up for any... →
The Cappuccino Congestion Index
The Cappuccino Congestion Index shows how you can show how anything costs Americans billions and billions We're continuing told that congestion is a grievous threat to urban well-being. It's annoying to queue up for any... →
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, American’s drove 3.015 trillion miles, up about 1.7 pe... →
The Cappuccino Congestion Index
City Observatory, April 1. 2015 A new City Observatory analysis reveals a new and dangerous threat to the nation’s economic productivity: costly and growing coffee congestion. Yes, there’s another black fluid... →
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 ... →
Has the Tide Turned?
Last month, City Observatory released a new report—Surging City Center Job Growth—chronicling 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, 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 ... →
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. It’s 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 “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. ... →
The Perils of Conflating Gentrification and Displacement: A Longer and Wonkier Critique of Governing’s Gentrification Issue
It’s telling that Governing calls gentrification the “g-word”—it’s become almost impossible to talk about neighborhood revitalization without objections being raised almost any change amounts to gentrification. W... →
Florida’s 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 correlated—and that, if we are concerned with the ability of children today to obtain ‘The... →
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 people—from all walks of life—together in one place. 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
Here’s a quick quiz: 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 – be more productive, retain more young people, reduce poverty—how 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 nation’s 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 nation’s 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 “best food city.” 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? 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 ... →
Where are the food deserts?
One of the nation’s biggest health problems is the challenge of obesity: since the early 1960s the number of American’s 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, 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... →
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 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... →
Understanding Your City’s Distinctiveness Through Occupational Data
At City Observatory, we’ve 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. 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 It’s a glorious moment to be in the business of promoting the built environment. I use “built environment” to encompass the way we build our buildings, arrange our neighborhoods a... →
Young and Restless
The Young and Restless—25 to 34 year-olds with a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education—are increasingly moving to the close-in neighborhoods of the nation’s large metropolitan areas. This migration is ... →
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... →
How distinct is your city?
Every city has its own unique characteristics. We know that industrial and occupational specializations can be measured using standard economic tools like location quotients. But some of the more intangible characteristics... →
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 ... →
Ten More you should read about Gentrification, Integration and Concentrated Poverty
Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects. In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. 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, “Overall, 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. In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues. Here we offer a baker’s dozen... →
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 – #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 – #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... →
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 It’s a common movie trope – 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 “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... →
And the Talent Dividend Prize Winner is . . .
Akron, Ohio! With a 20.2 percent increase in post-secondary degrees awarded over the past three years, Akron outpaced the 56 other metro areas entered in the Talent Dividend Prize contest. As the winner of the Talent D... →
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. →
Young and Restless: How is your city doing?
We just released our first CityReport looking at the "Young and Restless," detailing where young talent is going in the U.S.- and why it matters. (Download the report here.) Here we show how the nation's largest cities do ... →
Talent & Prosperity
Talent drives city success: The biggest single factor explaining urban economic success is human capital. →
Housing Markets
The creation and allocation of living space within a metropolitan area shapes our well-being and the regional economy. →
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Generating new ideas and creating new businesses drives city economies and national economic growth. →
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. →
Distinctiveness
Every city has its own unique character and strengths which shape its economic opportunities. →
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... →
Questioning Congestion Costs
It's frequently claimed that traffic congestion imposes high and rising costs on the economy. But is that true? →