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... →

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... →

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... →

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 ... →

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... →

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... →

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 ... →

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... →

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... →

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... →

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... →

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... →

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 ... →

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... →

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... →

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... →

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... →

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... →

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 ... →

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 ... →

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 ... →

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... →

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... →

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... →

Every city has its own unique character and strengths which shape its economic opportunities. →