August 2015

What City Observatory did this week 1. City home prices outpacing suburbs by 50 percent.  Joe Cortright examines a new study prepared by investment firm Fitch looking at the growing value premium in central cities. 

Since 2000, home prices have grown 50 percent faster in urban centers than in their surrounding metro areas. If your are an urban data geek, like we are, this is big news.  A dramatic shift

    One of the most controversial recommendations from Seattle’s affordable housing task force, or HALA, was to reform zoning laws that only allow single-family homes in certain neighborhoods. That was always going to be

“The automobile tragedy is one of the most serious…man-made assaults on the human body,” wrote Ralph Nader in 1965. “It is a lag of almost paralytic proportions that these values of safety…have not found their

What City Observatory did this week 1. Let’s talk about neighborhood stigma. Daniel Kay Hertz reviews some of the literature on the interplay between a neighborhood’s reputation and its disadvantage—and finds a surprising reversal in

OK, we admit we might be a bit obsessed with this story. But if you can, bear with us one more time. Here’s the most basic fact: The number of newly-built McMansions—single family homes of