September 2015

To butcher Orwell, all cities are unequal, but some cities are more unequal than others. While working with some of the Census-calculated income inequality numbers—in particular, the Gini index—we noticed an interesting pattern: the central

A few weeks ago, Nikole Hannah-Jones produced a tour de force report on school segregation in America, which became a two-part episode on the public radio show This American Life. In the first part, she

What City Observatory did this week 1. Great neighborhoods don’t have to be illegal—they’re not elsewhere. Daniel Kay Hertz follows up on our earlier piece about illegal neighborhoodsto point out that most other wealthy countries

In light of Smart Cities Week, we’re updating this post from March about the role of smart technology, people, and successful cities. The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business

A recent post from the excellent DC blog Greater Greater Washington has made a few ripples among transit advocates. In it, David Alpert takes the growth rate of WMATA’s operating costs (about 6% annually) and

One of the most broadly popular ideas about urban planning today is that decisions should be made locally. After all, who knows better what a neighborhood needs than the people who live there? And what