Month: April 2016
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The Week Observed: April 29, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. This week, we were proud to release City Observatory’s latest report: The Storefront Index. The Storefront Index maps and tallies every “storefront” business in the 51 largest US metropolitan areas, showing where clusters of customer-facing retailers create vibrant, flourishing neighborhood and regional commercial districts. The analysis highlights the…
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Storefronts and job growth
Earlier this week, we introduced the Storefront Index, a measure of the location and clustering of customer-facing retail and service businesses. A primary use of the index is to identify places that have the concentration of retail activity that we generally associate with a vibrant neighborhood commercial area, and that can support a high level…
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Squaring off with the Storefront Index
Yesterday, we introduced our latest report, The Storefront Index, which aims to quantify and map one aspect of a neighborhood’s vibrant street life—customer-facing businesses—in every neighborhood in the 51 largest metropolitan areas in the country. The Washington Post wrote more about it here. To illustrate one way the Storefront Index can help illuminate urban planning…
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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 the margins of public spaces (streets, sidewalks, parks and squares) and in and out of quasi-private spaces (stores,…
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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 the margins of public spaces (streets, sidewalks, parks and squares) and in and out of quasi-private spaces (stores,…
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On the road again?
Hot on the heels of claims that Millennials are buying houses come stories asserting that Millennials are suddenly big car buyers. We pointed out the flaws in the home-buying story earlier this month, and now let’s take a look at the car market. The Chicago Tribune offered up a feature presenting “The Four Reasons Millennials…
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The Week Observed: April 22, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. When we measure segregation, we almost always use Census numbers that reflect where people live—ie, where their homes are. But people don’t spend all day in their homes, so a team of researchers used Twitter data from Louisville, KY to figure out where they spend their days. The…
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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 where concentrated poverty grew. We know it’s a complex and wonky set of data, so we’ve worked with our colleagues…
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Marijuana: its geographical and policy implications
In the last several years, marijuana legalization has gone from a fringe issue treated as a joke or third rail to a mainstream, enacted policy in parts of the country. Broadly, the change seems to be driven by growing recognition of the general failure and costs of the drug war; growing understanding and acceptance of…
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Excessive expectations: A first look at the DOT’s new road performance rules
We’ve just gotten our first look at the new US Department of Transportation performance measurement rule for transportation systems. The rule (nearly three years in gestation, since the passage of the MAP-21 Act) is USDOT’s attempt to establish performance measures to guide investment and operation of the nation’s urban transportation system. One of the criticisms—fair,…
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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 live in Manhattan, there are nearly twice that many people on the island during a given workday. Most studies…
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The Week Observed: April 15, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. More than half of commuters to jobs in classically suburban DuPage County, outside Chicago, say they’d like to walk, bike, or take transit—but nearly 90 percent of them drive anyway. What’s going on? A closer look finds that decades of avowedly auto-centric planning has led to a situation…
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Urbanism isn’t yet a luxury good
For most of the 20th century, cities and their accoutrements were associated with immigrants, people of color, and relative economic deprivation. The very phrase “inner city” became a synonym of “poor,” and in certain contexts “urban” itself became a word that referred to people of color, especially black people. The “great inversion” has challenged that…
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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 presented analyses with detailed findings and direct policy relevance. Last year, they released the most detailed study yet on how place affects intergenerational…
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Note to journalists: Stop quoting bogus rent numbers
Hey reporters! We know you love rankings, especially ones that show some measure of widely shared pain, like traffic congestion or rent increases. And some people, armed with a database and an infographic are more than happy to feed your hunger for this type of analysis. But please: Stop using Abodo’s rent numbers. They’re wrong.…
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A mystery in the suburbs
More than half of workers in DuPage County, outside Chicago, say they’d like to get to work without a car. But nearly 90 percent of them drive anyway. What’s going on? First, a little context. Your city probably has a DuPage County—if not by name, by profile. Beginning about 15 miles due west of Chicago’s…
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The Week Observed: April 8, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. Even in a relatively dense city like Chicago, large amounts of off-street parking goes unused daily. A new report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology documents the over-supply of residential parking, and lays the blame on municipal parking requirements that force developers to build parking lots or garages…
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The limits of technology: Let’s hack an app
A Hollywood staple of the 1930s and 1940s was the story of a plucky band of young kids—usually led by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland—who, their dreams of making it on Broadway dashed by some plot twist, decide to stage a show of their own. They would find a barn or a warehouse, sing and…
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What lifecycle and generational effects tell us about young people’s homebuying
It’s been debunked, right? Though we’ve long been told that millennials want to live in cities, renting rather than owning, and biking instead of driving, a new round of articles are here to tell us that all of that is a myth: as soon as they find their financial footing, young people are buying homes…
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Sprawl beyond zoning
Another column from Paul Krugman today on the ways that US-style zoning laws are detrimental to economic opportunity is a pleasant reminder that the role of building regulations in broader questions of inequality is no longer such a fringe issue. Particularly in places with the greatest “shortage of cities”—where the gap between available housing and…
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The high and hidden costs of parking requirements
There’s not enough parking in Chicago: it’s an article of faith among many drivers, and has been a key assumption in many of the city’s planning efforts. But a new report from the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology finds that one of those efforts, mandatory off-street parking requirements for residential buildings, is causing an over-supply…
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The Week Observed: April 1, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. Have we reached “peak Millennial”? One researchers argues that because new births peaked in 1990, today’s 26-year-olds represent the high water mark of a youth-led urban renaissance. But a closer look shows that’s not the case: the US Census predicts that we have a number of years until…
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Introducing the Pedestrian Pain Index
America’s pedestrians are in pain. Every day, tens of millions of Americans waste tens of thousands of hours stuck waiting on the side of streets for car traffic to get out of their way. We estimate that the annual value of time lost waiting to walk totals $25 billion annually. Today, City Observatory announces the…