September 2017

The Week Observed, September 29, 2017

What City Observatory did this week 1.Interim report card on Portland’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance: An Incomplete. Portland’s inclusionary zoning requirements have been in effect for six months. While the ordinance prompted a land rush of development applications filed under the old rules, private sector apartment applications have almost completely evaporated since then. We take a […]

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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 interstate freeways in the Portland metropolitan area.  A key idea behind value pricing is that it would charge those who

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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.  Most new multifamily housing projects will have to set aside 20 percent of their units for families earning less than 80 percent of area median

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The Week Observed, September 22, 2017

What City Observatory did this week 1. What price autonomous vehicles?  It’s easy to obsess about the cool technological details of autonomous vehicles: their sophisticated computers, LIDAR systems, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication. But for economists, the big variable determining their impact is likely to hinge on their price. There’s a wide range of speculation now about

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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 white Americans) underestimate the gap in the economic circumstances between black and white families. The study also makes

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Cash prizes for bad corporate citizenship, Amazon edition

When we strongly incentivize anti-social behavior by big corporations, we get more of it Everyone in the urban space is busy handicapping the Amazon horserace, to see which city will land Amazon’s HQ2, which promises to be the biggest economic development prize of the 21st century. Amazon’s RFP, issued last week, invites metro areas with

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