Month: May 2018
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“Caveat Rentor” – beware of crazy rent statistics
The quality of rent data varies widely, beware of erratic data sources Trying to measure average housing costs for neighborhoods across an entire city—let alone the whole country—is an incredibly ambitious task. Not only does it require a massive database of real estate listings, it requires making those listings somehow representative at the level of…
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Fishy business: the promise and perils of city aquariums
To ballparks, convention centers and starchitect museums, add urban aquariums. To some boosters, your city is only one world-class visitor attraction away from economic prosperity. That pitch has been used to sell and endless series of public subsidies for baseball parks, football stadiums, basketball and hockey arenas, convention centers (and their appurtenant “headquarters hotels”) and…
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State government as an anchor industry
Eds and Meds . . . and Capitol Domes? I recently participated as a part of an expert panel reviewed Sacramento’s economic development strategy. You can learn more about the city’s “Project Prosper” here. It is rightly focused on identifying what can be do to promote economic growth with inclusion. Like most regions, Sacramento has…
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The Week Observed, May 18, 2018
What City Observatory did this week California’s next step in fighting global warming is building more apartments near transit. California has been a leader in climate change policy, being one of the first states to execute a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. In a guest commentary for City Observatory, Environment California’s Dan Jacobson draws a…
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California’s next bold step on climate should be building near transit
While the impetus for State Senator Scott Wiener’s proposed SB 827, which would allow apartment construction near transit lines was addressing housing affordability, the measure should also be a cornerstone of our efforts to tackle climate change. City Observatory is pleased to publish this guest commentary from Dan Jacobson, Director of Environment California. …
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The Week Observed, May 11, 2018
What City Observatory did this week 1. Cities as selection environments. It’s an article of faith in the economic development business that cheaper is better, or at least more competitive. The claim is that businesses will always gravitate toward and flourish in places with cheap rents, low wages, favorable taxation and generous subsidies. That’s always…
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Why do we make it illegal to build the neighborhoods Americans love most?
Narrow streets, a mix of large houses and tiny apartments, interspersed with shops and businesses in close walking distance. It’s the most desirable neighborhood in the city, and we’ve made it illegal to build any more like it. Editor’s note: City Observatory originally published this commentary in 2015. Our friend Robert Liberty a keen observer…
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Is Fruitvale gentrifying? Did it prevent displacement?
What does Fruitvale tell us about gentrification and displacement? Gentrification solved, or at least prevented. That was the celebratory headline announcing a recent study from UCLA’s Latino Politics and Policy Initiative, looking at changes in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. Fruitvale, a predominantly Latino neighborhood, the site of a transit-oriented development (TOD) at its BART rapid transit…
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Cities as selection environments
Being cheaper may not be an advantage at all in a dynamic, knowledge based economy It’s axiomatic in the world of local economic development that the sure-fire way to stimulate growth is to make it as cheap and easy as possible to do business in your community. Area Development, a trade journal for industrial recruiters…
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The Week Observed, May 4, 2018
What City Observatory did this week 1. Why don’t we have a powerful federal agency who can pre-empt local laws that drive up housing costs? Last week, the Federal Communications Commission took action that invalidated a City Of Philadelphia ordinance that would have regulated the location of satellite antennas and required their removal once they were…
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No exit from housing hell
Distrust and empowering everyone to equally be a NIMBY is a recipe for perpetual housing problems The recent defeat of SB 827–California State Senator Scott Wiener’s bill that would have legalized apartment construction in area’s well served by transit–was the subject of a thoughtful post-mortem in the Los Angeles Times: “A major California housing bill…
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Why doesn’t the federal government protect access to affordable housing the way it does access to TV?
A powerful federal agency can override local laws limiting access to TV. But housing? Nope. Local control. It’s the bedrock principle of land use planning. Cities and neighborhoods should have absolute control over the kinds of buildings that get built in their community. We dare not let state, or especially the federal government interfere in…