Month: June 2018
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The Week Observed, June 29, 2018
What City Observatory did this week 1. Closing the Kumbaya Gap. As we documented in our recent report, America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods, a growing number of cities boast neighborhoods with relatively high levels of both racial/ethnic and income diversity. But while people from different demographic groups may live in close proximity in these…
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How smart are “smart” cities, really?
Being a smart city should mean something different than a technology fetish The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Many have embraced the “smart city” banner. But what does that mean? People tend to see cities through the lens of their…
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Portland votes to increase housing supply
Portland’s City Council reversed its denial of one tall apartment building; we commend them Back in March, we were critical of a decision by the Portland City Council to deny approval of a 17-story apartment building in the city’s growing Pearl District. The building was opposed by neighbors (who lived in other, recently build residential…
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Socioeconomic mixing is essential to closing the Kumbaya gap
Integrated neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don’t automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? Our recent report, America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods identifies those places where people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and from different income strata all live in close proximity to one another. We’ve counted more than…
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The Week Observed, June 22, 2018
What City Observatory did this week 1. City Report: America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods. Our new City Report digs deep into the patterns of racial/ethnic and income segregation in US metro areas. We’ve used an array of census data to identify the places with the highest levels of integration along two dimensions (race/ethnicity and…
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Profiles of Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods
Our new CityReport dives deep in data; but what does a diverse, mixed income neighborhood look like? As we explained in our new report–America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods–nearly seven million Americans live in one of the neighborhoods we’ve identified as America’s most racially and ethnically diverse and mixed income. While we’ve got copious amounts…
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America’s Most Diverse Mixed Income Neighborhoods
In a nation increasingly divided by race and economic status, where our life prospects are increasingly de ned by the wealth of our zip codes, some American neighborhoods are bucking the trend. These neighborhoods—which we call America’s most diverse, mixed-income neighborhoods—have high levels of racial, ethnic and income diversity. This report identifies, maps and counts…
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City Report: America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods
Today we’re releasing our latest CityReport: America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods. In this report, we use Census data to identify those neighborhoods that have the highest levels of both racial/ethnic and income diversity among all urban neighborhoods in the US. We were motivated to take on this analysis, in part, because so much attention…
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The Week Observed, June 15, 2018
What City Observatory did this week 1. Handicapping the city vs. suburb horse race. The latest round of Census population estimates for municipalities has led some observers to claim that city growth has faltered. We take a close look at these claims, and identify the critical weakness of using data for city boundaries to trace…
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Why integration matters
Socioeconomic mixing, in neighborhoods that are diverse in race, ethnicity and income, benefits everyone To some extent, we take for granted that integration and equal opportunity should be valued for their own sake. But its worth noting that achieving greater integration along both racial/ethnic and income dimensions is important to achieving more widespread prosperity and…
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Sisyphus meets Bob the Builder
Why traffic engineers really aren’t interested in reducing traffic congestion We now know with a certainty that investments in additional highway capacity in dense urban environments simply trigger additional travel, what we call “induced demand.” The phenomenon is so well-documented that a recent article called in “The Fundamental Law of Traffic Congestion.” In a sense,…
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Handicapping the City-Suburb Horserace
The simple-minded comparison on city and suburb population growth rates is misleading and incomplete Every year, in the late Spring, the Census Bureau releases its latest population estimates for the nation’s municipalities. That produces a raft of quick knock-on statistical analyses that flag which places are gaining and losing population. Inevitably, these estimates get aggregated…
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The Week Observed, June 8, 2018
What City Observatory did this week 1. Growth in the center. A new report from New York City’s Office of Planning graphically demonstrates the growing centralization of people and economic activity in the nation’s largest metropolitan area. We highlight two sets of dot density maps that show the overall change in population in the New…
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The persistence of residential segregation
How slow growth and industrial decline perpetuate racial segregation As regular readers of City Observatory know, we think that the continuing racial and economic segregation of the nation’s metropolitan areas is at the root of many of the nation’s most persistent problems. We got a fresh reading on the extent and persistence of racial and…
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The increasing centralization of urban economies: New York
Prime working age adults are increasingly clustering in the center of the nation’s largest metro area City Observatory has long been following the movement of people and jobs back to cities. Our inaugural study on the Young and Restless charted the growing propensity of well-educated young workers to live in close-in urban neighborhoods. Our follow…
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The Week Observed, June 1, 2018
What City Observatory did this week Caveat Rentor: the problem with flawed rental inflation statistics. We highlight the continuing problem of erratic and unreliable rental price indices. A recent column by a financial journalist reports an apparent bubble in one-bedroom apartment prices based on an index generated by Zumper. Not only are these data implausible,…