What City Observatory did this week Must read 1. Why Detroit (and other cities) need more gentrification and congestion. Michigan Future’s Lou Glazer has a provocative essay arguing that Detroit and other struggling cities would actually benefit from more gentrification and congestion. In a word, both phenomena are indicators that there’s growing demand for […]
The Week Observed, August 30, 2019 Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. 20 Reasons to ignore the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report. It’s back. After a four-year hiatus Texas A&M University’s transportation institute trotted out another iteration of its periodic urban mobility report, which predictably claims (as it does every time) that traffic congestion is a horrible problem and
The Week Observed, August 30, 2019 Read More »
Community opposition forces Oregon Department of Transportation to do a full Environmental Impact Statement on its half-billion dollar Rose Quarter freeway widening project. For the past two years, we’ve been deeply engaged in the unfolding battle over the Oregon Department of Transportation’s proposal to spend half a billion dollars widening a mile long stretch of
Portland’s freeway fight: Round 1 goes to the scrappy upstarts Read More »
It’s hard to find a more biased and misleading example of pseudo-science than the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report. Here are our top 20 reasons why you should ignore the latest version. Since the 1980s, Texas A&M University’s Texas Transportation Institute has periodically trotted out various versions of its “Urban Mobility Report,” which purports to estimate
The top twenty reasons to ignore TTI’s latest Urban Mobility Report Read More »
What City Observatory did this week Portland’s food cart pods are dead; long live Portland’s food cart pods. Portland is famous as a foodie town, and one of the city’s claims to fame is having more than 500 food carts, mostly grouped in pods offering a range of different cuisines. One of the oldest and
The Week Observed, August 23, 2019 Read More »
After a four year hiatus, the Texas Transportation Institute has once again generated its misleading Urban Mobility Report–and its still wrong. The UMR has been comprehensively debunked–it has never been peer-reviewed nor have its authors responded to authoritative critiques, it relies on a series of false premises, penalizes cities with compact development patterns and short
Its back, and its still wrong: the Urban Mobility Report Read More »
How food carts illustrate the importance of dynamic change in cities. There’s a tension in the city between the permanent (or seemingly permanent) and the fleeting, between the immutability of the built environment and the minute-by-minute change in human behavior. Great cities not only change, but the excel at incorporating and encouraging change. There are
Portland’s food cart pod is dead, long live Portland’s food cart pods! Read More »
What City Observatory did this week Copenhagen’s success: More than just bike lanes. Copenhagen is one of the world’s great cycling cities, and its accomplishments are a a beacon to those looking to build more bike friendly places. Most commuters in the city now travel by bike on a daily basis. Part of the city’s
The Week Observed, August 16, 2019 Read More »
Correctly pricing car use and promoting dense urban development are keys to promoting cycling The Los Angeles Times has a gushy article–“Copenhagen has taken bicycle commuting to a whole new level,“–extolling the virtues of cycling in Copenhagen. What with a vast network of bike lines and even bike-superhighways, and a robust public commitment to making
Copenhagen: More than bike lanes Read More »
What City Observatory did this week How helping families move to better neighborhoods reduces segregation and promotes opportunity. The work of the Opportunity Insights project, led by Harvard’s Raj Chetty, has shown convincingly that where you grow up has a profound influence on your life’s path. Kids from low income families that grow up in
The Week Observed, August 9, 2019 Read More »
