Month: January 2020
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The Week Observed, January 31, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. A massive regional transportation spending plan that does nothing for climate change. Portland’s leaders are in the process of crafting a $3 billion plus regional transportation package. One of its stated objectives is to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But a recently released staff analysis shows the multi-billion dollar…
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With climate change, it’s always Groundhog’s Day
Every year, the same story: We profess to care about climate change, but we’re driving more and greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zero actual progress Sunday, February 2nd is Groundhog’s Day, and City Observatory has an annual tradition of looking around…
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Climate Fail: Metro’s 2020 Transportation Package
Metro’s multi-billion dollar transportation package does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Spending $3 billion reduces Portland’s transportation greenhouse gases by .05 percent This package costs nearly $40,000 per ton in reduced GHG emissions Metro Portland knows that climate change is one of the most serious problems we face. We know that transportation, particularly automobiles…
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The Week Observed, January 24, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Remembering Dr. King. We were reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech about the pronounced tendency in public policy to prescribe socialism for the rich and rugged, free market capitalism for the poor. Much has changed in the half century since that remark, but sadly, it’s still the case…
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Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor
It’s a long road to redressing inequality A half-century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the stilted rhetoric used use to talk about public spending to promote the social good: Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and…
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Walkable places are growing in value almost everywhere
Over the past decade, across the nation, the most walkable homes have appreciated the most In two-thirds of large metro areas, walkable neighborhoods have higher home values than car-dependent ones Walkable neighborhoods appreciated faster than car-dependent ones in 44 of 51 large metro areas in the past seven years. For some time, our research, and…
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Our updated list from A to Z of everything that causes gentrification
Gentrification: Here’s your all-purpose list, from artists to zoning, of who and what’s to blame We first published this list in 2019, but the search for scapegoats has expanded, and now includes little libraries and microbreweries. When bad things happen, we look around for someone to blame. And when it comes to gentrification, which is…
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The Week Observed, January 10, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. 2019: The Year Observed. We take a look back at 2019 and review some of the most important City Observatory commentaries, interesting stories and valued research. Our most read post of 2019 was “Ten things more inequitable than road pricing.” Other highlights were our “A to Z” list of…
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Why TOPA isn’t the tops
Turning renters into owners is not a simple solution to housing affordability Housing affordability is a tough, multi-faceted problem. Portland is wrestling with one approach to that, a new ordinance that would make it easier to build “missing middle” housing, like duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in city neighborhoods. According to a recent article in Willamette Week,…
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Why we should enable more people to move to opportunity
Enabling low income households to move to high opportunity neighborhoods is one way to promote equity and intergenerational mobility. But some people apparently don’t want anyone to move. Last year, we profiled an experiment in Seattle that tapped into the insights of the Equality of Opportunity Project. As regular City Observatory readers will know, Raj…
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2019: The Year Observed
What City Observatory did in 2019 We spent a lot of time this year addressing Portland’s proposed half-billion dollar Rose Quarter freeway widening project. You may have thought Portland put its freeway fights behind it in the 1970s, when it killed the Mt. Hood freeway and used the money saved to start a light rail…