January 2020

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

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

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

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,

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