Month: March 2020
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Covid-19 Prevalence by Metro Area (March 30 data)
UPDATED March 31, 2020 Note: More recent data is now available here. Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: New York, New Orleans, Detroit and Seattle have the highest incidence of pandemic among large metros. Seattle’s rate of new cases has declined to the lowest level among large metro areas Detroit,…
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How bad is the Covid-19 pandemic in my metro area?
Our “how to” guide to interpreting metro level Covid-19 data Here”s our explainer for understanding where your metro area stands compared to others A word of caution: Reported case data can be noisy and potentially misleading You’ll want to understand two metrics: prevalence (the number of cases per capita) and growth (how fast the number…
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Prevalence of Covid-19 in large US metro areas
UPDATED, March 30, 2020 Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: New York, New Orleans, Detroit and Seattle have the highest incidence of pandemic among large metros. Detroit has now surpassed Seattle in cases per capita New York had the highest level of reported cases per 100,000: 340 The typical (median)…
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Prevalence of Covid-19 in large US metro areas
UPDATED, March 29, 2020 NOTE: More recent data is now available here. Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: New York, New Orleans, Detroit and Seattle have the highest incidence of pandemic among large metros. Detroit has now surpassed Seattle in cases per capita New York had the highest level of…
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The Week Observed, March 27, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. The Geography of Covid-19. A week ago, we issued a call to get much more granular with our statistical analysis of the pandemic’s spread. In just the past few days, a number of new localized measures have emerged. We highlight some of the best practices from around the world. …
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Covid-19: Metro Incidence Estimates, 25 March [SUPERSEDED]
A note to our readers: This post has been superseded by new analysis published on March 28. In addition, the original post contains an error: The original version of estimates for the New York Metropolitan area reported on March 25 included an incorrect estimate of the rate of reported Covid-19 cases per 100,000 population. The actual reported…
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Covid-19: Metro Incidence Estimates, 22 March
New York, New Orleans and Seattle have the highest incidence of pandemic among large metros. The typical metro is only about 1-2 weeks behind these cities in the progression of the virus. Editor’s Note: As of 26 March, we have produced updated estimates with data through 25 March: These data are here. We’ve estimated the…
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Growth rates of Covid-19 in counties with many cases
The key to flattening the curve is reducing the daily rate of growth in Covid-19 cases We’ve charted the daily average growth rate for the counties with the most cases. The results are mixed: Covid-19 growth is slowing in some areas, but accelerating in others As City Observatory readers know, we’re very focused on the…
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Understanding the geography of Covid-19
What maps and charts can–and can’t–tell us about the spread of the pandemic National dashboards now have county data We need to shift our focus to changes in rates of growth at smaller geographies South Korea shows its possible to do high-definition, point-mapping of Covid-19 cases NOTE: City Observatory’s has tabulations of metropolitan data through…
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Covid-19: County-level Incidence Estimates, 19 March 2020
We’ve estimated the incidence of Covid-19 by county in states with 200 or more cases as of March 19, 2020. Incidence is calculated as diagnosed cases per 100,000 population. Data are shown for counties with 100,000 population or more. Highlights: Among these counties, the incidence of Covid-19 is highest in New York City (all five…
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The Week Observed, March 20, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Cheap gas means more pollution and more road deaths. Russia and Saudi Arabia have engineered a big decline in oil prices in the past few weeks, and as a result, US gas prices are now expected to decline by about 50 cents a gallon in the coming months. While…
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Cities and coronavirus: Some thoughts
The Coronavirus pandemic is already worse in several American states than anywhere in China outside Hubei Province The pandemic is all about geography, and we need to do more to pinpoint hotspots and contagion The very thing that makes cities special–their ability to bring people together–is their kryptonite in the Coronavirus pandemic The harsh and…
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Oregon DOT admits it lied about I-5 safety
Oregon’s Department of Transportation concedes it was lying about crashes on I-5 at the Rose Quarter For more than a year, we and others have been calling out the Oregon Department of Transportation for its false claims wider freeways are needed to improve road safety. And we’ve repeatedly show that ODOT’s claim that I-5 at…
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Declining bus ridership is no mystery
We know what’s responsible for declining bus ridership: Cheap gas And now, its about to get worse, thanks to $30 a barrel oil Prices matter. Last Friday’s New York Times has a nice data-driven article by the paper’s very smart Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui, illustrating the decline in bus ridership in cities across the…
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Cheaper gas: Bad for climate and safety
Gasoline prices will drop 50 cents per gallon in the next week or so, and cheap gas will fuel more bad results: more air pollution, more greenhouse gases and more road deaths Now is the perfect time to put a carbon tax in place Lower gas prices mean more driving, more pollution, more road deaths…
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The Week Observed, March 13, 2020
What City Observatory this week Exploding whales and cost overruns. For years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has been pushing a mile-and-a-half long freeway widening project at Portland’s Rose Quarter, telling the Legislature in 2017 that it would cost $450 million. That number has now ballooned to nearly $800 million, and could easily go over…
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ODOT: Exploding whales and cost overruns
It now looks like Oregon DOT’s $450 million freeway widening project will cost over a billion dollars Whales aren’t the only than blow up on ODOT One of the most viewed clips on YouTube depict the handiwork of Oregon Department of Transportation engineers. Nearly 50 years ago, in the fall of 1970, confronted with the…
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The Week Observed, March 6, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. The thickness of the blue line. Robert Putnam popularized the notion of social capital in his book “Bowling Alone,” which he illustrated with a number of indicators of social interconnectedness, like membership in non-profit organizations and clubs, including bowling leagues. We have our own indices of “anti-social” capital, including…
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Unsafe Uber? Lethal Lyft? We’re still skeptical
We’re still skeptical about an updated study claiming ride-hailing increases crashes and deaths In the Fall of 2018, we took a close look at a draft study from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business which made the provocative claim that the advent of ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber has actually led to…
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Unsafe Uber? Lethal Lyft? We’re still skeptical
We’re still skeptical about an updated study claiming ride-hailing increases crashes and deaths In the Fall of 2018, we took a close look at a draft study from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business which made the provocative claim that the advent of ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber has actually led to…
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The varying thickness of the blue line
Cops per capita: An indicator of “Anti-social” capital?” Why do some cities have vastly fewer police officers relative to their population than others? In the 1966 film “The Thin Blue Line” director William Friedkin explored the role police officers played in protecting the broader populace from violence and disorder. As we’ve frequently noted at City…