Month: May 2020
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The Week Observed, May 29, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. LA Covid correlates with overcrowding and poverty, not density. City Observatory is pleased to publish a guest analysis and commentary from Abundant Housing LA’s Anthony Dedousis. Los Angeles County has released detailed geographic data on the incidence of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Anthony offers a series of charts, maps and…
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Coronavirus in L.A. County: Separating Fact from Fiction
Are cities the latest victim of coronavirus? Editor’s Note: City Observatory is pleased to publish this guest commentary by Anthony Dedousis of Abundant Housing LA. Some elected officials and journalists have drawn a link between urban density and the spread of COVID-19. A few anti-urban pundits have gone further, arguing that suburban living patterns are reducing…
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City Beat: Why Portland is not like NYC when it comes to Covid
Once again, there’s a naive and unsubstantiated association between urbanism and the pandemic Portland and Multnomah County have some of the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases of any large metro area The big drivers of Covid-19 susceptibility are poverty, housing over-crowding and a lack of health care. Like many states, Oregon is starting to re-open. …
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The Week Observed, May 22, 2020
What City Observatory this week 1. Postcards from the Edges: Looking at the relationship between density and the pandemic. There’s a widely circulating meme associating urban density with the spread of the Covid-19 virus, undoubtedly because people know that the virus has hit New York City particularly hard, and well, it is America’s densest city. …
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Postcards from the edges: Density is not Destiny
There’s a meme equating density with Covid-19 risk. Two polar cases shows that density (or lack thereof) has little to do with the spread of the pandemic. Many, including New York’s Governor, have been quick to blame density for the spread of Covid-19. Last month, we looked at data for one of North America’s densest…
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Is the pandemic worse in cities or suburbs?
Using county-level data, it depends on who’s classification system you use Counties may not be the right basis for diagnosing the contributors to Covid. One of the oft-repeated claims in the pandemic is the notion that cities and density are significant contributors to the risk of being infected with the Covid-19 virus. Some of this,…
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What is urban?
Shape of the urban/suburban divide: Views differ There’s a lot of debate about the relative merits and performance of cities and suburbs. You’ll read that the migration to cities has come to a halt, that suburbs are growing faster than cities or that cities have a higher rate of Covid-19 infections than suburbs. All those…
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The Week Observed, May 15, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. City Beat: We push back on a New York Times story claiming that people are decamping New York City on account of pandemic fears. You can always find an anecdote about someone leaving New York (or any city, for that matter) because people are always moving out of…
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City Beat: No evidence that people are fleeing to the suburbs
Today’s misleading and incomplete take on cities: There isn’t any evidence that people are fleeing cities for the suburbs; plus it wouldn’t help them avoid the virus if they did. We’ve addressed the claim that the pandemic will lead to an exodus from cities before; today we’ll tackle another iteration. The New York Times…
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Oregon DOT: The master of three-card monte
The highway department’s claims it doesn’t have enough for maintenance are a long-running con You’ve all seen the classic street con three-card monte. All you have to do to double your money is follow one of three cards that the dealer is sliding around the on the surface of the little table. No matter how…
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Don’t make “equity” the enemy of improving cities for people
Invoking concerns about equity to block providing more street space for people is destructive A cautionary tale from Chicago, with some keen insight from Greg Shill. Let’s begin by stipulating one thing: There’s much about American cities, and our transportation system, that is deeply inequitable to low income households and people of color. Our auto-dependent…
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The Week Observed, May 1, 2020
What City Observatory this week Our updated analysis of the prevalence of Covid-19 in US metro areas. It continues to be the case that the pandemic is most severe in the Northeast Corridor. The New York Metro area is the epicenter, as everyone knows, but far less noticed are the very high rates of reported…