Month: June 2020
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Covid-19: Surging in Sunbelt cities
The pandemic is exploding in Sunbelt Cities, from the Carolinas to California Covid-19 is subdued in the North and surging in the South Hotter southern temperatures and a move indoors, coupled with looser reopening regulations, may explain the Southern surge In June, there’s been a dramatic change in the geography of the Covid-19 pandemic. For…
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The Week Observed, June 26, 2020
What City Observatory did this week When NIMBYs win, everyone loses. Two land use cases from different sides of the country are in the news this week. In both cases, local opponents of new housing development have succeeded in blocking the construction of new apartments in high demand neighborhoods. The high profile case is in…
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Triumph of the NIMBY’s: Less affordable, more displacement
When NIMBYs win, everybody loses Constricting housing supply drives up the price of housing further, and accelerates displacement, in rich neighborhoods and in poor ones. Two recent cases from different sides of the country illustrate the perverse effects of NIMBY fights against the construction of new housing. One from California, was a community effort to…
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The Week Observed, June 19, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Youth Movement: Our latest CityReport. America’s urban revival is being powered by the widespread and accelerating movement of well-educated young adults to the densest, most central neighborhoods in large metro areas. Our new report looks at the latest census data and finds that the number of college-educated 25-…
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City Beat: When workers can live anywhere
Another anecdote-fueled tale predicting of urban decline Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Rachel Feintzeig and Ben Eisen add another story, this one headlined “When workers can live anywhere” to the growing pile of claims that fear of Covid-19 and the possibility for remote work are likely to lead to the demise of cities. “Still,…
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COVID Lessons for Portland (and others)
COVID Lessons for Portland (and others) by Ethan Seltzer (. . . with profound thanks to anonymous reviewers) Editor’s Note: We’re pleased to publish this essay by City Observatory friend Ethan Seltzer, reflecting on our experience with the Covid-19 pandemic, with widespread civic unrest over police violence and racism, and what the experience of the…
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Youth movement: A generational shift in preference for urbanism
Well-educated young adults are increasingly moving to city centers Real estate search activity shows no decline in interest in city living due to the pandemic Our new report—Youth Movement: Accelerating America’s Urban Renaissance—confirms a powerful and still growing generational shift toward urban living. Increasing numbers of well-educated young adults are living in close-in urban neighborhoods…
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Youth Movement Dashboard
See how your city’s close-in neighborhoods did in attracting well-educated young adults Our CityReport, Youth Movement: Accelerating America’s Urban Renaissance, charts the growing concentration of well-educated young adults in the most central neighborhoods in the nation’s large metro areas. The trend is universal and accelerating. Every one of the 52 largest metro areas recorded an…
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Youth Movement
The movement of talented young adults to dense urban neighborhoods isn’t waning, it is widespread and accelerating, and it is powering urban revival. Cities continue to be magnets for talented young adults The number of well-educated young adults living in close-in urban neighborhoods is increasing in every large US metropolitan area, and this trend has…
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The Week Observed, June 12, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 rates are spiking in five cities. Stay-at-home policies and social distancing have dramatically slowed the spread of the pandemic in the US, but as many state’s begin re-opening, there’s a concern that the virus could rebound. Looking at the data for the 50 largest US metro areas shows…
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Covid-19: A catalyst for more inclusive cities
Will the Covid-19 pandemic be a catalyst for better, more inclusive cities? The media fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic has been a series of largely baseless stories predicting a panicky flight from cities to avoid the virus. As we’ve pointed out the correlation between urban density and the prevalence of disease is spurious; some of…
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Covid-19 accelerating in five cities
New Covid-19 cases are increasing in five metro areas: Phoenix, Tucson, San Antonio, Tampa and Raleigh These are the places to watch to see how well re-opening plans manage to avoid re-igniting the pandemic. Metro areas, not states, are a better lens for monitoring Covid-19. We’ve been tracking the spread of the Coronavirus for the…
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Covid-19 and segregation
Segregated cities seem to be harder hit by the pandemic Covid-19 prevalence is more strongly correlated with metropolitan racial and economic segregation than with urban density The New York City metro area has been the epicenter of the nation’s Covid-19 pandemic and because it is the nation’s most densely settled area, it is easy to…
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The Week Observed, June 5, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 and Cities: An uneven pandemic. We’ve been following the progress of the Covid-19 virus in the nation’s metropolitan areas for the past three months, and with the benefit of hindsight we can now trace out some key facts and trends. Overall, its apparent that the pandemic has…
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Whitewashing the freeway widening
A so-called “peer review” panel was kept in the dark about critiques of the highway department’s flawed projections This is a thinly veiled attempt These are the products of a hand-picked, spoon-fed group, asked by ODOT to address only a narrow and largely subsidiary set of questions and told to ignore fundamental issues. As we’ve…
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The convention business is cratering, and cities are getting stuck with the bill
By Mike McGinn and Joe Cortright Editor’s Note: We’re pleased to publish this commentary jointly authored by former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and City Observatory’s Joe Cortright. Mike McGinn served as Mayor of Seattle from 2010 to 2013. He is also a former lawyer, Sierra Club state chair, neighborhood activist, and founder of sustainability non-profit Great…
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Memo to the Governor: Recovering from Covid-19
Some advice on economic policy for states looking to rebound from the pandemic City Observatory’s Joe Cortright has served as Chair of the Oregon Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers under three Governors. The Council met (virtually) with Oregon Governor Kate Brown on May 29, to discuss how the state’s economy could recover from the effects…
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Covid-19 and Cities: A very uneven pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has played out very differently in different metro areas; some have been devastated, others only lightly touched and these patterns have shifted over time. Among US metro areas with a million or more population there is a more than 20-fold difference in cases per capita between the hardest hit and the least…