Month: September 2020
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The Great Disconnect: The perverse rhetoric of gentrification
The Great Disconnect By Jason Segedy City Observatory is pleased to publish this guest commentary from Akron’s Jason Segedy. It originally appeared on his blog. As this decade draws to a close, the story of urban America is increasingly about the great disconnect between a small number of large cities that are thriving, and…
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Carmaggedon does a no-show in Portland
Once again, Carmaggedon doesn’t materialize; Shutting down half of the I-5 Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River for a week barely caused a ripple in traffic It’s a teachable moment if we pay attention: traffic adapts quickly to limits in road capacity The most favored myth of traffic reporters and highway departments is the notion…
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The Week Observed, October 30, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Equity and Metro’s $5 billion transportation bond. This week, Portland residents are voting on a proposed $5 billion payroll tax/bond measure to fund a range of transportation projects. A favorite talking point of advocates is that the measure advances equity, because it will expand transit to black and brown…
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The Week Observed, September 25, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Why free parking is one of the most inequitable aspect of our transportation system. There’s a lot of well-founded anger over the inequitable aspects of transportation: the burdens of policing, fare enforcement, and road crashes all fall disproportionately on low income households and communities of color. But a…
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Parking and equity in cities
The average price of a monthly parking permit in cities is $2.25, compared to $70.00 for a transit pass. Everything you need to know about equity and privilege in urban transportation is reflected in how much we charge for parking compared to transit The triumph of asphalt socialism is reflected in providing unlimited free or…
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How to make gentrification even worse
Banning new construction is a great way to push up home values and accelerate gentrification Cities are conflicted and confused about how to protect affordability “Stop the world – I want to get off” was the title of Anthony Newley’s 1961 musical, but it seems like the core policy vision of a growing number of…
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Vancouver Columbian: Suburban drivers matter
Who are the real beneficiaries of the $800 million I-5 Rose Quarter project? Vancouver, Washington commuters, who won’t pay a dime for its construction. Wider freeways just double down on the damage done to city neighborhoods and privilege suburban commuters over communities of color. The editors of a suburban newspaper say the quiet part out…
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The Week Observed, September 18, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Lived segregation in US cities. Our standard measure of urban segregation, whether people reside in different neighborhoods, doesn’t really capture the way people from different racial and ethnic groups interact in cities on a daily basis. A new paper uses data gathered from cell phone records to look…
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City Beat: No flight to Portland’s suburbs
Another anecdote-fueled, data-starved article repeats the “suburban flight” meme, this time for Portland. Actual market data show the central city’s market remains strong Janet Eastman, writing in the Portland, Oregonian, offers up yet another example of a popular journalistic trope, the “Coronavirus is triggering a flight to the suburbs.” Never mind, of course, the point…
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The toxic flood of cars, not just the freeway, crushed Albina
Restorative Justice & A Viable Neighborhood What destroyed the Albina community? What will it take to restore it? It wasn’t just the freeway, it was the onslaught of cars, that transformed Albina into a bleak and barren car-dominated landscape. In the 1950s, Portland’s segregation forced nearly all its African-American residents to live in or near…
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Covid-19 is now a rural and red state pandemic
Covid-19 now disproportionately affects rural America, and is hitting red states harder than blue ones. OK, reporters, we’re waiting for the stories about rural Americans decamping to cities (or suburbs) and from red states to blue ones, where they will be safe from the pandemics. In the early months of the pandemic, reporters were quick…
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Lived segregation in US cities
We’re much less segregated during the day, and when we’re away from home Commercial and public spaces are important venues for interaction with people from other racial/ethnic groups Patterns of experienced segregation tend to mirror residential segregation across metro areas. In the US, we measure racial and ethnic segregation using census data that reports where…
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Why this Portland transit veteran is voting no on Metro’s bond
Editor’s Note: City Observatory is pleased to present this guest commentary from GB Arrington, longtime veteran of Portland’s transit and land use planning systems, explaining why he’s against a proposed $5 billion transportation bond measure proposed by Metro that will be voted in the Portland region this November. By GB Arrington When I stepped down…
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Manufacturing consent for highway widening
ODOT doesn’t want to hear the questions its Community Advisory Committee raises about the proposed $800 million Rose Quarter Freeway widening project–so it fires them. Agency staff misrepresent public testimony to public officials, minimizing objections, and failing to report substantive critiques of agency errors. An ever-shifting set process with constantly changing committees lacks legitimacy. As…
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Is there anything “smart” about smart cities?
Big data and new technology make bold promises about solving urban problems, but not only fall well short of solutions, but actually can end up making things worse. Why we’re skeptical of the “smart city” movement. You can’t be an urbanist or care about cities without hearing—a lot—from the folks in the “Smart Cities” movement.…
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The Week Observed, September 11, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Manufacturing consent for highway widening. In the early days of freeway battles, state highway departments were power blind and tone-deaf, and citizen activists often triumphed in the court of public opinion. In the past several decades though, highway builders have become much more adept at manipulating the process…
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The Week Observed, September 4, 2020
What City Observatory did this week Why most pedestrian infrastructure is really car infrastructure. One of the most misleading terms you’ll hear in transportation is “multi-modal” which in practice means a highway for cars and trucks, with largely decorative provisions for pedestrians and bicyclists. We look at a couple of examples of pedestrian overpasses in…
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The myth of pedestrian infrastructure in a world of cars
Big money “pedestrian” projects are often remedial and performative; their real purpose is to serve faster car traffic. One of the biggest lies in transportation planning is calling something “multi-modal.” When somebody tells you a project is “multi-modal,” you can safely bet that its really for cars and trucks with some decorative frills appended for…