Month: December 2020
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2020: The Year Observed
2020 was a trying, tumultuous and often tragic year. Here are some of the top commentaries that marked the year. Like so many, we were preoccupied with global crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic. Early on there was a chorus of voices blaming cities and urban density for the rapid spread of the pandemic. We pushed…
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City Observatory on housing supply and affordability
Here’s just some of what we’ve had to say about research on housing markets at City Observatory. Building more housing lowers rents for everyone December 14, 2020 A new study from Germany shows that added housing supply lowers rents across the board. A 1 percent increase in housing is associated with a 0.4 to 0.7 percent…
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The Week Observed, December 18, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. Want lower rents? Build more housing! A new study from Germany provides more evidence that the fundamentals of economics are alive and well in the housing market. The study looks at how increments to housing supply affect local rents, and finds that a one percent increase in the…
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Sustainability is about more than electrification
Editor’s Note: We’re pleased to publish this guest commentary by Kevin DeGood, Director of Infrastructure Policy at the Center for American Progress. This commentary originally appeared as a tweetstorm, and is republished with his permission. The text has been consolidated and edited for publication at City Observatory. Earlier City Observatory essays have questioned the sustainability of…
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Highway to Hell: Climate denial at the TRB
The Transportation Research Board, nominally an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is engaged in technocratic climate arson with its call for further highway expansion and more car travel. The planet is in imminent peril from global warming, with much of the recent increase in emissions in the US coming from increased driving. In…
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Building more housing lowers rents for everyone
A new study from Germany shows that added housing supply lowers rents across the board A 1 percent increase in housing is associated with a 0.4 to 0.7 percent decrease in rents Housing policy debates are tortured by the widespread disbelief that supply and demand operate in the market for housing. In our view, its…
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The Week Observed, December 11, 2020
What City Observatory did this week 1. The only reason many people drive is because we pay them to. There’s an important insight from recent applications of tolling to urban highways. When asked to pay even a modest amount for using a fast (and expensive) asset, many drivers vote with their feet/wheels and choose other…
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City Beat: Another sketchy claim of Covid-driven urban flight
Again: It’s anecdotes, not data that are fueling claims of an urban exodus due to Covid-19 The virus is now deadlier in the nation’s rural areas than it is in cities, undercutting the basis for the urban flight theory Since the early days of the Coronavirus, the media has regularly trumpeted anti-city screeds, a kind…
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The only reason some people drive is because we pay them to
Here’s an insight from tolling: A substantial portion of the people driving on our roadways are only there because we’re subsidizing the cost of their trip. When we charge a toll to use a road, suddenly many of those using it find they don’t value it enough to pay even a fraction of the cost…
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Phoenix: Climate Hypocrisy
You can’t be a climate mayor—and your city can’t be a climate city — if you’re widening freeways Phoenix says it’s going to reduce greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050, but the city’s transportation greenhouse gases have risen 1,000 pounds per person since 2014, and it’s planning to spend hundreds of millions widening freeways. Around the…