Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences I pity you, dear reader.  You likely have no idea what a real strawberry tastes like. Unless you spend the three weeks around  the Summe... →

The $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project (IBR) is likely delayed up to 18 months because of flawed traffic modeling.  The Oregon and Washington DOTs are in denial about the problem, but previously secret rec... →

A new scorecard tries to measure how cities are promoting energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gases—a laudable goal. But the scorecard has some serious limitations. This scorecard emphasizes policies and process... →

Portland's $30 Million Container Shipping Folly Cargo cults are a well-documented sociological phenomenon:  Cargo cults were religious movements that emerged among indigenous people in Melanesia during the early to mid-... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has proposed a $1.9 billion freeway widening project for Portland's Rose Quarter.  The agency proposes to cover a portion of the freeway in what it calls "restorative justice... →

The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Project is two years behind schedule IBR's Draft SEIS was supposed to be complete in December 2022—It now won't be done before December 2024. This two-year delay means the environ... →

Once again, Portland loses container service:  the economic effects will be minimal. Economic development has long been obsessed with "cargo cult" thinking:  the idea that economic prosperity is caused by ports and hi... →

The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project will save the average commuter just 30 seconds in daily commute time IBR officially determined that "leaking" the project EIS would result in "negative public react... →

The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project is afraid of what you'll find out when they release their Environmental Impact Statement IBR officially determined that "leaking" the project EIS would result in "n... →

R.I.P. Road Pricing in Oregon:  Dead before its even tried More than just money, the demise of pricing monkey-wrenches state transportation policy It's no surprise: ODOT's attempts to implement pricing have been hal... →

There's a yawning chasm of neighborhood level economic distress across US metro areas.  While about 1 in 6 US neighborhoods is classed as distressed, some metro areas have large concentrations of distress, while others ha... →

Wouldn't it be nice if we could create valuable new urban land by decking over freeways? Turns out, its massively uneconomical, and doesn't eliminate many of the most negative effects of urban freeways Its massively ... →

How ODOT is trying to re-write history to create a commitment to freeway cost overruns. The 2017 Legislature authorized zero funding for the I-205 Bridge project In 2024, ODOT now falsely claims that the I-205 projec... →

You can't tell if you're winning or losing if you don't keep score, especially when it comes to transportation greenhouse gas emissions. But a close look at the data shows we're not making much progress, and not making ... →

There are good reasons to be dubious of claims that trucks are being over-charged for the use of Oregon roads. The imbalance between cars and trucks seems to stem largely from the Oregon Department of Transportation''s ... →

An imagined decline in trip-making is the result of bad data analysis USDOT counted fewer trips in 2022, because it used a different, and less reliable survey method USDOT's social media created a false perception th... →

A central message of the highway building sales pitch is that traffic is ever-growing and ever worsening, and that we have no choice but to throw more money at expanded capacity. The Oregon Department of Transportation ... →

The proposed I-5 Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project will be paid for in part by $2.80 to $4.30 tolls charged to travelers.  These tolls will cause tens of thousands of vehicles per day to stop crossing the I-5 br... →

Why does it take four years and $200 million to serve up a warmed-over version of the Columbia River Crossing? The Interstate Bridge Replacement Project's director admitted that he's just pushing "basically the same" pr... →

Metro's Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) claims it will meet state and regional climate objectives by slashing vehicle travel more than 30 percent per person between now and 2045. Meanwhile, its transportation plan ac... →

The proposed re-design of the I-5 Rose Quarter Project now includes two deadly hairpin freeway off-ramps. Just last week, Brandon Coleman was killed at a similar hairpin highway ramp in downtown Portland  The Oregon... →

Earlier, we branded Portland Metro's proposed Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) a climate fraud because in falsely claimed the region was reducing greenhouse gases, and falsely claimed its transportation investments were ... →

Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) says it doesn't have enough money to maintain roads, fix potholes or even plow snow. This is a Big Lie: Mega-projects and their cost-overruns, not maintenance, are the cause ... →

A $7.5 billion highway boondoggle doesn't meet the basic test of cost-effectiveness The Interstate Bridge Project is a value-destroying proposition:  it costs more to build than it provides in economic benefits Fede... →

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proclaims the primacy of drivers "We are a nation of drivers" Those who don't own cars, or can't, or choose not to drive, are second class citizens The transportation culture war is f... →

Bad projects die with a whimper, not a bang Freeways are promoted with extravagant—and usually false—p.r. campaigns, but their death is just a bureaucratic footnote Freeway fights are often long, drawn-out affair... →

New York lost more than 100,000 homes due to the combination of smaller, more affordable apartments into larger, more luxurious homes When rich people can't buy new luxury housing, they buy up, and combine small apartme... →

Secret ODOT plans obtained by City Observatory show ODOT is planning a ten-lane freeway through the Rose Quarter Though the agency claims its "just adding one auxiliary lane" in each direction, the I-5 Rose Quarter proj... →

Portland Metro's Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) does nothing to prioritize projects and expenditures that reduce greenhouse gases Metro falsely asserts that because its overall plan will be on a path to reduce GHGs ... →

Metro's Regional Transportation Plan rationalizes spending billions on freeway expansion by publishing false estimates and projections of greenhouse gas emissions Transportation is the number one source of greenhouse ga... →

The cost of the $1.9 billion Rose Quarter freeway is driven by its excessive width ODOT is proposing to more than double the width of the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway through the Albina neighborhood ODOT could easily str... →

For years, we've been following the tortured Oregon Department of Transportation Plans to widen a 1.5 mile stretch of I-5 near downtown Portland.  The past few months show this project is in serious trouble.  Here's a su... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation is playing "Extend and Pretend" with the $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project The cost of the 1.5 mile freeway widening has quadrupled from $450 million in 2017 ... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged business enterprises One-tenth of one percent of I-205 contracts went to Black construction firms ODO... →

The members of ODOT's "Historic Albina Advisory Board" (HAAB) are hopping mad.  As related by Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland, they feel board betrayed by a decision to postpone construction of the $1.6 billion I-5 Rose Qu... →

On June 28, 2023, City Observatory's Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Transportation Commission about the agency's dire financial situation. Background:  The Oregon Department of Transportation is pushing a multi-... →

Oregon freeway fighters chalk up a key victory—but the fight continues On June 26, the Oregon Department of Transportation finally bowed to reality that it simply lacks the funds to pay for a seven-mile long widening ... →

The price of ODOT's trouble plagued Rose Quarter project has quadrupled to $1.9 billion, and the agency has no way to pay for it, because it spent the money the Legislature provided in 2017 on another project.  And agency... →

On Tuesday, March 26, the containership Dali slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing it to collapse into the Patapsco River.  Tragically, six workers on the bridge were killed, but fortunately the ... →

On Sunday June 11, a tanker truck caught fire on I-95 and the intense heat caused a section of the freeway to collapse.  I-95 is one of the nation's principal north-south connections, and carries 160,000 vehicles per day.... →

City Observatory is pleased to publish this guest commentary from Miriam Pinski. With the needed federal environmental approvals in hand, New York looks set to be the first American city to implement congestion pricin... →

There's plenty of time to fix the Interstate Bridge Project Contrary to claims made by OregonDOT and WSDOT officials, the federal government allows considerable flexibility in funding and re-designing, especially shrink... →

ODOT isn't giving buses the shoulder, it's giving transit the finger. IBR is planning a transitway for the new $7.5 billion interstate bridge that can't be used by buses. It's sketching in a "bus on shoulder" option ... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) can't tell the truth about the width of proposed $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project ODOT is more than doubling the width of the bridge from its existing 77 ... →

The HB 2098 "-2" amendments  are perhaps the most fiscally irresponsible legislation ever to be considered by the Oregon Legislature.  They constitute an open-ended promise by the Oregon Legislature to pay however much m... →

IBR officials are planning to sabotage the analysis of a moveable span options as part of the Interstate Bridge Project The Coast Guard has said a replacement for the existing I-5 bridges would need a 178 foot navigatio... →

ODOT grabs a billion dollars that could be used for bikes, pedestrians and transit, and allocates it to pay highway bills. Oregon highways are out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the cost of ... →

Oregon's transportation finance in crisis:  Testimony to the Joint Ways and Means Committee.  On March 16, City Observatory's Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Legislature's budget-writing committee about the fin... →

Editor's Note:  For the past two year's the Federal Highway Administration has been investigating a civil rights complaint brought against the proposed I-45 freeway expansion project in Houston.  This week, FHWA and TxDO... →

Do we need a federal commission on housing affordability? Bruce Katz, author of "The New Localism" is calling for a national commission to come up with recommendations for dealing with the nation's housing crisis. &n... →

The "bridge replacement" part of the Interstate Bridge Replacement only costs $500 million, according to new project documents So why is the overall project budget $7.5 billion? Short answer:  This is really a massi... →

Highway advocates deny or minimize the science of induced travel Induced travel is a well established scientific fact:  any increase in roadway capacity in a metropolitan area is likely to produce a proportional increa... →

Here are our 16 top reasons Oregon and Washington need to re-think the proposed Interstate Bridge Replacement Project.  The bloated size of the project and its $7.5 billion cost, and the availability of better alternative... →

The Interstate Bridge Project has released—after years of delay—computer graphic renderings showing possible designs for a new I-5 bridge between Vancouver and Portland.  But what they show is a project in real troubl... →

For four years, the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been pushing a revival of the failed multi-billion dollar I-5 Columbia River Crossing.  Their key sales pitch is that the size and design of the project c... →

Oregon is being asked to pay for half of the cost of widening the I-5 Interstate Bridge.  Eighty percent of daily commuters, and two-thirds of all traffic on the bridge are Washington residents.  On average, these commut... →

Oregon DOT has a history of enormous cost overruns, and just told the Oregon and Washington Legislatures that the cost of the I-5 Bridge Replacement Program (IBR) had ballooned 54 percent, to as much as $7.5 billion. To... →

City of Portland raises big questions about the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project (translated).  Last month was the deadline for comments on the supplemental environmental analysis for the proposed $1.45 billio... →

ODOT's planned I-205 tolls will cost the average local household $600 annually. Regular commuters on I-205 will have to pay $2,200 per year in tolls under the ODOT plan The Oregon Department of Transportation is prop... →

Sigh. Here we are again, another year, and yet another uninformative, and actively misleading congestion cost report from Inrix. More myth and misdirection from highly numerate charlatans. Burying the lede:  Traffic... →

Just 13 months after raising the price of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project by more than 50 percent, the state DOTs ay it will cost even more We estimate project costs are likely to increase 20 percent or ... →

The price of the I-5 "bridge replacement" project just increased by more than 50 percent, from $4.8 billion to $7.5 billion ODOT and WSDOT are blaming "higher inflation" for IBR cost overruns As we've noted, the Oreg... →

After more than three years of public debate, ODOT still won't tell anyone how wide a freeway they're planning to build at the Rose Quarter ODOT's plans appear to provide for a 160-foot wide roadway, wide enough to acco... →

ODOT's Supplemental Environmental Analysis shows it has no plans for doing anything on its vaunted freeway covers It left the description of cover's post-construction use as "XXX facilities" in the final, official Suppl... →

Under ODOT's toll plans, A driving from Wilsonville to Vancouver will cost you as much as $15, each-way, at the peak hour. Drive from Vancouver to a job in Wilsonville?  Get ready to shell out as much as $30 per day. ... →

ODOT's proposed relocation of the I-5 Southbound off-ramp at the Rose Quarter will add 1.3 million miles of vehicle travel to local streets each year. Moving the I-5 on ramp a thousand feet further south creates longer ... →

A newly revealed ODOT report shows the redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project will: creates a dangerous hairpin turn on the I-5 Southbound off-ramp increase crashes 13 percent violate the agency's own highw... →

The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from a Interstate 5 Is ODOT's supposed "safety" project really creating a new "Deadman's Curve" at the Moda Center? Bike riders wi... →

The soon-to-be released Rose Quarter I-5 Revised Environmental Assessment shows that ODOT is already reneging on its sales pitch of using a highway widening to heal Portland's Albina Neighborhood. It trumpeted "highway ... →

Oregon doesn't have tolls on any of its major roads or bridges.  But faced with stagnant gas tax revenues, and with an appetite for huge freeway expansion projects, the Oregon Department of Transportation has committed it... →

The science of induced travel is well proven, but state DOTs are in utter denial Widening freeways not only fails to reduce congestion, it inevitably results in more vehicle travel and more pollution The Oregon Depar... →

The real expense of the $5 billion I-5 bridge replacement project isn't actually building a new bridge over the Columbia River:  It's widening miles of freeway and rebuilding every intersection north and south of the rive... →

Oregon DOT is using phony claims about safety to sell a $1.45 billion freeway widening project People are regularly being killed on ODOT roadways and the agency claims that it lacks the resources to fix these problems ... →

A recently disclosed ODOT memo shows that congestion pricing would do a better job of fixing I-5 congestion than spending $1.45 billion widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter Congestion pricing would would be more... →

The Republican and Independent candidates for Oregon Governor are happy to spout a convenient myth that we can fight climate change by widening highways. That myth has been completely disproven:  wider roads encourage ... →

The Interstate Bridge Project falsely claimed to a legislative committee that the USDOT/Coast Guard agreement on bridge permits doesn't apply to the IBR project. This is part of a repeated series of misrepresentations a... →

ODOT claims that its policy is "fix-it first" maintaining the highway system. But it is spending vastly less on maintenance and restoration than is needed to keep roads and bridges from deteriorating It blames the Le... →

Ignoring the Coast Guard dooms the I-5 Bridge Project to yet another failure The Oregon and Washington DOTs have again designed a I-5 bridge that's too low for navigation In their rush to recycle the failed plans for... →

The Coast Guard has told Oregon and Washington that a new I-5 bridge must have a 178-foot vertical clearance for river navigation--vastly higher than the 116-foot clearance the state's have proposed A fixed span with th... →

Needed:  An independent review of technical mistakes that could cost billions The proposed multi-billion dollar Interstate Bridge Replacement is shaping up a repeat of the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) fiasco because t... →

Nearly every major project undertaken by the Oregon Department of Transportation has ended up costing at least double its initial estimate As ODOT proposes a multi-billion dollar series of highway expansions, its estima... →

Ignore the false claims that the Oregon and Washington highway departments are making about the number of lanes on their proposed I-5 project:  its footprint will be 164 feet—easily enough for a 10- or 12-lane roadway. ... →

In the next month or two, regional leaders in Portland are going to be asked to approve the "modified locally preferred alternative" for the I-5 Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project, an intentionally misnamed, $5 billion, 5 mi... →

Oregon and Washington are being asked to spend $7.5 billion on a giant bridge:  Why won't anyone show pictures of what it would look like? The Oregon and Washington highway departments are using an old Robert Moses tri... →

Sprawl and tax evasion are the real forces fueling the demand for wider freeways Highway widening advocates offer up a  a kind of manifest destiny storyline: population and traffic are ever-increasing, and unless we ac... →

California is the first in the nation to establish a Universal Basic Income . . . for cars One of the most widely discussed alternatives for tackling poverty and inequality head-on is the idea of a "Universal Basic Inco... →

Portland and Oregon leaders shouldn't commit to a $5 billion project without an investment grade analysis (IGA) of toll revenues Not preparing an IGA exposes the state to huge financial risk: It will have to make up tol... →

Green cities will be less hurt by higher gas prices; Sprawling cities are much more vulnerable to gas price hikes. In sprawling metros like Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Nashville and Oklahoma City, higher gas prices will c... →

Starting this spring, motorists will pay a $2 toll to drive Oregon's historical Columbia River Gorge Highway. Instead of widening the road, ODOT will use pricing to limit demand This shows Oregon can quickly implemen... →

Reporters:  read this before you write a "cost of congestion" story. Congestion cost studies are a classic example of pseudo-science:  Big data and bad assumptions produce meaningless results Using this absurd meth... →

A new study calculates that twenty percent of all time "lost" in travel is due to traffic lights Finally, proof for the Lachner Theorem:  Traffic signals are a major cause of traffic delay Another classic example o... →

Widening freeways is no way to promote equity.  The proposed $5 billion widening of I-5 between Portland and Vancouver is purportedly being undertaken with "an equity lens," but widening Portland's I-5 freeway serves high... →

The Oregon and Washington transportation departments are using a biased, unscientific survey to market their $5 billion I-5 freeway widening project. The survey over-represents daily bridge users by a factor of 10 compa... →

Oregon and Washington highway builders have re-branded the failed Columbia River Crossing as a "bridge replacement" project:  It's not. Less than 30 percent of the cost of the nearly $5 billion project is actually for ... →

Adah Crandall is a sophomore at Grant High School. She is the co-lead of Portland Youth Climate Strike and an organizer with Sunrise PDX's Youth Vs ODOT campaign, a biweekly series of rallies fighting for the decarboniza... →

If you aren't talking about our two-caste transportation system, you're not really addressing equity. Portland's regional government is looking forward at trends in the transportation system and their implications for e... →

Metro, Portland's regional government, says it has a plan to reduce transportation greenhouse gases But in the 8 years since adopting the plan, the agency hasn't bothered to look at data on GHGs—which have increased 2... →

Oregon's highway agency rigs its projections to maximize revenue and downplay its culpability for climate challenge ODOT has two different standards for forecasting:  When it forecasts revenue, it says it will ignore a... →

Metro's Climate Smart Strategy, adopted in 2014, has been an abject failure Portland area transportation greenhouse gasses are up 22 percent since the plan was adopted: instead of falling by 1 million tons per year, emi... →

The plan to spend $5 billion widening the I-5 Bridge Over the Columbia River would produce 100,000 additional metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, according to the induced travel calculator Metro's 2020 transporta... →

Your 12 ounce latte comes with a pound of carbon emissions, just from the drive-thru. How convenience for cars makes cities less livable for everyone, and contributes to climate change. Last week, twitter user Maris ... →

After decades of lagging the nation, Oregon's income now exceeds the national average. While some seem to think its a mystery:  It's not.  It all about a flourishing Portland economy, especially in the central city of... →

Gas prices are going up, and it's annoying to have to pay more, but let's take a closer look at how much we're paying for gas. Even with a recent uptick, gas prices are still lower than they were a decade ago. Cheap ... →

Louisville charges a cheap $1 to $2 toll for people driving across the Ohio River on I-65.   After doubling the size of the I-65 bridges from six lanes to 12, tolls slashed traffic by half, from about 130,000 cars per... →

Louisville's I-65 bridges:  A huge under-used roadway and hundreds of millions in debt for their kids—who will also have to cope with a climate crisis. Their financial plan kicked the can down the road, saddling futu... →

Portland's Metro regional government would be committing planning malpractice and enabling lasting fiscal and environmental damage if it goes along with state highway department freeway widening plans The proposed $5 ... →

The Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation are advancing their $5 billion freeway widening plan based on outdated 15-year-old traffic projections. No new projections have been prepared since the 2007 estimates... →

10 reasons not to believe phony DOT claims that widening highways reduces pollution We know that transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, and that our car dependent transportation syst... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation's glossy mailer to sell its $1.25 billion I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project is a cynical, error-ridden marketing ploy. ODOT doesn't show or tell about its wider freeway an... →

Jerusalem Demsas of Vox has a thoughtful synthesis of what we know about gentrification.   If we're concerned about poverty and inequality, gentrification is far from the biggest problem we face. Gentrification is ... →

Portland's $60 million a year clean energy fund needs climate accountability Any grant writer can spin a yarn that creates the illusion that a given project will have some sort of climate benefits, but if you're actuall... →

Stanford claims its campus will be 100 percent solar powered . . . provided you ignore cars. A flashy news release caught our eye this week.  Stanford University is reporting that its campus will be 100 percent powered... →

Yesterday, we explored the differences in car insurance premiums in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Today, we will take a look at homeowners insurance rates. Unlike car insurance, homeowners insurance is not... →

Everyone loves to compare the affordability of different cities, and most of the attention gets focused on differences in housing prices and rents. Clearly, these are a major component of living costs, and they vary su... →

Four lamentations about a bad infrastructure bill From the standpoint of the climate crisis, the infrastructure bill that passed the Senate is, at a minimum, a tremendous blown opportunity.  Transportation, especially ... →

Electric vehicles will help, but we need to do much more to reduce driving Editor's Note:  City Observatory is pleased to offer this guest commentary by Matthew Lewis.  Matthew is Director of Communications for Califor... →

Why Boston and Portland are the berry-best metros, and why it matters Summer is the height of berry season in most of the US, and nothing beats a fresh, locally grown blackberry, blueberry or raspberry.  Today we're ra... →

Borrowing billions to widen roads endangers the climate and finances It's doubly wrong to burden future generations with the environmental costs of wider roads, and then also send them the bill Bond financing of new... →

The Oregon DOT's "Climate Action Plan" claims that the agency wants to decrease greenhouse gases, but its financial plans show otherwise The agency's revenue projections show it is planning for gasoline consumption not... →

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is visiting Oregon to learn more about local transportation issues. The local advocacy group No More Freeways has sent him an open letter to provide some background for his visit. ... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation is in complete denial about climate change Oregon DOT has drafted a so-called "Climate Action Plan" that is merely perfunctory and performative busywork. The devastation of cli... →

In Miami, e-scooters pay four to 50 times as much to use the public roads as cars If we want to encourage greener, safer travel, we should align the prices we charge with our values Florida is home to some of the... →

There was an unprecedented decline in traffic congestion in the US last year.  According to the Urban Mobility Report, there's essentially nothing we can learn from this experience The Texas Transportation Institute ha... →

The decline in interest rates in 2020 is a huge factor in explaining the recent surge in home prices. Population growth, a key driver of housing demand, actually slowed dramatically in the past year. The current surg... →

The $800 million project transitions from "nothing has been decided" to "nothing can be changed" There's a kind of calculated phase-shift in the way transportation department's talk about major projects.  For a long, l... →

Newly revealed documents show its roadway is vastly wider than needed for traffic, and also makes "buildable" freeway covers prohibitively expensive If you really want just two additional lanes, you can do so much more ... →

Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood survived the 1921 race massacre, only to be ultimately destroyed by a more unrelenting foe: Interstate highways Black Tulsans quickly rebuilt Greenwood in the 1920s, and it flourished for ... →

Single-family zoning, a policy that bans apartments, is widespread in Los Angeles County. The median city bans apartments on 80% of its land for housing. Cities with more widespread single-family zoning have higher medi... →

Single-family zoning, a policy that bans apartments, is widespread in Los Angeles County. The median city bans apartments on 80% of its land for housing. Cities with more widespread single-family zoning have higher whit... →

If OregonDOT is serious about "restorative justice" it should mitigate  highway damage by building housing Around the country, states are subsidizing affordable housing to mitigate the damage done by highway projects ... →

Right diagnosis, weak medicine, wrong metaphor In a far ranging thought piece for James Fallows' Our Towns Civic Foundation—"Learning from Eisenhower and Lincoln:  A Grand Bargain for Transportation," Patrick Doherty... →

The Oregon and Washington highway departments are at it again, pushing a 10- or 12-lane, five mile long freeway widening project that's likely to cost at least $5 billion. They're responding to objections with a combina... →

Metro Council voted on July 14th to wave on the proposed "Interstate Bridge Replacement" project which is really a bloated, 5 mile long, 12-lane wide freeway that will cost $5 billion and likely much more. It's a scene-for... →

ODOT has repeatedly lied and misled Portland's leaders about major highway projects No one should take at face value its assurances or representations A warning from one of Portland's past leaders about the deceptive... →

The intentionally misleading re-brand of the failed Columbia River Crossing conceals the key fact that it is a 12-lane wide, 5 mile long freeway that just happens to cross a river, not a "bridge replacement." It's vastl... →

Drawings don't constitute restorative justice ODOT shows fancy drawings about what might be built, but isn't talking about actually paying to build anything Just building the housing shown in its diagrams would requi... →

In 2021, US residential values increased by $6.9 trillion, almost entirely due to price appreciation Those gains went disproportionately to older, white, higher income households Capital gains on housing in 2021 were... →

In 2020, US residential values increased by $2.2 trillion Those gains went disproportionately to older, white, higher income households Capital gains on housing in 2020 were more than three times larger than the tota... →

ODOT has claimed a "peer review panel" vindicated its air pollution analysis Now the panel says they didn't look into the accuracy of ODOT's travel forecast Travel forecasts are critical, because they determine air a... →

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.  Upton Sinclair It's even harder to get a trucking industry lobbyist or a highway department booster to un... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation is launching a series of boondoggle freeways, with no idea of their ultimate cost, and issuing bonds that will obligate the public to pay for expensive and un-needed highways. Fut... →

Oregon legislation goes whole hog on highways HB 3065 would launch a whole new round of freeway boondoggles, and plunge the state into debt to pay for them The classic Robert Moses scam:  Drive stakes, sell bonds ... →

ODOT's Fremont Bridge wiped out multiple blocks of the Albina neighborhood A freeway you've never heard of leveled dozens of blocks in North and Northeast Portland The stub of a proposed "Prescott Freeway" still scar... →

A proposed interchange in Natick, Mass. is a classic example of greenwashing The diverging diamond is an idea entirely given over to making things better for cars, and creates a disorienting, circuitous and dangerous wo... →

For years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has concealed its plans to build a ten lane freeway through Portland's Rose Quarter We're calling on the state to do a full environmental impact statement that assesses... →

Since Covid started, rents are down in some cities, but up in most "Superstar" cities have experienced the most notable declines; the demographics of renters in these cities are different than elsewhere. Rent decline... →

Vision Zero is a popular and widely embraced safety campaign, but the latest data shows Portland is not only not on track, it's going in the wrong direction when it comes to road safety Multi-lane, car-dominated urban a... →

ODOT's proposed I-5 Rose Quarter project would turn a school yard into a freeway The widened I-5 freeway will make already unhealthy air even worse Pollution from high volume roads has been shown to lower student ac... →

Editor's Note: Darrene Hackler is a consultant and a senior advisor with Smart Incentives. Darrene brings economic development expertise in economic equity and inclusive growth, entrepreneurship and small business, and inn... →

For years, ODOT has been planning to build a 10 lane freeway at the Rose Quarter, not the 6 lanes it has advertised. Three previously undisclosed files show ODOT is planning for a 160 foot wide roadway at Broadway-Weidl... →

Portland's inclusionary zoning requirement is a slow-motion train-wreck; apartment permits are down by sixty percent in the City of Portland, while apartment permitting has more than doubled in the rest of the region In... →

Portland's inclusionary zoning requirement is a slow-motion train-wreck; apartment completions are down by two-thirds, and the development pipeline is drying up This will lead to slower housing supply growth and increas... →

Studies from around the world have validated the existence of induced demand:  each improvement to freeway capacity in urban areas generates more traffic. The best available science worldwide—in Europe, Japan and Nor... →

Buried in an Oregon Department of Transportation presentation earlier this month is an acknowledgement that the I-5 bridge replacement "contribution" from Oregon will be as much as $1 billion—up from a maximum of $850 mi... →

An equitable carbon fee and dividend should be set to a price level necessary to achieve GHG reduction goals; kicker payment should be set so 70% of people receive a net income after paying carbon tax or at least break eve... →

Interstate 5 "Meat Axe" slashed through the Albina Neighborhood in 1962 This was the second of three acts by ODOT that destroyed housing and isolated Albina Building the I-5 freeway led to the demolition of housing ... →

I-5 wasn't the first highway that carved up Portland's historically black Albina Neighborhood. Seventy years ago, ODOT spent the equivalent of more than $80 million in today's dollars to cut the Albina neighborhood off ... →

Freeways slash population in cities, and prompt growth in suburbs Within city centers, the closer your neighborhood was to the freeway, the more its population declined. In suburbs, the closer your neighborhood was t... →

There's relatively little migration in the wake of Covid-19 Most Covid-related migration is temporary, involves moving in with friends or relatives, and not leaving a metro area It's not professionals fleeing cities:... →

Albina then and now Basically, Albina was wiped out by Interstate Ave 99E (ODOT)   1951 Memorial Coliseum (City) 1958 I-5 1962 Emmanuel Hospital (PDC)  1970s Blanchard Center (PPS)  1980 Convention Center 1990... →

Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas There's a strong correlation between metropolitan segregation and black-white housing wealth dispari... →

Home prices are soaring, rents are falling The disparate impact of the recession on high income and low income households in driving the housing market in two directions at once. Job losses have been concentrated amo... →

Widening I-5 at the  Rose Quarter in Portland will produce an addition 17.4 to 34.8 million miles of vehicle travel and 7.8 to 15.5 thousand tons of greenhouse gases per year. These estimates come from a customized cal... →

More than a year ago, Oregon Governor Kate Brown directed ODOT to "include a full review of  congestion pricing" before deciding whether or not to do a full environmental impact statement for the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter... →

Hartford Connecticut considers a pioneering move to make parking pay its way A higher parking tax works much like a "lite" version of land value taxation (LVT) Surface parking lots are highly subsidized polluters ... →

by Garlynn Woodsong Editor's note:City Observatory is pleased to publish this commentary by Garlynn Woodsong. Garlynn is the Managing Director of the planning consultancy Woodsong Associates, and has more than 20 years ... →

Our new year's resolution should be to take climate action seriously. Time is running out to actually do something that will reduce the steady growth of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, which is triggering irreversible... →

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 ch... →

By all means, Portland should adopt its proposed healthy climate fee, a $25 ton carbon tax But make sure it applies to the biggest and fastest growing sources of greenhouse gases in the region The healthy climate fee... →

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 supp... →

The real housing discrimination today is institutional, not personal The unfinished business of dismantling the institutional racism built into zoning Overt, personal discrimination in housing is just the tip of the ... →

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 republish... →

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 ... →

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 ... →

The Oregon and Washington transportation departments understated the funding gap for a revived I-5 Columbia River Bridge by more than $1 billion Correcting for an arithmetic error increases the gap between identified re... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) desperately wants to build a mega-freeway through NE Portland, and is planning to double the freeway from 4 lanes to 8 or 10 lanes.  But it has hidden its true objective, by ... →

There's no shortage of cynical greenwashing to sell climate-killing highway widening projects GeorgiaDOT and AASHTO have a new PR gimmick to promote the same old product In a famous season one sketch of Portlandia, F... →

There's no shortage of cynical greenwashing to sell climate-killing highway widening projects GeorgiaDOT and AASHTO have a new PR gimmick to promote the same old product AASHTO—the American Association of State Hig... →

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 ... →

Portland voters resoundingly defeated a proposed multi-billion dollar payroll tax to pay for transportation projects The two areas slated for the biggest benefits voted against the measure:  The Southwest Corridor and ... →

Does geographic rating of car insurance amount to 21st Century redlining? Car insurance rates vary more based on who your neighbors are than on your driving record The premium penalty for living in a Black neighborho... →

There are several  compelling reasons—the seven "C's"—to believe cities will thrive and prosper in a post-pandemic world: Competition: Zooming it in works when everyone has to do it, but if you work remotely whil... →

A proposed Portland area ferry makes no economic or transportation sense. Why the Frog Ferry is a slow boat to nowhere A ferry between Vancouver and Portland would take 20 minutes longer than existing bus service ... →

Advocates for a $5 billion transportation bond that Portland area voters will be deciding in November are making a specious argument about it being an equity measure. Its largest single project, a multi-billion dollar l... →

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... →

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 ... →

Covid-19 now disproportionately affects rural America, and is hitting red states harder than blue ones. Rural counties have 14 percent of US population and 21 percent of new Covid-19 cases. The nation's largest, densest... →

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 st... →

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... →

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 theo... →

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, Orego... →

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 segregati... →

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 transpo... →

Houston's "Energy Corridor" gets a pedestrian makeover, but just one thing seems to be missing. Bollards and better landscaping can't offset the increased danger from wider, faster slip lanes. Most "pedestrian" infra... →

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 someb... →

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. Y... →

Metro's proposed $5 billion transportation measure makes no sense for the region, for transportation, for our economy, for our kids and for our planet. Portland's regional government, Metro, will be asking voters in Nov... →

The latest Census data show that Black/White segregation is decreasing in large metro areas. Racial segregation still prevails in most American cities, but varies widely across the nation. Portland is one of America'... →

Racial segregation still prevails in most American cities, but varies widely across the nation. Portland is the nation's least segregated large city. The murder of George Floyd by police has reignited national intere... →

Pay no attention to Zumper's claims about rent trends Zumper claims rents for one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments are moving in opposite directions in about a fifth of all markets There's a lot of hyperventilation... →

Auto industry consultants KPMG see fewer cars and less driving in our future That may be bad for the car business, but good for the environment and cities One clear implication: hold off building new road capacity ... →

The greatest urban myth of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fear of density has triggered an exodus from cities. US Post Office data show that the supposed urban exodus was just a trickle, and Americans moved even less in ... →

The greatest urban myth of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fear of density has triggered an exodus from cities. The latest data show an increase in interest in dense urban locations. At City Observatory, we've regularl... →

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 a... →

Portland's climate emergency efforts are tarnished by an inability to plainly speak the facts about climate change But the tragic fact is that the city is utterly failing to meet even its own previous goals, and more al... →

Yet another entry in the trumped-up pandemic-fueled suburban flight narrative Anecdotes aside, there's no data that people are fleeing cities to avoid the Coronavirus The data show young, well-educated adults moving ... →

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 neigh... →

ODOT proudly spends road funds on mitigating the impact of its highways:  if you're an invertebrate. The highway department mitigates noise pollution, rebuilds jails, and even compensates neighborhoods But if we rep... →

Last week, over the space of about 24 hours, the prospects for Portland's proposed the Rose Quarter freeway widening dimmed almost to extinction. Leaders of Portland's African-American community have concluded that the ... →

Portland is utterly failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but not to worry, its ticking lots of boxes in its bureaucratic check-list. The city walks away from its 2015 Climate Action Plan after... →

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 r... →

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 c... →

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 o... →

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 U... →

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 a... →

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 ar... →

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 ... →

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... →

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... →

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 Sea... →

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 mo... →

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 Coun... →

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 draw... →

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 Cov... →

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 th... →

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 t... →

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:  Ther... →

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... →

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 g... →

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 t... →

One of the densest cities in North America has recorded relatively few Covid-19 cases. There's a popular theory going around--unfortunately being propagated by the Governor of New York--that somehow density is to blame ... →

The incidence of reported Covid-19 cases, and their daily growth is higher in the metros of NE corridor than the rest of the country. The Northeast Corridor has all four of the cities with the highest rate of newly repo... →

Limiting demand actually makes freeways work better Portland's I-5 North freeway now carries more cars, faster at the peak hour than it did prior to the pandemic.  Average speeds on I-5 between the Marquam and Intersta... →

Whether you live in a city its suburbs, your metro area is the biggest geographic factor in variations in Covid-19 rates Suburban incidence is lower, but there's about a six-day difference between the reported rate of C... →

Originally published April 12; Revised and Corrected April 14 The Covid-19 pandemic is hitting two regions in the US much harder than others:  The NE Corridor and the Great Lakes Metro areas in these regions have th... →

Reported case data correlate strongly with Covid-19 deaths, and provide a reasonable basis for assessing the geographic pattern of the pandemic across US metro areas. A critical question in judging the state of the Covi... →

Seattle and San Jose had the first outbreaks of Covid-19 but now have the slowest rates of growth of any large US metro area Their progress seems closely related to the fact that they've cut back on travel more than nea... →

How well are "stay at home" and "shelter in place" policies working in different metro areas? "Big data" from smartphones gives us a picture of how we're dialing back on travel in response to "stay-at-home" orders to co... →

Each metro area represents a different instance of the Covid-19 pandemic; we can use the varied experiences and timing of the virus in each metro area to better understand where we're headed. Seattle is 10 days to 2 wee... →

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 slo... →

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 ... →

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 pot... →

Updated April 29 with data through April 28.  In geographic terms, the Corona Virus has become the Northeast Corridor Virus:  NE Corridor metros account for 6 of the 8 hardest hit large metros, and have 6 of the ... →

REVISED April  18; Data through April 17, 2020 Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: New York, New Orleans, Detroit, Boston and Philadelphia have the highest incidence of pandemic among l... →

SUPERSEDED:  Please see latest data here. Original post below is for archival purposes. REVISED April 9; Data through April 8, 2020 Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: The situati... →

UPDATED April 3, 2020 Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: New Orleans, New York, Detroit, Boston and Seattle have the highest incidence of pandemic among large metros. New Orleans rat... →

NOTE:  This post has been superseded with more recent data: click here. Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: New York, New Orleans, Detroit, Boston and Seattle have the highest incidence of ... →

UPDATED April 1, 2020 Among the 53 metro areas with a million or more population: New York, New Orleans, Detroit, Seattle and Boston have the highest incidence of pandemic among large metros. Seattle's rate ... →

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 pande... →

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 surpa... →

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 pa... →

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 r... →

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 2... →

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 popul... →

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 ve... →

Adding more freeway capacity at the Rose Quarter will thousands of tons to the region's greenhouse gas emissions If you say you believe in science, and you take climate change seriously, you can't support spending $800... →

A new report from the DC Policy Center shows the inner-workings of the shadow rental market that is a key to housing affordability Too often, our debates about housing policy are shaped by inaccurate pictures of how the... →

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 pap... →

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 ... →

What's equitable about spending six times as much per homeless person in the suburbs as in the city? The "equity" standard that's guiding the division of revenue for Metro's housing initiative is based on politics, not ... →

Blocking new development will only accelerate demand for existing homes The moratorium makes flipping houses even more lucrative Atlanta's making a major investment in Westside Park at Bellwood Quarry, not far from t... →

Walkable density mapped for the nation's largest metropolitan areas by DW Rowlands Editor's Note:  We're pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands.  DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student at the U... →

A new way of measuring urban density that explicitly considers walkability by DW Rowlands Editor's Note:  We're pleased to offer this guest commentary by DW Rowlands.  DW Rowlands is a human geography grad student a... →

Happy Earth Day, Everyone! If we care about equity, we need to make rapid progress on climate change Equity needs to be defined by substantive outcomes, not vacuous rhetoric and elaborate process. Ultimately equit... →

Which US cities have the most independent restaurants? One of the chief advantages of cities is the range of consumption choices they afford to their residents. In general, larger cities offer more choices than smaller ... →

Which US cities have the most independent restaurants? One of the chief advantages of cities is the range of consumption choices they afford to their residents. In general, larger cities offer more choices than smaller ... →

Car-dependent metros have fewer independent restaurants Chain restaurants and cars go together Yesterday, we used data compiled by Yelp on chain and independent restaurants to compute the market share of chains in th... →

Oregon DOT's I-205 Abernethy Bridge rebuild, advertised as costing $248 million, will really cost $750 million The project's estimated cost has tripled in just over five years, and still has further cost overrun risk ... →

It now looks like Oregon DOT's I-205 Abernethy Bridge rebuild, advertised as costing $248 million, will really cost $500 million The project's estimated cost has doubled in just four years, and still has further cost ov... →

It now looks like Oregon DOT's I-5 Rose Quarter $450 million freeway widening project will cost more than $1.9 billion The project's estimated cost has nearly quadrupled in just six years, and still has further cost ov... →

It now looks like Oregon DOT's I-5 Rose Quarter $450 million freeway widening project will cost more than $1.25 billion The project's estimated cost has nearly tripled in just four years, and still has further cost over... →

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... →

ODOT's lies about safety at the Rose Quarter are so blatant they can be seen 400 miles away. Freeway widening isn't about deaths or injuries, but "motorist inconvenience" according to this safety expert, making this $80... →

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 publ... →

Oregon is utterly failing to reduce transportation greenhouse gas emissions Instead of being down 10 percent by 2020, transportation greenhouse gas emissions are up more than 20 percent Oregon will miss its 2020 GHG ... →

Climate change? Not our job.  We're just following orders. The Oregon Transportation Commission is on the firing line for its plans to build a $800 million I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project in Northeast Portlan... →

Denver's new bag fee is another object lesson on how to use economics to achieve environmental objectives.  Now do it for greenhouse gases Starting this month, you'll have to pay 10 cents for each disposable paper o... →

Oregon's new mandatory bag fee harnesses market forces to promote environmental objectives Now do it for greenhouse gases On January 1, a new law went into effect in Oregon, which mostly bans single use plastic groce... →

Enabling low income households to move to high opportunity neighborhoods is one way to promote equity and intergenerational mobility.  But some people apparently don't want anyone to move. Last year, we profiled an exp... →

Turning renters into owners is not a simple solution to housing affordability Housing affordability is a tough, multi-faceted problem. Portland is wrestling with one approach to that, a new ordinance that would make it ... →

Metro's multi-billion dollar transportation package does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Spending $5 billion reduces Portland's transportation greenhouse gases by .05 percent This package costs  $50,000 p... →

Metro's multi-billion dollar transportation package does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Spending $3 billion reduces Portland's transportation greenhouse gases by .05 percent This package costs nearly $40,... →

Forget about lofty greenhouse gas reduction goals and vision zero, our real climate and transportation policy is cheap gas The fall in gas prices in 2014 led to more driving, more SUV purchases, less transit ridership, ... →

Portland has soaring climate rhetoric, but 1,000 pounds per person more in greenhouse gases from driving Portland has adopted bold climate goals, but when it comes to the single largest local source of greenhouse gas em... →

The Oregon Department of Transportation has a decades long-tradition of ignoring Portland Public Schools when it comes to freeway projects So here's our story so far.  The Oregon Department of Transportation, ODOT, is ... →

ODOT Director Kris Strickler makes a phony claim that we can fight climate change by reducing traffic idling in congestion Asked about how his agency will respond to the challenge of climate change, newly nominated Oreg... →

Over the past decade, across the nation, the most walkable homes have appreciated the most In two-thirds of large metro areas, walkable neighborhoods have higher home values than car-dependent ones Walkable neighborh... →

The most basic concept in economics is that higher prices lead to less consumption, yet this fact is routinely ignored in transportation planning and policy. If we got the prices right, many of our most pressing transpo... →

A tech-centered vision of the future of the Pacific Northwest envisions creating a series of new urban centers 40 to 100 miles away from the region’s current largest cities—Seattle, Vancouver and Portland. The answ... →

If we're going to have a lot more missing middle housing; we're also going to have a lot more landlords Accessory dwellings, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes are suited to "mom-and-pop" landlords, but tough tenants ri... →

Despite claims from Oregon DOT officials, the only published seismic studies suggest the I-5 bridges will survive a Cascadia earthquake. It's far from clear that spending billions to replace this bridges is a good inves... →

State DOT's are using a false claim about financial liability to revive the Columbia River Crossing folly There's no requirement to repay $140 million in federal funds, if states choose the "No-Build" option The Oreg... →

Great cities, especially ones with dense, walkable mixed use neighborhoods are an economic boon to households because they save the precious commodity of time [caption id="attachment_9013" align="aligncenter" width="700... →

A new report shows how cities are central to any strategy to fight climate change Cities have the "3 C's: Clean, compact, connected National government policies need to support cities Let's describe a low carbon f... →

Pretending that climate change can be solved by widening roads to keep cars from idling in traffic is dishonest and reprehensible, yet that's exactly what Portland's regional government is doing. A new poll in Portland ... →

Political rationalizations and exceptionalism will always be used to justify giveaway policies With the possible exception of Greg LeRoy (who tracks state and local incentives for Good Jobs Now) and Amazon's site locati... →

Reallocating street space to buses is inherently equitable Charging a very high price to cars for using scarce road space promotes equity Just a year ago, New York took the bold step of of restricting traffic on 14th... →

One factor trumps all others in determining economic success:  Educational attainment Brookings researchers pile on more evidence of this key fact, and outline strategies for increasing skills. But remember:  talente... →

A new study shows a tantalizing connection between more walkable places and intergenerational economic mobility City Observatory readers will be familiar with the findings of Raj Chetty and his colleagues in the Equalit... →

Timing is everything in real estate, and mortgage availability cycles mean that people of color buy high and sell low. The Urban Institute has an informative new report charting the swings of home prices across the nati... →

We have urban traffic congestion because we heavily subsidize people driving in cities. Reducing subsidies and lowering road capacity reduces traffic and congestion. Why are we building highway capacity for users wh... →

There's no statistically significant news on young adults in cities in the latest Census release Pro-tip:  Ignore changes smaller than the margin of error: they're noise, not signal  It's hard to underestimate the ... →

Too often, progressive transportation advocates have been rolled by the highway crowd; No more, says Transportation for America Three principles for reform: Fix it First, Safety before Speed, Accessibility, not Mobility... →

What if we regulated new car ownership the same way we do new housing? A recent story about Singapore caught our eye:  In Singapore, you can't even buy a car without a government issued "certificate"—and the number o... →

Many states subject housing approval to environmental reporting requirements; what if we extended this same principle to car registrations. Back in the early days of the environmental movement--the late sixties and earl... →

Too much economic development policy is based on a naive analogy to portfolio theory Cities looking to strengthen their economies should concentrate on building upon and  extending current specializations One of the... →

There's scarcely any evidence that proximity to jobs matters for escaping poverty. One of the most popular and persistent theories of urban poverty is that the poor are poor because they don't live particularly close to... →

Carbon emissions from transportation in Portland increased 6 percent last year In the one are where city policy can make the most difference, greenhouse gas emissions are increasing Portland has long prided itself in... →

If your city isn't unequal, it's either poor or exclusionary Measured income equality, which is sensible goal nationally, is a perversely misleading indicator of which cities are the most just and and inclusive Incom... →

West Coast political leaders talk a good greenhouse gas game, but actions speak louder Throughout Ecotopia, carbon emissions are rising due to more driving, yet the region's leaders are throwing even more money at subsi... →

Super-commuting is a really a plea for more housing and better transit If long distance commutes are up, its probably because gas prices are so low If you're covering the transportation beat, the plight of the poor s... →

Beto O'Rourke brings a strong urbanist, inclusive message to the presidential campaign The 2020 Democratic presidential race has been remarkable for addressing both climate change and housing policy issues that have long ... →

We're killing more people because more people are ignoring traffic signals We've charted the ominous increase in road deaths in the past several years, and now there's a new bit of evidence of just how bad the problem h... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Why diversification is a simplistic, often flawed economic strategy. When it comes to personal investment everyone understands (or certainly should understand) the concept of portfol... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. What super-commuters really mean.  Media coverage of super-commuters--people who travel more than 90 minutes each way to and from work--is invariably sympathetic, treating these fol... →

What City Observatory did in 2019 We spent a lot of time this year addressing Portland's proposed half-billion dollar Rose Quarter freeway widening project. You may have thought Portland put its freeway fights behind it i... →

What City Observatory this week 1. 2019:  The Year Observed.  We take a look back at 2019 and review some of the most important City Observatory commentaries, interesting stories and valued research.  Our most read pos... →

What City Observatory did this week Remembering Dr. King. We were reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech about the pronounced tendency in public policy to prescribe socialism for the rich and rugged, free market ca... →

What City Observatory did this week The pernicious myth of "Naturally Occurring" Affordable Housing.  One of the most dangerous and misleading concepts in housing reared its ugly head in the form a a new publication from... →

What City Observatory this week Robert Moses strikes again:  One of the most infamous decisions of "The Power Broker" was to build the overpasses on the Long Island Expressway too low to allow city buses to use the roadw... →

What City Observatory this week Why does it take four years and $200 million for consultants to serve up a warmed-over version of the Columbia River Crossing?  The Interstate Bridge Replacement Project’s director admit... →

What City Observatory this week 1. The Urban Institute gets inclusion backwards. The Urban Institute has released an updated set of estimates that purport to measure which US cities are the most inclusive.  The report i... →

What City Observatory this week Institutionalized housing discrimination. A recent study of housing discrimination in Detroit came to a seemingly surprising conclusion:  Fair housing complaints were less likely to be fil... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Why Portland's Rose Quarter Freeway widening will increase greenhouse gas emissions.  The Oregon Department of Transportation hashas falsely claimed its $800 million freeway widening pr... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Calculating induced travel. Widening freeways to reduce traffic congestion in dense urban areas inevitably fails because of the scientifically demonstrated problem of induced demand; som... →

What City Observatory this week 1.  How housing segregation reduces Black wealth.  Black-owned homes are valued at a discount to all housing, but the disparity is worst in highly segregated metro areas.  There's a st... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Covid migration:  Disproportionately young, economically stressed and people of color.  Data shows the moves prompted by Covid-19 are more reflective of economic distress for the vulne... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Revealed: Oregon Department of Transportation's secret plans for a ten-lane I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter.  For years, ODOT has been claiming that its $800 million freeway widening pr... →

What City Observatory this week 1. How the Oregon Department of Transportation destroyed a Portland neighborhood, Part 2:  The Moses Meat Axe.  We continue our historical look at the role that freeway construction (and ... →

What City Observatory this week 1. How ODOT destroyed Albina:  Part 3 the Phantom Freeway.  Even a freeway that never got built played a key role in demolishing part of Portland's Albina neighborhood.  In parts 1 and 2... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Taking Tubman:  The Oregon Department of Transportation is planning to widen the Interstate 5 freeway in Portland into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School.  The $800 million w... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Restorative justice without funding is a sham.  Portland's Albina neighborhood was decimated by the construction of three Oregon Department of Transportation highway projects in the 195... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Fighting climate change is inherently equitable. While there's a growing recognition of the existential threat posed by climate change, it's becoming increasingly frequent to pit equity ... →

What City Observatory this week 1. It's not a bridge replacement, it's a 5 mile long, 12 lane wide freeway that just happens to cross a river.  The Oregon and Washington highway departments are trying to revive the faile... →

What City Observatory this week Don't be fooled again.  The Oregon and Washington state highway departments are up to their old tricks in trying to push a multi-billion dollar highway building boondoggle in the POrtland ... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Needed:  A bolder, better building back. In response to an invitation from its authors, we take a look at a  "grand bargain" proposed by Patrick Doherty and Chris Leinberger for breaki... →

What City Observatory did this week An open letter to Secretary Pete Buttigieg on his visit to Oregon.  Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg came to Oregon this week to look at some local transportation innovations. ... →

What City Observatory did this week Oregon Department of Transportation's Climate Fig-Leaf.  Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in Oregon, and the state's Department of Transportation is—yet again... →

What City Observatory did this week The cost of Oregon DOT's Rose Quarter project has nearly tripled to $1.25 billion.  Just four years ago, the Oregon Department of transportation sold its mile-and-a-half long I-5 freew... →

What City Observatory did this week Talkin' 'bout my gentrification.  Jerusalem Demsas of Vox has a thoughtful synthesis of what we know about gentrification.  If we're concerned about poverty and inequality, gentrifi... →

What City Observatory did this week The Cappuccino Congestion Index.  Media reports regularly regurgitate the largely phony claims about how traffic congestion costs travelers untold billions of dollars in wasted time. ... →

What City Observatory did this week A universal basic income . . . for cars.  One of the most widely discussed alternatives for tackling poverty and inequality head on is the idea of a "Universal Basic Income"--a payment... →

What City Observatory did this week How sprawl and tax evasion are driving demands for wider freeways.  The Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation are proposing to spend roughly $5 billion to widen a 5 mile ... →

What City Observatory did this week The folly of the frog ferry.  One bane of transportation policy discussions is the tendency to believe that miracle technical fixes—self-driving cars, personal aircraft, the Segway, ... →

What City Observatory did this week Ten questions that deserve answers before making a multi-billion dollar decision. The Portland metro area is being asked by the Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation to gi... →

What City Observatory did this week Just Say "No" to freeway widening zealots.  George Santayana meet David Bragdon:  Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat the failures of the past.  A year ago, we pu... →

What City Observatory did this week Another exploding whale:  The cost of the I-205 bridge project doubles in four years. Famously in the 1960s, the Oregon State Highway Department tried to dispose of the carcass of a wh... →

What City Observatory did this week Oregon DOT's "reign of error"—chronic cost overruns on highway projects.  The Oregon Department of Transportation is moving forward with a multi-billion dollar freeway expansion plan... →

What City Observatory did this week There's nothing green about free parking, no matter how many solar panels you put on the garage.  The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory brags about its sus... →

What City Observatory did this week The economics of fruit, time, and place.  It's berry time in Portland, and that got us thinking about how special local products are in defining quality of life.  Recently, Paul Krugm... →

Must read The most gas guzzling states. The sting of higher gas prices depends on where you live, not so much because of the variation in prices, but because in some states, you just have drive a lot more.  The website Q... →

What City Observatory did this week A Bridge too low.  The Oregon DOT is fundamentally misrepresenting the process and legal standards for setting the height of a proposed new multi-billion dollar I-5 bridge across the C... →

What City Observatory did this week Failing to learn from the failure of the Columbia River Crossing.  Last week, Portland's Metro Council voted 6-1 to wave on the Oregon Department of Transportation's plan for a multi-b... →

What City Observatory did this week Fix it Last.  The Oregon Department of Transportation claims that it has a "Fix-it" first policy--prioritizing spending funds to preserve existing roads and bridges.  But their actual... →

What City Observatory did this week The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve?  The redesign of the I-5 Rose Quarter project creates a hazardous new hairpin off-ramp from Interstate 5.  This  supposed ... →

What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges.  The Oregon and Washington highway departments are blundering ahead with a $5 billion plan to widen I-5 between Portland and Vancouver, and are making many of the same m... →

What City Observatory did this week Groundhog's Day for Climate.  So you think you're not Bill Murray in the classic "Groundhog's Day?"  Oregonians, ask yourself:  are we anywhere closer to seriously addressi... →

What City Observatory did this week Driving stakes, selling bonds, overdosing on debt.  The Oregon Department of Transportation is following a well trodden path to push the state toward a massive highway expans... →

What City Observatory did this week Why does a $500 million bridge replacement cost $7.5 billion?  For the past several years, the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been pushing for construction of somet... →

What City Observatory did this week Why does a $500 million bridge cost $7.5 billion?  For almost two decades the Oregon and Washington highway departments have been saying they want to replace the I-5 bridges over t... →

What City Observatory did this week Oregon's transportation finance in crisis:  Testimony to the Joint Ways and Means Committee.  On March 16, City Observatory's Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Legislature's b... →

What City Observatory did this week What are they hiding?  Oregon and Washington are being asked to spend $7.5 billion on a giant bridge:  Why won’t anyone show pictures of what it would look like?  The Oregon ... →

What City Observatory did this week IBR's plan to sabotage the "moveable span" alternative.  The proposed $7.5 billion Portland area freeway widening project is supposedly looking at a moveable span option to avoid i... →

What City Observatory did this week The case against the Interstate Bridge Project.  We offer 16 reasons why Oregon and Washington lawmakers should question the current plans for the proposed $7.5 billion I-5 freeway... →

What City Observatory did this week Scratch one flat top!  That was the famous cry of US Naval aviators, when, early in World War II they chalked up their first victory, sinking the Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho.  Por... →

What City Observatory did this week This is what victory looks like.  Freeway fighting is hard, drawn-out work.  StateDOTs and their allies have vast funding for public relations campaigns to sell giant projects; citize... →

What City Observatory did this week What if we regulated new car ownership the same way we do new housing?  Getting a building permit for a new house is difficult, expensive, and in some places, simply impossible.  In c... →

Must Read Portland:  Four Floors and Corner Stores--Upzoning for urban development and housing affordability.  A coalition of community, enviornmental and social justice groups is advocating for a YIMBY strategy for mor... →

What City Observatory did this week Britain's Caste system of transportation.  In a cynical ploy to revive the Conservative Party's flagging electoral hopes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has engaged in some blatant pro-mot... →

Must Read The high, high cost of "affordable housing."  The Voice of San Diego takes a look at the pricetag of several affordable housing projects in California and finds they're pushing and breaking through the million-... →

What City Observatory Did This Week Beware of phony claims that highway projects are "On-time and Under-Budget." For highway departments, the key to being on-time and under-budget is Orwellian double-speak. Oregon ... →

What City Observatory Did This Week Unique Local Experiences: The Hidden Value in Urban Economies. An often-overlooked aspect of urban economics: the value of unique, local, and seasonal experiences. We take as an example... →

What City Observatory Did This Week Inventing a "commitment" to megaproject cost-overruns.  Oregon's Department of Transportation is is trying to re-write history to create a commitment to unapproved freeway s and massi... →

What City Observatory Did This Week The Oregon Department of Transportation's (ODOT) Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project is facing significant delays of up to 18 months. The culprit? Flawed traffic model... →

What City Observatory Did This Week We grade the city clean energy scorecard.  A new scorecard tires to measure how cities are promoting energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gases—a laudable goal. But the scorecar... →

What City Observatory Did This Week A costly cargo cult in Portland:  A proposal to spend $30 million per year subsidizing the revival of container shipping operations at the Port of Portland is misguided effort based on... →

What City Observatory Did This Week The Oregon Department of Transportation can and should mitigate the negative impacts of its highway construction projects, including social and economic impacts.  ODOT's massive $1.9 b... →

What City Observatory Did This Week Another Oregon Department of Transportation exploding whale.*  The cost of one of OregonDOT's megaprojects, the expansion of the I-205 Abernethy Bridge over the Willamette River south ... →

What City Observatory Did This Week Earth Day: Oregon is spending billions to widen freeways in a move that will only worsen the increase in greenhouse gases from transportation.  Transportation is the leading source of ... →

What City Observatory Did This Week A teachable moment: Free Ice Cream Day.  Traffic was lined up around the block last Tuesday at your local Ben and Jerry's, for the same reason roadways are clogged most weekday afterno... →

What City Observatory did this week Thirty seconds over Portland:  Spending $7.5 billion on a freeway widening project will save the typical affected commuter about 30 seconds a day, according to the Interstate Bridge Re... →

What City Observatory did this week What the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project doesn't want you to know.  The $7.5 Billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project is afraid of what you’ll find out when they release ... →

What City Observatory did this week The high cost of covering freeways.  The latest fashion in highway urbanism is "capping" freeways.  In theory, highway builders claim that capping freeways will repair past damage and... →

What City Observatory did this week Abandoning road pricing monkey-wrenches state transportation, traffic reduction and climate plans.  This week, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek terminated Oregon's Regional Mobility Pricing ... →

What City Observatory did this week A yawning chasm in neighborhood distress among metro areas. Almost every metropolitan area has some neighborhoods that face serious economic distress, but the patterns of distress vary ... →

What City Observatory Did this Week Is it time to address the problem of "Missing Massive" housing?  This past week marked the latest convening of YIMBYTown, this year, held in Austin, Texas.  One of the perennial topic... →

Must Read The freeway cap mirage.  Don't like freeways?  Let's just cover up the problem.  It's increasingly popular to try to repair the damage done to urban neighborhoods by "capping" freeways:  building a cover so ... →

What City Observatory did this week Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study.  Some of the most important policy decisions are buried deep in seemingly technocratic documents.  Case-in-point:  Oregon's... →

Must Read How CalTrans cheated on its environmental reporting.  Some months back, former Deputy Director of CalTrans,Jeanie Ward-Waller blew the whistle on the agency's effort to evade environmental laws and illegally us... →

What City Observatory did this week A $9 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project?  Just 13 months after raising the price of the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project by more than 50 percent, the Oregon and W... →

What City Observatory did this week Bad data.  What appears, at first glance, to be a big decline in trip-making is really an object lesson in failing to read the footnotes.  Every five years or so, the US Department of... →

What City Observatory did this week Exaggerated Benefits, Omitted Costs: The Interstate Bridge Boondoggle.  A $7.5 billion highway boondoggle doesn’t meet the basic test of cost-effectiveness.  The Interstate Bridge... →

What City Observatory did this week Tolling i-5 will produce massive traffic diversion.  The proposed I-5 Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project will be paid for in part by $2.80 to $4.30 tolls charged to travelers... →

What City Observatory did this week Secret plans show ODOT is planning a 10-lane freeway in the Rose Quarter.  City Observatory has obtained previously un-released plans showing that the $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter pro... →

What City Observatory did this week 5 million miles wide of the mark.Portland's regional government Metro, has proposed a regional transportation plan (RTP) that purports to achieve state and regional policies to reduce g... →

What City Observatory did this week Snow-Job:  Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) threatens to slash snow-plowing and other safety maintenance unless it is given more money, while spending billions on a handful o... →

What City Observatory did this week Killer off-ramps.  The Oregon Department of Transportation's $1.9 billion I-5 Rose Quarter widening has been repeatedly (and falsely) portrayed as a "safety" project, but the latest re... →

What City Observatory did this week More climate fraud in Portland Metro's proposed regional transportation plan.  We branded Metro's proposed Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) a climate fraud because in falsely claimed... →

What City Observatory did this week What apartment consolidation in New York tells us about housing markets and gentrification.  A new study shows that over the past several decades, New York City lost more than 100,000 ... →

What City Observatory did this week Rose Quarter:  Death throes of a bungled boondoggle.  For years, we've been following the tortured Oregon Department of Transportation Plans to widen a 1.5 mile stretch of I-5 near do... →

What City Observatory did this week Metro's Climate-Denial Regional Transportation Plan.  Portland's regional governtment, Metro, has published a draft Regional Transportation Plan, outlining priorities for transportatio... →

What City Observatory did this week Climate fraud in the Portland Metro RTP.  Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan rationalizes spending billions on freeway expansion by publishing false estimates and projections of gr... →

Must Read Some Texas-sized greenwashing for highway widening in Austin.  TXDOT is aiming to spend close to $5 billion to widen I-35 through downtown Austin, and to sweeten the deal, they're producing project renderings s... →

What City Observatory did this week Eating local:  Why independent, local restaurants are a key indicator of city vitality.  Jane Jacobs noted decades ago that“The greatest asset a city can have is something that is d... →

What City Observatory did this week Myth-busting:  Idling and greenhouse gas emissions.  Highway boosters are fond of claiming that they can help fight climate change by widening highways so that cars don't have to spen... →

What City Observatory did this week Few highway construction dollars for Black-owned firms in Oregon.  The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is falling short of its own goals of contracting with disadvantaged bu... →

What City Observatory did this week We have an in-depth series of reports on the Oregon Department of Transportation's imploding I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project. The cost of the I-5 Rose Quarter project has n... →

What City Observatory did this week Yet another exploding whale:  One of the Internet's most popular videos shows employees of the Oregon Department of Transportation blowing up a dead whale carcass stranded on an Ocean ... →

What City Observatory did this week We took the week off to celebrate the Summer Solstice and gorge on Hood strawberries! We'll be back next week. Must Read The amazing non-appearance of Carmageddon.  Echoing th... →

What City Observatory did this week Carmageddon does a no-show in Philly.  A tanker truck caught fire and the ensuing blaze caused a section of I-95 in Philadelphia to collapse.  This key roadway may be out of commissio... →

What City Observatory did this week Guest contributor Miriam Pinski observes that getting the prices right could produce dramatic improvements in how US transportation systems perform.  New York is on the verge of implem... →

What City Observatory did this week What computer renderings really show about the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project:  It's in trouble. The Interstate Bridge Project has released—after years of delay—computer gra... →

What City Observatory did this week Pricing is a better, cheaper fix for congestion at the I-5 Rose Quarter.  The Oregon Department of Transportation is proposing to squander $1.45 billion to widen about a mile and a hal... →

What City Observatory did this week Rose Quarter tolls:  Available, but not foreseeable?  There's a glaring--and illegal--contradiction in the planning for the Oregon Department of Transportation's $1.45 billion Rose Qu... →

What City Observatory did this week There’s plenty of time to fix the Interstate Bridge Project. Contrary to claims made by OregonDOT and WSDOT officials, the federal government allows considerable flexibility in fundin... →

What City Observatory did this week Why can't Oregon DOT tell the truth?  Oregon legislators asked the state transportation department a simple question:  How wide is the proposed $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacem... →

What City Observatory did this week Why should Oregonians subsidize suburban commuters from another state? Oregon is being asked to pay for half of the cost of widening the I-5 Interstate Bridge. Eighty percent of daily c... →

What City Observatory did this week Testifying on the Oregon Transportation Finance.  City Observatory director Joe Cortright testified to the Oregon Legislature on HB 2098, a bill being proposed to fund bloated free... →

What City Observatory did this week More induced travel denial.  Highway advocates deny or minimize the science of induced travel. We offer our rebuttal to a reason column posted at Planetizen, attempting to minimize... →

What City Observatory did this week IBR admits its bridge is too steep.  After 15 years of telling the region that the only feasible alternative for crossing the Columbia River was a pair of side-by-side double-decker br... →

What City Observatory did this week Driving between Vancouver and Wilsonville at 5PM? ODOT plans to charge you $15.  Under ODOT’s toll plans, A driving from Wilsonville to Vancouver will cost you as much as $15, each-w... →

What City Observatory did this week CEVP: Non-existent cost controls for the $7.5 billion IBR project.  Oregon DOT has a history of enormous cost overruns, and just told the Oregon and Washington Legislatures that the co... →

What City Observatory did this week Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.  We're reminded this year of Dr. Martin Luther King's observation that our cities, and the public p... →

What City Observatory did this week A reporter's guide to congestion cost studies.  For more than a decade, we and others have been taking a close, hard and critical look at congestion cost reports genera... →

What City Observatory did this week The case against the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening.  This week marked the end of public comment on the Supplemental Environmental Assessment for the Oregon Department of Tr... →

Editor's Note:  Public Comment on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Project Between now and January 4, 2023, the public will be asked to weigh in with its comments on the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project.  ... →

Editor's Note:  Public Comment on the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Project In the next month, the public will be asked to weigh in with its comments on the proposed I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway Widening project.  If you're inte... →

What City Observatory did this week Risky bridges: If you're going to spend several billion dollars, you might want to get some independent expert advice.  Oregon and Washington are on the verge of committing 5 billion d... →

What City Observatory did this week A toll policy primer for Oregon.  The Oregon Department of Transportation is proposing to finance billions in future road expansions with tolling.  While we're enamored of road pricin... →

What City Observatory did this week Using phony safety claims to sell a billion dollar freeway widening.  This past week, Sarah Pliner, a promising young Portland chef was killed when she and her bike were crushed by a t... →

What City Observatory did this week Two of the three candidates for Oregon Governor are Climate Deniers. Oregon will elect a new Governor next month, and two of the three candidates for the job insist on repeating the dis... →

What City Observatory did this week Building a bridge too low--again.  In their effort to try to revive the failed Columbia River Crossing (a $5 billion freeway widening project between Portland and Vancouver) the Oregon... →

What City Observatory did this week Our apologies to City Observatory readers for our website outage on 19-22 May.  More meaningless congestion pseudo science.  A new study from the University of Maryland claims that... →

What City Observatory did this week Oregon crosses the road-pricing Rubicon. Starting this spring, motorists will pay a $2 toll to drive Oregon's historical Columbia River Gorge Highway.  Instead of widening t... →

What City Observatory did this week Who's most vulnerable to high gas prices? Rising gas prices are a pain, but they hurt most if you live in a sprawling metro where you have to drive long distances to work, sho... →

Must read The problem with the "reckless driver" narrative.  Strong Towns Chuck Marohn eloquently points out the deflection and denial inherent in the emerging "reckless driver" explanation for increasing car crashes and... →

What City Observatory did this week Freeway widening for whomst:  Woke-washing the survey data.  Highway builders are eager to cloak their road expansion projects in the rhetoric of equity and have become adep... →

What City Observatory did this week Freeway widening for whomst?  Woke-washing is all the rage among those pushing highway projects these days, and there's no better example that Portland's I-5 "bridge replacem... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Metro's failing climate strategy. Portland Metro’s Climate Smart Strategy, adopted in 2014, has been an abject failure. Portland area transportation greenhouse gasses a... →

What City Observatory did this week What does equity mean when we have a caste-based transportation system? Transportation and planning debates around the country increasingly ponder how we rectify long-standin... →

What City Observatory did this week Metro's "Don't look up" climate strategy.  In the new film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play scientists who find that the nation's leaders simply refuse to take s... →

What City Observatory did this week Why Portland shouldn't be moving elementary and middle schools to widen freeways.  We're pleased to publish a guest commentary from Adah Crandall, a high school sophomore and... →

What City Observatory did this week Climate and our Groundhog Day Doom Loop.  It's Groundhog  Day—again—and we're stuck in exactly the same place when it comes to climate policy.  Scientists are regularly... →

What City Observatory did this week The "replacement" bridge con.  It's telling that perhaps the largest single consulting expense for Oregon and Washington transportation departments' efforts to revive the fai... →

What City Observatory did this week Oregon's highway agency rigs its projections to maximize revenue and downplay its culpability for climate challenge.  ODOT has two different standards for forecasting:  When it... →

What City Observatory did this week The financial fallout from Louisville's I-65 boondoggle.  As we showed earlier, Kentucky and Indiana both wasted a billion dollars on doubling the capacity of I-65 across the... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. ODOT's real climate strategy:  Pollution as usual.  Oregon's highway builders are keeping two sets of books, one claiming that it cares about climate issues, the other shows that i... →

What City Observatory did this week How Portland powered Oregon's economic success. After decades of lagging the nation, Oregon's income now exceeds the national average. While some seem to think its a mystery:  I... →

What City Observatory did this week Why we shouldn't be whining about higher gas prices. Gas prices are going up, and it’s annoying to have to pay more, but let’s take a closer look at how much we’re paying for... →

What City Observatory did this week Has this city discovered how to solve traffic congestion?  Why aren't they telling everyone else how this works?  A miracle in Louisville. [caption id="attachment_12554" al... →

What City Observatory did this week The Opposite of Planning:  Why Portland's Metro government needs to turn down the highway department request for more money to plan future freeway widenings.  On paper, and to admirer... →

What City Observatory did this week America's least and most segregated metro areas:  Evidence from Census 2020.  Racial segregation remains a chronic problem in US metropolitan areas.  Data from Census 2020 provides a... →

What City Observatory did this week Ten reasons you can't trust DOT claims that widening highways reduces pollution.  Highway departments are fond of ginning up traffic projections and air quality analyses claiming... →

What City Observatory did this week Freeway-widening grifters: Woke-washing, fraud and incompetence.  The Oregon Department of Transportation has been trying to sell its $1.25 billion freeway widening project as a ... →

What City Observatory did this week Portland's Clean Energy Fund needs accountability.  Portland voters approved a ballot measure creating a $60 million annual fund to invest in community-based clean energy projects, par... →

What City Observatory did this week Is the campus 100 percent clean energy?  (Only if you don't count the cars and parking lots).  Stanford University announced that its near to realizing a goal to move all of its campu... →

What City Observatory did this week Cost of Living and Auto Insurance. We often compare the affordability of different cities with a clear focus on housing prices and rents. This week at City Observatory we are interest... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Tackling climate change will require electric cars, and a lot less driving.  We're pleased to publish a guest commentary from CalYimby's Matthew Lewis looking at the challenge of ad... →

What City Observatory did this week America's berry best cities.  It's the height of the summer fruit season and berries are ripening across the country.  Nothing beats a fresh local berry in season. We've ranked the na... →

What City Observatory did this week Selling Oregon into highway bondage.  Oregon is moving ahead with plans to issue hundreds of millions—and ultimately billions of dollars of debt to widen Portland-area freeways.  An... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Miami's double standard for charging road users.  The City of Miami is hoping to make their streets a safer place for bikes and scooters by building protected lanes along three mile... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. The Texas Transportation Institute is back, and it's still wrong about traffic congestion.  Every year or so, a group of researchers at Texas A&M University produce report purpo... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Cars kill city neighborhoods.  Across the nation, America's cities have been remade to accomodate the automobile.  Freeways have been widened through city neighborhoods, demolishin... →

What City Observatory this week 1.  Race and economic polarization.  In the past several decades, racial segregation in the US has attenuated, but economic segregation has increased.  This is nowhere more apparent than... →

What City Observatory this week What ultimately destroyed Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood:  Highways.  This past week marked the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre.  In 1921, a racist mob attacked and destroyed the B... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Why highway departments can and should build housing to mitigate road damage.  For decades, American cities have been scarred and neighborhoods destroyed by highway construction project... →

What City Observatory this week 1. How ODOT destroyed Albina.  Urban freeways have been lethal to neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods of color, in cities throughout the nation.  While the construction of Interstate ... →

What City Observatory this week 1. An open letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission.  For more than two years, City Observatory and others have been shining a bright light on the Oregon Department of Transportation... →

What City Observatory this week 1. The failure of Vision Zero.  Like many regions, the Portland metropolitan area has embraced the idea of Vision Zero; a strategy of planning to take concrete steps over time to reduce th... →

What City Observatory this week 1. The fundamental global law of traffic congestion.  For years, urbanists have stressed the concept of induced demand, based on the nearly universal observation that widening urban roadwa... →

What City Observatory this week 1. 2021 is when we have to get real about tackling climate change.  We've boiled our analysis of the climate challenge down to four key points: Pledges alone won't accomplish anything... →

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 interconnec... →

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 t... →

What City Observatory this week 1.  Counting Covid- Cases in US Metro Areas.  We've been updating our metro area tabulations of the number of reported Covid-19 cases on a daily basis. You can find our latest tabulations... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Regional Patterns of Covid-19 Incidence.  The pandemic has struck every corner of the nation, but has clearly hit some areas harder than others. We've focused on those metro areas, like... →

What City Observatory this week 1. What the Covid-19 Shutdown teaches us about freeways. Everyone knows that speeds are up on urban roadways around the nation because of the stay-at-home orders to fight the pandemic. But ... →

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-op... →

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... →

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... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Carmaggedon never comes, Portland edition. It's a favored myth that any reduction in road capacity will automatically trigger gridlock, and highway engineers regularly inveigh agains... →

What City Observatory did this week Let's fight congestion with a PR campaign.  For decades, when pressed to do something to improve road safety, city and state transportation officials have responded with . . . marketin... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Covid-19 is now worst in rural areas and red states. Early on in the pandemic, it seemed like everyone attributed the spread of the Coronavirus to big cities and density. It turns ou... →

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... →

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 amoun... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Achieving equitable transportation: Reallocate road space and price car travel. New York has recorded a kind of "Miracle on 14th Street." By largely banning through car traffic, its ... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Seven reasons you should be optimistic about cities in a post-pandemic world. There's widespread pessimism about the future of cities. With the pandemic-induced advent of work-at-hom... →

What City Observatory did this week Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Gridlock Tuesday?  The day after a nation celebrates its socially distanced "Zoom Thanksgiving" we'll look to see how the pandemic affects the traditional "... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Now we are six. We marked City Observatory's sixth birthday this week, and took a few moments to reflect back on the journey, and to thank all those who helped us on our way, and to ... →

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.... →

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 raci... →

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... →

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 ca... →

What City Observatory did this week The case against Metro's $5 billion transportation bond. Portland's regional government, Metro, is asking voters to approve a $5 billion package of transportation improvements, to be fu... →

What City Observatory did this week America's most and least segregated cities. Residential racial segregation is a fundamental and persistent aspect of system racism in the United States. Segregation cuts of disfavored g... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Is it random, or is it Zumper? Are rents going up or down in your city?  Listicles showing which places have the biggest jumps (or declines) in rents are a perennial media favorite,... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. The abject failure of Portland's Climate Action Plan. Last month, Portland issued the final report on its 2015 Climate Action Plan. It emphasizes that the city took action on three-q... →

What City Observatory did this week The exodus that never happened. You've probably seen stories bouncing around the media for the past few months claiming that fears that density makes people more susceptible to the pand... →

What City Observatory did this week Dominos falling on Portland's Rose Quarter freeway widening project. In the space of just a few hours two weeks ago, local political support for an $800 million freeway widening project... →

What City Observatory did this week CityBeat: NPR urban flight story. The pack animals of the media have settled on a single, oft-repeated narrative about cities and Covid-19; that fear of the virus will lead people to mo... →

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 succeed... →

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 ... →

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.�... →

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 viru... →

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 lea... →

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 ... →

What City Observatory this week 1. What cities are showing us about the progression of the Covid-19 pandemic.  In an important sense, each large US metro area is a separate test case of the path of the Covid-19 virus. By... →

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 exp... →

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 l... →

What City Observatory this week 1. The inequity built into Metro's proposed homeless strategy. Portland's Metro is rushing forward with a plan asking voters to approve $250 million per year in income taxes to fight homele... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Local flavor:  Which cities have the most independent restaurants.  Local eateries are one of the most visibly distinctive elements of any city. As Jane Jacobs said, the most important... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Talent drives economic development. We know the single most important factor determining metropolitan economic success:  It's determined by the education level of your population. The l... →

What City Observatory this week 1. A massive regional transportation spending plan that does nothing for climate change.  Portland's leaders are in the process of crafting a $3 billion plus regional transportation packag... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Oregon DOT repeats its idle lie about emissions. It's every highway builder's go-to response to climate change:  we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we could just keep cars from... →

What City Observatory this week 1. Portland's progress (or lack thereof) on climate. Portland likes to present itself as a climate leader, but the latest data on transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions shows that ... →

What City Observatory did the past couple of weeks 1. Using seismic scare stories to sell freeways. The Pacific Northwest is living on the edge; sometime (possibly tomorrow, possible several hundred years from now) we'll ... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. No Deposit, No Return: Another lie to try and sell the $3 billion Columbia River Crossing. The state's of Oregon and Washington spent nearly $200 million planning the failed Columbia... →

What City Observatory did this week 1.  Copenhagen's cycling success hinges on tax policy and pricing, not just bike lanes.  The New York Times offers up yet another postcard view of cycling in Copenhagen, where riding ... →

What City Observatory did this week A two cent solution to climate change?  Around the world, plastic bags are an environmental scourge, both in the form a litter (a nuisance) and as a threat to wildlife. In response, ma... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Tim Bartik explains business incentives. States and cities spend about $50 billion a year on tax breaks and other incentives to try to influence business location decisions.  The na... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Our 5th Anniversary.  October 17 marked 5 years since we started publishing our research and commentary at City Observatory. We reflect back on five years of work, and thank all tho... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Transportation for America won't be fooled again..  After years of getting rolled by the freeway lobby, it appears that T4America has finally said "Enough."  Transit and active tra... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. We debunk the Wall Street Journal's claim of an exodus of young adults from cities.  Last week, the Wall Street Journal trumpeted an "exodus" of 25 to 39 year old adults from cities... →

What City Observatory did this week 1. Beto O'Rourke brings a strong inclusive urbanist message to the Presidential contest.  While its been great to see housing affordability and climate change grow in prominence on the... →

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 immin... →

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 immin... →

After a four year hiatus, the Texas Transportation Institute has once again generated its misleading Urban Mobility Report--and its still wrong. The UMR has been comprehensively debunked--it has never been peer-reviewed... →

Community opposition forces Oregon Department of Transportation to do a full Environmental Impact Statement on its half-billion dollar Rose Quarter freeway widening project. For the past two years, we've been deeply eng... →

For many families, the way out of poverty is to move to a better neighborhood A new study shows modest investments in information combined with supportive services can help them make that move. We need to rethink... →

Facts are stubborn things: And they don't support the folk wisdom equating gentrification with displacement. There's a palpable and growing amount of cognitive dissonance between the accepted conventional wisdom about t... →

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 ... →

Why are there so few studies charting displacement and cultural decline in non-gentrifying neighborhoods? The implicit assumption in most gentrification research is that if a neighborhood doesn't change, that it stays t... →

Are home prices appreciating more or less in black neighborhoods? Is that a good thing? Today, in part 2 of our analysis of the home price gap between majority black and predominantly white neighborhoods we look at the ... →

How food carts illustrate the importance of dynamic change in cities. There's a tension in the city between the permanent (or seemingly permanent) and the fleeting, between the immutability of the built environment and ... →

The new Philadelphia Fed study of gentrification is the best evidence yet that gentrification creates opportunity and promotes integration To many "gentrification" is intrinsically negative. When wealthier, whiter peopl... →

Home buying is a risky bet: There's a 30% chance your house will be worth less in five years It's a widely agreed that promoting homeownership is a key means to help American households build wealth.  But as we and oth... →

The New York Times tells us that cities were "losing their allure" before the Covid-19 pandemic, and that now people are preparing to flee urban areas.  Sure, cities had a bit of a resurgence after 2000, But by the mid-2... →

Faster suburban population growth doesn't signal a preference for suburbs:  Here's why Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported suburbs growing faster than cities.  The article, "American suburbs swell again as a n... →

Oregon moves decisively to legalize missing middle housing Oregon became the first state in the nation to comprehensively bar local governments from imposing exclusive single-family residential zoning, and to effectivel... →

US drivers are killing 50 percent more pedestrians, European drivers are killing a third fewer If anything else--a disease, terrorists, gun-wielding crazies--killed as many Americans as cars do, we'd regard it as a nati... →

Lingering racism holds down property values in majority black neighborhoods For most American households, their home is their largest financial asset; how valuable that asset is, and whether it appreciates has a profoun... →

Renegotiating the right of way in public space They erased the lines on 24th Avenue.  Just a few blocks from my house is NE 24th Avenue in Portland, a principal North-South route through the Irvington neighborhood.  F... →

A new report confirms the growing market for walkable places George Washington University and Smart Growth America have a new report on the economic value of and growing market for walkable places. Called "Foot Traffic ... →

Frontier Group and USPIRG's annual report on highway boondoggles calls out the Oregon DOT's wasteful, ineffective I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project as a national level boondoggle. Portland is famous for making t... →

Employment is increasingly concentrating, and a few cities lead the way The Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program has a new report out, Where jobs are concentrating and why it matters to cities and regions... →

Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences   I pity you, dear reader.  You likely have no idea what a real strawberry tastes like. Unless you spend the three weeks around ... →

Perishable, special, and local: The economics of unique and fleeting experiences Friday night on Twitter, Paul Krugman waxed poetic about fruit and economic theory.  Krugman is back from Europe, and thirsting for summe... →

New data from TomTom shows Portland number one nationally in reducing traffic congestion:  Where's the celebration?  Portland chalked up the biggest reduction in traffic congestion of any city in the US over the past ... →

The case for using tax increment financing for affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods The problem with gentrification is that rising property values may make it expensive or impossible for lower and moderate in... →

Subsidizing electric vehicle purchases is an expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, and mostly subsidizes rich households who would have bought electric vehicles anyhow There's a new study from the National Bureau of... →

New research shows new apartments drive down rents in their immediate neighborhood, disproving the myth of "induced demand" for housing If you're a housing supply skeptic, there's one pet theory that you've been able to... →

Workers in low income households rely more on bikes for commuting, but the data show people of all income levels cycle to work There's a lot of hand-wringing and harrumphing about the demographics of cycling. Some worry... →

More housing supply denialism--debunked It appears that we have been a bit premature in calling the housing supply debate over. Last week's urbanist Internet was all a flutter with the latest claim of an academic study ... →

A sharp divide by race in urban residence for young adults Well-educated young whites are increasingly living in central cities, while well-educated young African-Americans are shifting increasingly to the suburbs Fo... →

Good decisions result only if state officials are transparent and honest City Observatory has been closely following the proposal to spend $500 million widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter in Portland. In the pr... →

Gentrification:  Here's your all-purpose list, from artists to zoning, of who and what's to blame We first published this list in 2019, but the search for scapegoats has expanded, and now includes little libraries and ... →

Gentrification:  Here's your all-purpose list, from artists to zoning, of who and what's to blame When bad things happen, we look around for someone to blame.  And when it comes to gentrification, which is loosely def... →

Using a data driven approach to understanding the health of the public realm We know that the civic commons, everything from parks and libraries, to city centers, the streetscape and other public spaces, play vital role... →

Portland is weighing whether to spend as much as $1.45 billion dollars widening a mile-long stretch of the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter near downtown. We've dug deeply into this idea at City Observatory, and we've publi... →

Portland is weighing whether to spend half a billion dollars widening a mile-long stretch of the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter near downtown. We've dug deeply into this idea at City Observatory, and we've published 25 co... →

We have always been at war with Eastasia. Concealing and lying about key facts regarding the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway widening process is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and a betrayal of publi... →

Oregon DOT's own consultants say congestion pricing would be a better way to fix congestion at the I-5 Rose Quarter than spending $800 million. Pricing would improve traffic flow and add capacity equal to another full l... →

Congestion pricing is a quicker, more effective and greener way to reduce congestion at the Rose Quarter than spending $500 million on freeway widening. Failing to advance pricing as an alternative in the environmental ... →

Long regarded as a national leader in transportation policy, Portland is being called out by some of the best and brightest for a wrong-headed decision to spend half a billion dollars widening freeways. The damage done is ... →

Expanding freeway capacity on I-5 hasn’t reduced crashes in Woodburn, but did triple in cost Today, we’re pleased to offer a guest commentary from Naomi Fast. Naomi currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon. Previously, ... →

Highway planners use a deeply flawed "lemming" model of traffic that rationalizes highway widenings The traffic projections made as part of the Environmental Assessment for the $500 million Rose Quarter I-5 widening pro... →

The proposed I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening project creates a bike- and pedestrian-hostile environment The Oregon Department of Transportation has crafted distorted images that exaggerate pedestrian use by a factor o... →

There's no evidence that widening the I-5 freeway at the Rose Quarter will reduce crashes. ODOT used a model that doesn't work for freeways with ramp-meters When ODOT widened I-5 lanes and shoulders near Victory Boul... →

ODOT is really building an 8-lane mega-freeway at the Rose Quarter You can tell from the tortured rhetoric about "auxiliary" lanes that the Oregon Department of Transportation is falling all over itself to make the free... →

ODOT's own traffic data shows that daily traffic (ADT) has been declining for 25 years, by -0.55 percent per year The ODOT modeling inexplicably predicts that traffic will suddenly start growing through 2045, growing by... →

State DOT officials have crafted an Supplemental Environmental Assessment that conceals more than it reveals The Rose Quarter traffic report contains no data on "average daily traffic" the most common measure of vehicle... →

`State DOT officials have crafted an Environmental Assessment that conceals more than it reveals In theory, the National Environmental Policy Act is all about disclosing facts. But in practice, that isn't always how it ... →

The fundamental injustice of pollution from urban freeways Item:  In the past two years, Portland Public Schools has spent nearly $12.5 million of its scarce funds to clean up the air at Harriet Tubman Middle School. ... →

Portland's $500 million Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Project is being sold as a way to reduce congestion:  But it won't work In three recent commentaries at City Observatory, we've explored whether a wider freeway at ... →

What pretends to be an environmental assessment is actually a thinly-veiled marketing brochure In theory, an environmental impact statement is supposed to be a disclosure document. The idea behind the National Environme... →

Portland's Albina neighborhood was devastated by the I-5 freeway; Widening it repeats that mistake Freeways and the traffic they generate are toxic to vibrant urban spaces. The great lesson of the urban freeway building... →

ODOT hid its plans to build a $3 billion Columbia River Crossing in the Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Environmental Assessment The carefully crafted marketing campaign for the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening project i... →

Why Portland's freeway fight is so important to the future of cities everywhere The plan to widen the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway in Portland, at a cost of $500 million, is a tragic error for one city, and an object lesson... →

We can calculate how much added freeway lanes will induce additional car travel The takeaway:  the I-5 freeway widening project in Portland lead to 10 to 17 million more miles of vehicle travel annually, which will in ... →

There's a huge demographic divide between those who use freeways and neighbors who bear their costs When it comes time to evaluate the equity of freeway widening investments, it's important to understand that there are ... →

The myth of a freight dependent economy: debunked by a thriving reality Imagine a port city, whose port went away.  It's economy would surely wither and die, right? That's what you might expect if you believed decades ... →

Streetsblogger extraordinaire Angie Schmidt is not happy with Uber and Lyft. They're not really the ones to blame. Are Uber and Lyft to blame for growing urban transportation problems? Streetsblog's Angie Schmit makes a... →

Widening  I-5 in Portland apparently made traffic congestion worse Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) is proposing to spend half a billion dollars to add two lanes to Interstate 5 at the Rose Quarter in Portl... →

Spending half a billion dollars to widen a mile of I-5 will have exactly zero effect on daily congestion. The biggest transportation project moving forward in downtown Portland isn't something related to transit, or cyc... →

More driving and our car-oriented transportation system killed 50,000 pedestrians in the past decade Each year, Smart Growth America produces its annual report Dangerous by Design looking at pedestrian deaths and injuri... →

One thing economists agree about: pricing carbon is essential to saving the planet; but if you don't believe economists, you ought to believe Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Economists are famous for disagreeing with one ano... →

Low house prices signify problems, not affordability There's a presumption that low housing prices are a sign of affordability, and a related belief that if housing prices rise, that its "a bad thing" because it must me... →

Here's a provocative proposal for getting more affordable housing, especially in rapidly changing, opportunity neighborhoods In part I of this series we laid out a key challenge to housing affordability described by Was... →

Coping with the nation's shortage of cities is a key factor in the Portland housing market in 2019 On January 9, I was invited to talk to the annual housing outlook seminar convened by HFO Oregon.  A video of my remark... →

How can affordable housing help minimize, rather than perpetuate, income segregation? At City Observatory, we've long focused on the challenge of concentrated poverty, starting with our first report Lost in Place, in 20... →

A New DIY toolkit helps neighborhoods and cities measure the state of their civic commons At City Observatory, we're all about metrics, and especially keen on metrics that help us better understand the function of citie... →

It's a long road to redressing inequality A half-century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the stilted rhetoric used use to talk about public spending to promote the social good: Whenever the government provid... →

It's a long road to redressing inequality Fifty-five years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the stilted rhetoric used use to talk about public spending to promote the social good: Whenever the government prov... →

It's a long road to redressing inequality A half-century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the stilted rhetoric used use to talk about public spending to promote the social good: Whenever the government provid... →

Data shows Portland's scooter experiment worked. Maybe it's time to critically appraise the failed 110 year experiment with cars. Starting in July, Portland, Oregon began allowing fleets of e-scooters, as an experiment,... →

Gradually, more people and elected leaders are admitting that more housing density is needed if we're to tackle housing affordability, and provide equitable opportunities to live in great cities and neighborhoods. But l... →

Eliminating exclusively single-family zones won't provide enough density: Recognizing the limits of "missing middle" as a solution to urban affordability  At City Observatory, we're excited as anyone that there seems t... →

Reviving the Columbia River Crossing will never happen:  the two sides have incompatible aims There are continued rumblings in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area about reviving the abandoned plan to spend $3 bill... →

Don't decry congestion pricing as inequitable until after you fix, or at least acknowledge, these ten other things that are even more inequitable about the way we pay for transportation. There's a growing interest in us... →

An obsession with gentrification obscures the urban problem: concentrated poverty Editor's Note:  We're again pleased to offer a guest commentary from Akron Planning Director Jason Segedy, who  has some keen insights... →

The Oregon Constitution exempts refunds and debt repayment from the limits on how revenue from taxing cars and fuel is spent Note: What follows is a hypothesis and a question. What's presented here is not a legal opinio... →

Tax free shopping in Oregon saves the typical Southwest Washington household $1,000 per year Cross border shopping accounts for 10-20 percent of all trips across the I-5 and I-205 bridges Tax avoidance means we're  ... →

Harnessing the value of public assets to support the civic commons It's widely recognized that public assets, like parks, libraries and community centers, generate important and tangible benefits for their neighborhoods... →

Cities are critical to expanding the circle of "us" and generating the new ideas that propel progress In October, Paul Romer was awarded the Nobel Prize in the Economic Sciences for his work on technology and economic g... →

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... →

Oregon's Department of Transportation is  lying about safety to sell a half billion dollar freeway project Fear-mongering is the one of the lowest, if unfortunately most effective, means of selling anything. Threaten a... →

Road pricing is inherently fairer to the poor because it speeds up buses As economists, we're keen on the idea of road pricing. The reason we have congestion and delay is because we charge a price for peak hour road use... →

Road pricing is inherently fairer to the poor because it speeds up buses As economists, we're keen on the idea of road pricing. The reason we have congestion and delay is because we charge a price for peak hour road use... →

We can't have empathy for those we can't encounter due to the way our cities are built Editor's Note: Last month, our friend Carol Coletta spoke to the Kinder Institute in Houston about the critical role that place play... →

A suburban campus with 10,000 parking spaces and virtually no transit isn't walkable A recent news item caught our eye:  The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported that American Airlines was putting a premium on promoting w... →

Adjusted for inflation, US home prices are still lower than in 2006 For most US households, the home they own is their biggest financial asset. After the housing bust of 2007, when collectively about $7 trillion in home... →

Wide variations in regional home price patterns tell us a lot about housing markets and cities Yesterday, we looked at the path of inflation-adjusted home prices in the US.  While much attention has been paid to the fa... →

The Equality of Opportunity Project shows local factors matter, but even more for black kids We now have a rich understanding of how where you grow up influences your life prospects. As we reported last week, the new Op... →

We have the data: Let's do a real test of whether Uber and Lyft lead to more crashes Last year, we asked some hard questions about a study from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business that made the provocat... →

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 whic... →

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 whic... →

A new study claiming ride-hailing increases crashes and deaths leaves some questions unanswered. A new study from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business makes the provocative claim that the advent of ride-... →

America's economy is increasingly driven by the concentration of talent in cities The Economic Innovation Group (aka EIG, a DC-based think tank) has been compiling some interesting data on the relative economic performa... →

Part of the disparity in intergenerational economic mobility may stem from a willingness to leave home Raj Chetty, Nate Hendren and their colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity Project have crafted a rich picture of ... →

Whether at the neighborhood or metropolitan level, more job growth doesn't seem to improve economic mobility There's a seemingly un-questioned (and unquestionable) truth among economic development practitioners that mor... →

Building a city so its residents don't have to drive so much powers economic growth A decade ago, we coined the term "green dividend."  We noted that among large US metropolitan areas, Portland residents drove signific... →

We're six! On October 17, 2014, we launched City Observatory, with the aim of providing solid, data-driven research on cities, and offering a timely and informed voice on urban policy issues. Six years—and more than a... →

We observe our fifth birthday On October 17, 2014, we launched City Observatory, with the aim of providing solid, data-driven research on cities, and offering a timely and informed voice on urban policy issues. Five yea... →

Today marks the fourth year since we launched City Observatory On October 17, 2014, we started up City Observatory. [caption id="attachment_7137" align="aligncenter" width="640"] (Flickr: Till Westermayer)[/caption] ... →

How neighborhood stability hinges on expectations:  If people don't believe things are going to get better, many will leave One of the most perplexing urban problems is neighborhood decline. Once healthy, middle-class ... →

Conspicuous non-consumption is really faux environmentalism; climate change is a social problem, not a personal one We're in the midst of the holiday shopping season, a potent reminder of how consumerism dominates so mu... →

The Opportunity Atlas: Stunning neighborhood maps of economic opportunity Some of the most important research findings of the past decade have come from the work of Raj Chetty and his colleagues at the Equality of Oppor... →

A careful study of evictions in San Francisco says "No." There's a widespread belief among some neighborhood activists that building new housing triggers displacement. We-and most economists are highly skeptical of that... →

Part 5. Are the nation's richest suburbs really its most economically inclusive cities? A statistical methodology that repeatedly flags high income suburbs as "inclusive" probably isn't actually measuring inclusiveness.... →

Part 4. Are racially and economically homogeneous cities and suburbs in a segregated metro "inclusive?" Looking only at disparities within cities misses the often far larger disparities across cities within in single m... →

Part 3.  Do annexations and mergers constitute economic growth? Not adjusting city job growth estimates for changes in city boundaries produces misleading estimates, especially when used for comparing and ranking cities.... →

Part 2. Are city boundaries the right way to measure inclusion? Municipal boundaries produce a myopic and distorted view of inclusion; the boundaries themselves were often drawn to create exclusion (Editor's note: Th... →

The Urban Institute has released an updated set of estimates that purport to measure which US cities are the most inclusive.  The report is conceptually flawed, and actually gets its conclusions backwards, classifying som... →

Inclusiveness is a worthy policy goal, but in practice turns out to be devilishly hard to measure. A recent report from the Urban Institute shows some of the pitfalls: looking just within city boundaries ignores metropoli... →

No:  Eighty percent of today's 8 to 23 year-olds won't be buying houses in the next five years At City Observatory, we get a regular stream of press releases and media advisories about the results of surveys and other ... →

Why a recent Fed study tells us very little about supply and affordability The takeaway: A recent Federal Reserve study which seems to show that building more housing won't improve affordability has little rel... →

The more you limit housing, the more you increase displacement In city after city, we see the same refrain: a neighborhood is starting to attract new residents and new investment, current residents are starting to worry... →

Gentrification Debates Without Gentrification? By Todd Swanstrom Editor's note: We're pleased to offer a guest commentary from Todd Swanstrom. Todd is the Des Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Pol... →

Capping or taxing ride-hailing services isn't going to solve NYC's congestion problem New York's City Council is moving ahead with a package of measures designed to cap the number of ride-hailed vehicles, like Uber and ... →

Rural and small town America faces some tough odds In an article entitled: "How to save the Troubled American Heartland," Bloomberg's very smart Noah Smith shares his thoughts on how to revive the smaller towns of rural... →

Whenever a distressed neighborhood gets new market rate housing, someone's bound to cry "Gentrification".  Here's why that's wrong. This is a guest post from Jason Segedy, Director of Akron's Planning Department.  Thi... →

A few knowledge workers decamp to rural America as they age, but cities are the key It's an oft-told tale: talented professionals grow weary of the stress and high cost of city-living, and decamp with their spouses, chi... →

If charging scooters to use city streets makes sense, let's charge cars proportionately A little bit late to the party, but today the first electric scooters appeared on the streets of Portland. Bird announced that, wit... →

The growth of concentrated poverty has been fueled by the secession of successful African Americans David Rusk has summarized his research on race and economic polarization in a series of three commentaries on "The Grea... →

Zillows data shows Portland rents have dropped 3.5 percent in the past year A couple of weeks ago, we published the latest data from ApartmentList.com on the decline in rents in the Portland metropolitan area.  Their b... →

Contrary to what you think you may have read in last week's Washington Post, rental housing markets at all levels still conform to the laws of supply and demand Monday's Washington Post ran a provocative headline: "In e... →

More supply is driving down rents in the Rose City According to Apartment List.com, rents for one bedroom apartments in Portland have declined 3 percent in the past year. It's a solid vindication of the standard predict... →

A review of The Divided City Alan Mallach, The Divided City:  Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America (Island Books, 2018, 326 pages). Before you head out to the beach or mountains or wherever your summertime plans ta... →

Why congestion pricing makes sense for Portland by Chris Hagerbaumer Today, City Observatory is pleased to offer a guest commentary from Chris Hagerbaumer on value pricing. Chris is the deputy director of the Oregon ... →

Philly's University City: The urban challenge in a nutshell The knowledge economy . . . tax breaks . . . NIMBYism . . . gentrification . . . Amazon's HQ2 . . . high speed rail . . . university economic development?  Al... →

How we embrace socialism for car storage in the public right of way Florida Senator Marco Rubio has denounced President Biden's $3.5 trillion spending program as un-American socialism.  Rubio claims: In the end, Ameri... →

How we embrace socialism for car storage in the public right of way Comrades, rejoice:  In the face of the counter-revolutionary neo-liberal onslaught, there's at least one arena where the people's inalienable rights r... →

People and social interaction, not technology, is the key to the future of cities Smart city afficianado's are agog at the prospects that the Internet of Things will create vast new markets for technology that will disr... →

What aspects of the built environment give rise to greater social trust? We're pleased to offer a guest commentary today from Em Friedenberg. Em is a recent graduate of the University of Oregon, who's studied urban desi... →

One of the places where socioeconomic mixing is highest Despite deep concerns that America is increasingly divided along racial, ethnic and economic lines, there are some neighborhoods that have a diverse array of resid... →

Our new CityReport dives deep in data; but what does a diverse, mixed income neighborhood look like? As we explained in our new report–America's Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods–nearly seven million American... →

Portland's City Council reversed its denial of one tall apartment building; we commend them Back in March, we were critical of a decision by the Portland City Council to deny approval of a 17-story apartment building in... →

The simple-minded comparison on city and suburb population growth rates is misleading and incomplete Every year, in the late Spring, the Census Bureau releases its latest population estimates for the nation's municipali... →

Prime working age adults are increasingly clustering in the center of the nation's largest metro area City Observatory has long been following the movement of people and jobs back to cities.  Our inaugural study on the... →

How slow growth and industrial decline perpetuate racial segregation As regular readers of City Observatory know, we think that the continuing racial and economic segregation of the nation's metropolitan areas is at the... →

Eds and Meds . . .  and Capitol Domes? I recently participated as a part of an expert panel reviewed Sacramento’s economic development strategy. You can learn more about the city’s “Project Prosper” here.  It ... →

To ballparks, convention centers and starchitect museums, add urban aquariums. To some boosters, your city is only one world-class visitor attraction away from economic prosperity. That pitch has been used to sell and e... →

While the impetus for State Senator Scott Wiener’s proposed SB 827, which would allow apartment construction near transit lines was addressing housing affordability, the measure should also be a cornerstone of our effort... →

Being cheaper may not be an advantage at all in a dynamic, knowledge based economy It's axiomatic in the world of local economic development that the sure-fire way to stimulate growth is to make it as cheap and easy as ... →

Distrust and empowering everyone to equally be a NIMBY is a recipe for perpetual housing problems The recent defeat of SB 827--California State Senator Scott Wiener's bill that would have legalized apartment constructio... →

A powerful federal agency can override local laws limiting access to TV. But housing? Nope. Local control. It's the bedrock principle of land use planning. Cities and neighborhoods should have absolute control over the ... →

Tax changes cut the Mortgage Interest Deduction sharply–but not for the rich The 1.2 percent of households with incomes over $500,000 get 20 times as much tax relief from the mortgage interest deduction as the half of... →

Zillow's data tracking prices of tens of millions of US homes adds further confirmation to the Dow of Cities For some time, we've been talking about the Dow of Cities:  the notion that the price premium that urban home... →

Earlier this month, City Observatory's Joe Cortright was interviewed for HFO TV.  The interview focused on recent developments in Portland's housing market, and explored the reasons behind the growth in rents in the middl... →

The "body count" view of suburban population misses the value people attach to cities Lately, we've seen a barrage of comments suggesting that the era of the city is over, and that Americans, including young adults, are... →

City Observatory's Joe Cortright is one of the panelists at Chapman University's April 5 conference "Will California Ever Figure Out How to House Itself".  Here's a summary of his remarks. The housing crisis in Califor... →

Is the "dream" of homeownership really just a massive, intergenerational wealth transfer?  Recently, that's just how it has worked out. The takeaways: Homeownership is a gerontopoly. Most housing wealth is held by... →

What does Fruitvale tell us about gentrification and displacement? Gentrification solved, or at least prevented. That was the celebratory headline announcing a recent study from UCLA's Latino Politics and Policy Init... →

Editor's Note:  Vision Zero is an impressive sounding slogan, but whether it will amount to more than that is in the hands of city leaders. The choices they make about how to prioritize public space for those who walk and... →

This page contains maps showing the nation's most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, and those with the highest levels of income mixing. for City Observatory's Diverse, Inclusive Neighborhood report.  These we... →

We're pleased to publish another contribution from City Observatory friend and colleague Alex Baca. Alex has written about cities while living in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Cleveland, OH, and earlier this year au... →

Denouncing developers and density is no way to solve a housing crisis Editor's Note:  Today we're publishing a guest commentary from Ethan Seltzer responding to New York Times columnist Tim Egan's recent column on housin... →

To change the world, we need to change the world… Editor's Note:  Ethan Seltzer is an Emeritus Professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University. He previously served as the P... →

Our planning processes and land use decisions have a huge impact on housing affordability. Editor's Note:  Today we're publishing an open letter from Ethan Seltzer to Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish. Portland is the... →

Understanding how housing markets really work is essential to crafting solutions to our affordability problems Regular followers of City Observatory will know two things about us:  We're keenly focused on the problem o... →

You won't know that your inclusionary zoning program is wrecking the housing market until it's too late to fix. How lags and game theory monkey wrench inclusionary zoning. One of the toughest problems in economics an... →

The key to being on-time and under-budget:  Orwellian double-speak Oregon DOT projects are always on-time and under budget--because the agency simply disappears its original schedules and budgets. Delayed, half-fini... →

Actions speak louder than words; blocking new housing will drive up rents Nominally, at least, the Portland City Council is all about housing affordability.  They've declared a housing emergency. In the last general el... →

Attention freeway builders! Want to make up for dividing the community and destroying neighborhoods? How about replacing the homes you demolished? One of the carefully crafted talking points in the sales pitch for the $... →

. . . we want more economic activity in this community, because that’s what creates opportunity and with more economic opportunity it does mean that there’s going to be more demand for all kinds of amenities in the com... →

Carol Coletta’s Remarks to Downtown Dallas, Inc. (Our friend and colleague Carol Coletta delivered the keynote address to the annual meeting of Downtown Dallas, Inc. on March 5. While her remarks are focused on Dallas... →

Jane Jacobs was just one of the first of many It’s International Women’s Day, and today, we’d like to acknowledge just a few of the really sharp women urbanists we rely on, every day, at City Observatory, to under... →

Journalists: Stop repeating phony congestion cost estimates. They're just weak arguments disguised with big numbers. This month The Economist has an excellent special report exploring the prospects for autonomous vehic... →

The states with the worst diets voted disproportionately for Donald Trump A powerful new study from  uses big data to shine a powerful light on our eating habits. Using data from grocery store scanner records, Hunt All... →

The problem isn't the ride-hailed vehicles, it's the under-priced street It really looks like we're on the cusp of a major change in transportation finance. Cities around the country are actively studying real time road... →

Gentrification is producing more diverse schools and growing enrollment In Washington DC, gentrification is producing higher levels of integration and increasing the total number of kids–black and white–attending sc... →

Ride-hailing is growing: We distill a new report into 5 key factors that explain its growth A good reporter is always supposed to ask five questions: "who, what, when, where and why?" A new report on ride-hailing provid... →

Lower income households are happier in higher income neighborhoods How does your neighbor's income affect your happiness? Do you feel worse off if you have less income than most of your neighbors? The "Keeping up with t... →

Big data should be used for problem solving, not propaganda and promotion Cue the extreme telephoto shots of freeways! Wallow in the pity of commuters stuck in traffic because of all those other people! Wail that co... →

Politics and the President's wheeler-dealer background suggest the infrastructure plan is a mirage If there's been one shred of hope for bi-partisan progress in this politically polarized time, its been the idea that so... →

Overselling localism is becoming an excuse to shed and shred federal responsibility Our friend, and director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, Amy Liu, weighs in with a timely commentary on the... →

We like cities, but localism can only flourish with a competent, generous, fair federal government  As our name City Observatory suggests, we're keen on cities. We believe they're the right frame for tackling many of o... →

City Observatory has long challenged the popular narrative about the nature and effects of gentrification. This is the second installment of a three-part commentary by our friend and colleague Alex Baca. You can read parts... →

City Observatory has long challenged the popular narrative about the nature and effects of gentrification. This is the first installment of a three-part commentary by our friend and colleague Alex Baca. Parts two and three... →

City Observatory has long challenged the popular narrative about the nature and effects of gentrification. Today, we are pleased to offer the final installment of a three-part commentary by our friend and colleague Alex Ba... →

A picture of metropolitan growth: Sprawl then, stagnation now. We're in awe of Issi Romem's prodigious data skills.  Romem is the economist and big data guru BuildZoom, the web-based marketplace for construction profes... →

As City Observatory predicted in January, Amazon will select multiple locations for HQ2 The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon's much ballyhooed headquarters contest  will choose not one winner, but two. Ama... →

What kind of company is Amazon, and how many locations does it want? We're now into round 2 of the great Amazon HQ2 extravaganza, and as with the initial announcement much digital ink has been spilled to analyze the mea... →

Growing supply is producing growing vacancies and easing rents There's been a lot of skepticism expressed as to whether supply and demand are actually at work in the housing market. We've been strong believers that the ... →

We're driving more, and more of us are dying on the roads. Four days before Christmas, on a Wednesday morning just after dawn, Elizabeth Meyers was crossing Sandy Boulevard in Portland, near 78th Avenue, just about a bl... →

Let's require that highways really be accessible to those who can't drive:  State highway departments should provide bus service on state roads for the disabled The Americans with Disabilities Act was landmark legislat... →

When gas prices stopped diving, Americans again began to drive less The most fundamental point in economics is that people respond to incentives. Make something cheaper to buy, and people will buy more of it. Make somet... →

The young and restless are continuing to move to the nation's large cities One trend that highlights the growing demand for city living is the increasing tendency of well-educated young adults to live in the close-in ur... →

Affordable housing and sensible transportation were our most-read features #7 - Urban myth busting: How building more high income housing helps affordability.  One of the predictable lamentations about the housing mark... →

A key design element of the supposedly pedestrian friendly Rose Quarter freeway cover is a pedestrian hostile diverging diamond interchange One of the main selling points of the plan to spend nearly half a billion dolla... →

We're pleased to publish this guest post from Akron's Jason Segedy.  It originally appeared on his blog Notes from the Underground. Drawing on his practical experience in a rust-belt city, he offers a compelling new insig... →

The so-called "peak millennial" conjecture.  Is it right? What does it mean? Should I care? Time has published an article, based largely on the research of UCLA demographer Dowell Myers, proclaiming that US cities are ... →

After a long, slow recovery, wages are finally rising for the lowest-paid workers, but we're no where close to rectifying our inequality problem; in fact, it's going to get worse. The very smart Jed Kolko, who now write... →

Concrete covers are just a thinly-veiled gimmick for selling wider freeways As you've read at City Observatory, and elsewhere (CityLab, Portland Mercury, Willamette Week), Portland is in the midst of a great freeway war... →

Widening I-5 actually increased crashes, instead of reducing them, and an even wider freeway won't be less congested if crashes don't decline. We're going to dig deep into Portland's proposed freeway-widening controvers... →

A proposed freeway widening project will tear out one of Portland's most used bike routes At City Observatory, were putting a local Portland-area proposed freeway widening project under a microscope, in part because we ... →

Churn means that lots of businesses, even large ones, aren't around forever Many of our discussions of the economy are based on simple, and often largely static mental models of the economy. In a good year, a local econ... →

Congestion pricing is a win-win strategy and the only way to truly reduce traffic congestion The urban transportation problem is a hardy perennial: no matter how many lanes we add to urban freeways, traffic congestion i... →

What to make of the high credit scores of new renters in some markets: alarm bell or success signal? RentCafe–one arm of Yardi Matrix, a real estate data and services firm–has a very interesting new data series on t... →

Will two firms produce enough effective competition to benefit consumers? The use ride-hailing services continues to grow in the US, and while there are a range competitors in some markets, like New York, in most places... →

Building more market rate housing sets off a chain reaction supply increase that reaches low income neighborhoods Households moving into new market rate units move out of other, lower cost housing, making it available t... →

Slowly, the rhetorical battle is being won, as affordable housing advocates acknowledge more supply matters There's been a war of words about what kind of housing policies are needed to address the nation's affordabilit... →