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... →

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... →

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... →

If it weren't for cultural appropriation, would America have any culture at all? In Portland, two women opened a food cart business--Kook's Burritos--selling burritos based on ones that they'd seen and tasted during a ... →

Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Change doesn't happen fast, but it happens more frequently and more quickly when we have integrated communi... →

Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Yesterday, we took a close and critical look at Derek Hyra's claim that mixed-income, mixed-race communitie... →

Integrated neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don't automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? Our recent report, America's Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods identifies ... →

Gentrifying neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don't automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? In one idealized view of the world, economically integrated neighborhoods would ... →

Volunteering is one of the hallmarks of community; here are the cities with the highest rates of volunteerism The decline of the civic commons, the extent to which American's engage with one another in the public realm,... →

Migration, especially by young adults, is increasing racial and ethnic diversity in US counties As we related last week, a new report from the Urban Institute quantifies the stark economic costs of racial and income seg... →

Last month, we took exception to critics of Detroit's economic rebound who argued that it was a failure because the job and population growth that the city has enjoyed has only reached a few neighborhoods, chiefly those in... →

How should we view the early signs of a turnaround in Detroit? Better to light a single candle than simply curse the darkness. The past decades have been full of dark days for Detroit, but there are finally signs of a t... →

Happy Independence Day, America! All Americans are immigrants (Even the Native American tribes trace their origins to Asians who migrated over the Siberian-Alaskan land bridge during the last ice age). And this nation o... →

Last Friday, President Trump signed an Executive Order effectively blocking entry to the US for nationals of seven countries—Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. We'll leave aside the fearful, xenophobic ... →

Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There's a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic a... →

Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There's a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic a... →

A new study of gentrification sheds light on how neighborhoods change.  Here are the takeaways: The population of urban neighborhoods is always changing because moving is so common, especially for renters. There's... →

Does geometry bias our view of how neighborhoods work? Imagine a neighborhood that looks like this: On any given block, there might be a handful of small apartment buildings—three-flats—which are usually clus... →

There's a large a growing body of research that shows the importance of peer effects on lifetime economic success of kids.  For example, while the education level your parents is a strong determinant of your level of educ... →

Overall, America is becoming more diverse, but in many places the neighborhoods we live in remain quite segregated. The population of the typical US metropolitan area has a much more ethnically and racially mixed compositi... →

The Big Idea: Many metro areas vie for the title of “best food city.” But what cities have the most options for grabbing a bite to eat -- and what does that say about where you live? There are plenty of competin... →

It's election day, 2016. Here's some of what we know about cities and voting. Well, at last. Today is election day. While we’re all eagerly awaiting the results of the vote, we thought we’d highlight a few things we... →

One of the enduring features of American inequality is the wide disparity in homeownership rates between white Americans and Latinos and African-Americans. And because homeownership has -- or at least was, historically -- ... →

More American neighborhoods are becoming integrated–and are staying that way It's rare that some obscure terminology from sociology becomes a part of our everyday vernacular, but "tipping point" is one of those terms.... →

Its rare that some obscure terminology from sociology becomes a part of our everyday vernacular, but "tipping point" is one of those terms. Famously, Thomas Schelling used the tipping point metaphor to explain the dynamics... →

Entrepreneurship is both a key driver of economic activity and an essential path to economic opportunity for millions of Americans. Historically, discrimination and lower levels of wealth and income have been barriers to e... →

In yesterday's post, we described why homeownership is such a risky financial proposition for low income households, who tend to be disproportionately people of color. From a wealth-building standpoint, lower income house... →

In Philadelphia last week, the Gehl Institute convened Act Urban—a global group of leaders and practitioners in the field of the civic commons. After three days of fieldwork and observation, expert presentations and inte... →

Last week, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a fascinating report detailing neighborhood change in Philadelphia over the past decade and a half. “Philadelphia’s Changing Neighborhoods” combines a careful, region-wid... →

There’s a growing body of evidence that economic integration—avoiding the separation of rich and poor into distinct neighborhoods—is an important ingredient in promoting widely shared opportunity. The work of Raj Che... →

This is the fourth in an ongoing series of posts about income segregation, urban planning, and economic opportunity. In the first, we examined three different ways of looking at income segregation: the proportion of people... →

Last week, we looked at some of the growing body of academic evidence that shows that mixed income neighborhoods play a key role in helping create an environment where kids from poor families can achieve economic success. ... →

Yesterday, we critiqued a study that claimed to show that the benefits of putting low-income housing in very low-income neighborhoods greatly exceeded the benefits of putting it in higher-income neighborhoods—especially ... →

Last week, we argued that the problem called “income segregation” is actually several problems, and broke it down with the help of different measurements designed to capture different aspects of the issue. In partic... →

Yesterday, we introduced three kinds of economic segregation, and how you might measure each: the proportion of people in high-income neighborhoods; the proportion of people in low-income neighborhoods; and the proportion ... →

Much of the conversation about urban inequality today—from Raj Chetty’s work on intergenerational economic mobility, to issues of concentrated poverty and gentrification—is framed in terms of economic segregation. Bu... →

  At City Observatory, we’ve been bullish on cities. There’s a strong economic case to be made that successful cities play an essential role in driving national economic prosperity. As we increasingly become a ... →

City Observatory is about cities, and while much of the discussion of urban policy surrounds the physical and built environment, ultimately cities are about people. When cities work well, they bring people together. Conver... →

When we talk about the costs and consequences of car-dependent urban development, we often talk about hard economics and climate science. Spread-out neighborhoods divided by big, pedestrian-hostile roads force people to sp... →

One of City Observatory’s major reports is “Lost in Place,” which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, you’ll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... →

One of City Observatory’s major reports is “Lost in Place,” which chronicles the change in high-poverty neighborhoods since 1970. In it, you’ll find a rich array of data at the neighborhood level showing how and wh... →

In cities, you’ll sometimes hear people talk about a “daytime population”: not how many people live in a place, but how many gather there regularly during their waking hours. So while 1.6 million people may actually ... →

Low income people live longer in dense, well-educated, immigrant-friendly cities Some of the most provocative social science research in the past decade has come from the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Stanford... →

There aren’t many economists whose research findings are routinely reported in the New York Times and Washington Post. But Raj Chetty—and his colleagues around the country—have a justly earned reputation for clearly ... →

There’s a hopeful new sign that how we build our cities, and specifically, how good a job we do of building mixed income neighborhoods that are open to everyone can play a key role in reducing poverty and promoting equit... →

As Jane Jacobs so eloquently described it in The Death and Life of American Cities, much of the essence of urban living is reflected in the “sidewalk ballet” of people going about their daily errands, wandering along t... →

Why does economic inequality—as opposed to just poverty—matter? There are a lot of reasons, but a big one is that higher levels of inequality make it harder to improve your economic position. As Federal Reserve Chair J... →

Today we're publishing an edited version of a speech given by Carol Coletta, VP of Community and National Initiatives at the Knight Foundation, last month in Portland, OR. Informed and engaged communities are fundam... →

Yesterday, we wrote about the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, which is in the unique position of being one of the wealthiest urban communities in the nation, and also having almost a third of its housing be public or ot... →

A few weeks ago, in a post about what income inequality means in an urban (rather than national) context, we contrasted images of a lower Manhattan neighborhood with a Dallas suburb. The Manhattan street had subsidized hou... →

Two years and two days ago--on October 15th, 2014--we launched City Observatory, a data-driven voice on what makes for successful cities.  Since then, we've weighed in daily on a whole series of policies issues set in an... →

We're very excited to spread the news that this fall, our partners and supporters at the Knight Foundation are reprising their wildly successful "Knight Cities Challenge." Last year, Knight chose 32 winners out of more tha... →

There's a lot happening in American cities these days, which means that there's a lot to read about! Even for those of us at City Observatory, sometimes good, important articles slip through the cracks. In recognition of t... →

In last Friday’s The Week Observed, we flagged an exhaustive literature review from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, summarizing what we know about gentrification and neighborhood change over about 40 pages. We... →

What does it mean for someone to be displaced by gentrification? And in a just world, what do our cities’ neighborhoods look like? As reported by Next City, a team of researchers at the University of California-Berkel... →

Washed away?  Or moved to the suburbs? At FiveThirtyEight, Ben Casselman writes: “Katrina Washed Away New Orleans's Black Middle Class.” It's a provocative piece showing the sharp decline in the black population of... →

Why are America’s neighborhoods so segregated? For a lot of people, the answer requires reaching deep into history: explaining the rise of the subsidized mortgage market and redlining; racial violence in towns from Cicer... →

This week, we're running a three-part series on the flawed way that we measure housing affordability. This post looks at exactly what's wrong with one of the most common ways we determine what "affordable" means. Tomorro... →

  In our CityReport, Less in Common, we explored a key symptom of the decline in social capital: Americans seem to be spending less time playing together. One major driver of this trend is a dramatic privatization ... →

Our City Observatory report, Less in Common, catalogs the ways that we as a nation have been growing increasingly separated from one another.  Changes in technology, the economy and society have all coalesced to create mo... →

Gentrification is a big issue in a few places, and not an issue at all elsewhere. Big cities with expensive housing are the flashpoint for gentrification. The city-policy-sphere is rife with debate on gentrificatio... →

It's unusual to flag an economics article as a “must-read” for general audiences: but if you care about cities and place, and about the prospects for the American Dream in the 21st Century, you owe it to yourself to re... →

Why we wrote "Less in Common," our latest CityReport. We’ve come increasingly to understand the role of social capital in the effective function of cities and urban economies.  The success of both local and natio... →

Think riots destroyed #Baltimore? Entire blocks boarded up. pic.twitter.com/OKSnHXMb9f— Michael Kaplan (@MichaelD_Kaplan) May 1, 2015 Look what the riots did to Baltimore! Oh wait no...These were taken before th... →

Yet again, a black citizen dies at the hands of the police. This event and the ensuing riots in Baltimore are a painful reminder of the deep divisions that cleave our cities.  There's little we can add to this debate, exc... →

Segregation is complicated and multi-dimensional, and measuring it isn't easy In 2014, NYU's Furman Center hosted a roundtable of essays on "The Problem of Integration." Northwestern sociologist Mary Pattillo kicked it ... →

  Nationally, the average black household has an income 42 percent lower than average white household. But that figure masks huge differences from one metropolitan area to another. And though any number of factors ... →

More jobs are close at hand in cities.  And on average the poor live closer to jobs than the non-poor. One of the most enduring explanations for urban poverty is the "spatial mismatch hypothesis" promulgated by John Ka... →

The last few months have witnessed a notable rebound in vehicle miles traveled. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that for the year ended December, 2014, American’s drove 3.015 trillion miles, up about 1.7 pe... →

Last month, City Observatory released a new report—Surging City Center Job Growth—chronicling a widespread rebound in city center jobs. For the first time in decades, job growth in city centers around the country has s... →

Over the past few weeks, there’s been a fair amount of media furor over the slowdown in container traffic handling on the West Coast as dockworkers and shipping companies negotiated the new terms of a labor deal. You ... →

The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue.  Many have embraced the Smart City banner.  But it seems each observer defines �... →

This week comes news that Target is laying off 1,700 workers at its Minneapolis headquarters, looking to become leaner and more efficient. It’s just the latest move in a shifting retail landscape in the United States. ... →

The first quarter of 2017 has marked a parade of announced store closures. The long awaited axe has fallen on 68 more Macy's stores around the country. J.C. Penney has announced it will close another 138 stores. Other maj... →

Cities are organisms, not machines; So a smart city has to learn and not be engineered The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long ov... →

A framework for thinking about smart cities Cities are organisms, not machines The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue.  ... →

It’s telling that Governing calls gentrification the “g-word”—it’s become almost impossible to talk about neighborhood revitalization without objections being raised almost any change amounts to gentrification. W... →

For more than a decade, one of the hottest trends in economic development has been pursuing biotechnology. Cities and states around the nation have made considerable investments in biotech research, ranging from California... →

(This post coincides with the newly released report, Surging City Center Job Growth. The report and more details are found here.) For decades, urban economists have chronicled the steady decentralization of employment in... →

We recently featured a post regarding how venture capital is associated with economic mobility. We know that these are strongly correlated—and that, if we are concerned with the ability of children today to obtain ‘The... →

As chronicled in our report here and commentary here, we are seeing evidence of a shift in employment back to city centers. We believe that this is driven by a number of forces, including the increasing preference of young... →

The essence of cities is bringing people—from all walks of life—together in one place.  Social interaction and a robust mixing of people from different backgrounds, of different ages, with different incomes and intere... →

For over half a century, American cities were decentralizing, with suburban areas surpassing city centers in both population and job growth. It appears that these economic and demographic tides are now changing. Over the p... →

Here’s a quick quiz:  Which of the following statements is true? a) Gentrification can be harmful because it causes displacement b) Gentrification is the same thing as displacement c) Gentrification is a totally diff... →

Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty--not gentrification--is our biggest urban challenge. A close look at population change in our poorest urban neighborhoods over the past four decades sh... →

In a nation increasingly divided by race and economic status, where our life prospects are increasingly de ned by the wealth of our zip codes, some American neighborhoods are bucking the trend. These neighborhoods... →

The work of Raj Chetty and his colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity project has spurred intense interest in the extent of economic mobility, measured by the likelihood that children born to low-income parents achieve ... →

Great public spaces make great cities. But so do great private spaces. They provide opportunities for people to socialize, and provide the character that make a city more livable and unique. We have already talked about ho... →

Local media over the course of the last several months have asked us variations on one question repeatedly: if our city wants to do better – be more productive, retain more young people, reduce poverty—how can it do th... →

The more segregated an metro area is, the worse the economic prospects of the poor and people of color Our City Observatory report, Lost in Place, closely tracks the growth of concentrated poverty in the nation’s citi... →

Our recent report, Lost in Place, closely tracks the growth of concentrated poverty in the nation’s cities; this is particularly important because of the widespread evidence of the permanent damage high-poverty neighborh... →

Socioeconomic mixing, in neighborhoods that are diverse in race, ethnicity and income, benefits everyone To some extent, we take for granted that integration and equal opportunity should be valued for their own sake. Bu... →

The number of eating places per capita is a key measure of a city's livability Cities are great places for consumers.  They provide an abundance and variety of choices, especially in the form of experiences. While our ... →

The Big Idea: Many metro areas vie for the title of “best food city.” But what cities have the most options for grabbing a bite to eat -- and what does that say about where you live? There are plenty of competin... →

Which metropolitan economies are the most productive?  Our broadest measure of economic output is gross domestic product -- the total value of goods and services produced by our economy.  Economists usually compare the p... →

Note: This article appeared originally in the February 13, 2010, edition of The Oregonian. Forgive any anachronistic references. These are tough economic times. Although economists tell us the recession is officially o... →

The red state/blue state divide is a persistent feature of American politics. Political differences among states are also associated with important economic differences, and a similar patterns hold across and within metro ... →

One of the nation’s biggest health problems is the challenge of obesity:  since the early 1960s the number of American’s who are obese has increased from about 13 percent to 35 percent. The problem is a complex, de... →

In this post, we'll go over the data and mapping steps that were used to create our Lost In Place report on the concentration of poverty and the interactive web map. This post is one of several commentary posts that accomp... →

Recently, we discussed the growth in the number of urban high-poverty neighborhoods, which we illustrated by examining the distribution of poverty rates among census tracts. This analysis showed that high poverty neighborh... →

For the past several months, Portland’s City Council has been wrestling with various proposals to raise additional funds to pay for maintaining and improving city streets. After considering a range of ideas, including fe... →

Here's a summary of our latest CityReport: Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty--not gentrification--is our biggest urban challenge. Lost in Place traces the history of high poverty neig... →

Many talk about poverty—its causes, its effects, and its possible remedies. There is literature on this issue from almost every social science, and no one can summarize it all in one blog post. However, there’s one asp... →

At City Observatory, we’ve come the conclusion that every city has its own unique characteristics that both define its identity and which play a key role in shaping its economic opportunities.  These distinctive traits ... →

Today we're releasing our latest CityReport: America's Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods. In this report, we use Census data to identify those neighborhoods that have the highest levels of both racial/ethnic and ... →

Guest Commentary by Carol Coletta It’s a glorious moment to be in the business of promoting the built environment. I use “built environment” to encompass the way we build our buildings, arrange our neighborhoods a... →

We recently released our latest report, Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty–not gentrification–is our biggest urban challenge. It speaks to a national trend that’s been largely ignor... →

The number of security guards is a good measure of a city's level of "anti-social" capital In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of sta... →

Cops per capita: An indicator of "Anti-social" capital?"  Why do some cities have vastly fewer police officers relative to their population than others? In the 1966 film "The Thin Blue Line" director William Friedki... →

In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can ... →

In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can ... →

Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects.  In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues.  Here we offer ten more of the m... →

Gentrification and neighborhood changes are hotly contested subjects.  In the past few years some very thoughtful and provocative work has been done that helps shed light on these issues.  Here we offer a baker’s dozen... →

If you've hung around enough espresso joints, you've probably heard someone order a “tall, non-fat decaf latte.” This is what baristas often call a "why bother?" That would also be a good alternate description for the ... →

If your impression of cities came entirely from watching the evening news, you might think that cities are saddled with ever-increasing traffic congestion and rising crime rates. From talking to your Great Aunt Ida at Than... →

The Myth: Traffic congestion is getting worse The Reality: Congestion has declined almost everywhere It’s a common movie trope – a busy commuter rushes out of his downtown office at 5pm, hoping to get only to... →

A new report detailing the “costs” of congestion twists the data to become little more than talking points for the highway lobby. For transportation geeks, Halloween came early this year. A new report claims ... →

One of the great ironies of urban economies is the wide disparity between the price of parking and the price of housing in cities. Almost everyone acknowledges that we face a growing and severe problem of housing affordabi... →

There is a central and unacknowledged problem in urban transportation: The price is wrong. Underlying traffic congestion, unaffordable housing, and the shortage of great urban places is the key fact that we charge the wron... →

A key measure of economic success has to be whether we provide widely shared opportunities for economic advancement. →

Metropolitan areas are the fundamental organizational units of our global, knowledge-based economy. →

Density, land use patterns and the transportation system interact to determine how well cities fulfill their fundamental task of bringing people together. →

It's frequently claimed that traffic congestion imposes high and rising costs on the economy.  But is that true? →