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... →

Here's a thought:  Let's fight traffic congestion using the same techniques DOT's use to promote safety. Let's have  costumed superheroes weigh in against congestion, and spend billions on safety, instead of the other... →

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... →

Last week, our friend and colleague, Carol Coletta delivered a "master talk" to the 66th Annual Conference of the International Downtown Association. Carol is President & CEO, Memphis River Parks Partnership, and a ... →

This is the text of a speech delivered in Detroit to the Congress for New Urbanism conference by Carol Coletta, a senior fellow at the Kresge Foundation's American Cities Practice. Could there be a more apt place to... →

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... →

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 ... →

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... →

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... →

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 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... →

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... →

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 ... →

The big idea: housing in desirable city neighborhoods in getting more expensive because the demand for urban living is growing. The solution? Build more great neighborhoods. To an economist, prices are an important signa... →

The Myth: Crime in cities is on the rise The Reality: Cities are getting safer For decades, the common perception about cities is that they were dangerous, dirty, and crowded. A look at the facts tells a differen... →

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