Which cities have the strongest concentrations of independent bookstores? Last week, we explored what we called the “mystery in the bookstore.” There’s a kind of good news/bad news set of narratives about bookselling in the US. After decades of decline in independent bookselling, many cities have seen a rebound by locally run stores. And while […]
The Geography of Independent Bookstores Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. Mystery in the Bookstore. In cities around the country, there’s been a noticeable rebound in the local bookstore business. After decades of steady decline, this is a pleasant surprise. One metric, the number of members of the national association of independent bookstores confirms this trend. But broader data
The Week Observed, May 5, 2017 Read More »
Patents rates are a useful indicator of innovative activity The US is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based economy, and as a result, the markers of wealth are shifting from the kinds of tangible assets that characterized the old industrial economy (like huge factory complexes) to much more intangible assets (the creativity and innovativeness of workers and
What patents tell us about America’s most innovative cities Read More »
A while back, a columnist in Seattle Magazine, Knute Berger, expressed his discontent with modern housing development. As Berger sees it, today’s homebuilding pales in comparison to the virtues of early 20th century bungalow development: In a rapidly growing city where the haves have more and the have-nots are being squeezed out, the bungalows offer
The immaculate conception theory of your neighborhood’s origins Read More »
Signs of a rebound in independent bookstores, but not in the statistics Lately, there’ve been a spate of stories pointing to a minor renaissance of the independent American bookstore. After decades of glum news and closings, there are more and more instances of independent bookstores opening or expanding. The American Bookseller’s Association points with pride
Mystery in the Bookstore Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. The latest from the Louisville travel behavior experiment. Just before the New Year, Louisville started charging tolls to cross its newly-widened I-65 bridge. When it did, traffic across the bridge fell by almost half. Part of the reason was that motorists could take a very short detour and
The Week Observed, April 28, 2017 Read More »
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 overdue. Many have embraced the Smart City banner. But it seems each observer defines “city” in the image of
What does it mean to be a “Smart City?” Read More »
It’s no longer fashionable to get an unrealistically flattering portrait painted, but you can get an economist to do it with numbers. You’ve no doubt heard the term “hagiography” an unduly flattering biography or other written treatment designed to burnish the public image of some person. The term is derived from the Greek words for
Hagiometry: Fawning flatterers with an economic model Read More »
Inclusionary zoning programs are too small to make a dent in housing affordability Two of the most respected names in housing research are Lance Freeman and Jenny Schuetz. Freeman is professor urban planning at Columbia University and author of a series of papers examining neighborhood change, and considering whether and when gentrification leads to the
The 0.1 percent solution: Inclusionary zoning’s fatal scale problem Read More »
Even with the free alternative closed, traffic is very light on the new I-65 bridges Time for one of our periodic check-ins on our real world transportation pricing experiment in Louisville, Kentucky. As you recall, we’ve been watching Louisville closely, because just at the end of last year, the city started what amounts to a
The latest from the Louisville traffic experiment Read More »
