What City Observatory did this week 1. How we measure segregation depends on why we care. Daniel Hertz explores the various ways we measure the geographic separation of different racial and ethnic groups. There’s a widely used dissimilarity index, that looks at differences between two groups, like blacks and whites. There are broader measures that […]
The Week Observed, April 21, 2017 Read More »
Four decades after the city earned national recognition for tearing out a downtown freeway, it gets ready to build more April 22 is Earth Day, and to celebrate, Oregon’s Legislature is on the verge of considering a transportation package that would drop more than a billion dollars into three Portland area freeway widening projects. Back
Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Widen Some Freeways! Read More »
Why is affordable housing so expensive? In many cities, affordable housing has a problem: it’s not affordable. California Governor Jerry Brown made that point again, emphatically, with his new state budget. He’s said that he’s not putting any new state resources into subsidizing affordable housing until state and local governments figure out ways to bring
The high, high price of affordable housing Read More »
Your 1,200 word bluffer’s guide to Richard Florida’s new book Richard Florida’s new book “The New Urban Crisis: How our cities are increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and failing the middle class–and what we can do about it,” came out last week. The book touches on many of the issues that are near and dear to
The New Urban Crisis: Cliff Notes version Read More »
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 off: I must begin by stating that I am by no means against integration…. My comments are not to promote racial separatism, nor to argue
How we measure segregation depends on why we care Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. Too soon to write off city revival? The release of the Census county-level population estimates two weeks ago led to a series of quick-reaction analyses of what the data portend for the “back-to-the-city” movement that’s been seen in the past several years. Unfortunately, county level data is a
The Week Observed, April 14, 2017 Read More »
The real disruptive technology for transportation is road-pricing. There’s been a surge of interest in road pricing in the past few weeks. In a new study of growing traffic congestion in New York City, Bruce Schaller attributed traffic delays to the expanding number of Uber and Lyft vehicles on city streets. Given the economics of
Why might Uber & Lyft support road-pricing? Read More »
More evidence that supply and demand are at work in housing markets In early 2016, Portland experienced some of the highest levels of rent inflation of any market in the US. According to Zillow’s rental price estimates, rents were rising between 15 and 20 percent year over year in late 2015 and early 2016. Portland
Has Portland’s rent fever broken? Read More »
County data can’t tell us much about thriving urban neighborhoods New county-level census population estimates became available last week, and Jed Kolko produced an interesting analysis published by FiveThirtyEight concluding that “America’s Shift to the Suburbs Sped Up last year.” While there’s nothing wrong with Kolko’s math, we think there are several reasons to believe
Too soon to write off city revival Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. Carmaggedon stalks Atlanta. Following an arson-caused blaze, a key section on Interstate 85 in Atlanta collapsed, and is likely to be out of service for at least a couple of months. Since the roadway carried about a quarter million cars every day, the media were quick to predict
The Week Observed, April 7, 2017 Read More »
