La-La Land voters deal a crushing defeat to a “NIMBYism on steroids” The latest returns show Los Angeles’ Measure S–the self-styled “Neighborhood Integrity Initiative”–failing by a 31 percent “Yes” to 69 percent “No” margin. If it had passed, Measure S was predicted to bring new housing development in Los Angeles to a screeching halt for the […]
Twilight of the NIMBYs? LA’s Measure S Fails Read More »
Today, partly as a public service, we’re going to dig into the academic literature on an arcane policy topic: rent control. We also have a parochial interest in the subject: the Oregon Legislature is considering legislation that would lift the state’s ban on cities imposing rent control. The legislation is being proposed by Oregon House
What we know about rent control Read More »
The amount of office space allotted to each worker is shrinking. What does that mean for cities? Last week a new report from real estate analytics firm REIS caught our eye. Called “The Shrinking Office Footprint” this white paper looks at changes in the demand for office space over the last couple of business cycles.
The implications of shrinking offices Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. More flawed congestion rankings. Traffic analysis firm Inrix released yet another report purporting to estimate the dollar cost of congestion and ranking the world’s cities from most to least traffic burdened. Our review shows that the report suffers from many of the same problems that plagued its predecessors. Chief
The Week Observed, March 3, 2017 Read More »
As has been well chronicled in the media, it’s been a tough month for Uber. The company’s CEO, Travis Kalanick was vilified in the press for the company’s tolerance for sexual harassment of its female employees, and derided for his participation in President Trump’s business advisory council (from which he resigned after an estimated 200,000
What Travis Kalanick’s meltdown tells us about Uber Read More »
Truck freight movement gets a subsidy of between $57 and $128 billion annually in the form of uncompensated social costs, over and above what trucks pay in taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office. If trucking companies paid the full costs associated with moving truck freight, we’d have less road damage and congestion, fewer crashes,
The real welfare Cadillacs have 18 wheels Read More »
A lesson in the elasticity of demand, prices and urban congestion. It looks like Uber, Lyft and other ride sharing services are swamping the capacity of New York City streets Every day, we’re being told, we’re on the verge of a technological revolution that will remedy our persistent urban transportation problems. Smart cities, replete with
Houston (Street), we have a problem. Read More »
Big data provides little insight Cue the telephoto lens compressed photo of freeway traffic; it’s time for yet another report painting a picture of the horrors inflicted on modern society by traffic congestion. This latest installment comes from traffic data firm Inrix, which uses cell phone, vehicle tracking and GPS data to estimate the speed
Yet another flawed congestion report from Inrix Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1.Busting the urban myth about high income housing and affordability. One of the most widespread beliefs about housing is that the construction of new high income housing somehow makes the housing affordability problem worse. Widely believed, but wrong. We marshal the economic evidence for filtering–how as apartments and houses
The Week Observed, February 24, 2017 Read More »
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 turnaround, a first few glimmers that the city is stemming the downward spiral of
Cursing the candle Read More »
