At City Observatory, we post several new commentaries each week on a variety of urban themes, and aim to provide discrete, coherent analyses of specific questions, and contributing to the policy dialog about cities. At the start of a new year, we’d like to pull back a bit, and reflect on what we think we’ve […]
Pulling it all together Read More »
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 composition than it did just a few decades ago. Overall, measured levels of segregation between racial and ethnic groups are declining.
How diverse are the neighborhoods white people live in? Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. A Toast to 2017: Beer and Cities. Its traditional to begin the New Year with a delicious beverage, and more and more Americans are choosing to celebrate with a locally brewed ale. That’s gotten much easier in the past decade, as microbreweries have flourished around the country. Microbreweries
The Week Observed, January 6, 2017 Read More »
A new study says ride-sharing apps cut cut traffic 85 percent. We’re skeptical We’ve developed a calloused disregard for the uncritical techno-optimism that surrounds most media stories about self-driving cars and how fleets of shared-ride vehicles will neatly solve all of our urban transportation problems. But a new story last week re-kindled our annoyance, because
Pollyanna’s ride-sharing breakthrough Read More »
In the middle of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn—a book published in 2011, but no less relevant today—Suleiman Osman turns the tables on the people who have long been the heroes of urbanist lore. Speaking of the insurgent middle-class professionals who, starting in the 1950s and 60s, began to organize to stop to the massive
Brownstone Brooklyn and the challenges of urban change Read More »
Celebrating the new year, city-style, with a local brew Champagne may be the traditional beverage for ringing in the new year, but we suspect that a locally brewed ale may be the drink of choice for many urbanists today. Much has changed about American beer in the past two decades. Most of the post-prohibition era
Beer and cities: A toast to 2017 Read More »
Plans to subsidize renters and homebuyers will likely just fuel housing cost inflation Rising rents and home prices are becoming unbearable–or at least politically unpalatable–in cities around North America. Over the past year, two Pacific Northwest cities, Portland and Vancouver, have seen some of the biggest rent and home price increases anywhere. Portland’s reported double
How not to fix housing affordability Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. The illegal city of Somerville. Just outside of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Somerville is one of the most sought after suburbs in the Boston area. It has a combination of attractive neighborhoods and dense housing, nearly all of it the legacy of the city’s 19th and early 20th century roots.
The Week Observed, December 30, 2016 Read More »
As 2016 draws to a close, we look back at our most popular commentaries of the year. Hear they are, in reverse order: #10. Introducing the sprawl tax #9. Urban myth busting: New rental housing and median income households #8. What filtering can and can’t do. #7. What I learned playing Sim City #6. In
Our ten most popular posts of 2016 Read More »
A crazy toll structure that encourages more driving. Kentucky and Indiana have just put the finishing touches on two new bridges crossing the Ohio River. Built at a cost of about $2.6 billion, the bridge project also includes a rebuilding “Spaghetti Junction” an elaborate system of on- and off-ramps in Louisville, where I-65 and I-64
For whom the bridge tolls Read More »
