Here’s an eye-catching statistic: “people in the US buying more things online than in brick-and-mortar stores.” This appears in the lead of a story published this week by Next City. There’s one problem with this claim: it’s not remotely close to true. One of the things we pay taxes for is the Census Bureau, which […]
Lies, damn lies, and (on-line shopping) statistics. Read More »
The greater San Francisco Bay area has been a hotbed of economic activity and technological change for decades, bringing us ground-breaking tech companies from Hewlett-Packard and Intel, to Apple and Google, to AirBNB and Uber. Its a great place to spot trends that are likely to spread elsewhere. One such trend is the growing tendency
Reversed Polarity: Bay Area venture capital trends Read More »
City Observatory is about cities, and while much of the discussion of urban policy surrounds the physical and built environment, ultimately cities are about people. When cities work well, they bring people together. Conversely, when cities experience problems, its often because we’re separated from one another or driven apart. A critical feature of cities
Our infographic for thinking about the civic commons Read More »
Last week, we noticed a small item on Streetsblog: “Where Walk Score falls short.” Because we’re keenly interested in to walkability, and routinely use Walk Score to benchmark walkable places, we clicked the link. It took us to a blog entry from Mariela Alfonzo asking “Does walk score walk the walk?” Dr. Alfonzo has been
Walk on by: How not to improve walkability measures. Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. Cities for Everyone: Our Birthday Wish. October 15 marked City Observatory’s second birthday. We reviewed some of the highlights of the past year, focusing on the growing evidence of the economic resurgence building around the nation’s cities. For the coming year, we’re planning on focusing on what it
The Week Observed: October 21, 2016 Read More »
There’s a new narrative going around about place. Like so many narratives, it’s based on a perceptible grain of truth, but then has a degree of exaggeration that the evidence can’t support. Cities, we are told, are becoming playgrounds of the rich. Last week, Quartz headlined Richard Florida’s recent talk about the future of cities
The new mythology of rich cities and poor suburbs Read More »
What the price of parking shows us about urban transportation Yesterday, we rolled out our parking price index, showing the variation in parking prices among large US cities. Gleaning data from ParkMe, a web-based directory of parking lots and rates, we showed how much it cost to park on a monthly basis in different cities.
Cities and the price of parking Read More »
How much does it cost to park a car in different cities around the nation? Today, we’re presenting some new data on a surprisingly under-measured aspect of cities and the cost of living: how much it costs to park a car in different cities. There are regular comparisons of rents and housing costs between cities. The
The price of parking Read More »
Two years and two days ago–on October 15th, 2014–we launched City Observatory, a data-driven voice on what makes for successful cities. Since then, we’ve weighed in daily on a whole series of policies issues set in and around urban spaces. So today, we’re taking a few moments to celebrate our birthday, reflect back on the past
Our birthday wish: Cities for everyone Read More »
What City Observatory did this week 1. More evidence job growth is shifting to city centers. A recent paper by Nathaniel Baum-Snow and Daniel Hartley has some interesting data on the pattern of job growth in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. They find that while suburban area job growth greatly outpaced that of the central
The Week Observed: October 14, 2016 Read More »
