Commentary

Pulling a FAST one

Whatever remained of the fig leaf claim that the US has a “user pays” system of road finance disappeared completely with the passage of the so-called FAST Act. It would be better to call the new transportation bill the “Free Ride” Act, because that’s exactly what it does: gives auto users something for nothing. It’s […]

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A $1.6 billion proposal

Last week, San Francisco Magazine reported on what, at first glance, just looks like another those-crazy-San-Franciscans-and-their-crazy-housing-market story. It begins with a film school teacher who had bought a home in the Mission neighborhood twenty years ago for just $90,000, recently decided to move, and put her home on the market—sort of. While similar homes in

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You need more than one number to understand housing affordability

Back in October, we wrote a post called “Affordability beyond the median.” While most discussions of housing costs measure based on a city’s or neighborhood’s median price, that’s not all that matters. After all, the median is simply the home for which equal numbers of other homes are more and less expensive. That may be

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Engaged communities, civic participation, and democracy

Today we’re publishing an edited version of a speech given by Carol Coletta, VP of Community and National Initiatives at the Knight Foundation, last month in Portland, OR. Informed and engaged communities are fundamental to a strong democracy. But many of the signs of those communities are not encouraging: Newspaper readership has plummeted in recent

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Even we at City Observatory believe in taking a break from all things urban on Thanksgiving. But in the spirit of the holidays, we wanted to take just a minute to share some of the things we’re thankful for. To begin with, we’re thankful for cities themselves: the places we live in and explore, that

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