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There’s a yawning chasm of neighborhood level economic distress across US metro areas.  While about 1 in 6 US neighborhoods is classed as distressed, some metro areas have large concentrations of distress, while others have almost no distressed neighborhoods at all.  Focusing on groups of contiguous zip codes classified as “distressed” shows that in some […]

What City Observatory Did this Week Is it time to address the problem of “Missing Massive” housing?  This past week marked the latest convening of YIMBYTown, this year, held in Austin, Texas.  One of the perennial topics was state strategies to promote “missing middle” housing—as evidenced by multiple initiatives to allow duplexes, triplexes and four-plexes

Gradually, more people and elected leaders are admitting that more housing density is needed if we’re to tackle housing affordability, and provide equitable opportunities to live in great cities and neighborhoods. But like a swimmer cautiously dipping a toe in a fresh stream, we’re proceeding slowly:  It’s been (relatively) easy to talk about “missing middle”

Must Read The freeway cap mirage.  Don’t like freeways?  Let’s just cover up the problem.  It’s increasingly popular to try to repair the damage done to urban neighborhoods by “capping” freeways:  building a cover so that the road is less visible.  While that’s widely seen as an improvement, some are pushing back that its really

What City Observatory did this week Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study.  Some of the most important policy decisions are buried deep in seemingly technocratic documents.  Case-in-point:  Oregon’s Highway Cost Allocation Study.  The state’s truckers are using the latest report to claim that they’re being overcharged, but the real story is very

There are good reasons to be dubious of claims that trucks are being over-charged for the use of Oregon roads. The imbalance between cars and trucks seems to stem largely from the Oregon Department of Transportation”s decision to slash maintenance and preservation, and spend more widening highways. ODOT could largely fix this “imbalance” by spending

Must Read How CalTrans cheated on its environmental reporting.  Some months back, former Deputy Director of CalTrans,Jeanie Ward-Waller blew the whistle on the agency’s effort to evade environmental laws and illegally use maintenance funds to widen I-80 between Sacramento and Davis.  Now the National Resources Defense Council has laid out a strong case that the

Every year, the same story:  We profess to care about climate change, but we’re driving more and transortation greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly. Oregon is stuck in an endless loop of lofty rhetoric, distant goals, and zero actual progress Case in point:  Portland’s Regional Transportation Plan:  It claims to do something about climate, but

What City Observatory this week Robert Moses strikes again:  One of the most infamous decisions of “The Power Broker” was to build the overpasses on the Long Island Expressway too low to allow city buses to use the roadway, cementing auto-dependency and blocking easy and economical transit access to many suburbs.  And eight decades later,

ODOT isn’t giving buses the shoulder, it’s giving transit the finger. IBR is planning a transitway for the new $7.5 billion interstate bridge that can’t be used by buses. It’s sketching in a “bus on shoulder” option as an excuse to justify building an even wider highway crossing. Meanwhile it plans to place light rail