What City Observatory did this week 1. Great neighborhoods don’t have to be illegal—they’re not elsewhere. Daniel Kay Hertz follows up on our earlier piece about illegal neighborhoodsto point out that most other wealthy countries allow the kinds of mixes of density and uses that most American cities have outlawed. Based on Sonia Hirt’s great […]

In light of Smart Cities Week, we’re updating this post from March about the role of smart technology, people, and successful cities. The growing appreciation of the importance of cities, especially by leaders in business and science, is much appreciated and long overdue. Many have embraced the “smart city” banner. But what does that mean?

A recent post from the excellent DC blog Greater Greater Washington has made a few ripples among transit advocates. In it, David Alpert takes the growth rate of WMATA’s operating costs (about 6% annually) and its operating revenue (about 1% annually) and makes the straightforward point that this isn’t really sustainable.   After all, these

One of the most broadly popular ideas about urban planning today is that decisions should be made locally. After all, who knows better what a neighborhood needs than the people who live there? And what better way to squash any would-be Robert Moses than by empowering the people whose homes he would claim for some

Ah, Paris! Perhaps one of the world’s most beautiful cities, a capital of European culture, and prosperous economic hub. What’s its secret? Zoning, of course!   Just kidding. Actually, Paris went for the better part of a millennium (until 1967) with nothing that an American might recognize as district-based zoning, a prospect that would surely horrify

What City Observatory did this week 1. My illegal neighborhood. Guest Commentary writer Robert Liberty describes all the things he loves about his neighborhood in Northwest Portland—and then explains why all of them would be illegal to build in a new development today. The mix of apartments and single-family homes doesn’t fit modern ideas about

Since the Texas Transportation Institute released its 2015 “Urban Mobility Report,” urban transportation experts and advocates have unleashed thousands and thousands of words poking holes at its methodology, assumptions, and political agenda. (We’ve pitched in our fair share of those words, and perhaps more.)   As one last entry to this conversation, we wanted to

Editor’s note:  City Observatory is pleased to provide this guest commentary by our friend Robert Liberty a keen observer of and advocate for cities.   by Robert Liberty For many years I lived in Northwest Portland, Oregon. It was a part of the city first settled by white pioneers in the 1860s, but development really

What City Observatory did this week 1. Looking at housing injustice requires a broad lens. A new research project on Bay Area neighborhood change defines “displacement” as any reduction in the number of low-income people in a given community. Daniel Kay Hertz argues that this way of thinking leads us down the wrong path in