Last summer, we flagged a fascinating study by Fitch Investment Advisers which tracked twenty five years of home price data, stratified by the “urbanness” of housing. Fitch showed that particularly since 2000, home prices in neighborhoods in the center of…
Over the past three weeks, we’ve introduced the “sprawl tax”—showing how much more Americans pay in time and money because of sprawling urban development patterns. We’ve also shown how much higher the sprawl tax is in the US than in…
Last week’s big news was Britain’s decision, via referendum, to leave the European Union. The results of the vote lead Prime Minister Cameron to resign and sent markets reeling, and it’s still unclear what the ultimate economic and political effects…
What City Observatory did this week 1. Urban housing is a massive asset. How massive? Well, a comparison to the valuation of our nation’s biggest corporations shows it’s no comparison at all—housing in major cities has them beat, often handily:…
For advocates of less restrictive building regulations, especially in high-cost cities where more homes might help bring down housing prices and create more equitable, diverse neighborhoods, state governments often seem like the best bet. At a local level, for reasons…