The big divides between rich and poor in the US are drawing increased attention, which is a good thing. Income inequality has been steadily growing in the US, and it’s a big problem. As we’ve pointed out, this problem has…
What City Observatory did this week 1. Cities can’t solve all our problems. Like other people who think and work about cities and urban issues, we’re often focused on how ground-level changes can make cities better—things neighborhood groups or local…
A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report confirms what we’ve known for a long time: our nation’s system of assessing the costs of roads—and paying for their construction and maintenance—is badly broken. Entitled “Approaches to Making Federal Highway Spending More…
This is the first in a three-part series on the flawed way that we measure housing affordability. This post looks at exactly what’s wrong with one of the most common ways we determine what “affordable” means. The second part looks at an…
In some ways, the urban renaissance of the last decade or two has been quite dramatic. Downtown or downtown-adjacent neighborhoods in cities around the country have seen rapid investments, demographic change, and growth in amenities and jobs. Even mayors in…