Joe Cortright

Joe Cortright

Are racial “tipping points” overblown?

Why are America’s neighborhoods so segregated? For a lot of people, the answer requires reaching deep into history: explaining the rise of the subsidized mortgage market and redlining; racial violence in towns from Cicero, Illinois to Charleston, South Carolina; restrictive…

The Week Observed, August 21, 2015

What City Observatory did this week 1.  The suburbs: where the rich ride transit.  In many cities, transit ridership is dominated by a transit dependent population:  people who can afford to own private cars don’t use the transit system.  But…

The Dow of Cities

OK, we admit it.  We’re data geeks.  To us, sometimes — well, often — a single number or data set is compelling proof of an important proposition:  bare-naked, and with no verbal embellishment or deeply personal anecdote or cutesy infographic.…