What City Observatory did this week 1. Who bikes? Discussions of investing in bike infrastructure are often fraught with arguments about who benefits, with oft-expressed fears that bike lanes chiefly benefit a spandex-wearing elite. How does cycling correspond to income. …
Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There’s a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic account of gentrification focuses on the observable fact that…
Workers in low income households rely more on bikes for commuting, but the data show people of all income levels cycle to work There’s a lot of hand-wringing and harrumphing about the demographics of cycling. Some worry that bike lanes…
What City Observatory did this week Exit, hope and loyalty: What’s behind neighborhood change? America’s neighborhoods are always changing, and it’s often a question of whether change is driven more by hope or despair. We offer a slight tweak to…
How neighborhood stability hinges on expectations: If people don’t believe things are going to get better, many will leave One of the most perplexing urban problems is neighborhood decline. Once healthy, middle-class or working class-places seem to gradually (and then…