What City Observatory did this week Caveat Rentor: the problem with flawed rental inflation statistics. We highlight the continuing problem of erratic and unreliable rental price indices. A recent column by a financial journalist reports an apparent bubble in one-bedroom…
The quality of rent data varies widely, beware of erratic data sources Trying to measure average housing costs for neighborhoods across an entire city—let alone the whole country—is an incredibly ambitious task. Not only does it require a massive database…
To ballparks, convention centers and starchitect museums, add urban aquariums. To some boosters, your city is only one world-class visitor attraction away from economic prosperity. That pitch has been used to sell and endless series of public subsidies for baseball…
Eds and Meds . . . and Capitol Domes? I recently participated as a part of an expert panel reviewed Sacramento’s economic development strategy. You can learn more about the city’s “Project Prosper” here. It is rightly focused on identifying…
What City Observatory did this week California’s next step in fighting global warming is building more apartments near transit. California has been a leader in climate change policy, being one of the first states to execute a cap-and-trade system for…