Signs of the times
“For Rent” signs are popping up all over Portland, signaling an easing of the housing crunch and foretelling falling rents A year ago, in the height of the political season in deep blue Portland (in a county which voted 76…
Category Commentary
The hamster wheel school of transportation policy
Going faster doesn’t mean your city gets anywhere more quickly, and it doesn’t make you happier One of the key metrics guiding transportation policy is speed: how quickly can you get from point A to point B. But is going…
The Week Observed, October 20, 2017
What City Observatory did this week 1. Now we are 3. This week marks City Observatory’s third birthday. It’s been an exciting time to be engaged with cities. We take a few minutes to review what we’ve done over the…
Why is “affordable” housing so expensive to build?
The high price of affordable housing It’s a problem that isn’t going away: the so-called “affordable” housing we’re building in many cities–by which we mean publicly subsidized housing that’s dedicated to low and moderate income households–is so expensive to build…
Now we are three!
Three years ago–on October 15th, 2014–we launched City Observatory, a data-driven voice on what makes for successful cities. Since then, we’ve weighed in daily on a whole series of issues set in and around urban spaces. So today, we’re taking a…