For a long time, we’ve been critical of the way we commonly talk about housing affordability. We’ve published a three–part series about why the way we measure housing affordability is all wrong. In particular, we objected to using the 30…
What City Observatory did this week 1. Shrinking offices: What it means for cities. Its not just you’re imagination: offices are becoming less common and smaller, and a variety of space-sharing and space-saving practices are taking hold in businesses around…
La-La Land voters deal a crushing defeat to a “NIMBYism on steroids” The latest returns show Los Angeles’ Measure S–the self-styled “Neighborhood Integrity Initiative”–failing by a 31 percent “Yes” to 69 percent “No” margin. If it had passed, Measure S was…
Today, partly as a public service, we’re going to dig into the academic literature on an arcane policy topic: rent control. We also have a parochial interest in the subject: the Oregon Legislature is considering legislation that would lift the…
The amount of office space allotted to each worker is shrinking. What does that mean for cities? Last week a new report from real estate analytics firm REIS caught our eye. Called “The Shrinking Office Footprint” this white paper looks…