The Week Observed: July 1, 2016
What City Observatory did this week 1. Last week’s big news was Brexit: the vote by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. What does that have to do with urban policy on our side of the Atlantic? Well,…
Category Commentary
Three challenges for the civic commons
In Philadelphia last week, the Gehl Institute convened Act Urban—a global group of leaders and practitioners in the field of the civic commons. After three days of fieldwork and observation, expert presentations and intense discussion, I was asked, along with…
More evidence on the “Dow of Cities”
Last summer, we flagged a fascinating study by Fitch Investment Advisers which tracked twenty five years of home price data, stratified by the “urbanness” of housing. Fitch showed that particularly since 2000, home prices in neighborhoods in the center of…
Sprawl and the cost of living
Over the past three weeks, we’ve introduced the “sprawl tax”—showing how much more Americans pay in time and money because of sprawling urban development patterns. We’ve also shown how much higher the sprawl tax is in the US than in…
Cities and Brexit
Last week’s big news was Britain’s decision, via referendum, to leave the European Union. The results of the vote lead Prime Minister Cameron to resign and sent markets reeling, and it’s still unclear what the ultimate economic and political effects…