“Affordable housing” can seem like a hopelessly vague term. First of all, affordable to whom? (Follow the link to a description of an “affordable” program targeting people making 40 percent more than the median income in San Francisco.) And even…
What City Observatory did this week 1. More doubt cast on food deserts. The concept of a “food desert”—typically low-income urban neighborhoods where a lack of nearby grocery stores leads to poor nutrition—is widely accepted. But a new study adds…
On Tuesday, voters in Seattle, San Francisco, Boulder, and elsewhere went to the polls to vote on referenda and other local elections with important consequences for urban planning and policy. Here’s an overview: Seattle: There are very good rundowns of…
Many studies of gentrification (for example, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia study we wrote about last week) begin by dividing neighborhoods into one of two categories: gentrifiable and non-gentrifiable. Usually, to qualify as “gentrifiable,” a neighborhood must rank relatively…
This week, City Observatory’s founder Joe Cortright sat down with the Knight Foundation’s Carol Coletta for the Knight Cities podcast. Their conversation reflected on the work City Observatory has undertaken over the past year, and dug more deeply into some…