The Curious Engineer

City Observatory

2017–2026

1,300 posts

← 2014–2016

2026 100

October 2026

  1. Risky business: How IBR’s contracting will produce billions in added costs
  2. The Week Observed: October 23, 2026
  3. Survey says . . . Fix it first, we don’t trust ODOT
  4. The Week Observed: October 9, 2026
  5. I-205 Abernethy Bridge hits $885 million
  6. The Week Observed: October 9, 2026
  7. The Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Sucks . . . Sucks up all the money
  8. Deriu on “Why Urban Planning Does Not Exist”: A Response
  9. The Week Observed: October 2, 2026

September 2026

  1. What Global Rankings Say About Successful Cities and Portland’s Performance
  2. How ODOT covers up cost overruns
  3. This is what “Success*” Looks Like: Hiding cost overruns
  4. The Week Observed: September 25, 2026
  5. ODOT’s “Strategic Review”: Conflicted consultants whitewashing mis-management
  6. Oregon DOT: First, third, and nearly worst
  7. ODOT admits its climate strategy is failing, tries to shift blame
  8. America’s Most Expensive Highway Projects
  9. Two lies and a truth about Oregon Transportation Finance
  10. The Week Observed: September 18, 2026
  11. Where’s my Carmaggedon?
  12. Testimony on the Prosperity Council Report
  13. The Week Observed: September 4, 2026
  14. Carmaggedon is coming to Portland! Or is it?
  15. The Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Sucks . . . Sucks up all the money
  16. Consultant Delays Cost Us Billions, While Padding Their Profits

August 2026

  1. The Week Observed: August 28, 2026
  2. What $2 billion in R&D investments says about Oregon’s business climate
  3. The Week Observed: August 21, 2026
  4. Senator Khanh Pham on ODOT’s Financial Crisis
  5. The Week Observed: August 13, 2026
  6. Bankrupt: A $3.5 billion Rose Quarter Freeway widening project
  7. The Week Observed: August 6, 2026
  8. Portland’s advanced seminar on sports economics

July 2026

  1. The Week Observed: July 31, 2026
  2. Business Oregon studies lied about tax incentives and business climate
  3. The Week Observed: July 24, 2026
  4. America’s shortage of cities
  5. The Week Observed: July 17, 2026
  6. Report of the Oregon Regressivity Council
  7. The Week Observed: July 10, 2026
  8. Don’t copy losers
  9. The Week Observed: July 3, 2026
  10. Why wages matter; why the minimum wage matters, to Oregon

June 2026

  1. Wrong before, wrong again: Taxes haven’t damaged Oregon’s prosperity
  2. A $650 million Cash Grab: Prosperity Council members call for cutting . . . their taxes
  3. Why Education, Not Taxes Matters to Oregon Economy
  4. Major Projects: The real cause of ODOT’s financial crisis
  5. The Week Observed: June 5, 2026
  6. ODOT re-writes history to hide its culpability for cost overruns
  7. ODOT: Going Orwell on falling behind schedule

May 2026

  1. The Week Observed: May 29, 2026
  2. The Week Observed: May 22, 2026
  3. Investment Grade Forecasts actually over-estimate future traffic
  4. Oregon’s lagging investment in higher education
  5. Interstate Bridge Project: Tolls will cause massive traffic diversion to I-205
  6. The Week Observed: May 15, 2026
  7. Are Oregonians getting jobs: the Employment Population Ratio
  8. The Week Observed: May 8, 2026
  9. Wrong way: ODOT is driving in the wrong direction for climate
  10. Oregon economy: Outperforming US, not in a recession, resilient
  11. Two bad years for two big firms

April 2026

  1. Eight reasons the Interstate Bridge project shouldn’t–and can’t legally–move forward
  2. Biotech: Still clustered after all these years
  3. What Oregon can learn from America’s best performing mid-sized metro economy
  4. The Week Observed: April 24, 2026
  5. Let’s get real: Oregon’s economy has performed well
  6. Earth Day in Oregon: Groundhog Day for the Climate Doom Loop
  7. What doom loop? Portland businesses optimistic about hiring in 2026
  8. The Week Observed: April 17, 2026
  9. City of Industry: Portland, Oregon–Number one large metro in new manufacturing firms
  10. The High Cost of Hiding: Why IBR’s Delayed Revenue Study is a $15 Billion Warning Sign
  11. The Week Observed: April 3, 2026
  12. Harbor Drive

March 2026

  1. The Week Observed: March 27, 2026
  2. NBA Extortion: Somebody call a cop.
  3. How should Portland pay for streets?
  4. The Business Climate is always bad, but it never matters
  5. The Week Observed: March 20, 2026
  6. Portland Economy’s Strong Report Card: Brookings Metro Monitor
  7. The IBR Boondoggle Blunders Ahead
  8. Single Stair Reform and Housing Affordability
  9. The Week Observed: March 13, 2026
  10. Abernethy & Accountability: Dashboards
  11. Friday the 13th IBR style: Spinning a terrifying new cost estimate
  12. The Week Observed: March 6, 2026
  13. Freeway fighters win! And a lesson for Portland

February 2026

  1. Accountability Roulette: Oregon’s SB 1544
  2. The Week Observed: February 20, 2026
  3. Interstate Bridge Replacement: The forever project
  4. The Market for Theatre Space in Portland
  5. The Week Observed: February 13, 2026
  6. The Week Observed: February 6, 2026
  7. Economic impact of NBA teams: Nearly nil.
  8. IBR: Falsely Blaming Inflation

January 2026

  1. The Week Observed: January 30, 2026
  2. IBR’s $17.7 billion cost estimate: Testimony to OTC
  3. The Week Observed: January 23, 2026
  4. IBR evasive, misleading and dishonest excuses for higher costs
  5. The Week Observed: January 8, 2026
  6. $17.7 Billion: Exploding costs doom I-5 bridge replacement

2025 97

December 2025

  1. IBR: Still hiding–and lying about–coming billions in cost overruns
  2. The Week Observed: December 12, 2025
  3. ODOT’s systemic financial crisis
  4. The Week Observed: December 5, 2025
  5. Oregon’s climate fail

November 2025

  1. Why you can’t bribe your way to a low fixed span bridge
  2. The Week Observed: November 21, 2025
  3. Train Wreck: Will transit sink the Interstate Bridge Project?
  4. The Week Observed: November 14, 2025
  5. The Week Observed: November 7, 2025
  6. Interstate Bridge: $273 million on consultants for “basically the same project”?
  7. The Week Observed: October 31, 2025

October 2025

  1. Burnside Bridge Cost Blows Up
  2. Lars Larson Interview: Is the Interstate Bridge Destined to Fail?
  3. IBR’s problems are much deeper than its leadership
  4. The Week Observed: October 24, 2025
  5. Oregon DOT’s “Reign of Error” grows worse.
  6. The Week Observed: October 17, 2025
  7. Greenwashing the Interstate Bridge Project
  8. Engineers gone wild: The I-5 bridge “replacement” con
  9. The Week Observed: October 10, 2025
  10. The Week Observed: October 3, 2025

September 2025

  1. A bridge too short, again
  2. The Week Observed: September 26, 2025
  3. IBR: Federal Funding in Jeopardy
  4. The Week Observed: September 19, 2025
  5. Metro: Time to tell the truth about failing climate strategy
  6. IBR: Falling further behind schedule
  7. The Week Observed: September 12, 2025
  8. Denial and declining traffic on the I-5 bridges
  9. IBR costs headed to $10 billion, but don’t tell anyone

August 2025

  1. The Week Observed: August 29, 2025
  2. What OPB left out about the special session
  3. The Old Bait and Switch
  4. Lars Larson Interviews Cortright on Special Session
  5. Killing road pricing: Enviros get rolled again
  6. Ten Things to Know About the Transportation Package
  7. The Week Observed, August 22, 2025
  8. Oregon DOT’s accountability charade
  9. No guardrails: ODOT evades accountability
  10. Caution: Scam Alert
  11. The Week Observed, August 15, 2025
  12. The Week Observed, August 8, 2025
  13. The Gender Gap in City Perceptions
  14. The Week Observed, August 1, 2025

July 2025

  1. ODOT’s big lie about transportation spending
  2. The Week Observed, July 25, 2025
  3. Rewarding bad behavior, getting bad results
  4. Deeply in debt: ODOT’s profligate borrowing helped lead to layoffs
  5. The Week Observed, July 11, 2025
  6. The Oregon Department of Transportation crashes into a financial brick wall
  7. The Rose Quarter Freeway Widening is Dead

June 2025

  1. Why Oregon’s legislators should vote “No” on HB 2025
  2. The Week Observed, June 20, 2025\
  3. HB 2025: Fiscally irresponsible, feeding the megaproject machine
  4. The Week Observed, June 13, 2025
  5. The ODOT accountability charade
  6. The elephant in Hearing Room A
  7. The Week Observed, June 6, 2025
  8. Another delay for higher IBR costs

May 2025

  1. The Week Observed, May 30, 2025
  2. Still Unaccountable: The AtkinsRealis-Horrocks Report
  3. The Week Observed, May 23, 2025
  4. Unaccountable: ODOT covers up cost overruns
  5. Joe Cortright’s testimony on Oregon stadium tax subsidies (SB 110A)
  6. The Week Observed, May 16, 2025
  7. Cortright Testimony to Oregon Transportation Commission, May 8, 2025
  8. Seattle’s new subway!
  9. The Week Observed, May 9, 2025
  10. Leave the car at home, take the income
  11. The Week Observed, May 2, 2025
  12. ODOT has repeatedly concealed and lied about the width of the Rose Quarter Freeway

April 2025

  1. Rose Quarter’s Deadly Off Ramps
  2. The Week Observed, April 25, 2025
  3. Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s spend billions widening freeways!
  4. The Week Observed, April 18, 2025
  5. Congestion pricing works in small metros, too
  6. The Week Observed, April 11, 2025
  7. Cities and the essential right to peaceable assembly
  8. The Week Observed, April 4, 2025
  9. A non-denial denial

March 2025

  1. The Week Observed, March 28, 2025
  2. ODOT’s “Strategic Review”: Conflicted consultants whitewashing mis-management
  3. The Week Observed, March 21, 2025
  4. Value of Time: Mis-estimating tolls and traffic
  5. OregonDOT’s real financial problem isn’t revenue. It’s mega project cost overruns
  6. The Week Observed, March 14, 2025
  7. IBR: Pretending work-from-home never happened
  8. The Week Observed, March 7, 2025
  9. Our 2025 list from A to Z of everything that causes gentrification
  10. Rules of thumb put a thumb on the scale
  11. If we’re so broke, why are we spending $2 billion to widen a mile of freeway?

February 2025

  1. The Week Observed, February 28, 2025
  2. De-congestion pricing works
  3. And, we’re back (almost)
  4. Economic Segregation
  5. Core Vitality

2024 80

November 2024

  1. History shows IBR modeling is simply wrong
  2. The Week Observed, November 9, 2024
  3. IBR: Planning for a world that no longer exists
  4. IBR’s DSEIS uses the least accurate forecast
  5. IBR contradicts region’s climate commitments
  6. Needless purposes: How IBR violates NEPA
  7. The Week Observed, November 1, 2024

October 2024

  1. Metro’s Kate Model: 25,000 phantom cars a day on the I-5 bridge
  2. IBR traffic modeling violates professional standards and federal rules
  3. Cooking the Books: How IBR used “Post-Processing” to alter the Metro Model
  4. Inventing millions of phantom trucks to sell a wider bridge
  5. They’re digging in the wrong place
  6. Moving the goalposts: Redefining traffic congestion
  7. The Week Observed, October 25, 2024
  8. The Week Observed, October 18, 2024
  9. IBR: Forecasting the impossible
  10. Kate: Metro’s wildly inaccurate model overstates current traffic levels
  11. The Interstate Bridge Project’s Flawed Traffic Data

August 2024

  1. The Week Observed, August 30, 2024
  2. Another housing bubble brewing? Not really
  3. City Observatory’s Joe Cortright on the Housing Bubble–2005
  4. The Week Observed, August 23, 2024
  5. How Metro’s RTP Illegally favors car travel and violates climate rules
  6. The Week Observed, August 16, 2024

July 2024

  1. The Week Observed, August 2, 2024
  2. The Week Observed, July 26, 2024
  3. Hiding the growing cost of the Interstate Bridge Replacement
  4. The Week Observed, July 19, 2024
  5. The Week Observed, July 12, 2024

June 2024

  1. The Week Observed, June 28, 2024
  2. Strawberries and economic prosperity
  3. The Week Observed, June 21, 2024
  4. Inventing a “commitment” to freeway cost overruns
  5. An 18 month delay for the IBR due to flawed traffic projections
  6. The Week Observed, June 14, 2024
  7. The Week Observed, June 7, 2024
  8. Grading the City Clean Energy Scorecard

May 2024

  1. How “anti-social” capital varies by city
  2. The Week Observed, May 24, 2024
  3. Cargo Cult Comeback: Cost–$30 million a year
  4. The Week Observed, May 17, 2024
  5. Oregon DOT can and should mitigate past damage from highways
  6. The Week Observed, May 10, 2024
  7. The Interstate Bridge Replacement is Two Years Behind Schedule
  8. Abernethy Bridge Cost Triples to $750 million
  9. The Week Observed, May 3, 2024

April 2024

  1. Moving the goalposts
  2. The Week Observed, April 26, 2024
  3. The Week Observed, April 12, 2024
  4. Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Widening Freeways Kills the Planet!
  5. The Week Observed, April 19, 2024
  6. Bye Containers, Again
  7. A teachable moment: Ben & Jerry’s seminar in transportation economics
  8. The Week Observed, April 5, 2024
  9. Another thing IBR doesn’t want you to know: 30 seconds over Portland
  10. States need honest reporting on transportation greenhouse gases

March 2024

  1. The Week Observed, March 29, 2024
  2. Carmageddon does a no show, again (Baltimore edition)
  3. What IBR doesn’t want you to know
  4. The Week Observed, March 22, 2024
  5. Freeway covers are an expensive way to create new urban land
  6. The Week Observed, March 15, 2024
  7. Monkey-wrenching road pricing
  8. The Week Observed, March 8, 2024
  9. A yawning chasm: Patterns of neighborhood distress in US metros
  10. The Week Observed, March 1, 2024

February 2024

  1. Housing: Missing Middle or Missing Massive?
  2. The Week Observed, February 16, 2024
  3. The Week Observed, February 9, 2024
  4. Three big flaws in ODOT’s Highway Cost Allocation Study
  5. The Week Observed, February 2, 2024
  6. Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop

January 2024

  1. The Week Observed, January 26, 2024
  2. Bus on shoulder: Stalking horse for freeway widening
  3. The Week Observed, January 19, 2024
  4. Why spend $200 million on consultants for “basically the same project”?
  5. The Week Observed, January 12, 2024
  6. The pernicious myth of “naturally occurring” affordable housing
  7. The Week Observed, January 5, 2024
  8. It looks like the Interstate Bridge Replacement could cost $9 billion

2023 104

December 2023

  1. The Week Observed, December 22, 2023
  2. Bad data: Not a decline in travel
  3. The Week Observed, December 15, 2023
  4. Exaggerated Benefits, Omitted Costs: The Interstate Bridge Boondoggle
  5. The Week Observed, December 8, 2023
  6. Diversion: IBR tolls will gridlock I-205
  7. Down is not up: The truth about traffic, congestion and trucking
  8. The ten lane freeway hiding in Rose Quarter Plans
  9. The Week Observed, December 1, 2023

November 2023

  1. The Week Observed, November 17, 2023
  2. Lying about climate: A 5 million mile a day discrepancy
  3. The Week Observed, November 10, 2023
  4. ODOT Snow Job: Give us more money, or we’ll stop plowing your roads
  5. The Week Observed, November 3, 2023
  6. Rose Quarter’s Killer Ramps

October 2023

  1. Doubling down on climate fraud in Metro’s RTP
  2. Britain’s Caste System of Transportation
  3. What if we regulated cars like we do houses?

September 2023

  1. The Week Observed, September 15, 2023
  2. This is what victory looks like, Freeway Fighters
  3. The Week Observed, October 27, 2023
  4. The Week Observed, October 13, 2023
  5. The Week Observed, October 20, 2023
  6. The Week Observed, October 6, 2023
  7. The Week Observed, September 8, 2023
  8. Gentrification and Housing Supply

August 2023

  1. Rose Quarter: Death throes of a bloated boondoggle
  2. The Week Observed, September 1, 2023
  3. The Week Observed, August 25, 2023
  4. Metro’s Climate-Denying Regional Transportation Plan
  5. The Week Observed, August 18, 2023
  6. The climate fraud in Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan
  7. The Week Observed, August 11, 2023
  8. The Week Observed, August 4, 2023
  9. Local flavor: Independent restaurants indicate city vitality

July 2023

  1. The Week Observed, July 28, 2023
  2. Urban myth busting: Congestion, idling, and carbon emissions
  3. The Week Observed, July 21, 2023
  4. ODOT’s I-205 Bridge: 1/10th of 1 Percent for Black Contractors
  5. The Week Observed, July 14, 2023
  6. Rose Quarter: So expensive because it’s too damn wide
  7. Who sold out the HAAB?
  8. Pens down!
  9. Extend and Pretend: ODOT’s Zombie Rose Quarter project
  10. The Week Observed, July 7, 2023
  11. Another exploding whale: ODOT’s freeway widening cost quadruples
  12. Testimony to the Oregon Transportation Commission

June 2023

  1. The Week Observed, June 30, 2023
  2. Scratch one flat top!
  3. The Week Observed, June 23, 2023
  4. The Week Observed, June 16, 2023
  5. Carmageddon does a no show, again (Philadelphia edition)
  6. The Week Observed, June 9, 2023
  7. Getting prices right to improve urban transportation
  8. The Week Observed, June 2, 2023
  9. What new computer renderings really show about the IBR

May 2023

  1. The Week Observed, May 26, 2023
  2. The Week Observed, May 19, 2023
  3. Pedestrian safety: There’s no technical fix
  4. The Week Observed, May 12, 2023
  5. What Cincinnati’s Brent Spence Bridge can tell Portland
  6. The Week Observed, May 5, 2023
  7. Why can’t ODOT tell the truth?

April 2023

  1. The Week Observed, April 21, 2023
  2. A blank check for the highway lobby: HB 2098-2
  3. Why should Oregonians subsidize suburban commuters from another state?
  4. The Week Observed, April 14, 2023
  5. Put a bird on it: Highway Greenwashing
  6. The Case Against the Interstate Bridge Replacement
  7. The Week Observed, April 7, 2023
  8. Wile E. Coyote hits bottom: Portland’s inclusionary zoning
  9. IBR’s plan to sabotage the moveable span option

March 2023

  1. The Week Observed, March 31, 2023
  2. The Color of Money: Bailing out highways with flexible federal funds
  3. What are they hiding? Why highway builders won’t show their $7.5 billion freeway
  4. The Week Observed, March 23, 2023
  5. Oregon’s transportation fiscal crisis
  6. Housing affordability? Localism is the problem, not the solution
  7. The Week Observed, March 17, 2023
  8. The Week Observed, April 28, 2023
  9. Houston’s I-45: Civil rights or repeated wrongs?
  10. The Week Observed, March 10, 2023
  11. Why does a $500 million bridge replacement cost $7.5 billion?
  12. The Week Observed, March 3, 2023

February 2023

  1. More induced travel denial
  2. The Week Observed, February 24, 2023
  3. I-205 tolls will cost you $600 per year
  4. IBR floats new bridge design, proving critics right
  5. The Week Observed, February 17, 2023
  6. Driving between Vancouver and Wilsonville at 5PM? ODOT plans to charge you $15
  7. The Week Observed, February 10, 2023
  8. CEVP: Non-existent cost controls for the $7.5 billion IBR project
  9. The Week Observed, February 3, 2023
  10. What the City of Portland said about the Rose Quarter
  11. Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop

January 2023

  1. The Week Observed, January 27, 2023
  2. Driving stakes, selling bonds: ODOT’s freeway boondoggle plan
  3. The Week Observed, January 20, 2023
  4. Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor
  5. The Week Observed, January 13, 2023
  6. Another flawed Inrix Congestion Cost report
  7. A reporter’s guide to congestion cost studies
  8. The Week Observed, January 6, 2023
  9. The case against the I-5 Rose Quarter Freeway widening

2022 85

December 2022

  1. Flat Earth Sophistry
  2. Traffic is declining at the Rose Quarter: ODOT growth projections are fiction
  3. The truth about Oregon DOT’s Rose Quarter MegaFreeway
  4. The IBR project: Too much money for too many interchanges
  5. The Week Observed, December 16, 2022
  6. Blame inflation now: Lying about the latest IBR Cost Overrun
  7. Pricing works better than spending $1.45 billion to fix I-5 traffic
  8. ODOT doesn’t care about covers, again
  9. ODOT’s I-5 Rose Quarter “Improvement”: A million more miles of local traffic
  10. The Week Observed, December 2, 2022
  11. Why won’t ODOT tell us how wide their freeway is?

November 2022

  1. The black box: Hiding the facts about freeway widening
  2. The Week Observed, November 18, 2022
  3. ODOT: Our I-5 Rose Quarter safety project will increase crashes
  4. The Rose Quarter’s Big U-Turn: Deadman’s Curve?
  5. ODOT reneges on Rose Quarter cover promises
  6. The Week Observed, November 11, 2022
  7. Highway officials misrepresent Coast Guard permit requirements
  8. The Week Observed, November 4, 2022

October 2022

  1. The Week Observed, October 28, 2022
  2. Risky Bridges: Deja vu all over again
  3. A Toll Policy Primer for Oregon
  4. The Week Observed, October 21, 2022
  5. ODOT’s safety lie is back, bigger than ever
  6. The Week Observed, October 14, 2022
  7. Two out of three candidates for Oregon Governor are climate denialists

July 2022

  1. The Week Observed, July 29, 2022
  2. ODOT’s “Fix-it first” fraud
  3. Failing to Learn from Failed CRC
  4. A bridge too low . . . again
  5. Oregon and Washington DOTs plan too low a bridge–again.

June 2022

  1. The Week Observed, June 24, 2022
  2. Fruit and economics: Local goods
  3. “Free parking” isn’t green
  4. The Week Observed, June 10, 2022
  5. ODOT’s Reign of Error: Chronic highway cost overruns
  6. Flying blind: Why public leaders need an investment grade analysis

May 2022

  1. The Week Observed, July 22, 2022
  2. The Week Observed, July 15, 2022
  3. The Week Observed, July 8, 2022
  4. The Week Observed, July 1, 2022
  5. The Week Observed, June 17, 2022
  6. The Week Observed, May 27, 2022
  7. More Congestion Pseudo Science
  8. The Week Observed, May 20, 2022
  9. Yet another exploding whale: ODOT’s freeway widening cost doubles
  10. The Week Observed, May 13, 2022
  11. Just say no: How to deal with highway widening zealots
  12. How ODOT & WSDOT are hiding real plans for a 10- or 12-lane I-5 Bridge Project
  13. The Week Observed, May 6, 2022
  14. Ten unanswered questions about the IBR Boondoggle
  15. The Week Observed, April 29, 2022

April 2022

  1. Frog Ferry: The slow boat to nowhere
  2. Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Waste Billions Widening Freeways!
  3. The Week Observed, April 22, 2022
  4. Sprawl and Tax Evasion: Driving forces behind freeway widening
  5. The Week Observed, April 15, 2022
  6. A Universal Basic income . . . for Cars
  7. The NIMBYs made $6 trillion last year
  8. The Week Observed, April 1, 2022
  9. The Cappuccino Congestion Index

March 2022

  1. The Week Observed, March 25, 2022
  2. Which metros are vulnerable to gas price hikes?
  3. The Week Observed, March 18, 2022
  4. The Week Observed, March 11, 2022
  5. Biased statistics: Woke-washing the I-5 Boondoggle
  6. The Week Observed, March 4, 2022
  7. Oregon crosses the road-pricing Rubicon

February 2022

  1. The Week Observed, February 25, 2022
  2. Freeway widening for whomst?
  3. The Week Observed, February 18, 2022
  4. ODOT’s forecasting double standard
  5. The Week Observed, February 11, 2022
  6. The I-5 bridge “replacement” con
  7. The Week Observed, February 4, 2022
  8. Climate: Our Groundhog Day Doom Loop

January 2022

  1. Portland: Don’t move or close schools to widen freeways
  2. The Week Observed, January 21, 2022
  3. Metro’s “Don’t Look Up” Climate Policy
  4. The Week Observed, January 14, 2022
  5. Transportation trends and disparities
  6. The Week Observed, January 7, 2022
  7. The Week Observed, January 28, 2022
  8. Oregon, Washington advance I-5 bridge based on outdated traffic projections
  9. Why the proposed $5 billion I-5 bridge is a climate disaster

2021 125

December 2021

  1. Metro’s failing climate strategy
  2. The Week Observed, December 17, 2021
  3. Louisville’s financial disaster: Deep in debt for road capacity that will never be used
  4. The Week Observed, December 10, 2021
  5. Drive-thrus are ruining cities and helping kill the planet
  6. Oregon DOT’s Real Climate Plan: Keep on polluting
  7. The Week Observed, December 3, 2021

November 2021

  1. Oregon’s economic success: The triumph of the city
  2. The Week Observed, November 19, 2021
  3. The Week Observed, November 12, 2021
  4. Let’s stop whining about gas prices: Gasoline is cheap, too cheap.
  5. How to solve traffic congestion: A miracle in Louisville?
  6. The Week Observed, November 5, 2021
  7. The opposite of planning: Why Metro should stop I-5 Bridge con

October 2021

  1. The Week Observed, October 22, 2021
  2. America’s least (and most) segregated metro areas: 2020
  3. The Week Observed, October 15, 2021
  4. Here’s what’s wrong with Oregon DOT’s Rose Quarter pollution claims
  5. Where we embrace socialism in the US: Parking Lots

September 2021

  1. The Week Observed, September 24, 2021
  2. Freeway-widening grifters: Woke-washing, fraud and incompetence
  3. The Week Observed, September 17, 2021
  4. Another exploding whale: ODOT’s freeway widening cost triples
  5. The Week Observed, September 10, 2021
  6. Talkin’ ’bout my gentrification
  7. The Week Observed, September 3, 2021
  8. Climate efforts must be cost effective

August 2021

  1. The Week Observed, August 27, 2021
  2. A net zero blind spot
  3. The Week Observed, August 20, 2021
  4. Insurance and the Cost of Living: Homeowners Insurance
  5. Insurance and the Cost of Living: Auto Insurance
  6. BIB: The bad infrastructure bill
  7. To solve climate, we need electric cars—and a lot less driving
  8. The Week Observed, August 13, 2021
  9. America’s berry best cities
  10. The Week Observed, August 6, 2021

July 2021

  1. The Week Observed, July 30, 2021
  2. Burn, baby, burn: ODOT’s climate strategy
  3. The Week Observed, July 23, 2021
  4. Selling Oregon into highway bondage
  5. The Week Observed, July 16, 2021
  6. Welcome to Portland Secretary Pete! Now about the Rose Quarter Freeway
  7. The Week Observed, July 9, 2021
  8. In the bag: Pricing works
  9. Miami’s E-Scooters: Revisiting the Double Standard
  10. The Week Observed, July 2, 2021
  11. It’s back, and it’s even dumber than ever: The Urban Mobility Report

June 2021

  1. Lower interest rates = More expensive homes
  2. The Week Observed, June 25, 2021
  3. The Bum’s Rush
  4. The Week Observed, June 18, 2021
  5. More proof of ODOT’s Rose Quarter Freeway coverup
  6. Race and economic polarization
  7. The Week Observed, June 4, 2021
  8. How highways finally crushed Black Tulsa

May 2021

  1. The Week Observed, May 28, 2021
  2. Single-Family Zoning and Exclusion in L.A. County: Part 2
  3. State DOTs can and should build housing to mitigate highway impacts
  4. Single-Family Zoning and Exclusion in L.A. County: Part 1
  5. The Week Observed, May 21, 2021
  6. What about reparations for people?
  7. For a grand bargain, think bigger and bolder
  8. The Week Observed, May 14, 2021
  9. Don’t Repeat the Hard Earned Lessons of the Failed CRC
  10. The Week Observed, May 7, 2021
  11. Who got trillions? We found the real speculators profiting from higher housing costs
  12. The real “I-5” project: $5 billion, 5 miles, $5 tolls

April 2021

  1. The Week Observed, April 30, 2021
  2. Alexa: What is Cascadia Vision 2050?
  3. ODOT consultant: Pricing is a better fix for the Rose Quarter
  4. Getting real about restorative justice in Albina
  5. The Week Observed, April 23, 2021
  6. The freight fable: Moving trucks is not longer the key to economic prosperity
  7. Fighting Climate Change is Inherently Equitable
  8. The Week Observed, April 16, 2021
  9. ODOT’s peer review panel admits it didn’t validate Rose Quarter travel forecasts
  10. Why cheap gas is our real climate and transportation policy
  11. Taking Tubman: ODOT’s plan to build a freeway on school grounds
  12. How ODOT destroyed Albina, part 3: The Fremont Bridge ramps
  13. Wholly Moses: Pave now, pay later
  14. The Week Observed, April 2, 2021
  15. The Cappuccino Congestion Index

March 2021

  1. How ODOT destroyed Albina: The I-5 Meat Axe
  2. The Week Observed, March 26, 2021
  3. Greenwashing auto infrastructure: Natick’s diverging diamond
  4. How ODOT destroyed Albina: The untold story
  5. The Week Observed, March 19, 2021
  6. An open letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission
  7. Is the pandemic driving rents down? Or up?
  8. Inclusionary Zoning: Portland’s Wile E. Coyote moment has arrived
  9. Progress Zero: Lofty vision but increasing deaths and injuries
  10. The Week Observed, April 9, 2021
  11. The Week Observed, March 12, 2021
  12. The Week Observed, March 5, 2021
  13. A new framework for equitable economic development
  14. The Fundamental, Global Law of Road Congestion

February 2021

  1. The Week Observed, February 26, 2021
  2. Revealed: ODOT’s Secret Plans for a 10-Lane Rose Quarter Freeway
  3. Oregon’s I-5 bridge costs just went up $150 million
  4. The Week Observed, February 19, 2021
  5. Equitable Carbon Fee and Dividend
  6. Covid Migration: Temporary, young, economically insecure
  7. How freeways kill cities
  8. The Week Observed, February 12, 2021
  9. How housing segregation reduces Black wealth
  10. Congestion Pricing: ODOT is disobeying an order from Governor Brown
  11. The Week Observed, February 5, 2021
  12. Urban myth busting: New rental housing and median-income households
  13. America’s K-shaped housing market
  14. Again, it’s Groundhog’s Day, again
  15. Albina Then and Now
  16. Calculating induced demand at the Rose Quarter

January 2021

  1. The Week Observed, January 29, 2021
  2. Widening I-5 at the Rose Quarter will increase greenhouse gases
  3. More performative pedestrian infrastructure
  4. The Week Observed, January 22, 2021
  5. Housing discrimination is baked into zoning
  6. The Week Observed, January 15, 2024
  7. Why parking should pay its way instead of getting a free ride
  8. The Urban Institute gets inclusion backwards, again
  9. The Week Observed, January 8, 2021
  10. A regional green new deal for Portland
  11. Portland carbon tax should apply to all big polluters
  12. 2021: Time to get serious about climate

2020 165

December 2020

  1. 2020: The Year Observed
  2. City Observatory on housing supply and affordability
  3. The Week Observed, December 18, 2020
  4. Sustainability is about more than electrification
  5. Highway to Hell: Climate denial at the TRB
  6. Building more housing lowers rents for everyone
  7. The Week Observed, December 11, 2020
  8. City Beat: Another sketchy claim of Covid-driven urban flight
  9. The only reason some people drive is because we pay them to
  10. Phoenix: Climate Hypocrisy

November 2020

  1. The real $3.4 billion hole in the I-5 bridge project
  2. Black Friday, Cyber-Monday and the myth of gridlock Tuesday
  3. The Week Observed, November 30, 2020
  4. More cynical greenwashing from the highway industry
  5. The Week Observed, November 13, 2020
  6. Why—and where—Metro’s $5 billion transportation bond measure failed
  7. Covid & Cities: Reasons for optimism
  8. The Week Observed, November 6, 2020
  9. Systemic racism and automobile insurance
  10. Achieving equitable mobility: Reallocate road space, price driving

October 2020

  1. Equity and Metro’s $5 Billion Transportation Bond
  2. The Week Observed, October 23, 2020
  3. The amazing disappearing urban exodus
  4. Now we are six.
  5. The Week Observed, October 16, 2020
  6. Equity and Parks
  7. Red states are now the red zone for Covid-19
  8. The Week Observed, October 9, 2020
  9. Let’s use a marketing campaign to solve traffic congestion
  10. The Week Observed, October 2, 2020

September 2020

  1. The Great Disconnect: The perverse rhetoric of gentrification
  2. Carmaggedon does a no-show in Portland
  3. The Week Observed, October 30, 2020
  4. The Week Observed, September 25, 2020
  5. Parking and equity in cities
  6. How to make gentrification even worse
  7. Vancouver Columbian: Suburban drivers matter
  8. The Week Observed, September 18, 2020
  9. City Beat: No flight to Portland’s suburbs
  10. The toxic flood of cars, not just the freeway, crushed Albina
  11. Covid-19 is now a rural and red state pandemic
  12. Lived segregation in US cities
  13. Why this Portland transit veteran is voting no on Metro’s bond
  14. Manufacturing consent for highway widening
  15. Is there anything “smart” about smart cities?
  16. The Week Observed, September 11, 2020
  17. The Week Observed, September 4, 2020
  18. The myth of pedestrian infrastructure in a world of cars

August 2020

  1. The Week Observed, August 28, 2020
  2. The case against Metro’s $5 billion transportation bond
  3. The Week Observed, August 21, 2020
  4. America’s least (and most) segregated cities.
  5. “Let them drive Teslas” is not a climate or a justice plan
  6. The Week Observed, August 7, 2020
  7. Climate Fail: Metro’s 2020 Transportation Package
  8. Is it random, or is it Zumper?

July 2020

  1. The Week Observed, July 31 2020
  2. Portland awards itself a participation trophy for climate
  3. A world of fewer cars and less driving
  4. The Week Observed, July 24 2020
  5. The Exodus that never happened
  6. The Week Observed, July 17, 2020
  7. Dominos falling on Rose Quarter freeway widening
  8. The Week Observed, July 10, 2020
  9. CityBeat: NPR’s suburban flight story

June 2020

  1. Covid-19: Surging in Sunbelt cities
  2. The Week Observed, June 26, 2020
  3. Triumph of the NIMBY’s: Less affordable, more displacement
  4. The Week Observed, June 19, 2020
  5. City Beat: When workers can live anywhere
  6. COVID Lessons for Portland (and others)
  7. Youth movement: A generational shift in preference for urbanism
  8. Youth Movement Dashboard
  9. Youth Movement
  10. The Week Observed, June 12, 2020
  11. Covid-19: A catalyst for more inclusive cities
  12. Covid-19 accelerating in five cities
  13. Covid-19 and segregation
  14. The Week Observed, June 5, 2020
  15. Whitewashing the freeway widening
  16. The convention business is cratering, and cities are getting stuck with the bill
  17. Memo to the Governor: Recovering from Covid-19
  18. Covid-19 and Cities: A very uneven pandemic

May 2020

  1. The Week Observed, May 29, 2020
  2. Coronavirus in L.A. County: Separating Fact from Fiction
  3. City Beat: Why Portland is not like NYC when it comes to Covid
  4. The Week Observed, May 22, 2020
  5. Postcards from the edges: Density is not Destiny
  6. Is the pandemic worse in cities or suburbs?
  7. What is urban?
  8. The Week Observed, May 15, 2020
  9. City Beat: No evidence that people are fleeing to the suburbs
  10. Oregon DOT: The master of three-card monte
  11. Don’t make “equity” the enemy of improving cities for people
  12. The Week Observed, May 1, 2020

April 2020

  1. The state of the pandemic by metro area
  2. The Week Observed, April 24, 2020
  3. What Covid-19 teaches us about how to fix freeways
  4. Why suburbs aren’t safer from the pandemic than cities
  5. Is Covid-19 the end of cities? (Spoiler: No.)
  6. Density is not Destiny: Covid in Cascadia
  7. The Covid Corridor: The pandemic is worst in the NE Corridor
  8. The Week Observed, April 17, 2020
  9. A Note on Covid-19 Case Data
  10. Regional Pandemic Hotspots: NE Corridor and Great Lakes
  11. The Week Observed, April 10, 2020
  12. Covid-19 Prevalence by Metro Area (April 17 data)
  13. Who’s flattening the curve? Evidence from Seattle & San Jose
  14. Staying at home: Estimates for large metro areas
  15. What cities tell us about the trajectory of the pandemic
  16. Covid-19 Prevalence by Metro Area (April 8 data)
  17. Covid-19 Prevalence by Metro Area (April 2 data)
  18. Anatomy of a rental marketplace
  19. The Week Observed, April 3, 2020
  20. Covid-19 Prevalence by Metro Area (April 1 data)
  21. Covid-19 Prevalence by Metro Area (March 31 data)
  22. Covid-19 Prevalence by Metro Area (March 30 data)

March 2020

  1. How bad is the Covid-19 pandemic in my metro area?
  2. Prevalence of Covid-19 in large US metro areas
  3. Prevalence of Covid-19 in large US metro areas
  4. The Week Observed, March 27, 2020
  5. Covid-19: Metro Incidence Estimates, 25 March [SUPERSEDED]
  6. Covid-19: Metro Incidence Estimates, 22 March
  7. Growth rates of Covid-19 in counties with many cases
  8. Understanding the geography of Covid-19
  9. Covid-19: County-level Incidence Estimates, 19 March 2020
  10. The Week Observed, March 20, 2020
  11. Cities and coronavirus: Some thoughts
  12. Oregon DOT admits it lied about I-5 safety
  13. Declining bus ridership is no mystery
  14. Cheaper gas: Bad for climate and safety
  15. The Week Observed, March 13, 2020
  16. ODOT: Exploding whales and cost overruns
  17. The Week Observed, March 6, 2020
  18. Unsafe Uber? Lethal Lyft? We’re still skeptical
  19. Unsafe Uber? Lethal Lyft? We’re still skeptical
  20. The varying thickness of the blue line

February 2020

  1. The Week Observed, February 28, 2020
  2. Why Atlanta’s anti-gentrification moratorium will backfire
  3. Gentrification: the case of the missing counter-factual
  4. Equity and Homelessness
  5. The Week Observed, February 21, 2020
  6. Climate failure and denial at the Oregon Department of Transportation
  7. Understanding Walkable Density
  8. Mapping Walkable Density
  9. How driving ruins local flavor
  10. Local flavor: Cities with the most independent restaurants
  11. Climate crisis: Cities are the solution
  12. Lying about safety to sell freeway widening
  13. The Week Observed, February 7, 2020
  14. Memo to the Oregon Transportation Commission: Don’t Dodge
  15. Bags, bottles and cans: Pricing works
  16. Jealous billionaires: The story behind Amazon’s HQ2
  17. Talent: The key to metro economic success

January 2020

  1. The Week Observed, January 31, 2020
  2. With climate change, it’s always Groundhog’s Day
  3. Climate Fail: Metro’s 2020 Transportation Package
  4. The Week Observed, January 24, 2020
  5. Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor
  6. Walkable places are growing in value almost everywhere
  7. Our updated list from A to Z of everything that causes gentrification
  8. The Week Observed, January 10, 2020
  9. Why TOPA isn’t the tops
  10. Why we should enable more people to move to opportunity
  11. 2019: The Year Observed

2019 170

December 2019

  1. The Week Observed, December 20, 2019
  2. Transportation planners flunk Econ 101: Price elasticity of demand
  3. Portland’s Phony, Failing Climate Strategy
  4. The Week Observed, December 13, 2019
  5. Freeway deja vu all over again: The freeway builders ignore school kids
  6. ODOT’s Climate Lie: An idle theory of greenhouse gas emissions
  7. The Week Observed, December 6, 2019

November 2019

  1. The shaky argument for the Columbia River Crossing
  2. Why Cyber-Monday doesn’t mean delivery gridlock Tuesday?
  3. The Week Observed, November 22, 2019
  4. Want more housing? Build a landlord.
  5. No deposit, no return: Another lie to sell the Columbia River Crossing
  6. The Week Observed, November 15, 2019
  7. The city as labor saving device
  8. Carmaggedon does a no-show in Seattle, again
  9. Copenhagen’s cycling success: Make cars pay their way, not just bike lanes
  10. The Week Observed, November 8, 2019
  11. Climate Change: A 2-cent solution
  12. The Week Observed, November 1, 2019

October 2019

  1. Here’s what climate change denial looks like
  2. Bartik: The verdict on business tax incentives
  3. Revealed: the secret of a successful urban economy
  4. How homeownership as wealth is rigged against people of color
  5. Does walkability promote economic mobility?
  6. Why its important for your city to be unequal
  7. The Week Observed, October 18, 2019
  8. City Observatory turns five
  9. Reduced demand: Tolling or restricting cars reduces traffic
  10. Buses, Bike Lanes, Crosswalks: Reclaiming public space
  11. The Week Observed, October 11, 2019
  12. Won’t be fooled again: Transportation for America
  13. The Week Observed, October 4, 2019
  14. No youth exodus from cities: WSJ is detecting noise, not signal
  15. A modest proposal: An EIS for the DMV

September 2019

  1. The Week Observed, September 27, 2019
  2. A lack of nearby jobs doesn’t cause urban poverty
  3. Why economic diversification is a poor guide to local strategy
  4. The Week Observed, September 20, 2019
  5. Portland’s Climate Fail: More Driving
  6. What supercommuting really means
  7. How Ecotopia is failing its biggest test
  8. The Week Observed, September 13, 2019
  9. “Smart Cities” have to be about much more than technology
  10. Inclusive urbanism comes to the presidential race
  11. The Week Observed, September 6, 2019
  12. Highway to Hell: Climate denial at the TRB
  13. Seeing red

August 2019

  1. The Week Observed, August 30, 2019
  2. The Week Observed, August 30, 2019
  3. Portland’s freeway fight: Round 1 goes to the scrappy upstarts
  4. The top twenty reasons to ignore TTI’s latest Urban Mobility Report
  5. The Week Observed, August 23, 2019
  6. Its back, and its still wrong: the Urban Mobility Report
  7. Portland’s food cart pod is dead, long live Portland’s food cart pods!
  8. The Week Observed, August 16, 2019
  9. Copenhagen: More than bike lanes
  10. The Week Observed, August 9, 2019
  11. Get Out!: Moving to a new neighborhood to escape poverty
  12. The Week Observed, August 2, 2019
  13. CityLab: Everything you think you know about gentrification is wrong

July 2019

  1. Economists & Scientists agree: To save the planet, we have to price carbon
  2. A modest proposal: Extend the Americans with Disabilities Act to highways
  3. The Week Observed, July 26, 2019
  4. Devaluation of housing in black neighborhoods, Part 2: Appreciation
  5. The devaluation of black neighborhoods: Part 1.
  6. How gentrification benefits long-time residents of low income neighborhoods
  7. Why homeownership is frequently a bad bet
  8. The Week Observed, July 12, 2019
  9. About those swelling suburbs
  10. The Week Observed, July 5, 2019
  11. Happy Birthday America; Thanks Immigrants!
  12. In Oregon: The middle isn’t missing any more
  13. Has Falling Crime Invited Gentrification? – NYU Furman Center

June 2019

  1. The Week Observed, June 28, 2019
  2. The Week Observed, July 19, 2019
  3. Why are US drivers killing so many pedestrians?
  4. Valuing Walkability
  5. The Week Observed, June 21, 2019
  6. It’s official: I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening is a boondoggle
  7. Job Density: A new metric for urban economies
  8. A solution for displacement: TIF for affordable housing
  9. Fruit and economics: Riffing on Krugman
  10. The Week Observed, June 7, 2019
  11. The Week Observed, June 14, 2019
  12. Portland is winning the fight against congestion!
  13. Electric vehicle subsidies: Inefficient & Inequitable
  14. Another housing myth debunked: Neighborhood price effects of new apartments

May 2019

  1. The Week Observed, May 31, 2019
  2. The constancy of change in neighborhood populations
  3. Who bikes?
  4. The Week Observed, May 24, 2019
  5. Exit, Hope and Loyalty: The fate of neighborhoods
  6. The Week Observed, May 17, 2019
  7. Will upzoning ease housing affordability problems?
  8. The Young and Restless in Black and White
  9. Inclusionary Zoning’s Wile E. Coyote moment
  10. The Week Observed, May 10, 2019
  11. Why road pricing is inherently equitable: Faster buses
  12. The limits of design thinking
  13. The Week Observed, May 3, 2019
  14. City of ideas, and the idea of cities

April 2019

  1. The Week Observed, April 26, 2019
  2. You can’t judge housing affordability without knowing transportation costs
  3. Let’s have an honest discussion about the Rose Quarter freeway widening project
  4. The high cost of low house prices
  5. The Week Observed, April 19, 2019
  6. Everything that causes gentrification, from A to Z
  7. Is Uber Unsafe? Is Lyft Lethal? Let’s dig into the data to find out
  8. Kevin Bacon & musical chairs: How market rate housing increases affordability
  9. The Week Observed, April 12, 2019
  10. Measuring the civic commons
  11. Time for the annual Ben & Jerry’s seminar in transportation economics
  12. How Portland thrives without a port
  13. The Week Observed, April 5, 2019
  14. Integration and social interaction: Evidence from Intermarriage
  15. 25 reasons not to widen Portland freeways
  16. More Orwell from the Oregon Department of Transportation

March 2019

  1. The Week Observed, March 29, 2019
  2. The Lemming Model of Traffic
  3. There’s a $3 billion bridge hidden in the Rose Quarter Project EA
  4. Congestion pricing is a better solution for the Rose Quarter
  5. National transportation experts: Portland, you’re doing it wrong
  6. The Week Observed, March 22, 2019
  7. Safety last: What we’ve learned from “improving” the I-5 freeway.
  8. Safety: Using the big lie to sell wider freeways
  9. How a freeway destroyed a neighborhood, and may again
  10. How tax evasion fuels traffic congestion in Portland
  11. The Week Observed, March 15, 2019
  12. Distorted images: Freeway widening is bad for pedestrians
  13. The Hidden Rose Quarter MegaFreeway
  14. The black box: Hiding the facts about freeway widening
  15. The Rose Quarter: ODOT’s Phony safety claims
  16. Why Portland shouldn’t be widening freeways
  17. The Week Observed, March 8, 2019
  18. Why do poor school kids have to clean up rich commuter’s pollution?
  19. Freeway widening for whomst?
  20. Orwellian freeway-widening
  21. Wider freeways don’t reduce congestion
  22. Widening the I-5 Freeway will add millions of miles of vehicle travel
  23. The Week Observed, March 1, 2019

February 2019

  1. Backfire: How widening freeways can make traffic congestion worse
  2. The high price of cheap gasoline
  3. The Week Observed, February 22, 2019
  4. Time to get real about climate change
  5. A wider freeway won’t reduce traffic
  6. The Week Observed, February 8, 2019
  7. Angie’s List: The problem isn’t ride hailing, it’s the lack of road pricing
  8. Rose Quarter freeway widening won’t reduce congestion
  9. Measuring “anti-social” capital
  10. The market cap of cities, 2019
  11. The Week Observed, February 1, 2019

January 2019

  1. It’s Groundhog’s Day yet again, Oregon: How’s your climate change strategy working?
  2. More driving, more dying: Dangerous by Design, 2019
  3. A third-way for approaching affordable housing
  4. A third way for more affordable housing? Part I. The problem
  5. The Week Observed, January 25, 2019
  6. The outlook for the Portland housing market
  7. Measuring the Civic Commons
  8. Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor
  9. The Week Observed, January 18, 2019
  10. Scooter Lessons: Success, but a stark double standard
  11. Why Carmaggedon never comes (Seattle edition)
  12. No deal: Why a CRC revival is going nowhere
  13. The Week Observed, January 11, 2019
  14. Ten things more inequitable than road pricing
  15. You’re going to need a bigger boat
  16. The Week Observed, February 15, 2019
  17. The Week Observed, January 4, 2019
  18. Is Oregon’s road tax limit a paper tiger?
  19. Displacement by decline

2018 177

December 2018

  1. The Week Observed, December 21, 2018
  2. Where you can walk and shop locally: The Storefront Index
  3. The limits of Nieman Marcus environmentalism
  4. The Week Observed, December 14, 2018
  5. A tool kit for value capture policies
  6. Consuming the city: Ranking restaurants per capita
  7. Cities, Ideas and Us: Paul Romer’s Nobel Address
  8. The Week Observed, December 7, 2018
  9. When planning rules of thumb are “all thumbs”

November 2018

  1. Going faster doesn’t make you happier; you just drive farther
  2. Does Cyber-Monday mean delivery gridlock Tuesday?
  3. The Week Observed, November 23, 2018
  4. The immaculate conception of your neighborhood
  5. Real home prices: A regional view
  6. The long tail of the housing bust
  7. The Week Observed, November 16, 2018
  8. You can’t feel ’em, if you can’t see ’em
  9. The myth of revealed preference for suburbs
  10. Why suburban office campuses aren’t really walkable
  11. The Week Observed, November 9, 2018
  12. Why road pricing is inherently equitable: Faster buses
  13. Homevoters v. the growth machine
  14. 2HQ2? Amazon doubles down, just as we predicted
  15. Detroit’s Corktown: Portrait of a diverse neighborhood
  16. The Week Observed, November 2, 2018

October 2018

  1. Get out! Why economic mobility might mean leaving home
  2. Housing can’t both be a good investment and be affordable
  3. Local neighborhoods matter even more for black kids
  4. The Week Observed, October 26, 2018
  5. Unsafe Uber? Lethal Lyft? We’re skeptical
  6. Cities, talent and prosperity
  7. The Week Observed, October 19, 2018
  8. The limits of job creation
  9. City Observatory’s Fourth Birthday
  10. Fresh evidence for Portland’s green dividend
  11. The Week Observed, October 12, 2018
  12. A Nobel Prize with a solution for climate change
  13. Paul Romer is awarded the Economics Nobel
  14. Why cities need to embrace change
  15. Does your neighborhood help kids succeed?
  16. Vision Zero: Moving from slogan to reality

September 2018

  1. The Week Observed, September 28, 2018
  2. Peaks, valleys, and donuts: Visualizing cities in cross-section
  3. Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 5: Exclusive suburbs
  4. The Week Observed, September 21, 2018
  5. Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 4: Metropolitan context
  6. Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 3: Annexing growth
  7. Why inclusive is so elusive, Part 2: The limits of city limits
  8. Why inclusive is so elusive, Part I
  9. The Week Observed, September 14, 2018
  10. Does new construction lead to displacement?
  11. The limits of localism
  12. The Week Observed, September 7, 2018
  13. An affogato theory of transportation
  14. Quantifying Jane Jacobs
  15. Let’s stop with the absurd surveys masquerading as serious research

August 2018

  1. The Week Observed, August 31, 2018
  2. Does increased housing supply improve affordability?
  3. Do rich neighbors make low income people unhappy?
  4. If you want less displacement, build more housing
  5. The Week Observed, August 24, 2018
  6. IoT: The Irrelevance of Thingies
  7. Philadelphia’s urban policy harmonic convergence
  8. The Week Observed, August 17, 2018
  9. Whither small towns? Wither small towns?
  10. Is St. Louis Gentrifying?
  11. We disagree with the Washington Post about housing economics
  12. The Week Observed, August 10, 2018
  13. Going the wrong way: NYC’s new ride-hailing cap
  14. More evidence of declining rents in Portland
  15. Don’t decry new urban housing as “gentrification”
  16. The Week Observed, August 3, 2018

July 2018

  1. E-Scooters and Paying for Roads
  2. Your summertime, urbanist “must read” Allan Mallach’s Divided City
  3. The Week Observed, July 27, 2018
  4. The limited allure of small towns
  5. The clear case for congestion pricing in Portland
  6. Portland rents are going down
  7. The Week Observed, July 20, 2018
  8. Parking: Where we embrace socialism in the US
  9. Nattering Nabobs of NIMBYism at the NYT
  10. The Week Observed, July 13, 2018
  11. How luxury housing becomes affordable
  12. Envisioning more cohesive communities
  13. Rather than demonizing driving—let’s just stop subsidizing it
  14. The Week Observed, July 6, 2018
  15. What makes America great, as always: Immigrants
  16. Envisioning the way we want to live in cities

June 2018

  1. The Week Observed, June 29, 2018
  2. How smart are “smart” cities, really?
  3. Portland votes to increase housing supply
  4. Socioeconomic mixing is essential to closing the Kumbaya gap
  5. The Week Observed, June 22, 2018
  6. Profiles of Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods
  7. America’s Most Diverse Mixed Income Neighborhoods
  8. City Report: America’s Most Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods
  9. The Week Observed, June 15, 2018
  10. Why integration matters
  11. Sisyphus meets Bob the Builder
  12. Handicapping the City-Suburb Horserace
  13. The Week Observed, June 8, 2018
  14. The persistence of residential segregation
  15. The increasing centralization of urban economies: New York
  16. The Week Observed, June 1, 2018

May 2018

  1. “Caveat Rentor” – beware of crazy rent statistics
  2. Fishy business: the promise and perils of city aquariums
  3. State government as an anchor industry
  4. The Week Observed, May 18, 2018
  5. California’s next bold step on climate should be building near transit
  6. The Week Observed, May 11, 2018
  7. Why do we make it illegal to build the neighborhoods Americans love most?
  8. Is Fruitvale gentrifying? Did it prevent displacement?
  9. Cities as selection environments
  10. The Week Observed, May 4, 2018
  11. No exit from housing hell
  12. Why doesn’t the federal government protect access to affordable housing the way it does access to TV?

April 2018

  1. The Week Observed, April 27, 2018
  2. Dow of Cities: Big data on the urban price premium
  3. The Mortgage Interest Deduction: Smaller, but even more unfair
  4. Gerontopoly: Homeownership, wealth, and age
  5. City as theme park
  6. Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Widen Some Freeways!
  7. Video: Portland’s Housing Market
  8. Housing reparations for Northeast Portland
  9. The Week Observed, April 13, 2018
  10. A critical look at suburban triumphalism
  11. The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics
  12. The Dow of Cities
  13. Housing: A shortage of cities
  14. The Week Observed, April 20, 2018
  15. The Week Observed, April 6, 2018
  16. The Cappuccino Congestion Index

March 2018

  1. The Week Observed, March 30, 2018
  2. Gentrification isn’t ending. We must rise to meet that challenge.
  3. How segregation limits opportunity
  4. Gentrification & integration in DC
  5. Diverse, Mixed Income Neighborhoods Maps
  6. The Week Observed, March 23, 2018
  7. An Open Letter on Housing Affordability to Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish
  8. Parking meters and opportunity costs
  9. Portland’s brouhaha over housing market economics 101
  10. The Week Observed, March 16, 2018
  11. Cloaking a weak argument in big—but phony—numbers
  12. Dallas: Diverse mobility, complete neighborhoods & placemaking
  13. Portland doesn’t really want to make housing affordable
  14. The Week Observed, March 9, 2018
  15. City Women
  16. The technological fix for our pedestrian problem
  17. Barack Obama on Gentrification
  18. Junk food America elected its president
  19. Road pricing for all vehicles, not just ride-hailed ones

February 2018

  1. Irony Squared: Inclusionary Zoning Edition
  2. The Week Observed, February 23, 2018
  3. The emperor’s new infrastructure plan
  4. What drives ride-hailing: Parking, Drinking, Flying, Peaking, Pricing
  5. The Week Observed, February 16, 2018
  6. Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 3: Cultural Displacement
  7. Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 2: The limits of ethnography
  8. Challenging the Cappuccino City: Part 1: A New Premise?
  9. The Week Observed, February 9, 2018
  10. Big Bad Data: The Uninformative Inrix Scorecard
  11. Qualms about the new localism: Cities need the national government to do its job well
  12. It’s Groundhog’s Day again, Oregon: How’s your climate change strategy working?
  13. Sprawl, stagnation, and NIMBYism: Animated maps of metro change

January 2018

  1. An idea whose time has passed: The VMT Fee
  2. The Week Observed, January 26, 2018
  3. More evidence of rent declines in Portland
  4. Two things everyone’s missed about Amazon’s HQ2 decision
  5. The Week Observed, January 19, 2018
  6. Are integrated neighborhoods stable?
  7. 2017 Year-in-review: More driving, more dying
  8. The Week Observed, January 12, 2018
  9. Your college degree pays off more if you live in a city
  10. How great cities enable you to live longer
  11. The Week Observed, January 5, 2018
  12. Nothing about pedestrian safety that more technology won’t fix
  13. Cities continue to attract smart young adults

2017 197

December 2017

  1. Our seven most popular posts of 2017
  2. The Week Observed, December 22, 2017
  3. How the g-word poisons public discourse on making cities better
  4. Diverging diamond blues
  5. Are the young leaving cities?
  6. The Week Observed, December 15, 2017
  7. The great freeway cover-up
  8. The Talent Dividend: Updated
  9. The Week Observed, December 8, 2017
  10. Is inequality over?
  11. A constant state of change: turnover in business establishments
  12. The death of Flint Street
  13. The Week Observed, December 1, 2017

November 2017

  1. Remember: There’s no such thing as a “Free” way
  2. Where should low-income housing go?
  3. Uber and Lyft: A dynamic duo(poly)?
  4. The Week Observed, November 17, 2017
  5. Using Yelp to track economic growth
  6. Renters move up-market
  7. The Week Observed, November 10, 2017
  8. The end of the housing supply debate (maybe)
  9. More evidence of the Dow of cities
  10. The Week Observed, November 3, 2017

October 2017

  1. Back at the ranch
  2. Winners and losers from rent control
  3. Autonomous Vehicles: Does federal preemption shut down the laboratories of democracy?
  4. The Week Observed, October 27, 2017
  5. Signs of the times
  6. The hamster wheel school of transportation policy
  7. The Week Observed, October 20, 2017
  8. Why is “affordable” housing so expensive to build?
  9. Now we are three!
  10. The Week Observed, October 13, 2017
  11. The myth of naturally occurring affordable housing
  12. The constancy of change in neighborhood populations
  13. The Week Observed, October 6, 2017
  14. Metro economies pulling away nationally
  15. Transportation equity, part 2: the Subaru and the Suburban

September 2017

  1. The Week Observed, September 29, 2017
  2. Transportation equity: Why peak period road pricing is fair
  3. Portland’s Inclusionary Zoning Law: Waiting for the other shoe to drop
  4. The Week Observed, September 22, 2017
  5. Racial wealth disparities: How housing widens the gap
  6. What price for autonomous vehicles?
  7. The Week Observed, September 15, 2017
  8. Cities lead national income growth, again
  9. Cash prizes for bad corporate citizenship, Amazon edition
  10. The Week Observed, September 8, 2017
  11. Cognitive dissonance on the Potomac
  12. Oh, no! Is the urban revival really over?
  13. The Week Observed, September 1, 2017

August 2017

  1. Uber’s Movement: A peek at ride-hailing data
  2. Inequality in three charts: Piketty, the picket fence and Branko’s elephant
  3. The Week Observed, August 25, 2017
  4. What Dallas, Houston, Louisville & Rochester can teach us about widening freeways: Don’t!
  5. Such a deal
  6. The Week Observed, August 18, 2017
  7. Driven Apart: How sprawl is lengthening our commutes
  8. Why we’re talking about Portland’s freeway widening proposal
  9. Hundred dollar bills on the municipal sidewalk
  10. The Week Observed, August 11, 2017
  11. Dying to widen highways
  12. What a congestion report doesn’t tell us about congestion
  13. Is it a net zero home if it has a three-car garage?

July 2017

  1. How luxury housing becomes affordable
  2. The Week Observed, July 28, 2017
  3. The Week Observed, July 21, 2017
  4. In a New York minute
  5. Housing Policy Lessons from Vienna, Part II
  6. Housing policy lessons from Vienna: Part I
  7. How green is my free parking structure? Not very.
  8. When it comes to transit use, it’s all about destination density
  9. The Week Observed, July 14, 2017
  10. Reality check: Poverty rates are much lower in suburbs
  11. What’s the biggest threat facing cities?
  12. Climate Change: A 2-cent solution
  13. The Week Observed, July 7, 2017
  14. Market timing and racial wealth disparities
  15. For low-income households, median home prices aren’t always what count

June 2017

  1. Pity the poor Super Commuter
  2. Prices Matter: Parking and Ride Hailing
  3. Urban myth busting: Congestion, idling, and carbon emissions
  4. The Week Observed, June 23, 2017
  5. The Week Observed, June 30, 2017
  6. You can’t judge housing affordability without knowing transportation costs
  7. Rent inflation is abating
  8. More evidence of the growth of concentrated poverty
  9. Downzoning won’t make housing cheaper
  10. The Week Observed, June 16, 2017
  11. Pricing roads for autonomous vehicles
  12. Historic Preservation: NIMBYism for the Rich?
  13. Cultural appropriation: Theft or Smorgasbord?
  14. The Week Observed, June 9, 2017
  15. More evidence on ridesharing’s growth surge
  16. Portland’s Green Dividend
  17. How green was my City (Hall)
  18. The Week Observed, June 2, 2017
  19. Integration and social interaction: Evidence from Intermarriage

May 2017

  1. Integration and the Kumbaya gap
  2. The hidden bias of big data
  3. Cities and the returns to education
  4. The Week Observed, May 26, 2017
  5. Just ahead: Road pricing?
  6. More debate on city revival
  7. Dirt cheap.
  8. The Week Observed, May 19, 2017
  9. Why America can’t make up its mind about housing
  10. Volunteering as a measure of social capital
  11. Key to prosperity: Talent in the “traded sector” of the economy
  12. My illegal neighborhood
  13. The Geography of Independent Bookstores
  14. The Week Observed, May 5, 2017
  15. What patents tell us about America’s most innovative cities
  16. The immaculate conception theory of your neighborhood’s origins
  17. Mystery in the Bookstore

April 2017

  1. The Week Observed, April 28, 2017
  2. What does it mean to be a “Smart City?”
  3. Hagiometry: Fawning flatterers with an economic model
  4. The 0.1 percent solution: Inclusionary zoning’s fatal scale problem
  5. The latest from the Louisville traffic experiment
  6. The Week Observed, April 21, 2017
  7. Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let’s Widen Some Freeways!
  8. The high, high price of affordable housing
  9. The New Urban Crisis: Cliff Notes version
  10. How we measure segregation depends on why we care
  11. The Week Observed, April 14, 2017
  12. Why might Uber & Lyft support road-pricing?
  13. Has Portland’s rent fever broken?
  14. Too soon to write off city revival
  15. The Week Observed, April 7, 2017
  16. New York City isn’t hollowing out; It’s growing
  17. Migration is making counties more diverse
  18. The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics
  19. Carmaggedon stalks Atlanta

March 2017

  1. The Week Observed, March 31, 2017
  2. The Cappuccino Congestion Index
  3. The High Cost of Segregation
  4. Breaking Bad: Why breaking up big cities would hurt America
  5. Autonomous vehicles: Peaking, parking, profits & pricing
  6. The Week Observed, March 24, 2017
  7. Big city metros are driving the national economy
  8. Transit and home values
  9. Getting to critical mass in Detroit
  10. How much could US retail shrink? And where?
  11. The Week Observed, March 17, 2017
  12. Going faster doesn’t make you happier; you just drive farther
  13. Speed: Fast cities
  14. Are restaurants dying, and taking city economies with them?
  15. Affordability beyond the median
  16. The Week Observed, March 10, 2017
  17. Twilight of the NIMBYs? LA’s Measure S Fails
  18. What we know about rent control
  19. The implications of shrinking offices
  20. The Week Observed, March 3, 2017
  21. What Travis Kalanick’s meltdown tells us about Uber
  22. The real welfare Cadillacs have 18 wheels

February 2017

  1. Houston (Street), we have a problem.
  2. Yet another flawed congestion report from Inrix
  3. The Week Observed, February 24, 2017
  4. Cursing the candle
  5. Playing Apart
  6. Urban myth busting: Why building more high income housing helps affordability
  7. The Week Observed, February 17, 2017
  8. Let’s not demonize driving—just stop subsidizing it
  9. Postcard from Louisville: Tolls Trump Traffic
  10. Are young adults moving less?
  11. Anti-Social Capital?
  12. The Week Observed, February 10, 2017
  13. Visions of the City Part III: You don’t own me
  14. Visions of the City Part II: A Perfect Day
  15. Visions of a future city, Part I
  16. The enduring effect of education on regional economies
  17. The Week Observed, February 3, 2017
  18. Happy Groundhog’s Day, Oregon
  19. Our old planning rules of thumb are “all thumbs”

January 2017

  1. Openness to immigration drives economic success
  2. What HOT lanes reveal about the value of travel time
  3. The Week Observed, January 27, 2017
  4. Constant change and gentrification
  5. Suburban Renewal: Marietta demolishes affordable housing
  6. Flood tide–not ebb tide–for young adults in cities
  7. How urban geometry creates neighborhood identity
  8. The Week Observed, January 20, 2017
  9. Louisville’s experiment in transportation economics
  10. Has Louisville figured out how to eliminate traffic congestion?
  11. Nothing’s worse than funky beer, except funky beer data
  12. Race & transportation: Still a long way to go
  13. The Week Observed, January 13, 2017
  14. Who pays the price of inclusionary zoning?
  15. Housing supply is catching up to demand
  16. Pulling it all together
  17. How diverse are the neighborhoods white people live in?
  18. The Week Observed, January 6, 2017
  19. Pollyanna’s ride-sharing breakthrough
  20. Brownstone Brooklyn and the challenges of urban change
  21. Beer and cities: A toast to 2017
  22. How not to fix housing affordability

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