Urban Issues

Read Part 1. Read Part 2.

Time to answer that question: what would a 2016 Olympics meant to Chicago? After looking at the examples of the last two American Olympics, in Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996, I’ve come to some conclusions on how it could have played out in the Windy City.  read more »

For more than 75 years America has been dispersing away from dense urban cores, with nearly all population growth in neighborhoods with a suburban form  read more »

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When I asked the “what if” question about Chicago being awarded the 2016 Olympics, it was just prior to the event itself. I noted some possible outcomes of a Chicago Olympics, but eight years beyond that today offers even greater perspective.  read more »

One of my many beefs with government planning advocates is that they tend to judge success by measuring inputs rather than outputs.  read more »

The latest American Community Survey data (2022) indicates that higher density condo living is strongly correlated with lower rates of home ownership than among detached or attached houses. The table below provides US data as well as data for the 56 major metropolitan areas by residential building density.

National Home Ownership by Type of Residential Building: Overall, 65.2% of US households owned their own homes  read more »

Morning and afternoon rush-hour traffic has returned to pre-pandemic levels in many U.S. urban areas, according to INRIX’s 2023 Global Traffic Scorecard.<--break--> However, what INRIX finds most “astonishing” is that mid-day traffic has grown by an average of 23 percent and is now much greater than during the morning rush hour, and almost as great at around noon as the afternoon rush hour.  read more »

Where you grow up in America powerfully influences your prospects in life.  read more »

If you’ve ever taken any interest in how cities grow and evolve, I’m sure you’ve noticed this before.

Urbanists want data. We want data that helps us understand how the places we love and live in got to be what they are. We want to know what makes them tick, what’s replicable.  read more »

For middle- and working-class people across the developed world, home ownership has served as a primary driver of upward mobility. But in a growing number of places, this aspiration is being systematically undermined  read more »

Transit systems carried less than 75 percent as many riders in April 2024 as in the same month before the pandemic  read more »