procurement reform (relaxing local/minority business requirements) allowed Oakland to get ~50% more curb cuts for the same money that means safer, more accessible streets for all Oakland residents

Paging @edzitron.com Sam Altman Says OpenAI's Top Token Spender Burns 100 Billion a Month. Or Jabba the Hutt bankrupts an all you can eat buffet. share.google/LZWgRE6M0Sqs...

AI bubble about to pop? Brad DeLong: The sudden race of Anthropic, probably OpenAI and SpaceXAITwitterTesla to IPOs that are highly premature from any accounting due-diligence perspective strongly suggests a bunch of well-informed people think now is as good as it gets & they have hit the wall.

The methodology here is fairly close to "half of families have below median consumption".

The World Cup is about celebrating exotic host nation cultures

"Road safety for vulnerable users must... be understood not merely as a function of street geometry or user behavior, but as a spatial outcome of transportation and land development configurations."

Pundits are asking why data centers are so maligned. Well, when the transparently bogus economic promises your hired lobbyists made about these big ugly buildings fall flat, in order to obtain rent-seeking spoils, you're going to get some harsh blowback.

Want to increase the supply 3+ bedroom homes? Building dense, market-rate apartments with mostly 1-2 bedrooms does just that, resulting in mostly 3+ bedroom vacancies after the second round of moves that were triggered by the new homes. papers.ssrn.com/sol3...

huh

“That’s 200,000 more people and $12.3 million more than the year before [the pilot].” “Market’s many business owners and vendors. They said they were happy with the ease of loading and unloading…Farmers, in particular, were happy about the reduced competition for parking spaces.” Make it permanent

Investment Grade Forecasts actually over estimate future traffic The Interstate Bridge Replacement project's investment grade analysis traffic and revenue analysis shows the $15 billion project...

There is no decision any city can make more catastrophically stupid than running a f'ing interstate right through the middle of itself. It's just one of the fatefully stupid decisions Seattle has made, but it might be the worst.

Transport bill currently making its way through US House: —Would massively increase highway funds—as it cuts transit & rail funding by 20% compared to previous transportation law. —Would discourage transport system electrification. Most Dems support it, however, with Rep. Nadler a rare exception.

❗❗❗❗ 49% of Americans say that if they could reliably get where they needed without owning a car, they probably wouldn’t want one. ❗❗❗❗ (While our federal government & most states are making it harder to get where you need without a car.) www.lendingtree.com/auto/afforda...

Looks good to me too! If you want to live in a fire zone, please figure out how to pay for it without mooching off the rest of us.

Turns out “Missing Middle” housing hasn’t been missing. We knew where it was the whole time. We made it illegal. Never forget, housing choice is a leadership challenge. #UrbanTruth #MissingMiddle

If only there were a word for a situation where employers face labor shortage but are unwilling to raise their wage ... :-) #monopsony

I’ve been warning that these deals don’t pencil out in terms of net economic benefits, but the boosters of the deal have dismissed that perhaps because I’m a politician now or perhaps because sports econ isn’t my field. Well, their hubris has now drawn the ire of the sports economists.

55% of city voters oppose spending $75 million from PCEF, a climate fund, to subsidize the Moda Center. “​​Portland historically has pretty dim views of big corporations and definitely has this idea that, frankly, very rich people could help pay more taxes and help pay for more services here.”

GitHub Copilot moves to token based billing on June 1, and its users have now got a calculator that shows how much they've been actually burning every month - some $39-a-month users have spent $1500 to $5800 in tokens a month. Microsoft's subsidies are insane. www.wheresyoured.at/premium-what...

Two organizations doing important work, both worth following — the Union of Concerned Scientists @ucs.org, and the Urban Truth Collective @urbantruth.bsky.social.

Are Oregonians getting jobs: the Employment Population Ratio One good measure of how well the economy is doing is looking at the relationship between population and employment:  What fraction of the...

i for one think the Oregonian should face more public shame for the fact 90% of their journalism coverage of the blazers billionaire giveaway deal has been written by their sports opinion columnist, who during that same time wrote multiple pearl-clutching columns fearmongering about the team leaving

Current example: Canada recently paused a 10 cent/liter gas tax. The resulting price dip only lasted for about a week.

The City of Ottawa posted the raw speed data from before and after Doug Ford banned speed cameras and the effect is so obvious it's not even necessary put a line marking when that happened. This chart shows the percentage of drivers going 15km/h or more over the posted limit.

Why does America have so many empty storefronts? Maybe we started this century with too many and zoning codes keep demanding more?

“In sum, the researchers uncovered extensive ways that the oil, auto, roadbuilding & trucking industries exert their influence for their benefit. Their experience and political connections are deep…working with state departments and public officials to advance their own industry-oriented campaigns.”

NEW STUDY: Who is the Highway Lobby? “The highway lobby has been shaping transportation policy conversations for decades in its interests.” And they spend MILLIONS buying car dependency to make sure all of us have to spend BILLIONS. #UrbanTruth Via the Union of Concerned Scientists @ucs.org.

Nike to close tech offices in Atlanta, China and Poland - and move jobs to Oregon. This speaks volumes about our business climate. Portland Business Journal share.google/xSEMAfQlyVcg... Our analysis: City Observatory share.google/c7yWvOHwp09G...

NEW POSTER: The Road Lobby loves when it’s hard for us to walk or bike to school, work, to get a coffee or some milk. Their profit depends on it. On everything far away, on car dependency, on convenience and choice being illegal. #UrbanTruth #1HourCityConspiracy

Yes. If you base your measure of social or economic health on households, and those measures impact household formation, you are inviting substantial collider bias.

oh i’m a little disappointed here i would’ve thought she understood that’s a caricature. new development soaks up high end demand and takes the demand pressure off of existing housing stock, that’s an immediate effect, you don’t have to wait for the new stuff to get cheap.

8 reasons the $15 billion Interstate Bridge project shouldn't -- and can't legally --go forward, even with its FEIS: cityobservatory.org/eight-reason...

Cities should be designed for those who live in them, not for those who cross them in their cars

Demanding a transparent, public process where Portlanders know what they get for their money is not 'playing politics.' It's good governance and fiscal stewardship. It's deeply unserious to suggest that the only thing that matters is locking up seven votes on council, by locking the public out.

After 25 years, biotechnology is still tightly clustered in just 3 metros: San Francisco, Boston and San Diego. Billions in failed economic development efforts have done nothing to change the geography of this industry. cityobservatory.org/biotech-stil...

"Cities are limiting the density of people to limit the density of cars." -Donald Shoup. This is 100% right. Agree also that when people say parking and traffic are why they oppose new development, they're telling the truth. (Whether the fear is warranted or not.)

Let's get real: Oregon's economy has performed well The current debate over Oregon’s "economic crisis" taking place around the state's Prosperity Council relies on a narrow reading of data while overlooking broader evidence of...

Do you really think those people and corporations getting rich off cars, oil, and long commutes aren’t the REAL conspiracy? Have you heard of the “1-Hour City Conspiracy?” You will. Stay tuned. #1HourCityConspiracy #UrbanTruth

Happy Earth Day, Oregon! Let's join ODOT in celebrating by committing us--and our kids--to dropping $15-$20 billion on widening freeways. cityobservatory.org/happy-earth-....

It's good to seek out expert opinions, but in this case, the person consulted doesn't appear to be familiar with the research. This statement is uninformed conjecture. Sports venues DO NOT increase the value of the tax base. At best, it's an intrajurisdictional reallocation.

A related problem: We've reduced transpo planning to making lists of things that transpo engineers will be doing. Induced demand is a PLANNING issue. We need real transportation plans, that seek to accomplish multiple societal goals, relate to land use, and aren't necessarily crafted by engineers.

DC's strict solar-rights laws have predictably been weaponized to prevent taller housing, e.g. the 9-story bldg proposed for this vacant lot. I'm developing a surface parking lot right now; it won't get a solar canopy b/c future ADUs above it would have a much greater carbon impact.

City of Industry: Portland, Oregon--Number one large metro in new manufacturing firms Portland leads the nation's metro areas in the growth of new local manufacturing firms Over the past five years, Portland has added 250 more new manufacturing...

1/9 🧵 The Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project is hiding its toll revenue study. Why? Because the data likely shows tolls will have to be much higher while providing less revenue for this now $15 billion project. #Portland #Transportation cityobservatory.org/high_cost_of...

Manhattan's West Village is the poster child for how historically preserving the buildings in high-demand neighborhoods eventually displaces all but the richest people. Case in point: a mansion created from two adjacent Bank Street townhomes will sell for more than SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS.

The S-trap shown in this public messaging banner is illegal in Canada. The requirements making it illegal are literally costing Vancouver alone millions in new construction!

How Should Portland Pay for Streets? www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026... via @strongtowns.org and @cityobservatory.bsky.social

It's weird that we're all having to pretend that any of this matters. The revenues are terrible, LLMs are yet to provide any truly measurable productivity improvements, and without selling software at a massive discount, AI would barely have any customers. www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-really-weird/

quick reference.