Recent job posting data from Indeed has revealed a bit of a paradox. The metro areas where more people are able to work from home — i.e. tech hubs and finance centers — have experienced larger job posting declines compared to all other US metros,… Read More
All posts tagged “boston”
The America we need
The New York Times is running an opinion series right now called, The America We Need. It is all about how the US might emerge from this crisis “with a fair, resilient society.” This piece by Carol Galante covers many of the topics that we… Read More
Fees on homes
A colleague of mine sent me this Bloomberg article today and said, “Here’s an article about things you already know.” The article cites a recent report by Altus Group that compared government-related fees on new housing across Canada and the U.S. What they discovered will… Read More
Equatorial Brutalism
Generally speaking, architects are the only people I know who like Brutalist architecture. In fact, architect, professor and author Witold Rybczynski once proposed the following litmus test to determine whether a building is indeed an example of Brutalism: “If people don’t hate it, it can’t… Read More
The densest urban cells in America
Garrett Dash Nelson recently published a study looking at urban density on a cell-by-cell basis for a number of US cities. Each “cell” is a 30 arc-second grid cell, but you can think of them as being approximately one square kilometer. The goal of the… Read More
San Francisco is the first city in the US to ban facial recognition software
San Francisco recently became the first city in the US to ban the use of facial recognition software by city agencies. (There’s a second vote next week, but it is considered just a formality.) A similar ban is also making its way through the system… Read More
Redfin is rolling out an online purchase option for homes
There’s a lot of money at work right now trying to reinvent the way that homes are bought and sold. Perhaps the most popular trend is “instant buying” or algorithmic home buying. I have been writing about this for years, mostly because of Opendoor. But… Read More
Scooter trips surpassed bike share last year
According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), scooter trips in the US surpassed station-based bike share trips for the first time in 2018. Here is a chart taken from Streetsblog: Dockless electric scooters have created a public nuisance in many of our… Read More
How Japan increased its housing supply
River Davis’ recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Tokyo’s generally flat home prices had me, again, wondering about demographics. I mean, aren’t their demographics working in reverse? They have an aging population, low immigration, and a low birthrate. But Tokyo, which represents about… Read More
Toronto vs. Boston
I worked late this evening, which is pretty typical these days. After I got home, I flipped on the Raptors vs. Celtics and sat down to write something about cities, as is the case every day. But the game was too close and too good… Read More