Here is a housing study that looked at housing supply — in the US from 2000 to 2020 — relative to median housing values. And here is the key takeaway: What this chart is saying is that new housing is rarely added in cities with… Read More
All posts tagged “research”
Is entrepreneurship contagious? (And a bull case for urban clustering)
The research isn’t absolutely conclusive, but Matt Clancy — who is an assistant teaching professor of economics at Iowa State — makes an interesting case (over here) about entrepreneurship being mostly contagious. The article cites a long list of studies that have more or less… Read More
A global survey of urban subway microorganisms
I don’t think I’m supposed to take any action or feel particularly alarmed after reading about this global mapping of urban subway microorganisms, but it is kind of neat nonetheless. A team of researchers recently spent over 3 years collecting “metagenomic samples” from the transit… Read More
Just how valuable is public transit?
Benjamin Dachis and Rhys Godin of the C.D. Howe Institute have a new report out talking about the effect of COVID-19 on the future of public transit in Canadian cities. In it, they make the argument that public transit is a key enabler of the… Read More
My Basic Income — 1,000 euros a month for a year
Michael Bohmeyer is the founder of a Berlin-based startup called “Mein Grundeinkommen” or “My Basic Income.” In the six years since he first asked for donations, his company has given more than 650 people a no strings attached stipend of 1,000 euros a month for… Read More
What’s in a name?
Picking a name for someone or something can be a daunting task. I have never had to name a newborn baby (though I’ve witnessed lots of people go through that process). But I am often involved in the naming of new buildings. Sometimes that process… Read More
Beautiful cities are growing faster than ugly ones
People move to cities for a whole host of reasons, whether it be for more money, more affordable housing, and/or better weather. The fastest growing cities in the US, for example, tend to be in the south where it’s warmer and where housing supply is… Read More
Atlas of Urban Expansion
Since 2012, a team at New York University has been working on something called the Atlas of Urban Expansion. What they are doing is collecting and analyzing data related to the quantity and quality of urban growth around the world. Everything from population densities to… Read More
How elevation impacts risk taking
There’s an old saying that we shape our buildings and environments and then they in turn shape us. Here is a fascinating research report about “the influence of physical elevation in buildings on risk preferences.” I discovered it through this MarketWatch article, which my friend John… Read More
What cars can tell you about a neighborhood
This is an interesting study from a team of AI researchers at Stanford. What they did was use car images taken directly from Google Street View (so images of cars parked on-street) to predict income levels, racial makeup, educational attainment, and voting patterns at the… Read More