A few days ago, Waymo announced (on X) that its robotaxis are now doing more than 50,000 paid trips every week across Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. This means that the company is getting an average of 300 bookings every hour or five bookings… Read More
All posts tagged “san francisco”
Housing follows money
One argument that you might be able to make is that home prices follow urban density. New York City, for example, is dense. And homes in New York City tend to be more expensive than those in, oh I don’t know, rural Canada. So with… Read More
San Francisco is highly proficient at making housing more expensive
If you’re looking to block new development, drive up the cost of housing, and appear “progressive” all at the same time, one generally effective technique is to do it under the guise of historic preservation. San Francisco is really good at this, as are many… Read More
Wuhan is right now a driverless car capital
Remember Wuhan? Well, it turns out that it is emerging as an important hub for driverless vehicles. Right now it is home to the largest fleet in the world: In Wuhan, 500 robotaxis, mostly run by Baidu, China’s rival to Google, recorded more than 730,000… Read More
Silicon Valley wants to build a new city about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco
We talk a lot about housing supply on this blog. And most of the time it is about creating more and better infill housing, In other words, housing that leverages existing infrastructure and uses previously developed land as efficiently possible. But I suppose there are… Read More
America’s most affluent cities
This is an interesting chart from Bloomberg showing the most affluent metropolitan areas in the US in 1949. As you can see, at the top of this list is Detroit, followed by mostly older industrial centers. Now here’s the list today: It’s largely a different… Read More
Toward the childless city
There is a common narrative that, when it comes time to start a family and have kids, you should probably consider moving to the suburbs. Sure, you’ll have a painful commute, but you’ll get more space for your money, and maybe you’ll end up with… Read More
A canyon as mid-block connection
Tishman Speyer, the San Francisco Giants, and MVRDV have just completed a new residential building in San Francisco called “The Canyon.” The first phase of the larger Mission Rock masterplan (which also includes a project by Studio Gang), the complex got its name because of… Read More
Measuring downtown recoveries using mobile phone data
The School of Cities at the University of Toronto and the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley have been using mobile phone data to track the recovery of 62 downtowns across North America. This work has been being published at downtownrecovery.com,… Read More
Wealthiest cities in the world
According to this annual survey by Henley & Partners (first chart from Bloomberg), these are the top 10 wealthiest cities in the world when you count the number of high-net-worth individuals (i.e. people with investable wealth greater than US$1 million): However, if you instead count… Read More