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BikeLoudPDX @bikeloudpdx.bsky.social · 1d

Sarah Risser, @familiesforsafestreets.org leader & recent BikeLoud Board member, will focus attention on the 20 people killed on SE 82nd in the past decade.

World Day of Remembrance 11/16/25 #WDoR2025

www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...

A map with the locations and addresses of Road Fatalities on SE 82nd

Signs that will be installed along SE 82nd in November that say, "Our Neighbor Was Killed Here."

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Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · 1d

Not to go all Robert Gordon but the potential benefits as a % of GDP are also much smaller. Going from no internet to internet is a much bigger bang for your buck than going from internet to AI

Sean Brodrick @seanbrodrick.bsky.social · 2d

The bullish view on #AI ...

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City Observatory @cityobservatory.bsky.social · 1d

IZ restricts housing supply & drives up prices. Per Jenny Schuetz, who you cite: Boston: "IZ has contributed to increased housing prices and lower rates of production" SFO Area "IZ appears to increase housing prices in times of regional price appreciation" furmancenter.org/research/pub...

Silver Bullet or Trojan Horse? The Effects of Inclusionary Zoning on Local Housing Markets in the United States

Many local governments are adopting inclusionary zoning (IZ) as a means of producing affordable housing without direct public subsidies. In this paper, we use panel data on IZ in the San Francisco met...

furmancenter.org

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City Observatory @cityobservatory.bsky.social · 1d

Inclusionary housing requirements drive up housing costs and restrict supply. Virtually all IZ is "unfunded." "Funded" IZ is at best a Rube Goldberg substitute for subsidized housing, which we all agree is needed.

City Observatory @cityobservatory.bsky.social · 2d

This also means avoiding counterproductive policies like inclusionary zoning and rent control that lead to fewer homes being built.

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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 3d

The US federal government's spending on housing—directly through the budget, or through tax expenditures—amounts to more than $400 billion a year.

Only about 1/4 of that goes to low-income renters. The majority is spent on subsidizing higher-income homeowners.

www.urban.org/research/pub...

The Federal Government Commits Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Annually to Reducing Housing Costs through a Variety of Mechanisms

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Sam Alcorn @samalcorn.bsky.social · 3d

The “residential” building code exists in the first place for very bad reasons. Don’t ever forget that. Lawrence Veiller, addressing the NAHB in 1913:

From the NAHB proceedings, 1913:

MR. LAWRENCE VEILLER, Secretary, National Housing As-
sociation, New York City:
The question is "How can we keep apartment houses and tenement houses and flats out of our city?" Before

212 NATIONAL HOUSING ASSOCIATION
we can answer that we must be sure that we want to keep them out. If we put it to a vote in any one of your cities, I think we would find it very difficult to get a vote against an apartment house. I am not for it —don't misunderstand me — but I do recognize that it provides a very convenient way of living, and because of the servant question, which Mr. Davis alluded to, a great many people prefer it. Per-sonally, I think it indicates a very bad tendency and will have a very bad effect on American life and upon our political and social conditions.
I don't think you can have
proper homes in an apartment house of the highest type.
The question is, " How are we going to stop it?" I think there is a way; at least, I have tried it and I think it is going to work. In framing our laws to regulate the construction of dwellings of all kinds, do everything possible in our laws to encourage the construction of private dwellings and even two-family dwellings, because the two-family house is the next least objectionable type, and penalize so far as we can in our statute, the multiple dwelling of any kind, whether it is flat, apartment house or tenement house.
It

If we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construction; if we require stairs to be fireproofed, even where there are only three families; if we require fire-escapes and a host of other things, all dealing with fire protection, we are on safe grounds, because that can be justified as a legitimate exercise of the police power.
We can show the necessity of these extra precautions where many families live in a dwelling, and at the same time we have made it difficult to build apartment houses. I recommend that method to the conference.
In our laws let most
of our fire provisions relate solely to multiple dwellings,

CITIES OF HOMES
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and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with almost no fire protection whatever.

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City Observatory @cityobservatory.bsky.social · 5d

Lars Larson Interview: Is the Interstate Bridge Destined to Fail?

https://cityobservatory.org/lars-larson-interview-is-the-interstate-bridge-destined-to-fail/

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Jens von Bergmann @jensvb.bsky.social · 6d

This was motivated by British stats on this question that spiked our interest. Unfortunately we could not find good Canadian data on shelter cost per square metre, we proxy for this by using shelter cost per room. And consider longer timelines.

Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 15d

Great chart here from @resfoundation.bsky.social on housing costs by square metre by age. Britain's problems with Nimbyism and the planning system in a nutshell.

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Patrick Siegman @siegman.biz · 8d

A meta-analysis of more than 50 studies of the effect of parking prices on parking demand found that elasticity of demand for parking with respect to parking price averages 0.4 (Lehner & Peer 2019). That is, on average, a 1% increase in parking price results in about a 0.4% decrease in demand.

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Patrick Siegman @siegman.biz · 8d

This planner thinks finding 35% of spaces empty means that “city planners…are actually doing a pretty good job already in understanding how much parking is needed.” That’s wrong. In the Vancouver region, the typical price of parking has been driven far below cost by minimum parking mandates.

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Patrick Siegman @siegman.biz · 8d

As UCLA Professor Donald Shoup explains, "Demand is a function of price, and this does not cease to be true merely because transportation engineers and urban planners ignore it."

See: #ParkingAndTheCity, page 73.
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
See also: www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2002/...

(PDF) Parking and the City

PDF | Donald Shoup overcame the challenge of writing about parking without being boring in his iconoclastic 800-page book The High Cost of Free Parking.... | Find, read and cite all the research you n...

www.researchgate.net

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FOX 12 Oregon @fox12oregon.bsky.social · 7d

Video from Portland ICE building shows arrest after agents appear to pull protester over line https://www.kptv.com/2025/10/26/video-portland-ice-building-shows-arrest-after-agents-appear-pull-protester-over-line/

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Ben Ross @benrosstransit.bsky.social · 7d

My article with @cityobservatory.bsky.social's Joe Cortright giving the history of how the Beltway toll lane traffic modelers altered their model outputs and Maryland DOT and FHWA tried to cover it up.
www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

Highway Robbery - Dissent Magazine

Government highway agencies have enabled the blatant falsification of traffic model results. Consequently, the United States wastes billions on road expansions that fail to cure congestion and make it...

www.dissentmagazine.org

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City Observatory @cityobservatory.bsky.social · 7d

IBR is losing its leader, Greg Johnson, at a very bad time: It is two years behind schedule, late on producing a new cost estimate that will push its price to almost $10 billion, is unlikely to get Coast Guard approval, and may lose $2 billion in federal grants. cityobservatory.org/ibr-johnson_...

IBR’s problems are much deeper than its leadership – City Observatory

cityobservatory.org

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Bob Ortblad @bortblad.bsky.social · 8d

Greg Johnson had a massive conflict of interest. He was a WSP Senior VP. Hired as the IBR Administrator he managed a $76 million contract with WSP.

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 9d

So they didn’t like the ad. Let’s just post Reagan’s 5 min speech against tariffs as it appears on YouTube.

Over and over. On all platforms (some of y’all are still on X).

*1981 Sherrilyn horrified by 2025 Sherrilyn saying “let’s post Reagan’s speech.”

youtu.be/5t5QK03KXPc

President Reagan's Radio Address on Free and Fair Trade on April 25, 1987

YouTube video by Reagan Library

youtu.be

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Kip Manley @kiplet.bsky.social · 9d

They lie, they lie, they lie, and then they lie some more.

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 9d

Immergut asked about this filing at the Ninth Circuit, in which the plaintiffs assert that we now know there were never more than 31 — not 115 — Federal Protection Service officers sent to Portland at any time. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

RE: State of Oregon v. Trump, No. 25-6268
Plaintiffs' Letter Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 280)
Dear Ms. Dwyer:
Plaintiffs write to alert the Court of a material factual error by defendants on which the panel relied to grant a stay pending appeal. Given that reliance, and the gravity of the interests at stake, plaintiffs ask that the panel immediately withdraw its order or, in the alternative, that the en banc court immediately vacate it.
The panel majority held that defendants were likely to prevail under
10 U.S.C. § 12406(3) because the record showed a colorable inability to execute federal law. (Order 23-31). Central to that determination was the majority's acceptance of defendants' averments that protests had forced the redeployment of
115 Federal Protection Service officers, "nearly 25% of FPS officers nationwide," to Portland. (Id. at 27-31). The dissent noted that defendants' declaration on the actual extent of the deployment was "carefully worded" to the point of "vague." (Dissent 16-21). But defendants' counsel emphasized at oral argument the
"magnitude" and "unsustainab[ility]" of having 115 FPS offices redeployed; then, when asked directly whether all 115 officers remained in Portland, counsel stated only that "some" had gone home but "many" remained. (Oral arg., 10/9/2025, at 9:48-9:58, 11:04-12:09).

$However, in discovery produced last night, defendants admitted that 115 FPS officers have never been redeployed to Portland. Only a fraction of that number was ever in Portland at any given time before the President's directive: 6/16/2025 - 7/15/2025: 27 7/15/2025 - 8/12/2025: 31 8/12/2025 - 9/10/2025: 29 9/10/2025 - 10/5/2025: 20 (Dkt. 108-1 at 4-5).' Critically, armed with the Court's stay order, defendants have now moved to dissolve the second TRO in this case, and the district court has scheduled a hearing on that motion for October 24, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. This Court must act swiftly to prevent defendants from attempting to benefit from their own material mistake to deploy military forces to peaceful civilian streets, contravening the rule of law and our nation's history and traditions. The panel majority's stay order should be withdrawn or vacated immediately. Respectfully submitted, DAN RAYFIELD #064790 Attorney General$

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Alissa Walker @awalkerinla.bsky.social · 9d

LA is building a new $1.5 billion freeway into LAX.

The very same airport where we just spent $2 billion on the people mover — actually, more like $3 billion, plus another $900 million if you count Metro's investment in the LAX station; so let's just say $4 billion — to make cars go away

Air traffic control

The LAX-pressway must be stopped

www.torched.la

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Alex Baumhardt @alexbaumhardt.bsky.social · 9d

Feds have repeatedly claimed 115+ federal police (25% of force) had to be deployed to Portland over the summer to quell violence. Oregon lawyers found on discovery this was not true and are asking 9th Circuit to reverse Monday decision because feds lied:
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 11d

Every economist asked about the project said it was a bad idea, with the exception of the one guy the city hired to tell them it would work. Who did they decide to listen to? And they still won't admit they were wrong. wbjournal.com/article/spor...

Sports economists: $101M WooSox stadium deal unlikely to beat the odds

Sports economists sharply criticized Worcester's ballpark plan, saying public benefits are often minimal and the spillover effects overstated.

wbjournal.com

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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 11d

"my support is based on the clear sociocultural benefits... and from the solid expectation that it won’t cost the Worcester taxpayers one penny. Indeed, the project promises to generate net funds to support additional city services in the areas of education, infrastructure and security."

Guest columnist Andrew Zimbalist: The case for Worcester's stadium deal

Predictably, the announcement of an agreement among the city of Worcester, the Red Sox’s Triple A franchise and Denis Dowdle’s Madison Properties has elicited some controversy. Several academic econo…

www.telegram.com

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City Observatory @cityobservatory.bsky.social · 14d

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u... Protesters sported costumes, including the inflatable frog ensemble that activists in Portland, Ore., began wearing to poke fun at the White House’s attempt to portray activists as anarchists or domestic terrorists.

‘No More Trump!’: Protesters Denouncing the President Unite Across the Country

www.nytimes.com

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D. D. Syrdal @ddsyrdal.bsky.social · 15d

For those of you who don't understand, and indeed are disparaging, the tactics Portlanders (and now other locations) are using to combat the lies of the regime, this explains it very well.
youtu.be/AIOLcNkaoh4?...

How a guy in a chicken suit ruined Kristi Noem's propaganda campaign in Portland

YouTube video by Parkrose Permaculture

youtu.be

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Cameron Maltby @cameronmaltby.bsky.social · 23d

Applicable to virtually every beg button in the @cityofnorthvan.bsky.social

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 23d

Roz Chast.

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