Fwd: The Week Observed: May 1, 2026
Andreae Downs
From: City Observatory <cityobs...@substack.com>
Date: Fri, May 1, 2026 at 9:24 AM
Subject: The Week Observed: May 1, 2026
To: <andrea...@gmail.com>
What City Observatory did this weekEight reasons the Interstate Bridge Project shouldn’t and can’t legally go forward. After six years of deliberation and $270 million in consulting fees, the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) program has finally released its 10,000-page Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). But far from providing a roadmap for construction, the document reveals a project that is legally insolvent, physically truncated, and built on a foundation of flawed “Highway Department math.”
Biotech: Still Clustered after all these years. Everyone has long known that three metro areas dominate the US biotech industry: San Francisco, Boston and San Diego. Yet for decades, large cities around the country, most which have a major medical university, and research facilities, have been trying to spin biotech research into pharmaceutical businesses and high paid jobs. The best evidence is that those efforts have almost entirely failed to alter the fundamental geography of US biotech. In 2002, when we undertook a study of biotech clustering published by the Brookings Institution, those three metro areas accounted for 63.9 percent of all US venture capital investment in life sciences firms. Now, more than two decades later, those same three metropolitan areas still account for exactly the same share of venture capital investment: 63.9 percent.
The remarkable stability of that leadership is a testament to the powerful competitive advantages of being located in one of these clusters. Firms are vastly more likely to find good ideas, be able to easily assemble top-notch teams of researchers, managers, and marketing and regulatory affairs experts, link up with venture capital firms, and increase their chances of success by being located in an established industry cluster. In addition, the fact that these three centers continue to dominate, even though they are in some of the most expensive housing markets in the US, and two states (Califforina and Massachusetts) with relatively high taxes, signals that cost factors are at best secondary to the busienss advantages that stem from locating in a cluster. Must ReadThe political consequences of a failing boondoggle may come down soon. A primary election in suburban Washington County may hinge on the utter failure of a multi-billion dollar boondoggle. For years, long-serving State Rep. Susan McLain has been an unflinching advocate for the now $15 billion Interstate Bridge Project.. But in its endorsement for her primary opponent, Portland area alt-weekly Willamette Week excoriated her record on the IBR boondoggle:
McLain is a long serving incumbent; it remains to be seen whether the race will turn on this issue or others. Vox populi. Using outdated and simply wrong traffic forecasts to justify highway widening in New York. Streetsblog Empire State reports on how, once again, highway agencies are using “hockey stick” models of future travel demand, and ignoring the steady erosion of traffic growth rates to justify spending billions on highway widening projects. In this case, the NY state Department of Transportation used 15-year-old traffic models to justify its plan to expand Rt. 17 in Orange and Sullivan counties — ignoring a 10-year drop in traffic and overemphasizing a few busy summer weekends, according to report prepared by traffic expert Norm Marshall. Streetsblog reports:
Highway agencies cling to their outdated views that traffic can only increase, and that expanding capacity is the only way to avoid gridlock, even as traffic growth rates slow--and are likely to slow even more due to recent fuel price increases. They also routinely ignore the effects of induced demand, in which expanding highway capacity only generates more sprawling development patterns and more car dependent communities. One more stab at convincing housing supply sketptics. Welcome to the fight for economic literacy, Milan Singh. Writing, appropriately enough at “The Argument” Singh once again takes up the battle to show skeptics that the only way to lower rents and housing prices is to build more housing. He takes on a common claim, made by many, that new housing is always associated with higher rents, therefore, the new housing must be causing the higher rents. He writes, exasperated:
The essential point here is that when demand for urban living goes up, or is high, rents will tend to rise as well, and the only way to bring them down is for supply to catch up. Singh goes past the simple explanation to dig into the latest literature about supply increases and moving chains, and we hope a few more skeptics get the message. But no doubt the argument will go on. The real conspiracy: one-hour cities. The idea of promoting walkable and livable urban neighborhoods has been under attack in many quarters. Some see 15-minute living and low-traffic neighborhoods as a kind of globalist conspiracy to restrict freedom, directly, presumably by some international cabal. Now comes the Urban Truth Collective--aka Grant Ennis, Brent Toderian, Tom Flood--to turn the tables on the conspiracy theorists.
The truth, they argue, is that the real conspiracy--one that has succeeded wildly--is to saddle us in living in one-hour cities, car dependent places that sap our time and money, endanger our health, increase loneliness and wreck the environment. There clearly are groups that have lobbied to block better urban living:
It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek to respond in kind, but there’s more than a grain of truth. And you have to fight a narrative with a better, more compelling and more truthful narrative. We should indeed be talking about the conspiracy that has forced us to live so far from one another and the things we want to do, who it actually benefits, and what might be done to create different and better options for living. The Week Observed is City Observatory’s weekly newsletter. Every Friday, we give you a quick review of the most important articles, blog posts, and scholarly research on American cities. Our goal is to help you keep up with—and participate in—the ongoing debate about how to create prosperous, equitable, and livable cities, without having to wade through the hundreds of thousands of words produced on the subject every week by yourself. If you have ideas for making The Week Observed better, we'd love to hear them! Let us know at jcort...@cityobservatory.org or on Twitter at @cityobs.
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