What City Observatory Did This Week
The Interstate Bridge: A forever project. The proposed $17.7 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project has already been more than two decades in the making–with planning starting in 2005, and already more than $450 million spent on consultants. Newly obtained project documents show that once construction starts–if it ever does–I-5 between Portland and Vancouver will be torn up for at least another two decades, through the 2040s.
The Oregon and Washington highway departments plan to embark on the project even though they don’t have even a third of the money they need to pay for the whole thing, they’ll just spend what they do have and then ask for more, rinsing and repeating as necessary. And while travelers between Portland and Vancouver will face decades of disruption, consultants will cash in, with staff and consulting costs expect to run at about $3 million a month (before inflation) for the next 20 years.
The market for theatre space in Portland. There are dueling proposals to add or renovate large theatres in Portland. Portland State University is contemplating a performing arts center and civic boosters are looking at possibly renovating the aging Keller Auditorium.
The major source of business for both venues would be touring Broadway shows. It is doubtful that there’s a market for two large theatres in town, but a marketing study claiming that the “optimal” size of a theatre in Portland would be 3,200 seats (slightly larger than the existing or renovated Keller) lacks any serious economic basis. About 90 percent of the venues hosting touring Broadway shows are smaller than 3,000 seats (and the median is 2,500), and it is far from clear that the incremental benefits of 200 more seats would be worth the cost. In addition, there are two privately funded similar sized facilities, aimed primarily at concerts and music, that would likely be major competitors for much of the other auditorium-centered events.
Must Read
Transportation for America discusses Oregon’s Transportation financial problems as an object lesson for the nation. Transportation for America looks at Oregon’s current mess of a transportation finance system, and says it has important implications for the nation. Instead of obsessing about a relative handful of unaffordable, and questionable mega-projects, we ought to be focusing on taking care of our current system, and assuring that it is safe and functional. The Oregon Department of Transportation has long maintained that it lacks the resources to fix potholes, plow roads, and maintain bridges, but still commits tens of billions of dollars to highway expansion megaprojects. Transportation for America argues that its time to be honest about our situation, particularly if we want the public to support more resources:
A state agency that talks openly about the diminishing returns on highway expansion projects and the benefits of focusing on multimodalism and community needs could change the game, rebuild trust, and lay the groundwork for state investment in transportation.
The logical starting point is to downsize or cancel expensive, mega-projects, like the Interstate Bridge Replacement (now estimated at up to $17.7 billion) and the I-5 Rose Quarter project, and focus on cost-effective preservation expenditures that maximize the life of the public’s massive investment in the existing road system. That’s likely a key to the visceral political reaction to higher taxes that’s repeatedly sunk transportation funding packages.
In Oregon, the legislature could cut its unaffordable megaprojects loose and start focusing on the basics, like repair, safety, and connecting people to destinations. If they get back to basics and focus on results, they can win back Oregonians’ trust and more taxpayer dollars to fund transportation improvements.
The critical role of immigrant talent in propelling the US tech sector. The Trump Administration’s attacks on immigrants are a clear and present danger to long term US economic health. The fact the the US has been a preferred destination for many of the world’s best and brightest, and because of our willingness to welcome and encourage immigrants, our technology industries have flourished. Data compiled by Silicon Valley Bank show that global talent plays a key role in driving the tech sector, especially the fast-growing, high growth “unicorn” firms:
The US tech industry is heavily propped up by foreign-born talent, especially among the highest valued companies. At least 59 of the top 100 highest valued US unicorns have a foreign-born founder. This group includes transformative companies such as OpenAI, SpaceX and Stripe — the three highest valued US unicorns — and collectively accounts for more than $1.5T of aggregate value. In fact, 19 of the top 20 US unicorns have at least one foreign-born founder.
Field of Schemes calls out Oregon’s proposed giveaway to the Portland Trailblazers. The national website that tracks the efforts of billionaire sports franchise owners to extract millions in subsidies for a range of stadiums and arenas takes a look at legislation proposed in Oregon to subsidize the rehabilitation of the Moda Center in Portland.
Proposed legislation would divert income taxes paid by teams playing at the arena (as well as a lot of others) to pay for the $600 million cost of rehabilitating the 30-year old arena, based on
the dubious theory that businesses should keep the income taxes paid by their employees because if they skipped town all that tax money would go away, which 1) it almost certainly wouldn’t and 2) pretty much defeats the whole economic purpose of luring and retaining businesses regardless.
New Knowledge
Walkable Cities make people walk more. We reported about this study this past summer, but it was recently featured, along with some compelling new graphics, in Scientific American. The study looks at the connection between human behavior (how far we walk each day) and the characteristics of the built environment, in particular, the relative walkability of neighborhoods. Walkability in this study is measured using Walk Score, which looks at the proximity of common destinations such as shops, schools, restaurants and parks. As we noted earlier, a key advantage of this research is that it overcomes so-called “selection effects” and looks at how people’s behavior changes when they move from one community to a different community, with a different level of walkability.’
“Does Your City Make You Healthier?”, Scientific American Magazine Vol. 334 No. 3 (March 2026), p. 82. The original research on which this article is based is:
Althoff, T., Ivanovic, B., King, A.C. et al. Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09321-3
In the News
Willamette Week quoted City Observatory’s commentary on the dubious claims made about the economic importance of professional sports to local economic prosperity.
And Joe Cortright, a Portland economist who’s made a career out of infusing facts into political arguments, notes that the claims of the Blazer faithful about the consequences of a potential Blazer departure are overblown—as evidenced by how Vancouver, B.C., and Seattle thrived economically despite the loss of their NBA teams in 2001 and 2009, respectively.
“We’ve essentially run the experiment of suddenly depriving a Pacific Northwest metropolis of its National Basketball Association franchise to see what happens to its economy,” Cortright writes at City Observatory. “As it turns out—and pretty much exactly as all the economic studies conclude—pretty much no negative effects on prosperity.”