Pinpointing development patterns in a growing urban area is not an exact science. If it were, no one would ever go belly up after betting on a hip neighborhood for their new restaurant or investment property, and we wouldn’t have to argue about what value a baseball stadium might or might not bring to the city. We can identify a couple of general rules, however. For instance, in a rapidly growing, quickly congesting city, a central location (geographically and economically) will command a pretty serious price premium, because those places minimize time to get to important places, and time is very valuable. In that central area, you might see some neighborhoods lagging others — based on differences in crime, housing stock, amenities, or transportation options — but major gaps between two centrally located areas can’t persist for very long.

D.C. has seemingly violated the rules, though, splitting roughly down its middle, and separating by hundreds of thousands of dollars the values of homes that are a few miles, or less, apart. A report released today by the Urban Institute, and discussed in today’s Post, confirms what many of us have noticed recently — that the great west side price premium is coming to an end.