Best comment so far on the plane crash.

by andrew on Jun 10, 2010 9:38 am  

Re: "...where to park my bike for an Infrastructure meeting..."

Oh, the ironing is delicious!

by er on Jun 10, 2010 9:50 am  

If you look at the college degree density at the "county level" (which combines DC, Arlington and Alexandria like the census does), we're #1 by kind of a long shot. Worth mentioning?

by Catherine on Jun 10, 2010 10:03 am  

@Catherine: Added, thanks.

by David Alpert on Jun 10, 2010 10:09 am  

Comparing the degree density at the county level has been a major challenge for my analysis because there are so many disagreements about what constitutes an "urban county" and what doesn't.

Ideally, I would draw a circle (with say, 10 mile radius) around the central business district in each of these cities and then the determine the degree density within that circle. Unfortunately, my GIS skills are rudimentary and it would be dicey to use ACS data (which isn't available at the tract level) for such an analysis. For now, I'll wait until the 2010 Census is released before really digging back into this.

by Rob Pitingolo on Jun 10, 2010 10:10 am  

Regarding Arlington bicycle lanes, they've done a half ass job on N Quincy Street. Really screwed up traffic between Fairfax and Lee highway.

There used to be 2 lanes to queue at Quincy/Washington and Quincy/Lee.

Now at Quincy/Washington (heading north) there is only one, with cars turning left blocking the lane. Cars go around (through the new bike lane).

They also put down the bike lanes last week without redoing the double yellow leading to a traffic lane (south) of about 6 feet in width.

At Quincy/Lee, it has been redone with a left only lane instead of a left/straight lane, and now traffic backs up for 2-4 light cycles. Quincy (heading north) at that intersection only gets 20 seconds of green and thus can't clear the backup.

Laughable improvements.

by Ben on Jun 10, 2010 10:24 am  

@Ben; sadly, I've driven through both intersections and wondered what was wrong w/o even noticing bike lanes.

Yes, car traffic is very negatively impacted.

by charlie on Jun 10, 2010 10:28 am  

@ Rob

I think it really depends what you're after. If you want to actually study the city proper, include only the city (and the entirety of the city). I think that this would be more meaningful to city government types than to citizens or people trying to get a reflection of what a place is like. It would be interesting to track the changes in the data over time, however.

I think that if you want to get a picture of the overall "vibe" (for lack of a better term) of a place, then "metro area" level makes more sense. After all, things don't change dramatically when you walk across Western Ave, and just because people live outside the city proper, doesn't mean that they don't have anything to do with the life and soul of the city. And plus, the "vibe" of an area doesn't end at the city limits, either. For better or for worse and like it or not, places in the same metro area do affect each other.

by Catherine on Jun 10, 2010 10:43 am  

That part of Quincy Street was on my bike commute last fall. The northbound bike lane used to end about a block before the Lee Highway intersection (turning into a regular traffic lane). I haven't been back, but sounds like they extended it that extra block, which in my opinion is quite unnecessary.

by Scott F on Jun 10, 2010 10:45 am  

Cathering: I think the problem with just using the metro area is that often the metro area definitions are extremely large. The Census might throw in a couple hundred square miles here and there on the margins without much of a thought.

If you're looking at the ethnic composition of the area or the per capita income, that's not a problem, and it makes sense to grab nearly everyone in the area. But if you're computing something per mile, those extra hundreds or thousands of rural square miles will really skew things.

In a place like the SF Bay Area, in particular, there's a lot of square miles of mountains and water. Those don't have very many people with college degrees in them.

by David Alpert on Jun 10, 2010 10:50 am  

Catherine, from my experience, Metro Area comparisons typically have very little variation in the data. So while you can make a claim like San Francisco is very dense and Oklahoma City is not, the variation at the MSA-level will be much smaller. Ultimately, what's at issue is that every metro area has suburbs and sprawl. If you look at the way the OMB defines the NYC and DC metro areas, it includes many badly sprawling counties, so to make comparisons is to minimize the vibe of the central city.

The problem with comparing only city geographies is arbitrary boundaries. Think of two cities typically considered to be very similar. Say.. Dallas and Houston. The data will show that the city of Houston is nearly twice the land size as Dallas with nearly twice the population. The reason? Because the boundaries were drawn differently in those two places. So when you compare the two, you're essentially comparing Dallas (without some suburbs) to Houston (with some suburbs). How fair is that?

by Rob Pitingolo on Jun 10, 2010 10:50 am  

P.S. David Alpert beat me to the punch on that one.

by Rob Pitingolo on Jun 10, 2010 10:51 am  

re the Mayflower

They do have a bike rack in the back by the loading dock/mechanicals area (or atleast they did last year) that hotel staff uses, but I am not surprised the bellhop didn't bring it up as I can't imagine they would ever let non-employees in that area for liability reasons.

The neighbor kid worked there last summer and used to ride his bike to work...

by nookie on Jun 10, 2010 11:02 am  

Urbanized area would be a better metric than metro area. You'd still get the suburbs, but wouldn't get all those mountains and water bodies.

by BeyondDC on Jun 10, 2010 11:06 am  

Rob and David,

I definately see your point. And Houston is a perfect example. It's basically city + suburbs all in one. The "suburbs" of Houston are really more exurbs. When I said "metro area", I meant that undefinable, makes sense only to those who live there kind of "metro area", not necessarily the census's version. But I suppose that's a big part of the problem, what is generally accepted to be the "metro area" is not easily defined (and can change year to year and person to person).

Maybe only including areas that have population density over a certain threshold could work (ie, only areas that have XX% of the population density as the city proper's highest population density).

by Catherine on Jun 10, 2010 11:13 am  

Re: HPRB Chair ... I heard that Tersh Boasberg was replaced as Chair of the HPRB by Fenty ... a couple months ahead of Tersh's term on the board expiring at the end of July. I hadn't heard about him resigning from the board. I wonder which in fact came first ... And if Fenty pushed him off the Board early ... why? What's coming up in the next month or so that Fenty's own nomination to the Board, Catherine Buell, will get to 'lead' a decision on rather than the Tersh? We know Tersh was fair and not 'swayable' for political interests. Let's hope Catherine is as trustable in this position as Tersh has been.

by Lance on Jun 10, 2010 11:15 am  

@charlie and Scott F

Email Arlington's DES (in charge of streets) about the problem. I called them and left a message with someone who answered but the traffic person never got back to me. I have also emailed, at the link below. We'll see if they respond to that.

http://www.arlingtonva.us/Scripts/FeedbackForm.aspx?to=des&dom=arlingtonva.us

or call them (but they never returned my phone call last week)
http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/EnvironmentalServices/EnvironmentalServicesContact.aspx

by Ben on Jun 10, 2010 12:03 pm  

I'm with Beyond DC on the metric. Go by urbanized areas. That being said, you'd have to give Berkley to SF, Jearsy and Conn to NYC, and those wonderfully picturesque towns to Boston.

by Thayer-D on Jun 10, 2010 12:25 pm  

not to knock the work of someone who has actually ridden a BRT system and was at least somewhat dependent on that BRT system to move him around (never duplicated in the Western World) and was not afraid to tell the truth about it, but i don't understand the implications of the degree-density research.

it seems nice to have the data. fine.

i'd seen the 'smart cities' lists in those weekly magazines for a long time. sf, nyc, boston -- and small collegy-towns and areas -- Austin, Providence, etc. but....so what? is there actually anything to know about degree density? as in, more than say...iPhone density? or Starbucks density? or....toilet density?

i.e. is 'economic value' positively correlated with degree density? and if that is the case, is this new information? is this controversial? is there a limit, or do cities and towns also need people who do actual work -- mechanics, artisans, etc.? is it something we should strive for? are we saying that lots of gentrification is a good thing, or a bad thing? and is there anything to Jane Jacobs' contention that lots of people in the same place creates a new economic value all its own, and that value grows more, even exponentially, as population density and/or degree density grows? do degrees follow investment opportunities, or do degrees create those investment opportunities? do degrees bring economic value through higher-end and luxury consumption, and is this desirable, and to what extent?

i'm generally skeptical of cities as 'economic engines', especially when so much of our economy has been financialized. and the places that specialize in this criminal activity masquerading as 'economic value creation'? NYC, SF, DC, and other 'brainy cities/towns'.

and cities (i.e. the degree-holders in those cities) don't pay the true cost of their consumption -- externalities like energy use (derived from oil wells in the Gulf), casting waste to landfills in the suburbs and at sea, etc. to me, cities are a lot like corporations -- perfect externalizing engines. slap a big 'ol BP sticker on our foreheads, b/c that's about what we are. self-importance. gluttony. ayn rand-iness in the extreme. that's me -- that's us.

imagine a town full of insurance agents and think tanks. maybe a place a lot like...DC -- where everyone is a manager/politician. is this the type of society we should strive for? create a place where nobody does any real work, but we can shuffle some numbers around on a paper and 'create value' (by shifting more manufacturing out of the US to Taiwan, for instance)?

two towns doing interesting economic stuff -- creating real, important, true economic value are the relatively degree-dense Austin (Black Star Coop) and the relatively non-degree-dense Cleveland (back to work co-ops). is there anything to learn about these two towns through degree density work, other than that massive government investment in the Austin-area tech market artificially props that economy up?

hey - my cable guy came early, and i'm bought and paid for for the next month (World Cup). let Israel maim and kill everyone in sight for the next 30 days -- Americans included. let BP continue to attack Americans on our own shores. hopefully, by the time the Cup is over, we'll see some tarballs have made their way up the Potomac -- why should Louisianans get to see all that beautiful chocolate milk water and not DC residents? I don't care -- it's time for me to do my American duty and ignore the hypocrisy and mendacity of American life and just consume lots of tv and beer. where's my tee-kate?!

[/rant]

by Peter Smith on Jun 10, 2010 1:38 pm  

@Peter Smith

i'm generally skeptical of cities as 'economic engines', especially when so much of our economy has been financialized. and the places that specialize in this criminal activity masquerading as 'economic value creation'? NYC, SF, DC, and other 'brainy cities/towns'.

Cities have been economic engines ever since, um, the creation of cities. Your focus on financial firms is misleading, as a city is essentially an agglomeration of economic activity - activity that produces a total greater than the sum of its parts - that's why people and capital cluster in them.

by Alex B. on Jun 10, 2010 1:43 pm  

upgrade technology to measure bike/ped traffic

What exactly does that mean? Sounds kind of boondoggle-ish.

by Vicente Fox on Jun 10, 2010 3:27 pm  

Some flavors of density scare people...and by "flavors", I mean poorer and/or ethnic.

The scale/density/walkability blurb reminds me of this one comment I got from someone at a greater Boston pedestrian advocacy group (at a wine and cheese function) when she asked me where I was from:

I mentioned the local city (Everett, MA), and she immediately cringed and said "Eww, I'm sorry".

I just responded, "Well, actually, it's pretty walkable...you'd know that if you had ever been there." ;-)

by ed on Jun 10, 2010 6:12 pm  

Cities have been economic engines ever since, um, the creation of cities. Your focus on financial firms is misleading, as a city is essentially an agglomeration of economic activity - activity that produces a total greater than the sum of its parts - that's why people and capital cluster in them.

there used to be a lot of real work that went on in cities - at least, American cities - up until...whew...i'm not sure when it really started falling off a cliff -- the 1970s? technology, of course, is partly to blame. outsourcing helps a lot. the 'financialization of the economy' stuff i'm always talking about helped. what kind of goods and services do any of our major cities now provide?

one could argue that DC is one of the least worst cities in that the high percentage of federal workers here are actually 'doing stuff' -- they're responsible for managing the day-to-day of the federal government.

but what does everyone else in DC do? all the relatively well-off, degreed folks? take the entire IT industry -- totally worthless, and worse -- a lot of it is attached to the defense sector -- literally created to destroy value in other parts of the world. nice.

the military is worthless or worse, but not sure it's really tied to cities in any significant way, tho.

pr firms. marketing. advertising. congressional-lobbyist complex types, including industry trade orgs and think tanks. HMOs and other insurance-type companies. real estate -- consumer and commercial. banking and investment companies and all those weird financial-type companies. capital and capitalist investors who do nothing but move money around to maximize profits, which usually requires externalizing/socializing risks/costs. venture capitalists. media companies which are really just part of the advertising complex. do any of these folks provide any value at all, or do they all make DC (and the rest of the US and the World) a worse place?

it's like 80% of the entire American corporate workforce could disappear overnight and we'd be none the wiser the next morning. and we'd all be a lot better off.

there are still valuable professions in cities -- health care workers, baristas, bike mechanics, educators, etc. -- but there seem to be fewer and fewer of them in cities, percentage-wise -- more and more of us city dwellers are paper pushers -- doing meaningless, brain-dead work, creating no value whatsoever for our fellow man, just taking orders in an authoritarian system so we can absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our small role in a big, evil system -- and this seems especially true in the 'high degree density' cities like NYC, SF, DC. we can always use 'the Nazi defense' -- we were just following orders, dontchaknow? it's kind of sick. i knew someone who worked for API (Am. Petrol. Inst.) for a long time -- the person wasn't evil, but the organization was. hey, living the white collar city lifestyle is easy -- just do what you're told, like you've always done, and live a nice, easy, happy life. i've done it before and i'll do it again. but i think there should be another way.

so, yeah - even though cities are still 'economic engines' on paper, i remain skeptical. skeptical of it all - existence, motivations, reasons, desirability -- the whole shebang.

i think cities should at least become sustainable in the process of producing nothing much of value, and crushing the world with our externalities.

it might be more of a knock against modern life than it is cities, but cities seem to embody modern life in the worst ways to me, so maybe it is a fair critique? maybe weird that i still enjoy cities, or at least real downtowns, more than suburbs -- but maybe not, b/c white collar/meaningless jobs are what cities seem to specialize in.

by Peter Smith on Jun 11, 2010 3:41 am