Posts about Demographics

Of these cities, DC is far and away the highest. However, this is not necessarily an apples-to-apples analysis. If someone moved from Arlington to DC, they would count in this tally, whereas if someone were to move from Buffalo to Broadway, it wouldn't.

That caveat aside, it's surprising to see what cities are higher on that list. Boston has the second highest, yet many would call the Hub the most parochial town on the list (or at least a close second to Chicago). Notice also how much higher Manhattan's numbers are compare with NYC as a whole. Not surprisingly, the most urban part of New York has the most new residents.

Now, consider the same cities but also include residents who moved from a different county within the same state. The numbers (with the obvious exception of DC's) jump up:

This demonstrates that these other cities are often the destination of regional migrants. Sports-wise, these new arrivals probably already rooted for their new home team. But if the criticism of DC is that too many residents have only just arrived to the city itself, it's got plenty of company.

When you look just at 25-34 year olds—the prime ages of migration—the respective positions are similar, but the numbers are much higher:

By middle age, however, DC residents are positively planted. Here are the numbers for 35-44 year olds:

So, in general, it is correct to say that DC has a higher transplanted population than other cities. But as the example of Boston demonstrates, there's not necessarily a correlation between transplants and a lack of a parochial esprit de corps. If in fact DC lacks such cohesion, don't blame it on the new residents.

"It scares me to think of all the pathetic projects done in the name of becoming a world-class city," he said. These projects just take away from moving cars in the city, he argued, and everyone moves out to a suburban-style neighborhood as soon as they can.

Mayor Williams jumped in. "That's an old movie, man," he said. A few others murmured in agreement. The reality that only the rare person of economic means lives in the District's urban neighborhoods is long gone.

Linda Donavan Harper, head of Cultural Tourism DC, was attending the event as a guest of a member (as I was), and had earlier told everyone about the new H Street heritage trail. She also lent her voice against the sentiment from that member.

Cultural Tourism DC thinks about who their target market is, Harper said. "Who is the cultural tourist? We used to look around and say, it's you, it's me, over 55" year olds, as in fact seniors comprised most of the people in the room. But now, said Harper, it's not. One significant group is international visitors, who expect to ride transit when they visit a city. They don't expect to rent a car and drive.

Another group, more and more, is younger residents who want to make their permanent homes in walkable places. Many people I know want to stay in the neighborhoods where they live; if they leave, the most likely reason is because the quality of public education in a neighborhood they can afford is "not good enough."

As Herb Caudill said, living in urban places doesn't mean abandoning automobiles entirely, but it means having options so that one isn't entirely dependent on them or any other mode of travel. This concept, foreign a generation ago, still persists in many residents' minds.

Of course, no generation uniformly believes one thing, and this is no exception. Many empty nesters are now moving into the city. One woman at the Cosmos Club discussion talked about her experience visiting her son on H Street. Laurence Aurbach, the organizer of the panel (and the person who invited me) has been a smart growth advocate for a long time, and helped design LEED-ND has been supporting smart growth in transportation and planning for the better part of 50 years in San Francisco, Clevleand, and Washington.

We can all can help shake this "old movie" belief by talking to people of all ages and all neighborhoods about the ways our region is changing. It will take time, but as we are seeing with the zoning update, the "old movie" can still wield great force to stop planning and transportation decisions that can move the city and region forward.

Update: The Laurence Aurbach who is involved with LEED-ND is Laurence Aurbach, Jr. (and also in attendance). Laurence Aurbach, Sr., who organized the panel, is his father, and has been a supporter of smart growth for many years in his own right.

There is no question that Bike to Work Day is a hugely successful event, growing every year. The organizers, and WABA in particular, deserve serious thanks and congratulations for the enormous undertaking of BTWD. It's done a great deal to raise the visibility of cycling and to expand the reach of cycling to more women, younger and older age groups, and beyond the MAMIL stereotype.

While we can revel in these growing levels of success, it's important not to be complacent. It may be time to start thinking about how to reach the current and future "invisible cyclists" through this event.

We can gauge participation by the numbers of people who checked in at the 58 pit stops across the region, and estimate very roughly the socioeconomic status of participants by where the pit stops are located. Total check-ins ranged from nearly 1,000 at the 2 most central, in Rosslyn and downtown DC, all the way down to 5 people in Takoma at Langley Crossroads.

Pit stop location

One way to increase diversity could be to add more pit stops in different parts of the region. Despite significant work by WABA over the last year to reach out to Wards 7 & 8, there was only one pit stop in the whole of both wards. That stop, in downtown Anacostia, saw 14 people. Ward 7 had no pit stops at all.

In fact, with the exception of National Harbor and Indian Head, right on the Potomac, there were no pit stops in southern Prince George's county either, leaving the entire southeast quadrant of the region without a place to participate.

Map by Adam Froehlig and Rob Pitingolo.

We shouldn't expect new cyclists to take on a major ride beyond a couple of miles. Even if some newcomers were feeling ambitious, many areas in the suburban counties don't offer safe biking routes in employment districts. Therefore, biking to transit has to be a key strategy to Bike to Work Day.

There were pit stops at many VRE and MARC stations to the south and north of the District, enabling commuters to potentially ride shorter distances to their local train station. Of course, MARC & VRE ridership is itself relatively homogenous.

Wards 7 and 8, as well as much of Prince George's, are not bike friendly. Anacostia River crossings are often downright dangerous on a bike. So promoting biking to work in these communities depends all the more on the first/last mile connection to transit. Yet no Metro stations on the southern Green Line or eastern Blue and Orange Lines had pit stops.

Many of these stations are located in relatively residential neighborhoods, meaning the comfort and safety barrier to biking is relatively low. Why not have pit stops at them?

Obviously it takes resources and volunteers to set up pit stops. Businesses often host stops in hopes of driving sales. Most volunteers want to host pit stops in their communities instead of traveling across the region to some other location they don't know well.

But perhaps in the future, some supporters could sponsor pit stops in neighborhoods where there may not be such natural hosts. We could also look beyond the WABA members and the cycling community for volunteers. Perhaps community action organizations could help address the challenge of volunteers?

These stops may have relatively low attendance, but I think the benefit of a few people participating in these areas would be much greater than the marginal benefit of a few more people checking in in upper Montgomery County.

Pit stop timing

Another way to increase diversity would be to schedule pit stops for more time periods. The vast majority of stops were set up for 2-3 hours between from 6 and 9 am. Only 4 pit stops were open later. 3 stuck it out until 10 am, and the Indian Head, Maryland stop on the east bank of the Potomac was open until 11.

In Columbia Heights and Falls Church, organizers set up an afternoon "Bike from Work Day" pit stop from 4-7 pm. Even with that one exception, Bike to Work Day clearly catered primarily to those people starting work by 9:30am and leaving by 6:30.

Many low-income workers work at other times, like a shift job from 5 am to 2 pm. Many may already be riding a bike to work out of necessity. And if they aren't, they may be spending significant portions of their income on more expensive modes of transportation. Being introduced to cycling could help keep more money in these workers' pockets.

Those that are riding, frequently ride any bike they can get a hold of, not the median-priced $1,000 bike you see mostly at Bike to Work Day pit stops. Of any cyclists on the road, they likely could most use a tune-up, a new light, pant leg strap, or other safety schwag typically being given away at BTWD. Lastly, they are a population group that could be much better represented in bike planning and advocacy.

Of course, the lack of pit stops in the poorest areas of the region is a challenge to getting these cyclists, whether seasoned or new, to participate. However, the map above shows that, despite the blank space east of the river and in southern Prince George's, many pit stops are already in higher-poverty areas. This is all the more reason to explore ways to diversify the pit stop hours.

Pit stops with different hours would also face challenges in recruiting volunteers. Again this is where we need to think creatively about making alliances beyond the existing cycling community.

BTWD organizers collected a lot of information about participants. It would be interesting to do some analysis on this data to see where the people who checked in at the biggest, most central pit stops were coming from. This could give us a better idea of how lopsided the participation truly is.

Bike to Work Day is a very valuable part of cycling advocacy. Reaching the invisible cyclist is no easy task. It won't be easy, but with some planning and effort, Bike to Work Day could be a major opportunity to better include these current and potential cyclists.

Rob Pitingolo has done a lot of research on which places have more or fewer people with college degrees. DC has the fourth most college degrees per square mile of any city in the nation, but that doesn't apply everywhere in the region or everywhere in DC.

Rob created these maps that show the locations of people with and without college degrees aged 25 and over.

There seems to be a fair amount of mixing in Virginia, but in DC and Maryland, the divide is starker. East of the Anacostia, blue dots are very few; west of Rock Creek and in the central city, they overwhelm the pink dots.

A lot of news stories talk about the DC region in terms of the division between black and white. The city's history of racial segregation has left a legacy of educational and socioeconomic inequality. As a result, many commentators use race as a simplistic shorthand for conflicts that are really about college educated versus not, or wealthy versus poor, or young versus old.

Race is immutable, but other characteristics are not. If our divisions are really about black versus white, they're not going to change unless some people move out of the city, and that's not what we want to happen. But education levels can change, and it's good for everyone if we can help all people in our region access better education.

Medians also don't consider desperately poor households, unless a place is so poor that half of its households are in poverty. When the news broke that the DC area has the highest median income of any metropolitan area, most of the news coverage about how DC is insulated from the economic downturn ignored that fact that there's serious unemployment and poverty in much of the region.

The unemployment rate might be lower than the national average, for sure, and far lower than in some parts of the country, but that's little comfort to the people without jobs.

Much of the disparity goes hand in hand with a higher cost of living. The national median household income in 2010 was $50,046, and the median in the DC region $84,623. But real estate prices are significantly higher here and have been climbing as well. For the 4th quarter of 2011, the median single-family home sales price was $325,400 and the median condo sales price $230,000, according to the National Association of Realtors. Nationally, the average house price was $166,200 and the average condo price $165,100.

Thanks in part to the higher housing costs and limits on the quantity of housing in walkable areas with good transit access, many professionals share housing in the DC region. When Rob lived in a group house in Arlington, the household income was about $160,000. That sounds like a lot on paper, and it's definitely above the area median, but 3 entry-level professionals and a grad student shared that income, and none considered themselves individually wealthy. On the other hand, a husband/wife household with no kids and a $160,000 combined income might feel a lot wealthier.

If these statistics aren't about the super-rich 1%, who is the median? To figure this out, Rob analyzed 2007-2009 American Community Survey microdata for people in households making within 5% of the median income (or in the range of $80,538-$89,014). There are 197,831 people living in such households, which represents a bit less than 4% of the total metro area population.

The average age in this median household income cohort is 43 years. 48% are non-Hispanic white, 26% non-Hispanic black, 13% Hispanic, and 10% non-Hispanic Asian. 21% work for the government, 66% work outside the government, and 13% are not working, out of the labor force or fall into another category. 69% live in owner-occupied homes, while 31% reside in rented homes.

It's great that the economy in the Washington region is doing well, at least for many people, and that median incomes are high, even if that means housing is expensive too. But reporters, when you write about these income statistics, please leave the references to fancy dinners and pictures of houses with gilded gates out of it.

What I found most striking was the drop in the county's young adult population. According to the Planning Department, Montgomery County has 15% fewer adults between the ages of 15 and 24 than we did in 2000. There are 17% fewer 25-to-34 year olds, along with 20% fewer 35-to-44 year olds.

The first two age groups belong to the Millennials (or Echo Boomers or Generation Y, whichever you prefer). As I've said before, we're now the largest generation in American history, due to being the kids of the Baby Boomers, America's previous largest generation. Yet their ranks in MoCo have swelled over the past 10 years, while my cohort has shrunk.

Why is this?

Some readers didn't agree with my post last June about my newlywed friends who grew up in Montgomery County, then moved elsewhere in the region. A lot of people didn't like my post last week about the difficulty of finding housing in MoCo for Millennials, which now has over 200 comments. But these are connected. Montgomery County is an expensive place to live, and some of us (like my friends) have found that neighboring communities have more jobs, cheaper housing, and more stuff to do.

This is a problem. Montgomery County thrived because of the Baby Boomers, who found life so good here that they never left. (A few of them, it seems, like it a little too much.) But if 30% of the county's population is over 65, as the Planning Department estimates will happen by 2030, we're not going to be able to manage. If we want the county to continue prospering, we have to draw young people.

"What" draws young people is pretty simple: Jobs, reasonably priced housing, short commutes, proximity to shopping and entertainment, and increasingly, neighborhoods where you can walk/bike/take transit instead of driving.

The "how" is more challenging. But we should start going after those solutions now rather than waiting until it's too late.