urban planning

Researchers map risk of gun violence, pinpoint prevention opportunities: ‘No one is destined to meet violence’

kkrisberg — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 16:57:27 +0000

Researchers map risk of gun violence, pinpoint prevention opportunities: ‘No one is destined to meet violence’

Researcher Douglas Wiebe first started studying gun violence as a doctoral student, investigating how having a firearm in one’s home affected the risk of injury. The work only heightened his interest in exploring gun violence from a public health perspective. Eventually, he decided to officially take on a question he’d been mulling over for almost a decade: Among people who’ve experienced a violent assault, are there any commonalities in their experiences just prior to the incident, and can we map those experiences in a way that reveals optimal intervention opportunities?

“I wanted to do a thorough job of measuring what people do and how they spent their time and see what might put people at risk,” Wiebe, an associate professor of epidemiology in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, told me. “Getting injured can happen in the blink of an eye, but there must be some things that affect the likelihood.”

It turns out Wiebe’s hunch was correct. In a study published in the January issue of Epidemiology, Wiebe and his research colleagues mapped the paths and activities of more than 600 10- to 24-year-old boys and young men in Philadelphia — about 140 had experienced a gunshot wound, 206 had been assaulted with a different type of weapon, and about 280 had not been injured and served as the control group. Those who had been injured were recruited through the emergency departments of a pediatric hospital and adult trauma center in central Philly. Researchers asked the young men to recount the 24 hours before they had been injured (control subjects were asked to recall a random day within three days of the interview time). As Wiebe had hypothesized, researchers found that location and activity either protected study participants from assault or significantly increased the chance of assault. In addition, the study found a connection between the risk of violent assault and environmental characteristics that can easily be mitigated, such as greening vacant neighborhood lots.

While the idea that behavior and location affect the risk of assault is nothing new, this study is the first to go back and map a victim’s path in the hours before being injured and illuminate the environmental factors that if acted upon, could reduce risk and even prevent violence in the first place. And in a time when gun violence is never far from the front pages and any attempt at regulating firearm access seems politically hopeless, using data to find new avenues for gun violence prevention is exactly what public health does best.

“If you ask most people (where violence is likely to happen), they’d probably say the bad part of the city or in high-risk environments,” Wiebe said. “But what we’re finding is that it’s not who you are and where you wake up in the morning, but the point at which you’re assaulted. That really shifts the focus — no one is destined to meet violence.”

To reveal their findings, the researchers developed an original geography software application that maps each study participant’s activities and then superimposes it with a map of the environmental characteristics through which the participant traveled. Participants were mapped from the time they woke up on the morning of the assault to the point of assault — kind of like the person left a trail of tiny cookie crumbs as they moved throughout the day, as Wiebe described it. Those “cookie crumbs” were superimposed with 27 features of the built and social environment.

Here’s what Wiebe and his colleagues found: The risk of gunshot assault was higher when the person was alone, when it was raining, and when the person was outside and on foot, though lower when using the bus or trolley than when indoors. Risk of gun violence was higher in areas with lots of vacant properties, vandalism and violence, fire and police stations, and in areas with a high prevalence of household gun ownership. Risk of gun assault was also higher among those who had just acquired a firearm. The risk of gun assault was lower in areas with high levels of neighborhood connectedness. Risk of being assaulted with a weapon other than a gun was higher near recreation centers, in areas with high rates of vacancy, violence and vandalism, and among people who’d recently been drinking. Overall, researchers found that “engaging in certain activities and coming into contact with certain types of locations seemed to act as triggers that abruptly resulted in assault.”

Wiebe and study co-authors Therese Richmond, Wensheng Guo, Paul Allison, Judd Hollander, Michael Nance and Charles Branas write:

Of the numerous neighborhood conditions that we found to be associated with violence, we are most encouraged by identifying that structural features of the environment including recreation centers, alcohol outlets, and vacant properties were associated with a risk of violence. Others have suggested that each of these is potentially modifiable, and vacant properties in particular could be ameliorated with structural, scalable, and sustainable interventions that could help make neighborhoods safer.

“From a public health perspective, we know it’s quite hard to get people to change their behavior,” Wiebe told me. “So we’re much more optimistic that changes to the environment could have a more sweeping impact. …I do think that by starting to make structural changes, we can change the fabric of how these places are used and it’s by that process that we can hope to make places safer.”

Wiebe noted that while recruiting study participants, researchers learned that many had been assaulted in or around schools. Those young people were excluded from this study, as researchers wanted to zero in on community violence. However, Wiebe and his colleagues are now six months into a new study in which they’re using a similar mapping method to examine violent assault in school settings.

Wiebe noted that with so many Americans dying from gun violence, national decision-makers must free up research funds to study violence as a public health problem. And he added that a variety of sectors, from public health to community design to transportation planning, can play a role in violence prevention. Today, gun violence is the leading cause of death among 10- to 24-year-old young black men and boys, and the second leading cause of death within that age group overall.

“It’s time to talk about gun violence as a public health problem,” Wiebe told me. “It’s such a preventable problem.”

To read a full copy of the study, visit Epidemiology. For more on the benefits of structural change, check out this study on the connection between stress reduction and the greening of vacant urban lots.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for nearly 15 years.

kkrisberg Fri, 12/18/2015 - 11:57

Tags

Environmental health

government

Public Health - General

Research

Location, location, location.

Critical mass for federal bike, pedestrian funds

lborkowski — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Critical mass for federal bike, pedestrian funds

by Kim Krisberg

Mark Martin isn't inclined to sit down and shut up -- well, unless it's on the seat of a bicycle.

"More people need joy in their lives and there's a real simple way to get it: ride a bicycle," Martin told me. "It's a joyous thing to ride a bike."

The Baton Rouge, La., bicyclist hasn't owned a car in 20 years -- "I just love my bike," he said. In fact, he loves biking so much that he said he was driving people crazy talking about the need for better biking and pedestrian infrastructure in his community. Somebody ought to do something about it, he thought, and so he did. About six years ago, Martin founded Baton Rouge Advocates for Safe Streets, known simply as BRASS, and has been making (safe) inroads for his fellow bicyclists ever since.

Before BRASS, there weren't a lot of bike-friendly spots in Martin's community of East Baton Rouge Parish. There were a few unconnected and scattered bike lanes that had been installed as traffic calming devices and the older neighborhoods had sidewalks, but you couldn't really get safely to and from desired destinations on a bicycle, he said. But today, with what Martin described as his "pleasant persistence," things are beginning to turn around.

The biggest success so far is that local planning officials now consider biking and pedestrian infrastructure in their decision-making, Martin said, noting that "we are, I hope, on our way to getting this firmly entrenched in the thinking of the city parish." For example, in 2005, the residents of East Baton Rouge Parish voted on and passed a bond issue to support street and roadway improvements via a local project known as the Green Light Plan. Under one of the plan's projects, an already existing bike lane was slated for elimination, so Martin began gathering signatures to save it. It worked and since then, officials "have been pretty good about the Green Light projects being bike- and pedestrian-friendly," he said. However, this is no time to back off -- "unless we let them know that we're continuing to pay attention, they'll stop doing it," he said.

Unfortunately, the same can be said at the federal level, where funds for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure face an uncertain future as well as powerful opponents. In Baton Rouge, it's a battle Martin will be watching. "Federal funding is very important...that's what our local folks are looking toward," he said. "It's critical for us as a locality and as a state in order to make any progress at all."

Pedal to the Metal

For now, federal funds for bike and pedestrian infrastructure are safe, but it didn't come without a fight.

First, a little background: The funds are included in a massive federal surface transportation spending bill known as the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (or simply, SAFETEA-LU), which was signed into law in 2005 and officially expired in 2009. Since its expiration, the bill has been subject to short-term extensions to keep it alive, but has yet to be officially reauthorized by Congress. Within SAFETEA-LU is the Transportation Enhancement Program -- this is where you'll find funds for biking and walking. According to the National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse

"(TE) activities are federally funded, community-based projects that expand travel choices and enhance the transportation experience by improving the cultural, historic, aesthetic and environmental aspects of our transportation infrastructure."

The TE program accounts for 1.5 percent of the overall transportation program, of which about one half is spent on bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

"This has made a real difference in communities across the country," Kevin Mills, vice president of program at Rail-to-Trails Conservancy, told me. "You get a huge bang for your buck in terms of health, environmental conservation, historic preservation...we think it's been one of the greatest unmitigated success stories in the nation's transportation history."

Nevertheless, the program has found its way onto the budgetary chopping block. In September during negotiations for SAFETEA-LU's six-month extension, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., held up the bill, demanding that transportation enhancements be eliminated. Fortunately, for people who'd like to safely bike and walk around their communities, Coburn was not successful, but only because he cut a deal to release his hold on the bill: The next transportation bill may include language that would allow states to opt out of spending federal funds on transportation enhancements. This, say advocates, is not a good compromise.

"State departments of transportation have not been the friendliest to bike and pedestrian investment -- it's usually the local communities that are conscious of quality of life and safety impacts," said David Goldberg, communications director at Transportation for America. "If we don't have dedicated funds, we won't see the results...an opt-out is really a nonstarter."

From advocates' perspectives, the debate is about more than creating an active and holistic transportation system -- it's also about using limited resources to reap the most benefits. Biking and pedestrian funds not only build physical infrastructures, they help prevent injury (14 percent of today's roadway fatalities are among bicyclists and pedestrians); promote physical activity and better health (studies shows that people who live in neighborhoods where they can safely bike and walk are (surprise!) more likely to bike and walk); and encourage less dependence on motor vehicles, which translates to less pollution and fewer health risks and emergency room visits for people living with respiratory illness.

"Why would you spend your money on transportation in a way that exacerbates our health problems," asked Caron Whitaker, campaign director at America Bikes. "I think Congress needs to be thinking more holistically. We will have another fight and it'll be a chance to make health and transportation come together."

In fact, public health folks are increasingly getting in on the transportation discussion, realizing the difference that smart transportation spending can have on Americans' health. Eloisa Raynault, program manager for transportation, health and equity at the American Public Health Association told me that while she expects further battles over TE funds, the "silver lining" is that the debate is mobilizing advocates from a diverse range of disciplines.

"We know that biking and walking facilities are vital to increasing health and safety," Raynault said. "(Cutting TE funds) is a risk that the nation can't afford to take."

For more info on biking and pedestrian funds as well as the intersections between transportation and public health, visit Transportation for America and APHA's Transportation from a Public Health Perspective.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance health reporter living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for almost a decade. While her education is in journalism, her heart is in public health.

lborkowski Tue, 10/18/2011 - 03:00

Tags

physical activity

Public Health - General

In Florida, less the rain, we can bike all year. In Naples, there are areas where bikes and pedestrians can share the sidewalk. For me, this is the safest detente, the truce with the walkers. When I approach, I signal my arrival with a bell, and they move to let me pass. Sometime, they swerve left, other times to the right, but my reduced speed allows for that variability. I thank them for their courtesy, and then I accelerate, hoping to return my heart rate to a healthy level.
Communities that plan bikeways and walking paths insure that older residents can continue to exercise safely. Down here, aging drivers sometimes fail to see helmet-free riders on bicycles and motorcycles, making the roads dangerous propositions. Sidewalks mandate interval training, but they protect me from the impaired and inattentive car operators.

Another Day in a Floating Libertarian Paradise

mikethemadbiologist — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:06:28 +0000

Another Day in a Floating Libertarian Paradise

So there's been a bit of discussion about libertarians who want to establish a bunch of off-shore countries on floating oil-rig type platforms that would be lil' loonitarian paradises:

Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."

"There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late."

The Seasteading Institute's Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later.

My first thought was "If a bunch of pompous rich libertarians want to go Galt and leave the U.S., well, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out." And I'm sure there's some entrepreneurial Somalian pirate who sees a glorious opportunity here. I think Atrios' take on the whole undertaking is exactly right:

In practice, of course, even libertarian paradises would have laws. And means for changing and enforcing those laws. And an evolving concept of just what the community wants. Ultimately I suppose some hybrid of Lord of the Flies and Gated Community in Irvine, CA, would emerge and then, you know, collapse. Maybe it's what happened to the "lost colony" of Roanoke.

Consider this conception of what one of the ~~communities~~ ~~collectives~~ paradises might look like:

(from here)

First, they live in apartment buildings. Like it or not, they'll need housing codes. For instance, can you smoke in the building? Smoke in apartment buildings, even nice ones, tends to enter other apartments. What constitutes a disturbance? One person's annoying racket is someone else's late night beautiful tuba serenade. Keep in mind, this will be a self-selected community of people who hate being told what to do. Then look at the park in the front left corner. Will dogs be allowed in it? Will owners have to clean up after the dogs? Will dogs be kept on leashes? What if people damage the grass? And let's think about the swimming pool. Will people be allowed to listen to radios while sitting next to it? Kinda annoying for the people who live surrounding the pool. Will late night cannonballs be allowed?

Then let's look at this figure:

Look at that freighter. When will it be allowed to dock? What if the business owners want early morning deliveries, but the residents don't like being woken up at 5am? (a problem familiar to any urban dweller).

While this might be nitpicky, this is exactly the kind of stuff that needs to be resolved. How will it be resolved? If there's a list of rules imposed by the founder/owner, what happens if the rules need to be changed (or added to) as will inevitably happen? Will these rules be adopted democratically?

The real question is what happens to rule breakers, or, even those who simply are on the 'losing side' of a decision. You will need some kind of enforcement mechanism to expel ~~lawbreakers~~ anti-Galtian personalities.

This all sounds kinda like gummint. AAAIIIEEE!!!

Frankly, I think they're just trying to avoid taxes.

mikethemadbiologist Sat, 08/20/2011 - 04:06

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Civil Liberties

The Rule of Law

urban planning

It's like Deepwater Horizon meets Boca Estates. Faith in Thiel is all it takes. This, surely, won't be a mistake.

Not to mention the fact that these things wouldn't survive the first good gale that hit them. . . It's hard enough to set up a drilling rig in deep water, let alone a permanent island that's supposed to house dozens if not hundreds of people. Plus, where are they going to get their supplies? Most oil rigs have supply boats running to them daily or weekly, but these libertarians probably won't want to trade with the oppressive US.

Are you kidding? This is the best idea ever! Taking hundreds of petty, selfish, isolationist, arrogant, entitled, maladjusted, Galt wanna-be's and trapping them together on a fragile and precarious structure hundreds of miles from any help? It's reality TV gold! It'll be like Jersey Shore, but for engineers!

And, how are they going to finance this venture? I propose a block-buster Reality Show, complete with High (or Low) Drama, and Clashing Egos. Heck, I'd watch it, and I hate reality shows!

Someone got the wrong idea from "Bioshock."

@captainahags:

Plus, where are they going to get their supplies?

Perhaps more importantly, where are they going to put their supplies? Food, fuel and other consumables for hundreds of people for a week must take up an impressive volume of space -- space that just isn't there on an oil rig inhabited by hundreds of people.

"The engineers, scientists, mechanics, skilled craftsmen? Oh, they'll be established on the THIRD island. Which we just started building. Will have it finished any year now."

The first thing these people are going to learn is that government is an emergent form. Two, perhaps three people, can live without operating principles and some established mechanism for compromise, and force if need be, in a word: government.

It could be entertaining. Stuff a couple hundred heavily armed Galts on an artificial island with limited resources and a failing infrastructure and you have a drama. An interesting twist is that there will be an inherent conflict between the true believers who felt the call, sold everything, and moved out to the platform; and the independently wealthy people who maintain a fallback position in an established nation.

What happens when a hurricane comes along and the rig starts breaking up. Do they call in the Coast Guard? Or do they go down with their illusions.

I think that their biggest problem will come from limited space. It seems to me that many of the people who want to live a libertarian lifestyle are exurban types living on a few acres all to themselves and that they don't like neighbors poking into their business. This kind of situation would not be appealing to most of them, so it would mostly be inhabited with urban geeks. "Don't fence me in" will not go over well.
Another problem might be a male dominated sex ratio. But then, polyandry and prostitution would be OK so that might take care of some problems but introduce the need for some regulation [shudder].
And who is going to do the scutwork? And where will the necessary servants live?

You know, these guys aren't going to take a boat to get there. Too slow. They'll take a helicopter, or at least some of them will. Those things are real noisy. You want to live near a helicopter landing pad (ask the folks in James Bay, Victoria, BC, who live near the Canadian Coast Guard's helicopter pad).

It would be interesting to come back in fifty years if this went big. I suppose the result would be a mix of the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong and Hashima Island.

There is a nice overview, along with other abandoned places, here:

http://www.dirjournal.com/info/abandoned-places-in-the-world/

There are big differences. Both are on land, and both had strong economic reasons for existing. Kowloon Walled City filled gap left by international relations and was, for a good time, a functioning society and economic entity. Hashima is a tiny island that has coal and it functioned as long as the need for coal justified the maintenance of the society to mine it.

A libertarian platform stobbed into an ocean far from national boundaries has few economic or political reasons to exist and it would be primarily driven by ideology and a series of tragically misapprehended understandings of how societies function.

That said there is a lot of randomness and haunting beauty in the pictures from the walled city and Hashima Island and it would be interesting to see what the remains of a Libertarian paradise might look like.

This is the contrast that amuses me the most

seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties

looser building codes

'cause looser building codes are exactly what you want when your very existence depends on solid construction, right?

This is all assuming that more than a fraction of the citizens actually live there. I'm going with the tax dodge angle, with timeshares and PO boxes for the majority of the "residents".

I imagine it'll look more like this after awhile.

http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/battleship-island-japans-rotting-met…

Jules Verne already described what's going to happen.

Art:

...a series of tragically misapprehended understandings of how societies function.

That is perhaps the best phrase I've seen to describe this sort of nonsense.

It's amazing how one can take basic and very sensible libertarian principles like, "People behave according to incentives," and, "Free markets usually produce better results than planned ones," to such an extreme that you end up crackpot proposals like this. It's almost as though these people have never actually seen a society operating.

Mike:

Then look at the park in the front left corner. Will dogs be allowed in it? Will owners have to clean up after the dogs? Will dogs be kept on leashes?

This is a Libertarian paradise. This won't be a public park. It will be privately owned and the owner will set those rules in order to maximize his profit by attracting the most customers.

Somewhere down the line, he'll probably figure out that running a grassy park is a ridiculously inefficient and unprofitable use of precious square footage on a floating platform and shut it down in favor of other more sensible uses. So you see, the park won't be a major issue.

Let them do it. Also send some cameras and broadcast their idilic life, and we'll have a terrific new reality show to have fun at, much much better than any Big Brother season.

Lenny Bruce dealt with this 50 years ago in his "How the Law Got Started" bit, AKA, "Eat, Sleep and Crap." There's a transcript of part of it here: http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=24181

I would say tax dodge, but I think there are already lots of those that are much easier to do. This is a fantasy land for the "persecuted".
I think they should all go to Mexico and see how awesome it is to live without building codes and such rules. I love Mexico, and lived in Baja for years, but even in the best neighborhoods, buildings were sketchily built. And you can forget about reliable water and power. Oh, and no minimum wage! great for greedy foreigners, but awful for a nation. I almost forgot about being able to dump hazardous waster wherever you want, or put sewage int he streets or ocean- OH THE FREEDOM!

Don't they realize how dependent they would be on the rest of the world? Or do they think everyones going to play by their rules, and bring them food and such as they want it? What happens when they are invaded by some motivated thieves? I hope they don't expect our military to help them out. Talk about clueless when it comes to how society functions.

Is it wrong to hope for a massive wave or typhoon??????

( Sorry about the typos above comment. Should've previewed......)

Yeah, all people are born equal, but some are more equal than others.

Should be fun!

I don't see any wind turbines or solar panels, and you can bet there wouldn't be any because, y'know, libertarians hate the environment. So since they're far enough out to sea to be in international waters, we're talking about continuous docking of oil tankers.

Interesting to see a complete lack of any of the infrastructure required for this.

Interesting also to wonder just how many rich people are lining up to pay for the privilege of living in an oil refinery with all its attendant grime, hazards, and stinks. The "Jersey Shore" jokes were more on-point than most people probably realized.....

storage space for a few weeks' worth of supplies won't be a huge problem. aircraft carriers go to sea for longer periods of time between (at-sea) resupplies than that, with thousands of people aboard. granted that the Galt-wannabes wouldn't want to be crammed in like navy sailors, they'd also have more physical space than even a Nimitz class allows.

the huge problem will come in the impressive governmental infrastructure and support they'll need. think about their fire department, alone. most merchant navy sailors are trained in firefighting, because if a fire breaks out at sea, there's noone else to put it out. i'm assuming oil-rig workers probably are similarly trained, for all the obvious reasons. will these gazillionaires put up with regular hose-pulling practice and training? would they do any good in a real situation even if they did so train?

Don't build it like those pictures, 1st of all. 2nd, don't skimp on materials, make sound-proof walls and that's half the battle right there. In smaller communities people know their neighbors and aren't as careless and selfish as they've become today. It would be unthinkable to allow your dog to bark 24/7 if you knew all your neighbors would come to your door and MAKE you take responsibility. It's all about people willing to be responsible adults. If that's the criteria then they will absolutely succeed.

Who's going to clean those pools? And tend to those gardens? And clean those apartments? Oh well, I guess with no laws, indentured servitude can come back into style...

I presume they ARE using their own money. I wish 'em luck. If they fail, as I presume most of the experiments will, perhaps we'll learn how society in general can take those lessons and apply them to our future cities, in particular coastal cities. We certainly could use some creativity when it comes to urban planning as it is practiced now. Cheers.

Libertarianism is not against rules or laws per se, just government-supported initiation of the use of force. Saying that things remain to be resolved is kind of like creationists pointing out unsolved problems in evolution. Sure, there is a lot left to be done in terms of the exact relationship between many taxa, but that is hardly a threat to conclusions like common descent.

A voluntary system of rules (such as free market contracts) can be accepted without issue under libertarianism. Here is how it could play itself out on such a libertarian island: if you want to live there, you voluntarily sign a contract with the owner saying you will abide to the rules and if you do not you accept that you will be kicked out. Notice how getting kicked out after breaking the rules is is not the initiation of force, but merely a form of self-defense. Presumably, the island will try to be self-reliant as much as possible and kinks will be attempted to be settled by negotiations and rational discussion.

Now, I fully admit that this system might have horrible end-results. I fully admit that libertarianism may be seriously flawed. However, using the rhetorical one-liner "who will decide the housing rules?" like it is a strong case against this libertarian project is a poor argument and has about the same low level of persuasiveness as "what use is half a wing?".

kinks will be attempted to be settled by negotiations and rational discussion.

The likelihood of that happening with a bunch of sociopathic ideologues is somewhere between slim and none.

If the owner sets the rules then what you have is simply a dictatorship.

Notice how getting kicked out after breaking the rules is is not the initiation of force, but merely a form of self-defense.

This would be initiation of of force by the owner who is the de-facto government. Also who decides when the rules have been broken?

Like in the middle of the ocean, on a structure with loose building codes? What could possibly go wrong?

Emil k -

So, basically, I'd assume that there would be some sort of 'holding company', in which everyone had a share, that had responsibility for the day to day upkeep of the infrastructure, setting the various rules, making sure that contracts are adhered to and, I presume, mediating in disputes.

Sounds a lot like a government to me, but there you go.

Interestingly, if someone 'breaks their contract' by stealing from their neighbors (and getting the proceeds off-island), is the only sanction eviction?

It's not a tax dodge, it's a flat-out scam. Nobody is putting up anything like the money needed to actually build anything - just enough to keep the Seasteading Institute ticking over (on unpaid labour), so Thiel and his buddies get to play dress-up and hold important-sounding conferences in expensive locations. That is all.

Shame, really... The potential for comedy is practically unlimited.

Libertarianism is not against rules or laws per se, just government-supported initiation of the use of force.

As a matter of fact, libertarianism is certainly against irrational laws which cannot be substantiated on the basis of Reason. Libertarianism is certainly against many laws which are meant to act violent against victims of victimless crimes. Libertarianism has a rational idea of legality or illegality and a libertarian suggests rational concept about laws, laws should be morally/rationally sound and they should not be based on emotional outbursts.

I tried to make a debate about such emotionally supported by rationally challenged laws Logic of Legal or Illegal

Removing Urban Highways: Thank the Big Dig

mikethemadbiologist — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 08:09:05 +0000

Removing Urban Highways: Thank the Big Dig

Over the past couple of months, there has been a spate of articles celebrating cities that are getting rid of their urban highways. The Christian Science Monitor had an article discussing New Haven's urban reclamation efforts. NPR reported the following:

How did this happen? After all, this is the country that always saw roads as a sign of progress.

Now, taking down freeways has gone mainstream. Cities as diverse as New Haven, New Orleans and Seattle are either doing it or talking about it. The chief motivation seems to be money...

This is the city planner's dream: Take out an underused freeway, open up land for new businesses or parks and magically more workers will move back to the city and property values will soar. So far, though, the results have been mixed.

Milwaukee hasn't seen as much development as proponents hoped after that city took down a spur of the Park East Freeway. But San Francisco revitalized an entire neighborhood by taking down the Embarcadero Freeway in the early 1990s.

The NPR story concludes by using the hypothetical example of a highway that wasn't built through New York City's SoHo. And Grist gets in on the act by finding inspiration for Cascadia via Seoul.

Can anyone tell me what shining example of urban reclamation and renewal hasn't been raised? What city has gone unmentioned? Can ya?

Boston.

Remember the Big Dig? It was always viewed as a hideously expensive boondoggle (even as 75% of the costs were born by Massachusetts), but, in reality, it truly helped revitalize the southern part of Downtown Crossing, the North End, and the Waterfront. Without it, Boston would be a lot worse off (if it helps, think of the Big Dig as a massive clawback for all of the subsidies, such as the mortgage interest housing deduction, that have essentially subsidized suburbs at the expense of cities*). After all, it happened in the 'corrupt'** Northeast in an urban area during a time when cities were not popular among the chatterati. It therefore symbolizes 'corruption' as opposed to a staggeringly successful urban policy.

Thanks to this unstoppable narrative, the Big Dig, which I would argue is the singular example of urban renewal through highway removal, appears to have disappeared down the memory hole.

Oh well, as long as we're getting good policy....

*Most people in cities rent, whereas most suburbanites own. Rent, beyond a trivial amount in the MA tax code (~$20 per year), is not tax deductible, whereas mortgages are.

**Having living for much of my life in Virgina, it's every bit as corrupt as the Northeast.

mikethemadbiologist Sun, 04/17/2011 - 04:09

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Some Thoughts About the WWF Energy Study, Nuclear Power, and Urbanization

mikethemadbiologist — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:55:26 +0000

Some Thoughts About the WWF Energy Study, Nuclear Power, and Urbanization

By way of Digby, we come across this proposal of how to reach 95% percent renewable energy by 2050. Before I get to some of the issue I have with the study (which is actually pretty good), I want to lay out my general views on energy use.

First, I'm not a 'fan' of nuclear power. While thorium-powered reactors would be a vast improvement over traditional reactors (and newer designs regardless of energy source would fail much more safely compared to older ones), even thorium isn't perfect. But what's really stupid are all of the calls for immediately stopping the use of nuclear power. (And, please, the 'well just shut down this one--which happens to be near me' argument doesn't work; every reactor is near somebody, including the Mad Biologist). Currently, the U.S. generates twenty percent of its electrical needs with nuclear power (pdf). If we take those reactors offline, we have to increase the amount of electricity generated using CO₂-emitting sources by 25 percent. And for those who argue renewable energy will fill the gap, it won't happen overnight--and meanwhile we're increasing carbon dioxide emissions. From a public health perspective, worldwide, fine particle pollution kills over one million people per year, and thirty percent of that pollution comes from electrical power generation. We'll only make that problem worse too.

Since most of our 'renewable' energy currently comes from hydroelectric power--damming rivers--we will have to massively increase our solar, wind and tidal generation capacity. Even if we regain that lost twenty percent capacity, we still haven't taken a single coal-burning plant offline. If anything, we should shut down nuclear power last. I don't like this situation, but I think it's the least worst option.

Having said that, I don't see any other alternative, but to move towards renewable energy. Even if we can only get to fifty or sixty percent renewable energy, that's a marked improvement, and one we desperately need.

Ok, onto the World Wildlife Federation Study (pdf).

Overall, it seems technologically feasible, for the most part. There don't seem to be many 'magic asterisks.' The only magic asterisk is algal biofuel production. That is just supposed to magical account for ~5% of power production, even though we really have no idea if it will work (and in the technical part of the report, the authors admit as much). But still 90-95% renewable energy still seems pretty good. As with all estimates, the report is based on future assumptions, but, from a technical standpoint, nothing leapt out at me as ludicrous, or simply not adding up (and, of course, the assumptions could be wrong in our favor too).

The real problems appear to be political in nature. First, a minor point. The report is called a path to 100% renewable energy. It's not: by 2050, according to the report itself, 95% of energy production could be renewable. While that sounds like nitpicking, anyone involved in the intersection of science and public policy knows that opponents of these proposals will jump all over that difference in an attempt to cast doubt. The report does itself no favors by overstating the proposals (that said, 95% would still be amazing).

But the major problem with the report is how green housing is portrayed (e.g., p. 220). First, the current rate of retrofitting existing housing would have to increase three to six-fold. Not impossible, but much more than we're doing now. The report also assumes that, as a result of retrofitting, heat consumption will drop eighty percent and the rest will be made up with solar or geothermal power. Kinda iffy, considering most current greening initiatives don't come close to eighty percent. And, as the report notes, there is a principal agent problem:

The principal agent problem, or 'landlord-tenant-problem' refers to the situation where the principal decision-maker for an investment is not the person which would benefit from the investment. This can lead to barriers to cost-effective investments being made. A classic example are energy-efficiency measures in buildings which are not owned by their occupiers: the investment has to be made by the owner, but the reduced energy bills are beneficial to the tenant.

But the most difficult problem--and one I dealt with here--is the policy objective of reducing energy use in transportation, with the following examples (p. 221; italics mine):

â¢ Policies delivering high-quality public transport at competitive prices
â¢ Dis-incentivising car use and incentivising other modes, e.g. congestion charging, public cycle hire schemes
â¢ Sustainable urban / land-use planning to sustain local and / or low-energy transport systems
â¢ High speed railway systems between large city centres to challenge short- and medium distance air travel

Let's just pretend there aren't Republican governors who give away free money for SUPERTRAINS (although some kinda fast trains would be more useful). It's the "sustainable urban/ land-use planning" that's difficult. As I put it:

One of the best ways to reduce the amount of stuff we have to light on fire is to move from single detached housing in areas with no efficient mass transit to apartments with access to mass transit (keep in mind that residential use and transporation account for about two-thirds of total energy consumption). In other words, we have to massively 'desuburbanize' and simultaneously 'reurbanize.'

Just how likely is that? Hell, whenever I write something nice about Boston, I get people showing up and claiming that they couldn't live in the city because those people will rape all their stuff and steal all the women (or is it the other way around? I get confused).

I then listed a bunch of relatively modest things we can do--and I don't think they're very likely to happen. Because this is the U.S. reality:

My impression reading a lot of commentary about renewable energy is that there's this fantasy that we just have to build a bunch of windmills, install some solar panels, buy a Prius, and replace our windows and all will be well. But the brutal reality is that we need to urbanize our suburbs. We need to discourage detached housing. We need to massively fund local mass transit--not just SUPERTRAINS. We can't have people firing up their own personal combustion engine to buy groceries. Most people will not be regularly driving to and from their detached house with a big front lawn and large backyard. This will require the kind of effort only seen with war mobilization--and, these days, we don't even really mobilize most people even as we fight two wars (or three, if we count Libya).

I understand why the report downplays this: across the board, developing countries are actually increasing suburban housing, and de-urbanizing. In the U.S., even though cities are finally gaining population, this simply means that the increase in suburbanization is slowing. (Hooray for the first derivative!) Urbanization policies would be immensely unpopular, and meet widespread resistance (although some suburbanites would support urbanization if they could afford it).

Politically, I'm not sure how we fix that, but we need a strong dose of realism here: until we confront how deurbanization has contributed to our rampant energy needs, we won't substantially tackle the global warming problem.

mikethemadbiologist Tue, 03/22/2011 - 04:55

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Ah, but we can do 100% by 2050. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110126091443.htm

As the authors of this study state, it's more a problem of intent than ability. If economics were using long-term and cost-internalized standards, as they should, I have no little doubt the renewables would be far cheaper than coal, gas, oil, and nukes. Even if we just took their subsidies and used it to build renewable generation and infrastructure, the fossil and nuke economies would start to crumble. And that, I think, is the single reason that this hasn't happened.

More pipe dreams of those who don't like suburbs. In a book on the electrification of the US, it talks about how the invention of the electric streetcar resulted in cities getting larger in area as the middle class could move out into surrounding land. The same theme occurs in City of the Century, a story of Chicago. There the railroads did some of the work as well. In both cases the desire for single family homes predates the introduction of the auto. Actually for its time we had quite a good high speed rail network in 1910 in the Northeast and Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Southern Mi, called the interurbans. But they did not survive the convenience of the car.
So the desire for the house and lot predates the auto the auto just enabled more to realize the dream. But of course the dictators of the wise don't want to realize history because it does not fit their view of the world.

Part of the objection to apartments is simply the lack of personal freedom and uncertainty. I can't improve my insulation, I can't install solar power, I can't paint the outside, I can't buy new/improved appliances, I can't change the wiring to suit my needs, I can't knock down obstructing walls or remodel. More importantly, I can't be sure I won't have to move any given year, which means I can't do things like put in permanent gardens, greenhouses, etc. because I'd have to leave them behind. Even if I own a condo, I still don't have 100% freedom with the yard etc. because of other tenants.

As I pointed out before, Providence shows that you can have single-family homes with yards etc. within the city and conveniently close to bus lines, eliminating most of the issues with suburbs but allowing you to own a home.

Given how it's obviously hard to sell people on "apartments for all!", maybe focus on easier plans that have similar impact, like expanded bus lines, more frequent buses, and tax incentives for both homeowners and landlords to green up the homes.

Honestly, your apartment-advocacy seems like me and advocating childfree living on environmental grounds - while our respective choices clearly have positive environmental effects, they're also counter to the strongly-held desires (rational or not) of so much of the populace that they're unlikely to ever become a major component of the move towards lower impact (or won't until long after other factors have dealt with the problem).

Urban Vertical Farming: Maybe in Detroit?

mikethemadbiologist — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:10:19 +0000

Urban Vertical Farming: Maybe in Detroit?

We come across this very depressing article about how Detroit is becoming 'unsettled', in that it is suffering from a massive population decrease, leading to some unprecedented solutions:

But a new momentum has taken hold here that embraces just that: shrinking the city in order to save it.

"There's nothing you can do with a lot of the buildings now but do away with them," said Mae Reeder, a homeowner of 35 years on the southeast side, where her bungalow is surrounded by blocks that are being reclaimed by nature, complete with pheasants nesting in vacant spaces where people once lived.

The residential vacancy rate in Detroit is 27.8 percent. This is up from the 10.3 percent rate found in 2000 by the United States census.

One of the problems with the 'unsettling' (or is it 'desettling') approach is that urban areas have massive amounts of 'hard' infrastructure: asphalt, concrete, sewer pipes, water mains, electrical wiring, and so on. Unlike farms from a couple of hundred years ago, which were basically wood structures with some stone, modern settlements--that is, cities--have all sorts of stuff that just doesn't rot very well (and can even be toxic when it does so).

But I think there's an opportunity here: why not convert the 'unsettled' parts of Detroit to vertical farms? These are essentially multi-story hydroponic farms (and China has adapted the concept to combine farming with apartment buildings).

One knock against vertical farming is that many urban areas don't have space for it: would anyone knock down parts of Manhattan or Paris to build farms? From an economic perspective, it's probably not practical. But some cities, like Detroit, have large areas that aren't being used: former industrial areas, or neighborhoods in decline. These areas already have much of the infrastructure needed for vertical farming--there's no need to build high-volume water mains or waste disposal systems as there might be in suburban or rural areas which typically don't (and can't) cope with that much infrastructure burden.

So, is this totally crazy, or could this be a partial solution towards revitalizing some of our down-on-their-luck urban areas?

mikethemadbiologist Thu, 06/24/2010 - 04:10

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agriculture

urban planning

Detroit can ill-afford to establish a hydroponic farming infrastructure. Such systems, especially in such a destitute city would be impossible. They are extremely high cost in terms of infrastructure and maintenance, there is probably no one in the area with the appropriate skill sets, and water is no longer the free commodity people often think of it as.

Regarding the water, these systems use partially cleaned 'gray water', not clean water, which most cities have in abundance.

i was about to mention that the water infrastructure is already in place, as Mike pointed out, negating that part of Thomas' objection --- but gray water infrastructure is definitely not in place in Detroit. probably not anywhere in Michigan; water conservation and reuse is not on many people's agendas here.

it's a neat idea, but probably financially unfeasible in a city that hosts things like this and this. if the buildings themselves can't be kept up, what hope of converting them to farms? it's not like even hydroponic farms produce anything highly-valued. highly needed, yes, but who ever got rich off farming?

I love this idea. From what I've read, it seems like it's possible to build vertical farms to be fairly energy- and water-efficient. Plus, growing the food close to where lots of food consumers lives saves on transportation resources.

Pilot testing something like this in Detroit makes sense because the space is cheaper. If it would supply jobs in an economically depressed area while testing out an environmental solution, foundations might be willing to fund it.

In regards to discounting the infrastructure, there is also the issue of building proper units that are able to perform hydroponic farming adequately. I suppose you can refer to it more as a "capital expense" as opposed to infrastructure, but it's definitely not an insignificant sum (and who is going to foot the bill?). Greenhouses are not a cheap expense by any stretch of the imagination. Plus ... it's Detroit. Your energy expenditures are going to go through the roof come winter.

While it'd be nice to find something useful for Detroit (aside from the auto industry), I doubt hydroponic agriculture is going to be the city's savior.

You can do this, but I'm not convinced that vertical farming is actually more cost and energy and resource effective than simply removing buildings and allowing the prairies to come back - if you haven't been to Detroit lately, you'll be stunned by the degree to which the prairies are coming back anyway. The same infrastructure that already exists can be partly demolished and partly used.

The high cost of converting aging and decaying structures to vertical farming suggests to me that this is a more complex strategy than is really needed in Detroit - it might make sense to do this in some of the sprawl cities instead, or to convert underused urban office space in dense cities that overbuilt for example, but rather than create complex, self contained systems, Detroit residents can actually use the complex self-contained system nature provides, with some comparatively low input retrofits, mostly involving bulldozers.

Sharon

Detroit, for obvious reasons, was developed based on the auto as the primary transportation tool. The result was sprawl beyond description. Much of the sprawl went undeveloped so the city is covered with unimproved land, interlaced into the built infrastructure. A recipe for failure with a golden opportunity hidden inside. Detroit is probably one of the few cities in the US with the current means to actually feed its entire population.

You don't want towers, you want neighborhood gardens. Towers isolate the citizen from the process. If you opt for organic the cities waste stream can be mined for its recycled organic fraction for fertilization which provides the added benefit of water efficiency (compost is hydroscopic and can hold 4.5 times its own weight in water).

In the right hands (probably the citizens) it could serve as a testing ground for all US cities to learn what's involved in feeding their poulations..

if you haven't been to Detroit lately, you'll be stunned by the degree to which the prairies are coming back anyway.

maybe, but they really shouldn't be. Michigan is too far east to be naturally prairie; the state was deciduous forest before people started changing the landscape.

Detroit's growing season is about 4 months, and that's in an "average" year. Even large industrial farms can't easily break even with that growing season using standard farming. The expenses associated with vertical farming would make it tough to break even in the south with a 7-month growing season. It's just not feasible in Michigan.

Rich's suggestion that you'd be better off with neighborhood gardens is pretty scary when you're talking about an industrial town like Detroit. I live in a smallish town (pop. 12,000) that has not had any major industrial involvement, and yet, it has proven virtually impossible to find a "clean" patch in town for a neighborhood garden. Pretty much any community that was occupied for most of the last century has very polluted soil. I suspect Detroit is particularly contaminated.

I love the idea of vertical gardening, but anyone who undertakes it will do so because they like the aesthetics or the feel-good aspects. It's not something that will be profitable (or even cost-offsetting) for years to come, if ever.

i think this an unusually good idea the problem seems to be funds. i am a college student in Detroit an i have been interested in getting involved in an idea like this but i wonder who would want to invest in this idea though?

I too am a college student who just finished a research report on vertical farming. I think this is a revolutionary idea, and the implementation should take place sooner rather than later. I recognize there is a high cost associated with vertical farming, but the long-term environmental and economic benefits significantly outweigh the cost. The only reason people are scared of the cost is because they do not know if vertical farms will succeed or not. Professor Dickson Despommier, the brain behind the concept, estimates that a modest vertical farm would cost 20-30 million to build. If you think about it, that is not an entirely outrageous price for such a project. The New Yankee Stadium cost roughly 1.3 billion to build, and it doesn't even get used every day! Many buildings cost millions and billions of dollars, and we don't even blink an eye. Besides, I highly doubt vertical farm projects are going to ask any of us to pay for it, most likely, the money will come from private investors, so why do we care what it costs? If Sting wants to put some cash down into vertical farming, let him! If I had a million dollars to spare, I would definitely invest in vertical farming. There is no doubt that the world population is going to increase by at least 3 billion people in the next 40 years, and vertical farming could be the single most important invention of this century. 40 years is not far away, we will still be alive and so will our children. Running out of arable land, and natural resources such as water, are not problems that we can ignore, and dump on future generations. Vertical farming will use solar and wind technology for energy, hydroponics and aquaponics for cultivation, among other technologies that will lessen the agricultural and human impact on this planet. People told Bill Gates his idea would never work, McDonalds was also told they would never succeed, and just 15 years ago people thought the internet and cell phones were just fancy toys, and would never take off. I hope that 15 more years down the road, people who thought vertical farms would never succeed are eating a salad, harvested from a vertical farm.

The idea is great and future of farming. In crowded cities, of course, it may be difficult to find space for VFs. But when malls can come in crowded cities why not VFs? Depending upon the need of the time and those who have the resources and knowhow to set up, VFs are going to come and shall become popular.

Taxpayers could partially fund vertical farms. Why would it all have to be on the backs of private investors? Food is just as much a necessity as water.

An Island in the Middle of the Charles River?

mikethemadbiologist — Mon, 24 May 2010 07:54:16 +0000

An Island in the Middle of the Charles River?

(Click to embiggen)

Don't worry, I'm not describing Boston Mayor Menino's latest harebrained scheme. Esplanade Magazine, which is some great architecture/real estate porn (and it's free!), describes an effort in 1907, during the heyday of the City Beautiful Movement, to build an island in the Charles River. It didn't happen due to opposition from Beacon Hill residents (naturally...) who opposed what would have been called St. Botolph's* island. But imagine if the island had been built (from Esplanade Magazine):

It's May, almost time for Commencement, and you are sunning yourself at the BU Beach--that grassy knoll that looks out over Storrow Drive. You decide to get up and leisurely cross the pedestrian footbridge over Storrow and walk down the Esplanade. As you reach the river, sparkling in the warm sunlight of late Spring, you see the BU DeWolfe Boathouse, with its beautiful turquoise copper roof and Naples yellow clapboards siding.
Bust as you turn to gaze downriver, you don't see the dome at MIT, or the span of the Mass Ave. Bridge. You can't see the Zakim Bridge either. Instead, an island looms in the middle of the river--an island that contains a Gothic cathedral and a large civic plaza.

As you face downriver towards the Cambridge side, the buildings on St. Botolph's Island (now known simply as "the Island") take up most of the view. The gothic spires of St. Paul's Cathedral, now over 90 years old, cast a shadow on the Charles. You can seee rowers emerging from the narrow channels between the Island and Cambridge on the other. You idly wonder whether you should wander over to the Island to buy some ice cream...

Both Boston and Cambridge would be very different. The real estate 'center of gravity' could have shifted from Beacon Hill, had the plans to include residential housing been enacted (the other option was to have a lot of parks, government buildings and museums). Cambridge might have been less of a biotech hub--or the hub would have shifted northward: much of Cambridge which is now occupied by tech startups and MIT expansion probably wouldn't have been left as derelict, given the proximity to the island.

In terms of aesthetics, I like the open river (and the fireworks would probably move to Allston), but, of course, maybe, in an alternative timeline, if someone were to blog about Boston's missing island, that would seem weird too.

*St. Botolph lived in the English city of Boston, and, consequently, more than a few churches, streets, and so on in Boston are named after him.

mikethemadbiologist Mon, 05/24/2010 - 03:54

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Architecture

Boston

urban planning

Boston itself is named after St. Botolph... Boston= St. Botolph's Town... Bo's Town... Boston.

Both Boston and Cambridge would be very different.

I dunno. You would think that Roosevelt Island (in the East River between Manhattan and Queens) would be a great real estate success but the fact is that it's always been difficult to get development going there. St. B's Island might have met the same fate. (Though perhaps the footbridges would have made a difference -- you can't access Roosevelt Island quite that conveniently.)

Well, Boston itself is named after St. Botolph, too, or at least so goes the supposed etymology. It's allegedly a contraction of "Botolph's town".

Anyway, as someone who's been taking advantage of Community Boating, at the base of the Longfellow Bridge, since last summer, I'm fairly glad that the Island never did get built. I think I prefer the unbroken stretch of river as it is. ;)

Apart from that bit of selfishness, though, it's a very cool plan. I like the way it ties Boston and Cambridge together a lot more.

Think about this: a smaller, narrower version of the island shown above. It would connect Cambridge to Boston by footbridges. Cafes along a promenade, and a tower you could climb for a view. Keep the building low except for the narrow tower, and no one's view would be damaged.

Now think about this - Boston can't keep the crackheads on the Common down to a dull roar, so what's the sense. Look at the Greenway - it looks like a single golf hole in the middle of the city. There was a time when this could have been done. That time has passed.

The tidal dam at the Museum of Science needs to be ripped out so the lower Charles can revert to its natural state as a tidal estuary. Even my 12 year nephew can figure that out. The Charles River is the only large river left in New England which still has a dam at or below the head of tide. Why? Because Boston is stupid. I have never seen a city so full of Ph.Ds but so bereft of awareness of their own backyard. As a native of Massachusetts (Brockton), it is pathetic and embarrassing. The Charles River should be the cleanest river in the U.S. Instead it is still the filthiest. Not cool.

Without that dam at the mouth of the Charles R., this proposed island would be underwater in major storms like the blizzard of '78. I believe the Esplanade and parts of Back Bay were inundated in hurricanes of mid-50's.

Transportation: The Hidden Cost of Housing

mikethemadbiologist — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:17:48 +0000

Transportation: The Hidden Cost of Housing

The Washington Post covered an interesting study by the Chicago-based nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology. Basically, to determine the cost of housing, the authors included the costs of transportation along with the cost of housing. Some findings:

...the combined cost of a home that requires a longer commute by car might exceed that of a more expensive home within walking distance of transit.

"The farther you get out, the cost of transportation can double," said Scott Bernstein, president of CNT. "Somewhere between eight and 12 miles out from the center . . . housing costs dropped precipitously, but transportation costs went way up."

Larger urban areas such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco, with more established transit options, fared better than smaller cities where the car is still king. Even Los Angeles, the epitome of urban sprawl, ranked as more affordable than Knoxville, Tenn., Terre Haute, Ind., or Laredo, Tex.
A neighborhood was rated as affordable if the combined cost of housing and transportation was below 45 percent of income. Of 3,012 census blocks in the Washington region, which contains several of the highest-income counties in the country, 2,158 blocks were ranked as affordable.

Just to give you an idea of the tremendous costs of transportation, consider this assessment of the DC suburbs:

Washington regional numbers indicate 26.03 percent of household income goes to housing costs. But add in transportation and the number soars to 43.55 percent.

A home in Loudoun County eats up an average 28.72 percent of household income with transportation raising that to 55.87 percent. Montgomery County housing came in at 26.57 percent but rises to 45.91 percent with transportation costs added in. A home in Fairfax County soaks up 30.63 percent of household income but 49 percent with transportation costs tacked on.

In the Boston area, here's what affordability looks like, once transportation is factored in:

Yellow regions have a cost of housing less than 45% of income; blue regions have a cost housing greater than 45% of income

Even though I ~~want to deport everyone to urban hellholes~~ think urbanization is a good thing, I didn't think that Boston (or Cambridge) would be so affordable after adding in transportation, until I thought of my own experience. When I had a car in Boston, between parking, servicing, taxes, insurance, and driving, it probably cost me six to seven dollars per year. If I actually did more driving (as I did when I lived in Long Island), the total figure would increase a couple thousand dollars more per year. So while I pay more for housing (~30%), my transportation costs are less than one percent of my income.

In fairness, there is an income selection going on here: parts of cities are often not cheap (i.e., Back Bay is expensive), but, still, having to fork over an additional 20-25% of income for transportation is actually quite expensive (the linked website is pretty cool, and you can extrapolate this). I wonder if this is where some of the anti-tax anger is coming from--there is essentially an outer suburb and exurb 'tax' in the form of high transportation costs. This 'transportation tax' is actually higher than many households' income taxes (and in many cases, income and payroll taxes).

mikethemadbiologist Tue, 03/30/2010 - 04:17

Tags

taxes

Transportation

urban planning

After choosing an apartment not too far from work (7 miles) in montgomery county maryland, my rent is about 50% of my take home pay and transportation is 3% (2 tanks of gas woot).

I've been exploiting this for years - because I'm 30 minutes walk and 5 minutes bus ride from lab, I can afford an apartment approximately 40% the size of my adviser's house (and can afford to keep it heated for my tropical reptiles).

Unfortunately, I probably couldn't do it somewhere like Boston or DC, since I need a yard for the dog. Plus, being far away from cities and suburbs has benefits, mostly in terms of freedom to keep the various dangerous/deadly things I consider "pets".

Running you a car cost you six to seven dollars per year? I could do with a car like that! ;-)

(But yeah; I live in the UK, and the same is often true here, although our mass transit systems tend to be better, which helps a bit.)

Those of us who reside in midwestern college towns/small cities really have it made. Where else can you have a comfortably large home on a large lot (1 acre +) and be just an 18 min walking commute from you office? I once calculated that a 35% increase in my salary being offered at Rutgers would just about allow me to break even in terms of housing and travel costs.

Can I just say that I get really annoyed at referring to every sort of expense or cost as a tax? It's not a tax. Yes, transportation costs money. The more you need it, the more you pay. But to say it's a tax suggests that buying gasoline is the same as paying state taxes that subsidize public transit. But it's not--your car consumes the gas you buy, and the cost is in proportion to the amount you use. You choose how much you are willing to pay for. Whereas your tax payments do no depend on your particular usage of the public transit system. You do not choose how much you are willing to pay for.

The cost analysis doesn't really apply to the working poor, who may not be able to afford close-in housing or a car. They depend almost entirely on mass transit to get to work. The Atlanta region has a pretty poor mass transit system. One of the suburban counties is actually abandoning their transit service this week because of lack of funds (Everybody cheer for tax cuts! Yay!) leaving a large part of the working poor with no good way to get to work.

For those who can afford to consider the two alternatives, the other cost of commuting in cities like Atlanta (not to mention LA) is the hell of commuting itself. If you value your time, that cost alone is staggering.

Those little yellow splotches, they're MBTA light rail stations.

Actually, you do choose how much tax you pay. If you take advantage of our government's economy, for example, you insist on being paid in government issued money, then you can take a lower paying job and pay less, just as you can take a higher paying job and pay more. Similarly, if you want a place to live in a house on land defended and regulated by the government, you can live in a more expensive house and pay more, or live in a less expensive house and pay less. It's similar for investments in government chartered collectives. If you pick stocks that go up in value, you pay more, but you can always put in a sell order at a much lower price and pay less.

Most people aren't aware of the government services they use. The government is what keeps the economy moving and pushes towards new technologies and ways of doing things. The government provides a currency, a court system, a police system, an army and so on. How much one pays is a matter of choice. No one makes you take a high paying job or buy a high priced house, at least not in America.

P.S. Try actually looking at a dollar bill. Hint: it's not magic; it's a government document. That's why it has a picture of a government employee on it.

I live in Canberra and ride a 125cc scooter. Spend about $15-20 AUD on petrol a week. Parking is free. The biggest transport cost is keeping the car registered.

Those little yellow splotches, they're MBTA light rail stations.

No, they aren't. Some of them correspond to commuter rail stations (the MBTA commuter rail system is heavy rail, not light rail). However, if you scroll up into New Hampshire, which doesn't have commuter rail service, you can still see splotches of yellow on the housing + transport map. Some of those places have Downeaster and/or local bus service (Portsmouth, Dover, Durham, Newmarket), but others do not (Hampton Beach, Plaistow).

Pet peeve regarding these maps: They show interstate highways (the medium gray lines) but not non-interstate freeways; e.g., I-93 is visible but not Route 3. To a driver who knows the area (that would include commuters), a freeway is a freeway whether it's an interstate or not.

Not completely true, routes 190 and 290 are shown, but it's immaterial to the larger point. It is impractical to get from Worcester (second largest city in NE) to Leominster/Fitchburg (the closest urban hub) except by automobile. Yes, it can be done, but the money spent on the regional freeways might have been better spent on light rail service. Lancaster once had trolleys running to all three cities, and (via Clinton)heavy rail running to Boston, Albany and Nashua/Manchester. Man, I wish we had them now.

Welcome to Ayn Rand America and Suburban Decay: The Colorado Springs Edition

mikethemadbiologist — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:09:03 +0000

Welcome to Ayn Rand America and Suburban Decay: The Colorado Springs Edition

I guess this is what a libertarian paradise looks like:

COLORADO SPRINGS -- This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops -- dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

I don't know who wants to live like this. Of course, if you're well-heeled, these sort of problems might seem perplexing (italics mine):

Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.

Businessman Fowler, saying he is now speaking for the task force Bartolin supports, said the city should study the Broadmoor's use of seasonal employees and realistic manager pay.

Because $24,000 for a family is a whole whopping 33% more than the poverty threshold. And the slackers should be thankful for that! Seriously, there are two types of conservatives: millionaires and suckers. But Colorado Springs does have a lot of suckers--it's home to Focus on the Family...

On a less snarky note, do you think this is a temporary setback, or is this the beginning of a trend of suburban decay? Because this is exactly what happened when cities became defunded. Public spaces degraded and became uninviting, which led to crime in those areas, followed by lowered property values (and tax base) and flight. Despite what some might think, I actually don't want suburbs to decay (just pay their fair share); in fact, the subsidies to state and local governments, which I called for two years ago, would help places like Colorado Springs.

Will have to look into data further....

mikethemadbiologist Wed, 02/10/2010 - 11:09

Tags

Conservatives

taxes

urban planning

for people in this country to live within their means (including general means like energy and materials consumption), they will need to accept decrements in standard of living and decrements in compensation for their labor. government's only option is to tax the rich more heavily and distribute this as public services to make up for the gap between actual and desired living standards for the masses. the point of compensation is where the masses have found a newer, lower equilibrium, and the rich have become less topheavy.

but first, the masses have to notice the gap, and to do that we have to *undershoot* the new equilibrium. people (read: the people with political effect, the suburban class) will only start to soak the rich when they see an appreciable decrement in their standard of living, and that's not happening yet. if there's somewhere else you can move, if there's another suburbia which isn't yet a wasteland that's still accepting tenants, it's like a pressure release valve, which further delays perception of the decrement.

solution: on with the libertarian paradise! let everyone see what it's like when they personally contract out all government services. let everyone jump into that dark pit, and watch them all start scrambling for the light! it's another version of the whole "tear it all down" tradition, but what else can be done? either continue on course and go broke, or sell everything off by choice and start over again.

the simple alternative would be for common people to accept what the informed "elites" have been telling them for decades: tax the rich, build social services, cut militarism. but so long as those elites are sufficiently villainized by the rich and the fanatical libertarians, they will not be accepted popularly except in times when it appears that the bottom is actually going to drop out of things - e.g. ca. October 2008. when some meager recovery or stabilization takes place, everyone promptly forgets what they were thinking all along...

Let us see how this minimal government experience will work out...

A slightly silly premise for a blog, based on the quoted article.

Read the linked article, how about?

The city of Colorado Springs is in trouble because of overpaid city workers and a massive pension fund which is burning through the city's budget. The residents refused the tax increase not because they disliked the services or even the taxes, but because of a lack of confidence that the city would spend the money on those services.

How about touching on that that - the point of the tax protest isn't about being taxed unfairly but about the waste in the current situation of the taxpayer's money, and why in hell should they not demand that their money be spent wisely? Colorado Springs looks like they're wasting a whole lot of money if they're really paying city workers on average $89k. I mean what are all these city employees, lawyers and accountants? Last time I checked that was a fair salary for a manager at an IT company in Silicon Valley, much less a city worker in Colorado Springs...

Of course, the relevant measure in talking about salaries and income is the median, not the average.

The mayor and city council is a part-time job that earns $6,000 a year?!?!

They get what they pay for!

"The residents refused the tax increase not because they disliked the services or even the taxes, but because of a lack of confidence"

ORLY?

Hmm. Let's read that article:

"Fowler and many other residents say voters don't trust city government to wisely spend"

Fowler? Who's Fowler?

""I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day.""

LOL! And Triple LOL! A "businessman"? Someone leading a city budget financing taskforce is not simply a businessman, or a resident - he's a politician. Yet another rich right-wing elite sapping wealth from the public sphere and spouting fake populism.

Let's continue:

"Community business leaders have jumped into the budget debate, some questioning city spending on what they see as "Ferrari"-level benefits for employees and high salaries in middle management."

Need I say more? "Community business leaders" again.

"Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each."

Jesus. A man running a luxury resort is complaining about public service salaries (and you just know, dont you, that that number is a mean, not a median). And I'd just had my irony meter fixed ...

Shorter #1: "The worse, the better."

@Siaming that's a big problem at least in Colorado - low salary implies that it's truly a public service being performed. In reality, only the well-healed can afford to run in the first place and live on a paltry salary.

"Pay" includes benefits, and it isn't really moral to cut those for workers who put themselves at risk in the short and long term for their careers.

Colorado Springs is an urb, and "sub" only in terms of community cohesion (I was about to write "spirit", but that word has a different meaning in hotbeds of superstition religiosity).

The (ahem) person paying his serfs $2K/month runs a resort. Has Cullen Tillotson thought through the implications of a municipal government where quality of service depends on the size of the customer's tip?

Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.

That's an interesting comparison. I wonder how many police officers his resort employs. Or how many of the city's firefighters will work for $2.13/hour plus tips.

What a bizarre metric.

You should take some time to read the comments. The "I've got my guns!!! I don't need no gubmint!!" writers are great.

Mike, while I enjoyed the read, we libertarians are for minimum "essential" government -- a fact that is lost on the neo-cons who recently co-opted the tea party movement and call themselves "conservatives." Obviously, we need functions such as law & order and emergencies services as long as the government insists on subsidizing the free market. But I dare say the libertarians are hardly running the show, even in Colorado Springs.

I am not suggesting all city employees be paid $27k per year, or that they be dependent on (and taxed on!) tips to survive. I am suggesting that if the average is $89k, the someone is being wildly overpaid. My father was the city attorney of a medium-sized midwest city; he didn't get paid that much, even when you included all the benefits which were pretty damn good.

@Paul Murray - City businessmen does not automatically mean 'Capitalist pig-dog banker raping the working class for personal benefit'. I also didn't realize the choice was limited to either that or Socialist activists actively working to make the situation worse in order to force implementation of social change, or that the only people involved in municipal politics fit one of those lunatic extremes. Perhaps he is exactly what he says he is - someone concerned about the way his tax dollars are being spent.

How about responsible spending in the first place on truly essential services? How about letting the people decide in this wonderful Republic of ours how they want their communities run, rather than forcing an agenda down their throats they clearly don't want?

Finally, for every local businessman being accused of rapacious capitalist sins, it sounds like you've got 1 or possibly 2 Colorado Springs city employees who are overpaid and with too many benefits bankrupting the city coffers and forcing services to be pared back for lack of funds. How about addressing the real problem, rather than politcal point-scoring at the expense of the citizenry?

You have to be careful in using that $89k figure. That Bartolin guy said that the city spends $89k per employee. In my experience, phrasing that way often means that it includes spending on retirees. During the auto company bailout debate, a figure that was often brought up was how the (formerly) big three had labor costs of around $70 per hour and that the extra expense was for the generous retirement packages the unions got for their members. The labor costs at the U.S. plants of Japanese auto makers in the South were much lower because they were newer and didn't have the same legacy costs of a generation of retired employees.

Basically, we need more information than was in that article to analyze what's going on in Colorado Springs, as Mike pointed out.

I am suggesting that ... it sounds like...

Facts, my man, facts. 'Round here at SciBlogs, we likes us some facts.

As Mike Smith pointed out in # 8, the game was rigged a while back that only the independently wealthy can hold city office in Colorado Springs, so the game was rigged a while ago. Given the usual Republican pattern of crony capitalism, you may even have a point that a few insiders are - like "top executive talent" in the corporate world - wildly overpaid, but I rather doubt that "1 or possibly 2 Colorado Springs city employees who are overpaid" are enough to eviscerate the city budget.

Do you really think the citizens in the wonderful Republic of Holyrado Springs decided they want dark streets, dead grass in the parks, and inadequate police & fire services? They're getting what they, in effect, chose when they supported a local version of Bushonomics, but doesn't it look like they (a) never thought about it, (b) were dumb enough to believe the sort of "it's that irresponsible liberal elite!" jive you're offering, and/or (c) figured they could make up the difference by prayer?

@Pierce R. Butler - I'm going to ignore your snide tone and reply honestly.

First and foremost, no-one has the facts in this case and I certainly don't claim to. We're all going off the same piece of information - a story in the Denver Post which Mike the Mad Biologist uses to posit this situation as the end result of the Libertarian dream. I'm sure you believe that your opinions, by simple virtue of being yours, hold more merit than mine and are factually based; allow me to disagree.

The game wasn't rigged that only the independently wealthy could hold office - that's quite misleading at best if not outright disingenuous. The mayor and city council officers don't need to be full-time employees in order to do their jobs so were only given part-time salaries, thus trying to save the city some money. It's less to do with politics and a whole lot more to do with realistic workload. The advantage of this system is that people don't run for city council as a job-for-life like Congress, instead only running if they actually want to accomplish something and with the full realisation that it's not their day job so you do tend to get slightly more switched-on people who actually want to make a difference. My home town had a similar setup and it didn't do much harm and kept the Council and the Mayor mostly honest.

As for crony capitalism, how do you know the politics of the city council? All we have to go on is the fact that your assumed Republican / Capitalist Rapist are the ones forming the independent budget review board, which would seem to be not part of the city council if they're complaining so mightily that the city is mis-spending taxpayer dollars. Wouldn't that mean that actually the Republicans you clearly despise are actually *out* of power, not in it? How much cronyism do you get from people not actually able to hire or fire, anyways?

Colorado Springs is a small-to-medium town in a Conservative area with a lack of big industry of any description that has long struggled to raise income via taxes. How many overpaid employees at the city level would it take to bankrupt the city budget? 1? 2? 10?

And yes, the people of Colorado Springs didn't want to pay high taxes. But you're condeming them as idiots with no forethought as well as exposing your own religious intolerance when the reality is that they wanted the services but didn't want the overhead which they were being forced to pay. Who can blame them?

This reminds me a lot of the situation here in MI, with our Repub legislature cutting school funding like it's going out of style. Much like this situation, we have business people telling us our taxes are too high, we need to cut spending, etc., when we haven't had a decent tax raising in ages. At some point we're going to be cutting teacher's salaries, which means worse teachers in the schools because no experienced teacher will take our low pay. People like Mr. Tillotson seem to think that private industry is the only source for jobs, and public jobs are just wasteful spending. Well, those city employees were probably people who spent money in the community, helped keep businesses alive with their patronage, and now Capitalist McMoneypants wants to pay them a Bob Cratchit salary, just like we want to do with our teachers. Well I'm no economist, but when less people have money to spend, it seems like businesses are going to go under, no matter how many generous tax breaks we give them. And you know what? I don't begrudge our teachers for their salaries (especially considering how low they are already). They do a valuable job in the community, and frankly I'm willing to pay for it, even if I don't have kids. Just like I want to pay for streetlights on streets I don't live on, cops even though I never call them, firemen even though my house hasn't burned down. It's a matter of good governance, employing people who will spend money, and protecting our citizens from being thrust into a Mad Max-style suburban nightmare (ok, now I want to make a movie about Mad Max in Desperate Housewives land).

@Rob Monkey - I really wish people would stop putting words in my mouth. It's a most disagreeable way to debate.

I never once said that the Public sector jobs are wasteful spending; I simply stated that in a small to mid-sized city in Colorado, an average salary of $89k would indicate to me that some city workers are overpaid, not that they are non-essential. As this is the case in lots of municipalities, it wouldn't surprise me as city jobs are frequently one step short of Union jobs for high levels of benefits and salary. I further stated that the residents of the town, in voting down property tax increases, may have had a valid argument as they are already paying money for services which they believe are not being well spent.

I too am willing to pay for police I don't call and lights on streets I don't walk on; although I am an American citizen and pay US Federal income tax, I live in England and pay substantially more for services I am not even legally entitled to use, as well as paying a substantial amount for National Insurance (aka the NHS) and Private Insurance at the same time. I pay these taxes somewhat happily, as I know that these services benefit those in far more need than I am.

I certainly didn't turn this into a political blame-fest, I just thought that the blog was a bit one-sided and silly, and not accurately reflecting the thrust of the article and unfairly portraying the people of Colorado Springs.

Hey, don't mean to put words in your mouth, I looked at my previous post and kinda did, so apologies. As it is though, aren't you suspicious of an "average" figure? Like those "average" auto workers previously mentioned? What types of city jobs are included here? Lawyer? Doctor? Some positions seem like 89K is reasonable, especially when you figure in insurance, which could probably knock that 89 down to 70K or less. How long did they work for the city? So yeah, you seem like you just want to get the other side out there, but it seems that arguments like yours are often used to justify paying people a pittance simply because they don't work for private industry, which is a recipe for shitty public services in general. Not to say that this is your position mind you, just that's what these excuses are usually used for.

I am suggesting that if the average is $89k, the someone is being wildly overpaid. My father was the city attorney of a medium-sized midwest city; he didn't get paid that much, even when you included all the benefits which were pretty damn good.

Seriously? What year was this, and what was the median income in the area? How are you doing the math on the total spent?

If I can hire a staff attorney to work for me full time for a year and be out of pocket less than $89K when all is said and done, I'll be stunned. Most people are shocked at what it actually costs to employ somebody once you add up the benefits and overhead associated with them (which is almost certainly added together when he uses the word "spend" rather than "pay"). The number doesn't look anything like their actual salary.

FWIW, national median pay for a firefighter runs around $60K w/o benefits. Colorado Springs is not a low-cost-of-living area and firefighters are quite mobile so their pay pretty much has to track costs or they go somewhere they can afford.

Police, maybe a bit less.

Also note: most businesses calculate "cost/employee" complete with amortized real estate, utilities, etc. which generally comes close to doubling the nominal pay rate. If that's the case, those $89K/yr employees are making pretty close to the national median wage.

Ayn Rand clears it up for me, which is why I miss the libertarian 19th century true Democrats, the ones who followed Jefferson and Madison and were closest to Rand, not the ones like Obama who now follow Rousseau and Marx, as cited in The Changing Face of Democrats on Amazon and claysamerica.com.

A simple web search reveals that the $89K/yr figure is misleading - the average salary is in the vicinity of $61K, which is near the national average for a police officer or fireman.

So Bartolin is lumping in benefits, which is fair for comparison purposes - but when you compare the salaries and benefits of professional, experienced public servants to the salaries of hotel servants, it's not too surprising that the hotel workers get the short stick. What he's really demonstrating is that he pays crap wages to the people who make his business run.

@troublesome frog - my father died in 1998, so slightly out of date, but his take-home was never more than $65K and benefits about $10k. I can't imagine he'd have needed $89k total benefits and salary to do his job. He was a simple man who didn't want the big money, he just wanted a fair salary for a fair day's work.

@Rob Monkey - thank you. I am purely trying to get out the other side in the debate. I'm no Randite, nor am I a Libertarian, but the fact is that sometimes public spending is out of control and needs to be reigned in. If you're paying too many people but can't afford services, then something is out of whack and needs to be fixed, desperately.

In my experience, both here in the UK and in the US before that, quite frequently Public jobs swap salary for benefits in their total renumeration package; Private / Corporate jobs seem to go the other way. Perhaps it's true to state that Colorado Springs city employees *are* getting 'Ferrari' level benefits on 'Chevy' paychecks and the taxpayers would rather Chevy paychecks get Chevy benefits when they're footing the bill.

my father died in 1998, so slightly out of date, but his take-home was never more than $65K and benefits about $10k. I can't imagine he'd have needed $89k total benefits and salary to do his job. He was a simple man who didn't want the big money, he just wanted a fair salary for a fair day's work.

For the sake of argument, I'll assume that he was working and not retired in 1998. Using the CPI for inflation alone, his salary (minus benefits) would have been about $85,500 in 2008. The average family's health insurance bill per year looks to be just over $13,000 per year right about now, so that's approaching $100K right off the bat.

Is there any sort of retirement/pension plan? Surely there must be. It's pretty clear to me that the defined benefit plan is going the way of the dinosaur, but it wasn't so much during your father's career. Those are expensive.

Finally, you didn't mention what he cost of living in that location is. As another poster pointed out, Colorado Springs is not the cheapest place to live, so one can expect salaries across the board to be a bit higher.

I'm going to assume (generously) that the original $89K figure was only salary plus appropriately discounted value of that particular employee's future benefits. It's not uncommon to see people do things like take the sum of all salaries/benefits plus currently paid pensions for retirees and then divide them by currently active workers to get an even bigger number.

Even without correcting for that trick, it's easy to see how those numbers could rapidly approach the $90K range. It depends on the breakdown of city employees. If you have a lot of police and firefighters supplemented with general office staff, accountants, etc. and not a lot of gardeners and towel washers, it's very hard to see employeeing the "average" worker on the cheap. Given the fact that health care costs are growing far faster than inflation, it's not surprising to see a spike in public employee costs, especially relative to seasonal wage earners with no benefits.

Until somebody can do a proper apples to apples comparison, it seems to me that the numbers we're dealing with are crap.

Cullen Tillotson - you're right about none of us having enough data to nail any of this down with much confidence. Otherwise, alas...

According to Wikipedia, CS isn't that small a town (380,307; 47th in size in the US). If you really think an operation of that size can be run (well) by a handful of amateur part-timers, you might be just the person an online correspondent of mine needs to help process some Nigerian bank transfers.

And if you think Democrats or Greens of Colo. Spgs. have had a snowball's chance in Fallujah since the Dobsons & Haggards took over, you probably wouldn't recognize crony capitalism if it kicked down your door and crapped on your TV Dinnerâ¢.

I'm condemning the voters of CS "as idiots" (pls cease and retract all complaints about others putting words in your mouth) with much more background evidence than you assume, having followed with slack-jawed amazement the chronicles of the hyperchristian hordes there and elsewhere for decades. (Read Jeff Sharlet for a good intro.)

Also pls note they do have a local "industry" - no, two. One's called the US Air Force Academy, whereby the taxpayers subsidize the local economy by multi-millions, decade after decade. The other (actually just the flagship of a numerous fleet) is the aforementioned Focus on the Fantasy Family, an operation big enough to have its own zip code, importing nine digits of cash (the only such scam more lucrative than Pat Robertson's) every year from credulous sheep across Gawd's Country. Imagine what shape Colorado Springs would be in if they had to depend on actual productive work, like farming.

The reality-based community, they're not. Unfortunately, as our esteemed host suggests, they are quite likely just the avant-garde of the proverbial lemmings stampeding our country off the teabag cliffs.

Pierce - you may have a point about Focus on the Family, an organisation I abhor, and I had forgotten about the Air Force Academy, but those two still don't make up 'industry' in my mind. It's not exactly manufacturing or banking and service industry jobs don't generally make for strong median or average wages for a community - look at Montana where you've got rich landowners, a few mines, and a sprinkling of professionals (Doctors and Lawyers and Accountants) and pretty much everybody else works serice jobs for an hourly wage and no benefits or is a rich immigrant from out-of-state who made big bucks elsewhere. Not exactly thriving for the natives.

Yes, I do believe a part-time mayor and council would be fine for a town population of 380k. Seattle has a full-time mayor but only a part-time council and they seem to get along fine and have nearly double the population of Colorado Springs.

I still find it amazing, if the Conservatives are forming independent committees to review budgets and spending as we all assume they are, that they are also in political power in the community.

Cullen - I was using "industry" in the broad sense of large-scale income-generating activity, and in that sense Colorado Springs does have some major advantages over just about every other US community.

And, as an activist long involved in the affairs of a town half the size of CS, I still maintain that municipal politics does require serious full-time management. I suspect CS - and Seattle too - function only by relying on a powerful City Manager and professional department heads. Whether that's preferable to elected leadership is an open question, but it's probably a major reason why the citizenry is reported to feel so thoroughly disaffected in CS.

As for the "independent" review committees, I advise you not to accept such adjectives at face value without careful confirmation. (The same applies for the proposed federal SocSec/Medicare-chopping commission.)

Wikipedia reports that the city is also a high-tech center, so it's not totally dependent on Uncle Sugar and Big Daddy Dobson et al. Of course, Verizon, HP, etc have bought & used quite a few pink slips in the last two years.

Finally, it occurred to me on the way to my pillow last night that both of the "industries" I named for Colorado Spgs feature significant fiscal disadvantages for the city as a financial industry. Probably the USAF Academy is outside city limits, so the point is moot there (except for El Paso County), but I betcha the lion's share of those churches and other ministries are tax-exempt, meaning a disproportionate share of the local real estate contributes nothing directly to the municipal coffers. The employees still have to pony up every year, and every time they do business with a local cash register, but the City of Colorado Springs may well be starved for income, relatively speaking.

I have the usual Howling Atheistâ suggestion to make about that, but I'm quite sure the voters of CS would rather see their parks become dustbowls and criminal gangs raging through their unlit streets than to touch of penny of The Lord's Loot.

Oops - in graf 5 of # 29, that should read "city as a financial entity."

And, as an activist long involved in the affairs of a town half the size of CS, I still maintain that municipal politics does require serious full-time management.

I live in a town with 1/20th the population of Colorado Springs, and we have a full time Town Manager and full time Code Administrator. It's in a state whose legislators are paid $100 per year (no, that is not a typo) plus a mileage allowance for their services, though the governor gets a decent wage. You can still have a decently run local government as long as you have a good full-time staff. But it does get harder if you don't pay them adequately.

The $89k/year cost mentioned above, if it is accurately described as per employee, is hardly ridiculous. It includes benefits, the employer's share of Social Security taxes, and most likely some legacy retirement costs. Maybe they could bring it down a bit at the margins, but I don't see any large savings in personnel costs short of cutting large numbers of positions.

I guess we could look at the employees of the guys resort spa and see if there is a defining characteristic they share that allow them to cost, on average $24k for their employer.

I have a reasonable guess and I don't think it would work out well for running a government.

I also have a very cynical guess and I think it would be amusing if it were the case.

Thank goodness for failures like CO Springs and MI. We can easily look at the history and see what let to this problem.

This debate has been full of assertions and light on facts. Lets see the charts and numbers of taxes, spending, and political majorities. Lets see the decisions and the lack of decisions that led to this crisis.

Lets put the blame where it belongs and hold this failure up for everyone to see so we don't repeat it.

The author ignores the fact that problems such as those faced by Colorado Springs are faced by other communities across the nation. Both conservative Arizona and liberal California are closing state parks. New York communities are laying off teachers. The problem is a result of communities and states living beyond their means for generations. Yes, Colorado Springs cuts are deep but AT LEAST THE COMMUNITY IS DEALING WITH THE PROBLEM. If you think that you're enlightened, progressive community is immune, you're going to be surprised. Before this is over (and it's nowhere near over regardless of what the administration says) you're going to be looking at unimaginable cuts at home. This was a poorly written attempt at saying that libertarianism is bad. The author is truly clueless.

To Texas: So tell me what are the so-called progressive areas and "libertarian" areas of the nation doing similarly these days? Cutting budgets. The libertarian solution to everything after all is small gubmint, these "progressives" as you describe them areas are simply doing what Ayn Rand wanted and what Ayn Paul wants. Cutting budgets and implementing austerity. You're the one who is of poor taste here. Instead of taking an OBJECTIVE look at the policies being implemented across the nation and political spectrum you simply use the shallow excuse that yes the libertarian hole is not successful be neither are other areas of the nation also implementing tightening of the budget which is what the libertarians want after all. If the libertarians want small govmmint so bad they're free to move to
Haiti.

A NY Times (Silly) Idea of the Day: 'The War Against Suburbia'?

mikethemadbiologist — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:33:27 +0000

A NY Times (Silly) Idea of the Day: 'The War Against Suburbia'?

There's been some discussion about Joel Kotkin's argument "The War Against Suburbia", kicked off by The NY Times making it their Idea of the Day. Leaving aside whether there should be a 'war against suburbia', it's just not true. First, there has been a decades-long policy of federal subsidization of housing prices through the mortgage interest tax deduction. Since there are far more homeowners in suburbs than in cities, this is a massive wealth transfer to suburbs. Also, Obama's non-cramdown policies which have the effect of (temporarily) keeping housing prices higher than they should be are also pro-suburb.

Second, road construction is massively subsidized at the federal and state levels. If these costs were 'PAYGO'--that is, not externalized, and, instead, paid in full through gas prices, licensing and registration fees, and car taxes--that would be a 'war on suburbia' (or reasonable policy, take your pick).

Third, gas prices are subsidized by federal tax breaks (the gas tax doesn't fully cover that). Again, suburbanites, because they use more gas, receive far more subsidies than urbanites.

Fourth, our lending policies stink: neither Fannie Mae nor Freddie Mae will even touch home loans in mixed-use properties. Again, more money for suburbs--if there's a war, cities certainly aren't winning.

And this is before one looks at funding allocations within states, which are often biased towards suburban areas, not urban ones.

It's a silly idea from an economic perspective, but this is really just an episode of narcissism (italics mine):

Atrios says, "This is completely idiotic for mostly obvious reasons, including the hundreds of billions devoted to propping up single family home prices. It isn't necessarily a wise policy, but it's hardly a war on the suburbs." I agree: Kotkin is overwrought. And yet, Atrios bangs the drum pretty regularly for the notion that if Obama wants the public to support his policies, then the public better get some goodies out of it. And for the most part, suburbanites might well be feeling that they aren't getting many goodies lately. "Hundreds of billions devoted to propping up single family home prices" is overwrought too, and in any case is generally invisible.

The invisibility of actual policies that help suburbia is combined with some (unspecified) cultural resentment. In other words, they feel unloved:

Whenever possible, the Clintons expressed empathy with suburban and small-town voters. In contrast, the Obama administration seems almost willfully city-centric. Few top appointees have come from either red states or suburbs; the top echelons of the administration draw almost completely on big city urbanites--most notably from Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They sometimes don't even seem to understand why people move to suburbs.

Of course, everybody wants to be loved:

We don't applaud the Obama administration for seeking ways to improve dense urban areas because we want to steal from suburbanites; we've just never had many leaders who give two shits about the cities, and we're excited that someone cares about taking care of us for once. Don't we deserve some improvements? A lot of American cities are in a bad place because they've received so little investment. Obama's ideas would improve urban spaces not to punish suburbanites, but because it's the right thing to do. City dwellers are people, too.

As always, follow the money, not stupid faux-cultural markers.

Besides, suburbs seem to be doing a perfectly good job defunding themselves and creating urban decay....

mikethemadbiologist Fri, 02/05/2010 - 04:33

Tags

Nitpick on your last link: Colorado Springs is actually a sizable city. Wikipedia gives a 2008 population of around 380k, making it the second largest city by population in the state (behind Denver) and 48th in population for the US as a whole. However, as in many western states a large chunk of that population is in areas that would be considered suburbia if they were on the east coast.

Colorado Spring is entirely suburban. Even "downtown" is pretty darn suburban.