The US Census Bureau thread

[fflint]

This really is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

While this arbitrary 50 square miles of LA has been cobbled together to exclude 75% of its own downtown and avoid as many non-residential areas as possible, Boston fits its residential *and* non-residential zones into roughly that same land area--downtown, airport, universities, seaport, etc. It's entirely possible the Bostonians are living at higher average densities than the Angelenos even within this random area as assembled. That's how inapt this attempted comparison is--it's not even clear what can be gleaned from the data given.

[wwmiv]

... ... ... ... nvm

[M II A II R II K]

The 22 Most Segregated Cities In America


Apr. 1, 2011

By Gus Lubin and Christine Jenkins

Read More: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-...ca-2011-3?op=1

Segregation Analysis PDF: http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report2.pdf

Racial segregation has been declining since the 1970s but it clearly exists. For example, the average black person lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black. Without segregation, his neighborhood would be only 13 percent black.

The slow decline of segregation was revealed in 2010 census data and analysis by professors at Brown and Florida State University. John Logan and Brian Stults created a dissimilarity index, which identifies the percentage of one group that would have to move to a different neighborhood to eliminate segregation -- think busing.

.....

Magenta shows tracts that are over 50% black

60.6% of one group would have to move to a different census tract for white-black segregation to be eliminated.

Dissimilarity decreased from 65.1 in 2000; 65.5 in 1990; and 73.7 in 1980.


#22 Houston






Magenta shows tracts that are over 50% black

79.6% of one group would have to move to a different census tract for white-black segregation to be eliminated.

Dissimilarity decreased from 82.2 in 2000; 82.8 in 1990; and 83.9 in 1980.


#1 Milwaukee

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by fflint

Cherry-picking data:
75% of the land area of downtown LA is within area codes 90012, 90013, and 90021 with a sliver of downtown in 9033 (which contains Boyle Heights). Yet all four of these downtown zip codes are inexplicably excluded from your exercise, and the likely reason is they are mostly non-residential. That is cherry-picking data.

Subjective definition:
How can one legitimately define LA's "core" as containing only 25% of downtown and excluding Boyle Heights while including the Fairfax?

Like Boyle Heights is part of LA's core and Fairfax with CBS, Farmers Market and The Grove isn't. And I would love to get those parts to be considered part of Downtown on the SSP Downtown population research project but Cirrus won't include them... go figure.

Anyway, I added all your suggestions there and at 59.1 square miles and a population of 1102184 it gives a density of 18,649 people per square mile.

90012-3.5 sqm 31383 pop
90013-.8 sqm 9983
90021- 2.0 sqm 3082
9033- 3.1 sqm 50720

[Metranite]

Originally Posted by Lecom

Hmm. Looks like the South is rising again, and the North is losing members. Not surprising, considering the Sun Belt growth during the past decade.

A friend of mine called this growth the final phase of the Civil War.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Metranite

A friend of mine called this growth the final phase of the Civil War.

Your friend is an unreconstructed southerner.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Metranite

A friend of mine called this growth the final phase of the Civil War.

^ Except that the South is selling its soul in the process.

As the South "rises" it becomes less the nation of Scarlett O'Hara and Kenny Rogers and more suburban everything-looks-like-everything-else blandness, both physically and culturally, which was essentially invented by the north.

The South just happened to be very adept at it because it already had a lot of unused land and relatively small cities to begin with, just a perfect fertile ground for that northern invention to thrive. So if the South's revenge is to become particularly adept at transforming rapidly into the soulless suburban blob that seems to be permeating the rest of the nation, then yes--your friend is right.

But I'm sure that is not quite the "rise of the South" that General Lee or his contemporaries would have envisioned.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by dktshb

Like Boyle Heights is part of LA's core and Fairfax with CBS, Farmers Market and The Grove isn't. And I would love to get those parts to be considered part of Downtown on the SSP Downtown population research project but Cirrus won't include them... go figure.

Anyway, I added all your suggestions there and at 59.1 square miles and a population of 1102184 it gives a density of 18,649 people per square mile.

90012-3.5 sqm 31383 pop
90013-.8 sqm 9983
90021- 2.0 sqm 3082
9033- 3.1 sqm 50720

Hey, I love this kind of stuff and I think it can have explanatory power if the data is used properly and people don't draw unsound conclusions.

I think it's a huge mistake to reduce a discussion of density only to city land area. Obviously land area comes into play, which is why many just go for the safe measure of density--city population divided by city land area. But for some of us, and you too, we'd like to try to get at some more fine-tuned and standardized measure of density suitable for meaningful comparisons. It's okay if that desire comes from wanting to show how a mountain range down the middle of LA is going to render a traditional population/land measurement less than enlightening about the densities in which Angelenos actually live--but regardless of motivation, there must be intellectual honesty.

When it comes to density, there's no legitimate way to wave off or abstract places like Boston or DC or SF or any of the other compact US cities. These are crowded, populous places that pack a great deal into a relatively small space. They are not like the zip codes you put together--they're significantly different, too different to be purportedly interchangeable. Discussions of density cannot be reduced to just how far out we need to cobble together zip codes until an apple is the same circumference as an orange. There's got to be a way to compare apples to apples or else we're not going to learn anything.

We did a density profile a while ago on the forum, and the initial idea was to basically get at every city's "Manhattan"--it's entire CBD plus as many surrounding residential areas as could fit into roughly the size of Manhattan (I think we allowed some deviation from 25 square miles, but not much). It turns out 25 square miles is a pretty good size for comparing core densities--it's not too small for Manhattan obviously, and it's not too large to disqualify some of the nation's most dense cities. You go for a 50-mile comparison and you knock out the nation's 13th most populous city (and second-densest by the traditional measurement) right off the bat, as well as some of the nation's other most densely populated cities. The 25-square mile comparison also allowed the sunbelt sprawlers to highlight their pre-war central cities.

I'll try to dig up the results of that experiment on my other laptop, but I know for certain I did not save the lists of zip codes used for each city. If I do find the numbers it won't be of much help with doing a similar experiment with 2010 data, unfortunately. I do know this: LA ranked a close third even when its entire CBD was included. And that was with 2000 data, before all the new homes downtown.

[BevoLJ]

I wish there was a better way to show density than just from the population stuff. Many downtowns have a lot more than just the people living there. Hell I'd bet that at any given time most of the cities on these list posted in this thread have twice as many people in their downtowns than what the populations of those who live in those downtowns are. In Austin 15,000 people live downtown (S. of UT), but given all the hotels, retail, clubs and whatnot, there is no way that at any point there are only 15k people in downtown Austin.

I was looking at that New York Times thingy that dimondpark linked in the N. Caly thread and Central Park in NYC has its own census thing with a population of 25. That struck me as so silly. First we all know there are more people sleeping in the bushes there than that, but really though that there are always so many more people in CP than 25. I'm sure it has been centuries since that park has had less than 25 people in it at any given moment.

London might not be all that tall like NYC is, but it is still a pretty dang dense city with tons of people all over the place all the time. There are parts of it like the CBD over on Canary Wharf which is pretty massive that not to many people actually live there.

[M II A II R II K]

Originally Posted by BevoLJ

I wish there was a better way to show density than just from the population stuff. Many downtowns have a lot more than just the people living there.

Google Maps, although not the whole city at once of course.

[djlx2]

Originally Posted by BevoLJ

I wish there was a better way to show density than just from the population stuff.

Me too. Basically I think that would call for something more substantial than the internet, which sometimes doesn't seem to cut it in general.

[djlx2]

Originally Posted by djlx2

Me too. Basically I think that would call for something more substantial than the internet, which sometimes doesn't seem to cut it in general.

...particularly for new york, since its density is mind-boggling even to people who ought to know it best. all those sidewalks around its nerve-center are so packed that it's slow walking to places you want to get to. Mine's the Empire State. If they ever allow this possibility I'll move in there and never leave.

[urbanactivist]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Except that the South is selling its soul in the process.

As the South "rises" it becomes less the nation of Scarlett O'Hara and Kenny Rogers and more suburban everything-looks-like-everything-else blandness, both physically and culturally, which was essentially invented by the north.

The South just happened to be very adept at it because it already had a lot of unused land and relatively small cities to begin with, just a perfect fertile ground for that northern invention to thrive. So if the South's revenge is to become particularly adept at transforming rapidly into the soulless suburban blob that seems to be permeating the rest of the nation, then yes--your friend is right.

But I'm sure that is not quite the "rise of the South" that General Lee or his contemporaries would have envisioned.

So you're saying that suburbanization and blandness is only occurring in Southern metros, and has now ceased in the oh so sophisticated North? How much did suburban Chicagoland counties grow over the last 10 years? And uh... where do you think many of those residents moved from??

And thanks for completely ignoring all of the growth that within the urban cores of our Southern cities

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by urbanactivist

So you're saying that suburbanization and blandness is only occurring in Southern metros, and has now ceased in the oh so sophisticated North?

^ I didn't say that. Here's a line from my post, look at what's in bold:

So if the South's revenge is to become particularly adept at transforming rapidly into the soulless suburban blob that seems to be permeating the rest of the nation, then yes--your friend is right.

I never said that it "ceased in the oh so sophisticated North". To the contrary--I am frustrated by just how much of it has and continues to happen in the north.

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Except that the South is selling its soul in the process.

As the South "rises" it becomes less the nation of Scarlett O'Hara and Kenny Rogers and more suburban everything-looks-like-everything-else blandness, both physically and culturally, which was essentially invented by the north.

The South just happened to be very adept at it because it already had a lot of unused land and relatively small cities to begin with, just a perfect fertile ground for that northern invention to thrive. So if the South's revenge is to become particularly adept at transforming rapidly into the soulless suburban blob that seems to be permeating the rest of the nation, then yes--your friend is right.

But I'm sure that is not quite the "rise of the South" that General Lee or his contemporaries would have envisioned.

I think you hit the irony of it all right on the head. The south is the most conservative part of the nation with people who love to talk about "rugged individualism" and yet they express it by becoming just like everyone else in an even more homogonous way than much of the rest of the country. So rugged individuality equals suburban conformity, if that isn't 1984 Orwellian brainwashing at work than I don't know what is. People sitting in a McMansion watching Fox News like everyone else in their subdivision and talking about how they love freedom and individuality when they are essentially clones of everyone else is like something out of the Night of the Living Dead, it is like we are a nation of zombies.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Chicago103

I think you hit the irony of it all right on the head. The south is the most conservative part of the nation with people who love to talk about "rugged individualism" and yet they express it by becoming just like everyone else in an even more homogonous way than much of the rest of the country. So rugged individuality equals suburban conformity, if that isn't 1984 Orwellian brainwashing at work than I don't know what is. People sitting in a McMansion watching Fox News like everyone else in their subdivision and talking about how they love freedom and individuality when they are essentially clones of everyone else is like something out of the Night of the Living Dead, it is like we are a nation of zombies.

What does Orwell have to do with this? Orwell was a socialist, the American South is conservative. I find it laughably ironic when conservatives use Orwell as a defense when he is inexplicably condemning their lifestyle and ideology. Furthermore, the south has no discernable connection to the term "rugged individualism" if it is properly understood.

The term, derived from a speech of the same name by Herbert Hoover during the 1928 campaign, is a uniquely 1920s Republican mantra. The Republican Party of the 1920s was based in New York and the West, not the Democrat's Solid South. Hoover himself was from a geologist from Iowa who was the first president born west of the Mississippi river. Though Hoover is associated with coining the term, perhaps the person most widely emblematic of its core philosophy was Progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt of New York. Rugged individualism is a term to describe the rough and tumble nature of the nation at that point in history, and it wasn't even an attribute given to the south.

Please do not assume that, because the south is now dominated by the a party (Republican) which has historically been associated with completely different regions, southerners have anything in common with the term. They don't. The south, by virtue of its inherent conservatism, is antithetical to the ideals of individualism. It is instead the embodiment of conservatism: the pressure to conform to and abide by the historical and cultural norms and mores of the area.

No-one in the south actually talks about rugged individualism, they talk about liberty and freedom. Liberty and freedom subconscious cues are the last political vestiges of the southern civil war perspective. In order to have individualism you must have liberty and freedom, but in order to have liberty and freedom individualism is not necessary. Do not forsake the south's polity for using their liberty and freedom to make the logical choice - at least from their perspective - of shunning individualism.

So, obviously the south is going to be less individualist than elsewhere.




Now, let's move on. This topic really has nothing to do with the 2010 Census and is counterproductive. Let us not bash others, but instead congratulate those areas which have done well this census.

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Now, let's move on. This topic really has nothing to do with the 2010 Census and is counterproductive. Let us not bash others, but instead congratulate those areas which have done well this census.

I salute you sir I wish you luck with the ridiculous amount of BS you're about to receive in return for simply speaking your mind. Though, Skyscraperpage is a lot more tolerant than some other sites I've seen.


To call the South a region where everyone wants to simply be by themselves is an awful stereotype. What about the church group I saw engaging in a cleanup of a local watershed today? Yes, I did see that, I'm not making it up.

The blatant ignorance of the fact that South that many think about no longer exists is quite frustrating. The South I know is accepting and friendly. Of course people have their own strong opinions, but it's stupid to say that the average Southerner doesn't have a clue about equality or diversity.

As for this talk about Southern suburbanization, I think it's laughable. Are suburbs a good planning practice? Hell to the no. Should we all be looking at other ways to be constructing our communities? Hell to the yes. However, I personally find the idea of criticizing Southerns for constructing this way kind of stupid.

The fact is, lessons have to be learned. The South has learned the hard way that racism is stupid, wrong, illogical, etc... Eventually, we'll learn how suburbs aren't a good way to build a great city. To try and force a group of people to live a certain way without them going through the experience of living another is setting them up for disaster. People in metro Atlanta, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Nashville, etc... will soon realize that they don't want to pay so much for gas and that living in a more urban environment is better for their wallet, and even health.

Get a life people. If people want to live in massive suburbs, let them. Does that make them conformists? No, some people legitimately just want to have land. I mean, my 83 grandfather who lives in assisted living bought a piece of land simply because he likes being outside and maintaining something.

Stop fretting, it's not worth it. If you want suburbs to go away, the people that live in them have to learn why they aren't great ideas. When they finally learn that lesson, I promise you that some of the most innovative planning ideas will becoming from those areas that used to be dominated by suburbanization.

NOW, back to the 2010 Census.

[tdawg]

Lest we forget that the suburbs as we know them were invented on Long Island.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by tdawg

Lest we forget that the suburbs as we know them were invented on Long Island.

Unfortunately, but it was Levittown that really got the ball rolling after WWII.

[urbanactivist]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I didn't say that. Here's a line from my post, look at what's in bold:



I never said that it "ceased in the oh so sophisticated North". To the contrary--I am frustrated by just how much of it has and continues to happen in the north.

Ok so why is it that SSP always has to make this a VS thing between North and South? These cities are not against each other. They may be different in many ways, but people in Austin are doing the very same thing as people in Chicago... living their lives the best way they know how. And that compendium of know-how is growing/expanding in the urban cores of the Sunbelt. Where is the VS with that?? Is it not a good thing for all of our cities to grow stronger???