The Infrastructurist presents a graphic displaying the populations of the 60 cities in China with a population over 1 million.
Some interesting points in the comments about what exactly counts as “city population.” The graphic says: “Generally the lighted area that can be observed from an airplane at night.” This is a measurement issue: should rural areas be included? Whole counties? Just within city limits? Metropolitan regions? Each choice for boundaries will change the numbers.
I’ve always been fascinated by cities and what is beneath them. Even American cities, which tend to be younger compared to other cities around the world, have some interesting items buried underground. The New York Times reports on the discovery of a 30-foot long 18th-century ship found at the World Trade Center site.
h/t The Infrastructurist
The Atlantic provides a quick roundup of opinions regarding the on-going foreclosure crisis. The verdict: it’s complicated.
The EPA is still working out a system by which to measure MPG for new electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt. We do know the Volt won’t have a rating of 230 MPG. Read about it here.
The New York Times is reporting that the recession is causing a boom for some lawyers:
As millions of Americans have fallen behind on paying their bills, debt collection law firms have been clogging courtrooms with lawsuits seeking repayment.Few have been as prolific as Cohen & Slamowitz, a Woodbury, N.Y., firm that has specialized in debt collection for nearly two decades. The firm has been filing roughly 80,000 lawsuits a year.With just 14 lawyers on staff, that works out to more than 5,700 cases per lawyer.
The New York Times reprints some unemployment figures:
For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work…23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s.
…and fleshes out those figures with the anecdote of Scott Nicholson, a 2008 college graduate who is still looking for work:
The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.
I think what makes this story so interesting is its intergenerational comparison of Scott, his father, and his grandfather and the opportunities available to each. Louis Uchitelle makes a strong case that fundamental opportunities have shifted, that the millennials’ equivalent of “go West, young man” means leaving the U.S.–and its moribund economy–entirely.
Via Yahoo! Finance, the New York Times looks at the costs of living in the suburbs vs. living in the city. The verdict: unless a family is sending kids to private school (particularly at middle-school age and above), the suburban life costs about 18% more.
The basis for the analysis – and Manhattan is not part of the figures:
While our analysis was by no means scientific, our goal was to recreate the type of decision a hypothetical family of four earning $175,000 a year might encounter. We chose an upper-middle-class income because that’s generally what our family needs to earn, conservatively, to afford a median-price home in Park Slope, a section of Brooklyn that is family-friendly, has good schools and is generally more affordable than Manhattan.
The two-bedroom, one-bathroom co-operative apartment that we’re using as a model in Park Slope is listed at $675,000, close to the median price for the neighborhood, as calculated by Zillow.com.
We stacked that against a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home in South Orange, N.J., just a 30-minute train ride from Manhattan, where the two parents work. The house is selling for $595,000.
Some experts have been talking a long time about the hidden costs of suburbia due to more driving and sprawl. Homes may be cheaper (and bigger) but there are added costs from lower density living.
If homeowners were presented with this sort of evidence (assuming it would hold up across cities), would they chose the suburbs in lesser numbers? Or would people still be willing to pay a premium for the amenities that suburbia can offer?
According to biology professor Christoph Randler, morning people are viewed more positively. Through surveying 367 college students, Randler found that “The problem is that those with the genetic gift of “morning-ness” tend to be more highly rewarded. Morning-ness is perceived as a sign of activity and zest, whereas evening-ness implies laziness and loafing.”
As the story discusses briefly, this seems to be a cultural issue. In certain arenas, traits associated with being “up and ready” in the morning are prized. Being peppy and ready to go in the morning can indicate a person is efficient and in control.
How about a study that examines perceptions of people who accomplish roughly the same amount of work but who are opposites in terms of being morning or evening people. Do people and/or institutions place a higher value on being ready to go in the morning even if the work gets done by the end of the day?
The Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario has drawn attention as public officials discuss building a new bridge instead of undertaking costly repairs. The twist: the existing bridge is privately owned. Both the private owner and public officials are discussing where they might build a new bridge – the private owner wanting one under his control, the public officials wanting one under their control.
The Russian spy ring recently caught in America was primarily based in suburbia. One New York Times writer argues that this is not that unusual:
We’ve seen this movie before, a variation on “Fun With Dick and Jane” or “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” among others.
It’s fun, but as sociology, the story line set against the presumed seamless banality of suburban life gets ever flimsier. We seem to have had a computer chip implanted in our brain about the time of “Little Boxes,” the dopey and incredibly sanctimonious 1962 song about suburban conformity (“Little boxes made of ticky tacky … Little boxes all the same”) that helped define the suburbs. And it seems to persist even as its descriptive value trends toward zero. So at a time when more than half of Americans live in suburbs, what exactly does the suburban part of this tale tell us? Alas, not much.
The article contains more information about the growing diversity in suburbia including a smaller number of families living the “Ozzie and Harriet sort of life.” (Perhaps this phrase needs to be updated for the 21st century since “Ozzie and Harriet” is a little dated. How about the “Homer and Marge Simpson suburban life”?) If a majority of Americans live in suburbia, it is not unusual that a number of nefarious characters come out of suburbia.
What is not addressed in this article is a stereotype that suburbia leads people to such things as spying, violence, and breaking up their families to escape the dull and empty suburban lifestyle. In this case, the Russians came to suburbia to blend in and live a normal life.
Legally Sociable 