Author Archives: legallysociable

Proposal to bury some of Lake Shore Drive and create more parkland

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Chicago’s lakefront parks are impressive and a new plan suggests they could be enhanced even further by putting some of Lake Shore Drive underground:

At its heart, the plan would straighten out and bury Lake Shore Drive’s tight and dangerous Oak Street S-bend and would provide unfettered pedestrian access to 70 acres of newly created lakefront parkland, beaches, trails, and a breakwater island. The improvements would buffer the roadway from the routine abuse dealt by crashing winter waves as well as fix the dysfunctional Chicago Avenue bottleneck by removing traffic signals and adding new interchange ramps.

With a price tag reaching as high as $500 million, the project would be hugely expensive and would require the cooperation of multiple local, state, and federal entities like the various Departments of Transportation and the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Provided the massive undertaking is approved and funding can be secured, construction wouldn’t begin until at least the year 2020 and will likely take many years to complete.

The pictures look great (though they also include extending the beach even further into Lake Michigan). This could be a mini version of Boston’s “Big Dig” and that project turned out great for the aboveground landscape (based on several enjoyable experiences there in recent years). Additionally, the efforts to change the path of Lake Shore Drive around the Field Museum and Soldier Field (traffic used to split around these landmarks and now follows a single path further away from the lake) worked out.

While it is often better to do such large projects sooner than later as they only get more expensive and extend current problems, one could reasonably ask why it takes so long to bring up such ideas. Is it simply that it is often cheaper to think primarily of the road? Is it that planners in the past didn’t have sufficient foresight or that our standards of what is acceptable in terms of highways within cities has changed?

Bad predictions: actively managed equity funds

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An article about diversity in ETFs includes this figure about the prediction abilities of those who pick stocks:

A study by S&P Dow Jones Indices found that from 2006 to mid-2016, 87 percent of all actively managed U.S. equity funds underperformed the market.

In other words: not good. This is plenty of other evidence about this; see the work of Phillip Tetlock. Hence, the rise of ETFs.

One thing that this article on ETF does not address: if more business has moved to different financial instruments, what has happened to all of those stock pickers and hedge fund managers?

Four suburb annexation plans thrown out by a judge

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Efforts to combine Warrenville, Woodridge, and Lisle with Naperville were derailed by a judge earlier this week:

Judge Paul M. Fullerton granted motions to dismiss the question filed by mayors of the three smaller communities, who oppose the idea of annexing their towns into their larger neighbor…

The question will not come before Warrenville and Woodridge voters because the idea’s originators — who have not come forward publicly — failed to gather enough signatures.

In Warrenville, 177 signatures are required to meet the threshold of 10 percent of the voters in the previous municipal election, but only 81 signatures were filed. In Woodridge, 235 signatures are necessary for ballot placement and 50 were filed…

The petitioners’ attorney Avila did not immediately return a call or email seeking comment. Avila previously said petitioners brought forward the idea as a way to decrease property taxes in Lisle, Warrenville and Woodridge, but mayors say there is no proof such a merger would have resulted in lower taxes.

An odd affair all around: not enough signatures, no public campaign to support the effort, the mayors of all four suburbs denounced the annexations, and the reason for the proposed changes has not been clearly explained.

Still, the idea raises interesting questions. In an era of tight budgets, it is worth it in American metropolitan regions to maintain separate communities and taxing bodies? Would there be advantages in some merging? In denouncing the idea of annexations, the mayors of these suburbs said it is not clear how the cost savings might happen (property taxes around here primarily support schools so merging municipal boundaries may have very little effect) and that residents of each community like their distinct characters. But, if voters were told that merging would reduce their tax burden at least $500 or $1,000 a year (particularly given the property tax burdens in Illinois), would that overcome an interest in local control and character?

Claim: we see more information today so we see more “improbable” events

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Are more rare events happening in the world or are we just more aware of what is going on?

In other words, the more data you have, the greater the likelihood you’ll see wildly improbable phenomena. And that’s particularly relevant in this era of unlimited information. “Because of the Internet, we have access to billions of events around the world,” says Len Stefanski, who teaches statistics at North Carolina State University. “So yeah, it feels like the world’s going crazy. But if you think about it logically, there are so many possibilities for something unusual to happen. We’re just seeing more of them.” Science says that uncovering and accessing more data will help us make sense of the world. But it’s also true that more data exposes how random the world really is.

Here is an alternative explanation for why all these rare events seem to be happening: we are bumping up against our limited ability to predict all the complexity of the world.

All of this, though, ignores a more fundamental and unsettling possibility: that the models were simply wrong. That the Falcons were never 99.6 percent favorites to win. That Trump’s odds never fell as low as the polling suggested. That the mathematicians and statisticians missed something in painting their numerical portrait of the universe, and that our ability to make predictions was thus inherently flawed. It’s this feeling—that our mental models have somehow failed us—that haunted so many of us during the Super Bowl. It’s a feeling that the Trump administration exploits every time it makes the argument that the mainstream media, in failing to predict Trump’s victory, betrayed a deep misunderstanding about the country and the world and therefore can’t be trusted.

And maybe it isn’t very easy to reconcile these two explanations:

So: Which is it? Does the Super Bowl, and the election before it, represent an improbable but ultimately-not-confidence-shattering freak event? Or does it indicate that our models are broken, that—when it comes down to it—our understanding of the world is deeply incomplete or mistaken? We can’t know. It’s the nature of probability that it can never be disproven, unless you can replicate the exact same football game or hold the same election thousands of times simultaneously. (You can’t.) That’s not to say that models aren’t valuable, or that you should ignore them entirely; that would suggest that data is meaningless, that there’s no possibility of accurately representing the world through math, and we know that’s not true. And perhaps at some point, the world will revert to the mean, and behave in a more predictable fashion. But you have to ask yourself: What are the odds?

I know there is a lot of celebration of having so much available information today but it isn’t necessarily easy adjusting to the changes. Taking it all in requires some effort on its own but the hard work is in the interpretation and knowing what to do with it all.

Perhaps a class in statistics – in addition to existing efforts involving digital or media literacy – could help many people better understand all of this.

Camping in the McMansion of tents

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This article sent by a friend is a few years old but still interesting: why settle for a small tent?

MCMANSIONS MAY BE going out of style, but when you’re camping, there’s something to be said for having an abode with outsize square footage. Yes, you can enjoy the great outdoors in a just-big-enough dwelling, but why compromise? Sleeping in the woods is much more comfortable when you have room to spare.

Just like McMansions are often criticized, I imagine some campers would criticize these tents for too much space. Plus, a large tent might be the market of the occasional camper rather than a hardcore camping enthusiast. But, as the article notes, not everyone wants to be packed like a sardine in a tent. And when the square footage of the “McMansion” is just over 100 square feet, half of what you might see in a typical tiny house (and without as much head space), a temporary structure of this size may not be too bad…

Will he or won’t he tunnel under Los Angeles?

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Few tunnels get as much public attention as just the idea Elon Musk has to tunnel under Los Angeles to avoid traffic:

After being stuck in heavy traffic in December, the billionaire came up with a plan to create a giant tunnel under Los Angeles to ease congestion.

‘Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…’, he tweeted…

Excavators working for the entrepreneur have already dug a test trench at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Los Angeles, Wired reported last week…

‘If you think of tunnels going 10, 20, 30 layers deep (or more), it is obvious that going 3D down will encompass the needs of any city’s transport of arbitrary size,’ he told Wired last week in a Twitter direct message.

I have a hard time envisioning how this could become useful for the general public. Musk would have to figure out something pretty spectacular to get the cost and time down. Or, one tunnel could open but it would be prohibitively expensive to use.

And isn’t there also an issue of freeing up land for entrances and exits from these deep tunnels? (Los Angeles might be a bit different if the tunnels are primarily for going through mountain passes.)

Claim: Millennials can’t buy a house so they are serfs

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Joel Kotkin makes a bold claim regarding the inability of millennials to purchase a home:

Like medieval serfs in pre-industrial Europe, America’s new generation, particularly in its alpha cities, seems increasingly destined to spend their lives paying off their overlords, and having little to show for it.

No wonder that rather than strike out on their own, many millennials are simply failing to launch, with record numbers hunkering down in their parents’ homes. Since 2000, the numbers of people aged 18 to 34 living at home has shot up by over 5 million…

It’s time for millennials to demand politicians abandon the policies that have enriched the wealthy and stolen their future. That means removing barriers to lots of new housing in cities and, crucially, embracing Frank Lloyd Wright’s notion of Broadacre Cities, with expansive development along the periphery.

These new suburbs, like the Levittowns of the past, could improve people’s lives, while using new technology and home-based work  to make them more environmentally sustainable. They could, as some suggest, develop the kind of urban amenities, notably town centers, that may be more important to millennials than earlier generations. One thing that hasn’t changed is the demand for affordable single-family homes and townhomes. But the supply is diminishing—those under $200,000 make up barely one out of five new homes.

This is a familiar argument for Kotkin: millennials really do want to own homes in the suburbs – like many other Americans since the early 1900s – and economic policies limit their opportunities.

But, this argument is still overstated in its claim that millennials are serfs. Kotkin gets at a deeper question: is homeownership essential to the American way of life? More specifically, a suburban home in a nice community? There is much in American history to suggest that owning land and a home is key, even if it isn’t a right. Yet, does it necessarily have to always be part of American life? Could Americans decide that they value other things (and not be forced away from homeownership by forces outside of their control)?

American geographic mobility still limited

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Richard Florida highlights how the percent of Americans moving each year has slowed, particularly compared to the postwar era:

Just slightly more than one in ten Americans (11.2 percent) moved between 2015 and 2016, almost half the 20.2 percent rate back in 1948, when the Census began tracking American mobility. Mobility was once the cornerstone of the American Dream, but today Americans move less often than Canadians, and only a bit more than Finns or Danes.

Both longer and shorter moves have declined over this period. Just 6.9 percent of Americans made shorter moves within the same county, down from 13.6 percent in 1948. The mobility rate for these types of moves plummeted between 1998 and 2008 (with the economic crisis) as the chart below shows, and has declined more slowly ever since.

(David Ihrke/U.S. Census)

Longer moves between counties declined from 6.4 percent in 1948 to just 3.9 percent today over the same period.

(David Ihrke/U.S. Census)

Florida goes on to provide several possible reasons for this more limited mobility. But, two quick issues come to mind:

  1. The historical comparison is both useful and might be a red herring. On one hand, we can consider trends over six decades and this provides helpful context. Too many current news stories talk about trends based on one year changes in data. On the other hand, the immediate decades after World War Two may have been extremely different with general prosperity in America and growing suburbanization. Should we expect the same levels of mobility today or was the postwar era unique?
  2. Is there an ideal level of mobility? I know Florida is in favor of mobility because it means workers can flock to places with jobs and cities that have certain features will attract motivated and talented residents. Clearly, no mobility would create issues as there could be significant mismatches between jobs and employees. But, instead of making comparisons to a few other countries, what would be a healthy level of mobility in the United States?

All that said, a less mobile United States is a different United States.

Can you say you are from a city when you actually live in its suburbs?

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The debate continues on whether suburban residents can claim to be from the big city:

Fowler was criticizing Trump for bashing Chicago while failing to reach out to Gov. Bruce Rauner about potential solutions. When he says “I’m from Chicago,” he’s quickly cut off by Caldwell whose “Bruh, you’re from Evanston” comment quickly excited Chicagoans on Twitter…

Perhaps this is even a bigger issue in Chicago where identification with a neighborhood or community area is very common among urban residents.

While suburban residents shouldn’t try to boost their image by claiming to be from the big city when they aren’t, they are in a difficult place when talking to people from outside of the region. When meeting someone, telling them the name of your suburb can often produce blank stares. The Chicago region has hundreds of communities of varying sizes and it is difficult to expect people to know even most of them (even if they are from the region). The big city becomes a kind of shorthand of where you are from. One other option that might work could be to identify a noteworthy or large suburb that others may know – I’ve been surprised how many people register some familiarity when I say I live near Naperville.

Additionally, there are certainly instances when saying you identify with the big city does make sense. Sports teams are the first example that comes to mind. There are very few American major sports franchises that identify with the suburbs. The only two that come to mind are the Long Island Islanders and the New Jersey Devils but they are from the largest region in the country and there are three hockey teams to differentiate. There are certain resources that big cities have that suburbanites could identify with, such as major airports (many people who have spent little time in the Chicago region can hold some kind of conversation about O’Hare Airport) or museums and cultural attractions.

The difficulties of big protests at airports

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Airports don’t often attract people for protests so the gatherings of recent days highlighted a few issues:

Moving hundreds of thousands of people to downtown streets for a march is one thing—getting people to an airport is a huge transportation challenge, especially in cities that don’t have adequate transit connections to begin with. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, transit authorities were coyly reminding protesters to use trains or buses to get to SFO and LAX.

Some airports reported delayed flights because crew members could not get to work, and heavy traffic was reported around many airports. Long-term parking lots and shuttles were filled with protesters, and passengers had to wade through sign-holding crowds to get to their gates.

So many New Yorkers were using the city’s AirTrain to get to the protest at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) that security guards blocked people from boarding it until Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered Port Authority to let protesters through…

The incident on JFK’s AirTrain also points to another challenge for an airport demonstration. Most airports are a checkerboard of public and private properties with both local and federal oversight. JFK’s international terminal, Terminal 4, which became ground zero for the protests nationwide, for example, is partly owned by Schiphol Cargo, the corporation that manages Amsterdam’s airport…

Globally, this type of “airport urbanism” is actually becoming the norm as airport design worldwide moves away from the fortress model of the past. While continuing to focus on security for boarding areas, new airports are adding more permeable spaces that serve both passengers and the greater public. Munich’s airport has a similar programmed plaza that inspired Denver’s.

It is unlikely that airports can be consistent centers of urbanism because many types of development do not want to locate near loud runways. At the same time, there is little reason why more airports can’t introduce more interesting spaces that give travelers, workers, and other visitors opportunities to relax, shop, and interact. For example, I really enjoyed the grand windows at the Seattle airport last August. (At the same time, that space was past security and wouldn’t be available to protestors.)

Protestors in recent years have shown more willingness to congregate in transportation corridors, whether highways or airports. Such tactics do tend to get people’s attention while also highlighting the lack of large public space sin many locales.