Author Archives: legallysociable

Argument: rural American voters are being disenfranchised

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A member of the Hoover Institution argues rural Americans are losing their right to self-governance:

With each passing election, rural and small town Americans have ever less influence on their state and national governments and ever declining control over the governance of their own communities. Their lives are increasingly controlled from distant state capitals and from the even more distant Washington, D.C., by politicians with little incentive to pay attention to their country cousins. To some extent, their disenfranchisement is the inevitable result of a century of urbanization and economic centralization. But the erosion of self-governance in rural America is also the result of a generally well intentioned but simplistic understanding of democracy and the associated elimination of institutional protections of local democratic governance.

Two ideas have been central to this effective disenfranchisement of rural America. First, that one person/one vote is an inviolable principle of democratic government under the United States Constitution. Second, that the winners of elections owe allegiance only to those who voted for them, no matter how close the margin of victory…

The reality is that rural communities have experienced a declining influence on state governance ever since reapportionment was first mandated in the 1960s. Many will say that this is as it should be. Rural and small town voters constitute minorities in every state, and minorities are supposed to lose in a democracy. But that is the same argument made against the Electoral College, given the possibility that a candidate who wins the popular vote might lose in the Electoral College, and it is an argument that also would condemn the much greater counter-majoritarian nature of the U.S. Senate.

Different and diverse majorities in each state are combined in the U.S. Senate to pursue national policies that are truly national and not just what will serve the interests of the nine states in which the majority of the nation’s population resides. There is no similar safeguard at the state level for different and diverse majorities in small town and rural communities that happen to constitute the red regions of the blue states—though there once was.

Prior to the 1964 United States Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims, most state legislatures included one house apportioned on the basis of population and a second chamber apportioned on the basis of counties or other geographical regions. Many of the former had not been reapportioned for decades, leaving growing urban areas with less representation per capita than rural regions. On the basis of the principle of one person/one vote, the Court found that the failure of most states to regularly reapportion their lower houses put them in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

The first thing I thought of when reading this argument was that this is a long-standing tension in American history. Thus, we have mechanisms in national government that are meant to limit some of this. From the beginning, the interests of the more urban North were pitted against the interests of the more rural South. These issues still remain even though the geography has changed since then in several important ways: there are plenty of rural areas in mid-America as well as in the West and we have a broad middle category, actually the most populous space for Americans to live, called the suburbs. Additionally, party lines have shifted.

But, we could take this in another direction and think more creatively about how to select elected officials. Huffman argues the Supreme Court limited the voice of rural voters in states when it went to a system of officials per population rather than by geographical boundaries. What might happen if we went to a system where districts were drawn only within a single geographic group: cities, suburbs, and more rural areas? Huffman seems to be suggesting that the interests of a city-dweller in Chicago or Atlanta may be much similar to each other than representatives across northern Illinois where there districts can cover all three geographic types. Suburban legislators across metropolitan regions or states might have similar interests compared to those who represent other types of geographies.

I just have to ask: would conservatives be arguing for the voters in rural areas if it were primarily Democrats in rural areas as opposed to Republicans?

Reformatting a zoning map of Chicago to look like SimCity 2000

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Zoning maps can include a lot of categories but what happens if it is converted to a SimCity 2000 format? Check out this recolored Chicago zoning map:

To spice up their interactive “2nd City Zoning” map of Chicago, Derek Eder, Juan-Pablo Velez and Aya O’Connor paid tribute to the SimCity franchise with some familiar color-coding. Blue for commercial, yellow for industrial, green for residential.

Then they got carried away, incorporating a few choice icons from SimCity 2000 as well as some of that legendary game music, which you can listen to while you browse the map.

Zoning is a little more complicated than the tri-color scheme implies, but by the time you get to the portion of the site that explains the difference between Manufacturing and Planned Manufacturing Districts, it’s mission complete for the designers.

Here are more details of the SimCity change from 2nd City Zoning – including a plea to not be sued.

It is too bad there isn’t a longer discussion about the simplicity of SimCity zoning versus real world zoning. Are there benefits to presenting a simpler zoning map to residents? (This assumes that there are a good number of residents that want to look at such maps.) How much complexity compared to real life was SimCity missing in the 2000 version? SimCity players might have learned something by playing the game but might also have been misled by the reductionism.

The music takes me back…

Supersized McMansions, supersized roses for Valentine’s Day

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I’ve seen McMansions compared to a number of other large consumer items, but until today I had not seen a comparison to flowers:

Leave it to America, land of the Big Gulp, Monster Burger and McMansions, to supersize yet one more thing: the rose.

Make that a six-foot rose, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

This flower-on-steroids — it actually gets this big from special breeding and soils — comes courtesy of several companies, including FTD, The Ultimate Rose and FiftyFlowers.com. Sales are taking off as florists promote the gargantuan blooms, which also come in three-, four- and five-foot varieties. The companies won’t release exact numbers, but FTD says sales have increased 50% year over year since it started selling the roses four years ago…

Skaff says FTD has already sold out of the five-foot variety and had to order more to meet demand ahead of Valentine’s Day. The Ultimate Rose, which supplies the giant roses to FTD and also sells them on its own site, says sales jump this time of year.

The suggestion here is that the presence of McMansions is related to the presence of six-foot tall roses through the desires of Americans for both because they are large. This seems like a bit of a stretch to me; are the same people buying McMansions and large roses? Are both solely about standing out from the crowd? Overall, this seems like a journalistic shortcut of recent years: when an item becomes larger, compare it to McMansions (and perhaps SUVs and Big Gulps might be other apt comparisons). What items if an item becomes smaller – is there a similar go-to comparison?

On state roads in Chicago, IDOT wants to properly collect evidence about bike lanes

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Chicago may be interested in building 100 miles of bike lanes but the state of Illinois wants to slow down the process on state roads in the city in order to collect more data:

But in many of the selected locations, sections of the roadways fall under state jurisdiction. The Illinois Department of Transportation won’t allow protected bicycle lanes to go on state-designated routes until it is satisfied they are safe, officials said.

IDOT will collect at least three years’ worth of traffic accident data and then make a determination based on the analysis, officials said, adding that the existing information is inadequate because protected bike lanes are new here…

Claffey said IDOT has safety concerns that include the visibility of cyclists at intersections and operational issues like maintenance and snow-removal around protected bike lanes. Approving protected bike lanes for Chicago would open the floodgates to allowing all other local governments in the state to do the same, he said.

“We are also concerned about losing traffic lanes,” Claffey said, noting that protected bike lanes require more space than traditional bike lanes.

In Illinois, it seems safe to ask if there is something else going on behind the scenes. But, if IDOT is claiming in part that they need more data about safety, isn’t this typically a persuasive argument when it comes to roads?

Some proposed solutions to the problem of 947,000 hours a year in traffic lost to parcel delivery trucks

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Cities are looking into ways to better facilitate parcel delivery than having trucks park along the curb:

Over the last couple of years, urbanists have dreamed up a handful of new parcel delivery strategies. A number got a field test in Europe last year as part of CITYLOG, a project funded by the European Union to evaluate fresh ideas in urban transport.One of these new strategies, the BentoBox, works by shifting delivery truck activity away from peak driving hours. If congestion reduction is the goal, the ideal time to deliver packages would be late at night—but customers won’t likely be smiling when they answer the door. Named after a single-serving Japanese takeout tray, the BentoBox is a storage locker that can be loaded with parcels and then dropped off at a local docking station after hours. Customers in the area can access one of six subdivided units with a key the following morning…

TNT Express has its own program aimed at piloting urban delivery solutions. In Brussels, where the courier company delivers about 1300 parcels per week, three-quarters of those deliveries are already made using pedal-assisted electric tricycles. These small vehicles are more environmentally sound than large trucks and vans, and much less disruptive to traffic patterns when parked.

TNT is modeling a new distribution model for Brussels that it calls the “mobile depot.” In this system, which works similarly to the BentoBox, a trailer containing a large number of parcels is towed to a central location in the city during off hours. Parcels are delivered by last-mile drivers in small electric or human-powered vehicles. If a few of these mobile depots could be dropped in strategic locations around the city, package trucks, which currently use surface streets and highways en route to distribution hubs located outside the city, could be eliminated.

The “mobile depot” idea sounds interesting but it might be difficult to find suitable distribution sites within cities. This idea reminds me of the rail traffic problems in the Chicago area where the solution in recent years has been to keep moving distribution facilities to areas further away from the core of the region. But, new distribution sites could inconvenience certain neighborhoods or areas while providing a benefit to the city or region.

I wonder if this is similar to adding lanes on highways: if delivery trucks are taking up less space, will more cars fill the space?

Architect Jeanne Gang opposed to sprawl

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An interview with Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, designer of Aqua in the Loop, reveals her dislike for sprawl, and, along the way, the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright:

“Urbanization is the huge issue of our time,” she says. “We can’t survive if we can’t solve the problems of population growth, loss of clean air and water and loss of biodiversity.”

Gang and her firm, Studio Gang Architects, are pioneers in ecological urbanism, a field of design that considers rising populations and dwindling resources. Cities are key laboratories, and Gang says they must become denser and more nature-friendly.

She hasn’t hesitated to take on global icon Frank Lloyd Wright with her anti-sprawl approach. Chicago’s — and America’s — most famous architect spent decades promoting single homes on suburban lots where residents would savor nature far from downtowns and connect with society in cars.

“I want to turn Wright’s legacy upside down,” Gang says with no hint of doubt. “The way to be ecological is not by spreading out. It’s by clustering together. It’s by having a better relationship with nature in the city than you can have in a far-out suburb.”…

Taking on Wright is not an easy task. While he may have designed a number of single-family homes, he also designed a mile-high tower. Particularly in Chicago, Wright is someone revered for his ability to design in a Midwestern sort of way, drawing upon prairie influences and helping Chicago grow up. But, I’m sure Gang could find many people who agree that sprawl uses too many resources. Additionally, if new designs like that of Aqua can be more ecologically friendly, attract residents and business, and give cities iconic buildings, city leaders are likely to see this as a big win.

Cool images of underground subway construction in NYC

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Building new subway lines is a massive undertaking and this gallery of photos gives some indication of the scale of the work. Here is what New York is undertaking:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has taken on three massive projects: East Side Access, the No. 7 subway line extension, and the new Second Avenue subway line. Construction for the projects is taking place deep underground, much of it simultaneously. The three projects span 14 miles and are expected to be finished in 2019 at an estimated cost of $15 billion.

This indicates a few things: New York has the kind of capital and ability to build such lines and the trouble it takes to construct such things suggests new lines must be needed in a city where a large percentage of residents use mass transit on a daily basis.

Misinterpreting a graph of income in the US by misreading the X-axis categories

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Some graphs can be more difficult to interpret, particularly if the categories along one of the axes are not a consistent width. Here is an example: misreading a chart of income in the United States:

“When I was growing up in Canada,” says Jon Evans of Techcrunch, “I was taught that income distribution should and did look like a bell curve, with the middle class being the bulge in the middle. Oh, how naïve my teachers were. This is how income distribution looks in America today.”

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“That big bulge up above? It’s moving up and to the left. America is well on the way towards having a small, highly skilled and/or highly fortunate elite, with lucrative jobs; a vast underclass with casual, occasional, minimum-wage service work, if they’re lucky; and very little in between.”…

Er, no.  Look closely at those last two brackets.   Now look at the brackets immediately to the right of them? What do you notice?

Probably, you notice the same thing that immediately struck me: the last two brackets cover a much, much wider income band than the rest of the brackets on the graph.

Each bar on that graph represents a $5,000 income band: Under $5,000, $5000 to $9,999, and so forth.  Except for the last two.  The penultimate band is $200,000 to $250,000, which is ten times as wide as the previous band.  And the last bar represents all incomes over $250,000–a group that runs from some law associate who pulled down $251,000 last year, through A-Rod’s $27 million annual salary, all the way to some Silicon Valley superstar who just cashed out the company for a one time windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars.  Unsurprisingly, much wider bands have more people in them than they would if you kept on extrapolating out in $5,000 increments…

To put it another way, the apparent clustering of income along the rich right tail of the distribution is just an artifact of the way that the Census presents the data.  If they kept running through $5,000 brackets all the way out to A-Rod, the spreadsheet would be about a mile long, and there would only be a handful of people in each bracket.  So at the high end, where there are few households, they summarize.

The Census likely has good reasons for reporting these higher-income categories in such a way. First, because there are relatively fewer people in each $5,000 increment, they are trying to not make the graph too wide. Second, I believe the Census topcodes income, meaning that above a certain dollar point, incomes don’t get any higher. This is done to help protect the identity of these respondents who might be easy to pick out of the data otherwise.

But, this is a classic misinterpretation of a graph. As McArdle notes, this is a long-tail graph with very few people at the top end. The graph tries to alert reader to this by also marking some of the notable percentiles; above the $130,000 to $134,999 category, it reads “The top 10 percent reported incomes above $135,000” and above the top two categories, it reads, “approximately 4 percent of households.” Making the right interpretation depends not just on the relative shape of the graph, bell curve or otherwise, but looking closely at the axes and categories.

Six reasons Gen Y isn’t interested in cars

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Howard Tullman gives 6 reasons in answer to the question “Why doesn’t Gen Y care about cars?”

Emotional ties…

Mechanical abilities…

Technical constraints…

Economic realities…

Environmental considerations…

Political and regulatory changes…

If I had to vote for one of these reasons as being most important, I might go with number four. Owning a car is simply expensive and requires a long-term investment. Cheap reliable cars, say, under $5,000, can be difficult to find and the costs of insurance, maintenance, and depreciation are very real on top of expensive gas.

But, I think there are a few other reasons Tullman missed that could fit under his first and fifth reasons. Under emotional ties, it isn’t just that people don’t see owning a car as a “civic duty” but that Generation Y and younger have emotional ties to other objects like computers, video game consoles, and smart phones. Additionally, an interest in living in more urban areas might fit under environmental considerations plus the other bonuses such as culture and “scenes” present in big cities that are much more difficult to find in suburbs. Living in denser areas is seen as greener and such areas often offer more opportunities for mass transit or walking and biking.

A few other thoughts about the six reasons:

1. I think the interest in mechanical abilities has definitely shifted from analog objects, like cars, to digital objects. Generation Y is interested in “mechanical” activity but in a very different way.

2. Political and regulatory changes may discourage driving to some degree with stricter standards but this could also work in the favor of cars. If gas mileage increases significantly in the coming years, cars could be greener and small ones, in particular, could fit an urban ethos. The trick here might be making sure that these regulations don’t increase the costs of cars in such a way to discourage purchases. And, it remains to be seen if the federal government will significantly shift money toward mass transit and further encourage people to drive less.

Zillow starts estimating remodeling costs

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Zillow is already known for estimating housing values but just last week they started offering another estimation: what it will cost to remodel.

On Tuesday, Zillow waded into the world of remodeling, by pairing its database of photos of pretty rooms (from its for-sale listings) with the tool that seems to drive most aspects of American life these days, the algorithm.

Thus, the company is attempting to answer the obvious question that dogs glossy magazine layouts and cable TV decorating shows: How much would it cost to do a room like that, anyway?

Remodeling costs are notoriously difficult to generalize about with the public, for a number of reasons…

Undeterred by all that, the website has rolled out Zillow Digs, which has launched with about 6,500 photos of kitchens and master baths. Beyond mere real estate eye candy, though, it also has brought in a team of contractors to offer estimates of the cost of each room’s appliances, finishing materials, labor, etc.

As the article notes, this could be quite a money maker with the number of Americans who remodel their homes. It seems like the algorithm could benefit from getting some data after the remodeling takes place; perhaps a later appraisal or an estimate based on a later sales price. Of course, this would require waiting some time after the remodeling takes place and perhaps there are not enough cases of remodeling within a certain geographic area to make a good estimate.

In the end, it will be interesting to see how many people make use of this new site. Additionally, how many will be willing to make financial decisions based on the estimates from the site?