Category Archives: Places

Trying to understand China’s economy with a lack of statistics

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Megan McArdle writes about the issue of a lack of comprehensive data to understand what is happening with China’s economy:

But central planners badly need good, comprehensive data.  Once you limit the autonomy of local nodes to make decisions, you need some sort of massive data set to overcome information loss as decisions move up the hierarchy.

Libertarians often use this to argue against any sort of central planning, but that’s not the point of this post.  All modern economies engage in some level of planning, whether it is monetary policy or infrastructure construction.  It was in response to the problems of managing production during World War I that economists first conspired to create US economic statistics.

The Chinese government is extremely enthusiastic about managing their economy, and they put a lot of thought into it.  But the lack of good statistics on economic performance makes an already near-impossible challenge even more daunting.

It is remarkable to recognize how much data there is out there these days in the United States. And even with all that data, it is often not always clear what should be done – government officials, investors, journalists, and citizens need to know how to interpret the data and figure out how to respond.

What would it take to get comprehensive data in China?

h/t Instapundit

Interactive maps of metropolitan America

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The Brookings Institute has put together a website with interactive data maps of metropolitan America. The data comes from the 2009 American Community Survey (done by the Census) and one can look at all sorts of variables across cities or metropolitan areas.

The best feature, in my opinion, is the tab that lets you compare suburbs alone across metropolitan regions. Very quickly, you can find that the suburbs of Syracuse, New York have the highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites (93.1%), the suburbs of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California, have the highest median household income ($96,478), and the suburbs of Modesto, California have the highest percentage of commuters traveling more than 90 minutes to work (7.2%).

Richard Florida cited by UK Conservatives

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The Economist takes a look into the background of urban thinker Richard Florida, who has recently been cited by leading British Conservatives. Here an excerpt about Florida’s background:

Although less well-known in Europe, he is as close to a household name as it is possible for an urban theorist to be in America. In his best-selling books, highly paid speeches and frequent television interviews, Mr Florida has extolled one core idea: that the creative sector is the growth engine for Western economies as menial work migrates to developing countries.

Mr Florida’s definition of creative goes beyond the obvious artists and musicians to include anyone open to new ideas. He says businesses must give space and flexibility to these freethinkers, and that cities must attract lots of them to be successful. This means they must be green, clean, tolerant and cultured, typically with large gay and ethnic-minority populations…

His superstar status, as much as his ideas, have made him enemies. One Canadian newspaper columnist, fed up with his high profile after he became head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at Toronto University three years ago, started handing out badges that read “Please stop talking about Richard Florida”. More seriously, other academics have denounced his “snake oil economics”, his use of statistics and his confusion of causation and coincidence. Joel Kotkin, another writer about cities, points out that over the past 20 years far more jobs in America have been created in boring suburbs than in the multicultural city centres beloved of Mr Florida.

He describes himself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

There are some interesting things to think about based on this story:

1. How much evidence is there that Florida’s ideas can bring about a “quick fix” to depressed locations? In England, are they looking to his ideas for a quick turnaround or is this a long-term project?

2. I’ve seen and read some of this criticism of Florida by other academics. Some of it did seem based on envy of his status and money-making abilities – his books have done well, he is an expensive speaker, and he has had the ear of a number of politicians. At the same time, there are legitimate concerns about whether his ideas work in the real world. I’m particularly struck by Kotkin’s criticism as noted in this story – job growth in America has been primarily in the suburbs.

3. In another part of the story, The Economist hints that politicians who court thinkers or adopt ideologies can often be left struggling to convey or act upon these ideas. On one hand, it is remarkable that Florida gets so much attention from politicians – few academics ever draw this kind of attention. On the other hand, when social scientists and urban thinkers do have a chance to influence politics, what are the outcomes?

h/t The Infrastructurist

How to get into clubs (the key: status)

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Status is a topic that fascinate sociologists – who is labeled high status, why do they develop this, and how do they use it? A new study in Qualitative Sociology looks at what people are more likely to get into clubs:

Bring a woman — preferably many — if you want to get past the velvet rope.

That’s the advice of professor Lauren Rivera, who spent six months as a coat-check girl and in other low-level positions at an uber-exclusive club in Manhattan. The jobs were a cover for her academic work, on the bouncers of the club and the decisions they make. That account was just published in the journal Qualitative Sociology. It’s pretty much a how-to for making it beyond the velvet rope.

“I study status,” Rivera, an assistant professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, tells AOL News, “and I had a question. And the question I had was, How do people evaluate the worth of others in these unconstrained situations?'”…

Rivera began by flitting around the club, trying to steal looks at the bouncers in action. But a few shifts into her stay, she set up as a coat-check girl, which gave her an almost unencumbered look at the bouncers and who they were admitting. Later, she interviewed them all, delving deeper for the why of their judgments. “The interviews were actually more fruitful than the process itself,” Rivera tells AOL News.

Here’s what she found. Bouncers, first and foremost, let in the people they’ve let in before. “Generally, the most important thing is to be recognized,” she says, i.e. a star. If you’re not a star, it’s important to be a regular — maybe a friend of the star who goes to the club often, even when the star is, say, filming a movie in Antigua.

That still leaves the rest of us. How do we get in?

“Bring women,” Rivera says. “Women get in because the more women there are, the more men will spend money on them.” So if you’re a man, it matters less what you wear than who’s on your arm — or, preferably, arms. And if you’re a woman, never come alone. Always come during a massive girls night out.

After that, pinning down who’s admitted gets tricky and idiosyncratic.

Very interesting work. The bouncers had to develop methods for letting people in or keeping them out. The bouncers may appear to have an “instinct” about this but in reality, they develop and follow rules that they believe lead to a more successful club. While the above factors would increase the likelihood of getting into the club (being a regular, bringing women, being famous), there were also factors that would decrease your status in the eyes of bouncers: being an American black or Hispanic man.

Also, this research method of participant observation allowed Rivera to dig deep into the workings of the club. Without the initial observations from the inside of the club as an employee plus the interviews at the end where she could then ask the bouncers about their decision-making, the study would not have been so complete.

Six reasons for living in the country versus in cities

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The Yahoo Green blog provides a list of “six amazing things city dwellers miss out on.” Here are the six items on the list: stars, fresh air, peace and quiet, greenery, sounds of nature, and animals and wildlife.

It is interesting to think how many cities have created spaces where city dwellers can get glimpses of these things. Many large cities have large parks (think Central Park or Grant Park or the Golden Gate National Recreational Area) where some of these things are possible. However, as this blog suggests, seeing the stars even in the suburbs or thinking about city wildlife versus country wildlife is quite different.

To have all six of these things, how far would this blog suggest one has to move from the city? And for most Americans, how would these six amenities rate against the amenities that cities offer?

The globalization of scientific research

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A recent report from the United Nations suggests that while the West (and the United States, in particular) still dominate scientific work, other countries are gaining ground. Here are some of the measures from the UNESCO report:

In 2007 Japan spent 3.4% of its GDP on R&D, America 2.7%, the European Union (EU) collectively 1.8% and China 1.4% (see chart 1). Many countries seeking to improve their global scientific standing want to increase these figures. China plans to push on to 2.5% and Barack Obama would like to nudge America up to 3%. The number of researchers has also grown everywhere. China is on the verge of overtaking both America and the EU in the quantity of its scientists. Each had roughly 1.5m researchers out of a global total of 7.2m in 2007…

One indicator of prowess is how much a country’s researchers publish. As an individual country, America still leads the world by some distance. Yet America’s share of world publications, at 28% in 2007, is slipping. In 2002 it was 31%. The EU’s collective share also fell, from 40% to 37%, whereas China’s has more than doubled to 10% and Brazil’s grew by 60%, from 1.7% of the world’s output to 2.7%…

UNESCO’s latest attempt to look at patents has therefore focused on the offices of America, Europe and Japan, as these are deemed of “high quality”. In these patent offices, America dominated, with 41.8% of the world’s patents in 2006, a share that had fallen only slightly over the previous our years. Japan had 27.9%, the EU 26.4%, South Korea 2.2% and China 0.5%.

Even though the United States still dominates a number of measures, UNESCO concluded Asia is the “dominant scientific continent in the coming years.”

A couple of things are interesting here:

1. Even if jobs have left the United States for cheaper locales, the US still has advantages in scientific research. How long this advantage holds up remains to be seen.

2. These are just three possible measures of scientific output. Other ones, such as journal citations, could be used but this seems fairly effective to quickly look at several measures.

3. It is interesting to think about how science itself will change based on increased research roles in non-Western nations.

h/t Instapundit

Mapping the most gerrymandered districts

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Buried in some of the election coverage this season was the story that this class of legislators will play an important role in the redistricting process. I love maps and here is a collection of maps of the “top ten most gerrymandered political districts in the United States.”

While there are some short descriptions of how these particular districts came to be defined, I’m sure there are some interesting stories about each case. If more voters knew that this is what districts could look like in the hands of legislators, would there be any outcry?

The CTA makes it official: will sell naming rights to almost anything

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This has been in the works for a while (particularly with the revamped Apple stop at North and Clybourn on the Red Line) but the CTA officially announced today that it will solicit “bids soon to sell naming rights to just about anything it owns.”

The transit agency expects to award corporate sponsorships by next spring, officials said. Rodriguez said the CTA will go out for bids next week to hire a corporate adviser who will help package the sponsorship opportunities.

“We want to find new ways to generate revenue, and we want to do so in a way that will enhance the experience of our riders for improvements, services and amenities,” Rodriguez said.

But he and other CTA officials declined to offer any estimates on how much money the venture might generate.

“Providing 1.7 million rides every single day is a value to somebody someplace,” Rodriguez said. “The question is, What’s it worth?”

Savvy marketers will want some idea of how much bang they’re getting for their investment, experts say. Marketers also would have to look past the “what-ifs” of having their brand name associated with the unpleasant realities of public transportation, which include unkempt stations, rail line breakdowns and potential crashes.

A couple of things seem remarkable about this:

1. Sociologists are often concerned with the lack of true public spaces in cities (and suburbs). This is bound to have some effect on what were previously public spaces; now there were be even more reminders about corporations.

2. The CTA is going forward with this without being able to say publicly how much money they might be able to raise? This seems foolish. Will they still go forward if bids end up being lower than expected? Might it have been better to line up some more deals before going public with this?

3. How exactly will these new revenues be used within the CTA?

4. What are the next steps for expanding the CTA budget if these deals do not bring in as much money as expected or costs continue to rise and these new revenues are not enough?

5. The agency said it “will be sensitive to avoid naming rights that are in poor taste or at all questionable.” This could lead to some interesting battles over which companies can purchase naming rights and which cannot. What may be responsible to one neighborhood is not necessarily responsible to another.

Plans to revamp Navy Pier

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Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin takes a look at new plans to revamp Navy Pier. Overall, Kamin argues the plans lack coherence even as they offer a few nice ideas:

That’s what’s missing from the new report: A bold design framework for the future of the 3,300-foot-long pier (above, in its current state), which was envisioned by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, completed in 1916, and remains Chicago’s top tourist attraction, even if it’s not as popular as it used to be.

Drawn up for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority by the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate developers’ group, the report unveiled Wednesday has a certain urgency because Navy Pier’s annual attendance has fallen to 8 million from a peak of 9 million in 2000.

But the report’s principal recommendations lack flashes of insight about the great public work, which originally consisted of classically-inspired buildings framing freight and passenger sheds. The sheds disappeared as part of the pier’s $225 million makeover, completed in 1995.

My complaints about the space would be a little different and not focus so much on the design. My main issue is that it is primarily a tourist attraction that has little revisit value and is not connected enough to other Chicago attractions like Michigan Avenue or the Chicago River. As a tourist destination, it doesn’t actually offer much to do – the stores are limited, there are limited eating opportunities, attractions like the Ferris Wheel aren’t something you would come back to several times a year, and the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre is a great performing space but doesn’t add much to the atmosphere. Additionally, Navy Pier is a bit of a walk from Michigan Avenue which features much more interesting shops and restaurants.

The contrast I would draw with Navy Pier is Millennium Park. The park doesn’t cost anything (outside of some concerts, ice skating, and food) but has attractive elements: interesting design, some great gardens to walk through, and great people-watching opportunities, as people converge from the train stations, State Street, Michigan Avenue, and the lakefront. Most of all, the park is not a mall or amusement park, which Navy Pier can often feel like. Millennium Park feels and operates like a real public space, not a controlled commercial environment.

What might be helpful are some low-cost options for boasting interest. Why not have revolving (and interesting) art displays or themes? Why not have more street performances? Why not work on connecting the Navy Pier streetscape with Michigan Avenue so it doesn’t require a drive to the overpriced Navy Pier garage? Navy Pier needs to offer more unique and cheap features that tourists and others can’t find elsewhere in Chicago.

Prolonged housing issues: one-third of Chicago homes underwater

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The housing crisis of recent years is not just about foreclosures. The loss in housing value across the board means that many homeowners with mortgages owe more on those mortgages than their house is worth. This is a common occurence in the Chicago region where new data suggests one-third of homes are underwater, a rate almost ten percent higher than the national average:

Some 32.9 percent of all local single-family detached homes with mortgages were underwater in September, meaning the homeowners owed more on the loans than the properties are worth, according to new data from realty Web site Zillow.com. That compares with 30.9 percent in June and 27.2 percent in September 2009. The report does not include data on condominiums.

Nationally, 23.2 percent of homes have negative equity.

“Negative equity is going to continue to cast a pall over the housing market for the next several years,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist. “All these people are trapped in their homes and can’t move onto another one and it’s throwing off more foreclosures. For people who are not going to move anytime soon, it is much more of an academic issue. For people who need to move or who encounter an economic issue, it’s a material issue.”

I haven’t seen too many people speculating about the social consequences of this. Americans in the last 60 years have been fairly mobile people but these sorts of mortgage situations limits that. This may have consequences for job markets; even if there are jobs available elsewhere, fewer people are then able to pick up relatively quickly and move. On the other hand, it may lead to increased “feelings or perceptions of neighborhood” as more residents have to stay put longer than they would have even just five years ago.