The influential 1965 Immigration Act

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The current position of the United States regarding immigrants was heavily influenced by the 1965 Immigration Act:

A new Pew Research Center report finds that the 1965 Immigration Act was largely responsible for bringing 59 million immigrants into the American population between then and 2015. These new arrivals, their kids, and their grandkids make up over half of the total U.S. population growth during this period. Looking ahead to 2065, immigrants that came to America as a result of this law, plus their families, will account for almost 90 percent of the nation’s population increase from now to then…

The Immigration Act of 1924 clamped down on immigration from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Western and Southern Europe. Here’s Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University, commenting on the explicit racism of the policy, via NPR:

“It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians.”

The 1965 law re-wrote that policy, and since then America’s white population share has declined from 84 percent at the time to 62 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, the Hispanic population share grew from 4 to 18 percent, and Asians rose from less than 1 percent to 6 percent (below, left). If President Johnson hadn’t signed the 1965 law, America would be 75 percent white today…

Quite a long-lasting impact for a piece of legislation that still doesn’t seem to get much attention today. And, as the article notes, it may not have been easy to know the impact of the Act at the time even as its effect from the vantage point of today looks significant. If supporters or opponents of immigration want to support or change policy, this is a place to start (though there have been changes made since then).

Also noted: much of the population increase in the United States in recent decades is due to immigration. Otherwise, the fate of the country looks more like many other industrialized nations with low birth rates and an aging population.

Uptick in $100+ million residential properties with several more in LA

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The luxury residential market continues to see higher and higher prices:

“There’s a shortage of trophy properties that are available for sale in this pocket of Los Angeles,” Barry Watts, president of Domvs London, said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got high-net-worth people who want to own multiple homes across the world, and Los Angeles offers something different. If you want to drive your convertible car 12 months a year, it’s a city where you can do that.

Homes priced at more than $100 million are becoming increasingly common as billionaires, seeking places to put cash, shatter sales records from Los Angeles to London. Around the world, five properties sold for $100 million or more last year, and at least 23 others have nine-figure asking prices, according to Christie’s International Real Estate.

In the Los Angeles area, the Bel Air homes add to multiple trophy mansions being built, including several on a speculative basis, or without a buyer in place. In December, video-game designer Markus Persson bought an eight-bedroom, 15-bath spec mansion in Beverly Hills for $70 million. The developer of a four-house compound being built in Bel Air hopes to sell it for $500 million…

The Bel Air project that spec developer and film producer Nile Niami wants to sell for $500 million will have a 74,000-square-foot main residence, three smaller houses, a 30-car garage and a “Monaco-style casino.” The most expensive home ever sold worldwide with a confirmed price was a London penthouse purchased in 2011 for $221 million, according to Christie’s.

After a certain point, it doesn’t seem to really matter what is in the unit or how it is built. Instead, two other things matter. Where exactly it is located – typically among other expensive and limited properties. A place where the wealthy can sort of gather together (in their separate compounds) near a cultural and economic center. Second, how much of a status symbol it is because of its high price. How does it compare to other luxury properties? Such an expensive home is a trophy to have until others push past the price point.

The FBI doesn’t collect every piece of data about crime

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The FBI released the 2014 Uniform Crime Report Monday but it doesn’t have every piece of information we might wish to have:

As I noted in May, much statistical information about the U.S. criminal-justice system simply isn’t collected. The number of people kept in solitary confinement in the U.S., for example, is unknown. (A recent estimate suggested that it might be as many as 80,000 and 100,000 people.) Basic data on prison conditions is rarely gathered; even federal statistics about prison rape are generally unreliable. Statistics from prosecutors’ offices on plea bargains, sentencing rates, or racial disparities, for example, are virtually nonexistent.

Without reliable data on crime and justice, anecdotal evidence dominates the conversation. There may be no better example than the so-called “Ferguson effect,” first proposed by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald in May. She suggested a rise in urban violence in recent months could be attributed to the Black Lives Matter movement and police-reform advocates…

Gathering even this basic data on homicides—the least malleable crime statistic—in major U.S. cities was an uphill task. Bialik called police departments individually and combed local media reports to find the raw numbers because no reliable, centralized data was available. The UCR is released on a one-year delay, so official numbers on crime in 2015 won’t be available until most of 2016 is over.

These delays, gaps, and weaknesses seem exclusive to federal criminal-justice statistics. The U.S. Department of Labor produces monthly unemployment reports with relative ease. NASA has battalions of satellites devoted to tracking climate change and global temperature variations. The U.S. Department of Transportation even monitors how often airlines are on time. But if you want to know how many people were murdered in American cities last month, good luck.

There could be several issues at play including:

  1. A lack of measurement ability. Perhaps we have some major disagreements about how to count certain things.
  2. Local law enforcement jurisdictions want some flexibility in working with the data.
  3. A lack of political will to get all this information.

My guess is that the most important issue is #3. If we wanted this data we could get this data. Yet, it may require concerted efforts by individuals or groups to make the issues enough of a social problem to ask that we collect good data. This means that the government and/or public needs a compelling enough reason to get uniformity in measurement and consistency in reporting.

How about this reason: having consistent and timely reporting on such data would help cut down on anecdotes and instead correctly keep the American public up to date. They could then make more informed political and civic choices. Right now, many Americans don’t quite know what is happening with crime rates as their primary sources are anecdotes or mass media reports (which can be quite sensationalistic).

The potential to redline customers through Facebook

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If Facebook is used to judge creditworthiness, perhaps it could lead to redlining:

If there was any confusion over why Facebook has so vociferously defended its policy of requiring users to display their real, legal names, the company may have finally laid it to rest with a quiet patent application. Earlier this month, the social giant filed to protect a tool ostensibly designed to track how users are networked together—a tool that could be used by lenders to accept or reject a loan application based on the credit ratings of one’s social network…

Research consistently shows we’re more likely to seek out friends who are like ourselves, and we’re even more likely to be genetically similar to them than to strangers. If our friends are likely to default on a loan, it may well be true that we are too. Depending on how that calculation is figured, and on how data-collecting technology companies are regulated under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, it may or may not be illegal. A policy that judges an individual’s qualifications based on the qualifications of her social network would reinforce class distinctions and privilege, preventing opportunity and mobility and further marginalizing the poor and debt-ridden. It’s the financial services tool equivalent of crabs in a bucket...

But a lot of that data is bad. Facebook isn’t real life. Our social networks are not our friends. The way we “like” online is not the way we like in real life. Our networks are clogged with exes, old co-workers, relatives permanently set to mute, strangers and catfish we’ve never met at all. We interact the most not with our best friends, but with our friends who use Facebook the most. This could lead not just to discriminatory lending decisions, but completely unpredictable ones—how will users have due process to determine why their loan applications were rejected, when a mosaic of proprietary information formed the ultimate decision? How will users know what any of that proprietary information says about them? How will anyone know if it’s accurate? And how could this change the way we interact on the Web entirely, when fraternizing with less fiscally responsible friends or family members could cost you your mortgage?

On one hand, there is no indication yet that Facebook is doing this. Is there any case of this happening with online data? On the other hand, the whole point of these social network sites is that they have information that can be used to make money. Plus, they could offer to speed up the approval process for loans if people just given them access to their online social networks. Why do you need mortgage officers and others to approve these things if a simple scan of Facebook would provide the necessary information?

Additionally, given the safety of our data these days, redlining might be the least of our worries…

I survived the new Route 59 diamond interchange

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I went out of my way a bit this weekend in order to try the recently opened diamond interchange at I-88 and Route 59. There wasn’t much traffic but I found it pretty easy to navigate and it looks like it will help move traffic onto I-88 more quickly. Here were some reactions from drivers earlier in the week:

“Am I doing this right?” one Daily Herald reporter wondered while test driving the new route. There was bemusement on the faces of some other drivers, but Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman Guy Tridgell reported no major problems Monday afternoon.

“We have observed folks maybe driving a little tentatively, a little slowly, perhaps because they’re curious, but everything is going according to plan,” Tridgell said.

While it may take drivers some time to adjust – though there are plenty of signs and traffic light indicators – the improved safety and traffic flow of such interchanges means more are coming:

A similar interchange will be completed at the Jane Addams Tollway (I-90) and Elmhurst Road near Des Plaines in 2016.

The Illinois Department of Transportation opened another diamond interchange at I-57 and Route 13 this summer in Marion, in southern Illinois.

Given that more cars can now move through this interchange, does that mean traffic will increase? Generally, if you add lanes to a highway, drivers see that as a feature and this can lead to more congestion. (Conversely, road diets that limit lanes can reduce traffic.) This is already a busy area along I-88 with numerous crowded interchanges both east and west. Perhaps safety through a reduction of accidents in busy intersections is the number one goal here…

This particular type of interchange is relatively new – see a 2010 post here.

What it takes to build supertall structures

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In order to construct new supertall buildings, some new building techniques are used:

Wind is the “dominant force” in tall buildings, says Baker. Over time, engineers and architects have become more and more sophisticated when it comes to shaping a building to account for gusts that can, on very rare days, reach 100 miles-per-hour at the crown of a 90- or 100-story skyscraper. Early in the design process, different shapes for a proposed tower are workshopped and run through wind tunnel testing to determine which one is most efficient. Computer simulations for complex wind patterns still take a long time, so model testing often works best to determine factors such as lift and cross-breezes. Baker says, “the wind tunnel is a giant calculator.”

Skyscraper designers want to “confuse the wind,” says Baker. Air pushing against the surface of a tall tower creates vortices, concentrated pockets of force that can shake and vibrate buildings (the technical term is vortex shedding). The aim of any skyscraper design is to break up these vortices. Facades often have rounded, chamfered or notched corners to help break up the wind, and sometimes, open slots are grooves will be added to let wind pass through and vent, in effect disrupting the air flow…

To help counter the shifting and swaying of building, engineers also utilize dampers, massive devices that shift and help stabilize tall structures like counterweights. Think of them like the weights in a grandfather clock; engineers attach 300-800 ton pieces of steel or concrete on a floor near the top of a tower, tuning and adjusting chains to balance them so they move out of phase with local wind patterns, steadying the tower. Two main types of dampers are used today; tuned mass dampers, which function like swinging pendulums, and slosh dampers, or slosh tanks, large pools of water that help absorb vibrations. The technology isn’t new; it’s been used on buildings such as the Seagram Tower, completed in 1958. But it’s become more common and more sophisticated. Some tuned mass dampers even use actuators, or small motors, to shift and move in opposition to the wind. The engineers of the Shanghai Tower even devised a damper system with powerful magnets…

Even with carefully engineered facades and vibration-canceling technology, supertalls still need to support massive amounts of weight. While we haven’t moved past concrete and steel, technological advances means the elemental ingredients of skyscrapers can support much larger loads with much less material. “Concrete is amazing these days,” says Baker. “We should call it something new, since it’s so different than concrete from a few decades ago.” More workable and up to five times stronger, concrete today has gained these powers due to a more complex chemical composition. In many cases, industrial by-products, such as fly ash, slag from steel mills and microsilica left over from silicon manufacturing, are added to strengthen the mix, allowing it to be stiffer and support heavier loads.

That’s a lot of work and we would want to make sure this is done right from the beginning. (If people are worried about all the computer code in cars, imagine an article written from the angle of what could go wrong is building these tall structures.) Just putting all the appropriate pieces together – in addition to the new technologies that evolve to help make this possible – requires dealing with an impressive amount of complexity.

Just a reminder from a post earlier this year: the engineering can get us to even taller buildings (3,000-5,000 feet) but the economics haven’t caught up yet. Yet, with the luxury end of the market continuing to thrive, perhaps we aren’t that far away…

Today’s cars with more 100 million lines of code

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Driverless cars will only compound this issue: the increasingly complex programming for cars.

New high-end cars are among the most sophisticated machines on the planet, containing 100 million or more lines of code. Compare that with about 60 million lines of code in all of Facebook or 50 million in the Large Hadron Collider.

“Cars these days are reaching biological levels of complexity,” said Chris Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University.

The sophistication of new cars brings numerous benefits — forward-collision warning systems and automatic emergency braking that keep drivers safer are just two examples. But with new technology comes new risks — and new opportunities for malevolence.

The article then goes on to discuss two issues: hacking this complex software and regulating it (with the recent VW case serving as a good example). I’d rather the article goes three different directions rather than just highlight what could go wrong:

  1. How exactly do car makers and programmers make sure this all works together? How many people are involved in this? Who coordinates it all? Just putting this all together is quite a task.
  2. Say more about the complexity compared to other items. Based on what was said here, it sounds like this is the most complex mechanical object the typical person interacts with.
  3. The move to driverless cars may just only up the ante. Or, can some of this be reduced if you start with no driver and a fully autonomous system? New codes can tend to simply be built on top of older codes as pieces change but starting anew may make things easier.

Frankly, much of our lives these days is dependent on complex and/or long computer codes. If all that knowledge suddenly disappeared for some reason (perhaps an interesting starting point for a sci fi story), we would have some problems.

What if car-free central Paris catches on?

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It is a day for pedestrians in Paris:

“Parisians will be able to take back their daily living space and experience the city in a different way,” said Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who would have liked to make the entire city off-limits to vehicles on Sunday.The closure is unprecedented for the French capital and opens the entire city center to pedestrians only for one day, expanding on popular areas already off-limits to Sunday traffic like the fashionable Marais, the cobblestoned Montmartre and the hip neighborhood along Canal Saint-Martin.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic that normally clogs the city’s boulevards will be replaced by street parties, yoga classes, markets with fresh produce and — this being Paris — food tastings with top chefs…

Paris’ motor-free day is by no means a world’s first. Brussels, the traffic congestion capital of Europe, launched its first car-free Sunday 15 years ago, an example followed by Montreal, Jakarta and other cities.

The rest of the article emphasizes the pollution cars regularly bring to Paris and an upcoming climate change conference. These are important matters to address but there are also quality of life issues at well. Like many older cities, Paris has been retrofitted to accommodate cars and vehicles but what can be done is limited. Central Paris is a place for pedestrians, even after Haussmann’s changes, for both locals and tourists. The congestion tax in central London is an adaptation to a similar setting.

All together, I’m interested in what happens after this car-free day happens: do people find that they like this more than they thought? Why not regular car-free Sundays and then perhaps additional days as well? Yes, this could help bring down pollution levels but it could also make the central city a more pleasant place. Given the spread of such days in major cities throughout the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more such days in Paris.

Competing population projections for Chicago

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I highlighted one recent prediction that Chicago would soon trail Houston in population. Yet, another projection has Chicago gaining people and holding off Houston for longer. Which is right?

Data released by the Illinois Department of Health in February show that the population for Chicago, about 2.7 million in 2010, could decrease by 3 percent to 2.5 million by 2025. Meanwhile, Houston’s population could reach 2.54 million to 2.7 million in 2025, according to the Reuters report. But a recent population estimate by the Census Bureau shows an increase in population, rather than a decrease.

Census estimates released in June show that the population of Chicago increased by 1 percent from 2010 to 2014. So why is one projection showing a decrease, but another an increase?

Both data sets are based on estimates and assumptions, says Rob Paral, a Chicago-based demographer. Unlike the 2000 or 2010 census, where all residents answer a questionnaire, any interim projections or estimates must use sampling or a formula based on past population statistics to calculate population…

“Trend data do not support any increase in the projections for Chicago in the next 10 years,” said Bill Dart, the deputy director of policy, planning and statistics at the health department. Dart explained that the estimates from the census use a different formula than the health department. And factors such as births, deaths, migration, economic boons or natural disasters can disrupt projections.

Two groups dealing with population data that come to opposite conclusions. Two ways we might approach this:

  1. The differences are due to slightly different data, whether in the variables used or the projection models. We could have a debate about which model or variables are better for predicting population. Have these same kind of variables and models proven themselves in other cities? (Alternately, are there factors that both models leave out?)
  2. Perhaps the two predictions aren’t that different: one is suggesting a slight decline and one predicts a slight increase. Could both predictions be within the margin of error? We might be really worried if one saw a huge drop-off coming and the other disagreed but both projections here are not too different from no change at all. Sure, the media might be able to say the predictions disagree but statistically there is not much difference.

The answer will come in time. Still, projections like these still carry weight as they provide grist for the media, things for politicians to grab onto, and may just influence the actions of some (is Chicago or Houston a city on the rise?).

Chicago with several new supertall building proposals

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In a city known for its architecture, several proposals for new skyscrapers stand out:

Not only is Helmut Jahn the architect behind a new tower planned for 1000 S. Michigan Avenue in the South Loop, but this new building is expected to stand at a whopping 86 stories — a height that would make this one of the tallest buildings in Chicago. Of course, the news comes literally just hours after a 76-story tower proposal designed by architect Rafael Viñoly made its public debut. According to drawings uncovered by the development watchers at Skyscraper Page, the tower would stand at a height of 1030′, which would make it the fifth tallest tower in Chicago, or sixth if the 93-story Wanda Vista is completed before it. The tower would stand two hundred feet over the 76-story Viñoly-designed tower for 113 E. Roosevelt Road and would consist of 506 residential units, 598 parking spaces and retail offerings.

Several thoughts regarding these plans:

  1. Big cities like skyscrapers for the image they project and the commercial and residential space they can provide in a small footprint. Chicago has always liked tall buildings – this is a place that may be near having three high observation decks – and the quest to add more continues.
  2. Who exactly can buy or lease all the new space? Chicago is an attractive city but given its population plateau/decline, these are probably more evidence for an ongoing divided housing market where wealthier residents can afford such things but the majority couldn’t dream of such buildings.
  3. With the recent anniversary of 9/11, I remember some of the predictions that there wouldn’t be as much interest in supertall buildings after the events of that day. This does not seem to be much of an issue today.