A new Gallup study of 26 American cities finds that residents of smaller cities such as Boulder, Colorado, and Charlotte, North Carolina, are more likely to recommend their city as a place to live than residents of larger cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit. Overall, residents in Bradenton, Florida, were the most likely to recommend their city, while residents in Detroit and Gary, Indiana, were the least likely.

Gallup also finds a relationship between community attachment scores and net migration in the communities surveyed. Communities scoring in the top quartile of community attachment experienced positive population growth resulting from migration ( .78%), while communities scoring in the bottom quartile experienced a decline in population (-.28%). The third quartile does buck the trend as a result of high population growth last year in Charlotte, North Carolina.

See the results

Eric Miller on 09.29.10 @ 06:01 AM PST [link]  

Eric Miller on 09.23.10 @ 01:28 PM PST [link]  

It's just ten people on a streetcorner, practically invisible in the dusty sprawl of Hollywood--but it's also community and democracy at work.

It's one of a scattershot series of small protest organized by Credo Action, an outgrowth of dear old Working Assets, a progressive group that provided my first ever email address many years ago. A haven for people who don't want the money they pay for services to go the usual rapacious corporations that generally have a stranglehold on telecommunications, investment, and such. (I used to invest in their clean-and-green mutual funds, too, till the dot.bomb crash tempered my enthusiasm for unearned income....) still around, still kicking a percent of their earnings over to folks such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, women's empowerment, and all that good stuff.

Today's to-do was about Proposition 23--yep, another of those California propositions, descendant of the infamous Proposition 13, which gutted the funding of just about everything from schools to roads and started California's evolution from a sunny Switzerland to a dreary 3rdWorld kleptocracy, with the stealing privatized. Now we have a cabal of Texas oil companies bankrolling an initiative that would block enactment of California's hard-won global warming regulations, AB32, which would "he Air Resources Board (ARB) to develop regulations and market mechanisms to reduce California's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020. (Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are widely believed to contribute to global warming and other forms of climate change. ) Mandatory caps on GHG emissions will begin in 2012 for significant GHG sources. The caps will be reduced over time to meet the 2020 goals."

It's not a particularly stringent bit of legislation; it merely requires that the state monitor emissions and "adopt GHG emission limits and measures to achieve the maximum feasible and cost-effective reductions in emissions to meet the statewide GHG emission limit, using market mechanisms and alternative compliance mechanisms."

You'd think they like "market mechanisms," being good old conservative businessmen--but I guess they've gotten to accustomed to having their messes cleaned up at government expense, paid for by you and me--sometimes in cash, sometimes in cancer. (Hey, it's all good for the GDP in modern economics, right?) And it's odd that those fervent states' rightists don't like it that Californians have decided they don't want their state to be devastated by GW induced weather irregularities and fossil filth spewed out by cars and powerplants.

So we decided we want things cleaned up. We want cleaner cars; we want better transit; we want a little control over our own destiny, our own communities, thank you. Sorry, Mr. Texas Feudal Lord; that's why we were holding signs outside your Valero gas stations today. (The CEO of valero has been the biggest cheerleader and fundraiser for Prop. 23.)

And other Californians agree. Driver after driver--and you'd think LA's drivers would be automatic supporters of oil companies, right?--driver after driver honked approval in response to the signs.

We want our world back, one state at a time. Sorry, Mr. Oil Baron. We'd rather have jobs building streetcars, installing solar panels, or repairing bicycles than export our cash to Texas for you to light your cigars with.

And your customers, in their droves of cars, stuck in their dreary traffic jams, agree.

Richard Risemberg on 09.18.10 @ 02:50 PM PST [link]  

From Grapevine, TX

That is near Worth and Nash Streets in Grapevine, TX

Eric Miller on 09.16.10 @ 09:40 AM PST [link]  

Last night a diversion arrived at my desktop, a link to a web site about Facebook analytics. It was one of two links actually. The first showed me which fan pages are most popular by state or city, and so I now know more people in Pennsylvania like Freeze Pops than the Steelers and more people in Texas like the Dallas Cowboys than God. I'm not sure I would have guessed either. Who eats Freeze Pops anyway? [also of note, The New Colonist has Facebook fans in every state but Texas]

The more interesting of the links showed me how Facebook users are connected, or more specifically where the friends of Facebook users in say New York are concentrated. I have a feeling Jane Jacobs would have loved this.

Let's start with Dallas.

People using Facebook in Dallas have the most friends in Houston. I guess that would be expected. It's the same in Houston where most of the friends are in Dallas. Let's move to some smaller towns. Kingsport, Tennessee has the most friends in Knoxville and Nashville, so we're staying in state for the most part, most friends are within driving distance. Let's move out to where there's more space:Logan, Utah. Again the cities with the most friends are in state, Salt Lake City and Provo.

Now for the fun part, big cities. Let's start with Chicago. You might think the folks in Chicago would have the most connections in Milwaukee and Detroit. Nope, New York and Los Angeles. In Los Angeles its Orange County and New York. If you're like me and think Orange County doesn't count, it's followed by the Inland Empire and San Diego. If you think Southern California is one big conglomerate of places, then we move down to San Francisco and finally Chicago. But remember, people on Facebook in LA have more friend in New York than any of those places.

In New York we see something similar, but Chicago is further down on the list. Los Angeles, Nassau County and Washington D.C. followed by Boston, some other suburbs then Atlanta and Chicago. If the scope were broad enough to include international cities, I think we may see London and perhaps some other cities show up ahead of some of the others.

You may be able to use this to get an idea of how provincial a place is. Atlanta for example has cities much bigger than itself higher on the ranking than either Dallas or Houston. The web is faint over Texas, yet a distinct triangle of connections appears between New York, Chicago and Atlanta. In fact, those three cities seem to have the greatest connection, on Facebook anyway.

The page also shows the most popular names on Facebook, but the only city I checked where no Hispanic names begin appearing in the top ten is Miami. Oh, the top likes in New York, Chicago and Atlanta are Michael Jackson, the Chicago Bears and God.

See for Yourself

Eric Miller on 09.15.10 @ 01:37 PM PST [link]  

I was unaware of a new park coming to Dallas until it was pointed out by the streetcar operator. An urban highway that currently divides the city will before long become a large urban park. There's a great example of this at Harvard University in Boston and I have previously suggested it to cover I-279 in Pittsburgh which divides East and West Deutschtown.

You can see the highway in my recent video of the McKinney Avenue Streetcar. This will be a monumental improvement in the walkability of the city, particularly since one side contains many high-rise residences and the other side businesses and entertainment venues. Check out the web site for The Park in Dallas.

Eric Miller on 09.15.10 @ 05:16 AM PST [link]  

Eric Miller on 09.12.10 @ 04:20 PM PST [link]  

Could Philadelphia have a new neighborhood free of auto traffic? If J.H. Crawford has his way it will! Listen to our new podcast about an innovative plan for a Gaslight District in the City of Brotherly Love.

Eric Miller on 09.09.10 @ 12:43 PM PST [link]  

Baltimore seems to be continuing is renaissance. On a weekend trip I had the occasion to walk four or five blocks beyond Mt. Vernon Place. I found it completely charming. Since I constantly hear about the crime in Baltimore, I took a look at a crime map for the dates I was there, and only in the general vicinity of where I was. Not much occured in the Mount Vernon Place area over the three-day period. All of the incidents on the map, none of which appeared to occur in the date range, involved larceny. There were four shootings in the city during that time period, however, which certainly is cause for pause.

Eric Miller on 09.07.10 @ 06:03 AM PST [link]  

The US Public Interest Research Group has released a report showing that investing money in transit systems results in far more job creation than putting the same (or even more) money into highways. From their press release:

New data released today by the Transportation Equity Network reveals that investment in public transit can create hundreds of thousands more jobs than highway projects.

More Transit Equals More Jobs examines official project lists from 20 federally authorized Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and concludes that "if [they] shifted 50 percent of their highway funds to transit, they would generate an additional 184,801 jobs over a five-year period without spending any more money."

"This report reveals just how much more bang we can get for our buck if we invest in transit," said Dan Smith, a transportation associate for U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). "Transit provides important benefits to communities and, with unemployment so high, this is data that should not be ignored."

Previous studies, including examinations of federal Recovery Act spending, have consistently found that public transportation creates more jobs than highways. Investment in public transit tends to be more labor-intensive than highway projects because the work is generally more complex, involves the purchase and maintenance of vehicles, and requires much less spending on land acquisition.

More Transit Equals More Jobs makes a broad case for larger investments in our public transit systems. More money for transit not only means more jobs but would additionally lead to less traffic congestion, hazardous pollution, and global warming emissions.

For more information, click here, or view the entire report in PDF form: More Transit = More Jobs

Richard Risemberg on 09.03.10 @ 01:26 PM PST [link]  

Americans living in cities are more likely than their suburban counterparts to rent their residence. Still, the country has continued to become urbanized and for a long time the percentage of those who own their homes has risen. More recently its begun to fall and there is significant talk on the federal level of subsidizing rental housing instead of homeownership (let's face it, most all private housing is in some way subsidized). I'd like to get some feedback, is homeownership still a staple of what it means to secure the "American Dream" or is rental now seen as a viable and practical option? What is sacrificed? What is gained?

Eric Miller on 09.01.10 @ 10:50 AM PST [link]  

The American Dream Study by Trulia recently found that of those renters who do plan to purchase someday, 68 percent said it would be more than two years before they do. However, almost half of the respondents said they would be ready to purchase sooner than later, if they could only come up with the cash for a down payment and 30 percent could be convinced by a new job.

See the Report

Eric Miller on 09.01.10 @ 10:46 AM PST [link]