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Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

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Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#51

Either something's missing from the report of Vogl's argument, or she's trying to do something purely destructive in shutting down the startup offices. This seems to be the entirety of her case: - The workers use up too many parking spaces. - They're richer than us. - They think we're poor. - They commute to work instead of living in the office. - They're untrustworthy because they're outsiders.

It's the same old suburban flight problem, except that it's happening to a residential neighborhood rather than a commercial city center.

They have parking problems: consider 4 small businesses in a 2000 sq ft house: that'll be 8 or 10 cars parked around the house, rather more than the property is designed for. I'd imagine traffic during commuting hours would be interesting, too, given that residential neighborhoods are usually laid out to prevent it.

The start-ups and the pseudo-commercial property owner are primarily interested in keeping costs low, rather than keeping the neighborhood viable. Residents can no longer expect infrastructure upgrades (other than street maintenance) if the commuters are in the same voting area. Even if they aren't, you can probably expect the tax base to go down since they probably will go back to their own neighborhoods to use other facilities.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#52
post #16

I am always amazed that people can't figure out why Google is doing this. Google is rolling out fiber to neuter Comcast. Period. Comcast basically blackmailed Google several years back and thought they won. Google, rightfully, now saw Comcast as an existential threat to their business. Google will keep rolling out until they have Comcast by the balls. Only then will they stop.

I disagree. I think it's pretty clear that Google fiber is an attempt to create demand for faster residential connections and provide a model for ISPs to do it.

If Google wanted to come at Comcast, they'd be gearing up a lot faster than they are. At this point Google Fiber is mostly FttPR-Fiber to the Press Release. And also, I don't think any of the first several Google Fiber locations were even in Comcast territory. So far AT&T and TWC have been their competitors.

They want to create demand because Google loves remote computing and loves internet consumption.

Google is providing a model for the ISPs by forcing local communities to deregulate their ISP franchising system. Before Google Fiber, each town or state would take a pound of flesh from the new company trying to lay down a network. Google made the cities bend over backwards.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#53

Either something's missing from the report of Vogl's argument, or she's trying to do something purely destructive in shutting down the startup offices. This seems to be the entirety of her case: - The workers use up too many parking spaces. - They're richer than us. - They think we're poor. - They commute to work instead of living in the office. - They're untrustworthy because they're outsiders.

Did we read the same article? Vogl's argument seemed to rest on :

- These houses are residential properties.

- People are using them as commercial properties (offices, under the guise of 'live/work spaces')

- No one is stopping it, Zoning is not enforced there (because 'it's a poor neighborhood'), but zoning is enforced in wealthier areas (Johnson County).

The rest of the stuff you mention is true too. But I don't think it's the "entirety of her case" -- it's support for the case. "They commute to work instead of living in the office", for instance, is strong evidence that the property is commercial, not residential in nature.

This seems like a cut-and-dry zoning violation, that's being ignored because the area is "poor". I don't think she's being destructive, she's just asking for fair and equal treatment.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#54
post #18

This is just mentioned as an aside in the article, but is this accurate? "Even now, the schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are effectively segregated, with almost all white children at private schools. Just nine per cent of pupils in the state system are white. Almost 90 per cent are on free lunches." That statistic was totally shocking to me. Are there any other places in the U.S. where there's such a dramatic dispar…

This is an entirely misleading garbage statistic.

This statistic only relates to the rather small Kansas City Missouri public school district which only contains an estimated 17,500 students.

The author is misleading readers to believe that this statistic relates to all the schools in a relatively large US City named "Kansas City."

Per wikipedia:

In fact, there are portions of Kansas City, Missouri, where children attend 14 other "suburban" districts. In other words, the Kansas City District comprises the oldest parts of the city and is not contiguous with the boundaries of the city of Kansas City, Missouri.

So if we look up the total demographic of students that live in that same small geographic footprint I'd wager to say its not much higher than 9% white. (although that information is proving much more difficult to find)

As bachmeier comments - there is much more to the story.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#55
post #18

This is just mentioned as an aside in the article, but is this accurate? "Even now, the schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are effectively segregated, with almost all white children at private schools. Just nine per cent of pupils in the state system are white. Almost 90 per cent are on free lunches." That statistic was totally shocking to me. Are there any other places in the U.S. where there's such a dramatic dispar…

That quote, while true, doesn't tell the whole story. Families with school-age children will normally locate on the Kansas side of the border and send their children to the public schools there. Right or wrong (I'm not in a position to say) the Missouri schools have a very bad reputation. If you're thinking about buying a house on the Missouri side of the border, you factor in the cost of sending all your kids to pri…

It's not just that—not every Missouri-side Kansas City address goes to KCMO schools. Many don't. Everything north of the river, for example. Source: my wife has been teaching or subbing in the region for years, we have a KCMO address, and we're ~8 miles away from the nearest KCMO school district boundary. Some of the non-KCMO districts serving KCMO addresses are damn good, actually (Platte, for example).

There appears to be some confusion of KCMO the school district with KCMO the city (let alone the metro area).

I noted that elsewhere, and got down voted for it for some reason. There's segregation, yes, but it doesn't work quite the way that's implied, even if we only consider the city proper—I highly doubt a majority of white people in KCMO are sending their kids to private schools. In the KCMO school district, OK, that could be. Maybe I came off as defending the situation, despite calling out that there is indeed segregation? Who knows.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a recent This American Life episodes about this. Apparently the best way to raise poor black children's scores is to remove segregation, but white communities don't want it: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t... I'm from the UK and was genuinely shocked. While there are disparities and issues over here, they're on a different scale compared to the US.

Depends where you are. London is deeply racially divided. There are effectively black-only schools and white-only schools. There are also schools almost completely dominated by various other ethnic groups too. The divide includes both the teachers and the students.

Not just London.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#57
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I'm always amazed at the lengths people will go to in pushing the "Google is an ad company" trope. When 95% of your revenue comes from ad sales, you're an ad company.

And I conceded as much. But for all its truth, it just doesn't give you a useful analytical framework for reasoning about Google and what they do.

Always a good idea to weigh financials heavily when analyzing a company's strategy. After all, that's what the C-suite and investors are doing. Granted, they have more info than us, the public, but sources of revenue are an important part of the framework for sure.

Perhaps it makes more sense that Google is investing in high-cost infrastructure because they want to move away from the ad-model business. It's risky to have 95% of your revenue coming from a single industry.

Google can eat a lot of the costs of setting up a better network, which is a great investment in the future if you're betting that a majority of people will need high speed internet access 10-20 years from now. Then they can start extracting monopoly profits just as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast etc. do now.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

St. Louis has a similar disparity, especially vs its MSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Public_Schools#Demog... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis#Demographics

Like most people, your links confuse people by combining St. Louis city with St. Louis county. However, St. Louis county is not part of St. Louis city. The statistics, such as this and the too often ballyhooed crime stats, are falsely skewed. It's like taking the crime stats of the baddest part of your town alone to represent the crime (or education) of your city as a whole. Here's another example. The City of St. Lo…

People from St. Louis tend to over-play this -- it's pretty normal for cities to be separated from their surrounding suburbs in these sorts of statistics. Almost all of the mid-sized Midwest cities have populations in the 300k range and regional populations in the millions. St. Louis really is an exceptionally segregated city and region -- the city vs. county population trope is more of a favorite local excuse than a legitimate explanation.

Speaking more specifically, compare Normandy to Ladue. St. Louis County isn't just a mirror of its city -- if anything, it's a magnification of its city. This American Life did an excellent story that discusses this ( http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t... ):

* nearly 1/2 of black students in the St. Louis region (not the city -- the entire region, those 1.5m people) attended unaccreddited or provisionally accredited schools.

* Tellingly, the first wave of desegregation in St. Louis included County schools because, according to the judge, the county suburbs shared equal blame for the segregation of city schools.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#59
post #16

I am always amazed that people can't figure out why Google is doing this. Google is rolling out fiber to neuter Comcast. Period. Comcast basically blackmailed Google several years back and thought they won. Google, rightfully, now saw Comcast as an existential threat to their business. Google will keep rolling out until they have Comcast by the balls. Only then will they stop.

I disagree. I think it's pretty clear that Google fiber is an attempt to create demand for faster residential connections and provide a model for ISPs to do it. If Google wanted to come at Comcast, they'd be gearing up a lot faster than they are. At this point Google Fiber is mostly FttPR-Fiber to the Press Release. And also, I don't think any of the first several Google Fiber locations were even in Comcast territory…

This is exactly it, and it was their stated intention from the beginning.

https://gigaom.com/2010/02/10/google-doesnt-want-to-be-an-is...

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#60
post #16

I am always amazed that people can't figure out why Google is doing this. Google is rolling out fiber to neuter Comcast. Period. Comcast basically blackmailed Google several years back and thought they won. Google, rightfully, now saw Comcast as an existential threat to their business. Google will keep rolling out until they have Comcast by the balls. Only then will they stop.

I disagree. I think it's pretty clear that Google fiber is an attempt to create demand for faster residential connections and provide a model for ISPs to do it. If Google wanted to come at Comcast, they'd be gearing up a lot faster than they are. At this point Google Fiber is mostly FttPR-Fiber to the Press Release. And also, I don't think any of the first several Google Fiber locations were even in Comcast territory…

I believe this is correct. Google Chrome, Android, & Chromecast (kinda); Google has learned that influencing the lowest controllable tier is worthwhile.
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