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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

#71

Post by tzs »

pash wrote: post #62
rcraft wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 at…

I mostly agree, but there are far more white people living within the boundaries of the Kansas City Public School District than you realize. It's difficult to find numbers, but I guesstimate that at least 30% and probably more like 40–50% of residents there are white. (To see this, look at the number of black people in Kansas City, Missouri, who live within the boundaries of the Hickman Mills, Center, Grandview, Rayt…

> I mostly agree, but there are far more white people living within the boundaries of the Kansas City Public School District than you realize. It's difficult to find numbers, but I guesstimate that at least 30% and probably more like 40–50% of residents there are white.

That guesstimate looks high, based on what I could find of the boundaries of the district and the racial data from this map: http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/

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

#72

Post by theschwa »

SG- wrote: post #66

Just curious, but realistically if I wanted to move to KC and rent a single or double bedroom apartment or small home that could get Google Fiber, what would I be looking at? Seriously pondering moving out of Canada and back to the US and I'm not interested at all in paying for a place like Boston where I used to live.

I had a beautiful spacious apartment in midtown for $800 with all utilities included. I now rent a two story three bedroom house in midtown for $1300 not including utilities. Overall, it's extremely affordable, and there are single bedroom options that aren't as big as those places for even less.

Not all of these are listed on sites like Craigslist, so it helps to reach out to some property management places.

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

#73

Post by rasz_pl »

theklub wrote: post #31
adventured wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Akamai's State of the Internet report for Q1, the US has an average broadband speed of 11.9mbps. Romania is 12.8mbps, Poland is 9.8mbps. By comparison France is 7.5mbps, and Germany is 10.2mbps. Based on the median household income in Romania being 16% that of the US, if 1gbps Internet access there costs $35-$40, you're paying the US equivalent of $210-$240.

That's all pretty good. Especially considering the size of the US.

size? you mean you have cheaper faster internet in the cities with high population density? :)))))) btw $40 1Gbit in Poland is in totally rural regions.

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

#74

Post by pash »

tzs wrote: post #71
pash wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree, but there are far more white people living within the boundaries of the Kansas City Public School District than you realize. It's difficult to find numbers, but I guesstimate that at least 30% and probably more like 40–50% of residents there are white. (To see this, look at the number of black people in Kansas City, Missouri, who live within the boundaries of the Hickman Mills, Center, Grandview, Rayt…

> I mostly agree, but there are far more white people living within the boundaries of the Kansas City Public School District than you realize. It's difficult to find numbers, but I guesstimate that at least 30% and probably more like 40–50% of residents there are white. That guesstimate looks high, based on what I could find of the boundaries of the district and the racial data from this map: http://demographics.coop…

Here [0] are the numbers from the most recent five-year estimates of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, aggregated over the census tracts within the boundaries of the Kansas City Public School District:

    Total population: 192,692
    Race:
      White only: 87,765 (46%)
      Black only: 80,627 (41%)
So my guesstimate was pretty much spot on.

0. http://proximityone.com/sd11dp1.htm

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

#75

Post by dnsbty »

rhino369 wrote: post #52
bsder wrote: 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 agree with most of this except for the bit about any of the first locations being in Comcast territory. I'm a Google Fiber subscriber in Provo, UT. Before Google got here I was on Comcast.

Our cap was 50 Mbit which wasn't bad, but then when Google came in, Comcast upped that plan to 250 Mbit with no hardware upgrades or anything for the same price which was really nice.

The main thing I noticed though is that reliability with Google is a lot higher. My Comcast connection would go down for an hour or two about once a week, but my fiber connection seems to always be fine.

As far as cities bending over backwards, Provo definitely did that. We had put in a citywide fiber network using a $40 million bond and then ended up selling it to Google for $1. It was definitely the best move considering the company that had been operating it before defaulted on their payments, but Provo will still be paying for the network for 12 years.

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

#76

Post by gopowerranger »

nmrm2 wrote: post #58
gopowerranger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In this case, they're not. Specifically, FBI crime data only only covers the city, so often used in news stories, only covers the city which, if it weren't for the state separating the city and county in the 1850s, would have also included the county.

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

#77

Post by nmrm2 »

gopowerranger wrote: post #76
nmrm2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In this case, they're not. Specifically, FBI crime data only only covers the city, so often used in news stories, only covers the city which, if it weren't for the state separating the city and county in the 1850s, would have also included the county.

Which doesn't make St. Louis unique -- that's also true of many other cities.

Anyways, that's all moot when the social and economic problems the region faces are clearly present in the county as well as the city.

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

#78

Post by gopowerranger »

nmrm2 wrote: post #77
gopowerranger wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, they're not. Specifically, FBI crime data only only covers the city, so often used in news stories, only covers the city which, if it weren't for the state separating the city and county in the 1850s, would have also included the county.

Which doesn't make St. Louis unique -- that's also true of many other cities. Anyways, that's all moot when the social and economic problems the region faces are clearly present in the county as well as the city.

It's not true of many other cities. There are only about three to five others in the USA with the unique separation of city and county government that St. Louis has.

In case you don't understand, the city is not part of any county but has both a chief of police and a sheriff. There are personnel that handle duties that cities don't typically have but do exist for county governments. The county is not part of the city and has no relationship with them whatsoever (this has changed slightly over the last decade or so but essentially still true).

I just realized I can get into a too long a list of the differences but there are articles online and, I think, a Wikipedia article.

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

#79

Post by discardorama »

kohito wrote: post #63
discardorama wrote: post #48

"In February, local Congressman Emanuel Cleaver sent a letter to Larry Page, co-founder of Google, warning that “preliminary statistics [for Google Fiber] suggest the beginning of a ‘digital redlining’ in our city”" But this Congressman couldn't find the funds to subsidize the poor people's signup fees, which are just $10 each?

Subsidy is one way of handling the signup fees. And it might work. But I can't tell if you're saying subsidy is the right answer here, or if you're saying the congressman's complaint to Google is out of line.

I'm saying that throwing about words like "redlining" is just an attempt to browbeat Google. If the Congressman was so concerned, he could get the $10/family subsidy from somewhere; which, I think, is the proper use of funds.

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

#80

Post by nmrm2 »

gopowerranger wrote: post #78
nmrm2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which doesn't make St. Louis unique -- that's also true of many other cities. Anyways, that's all moot when the social and economic problems the region faces are clearly present in the county as well as the city.

It's not true of many other cities. There are only about three to five others in the USA with the unique separation of city and county government that St. Louis has. In case you don't understand, the city is not part of any county but has both a chief of police and a sheriff. There are personnel that handle duties that cities don't typically have but do exist for county governments. The county is not part of the city…

> There are only about three to five others in the USA with the unique separation of city and county government that St. Louis has.

But a lot of other cities with a comparable population split, so St. Louis's situation isn't as special as its county's residents like to proclaim.

> In case you don't understand

Having spent several decades in St. Louis, I understand and disagree with this piece of regional folk knowledge:

1. The trivia that creates the population split in reporting is rather exceptional (and a nice testament to the dismal state of Missouri politics for the past N decades), but the occurance of city/county population splits on the order of 100,000's to millions is not nearly exceptional as people claim. St. Louis City really has been an exceptionally bad city for a while now.

2. This folk knowledge is usually used as an excuse to ignore the fact that the county is as segregated into rich/white and poor/black as the city is. I suppose I don't have to remind you that Normandy is in the County. The St. Louis that's been in the news for the past year absolutely 100% IS the County everyone pretends is so drastically different from the city.

3. This factoid also ignores the fact that White Flight defines the political geography of the St. Louis region (go to Main Street some time -- you won't have a hard time finding people proudly proclaiming that's why they live there, and after a few beers the language isn't even very coded; it's always funny to hear an apartement dweller cite home values as a reason for living in St. Charles...).

If this factoid were used with any degree of historical honesty or presence of mind toward improving the region, then it would be a harsh indict of the region and a call to reflection, rather than essentially an excuse for complacency.

In short, this factoid captures everything that I hated about St. Louis (and there was a lot I loved about it).

> The county is not part of the city and has no relationship with them whatsoever... but essentially still true

The city and county are tied together in a lot of ways that matter -- public transit funding, funding for major public parks in the city, regional city planning, etc.

I think for the past couple of decades at least, the degree of political inter-connection between the suburbs and the city rivals that of similar cities, even in spite of the weird political arrangement.

More to the point, we're quibbling over a detail that is irrelevant to the fundamental truth of the original post in the subthread -- St. Louis County school districts are strikingly and exceptionally segregated. There are only a few high schools in the entire region that have anything resembling a representative mix of the demographics found throughout the region.

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