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Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

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Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#61

Post by hatfortguy »

_delirium wrote: post #57
wil421 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, this always comes up and I’ve never met a single person who actually had to pay taxes. My brother in law was out of the country for a decade and a few other friends lived in Europe and never paid. Has anyone on HN paid US taxes living abroad?

You do still have to file a tax return, which can be a bit complicated if you have foreign income. But if you work in Europe, you're right that you likely won't have to pay any actual US taxes. You can take the European tax paid as a foreign tax credit against the US taxes, and that almost always zeroes it out, since European countries mostly have higher tax rates. That was the case for me, anyway. You will have to p…

This is often also the case in Switzerland.

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#62

Post by kick »

journalctl wrote: post #37
adrianmonk wrote: post #25

Walkability goes hand-in-hand with density. Density tends to occur close-in as a consequence of land values being higher. Therefore, there is a natural association between high property values and walkability. I hope the paper takes this into account. It could just be that people with more money live in more desirable locations, which end up being more walkable too.

Dense cities being expensive is relatively recent in the United States. It follows decades of restrictive zoning and changes at the federal level to make housing more of an investment. Also, don’t forget that for most of history, you could only travel on foot, by horse (or similar), or by boat. “Walkability” is a retronym; for the longest time it was the only way most people got around. Edit: Downvotes? Stay classy,…

News Guidelines:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#63

Post by contingencies »

usrusr wrote: post #42
byeadam wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote the study, the walkscore.com data is "the earning records from all American citizens born between 1980 and 1982 whose parents filed taxes." Your use of the number 382 seems to be rhetorical implying that the sample isn't large enough. Moreover, your use of "buy/beg" verges on a predicative sort of ad hominem. Your criticism are totally valid, but you missed the most egregious flaw: "[O]ur analyses treat walk…

“whose parents filed taxes.“ As an outsider to the American tax system: is this a strong selection that could impact results? Here in Germany for example filing is optional for a lot of people (not just legally, but also in terms of expected returns) which would have quite unpredictable results on a study like this.

whose parents filed taxes

Excludes recent immigrants or orphans then, both of which groups could be particularly acute case-studies of upward mobility.

Big picture though, walkability and public transport definitely imply at least the potential for interaction and empathy, and cars the opposite.

The Highway and Automobile culture are symbols of totalitarian cultures which deny people more sustainable and equitable alternatives for mobility and transport. - Vandana Shiva, February 19, 2004.

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#64

Post by Eric_WVGG »

truebosko wrote: post #54

Yet it seems common in American cities that the best schools for children are in the suburbs, where walkability is graded lower. Public schools seem to be regaining credibility as the upper-middle class flood back into cities, but have they caught up? Unsure.

It's less a question of "suburban vs urban" than "wealth vs poverty."

Big cities have wealthy neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods, good schools and bad schools. And likewise, there are wealthy suburbs and poor suburbs.

A school that serves a mix of wealthy and poor suburbs probably has a more-average quality than the low end of a highly segregated city, but you can bet that a school in a tony part of NYC is going to be a hell of a lot better still.

All of this is due to San Antonio vs Rodriguez, which IMHO is the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Independent_School...

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#65

Post by surfmike »

wil421 wrote: post #56
amiga_500 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine Americans living abroad will be shaking their fist at the parent poster. They have to pay taxes in the USA even when working abroad, never mind in the USA!

Sigh, this always comes up and I’ve never met a single person who actually had to pay taxes. My brother in law was out of the country for a decade and a few other friends lived in Europe and never paid. Has anyone on HN paid US taxes living abroad?

California’s residency requirements are quite strict, and they don’t offer foreign tax credits, so if you’re planning to go back after a few years you’re effectively being double-taxed on the state income.

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#66

Post by jdnenej »

war1025 wrote: post #48
notStoicEnough wrote: post #38

Interesting. I know a lot of the statistics have been discussed elsewhere here, so I'll add two weak speculations - Cars are pretty expensive to own and operate. Mr. Money Moustache is constantly railing against them - https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/04/22/curing-your-clown... . Agree or disagree with his approach to things, his blog is very much about high social mobility. Secondly, walking is a pretty good way…

I was thinking recently about whether it would be useful for people to start thinking of things in terms of $/mi instead of mpg. Would make it much more explicit that it costs money to go places. Also as a bit of a side tangent, one of my big pet-peeves is people who state their mpg in best case scenario and not day to day. "Oh my SUV gets 45mpg cruising down the interstate." Yea sure it does. but overall you're stil…

That depends on the current price of petrol which changes often.

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#68

Post by Mathnerd314 »

byeadam wrote: post #32
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #20

Paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329729827_The_Socio... So they buy/beg data for 382 "community zones" from walkscore.com, do linear regression, and find a correlation. Then they get funding to do an individual-level survey and there's no correlation. And it doesn't appear in South Korea either. Their explanation is some statistical magic to pull out a "sense of belonging" as a mediating factor and a s…

To quote the study, the walkscore.com data is "the earning records from all American citizens born between 1980 and 1982 whose parents filed taxes." Your use of the number 382 seems to be rhetorical implying that the sample isn't large enough. Moreover, your use of "buy/beg" verges on a predicative sort of ad hominem. Your criticism are totally valid, but you missed the most egregious flaw: "[O]ur analyses treat walk…

The walkscore data is separate from the earnings records; it's calculated almost on-demand from the Google Maps API. The earning records are from https://opportunityinsights.org/paper/land-of-opportunity/, they didn't actually analyze the records themselves. And yes, 382 isn't particularly fine for geography of the US: https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/m.... For comparison, there are 3142 counties and they could have used that data instead.

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#69

Post by kbos87 »

I live in a very walkable area. Partly because it’s walkable, it’s also desirable and thus expensive, and tends to attract people who are either wealthy or at the start of their upward mobility - young people from families with means who are fresh out of college and reporting $50k in annual income now, but will likely be reporting $150k in annual income in the next decade. This is the story of most larger northern cities, and it’s a pretty simple explanation for the phenomenon explored here.

Re: Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

#70

Post by war1025 »

jdnenej wrote: post #66
war1025 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking recently about whether it would be useful for people to start thinking of things in terms of $/mi instead of mpg. Would make it much more explicit that it costs money to go places. Also as a bit of a side tangent, one of my big pet-peeves is people who state their mpg in best case scenario and not day to day. "Oh my SUV gets 45mpg cruising down the interstate." Yea sure it does. but overall you're stil…

That depends on the current price of petrol which changes often.

And the price of travel changes as the price of gas changes.

I was taught to check my mileage every time I fill up the tank. It would be just as easy to divide `cost / trip meter` vs `trip meter / gallons`, and would arguably give a more interesting number.

Mostly just an idea I had that I thought may be worth trying.

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