Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bipartisanalliance.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 72 posts

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

#41

Post by iguy »

ghaff wrote: post #40
journalctl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Dense cities being expensive is also mostly a relatively recent phenomenon in the US because until about 20 years ago there was a next outflow of population in most cities. Supply is certainly part of the problem for expensive housing in some cities. But it's also driven by a significant increase in demand over a fairly short period. (And IMO it remains to be seen whether trends like remote work, autonomous vehicles,…

Right, but doesn't this explain what they see just fine? The walkable parts of cities are the gentrifying cores, which are now expensive, but 30 years ago were in deep decline. Were poor, now rich, call that upward mobility to sell the paper?

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

#42

Post by usrusr »

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…

“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.

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

#43

Post by sezna »

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.

It is required in the states but could potentially limit results to include less low income/unemployed individuals. Almost any job will withhold income tax and send it off to the government without you doing anything.

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

#44

Post by wil421 »

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.

It is 100% mandatory to file taxes if you make over $12k and over $13.5k if you’re over 65 and file single. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a job, investment, or unemployment.

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

#45

Post by ghaff »

iguy wrote: post #41
ghaff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dense cities being expensive is also mostly a relatively recent phenomenon in the US because until about 20 years ago there was a next outflow of population in most cities. Supply is certainly part of the problem for expensive housing in some cities. But it's also driven by a significant increase in demand over a fairly short period. (And IMO it remains to be seen whether trends like remote work, autonomous vehicles,…

Right, but doesn't this explain what they see just fine? The walkable parts of cities are the gentrifying cores, which are now expensive, but 30 years ago were in deep decline. Were poor, now rich, call that upward mobility to sell the paper?

Other than that they're largely different groups of people. It's mostly young professionals displacing blue collar workers and racial minorities.

With some exceptions like Manhattan, graduates of 20 to 30 years ago didn't live in city cores or often even commute to them. In my grad school class--the New Yorkers aside--almost no one I knew moved into a city. They were all out in the suburbs, which is where most of the companies they worked for were located as well.

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

#46

Post by blablabla123 »

jedberg wrote: post #31

This sounds at best correlation not causation (and the correlation is pretty weak too). I didn't see any causal effect. My instinct tells me that walkability is a consequence of the actual cause, which is probably higher property values in denser cities, meaning better schools, or something to that effect.

I was living for some time in a city that offered a lot of options for pedestrians but certain things were not available or only with difficulties - e.g. buying furniture - unless you had a car. So living there without a car was fun at first but then it became very draining, especially when having to move from one apartment to the next one.

The logical explanation is probably that with a car one has not only more options but also options are available at lower cost. E.g. one can move to a cheaper area, with cheaper supermarkets but that is only reasonably accessible by car. The irony for me is that cars became that popular in the first place, given that they are a quite unreliable and expensive toy.

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

#47

Post by amiga_500 »

wil421 wrote: post #44
usrusr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

It is 100% mandatory to file taxes if you make over $12k and over $13.5k if you’re over 65 and file single. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a job, investment, or unemployment.

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!

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

#48

Post by war1025 »

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 still getting low 20s if you measure fill up to fill up.

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

#50

Post by yalogin »

Isn’t a city walkable by definition? I am comparing it to a suburb obviously. It feels like they have to define what walkability is first. If there is any correlation it will not be on the overall score but on some aspects that make up the score.
Post reply on HN