Over the years the Post has distinguished iteslf as being a paper catering to cars and scum-burbs.Over the years, I've seen Capitol Hill, for instance, described as being all of the way north to Brookland- and as far east as INTO Anacostia by various Post writers- few of whom seem to be from or really care about the city.With suburban sprawl, we have also become a one newspaper town.More sprawl- less diversity of opinion. As much as I do not like the rabid opinions of some of it's writers[ as w/ the Post also] the Times has much better local arts and metro coverage than the Post in any given day.This is a very sad state of affairs.
I'm always struck when I look at historical population numbers how just about every city peaked in population in the 50's. That really must have been the best time to live in cities during the 20th century.
I recently saw a movie that captured a lot of great 1950's city scenes. It's the old film-noir movie D.O.A. Because they screwed up with their copyright notice, it's in the public domain and available for download here:
http://www.archive.org/details/doa_1949
I enjoy the film for it's film noir elements, but beyond that, it is a time capsule of San Francisco at its mid-century peak.
I'm looking forward to getting "The Day the Earth Stood Still" from Netflix, as I believe it does the same for DC.
I should correct my statement to say, "But for the racial segregation and other indignities, cities in the 1950's must have been wonderful to live in."
check out "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers" it has the best scenes of DC Ive ever seen - and doesn't treat the city as just the Mall with trees and tombs.The Aliens wax Union Station, F Street,Supreme Court , among other things and places that are never featured even now in movies. Hollywood even gets our Metro all wrong here. Many tourists must be shocked to find that it is an actual city here- as all of the adds seem to promote just the Mall and ignore the rest of it[us].Its like promoting NYC by only showing Central Park w/o any of the buildings.
The Balaker and Staley article was filled with deceptive statistics - claiming that 25% of NYC commuters use transit for example. That's true, but 51% of RUSH HOUR commuters use transit. The stat gets out of whack because many in New York work odd hours. It's at rush hour that transit comes into its own. There are more, but I haven't time to discredit them all...
Trust me, the 50s were not a good time to live in American cities. There are reasons so many people wanted to move to the suburbs then.
But there's no reason in the 'Reason' authors, cowtowing slavishly to the pro-car and pro-suburb mindset of the big city daily, which gets most of its revenue from car and real estate ads.
The statement that we are not paving America over is technically true, because most of America is an unusable desert. The real question is, how much of the arable land is being paved over, and the answer is, a lot, especially river bottoms near cities that used to furnish truck garden produce locally.
Should we stop driving to deal with global warming? Definitely- first, to reduce greenhouse gases from transportation, second, to gain the economies in provision of social services from compact communities, thirdly, because transportation and suburban devlopment patterns together constitute our largest energy use, so making that situation better produces more results than changing something less important.
Basically, there is something profoundly laughable about a so-called 'Libertarian' being totally in favor of the socialistic road system. Apparently they've forgotten that America chose automobiles and a socialized road system because we were fed up with private-enterprise railroads.
If the provision of social services is so much more efficient and economical, then whay are taxes and rents in the urban spaces so much higher. And why is the provision of social services in DC such a joke?
I agree we should be more clear about statistics. You may be correct that 51% of rush hour commuters use transit in New York. But New York has almost half the transit users in the nation. Using New York as an example of anythin to do with transit is an example of what you said was a bad example.
A recent study pointed out that more than half the people who live in New York travel by car, not transit. Winston and Shirley, in a book published by the Brookings institution claim that the economically optimum usage of transit nationwide is only 2%, because that is all the routes we have that are sufficiently dense to actually support transit.
Go back to your argument that 51% of New York Rush hour commuters use transit. The next question to ask is whether it is worthwhile to build this massive and expensive system just to support rush hour.
Metro reported operational costs per passenger mile of 44 cents in 2003. This is barely better than the automobile, and it doesn't say anything about the non operational costs. on the other hand automobile operating costs don't include the road costs.
According to Winston and Shirley the load factor of transit is actually less than the load factor of autos. This is hard to beleive, but it is apparently true.
In 2003 Metro reported operating costs of $8.50 per revenue mile. If their costs are 44 cents per passenger mile, then it means that Metro is carrying something like 19 passengers per revenue mile.
It seems to me that if you say that transit is the solution to our transportation problems then you are averaing statistics in a non meaningful way, just as you claim Reason Foudation did.
Finally, you ascribe 70% of fuel use to transportation. I suspect that the urban heat island effect tells us a lot about where energy is consumed: cities are profligrate energy hogs.
All of the produce in the US is produced on less that 2% of the land. I agree it would be better if we didn't pave over much of the best land as we have done with cities, but if the alternative is to put the cities in otherwise unusable deserts, then maybe you are on to something.
We don't produce produce in the cities because you can't afford to: the land is too valuable, regardless of whether it was once arable or not. As it stands now, much of our land is "protected" by far suburban farmers of various types, although we frequently think of them as hobby farmers. They are able to hold that land only because of off farm jobs. To the extent that sprawl makes off farm jobs available closer to them, then it turns out that sprawl is what makes many of our farms possible today.
I agree with you that statistics are used badly, but the first step in using them well is to reject any prejudice you may approach them
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