We tend to think of urban sprawl in America as a product of the Interstate Highway System built in the 1950s and 1960s. Metro area residents who might have been inclined to live near work in the city took the chance to head up the road, find a parcel of land for a single-family home, and commute into work by car. Others followed and pushed development farther out until we got the sprawled out metros we know today.
Some new work published today in the journal PNAS challenges this timeline—showing evidence of sprawl dating back to the 1920s. Using precise, street-level data at the county level, Christopher Barrington-Leigh of McGill University and Adam Millard-Ball of UC-Santa Cruz report that sprawl was rising well before 1950, then grew steadily through the 1990s. The researchers also conclude that US sprawl peaked around 1994 and has been falling ever since.
Tag: us
US legal reach
rather than sending troops around the world, maybe the US should do more of this global stamping out of corruption. if only there was as much zeal to stamp out corruption domestically.
Europe is also more wedded to the doctrine of “comity”, which holds that courts should not act in a way that demeans the jurisdiction, laws or judicial decisions of another country. “In practice, this translates into keeping your collective nose out of other nations’ legal affairs, with a few exceptions, such as war crimes
The tragedy of the US Military
We are vulnerable because our presumption of unconquerable superiority leads us deeper and deeper into unwinnable military conflicts
Lowest-Level Talks
this will be reality after a few more rounds of WTO
In an effort to strengthen diplomatic ties between the global superpowers’ most oafish representatives, sources confirmed Thursday that schlubs from the United States and China met in Australia this week for a series of lowest-level talks.
Reconstruction failed
This Confederacy nonsense should have been snuffed out when the civil war was won. Instead it was allowed to fester into the 21th century. Absurd.
College-Poverty pipeline
Corinthian Colleges lured students to its high-priced courses with the promise of an escape from poverty. But mired in $10Ks of debt they will likely never be able to repay, many now feel more stuck than ever.
Why no broadband
US consumers pay broadband prices for sub-broadband performance; ISP business relationships at the root of the problem
Shocking, i know.
Recursive scandals
The Department of Homeland Security revealed that David Nieland, an investigator leading the internal review of the Secret Service’s 2012 prostitution scandal quit in August — because he was caught in a prostitution scandal of his own.
Pay for performance
It’s common to hear that teachers should be paid better — more like doctors and lawyers. In 2009, the Equity Project, a charter school in New York decided to try it: they would pay all their teachers $125k per year with the possibility of an additional bonus. The typical teacher in New York with 5 years’ experience makes between $64k and $76k. The charter school, known as TEP, would pay much more. But in exchange, teachers, who are not unionized, would accept additional responsibilities, and the school would keep a close eye on their work. 4 years later, students at TEP score better on state tests than similar students elsewhere.
what becomes possible when you’re not constrained by a union straightjacket.
Cafeteria Corruption
The average school-nutrition director is not unlike the chief executive of a medium-size catering business, but with a school for a landlord and a menu regulated by the government. With lower subsidies, the lunch ladies needed cheaper calories, and they turned to the increasingly efficient processed-food industry to find them. School cafeterias also began to rely more on revenue from so-called competitive foods — snacks and lunches that are not regulated by federal guidelines and “compete” with the regular school lunch on cafeteria à la carte lines.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 