suburbs thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/us/politics/mayors-concerned-as-redistricting-carves-up-urban-areas.html?hp

Salt Lake City’s mayor, Ralph Becker, said he worried that whoever was elected to represent the district would be torn between the needs of the urban and rural areas, which are sometimes at odds. Salt Lake County has been expanding its mass transit system and trying to protect its watershed, Mr. Becker said, while many rural areas are pushing for more highway money and for fewer restrictions on the use of federal land.

“We now are combined with areas that have virtually no relationship to our issues,” Mr. Becker said.

Cities have long been underrepresented in Congress, political scientists have found. As far back as 1963, when 31 percent of Americans lived in central cities, only 25.3 percent of the nation’s Congressional districts were situated mostly in central cities, according to a 1998 study by Harold Wolman and Lisa Marckini. By 1993, they found, the portion of Americans living in central cities had dropped to 28.2 percent, and only 21.4 percent of Congressional districts were primarily urban.

Smaller cities really get fucked on this, as their votes are diluted by 1/3 of their district being a dozen more counties tagged on to the two counties that actually house a city

article doesn't mention it but the senate by nature is just a huge gerrymander that has an even more dramatic urban-rural interest distortion

http://streetsblog.net/2011/12/07/the-federal-government-wants-to-bribe-you-to-drive-to-work/#more-17389

That’s some backwards ass shit right there

http://www.grist.org/transportation/2011-12-15-highway-to-hell-more-roads-more-traffic

i like highways

kshighway1=hershey highway

― Mr. Que, Friday, 23 October 2009

the senate by nature is just a huge gerrymander that has an even more dramatic urban-rural interest distortion

Yup, and in particular an overrepresentation of those who live in the relatively empty Western-middle of the country (hence the strength of the farm and oil lobbies), which did not even exist as a political matter when the Constitution was drafted. But it also obscures the cultural differences within the nation that rise up in the House, in which there is much better representation of the more populous coasts, South, and industrial Midwest.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45727067/ns/business-oil_and_energy/

When the gifts from Grandma are unloaded and holiday travel is over, the typical American household will have spent $4,155 filling up this year, a record. That is 8.4 percent of what the median family takes in, the highest share since 1981.

I couldn't think of what to get you iatee for christmas this year so I got you a texaco gift card

awesome I have been meaning to start hoarding gas

$4155 ~= $2650 but petrol is 2.5 times cheaper so that same gas would cost £6650 in the UK? Seems like an awful lot of driving, or very big cars ( both of which I guess fit the stereotype of US car usage?)

yeah that's right

two iatee-bait articles on the same page of today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/san-francisco-buses-are-slow-but-just-try-eliminating-a-stop.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/san-francisco-hopes-to-find-out-whos-parking-where.html

yeah when I lived in sf I would just walk everywhere unless the weather was bad or the distance was like 3+ miles. it's a pretty frustrating city w/r/t public transit, buses *and* muni are slow as hell. iirc studies show that people will walk ~.25 miles for a station, sf could rip out plenty. that other dude has a point in that there's a lot of low hanging fruit when it comes to speeding up buses without getting rid of stops but that doesn't mean we can't do both. the blog human transit is pretty good on this subject.

Convenient bump. I was just going to post this interview Cities Are Making Us More Human

It goes over some well covered territory (cities are better fro the environment, they encourage creativity, they are good for health, good for economy) but it still interesting.

'cities are making us more human' in 'the european' magazine