Cities get the types of crime their design calls for.
Excited for Manaugh’s book to hit my mailbox in a few days.
How Aerial Surveillance Has Changed Policing — and Crime — in Los Angeles
Tag: geography
Louisiana Loses Its Boot — Matter — Medium.
According to the U.S.G.S., the state lost just under 1,900 square miles of land between 1932 and 2000. This is the rough equivalent of the entire state of Delaware dropping into the Gulf of Mexico, and the disappearing act has no closing date. If nothing is done to stop the hemorrhaging, the state predicts as much as another 1,750 square miles of land — an area larger than Rhode Island — will convert to water by 2064. An area approximately the size of a football field continues to slip away every hour.
Cartography: The true true size of Africa | The Economist. Speaking of Africa, the place is huge.
In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters – NYTimes.com.
All else being equal, upward mobility tended to be higher in metropolitan areas where poor families were more dispersed among mixed-income neighborhoods. Income mobility was also higher in areas with more two-parent households, better elementary schools and high schools, and more civic engagement, including membership in religious and community groups.
Hey wait that cuts across party lines what should I believe?! Cf. The Geography of Stuck.
Landscape Absurdism: Las Vegas – Design – The Atlantic Cities. The natural vs. the built.
The Makeup of Stuck America – The Atlantic Cities
Richard Florida follows up on The Geography of Stuck that I tumbled a few days ago, talking about religion, poverty, human capital, diversity, health, and most interesting to me, the Big Five personality traits:
States with higher levels of agreeable, extroverted and neurotic personality types are much more likely to have a higher percentage of residents born in that state (with correlations of .46, .49 and .4 respectively). Conversely, the percentage of residents born in a state is negatively associated with openness-to-experience personality types (-.32).
I should add: considering all of the above, it seems statistically unlikely that I will remain in Atlanta.
The Geography of Stuck – The Atlantic Cities. Glad to verify my childhood hunch that no one ever leaves Louisiana, or if they do, they go back. 78.9% native, that one.
Palo Duro Canyon – Wikipedia
The second-largest canyon in the United States. I’d never heard of it.
Dallas and Los Angeles represent two distinct models for successful American cities, which both reflect and reinforce different cultural and political attitudes. One model fosters a family-oriented, middle-class lifestyle—the proverbial home-centered “balanced life.” The other rewards highly productive, work-driven people with a yen for stimulating public activities, for arts venues, world-class universities, luxury shopping, restaurants that aren’t kid-friendly. One makes room for a wide range of incomes, offering most working people a comfortable life. The other, over time, becomes an enclave for the rich. Since day-to-day experience shapes people’s sense of what is typical and normal, these differences in turn lead to contrasting perceptions of economic and social reality. It’s easy to believe the middle class is vanishing when you live in Los Angeles, much harder in Dallas. These differences also reinforce different norms and values—different ideas of what it means to live a good life. Real estate may be as important as religion in explaining the infamous gap between red and blue states.
Virginia Postrel, A Tale of Two Townhouses (via christmasgorilla)
Map of US Census Bureau’s geographical regions. I always mix up the north and northeast subdivisions.
Mark Larson 
