BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

It seemed interesting to me - until I spot-checked his data.

Then suddenly it looks like he is a jerk who cherry-picked white cities as his examples of "top-rated cities."

You can get ot various indexes from the links in this article (yeah, I know Wiki is not, in itself, taken as an authorative reference., It's a starting point)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_most_livable_cities

Including, fairly typically, this list:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07116/781162-53.stm

2007 Places rated list

1) Pittsburgh ! ! !

2) San Francisco

3) Seattle

4) Portland

5) Phildelphia

6) Rochester, NY

7) Washington

San Jose

9) Boston

10) Madison

So. yeah, Portland and Seattle are highly rated. But so are San Francisco, Phildelphia and Washington DC and they are not very white

Mick

Yeah, I agree he found data to fit his hypothesis. But bit is interesting:

This may explain why most of the smaller cities of the Midwest and South have not proven amenable to replicating the policies of Portland. Most Midwest advocates of, for example, rail transit, have tried to simply transplant the Portland solution to their city without thinking about the local context in terms of system goals and design, and how to sell it. Civic leaders in city after city duly make their pilgrimage to Denver or Portland to check out shiny new transit systems, but the resulting videos of smiling yuppies and happy hipsters are not likely to impress anyone over at the local NAACP or in the barrios.

We are seeing this script played out in Cincinnati presently, where an odd coalition of African Americans and anti-tax Republicans has formed to try to stop a streetcar system. Streetcar advocates imported Portland's solution and arguments to Cincinnati without thinking hard enough to make the case for how it would benefit the whole community.

Now, I'd argue that some bicycle-related infrastructure improvements (such as the ELB lanes) do benefit the whole community. Not only do commuters get a safe option for getting from point A to point B, but other people in the community get a safe place to ride their bikes and some measure of traffic control. I'd be curious if anyone has canvassed East Liberty residents regarding their thoughts about the ELB improvements....

I think the author stated the ones he chose are progressive cities, not most livable. While it is certainly open to argument, Pittsburgh doesn't top my list when someone asks me to fire off a list of progressive cities. Some sort of metric to measure how progressive a city is would be nice, and should have been mentioned in the article.

In any case, the list of cities is not even the most conspicuous cherry picking the author did. I dislike that he only compared African American population versus non-African American (all other races) population. If you are going to talk about how "white" a city is (which I think is ridiculous in this day and age), it would be prudent to include percentage of caucasians as one of your measures. For example, Portland has a larger percentage of Hispanic than African American, but for this article, Hispanic, Native American, and all Asian ethnicities are considered "white" for his comparison.

I'd be curious if anyone has canvassed East Liberty residents regarding their thoughts about the ELB improvements

ELDI did a lot of the work related to that. some of the impetus was residents complaining about how fast people drove, past schools, old folks homes, churches. also, they wanted more parking, especially for the churches.

When I opened this thread, I thought it was going to be about how the bike bell ringtone and the LRAD ringtone are among the most downloaded ringtones from Locally Toned in today's Trib.

ELDI did a lot of the work related to that. some of the impetus was residents complaining about how fast people drove, past schools, old folks homes, churches. also, they wanted more parking, especially for the churches.

That's what I figured.

Schmoo, that article came out! awesome! you got a link?

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_649261.html

finally got around to reading this. it was pretty thought provoking to say the least.

one thing that he didn't touch on, but could also support his thesis, is that cities, like humans, are better off when they have money. aside from cultural differences between different groups in a city, cities that have more money are able to get what they want.

one reason that cities with a ton of bike infrastructure have it is because they tend to have the money to do it. it's something that's difficult to portray to people, especially if they come from cities with money.

it's a shame that only rich people can afford organic food.

Eroc, I'm far from rich, at least according to American standards. I can afford organic food. Hell, I bet I could qualify for food stamps.

Priorities.

I think this article was crap. Absolutely no attempt made to look at the history of these cities to see why the populations are different than other large cities. He also seems to confuse causation with correlation.

I also don't understand the paragraph on public transit. Why wouldn't Portland style transit work in other cities? And if it won't work, what type of system would? Transit actually seems pretty simple to me. Trains or light rail between business and highly populated areas, buses, bikes, walking and park and ride lots to get people to the rail system.

RE: the public transit thing--I'm wondering if it's an issue of not providing good, inexpensive public transportation for people who need it most? For example, building a rail system along, say, the Allegheny valley makes sense, right, because that could help curb the number of people driving into the city and mitigate traffic. That's a good thing, at least from my perspective. But, if I live in Manchester, and work at a nursing home in Observatory Hill, and the Port Authority is cutting bus routes and jacking rates, it would upset me that some rich folks are getting a magic carpet ride to work.

But I'm just speculating.

I agree with Eric about organic food. It is all about priorities.

What Eric said.

Beyond that, I take issue with what I term "implied homogeneity". Pittsburgh too has enclaves of all-black and all-white neighborhoods, and many other ethnicities. It would be useful to compare bike ridership (transit ridership as well) among these, and more mixed, areas, broken down by race.

Transit cuts? What I said in 2004 still seems very relevant.

ok ok, i'll concede on the organic thing. just trying to use a little metaphor, jeez. but maybe it still works. although i could technically afford organics, when it's sometimes twice as much, i find it hard to justify it.

anywhooooooo....

re: transit

pittsburgh is a good example of what you are describing, brian. just look at the difference in transit options to the south hills (T) as compared to the east end (busway). thus making the northshore connector harder to justify when the east end has no light rail, and potential cuts

Here's an interesting rebuttal to the original article.

while i agree with the sentiment of the rebuttal, ie "who are you to tell me what i need?," there's something that irks me a bit about it.

i've never been to houston or atlanta, so i won't talk about those places.

but what he said could essentially be said of the burbs too. some people like living in the burbs, having no access to transit, driving gas guzzlers. saying so doesn't mean that it's above criticism and shouldn't be planned.

again, this is in no way talking about the cities he mentioned, just that way of thinking is odd.

I think it was more of a statement that it really doesn't matter what the racial make-up of a city is, as long as there isn't some type of institutional attempt exclude certain people.

that's what the first guy was saying, but in a dubious way.