Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/10/we-identified-walkability-of-city-how.html

by Fricken • 7 years ago

244 69 7 years ago

bipartisanalliance.com

dogma1138• 7 years ago

London is extremely walkable and doesn’t seem to have that great of a social mobility for its residents.

izacus2• 7 years ago

Do you have better support for this statement than what the authors of cited paper have?

You did, after all, dismiss a whole paper with a glib remark.

pmiller22• 7 years ago

One example doesn’t strike me as a glib dismissal, particularly since this study was done in the United States.

cameronbrown• 7 years ago

Citation needed. Feels like a deathtrap sometimes.

baron816• 7 years ago

Seems spurious. Could be talented people move to cities with high earning potential—which happen to be walkable. Do the authors control for that?

rory096• 7 years ago

It's longitudinal tax data.

We 1st identified the relationship between walkability and upward mobility using tax data from approximately 10 million Americans born between 1980 and 1982.

pacbard• 7 years ago

The data structure doesn’t help with causal inference.

Reading the abstract, it looks like the authors are trying to make a causal argument: people are more likely to improve their economic standing because they moved to a walkable city.

OP pointed out that this could be due to self-selection of people with the potential of upward mobility to walkable cities. This would lead to spurious correlation between economic mobility and walkability. That is, a third variable (a potential candidate, awareness of climate change) could explain both upward mobility (usually, climate change awareness correlates with education level) and economic mobility (education correlates with higher wages).

tomatotomato37• 7 years ago

Yeah, something about this study just feels like it will ultimately end up as an example in an article covering the replication crisis or something.

pmart123• 7 years ago

Without reading the study, this would be my first assumption.

mwfunk• 7 years ago

Agreed. The most desirable and expensive neighborhoods tend to be the most walkable ones. It would make sense that the people who live in those neighborhoods tend to be more financially successful.

It's as if a study came out that showed that, according to their exhaustive statistical analysis, people that drove Mercedes tended to be wealthier than people who drove Chevys. Then they concluded that the key to upward mobility must be to get a Mercedes.

iguy3• 7 years ago

It's supposed to be mobility, and I think tracking individuals through their tax returns. (This magic data which only Chetty & co have access to.) So I don't think the Mercedes example works.

But I agree that it's very unlikely to be that being able to walk places makes you succeed. Could even be something as simple as enough people owning a few flats in their neighbourhood, which suddenly became super-valuable when lots of google employees showed up. That would look a lot like income mobility.

lonelappde• 7 years ago

Blog post is a copy of the abstract of a $12 article. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Famp0000422

Nothing to see here.

toptal• 7 years ago

I wonder how remote will change this.

ccvannorman• 7 years ago

Correlation not causation..nothing to see here.

braythwayt2• 7 years ago

Lots to see when we find correlation, even if we aren't certain of the causation.

First and foremost, we should attempt to replicate it and see if the correlation holds up independently.

Second, we should attempt to determine if their is a causal relationship. The arrow of causality going in either direction is of great interest to urban planning.

Or third, if there is no causal relationship between them, we should attempt to determine whether there is a third correlating factor, or better still, another factor that has a causal relationship with these two.

This discovery is highly interesting, and points in the direction of useful further research to perform. I would definitely not say that there is nothing to see here.

Authors often do some research, and then present some conjectures. Their conjectures may not be supported by the research, but they point in the direction of further research to confirm or refute the conjectures.

Research like this may not be sufficient, but it may be useful.

tmoertel• 7 years ago

There's another possibility: The two variables are completely unrelated but we only get to observe them when some function of both of the variables is true. The classic example is two independent coin tosses that trigger a bell when both coins come up the same -- and we only think to look at the coins when the bell sounds.

dwoozle• 7 years ago

Walkability is a proxy for whether a city has a knowledge economy (closely packed buildings) or an industrial economy (large warehouses and factories, less walkable). The knowledge economy cities have far outperformed the industrial cities in economic growth over the last four decades.

ghaff4• 7 years ago

By and large, most "downtowns" are primarily knowledge economies whether or not there is a lot of industrial economy centered around a city. If for example you look at the jobs in central Houston or Dallas I think you'll find they are mostly office jobs but those, like many other US cities, are not very walkable except in very limited areas.

Mathnerd3142• 7 years ago

Paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329729827_The_Socio...

So they buy/beg data for 382 "community zones" from walkscore.com, do linear regression, and find a correlation. Then they get funding to do an individual-level survey and there's no correlation. And it doesn't appear in South Korea either.

Their explanation is some statistical magic to pull out a "sense of belonging" as a mediating factor and a statement in the conclusion that "It may be that walkability is an emergent property most clearly visible at the level of aggregate, not at the level of each individual."

No discussion of data accuracy besides noting that even perceived walkability and actual amount of walking are barely correlated in their surveys (i.e., their data sucks).

Interesting paper idea, but the implementation seems like more statistical garbage.

byeadam• 7 years ago

To quote the study, the walkscore.com data is "the earning records from all American citizens born between 1980 and 1982 whose parents filed taxes." Your use of the number 382 seems to be rhetorical implying that the sample isn't large enough. Moreover, your use of "buy/beg" verges on a predicative sort of ad hominem. Your criticism are totally valid, but you missed the most egregious flaw: "[O]ur analyses treat walkability and access to public transportation as interchangeable."

usrusr• 7 years ago

“whose parents filed taxes.“

As an outsider to the American tax system: is this a strong selection that could impact results? Here in Germany for example filing is optional for a lot of people (not just legally, but also in terms of expected returns) which would have quite unpredictable results on a study like this.

Mathnerd3142• 7 years ago

The walkscore data is separate from the earnings records; it's calculated almost on-demand from the Google Maps API. The earning records are from https://opportunityinsights.org/paper/land-of-opportunity/, they didn't actually analyze the records themselves. And yes, 382 isn't particularly fine for geography of the US: https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/m.... For comparison, there are 3142 counties and they could have used that data instead.

samstave2• 7 years ago

There is a factor not being considered in walkability studies.

How far/convenient are pharmacies/cheap grocery places.

Those are the most important things

_fool• 7 years ago

Availability of nearby services such as those is a pretty major component in the walkability scores I've seen like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_Score . I agree they are very important, but I think they are considered. Where do you see them missing?

samstave2• 7 years ago

In real life.

adrianmonk2• 7 years ago

Walkability goes hand-in-hand with density. Density tends to occur close-in as a consequence of land values being higher.

Therefore, there is a natural association between high property values and walkability.

I hope the paper takes this into account. It could just be that people with more money live in more desirable locations, which end up being more walkable too.

journalctl• 7 years ago

Dense cities being expensive is relatively recent in the United States. It follows decades of restrictive zoning and changes at the federal level to make housing more of an investment. Also, don’t forget that for most of history, you could only travel on foot, by horse (or similar), or by boat. “Walkability” is a retronym; for the longest time it was the only way most people got around.

Edit: Downvotes? Stay classy, HN.

ghaff4• 7 years ago

Dense cities being expensive is also mostly a relatively recent phenomenon in the US because until about 20 years ago there was a next outflow of population in most cities.

Supply is certainly part of the problem for expensive housing in some cities. But it's also driven by a significant increase in demand over a fairly short period. (And IMO it remains to be seen whether trends like remote work, autonomous vehicles, etc. end up reversing the inflow into "elite" cities.)

adrianmonk2• 7 years ago

I agree some of the reasons for density are artificial. Not all of them, because the more desirable an area is, the more infill makes sense. (You see vacant lots in rundown areas, not thriving ones.)

But yes, that's a real issue, and it's a disastrously bad policy if you care about the environment (because density reduces transportation energy use).

However, I think the artificial restriction only magnifies the effect here. Lots of people would like to live in a dense, walkable area. If those policies weren't in effect, most people who wanted to could. But since they are, density is for those who can afford it.

kick• 7 years ago

News Guidelines:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jedberg• 7 years ago

This sounds at best correlation not causation (and the correlation is pretty weak too). I didn't see any causal effect.

My instinct tells me that walkability is a consequence of the actual cause, which is probably higher property values in denser cities, meaning better schools, or something to that effect.

blablabla123• 7 years ago

I was living for some time in a city that offered a lot of options for pedestrians but certain things were not available or only with difficulties - e.g. buying furniture - unless you had a car. So living there without a car was fun at first but then it became very draining, especially when having to move from one apartment to the next one.

The logical explanation is probably that with a car one has not only more options but also options are available at lower cost. E.g. one can move to a cheaper area, with cheaper supermarkets but that is only reasonably accessible by car. The irony for me is that cars became that popular in the first place, given that they are a quite unreliable and expensive toy.

chiefalchemist• 7 years ago

In general, the fluidity of movement is a key to a healthy economy.

For example, post 2007/2008 one of the things that slowed the economic recovery was the fact that too many people owned homes. When you own your home you can't just pick up and move (to where the jobs are/growth is). Eventually, some people abandoned their homes. Necessary. Unfortunately, those holes left a mark behind them as well.

There is no opportunity without fluid movement.

zwaps• 7 years ago

This is not a causal analysis. However, the authors do state this as a limitation in the paper.

werber• 7 years ago

Ancedotally, here in Detroit the walkable neighborhoods are the ones gentrifying the fastest and in the process becoming more walkable (more shops, grocers, restaurants)

microcolonel• 7 years ago

Correlation is not causation; and public transit is not walking. This is a rat's nest of extreme reaches.

I really like being able to walk places, I think it probably is helping me fiscally, but this is not even a survey.

notStoicEnough• 7 years ago

Interesting. I know a lot of the statistics have been discussed elsewhere here, so I'll add two weak speculations -

Cars are pretty expensive to own and operate. Mr. Money Moustache is constantly railing against them - https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/04/22/curing-your-clown.... Agree or disagree with his approach to things, his blog is very much about high social mobility.

Secondly, walking is a pretty good way to force yourself to get exercise. I'm fortunate enough to work for a big tech company with a shuttle; I recently realized that taking the shuttle forced me to walk more than 500 miles a year just between the stop and my apartment. That's huge when I'm pretty unreliable about going to the gym. The shuttle also strongly encourages me to stay on a reasonable schedule - in before the last morning shuttle, out before the last evening one. I have to imagine that over time, this is also a pretty huge health benefit.

Edit: typos

war10252• 7 years ago

I was thinking recently about whether it would be useful for people to start thinking of things in terms of $/mi instead of mpg. Would make it much more explicit that it costs money to go places.

Also as a bit of a side tangent, one of my big pet-peeves is people who state their mpg in best case scenario and not day to day. "Oh my SUV gets 45mpg cruising down the interstate." Yea sure it does. but overall you're still getting low 20s if you measure fill up to fill up.

jdnenej2• 7 years ago

That depends on the current price of petrol which changes often.

blue_devil• 7 years ago

Ugh oh: correlation is not causation - hence you cannot state it's a "determinant".

They are probably both caused by - say - "criminality" which makes a place more or less walkable.

yalogin• 7 years ago

Isn’t a city walkable by definition? I am comparing it to a suburb obviously. It feels like they have to define what walkability is first. If there is any correlation it will not be on the overall score but on some aspects that make up the score.

ghaff4• 7 years ago

Isn’t a city walkable by definition?

Not really. Even if you can walk to a restaurant from a company or your apartment/condo/house, if you still have to routinely take cars and/or public transit to do most things, that city isn't very walkable.

A lot of cities have specific areas that are fairly walkable but those areas may be pretty small and/or not particularly mixed use--so you still need to mostly drive.

Here's Redfin's classification scheme: https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works

truebosko• 7 years ago

Yet it seems common in American cities that the best schools for children are in the suburbs, where walkability is graded lower.

Public schools seem to be regaining credibility as the upper-middle class flood back into cities, but have they caught up? Unsure.

criddell• 7 years ago

I was wondering the same thing. How can they isolate walkability rather than cultural factors or factors related to the public school system of a city?

Eric_WVGG• 7 years ago

It's less a question of "suburban vs urban" than "wealth vs poverty."

Big cities have wealthy neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods, good schools and bad schools. And likewise, there are wealthy suburbs and poor suburbs.

A school that serves a mix of wealthy and poor suburbs probably has a more-average quality than the low end of a highly segregated city, but you can bet that a school in a tony part of NYC is going to be a hell of a lot better still.

All of this is due to San Antonio vs Rodriguez, which IMHO is the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Independent_School...

cmarschner• 7 years ago

This reads as if there could be an alternative title: “Multi-story city buildings should include stairs.”

jdnenej2• 7 years ago

They all do for fire safety.

kbos87• 7 years ago

I live in a very walkable area. Partly because it’s walkable, it’s also desirable and thus expensive, and tends to attract people who are either wealthy or at the start of their upward mobility - young people from families with means who are fresh out of college and reporting $50k in annual income now, but will likely be reporting $150k in annual income in the next decade. This is the story of most larger northern cities, and it’s a pretty simple explanation for the phenomenon explored here.

foxyv• 7 years ago

Average commute distance is 20 miles or so. At $0.25 per mile in depreciation, maintenance, gas, etc... you are spending about $10 per trip. With 260 work days in the year that costs the average American about $3,000 extra at a minimum. If you make less than $30,000 a year that is 10% of your budget gone before even rent is calculated.

In states with higher road taxes and fuel prices, and if you drive a less economical vehicle, that figure can get as high as $10,000 pretty quickly. I'm always surprised at poverty level families driving vehicles that cost them 25-40% of their yearly income. Often they have to use Uber and Lyft to help cover the car's cost and end up depreciating it even faster.

Imagine, being a slave to a freaking car.

Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents

Related Stories