Urban/Suburban Stereotypes

Stereotypes about the urban/suburban divide annoy me.   

Today's stereotype comes from Andy Kiersz, who has a new blog post on Business Insider called "These Two Maps Prove That Living in the City is Better Than Living in the Suburbs."  (Fair warning: Kiersz took the maps from Reddit, which took them from Sightline Institute).  I'll focus on Kiersz, though, because the 'boiling down' that happens in this kind of data presentation is how stereotypes are made. 
 
Kiersz's first map shows a neighborhood in Bellevue, Washington.  His second map shows an area near downtown Seattle.  Both maps also include commercial and retail establishments, coded in purple.  The downtown Seattle map has much more purple than the Bellevue map.  Voila! -- living in the city is better than living in the suburbs because city residents can walk to things their suburban counterparts have to drive to.  

I don't take issue with the notion that walkable neighborhoods are better than non-walkable neighborhoods.  Rather, I take issue with the assumption that cities and suburbs have uniform characteristics within their respective borders.          

There are plenty of non-walking neighborhoods in DC, and plenty of walkable neighborhoods in Montgomery County.  Below are the walk scores and associated maps for two houses listed for sale on Franklymls.com (see here for how the walk score is calculated).  The first score, for a house on Houston St. in Silver Spring is categorized as a "walker's paradise."  The house on Whittier St. in Brightwood, DC is deemed "car-dependent."       

For another day--what the walk score can and cannot tell you about a neighborhood's 'walkability.' 

Should the Suburbs Be a Dumping Ground for NFL Stadiums?

In today's Washington Post Dan Malouff makes an argument against bringing the Washington football team back to the city.  For out-of-towners, the team's current stadium is located in Prince George's County.  

According to Malouff big sports stadiums don't "fit" in cities because they need large, open-air parking lots for tailgaters and aren't used very often (most NFL teams play 8 home games a year).  Let's leave the stadiums to the suburbs he concludes.   

Malouff's argument is against the grain.  As he notes, the DC city council is considering luring the team back into the city by offering to finance a new stadium. 

I'm ambivalent about where Dan Snyder's team plays, but I can't help feeling a little insulted by Malouff's opinion.  It's as if the suburbs are DC's dumping ground.  If DC shouldn't want a new NFL stadium why should the suburbs? 

I'm sure Malouff is familiar with DC's suburbs; he's described as an Arlington County transportation planner.  So, he must know that many of DC's suburbs are as 'urban' as the city is.  And, many of them are becoming, or trying to become, more urban by allowing higher density housing, courting mixed used development, and encouraging more walkable retail.  The last thing these suburbs need is heavy game day traffic, enormous parking lots, and public venues rarely in use. 

How much do you need to make to buy a home in the DC Metro Area?

The Washington Post had an interesting article yesterday about how much it costs to live in major metropolitan areas in the US.  The WaPo article is here.  The study the article was drawing on is here. 

The study, by HSH.com calculated how much salary it would take to afford "the base cost of owning" a median priced home in 25 metro areas in the US (see the link above for a more detailed description of HSH's methdology).

The DC metro area's median home price $368,000.  To afford a house at that price you need to make at least $62,809.63.  DC came in at 6th on the list.  

The top three salary thresholds were all in California--San Francisco at $115,510.06, San Diego at $81,570.40, and Los Angeles at $72,126.90.  

The lowest salary threshold was for Cleveland at $19,435.17.  Nearby Baltimore came in at $41,155.40.  

I have to confess that I was surprised that the DC metro area wasn't higher on the list.  I also thought the median house price was low.  The figures are correct, but it turns out my experience living in the District (during a time of rapid gentrification) and recently moving to South Four Corners in Silver Spring colored my assumption about home prices.  

My old zip code in DC (20016) had a median sales price in 2013--$955,263--that was well over the metro area's median house price.  And, all but one of MoCo's 10 inside the beltway zip codes had median sales prices above it as well (four had prices more than twice as a large).  An interactive graphic with median home prices for 2013 by zip code can be found here.   

In short, if you buy a house in Montgomery county at the median metro value, you are probably going to be doing so outside the beltway. 

Zip Code	Median Sales Price 2013
20812	$624,750
20814	$790,000
20815	$946,000
20816	$880,500
20817	$838,750
20818	$751,500
20901	$410,000
20910	$519,500
20903	$302,500
20912	$440,000

Maryland's next governor could be decided in the June Primary.

After living in 'Republican' places for much of my life (southern Virginia, Kentucky), I finally moved to a place that is bluer than your great grandma's hair--DC.  I'm now on my second stop in my tour of blue places to live--Montgomery County, Maryland.

Although we have a small secessionist movement in western Maryland, this state gives DC a run for its money on the blue spectrum.  That's why the Democratic primary coming up in June is so important.  Whoever wins it, will likely win the governorship.  Right now, these two guys are the top contenders in a recent poll.  It's early yet, but do you want either of these guys calling the shots in Annapolis?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/brown-has-2-1-lead-over-gansler-in-race-for-md-democratic-gubernatorial-nomination/2014/02/18/dcac56f6-989c-11e3-8461-8a24c7bf0653_story.html?hpid=z3

South Four Corners Makes it into the Washington Post!

This weekend my neighborhood made it into the Washington Post's 'where we live' column in the Real Estate section (http://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/south-four-corners-is-at-the-intersection-of-suburbia-and-bustle/2014/02/13/ed51937a-7260-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html).  I thought the author, Amy Reinink, did a great job capturing the flavor of my neighborhood, describing it as "at the intersection of suburbia and bustle."
 
But, being a geographer, I'm always thirsty for more spatial information.  So, I thought I'd share some census data for South Four Corners and compare it to the county as a whole.  Unfortunately, South Four Corners does not have its own census tract.  Rather, it is spread across two tracts, both of which include neighborhoods outside of the generally accepted borders of South Four Corners.

 The map on the left is from the Washington Post article linked above.  It shows the generally accepted boundaries of the neighborhood. The map on right side panel shows the census tracts in which South Four Corners is located (703.000 bordering the beltway and 703.100 just above it). Although these tracts include areas outside of South Four Corners, the neighborhood takes up a large share of both tracts.  So, we can still get a general sense of the neighborhood's demographics. 

























If we look at the racial background of three groups (white, Hispanic, and African American) from the 2010 census, South Four Corners differs in interesting ways from the county as a whole.  On the whole, South Four Corners is 'whiter' than the county.  Whites comprise 66% percent of the population across census tracts 703.000 and 703.100 while they take up a slightly smaller share of the county--63.2%.  Not surprisingly, minority populations take up a smaller share of the total population in South Four Corners as well.  However, there's one interesting caveat--the Hispanic share of the population is slightly higher in South Four Corners than it is in the county as a whole.  This may be due to the growth of the Hispanic population in the border area between Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

Share of the Population by race/ethnicity in South Four Corners and Montgomery County:

	MoCo as a whole	703.000	703.100	Avg of two census tracts
Percent White	63.2	72	60	66
Percent Hispanic	17.9	13	28	20.5
Percent African American or Black	18.3	11	13	12

Welcome to MoCo Musings

This blog is my way to get acquainted with my new home--Montgomery County, Maryland.  I live in South Four Corners, a sweet little neighborhood in Silver Spring just north of the beltway between Georgia and Colesville Road.  My perch is down county.  But, I'll be looking north, east, south and west, because borders notwithstanding, this is truly a metropolitan area.

I moved to Montgomery County in October of 2012.  In a lot of ways it was a hard move.  I spent the previous 14 years in DC.  And, to be honest, I didn't want to leave.  It's not that I had a love affair with DC.  If I was dating DC I wouldn't put 'in a relationship with DC' on my Facebook page.  Nope, I'd put 'its complicated.'  I loved my neighbors, I loved my local pub, and I loved my proximity to work.  I didn't like dealing with the DC DMV, the latent hostility of some city workers, or the grind of looking for parking on cold winter nights.   The transience also bothered me.  It is hard to build a community when its potential members are always changing.  Still--inertia set in, and in my 14 years I'd become a bonafide city girl.

Life has a way of upending the inert.

A number of factors contributed to the move:

• A 1-bedroom condo was too small for 2 adults (me and hubby), a baby (lovebug) and 1 dog (Fluffy stuff). 
• 'Are you for real--this apartment costs how much?'  Yes, the DC housing market is ridiculous. 
  
• The public schools in the neighborhoods we could afford ran the gamut from so-so to crappy.  My friends in the District told me things would be better by the time my son was ready to go to school.  But, it was a gamble I didn't want to make since private school simply wasn't an option (can't afford it, don't want it).  
• I was close enough to walk to work, but my husband had an hour commute on New York Avenue.  Enough said. 
• Baby boy arrived and baby boy's entourage of stuff was filling all available wall space
• The sofa won't cut it anymore for visitors

Come join me as I explore Montgomery county and its place in the DMV.