MOCO Map of the Week--Percent Black/African American by Census Tract, 2010

Today's map looks at the distribution of Montgomery County's Black/African American population by census tract.

People who identify as Black or African American comprise 16.62% of MOCO's population.  Their share in MOCO is lower than it is for the state (29.4%), but higher than it is in the country as a whole (12.6%).

A few spatial patterns stand out on today's map.  First, the Black/African American population is spatially clustered in two places in the county--Gaithersburg/Montgomery Village and along the border with Prince George's County.  Second, the top 5 census tracts with the highest percentages of Black/African American residents are all located on the eastern edge of the county (either bordering the county, or bordering a census tract that does). Finally, the county's Black/African American population is largely concentrated outside the beltway, despite a significant cluster along the northeastern border of DC.

Next map will look at statistically significant clusters of the Black/African American population.  Stay tuned! 

Map notes:  The data for this map is from the 2010 census.  The census does not disaggregate between people who identify as African American and those who identify as Black (usually, though not always people from other countries with African heritage).  

Random MOCO Pic of the Day--Summer's coming!

It's only Tuesday, but here's a Glen Echo throwback that screams summer (pun intended)! 

Photo Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C., 20540 USA.  Digital ID: cph 3c24438
Date: circa 1920s.  

Silver Spring Transit Center--Who Pays for Private Sector Screw Ups?

"That's a rhetorical question, right?" my husband asked when he saw today's blog title.  Yes it is.  But more on that in a second.  Let's start with introductions.

The still incomplete Silver Spring Transit Center is a concrete eyesore for many MOCO residents.  As far as transit centers go, though, this one isn't half bad.  The double decker bus platform doesn't just have a functional design--that second level meets people at the level they come off the train--it is also open air, so it doesn't look brutalist in the way concrete behemoths often do.   

At the end of the day, though, the transit center's aesthetics aren't the real problem.  The concrete that was used to build the structure started cracking during construction.  Further tests revealed weaknesses in the integrity of the concrete--not a good result for a structure designed to withstand daily bus traffic.   

Ever since, there's been a looming question--who is to blame?  The general contractors who built the project (Foulger-Pratt), the engineers who designed its implementation (Parsons Brinckerhoff), the County that assembled the team, or the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which approved the plans?  Two reports on the center's problems haven't helped shed light on the process. 

Answering this question is important because assigning blame will go a long way towards determining who pays for the fix.  

In that regard, it was troubling to see that the County will likely cover the upfront costs of the fixes.  It also appears that the County's strategy for recouping costs is to go to court.  As a report in yesterday's Washington Post noted, "although they expect the expense to ultimately be borne by contractors, they may have to put up the money and attempt to recover it through litigation, a process that could take years."

At the very least, you hope MOCO decides to refuse any future business with these two companies while the court system figures out who is to blame.  Unfortunately, if the shady game of government contracting is any indicator, these two companies will be first in line at the MOCO trough for future contracts.  And, it isn't a foregone conclusion they'll be sent away.  

The drawing of the transit station above can be found on MOCO's website for the project.  

Random MOCO Pics of the Day

One of my favorite places in Montgomery County is National Park Seminary.  Strangely enough, given its name, NPS has never actually been a seminary.  It started as a resort in the late 1800s, became a girls' finishing school, and later an outpost of Walter Reed Hospital.  It has beautiful, if quirky architecture with a mixture of styles (An auditorium with Greek columns, some buildings that look like they belong in Dublin, and a pagoda).   

Over time the maintenance of the property declined. 

NPS is in the process of being redeveloped, but as these pictures show, it is a work in progress.  In fact, the private property that has been developed next to the it provides an interesting contrast to the quirky, Faulkner-esque state of decline of some NPS buildings.

 

 

Purple Line Follies--spring 2014 edition part 1

How do people on different sides of the debate about the Purple Line settle their differences?

If this was Game of Thrones, one of them would invite the other to a wedding and then kill him, his wife, and the horse he rode in on.

Fortunately, Purple Line fights are more Gladys Kravitz than Kingslayer.  The results are more comical as well.

The most recent fight started when Wayne Phyillaier complained to the Maryland Department of Transportation that a homeowner along the Capital Crescent Trail had extended his backyard onto public property by building a fence on the shoulder of the trail.  For out-of-towners, the Capital Crescent trails is an old rail-line that has been turned into a hiking trail.  The Purple Line is slated to be built along the trail.

Montgomery County investigated the complaint and levied a $500 fine against the homeowner, who happens to be one Ajay Bhatt, the president of Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail, a group fighting the line.

Turns out Phyillaier is an outspoken advocate of the line.

It is hard not to laugh at these fifth-graders guys. 

The Purple Line is most likely going to happen, so Phyillaier is on the winning side.  He could have said nothing or reported all of the sheds and fences built in the trails' right of way (Bhatt apparently has lots of company in his sense of entitlement to public land).

For his part Bhatt has already gone to court once to avoid paying the fine.  He lives in Chevy Chase, MD and owns his own company so can probably afford the fine.  Instead, he'll likely pay more in court costs than the fine.

Well, at least they aren't jousting, sword-fighting or playing dodge ball.

On second thought, maybe dodge ball IS the way to solve this.  

Map of the Week Bonus Edition--Ethnic Clustering

This is for all you map lovers out there!

The last two maps I've made showed that the distribution of two minority populations--Asian and Hispanic--in Montgomery County.  Today, I thought I'd take a look at the degree to which these two minority groups are clustered in a statistically significant way.

Stay with me statistics phobes.  There are pretty maps involved!

One way to see evidence of clustering is to create a standard deviation map.  This means that each tract is categorized based on where the minority share of the population in that tract fits in the wider distribution (i.e. within one standard deviation of the mean, within two standard deviations, etc.).

Evidence of statistically significant clustering would be found in tracts where the Asian or Hispanic share of a tract's population is more than two standard deviations from the mean.  

For both groups--Asians and Hispanics--there a 12 tracts with significant spatial clustering.  On the maps below these tracts are shaded in dark blue and outlined in black (as opposed to gray).  For the Asian distribution this means tracts where Asians comprise 29.4% or more of the total population.  The comparable figure for the Hispanic population is 42% or more.

Although both groups have significant clustering, the clustering tends to happen on different sides of the county--north and west for Asians and south and east for Hispanics.

What to make of all this?  Montgomery county may be exceptionally diverse, but that diversity isn't evenly across space.


Map 1: Asian Share of the Population, Classified by Standard Deviation

Map 2: Hispanic Share of the Population

MOCO Map of the Week--Percent Hispanic or Latino by Census Tract 2010

This week's map shows the distribution of Hispanics in Montgomery County.  

The Hispanic share of the population in Montgomery County (17%) is slightly larger than it is for the US as a whole (16%).  By contrast it is double the share for Maryland as a whole (8%).       

In terms of the distribution of the Hispanic population, two patterns stand out on the map below.  First, Hispanics are clustered in a fairly narrow band running along a northwest-southeast axis.  The band doesn't follow one particular road, but it does run through three places in the county known for having large Hispanic populations--Gaithersburg, Wheaton, and north Takoma Park.  Second, most of the county's Hispanic population lives outside the Beltway (the black line at the bottom of the county).

MOCO Musings' next map will explore the degree of clustering for Hispanics.  Be on the lookout for a standard deviation map! (For map lovers a 'be still my beating heart' moment!)