The Daily Parker

The U.S. Census Bureau yesterday released new estimates showing that Chicago's population declined slightly last year. The deeper numbers are more troubling:

According to Alden Loury, director of research and evaluation at the Metropolitan Planning Council, while the degree of black flight from the city has slowed some this decade, it's still averaging about 12,000 a year, based on data from the American Community Survey, also issued by the Census Bureau. Blacks leaving Cook County tended to move either to northwest Indiana or farther out in the metro area, or to Atlanta, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Dallas-Fort Worth, Indianapolis or Milwaukee, in that order of popularity of destinations.

The same data show the population of whites, Latinos and people of Asian heritage growing, he said.

Loury's conclusion: "The numbers show Chicago has an issue. . . .Areas around the Loop and the central area are doing well, but overall, the city as a whole is not doing well."

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner blame each other for the declines.

Citylab, analyzing a Times Op-Ed by Jed Kolko, adds color:

A more finely grained geographic analysis shows that the closer you get to the city center in most metros, the stronger has been the performance. While it’s true that the more outlying parts of some cities are losing population, their cores are becoming increasingly vibrant. As we’ve noted, that notion of critical mass at the neighborhood level is one of the defining characteristics of urban growth.

[And] there’s a baseline issue here. City growth has decelerated from the past year or two. But city growth this decade looks far different than it did a decade ago. While Kolko’s FiveThirtyEight.com post just shows the change in city and suburb growth rates over the past few years (and emphasizes the one-year change between 2015 and 2016), his longer blog post on his own website shows the change in population by type of county since 2001. Taking this longer view, it’s apparent that growth rates in suburbs have declined sharply since the last decade, while growth rates in urban counties were up.

We're still not candidates for The Atlantic's latest (really cool) photo collection of "A World Without People," thankfully.

The New York Times yesterday published a chilling description of how Venezuela's democracy sputtered and died:

Venezuela, by the numbers, resembles a country hit by civil war.

Its economy, once Latin America’s richest, is estimated to have shrunk by 10 percent in 2016, more than Syria’s. Its inflation that year has been estimated as high as 720 percent, nearly double that of second-ranked South Sudan, rendering its currency nearly worthless.

In a country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, food has grown so scarce that three in four citizens reported involuntary weight loss, averaging 19 pounds in a year.

Venezuela’s crisis came through a series of steps whose progression is clear in retrospect, and some of which initially proved popular.

The entire article is worth reading. Not that it could happen here, right? No, of course not.

Some stories from today:

• Andrew Sullivan sees Trump's insane Obama tweet as one more way to de-legitimize truth in general. Peter Beinart saw that too.
• President Trump, meanwhile, continues to claim credit for things that he had nothing to do with, like February's job numbers.
• There's new corroborating evidence that James Comey basically got Trump elected.
• Bruce Schneier calls for regulation of the Internet of Things.
• Peter Moskowitz sees gentrification as a long-term disaster for cities.
• Jeff Atwood reminds us that password rules are (still) bullshit.
• Tom Philpott thinks recipes are bad for you.

And, hey! It's Friday afternoon already.

Welcome to February, in which I hope to increase my pathetic blogging rate (currently 1.23 per day for the last 12 months). Of course, even taking a day off to catch up on things doesn't seem to be helping, because I have all of these articles to read:

• How did Big Data help Trump win?
• How do you talk to dogs?
• How can we prevent seeing the Trump Administration as normal?
• How does Sam Harris analyze the Muslim ban?
• How can the Internet of Things work securely?
• How is the Trump Administration ginning up a phony war with CNN?
• How are they possibly manipulating the Euro?
• And how can we best resist them?
• How did we get through all of January with almost no snow?

So, a lot to read. And still almost no time to read it.

From the Intertubes:

• Paul Krugman, "Greed Springs Eternal."
• What happened to O'Hare Terminal 4?
• Imagine how much New York's Hell's Kitchen stank in the 1860s.
• Deeply Trivial has a lot to say about Carrie Fisher's untimely death.
• 538.org rounds up their 11 favorite stories of 2016 (that they didn't write).
• There are a bunch of improvements (and fare increases) coming to Chicago's transit network next year.

I'll also have some blog entries in January. December seems to have been pretty light.

First, from Crain's, an exploration of the ghost town inside Naperville, Ill., where millions of dollars evaporated when the housing bubble burst in 2008:

At the height of the building boom, Novack estimates, there were 88 homebuilders working in Naperville. "Everyone was building homes then," he says. "It was the best business to be in." The bust took that figure down to "maybe a dozen," Novack says, though in recent years it's grown back to around 30. Homebuilding has been in a trough throughout the region, not only in Naperville. Builders sold 25,105 new homes in the Chicago area in 2006, according to Schaumburg-based industry tracker Tracy Cross & Associates, and in 2015 sold less than 15 percent of that.

If only Alan Greenspan had taken an economic view instead of an ideological one in the mid-2000s and put the brakes on runaway lending. Oh, and if we'd had financial oversight. But Republicans believe in everyone making it on their own: i.e., the richest making it on their own by not having to deal with the protections we put in place in the 1930s and 1940s, the last time this happened.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the incoming Christie administration moved money around the state budget to cut taxes, and he cancelled an enormous Hudson River tunnel project ostensibly to protect the state from cost overruns. The effects of his policies (which are consistent with Republican ideology) were calamitous for public transport. The New York Times explains in detail the effects on New Jersey Transit in particular:

Under the administration of Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, the state subsidy for the railroad has plunged by more than 90 percent. Gaping holes in the agency’s past two budgets were filled by fare increases and service reductions or other cuts. And plans for a new tunnel under the Hudson River — one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the country — were torpedoed by Mr. Christie, who pushed for some of the money to be diverted to road-building projects. 

The result can be felt by commuters daily. So far this year, the railroad has racked up at least 125 major train delays, about one every two days. Its record for punctuality is declining, and its trains are breaking down more often — evidence that maintenance is suffering.

Midway through Mr. Christie’s first year as governor, New Jersey Transit was spending about $1.35 billion on projects to maintain and improve service. By the middle of last year, that figure had fallen by more than half, to about $600 million.

Again, Republican low-tax, low-service policies benefit the rich (who don't care about public services but do care about taxes) at the expense of everyone else (who pay much less in taxes to begin with but do care about public services).

With 26 days until the election, maybe we should pay attention to down-ballot races and their consequences. You want to make America great again? Quit electing people who don't care about you.

I'm a little disappointed with the Cubs' 6-5 loss to the Giants last night, but they get another crack at them tonight. I'll probably watch—while writing software. Meanwhile, here are some articles I wish I'd had more time to read:

• CityLab has an excerpt from a new book about Jane Jacobs.
• The Republican Party, unable to win a majority of voters on the merits, has been on a decades-long quest to keep "those people" from voting in the first place.
• Sterling has taken a beating because of Brexit, which Krugman argues is normal and The Economist says "we told you so."
• Apparently, Theodosia Burr had an interesting life.
• And wouldn't you know it, murder looks like an evolved behavior, generally more common in primates than in other orders.

Go Cubs, and back to work.

It turns out, no one wants to buy ugly big houses in the far suburbs. This apparently comes as a shock to their owners:

The McMansion style, built between 2001 and 2007 and averaging 3,000 to 5,000 square feet, lacks the appeal with today's buyers compared to old vintage homes or large freshly built homes.

The realization is especially hard on homeowners trying to sell because when they bought the giant homes in the early 2000s, they thought of them as great investments, Feinstein said.

Then, the idea was that bigger was better because prices presumably would keep going up.

Now, housing analysts say the day of the McMansion has come and gone. An analysis just completed by Trulia shows that the amount buyers are willing to pay for McMansions over other homes has fallen 26 percent in just four years. As homes in general have been regaining value, McMansions have been losing appeal in comparison to others as the giants of the pre-crash years have aged.

No kidding. And no sympathy from me. Fools, money, etc.

The UK's Daily Mail has a decent explanation and creepy photos of how the southernmost city in Illinois went from a thriving (and historical) port to a nearly-abandoned shell in 50 years:

The town's luck began to fall in 1889 when the Illinois Central Railroad bridge opened over the Ohio River - although much railroad activity was still routed through the town, so its effects were not severe.

The same can't be said for a second bridge that opened around 23 miles up the Mississippi at Thebes, Illinois in 1905. 

The completion of that bridge drained away much railroad activity, reducing the need for the ferries that once carried railroad stock. 

And with steamboats being phased out in favor of barges, Cairo was no longer the essential hub it had once been. The end had begun.

The town was hit again in 1929 and 1937 when bridges were completed across the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, respectively, allowing a route through for US Routes 51, 60 and 62.

As the bridges were built at the town's southern tip, it was easy for traffic to bypass Cairo completely, draining away more money. 

But there was still a little money coming to the town until 1987, when the Interstate 57 bridge opened across the Mississippi, allowing traffic to bypass the town altogether - killing its hotel and restaurant industries.

I visited Cairo in 2003. It was pretty dead then, but judging by the photos in the Daily Mail article, it's even worse now.

Here's the confluence of the rivers, in December 2003:

We had nearly-perfect weather this past weekend, so I'm just dumping a bunch of links right now while I catch up with work:

• Foursquare reports that Trump's presidential campaign is really, really hurting his businesses.
• Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field (the minor-league park on the South Side) will be getting more events now they've worked out a deal with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority.
• Wired reports on how scary-easy it is to hack electronic voting machines.
• Paul Krugman puts out the economic case for massive deficit spending on infrastructure. (This is why we need to win the House.)
• Josh Marshall plainly states that, if you're against Trump, you have to vote for Clinton.

Back to the mines.