
Walkability a key factor determining upward mobility of a city's residents - Fricken
https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/10/we-identified-walkability-of-city-how.html
======
Mathnerd314
Paper:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329729827_The_Socio...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329729827_The_Socioecological_Psychology_of_Upward_Social_Mobility)

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
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
“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.

~~~
wil421
It is 100% mandatory to file taxes if you make over $12k and over $13.5k if
you’re over 65 and file single. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a job, investment,
or unemployment.

~~~
amiga_500
I can imagine Americans living abroad will be shaking their fist at the parent
poster. They have to pay taxes in the USA even when working abroad, never mind
in the USA!

~~~
wil421
Sigh, this always comes up and I’ve never met a single person who actually had
to pay taxes. My brother in law was out of the country for a decade and a few
other friends lived in Europe and never paid.

Has anyone on HN paid US taxes living abroad?

~~~
_delirium
You do still have to file a tax return, which can be a bit complicated if you
have foreign income. But if you work in Europe, you're right that you likely
won't have to pay any actual US taxes. You can take the European tax paid as a
foreign tax credit against the US taxes, and that almost always zeroes it out,
since European countries mostly have higher tax rates. That was the case for
me, anyway.

You will have to pay some tax if you work in a country whose tax rates (for
your bracket) are lower than US federal tax rates. That can be the case for
Americans working in places like Hong Kong or the Bahamas.

~~~
hatfortguy
This is often also the case in Switzerland.

------
notStoicEnough
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...](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/04/22/curing-your-clown-like-
car-habit/). 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

~~~
war1025
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.

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

~~~
war1025
And the price of travel changes as the price of gas changes.

I was taught to check my mileage every time I fill up the tank. It would be
just as easy to divide `cost / trip meter` vs `trip meter / gallons`, and
would arguably give a more interesting number.

Mostly just an idea I had that I thought may be worth trying.

------
adrianmonk
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
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.

~~~
ghaff
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.)

~~~
iguy
Right, but doesn't this explain what they see just fine? The walkable parts of
cities are the gentrifying cores, which are now expensive, but 30 years ago
were in deep decline. Were poor, now rich, call that upward mobility to sell
the paper?

~~~
ghaff
Other than that they're largely different groups of people. It's mostly young
professionals displacing blue collar workers and racial minorities.

With some exceptions like Manhattan, graduates of 20 to 30 years ago didn't
live in city cores or often even commute to them. In my grad school class--the
New Yorkers aside--almost no one I knew moved into a city. They were all out
in the suburbs, which is where most of the companies they worked for were
located as well.

~~~
iguy
Yea, I know. And since they track people by tax returns it can't literally be
the rich newcomers who are the today datapoint. But I'm still pretty dubious
about the causality they claim.

------
baron816
Seems spurious. Could be talented people move to cities with high earning
potential—which happen to be walkable. Do the authors control for that?

~~~
mwfunk
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.

~~~
iguy
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.

------
jedberg
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
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.

------
dwoozle
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.

~~~
ghaff
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.

------
truebosko
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.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Independent_School_District_v._Rodriguez)

------
ccvannorman
Correlation not causation..nothing to see here.

~~~
braythwayt
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
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.

~~~
braythwayt
Thus my first suggestion that we get independent reproduction of the results
:-)

One of the most common such "observability" functions is that humans tend to
pay attention to things they find interesting.

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

------
foxyv
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.

------
kbos87
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.

------
chiefalchemist
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.

------
yalogin
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.

~~~
ghaff
>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](https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works)

------
microcolonel
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.

------
blue_devil
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.

------
samstave
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
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](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?

~~~
samstave
In real life.

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

~~~
jdnenej
They all do for fire safety.

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

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

Nothing to see here.

------
toptal
I wonder how remote will change this.

------
dogma1138
London is extremely walkable and doesn’t seem to have that great of a social
mobility for its residents.

~~~
izacus
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.

~~~
pmiller2
One example doesn’t strike me as a glib dismissal, particularly since this
study was done in the United States.

~~~
maxerickson
They don't give an example, they express their impression rather than
providing contrary data.

~~~
pmiller2
Do you expect an entire research paper in a single HN comment?

~~~
maxerickson
I don't really care either way. I was arguing with your characterization of
their comment, not demanding that they retract it.

