Jacob Christensen

Could anyone please explain the logic behind DN Debatt’s use of bold types to me. Paragraphs in bold type seem to be spread out with no logical or typographical motive.

How did I allow this disaster to happen? No soccer this week-end, then

I’m ripping off Crooked Timber like a madman today, but Henry Farrell and Kieran Healy discuss a central topic in economics and political science – racial segregation and driving instead of walking (of biking). Are these more or less spontaneous processes or is the some form of collective action behind them.

First, the dreaded school-run:

There might be more than one initial impetus—irrational concerns about safety, heavier school backpacks making walking more difficult, busier parents using the commute as quality time, and the like. Once it gets moving, the phenomenon seems vulnerable to a self-reinforcing tipping phenomenon. By not letting your child walk to school because the streets aren’t safe, you take one more child off the sidewalks and incrementally exacerbate the problem of deserted streets.
Like the original Schelling tipping model of racial segregation , this explanation has some very attractive characteristics. It’s parsimonious, self-propelling and grounded in simple, disaggregated individual choices. It’s got all the desiderata of an elegant theory that satisfies the strictures of methodological individualism mentioned recently. It might be right. But there’s still a good chance that, empirically, it’s wrong.

For example, in many parts of Tucson you court death by walking to school, or anywhere else, because the city is built to accommodate cars and not pedestrians. You routinely have to cross 4-lane highways and often there are simply no sidewalks to walk on. The lack of children walking to school might then be explained by the design choices behind the built environment rather than by a nice tipping effect. The other potential explanations mentioned above are also exogenous in this way. But we might find that the appeal of the tipping explanation is so strong that it becomes conventional wisdom without anyone actually studying the problem.

And then racial segregation (the text is by Rick Perlstein):

You could draw a map of the boundary within which the city’s seven hundred thousand Negroes were allowed to live by marking an X wherever a white mob attacked a Negro. Move beyond it, and a family had to face down a mob of one thousand, five thousand, or even (in the Englewood riot of 1949, when the presence of blacks at a union meeting sparked a rumor the house was to be “sold to niggers”) ten thousand bloody-minded whites. In the late 1940s, when the postwar housing shortage was at its peak, you could find ten black families living in a basement, sharing a single stove but not a single flush toilet, in “apartments” subdivided by cardboard. One racial bombing or arson happened every three weeks…. In neighborhoods where they were allowed to “buy” houses, they couldn’t actually buy them at all: banks would not write them mortgages, so unscrupulous businessmen sold them contracts that gave them no equity or title to the property, from which they could be evicted the first time they were late with a payment.

I think both arguments make sense in a US context (entrenched racism and urban planning designed to promote driving), but what about the Scandinavian countries which are seeing increased car traffic and urban segregation?

Some guesses:

I think it is fair to say that segregation in part is due to planning decisions of local authorities. Well-off suburbs (think Gentofte, Täby and so on) have gone to great lengths to keep lower-income people out of their premises, primarily by not planning for rented apartments or by deliberately placing them on the least attractive areas. On the other hand, I don’t think we have seen cases of “bottom-up” activism to keep immigrants out of neighbourhoods.

Transport is more tricky as affluence and large-scale urban planning definitively play a role here. What Danish observers have noted is that urban and especially industrial development have followed the Copenhagen – Århus motorway in spite of original ambitions. This seems to be due to planning decisions by local councils and in the second round fuels car traffic as there has been no comprehensive planning for public transport in these developments.

Question: What role does the absence of “soccer moms” play in Scandinavian traffic patterns?

Via Chris Bertram: The Ultimate Exam Paper

This is technically a philosophy exam but I think it can be used in PolSci with only a little bit of revising:

Philosophy Exam – First Year

Answer two questions

Two hours

1. Patch together some things you have heard in lectures, in no particular order.
2. Has this question vexed philosophers for centuries?
3. Create an impression of original thought by impassioned scribbling (your answer may be ungrammatical, illegible, or both).
4. Does the answer to this question depend on what you believe?
5. How much irrelevant historical background can you give before addressing this question?
6. Describe two opposing views, then say what you personally feel.
7. Rise above the fumbling efforts of others and speculate freely on an issue of your choice.
8. EITHER
(a) Answer this question by announcing that it really means something different (and much easier to answer).
OR
(b) Write out your answer to last year’s question on this topic.
9. Protest your convictions in the teeth of obvious and overwhelming objections.
10. Keep your reader guessing about what you think until the end. Then don’t tell them.

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