The Underground Economy: D.C.’s Richest and Poorest Metro Stops

Originally Printed/Posted in the Washington City Paper on April 25, 2013: 
The Underground Economy: D.C.’s Richest and Poorest Metro Stops




Metro doesn’t just run from one part of town to another; it bridges some enormous gaps in income around the D.C. region. Median annual household income along the subway system ranges from $147,630 around the Friendship Heights station on the Red Line to $31,735 in Congress Heights on the Green Line. These figures are from the American Community Survey’s 2011 5-Year Estimates. Each number represents an average of the median household incomes for all populated census tracts within a half mile of the station. (This was inspired by a New Yorker project that mapped income inequality on New York subway lines.)

The most volatile route in our system is the Orange Line, reaching upward of $142,000 at East Falls Church and bottoming out at around $34,000 18 stops later at Minnesota Ave. Just across the Anacostia River from what your realtor will have you believe is Capitol Hill, Minnesota Ave. is also one of the two adjacent stations that boasts the highest level of income inequality between next-door neighbors; the Stadium-Armory station’s surroundings have an annual household income of about $88,000, more than two and a half times Minnesota Ave’s.

Here's another look:

America's Most Efficient City Is... Miami?

DC may be tops when it comes to green roofs, but the region stands out less on a more impactful environmental indicator: how efficiently our infrastructure is laid out.

The purpose of infrastructure is to connect people, goods, information, and services. When people live close together, less infrastructure is needed to make these connections. Consider one type of infrastructure, perhaps the most representative from an urban planning perspective: roads.

Roads cost money to build and maintain. Movement along those roads creates pollution and costs the users time. All else equal, it is more efficient to build, use, and maintain fewer roads per person.

Which of the 12 statistical areas in the United States with more than 5 million inhabitants has the greatest number of people per mile of arterial roads? That honor goes to the Miami Metropolitan Area, perhaps not by choice but rather by geographic necessity, tightly bound by ocean to the east and the Everglades to the west.

In contrast, the Atlanta Combined Statistical Area (CSA), the most sprawling of the 12 regions, has roughly the same population as Miami, but its roads total a distance nearly 3 times as long. Wouldn't it be great if we could spend all the money that goes to maintaining those unnecessary miles of road on something more productive?

The DC-Baltimore-Northern Virginia CSA ranks right in the middle, at number six, just behind Los Angeles, a fact that local environmentalists probably won't find especially comforting. At least we have both Houston and Dallas beat.

Miami is the only one of the largest metro areas not to have multiple Metropolitan Statistical Areas making up one larger CSA. Does that account for the change? No; even if you look at the individual Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas that make up those 11 CSAs, Miami's still has the most people per road mile.

The gap between the Miami metro area and the second place, New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA, is closer, and without Ventura County and the Inland Empire, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA metro area jumps to #3, but otherwise little changes in the calculation.

Top 12 Regions

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington

White Privilege and Trayvon Martin

From one year ago, originally posted here.
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3 years ago I was walking through a public housing project in DC because it was the quickest way home from the post office. As I rounded a corner, a pair of plain clothes cops in bullet-proof vests sprinted towards me, started frisking me forcefully, and demanded to know what I was doing there. I could see the pleasure in their eyes, convinced that they were about to book an arrest. I mean, why else would a white boy be in the projects if not to buy drugs? The cops’ satisfaction faded as their search uncovered a book of stamps and my driver’s license, substantiating my alibi and proving that I lived in the neighborhood.

Grudgingly, they let me go. The experience was terrifying. I walked the last few blocks to my apartment trembling violently, similar to how I had felt years earlier when I got robbed at gunpoint. But soon my anxiety passed and I archived the event as a funny story to tell my family over Thanksgiving dinner, knowing that what had happened was an anomaly; it was the first and last time I would ever be mistreated or wrongly accused because of my skin color.

 It’s not that I’m not used to being treated differently because of my race - I get racially profiled on a daily basis. Tourists go out of their way to ask me directions instead of asking the Black police officer standing next to them.  Elderly Black men call me “sir,” even though I am 28 and like to shop at thrift stores. A while back, a man 20 years my senior approached me bashfully on the metro and asked if I would review his resume. I was wearing basketball shorts and a hoodie. The grocery store I shop at just started checking customers’ receipts as they exit, but I get waved through every time. Plus, I have no trouble sneaking into a second movie at the theater after the one I paid for lets out. The difference between me and my Black peers is that when people see me on the street, they immediately assume I am an upstanding citizen and not a lurking home invader or iPhone snatcher. I am racially profiled in a way that has absolutely no negative impact on my safety or my psyche.

 My white privilege isn’t responsible for my accomplishments in life, but it certainly has given me a boost. Society trusts me and has faith in my abilities. Every day I experience instances of positive reinforcement from strangers, colleagues, and superiors, which cumulatively give me a psychological, and sometimes tangible, advantage over my Black peers. Only once in my life have I been received with distrust and suspicion based solely on my appearance, and even though I was not stripped, handcuffed, beaten, or shot, the experience still felt like an assault.

Dismantling white privilege would require major attitudinal and institutional changes, and will only occur over a long period of time, if at all. In the short term, there are three things that I can do as an individual to advance the movement:

1. Acknowledge that when people racially profile me, they treat me in a way that makes me feel good about myself, and occasionally saves me time and money, but that when Black men are racially profiled, it more often results in insult or humiliation and can endanger their safety.

2. Encourage other White people to recognize and admit the same: That, as individuals, they benefit from white privilege.

3. Demand justice when racial profiling is taken to the extreme and results in a heinous crime. George Zimmerman must be arrested and tried for the racially motivated murder of Trayvon Martin. Anyone protecting him should be charged with harboring a fugitive, and the police cover-up of the murder must be investigated and prosecuted.