“The Atlantic Cities: 

Gun Violence Is an Everywhere Issue

Richard Florida. Dec 15, 2012

All too often gun violence in America is posed as an urban problem. True, large urban centers have the highest rates of murders by gun. But our suburbs, small towns and rural areas are far from immune to the tragic consequences of guns, as the mass murder of children in Newtown, Connecticut, shows, not to mention the killing spree in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater this past summer, or the gunning down of Gabby Giffords and others during a political event in Tucson, Arizona, or 1999’s mass shooting at Columbine High School.

With the help of Atlantic Cities’ fellow Sara Johnson, I examined several lists of the locations of recent mass shootings in America. While the data do not cover every mass shooting and have limited geographic information, our accounting clearly shows that the wide majority of mass killings and especially mass school killings have occurred not in the urban centers of large cities, but in the small towns, burgs and villages of our suburban and rural areas.

By our accounting, more than 80 percent of America’s 21 worst mass killings identified by theHartford Courant took place in suburban towns or rural areas, including each and every one of what the paper identifies as the five “worst school massacres in U.S. history.” More than two-thirds of the 61 mass shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 according to a list and map compiled this year by Mother Jones can also be traced to a suburban or rural location.”

Photo: Reuters

“Isolated and Under-Exposed: Why the Rich Don’t Give

Nate Berg. August 20, 2012

In terms of charity, the rich in America give a lot. But they’re not giving the most. According to a new study out from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, which analyzes charitable giving at the ZIP code level, the richest neighborhoods are donating much smaller shares of their discretionary income than lower-income neighborhoods. Only nine of the 1,000 biggest-giving ZIP codes are among the richest 1,000 ZIP codes.

Rich people are certainly giving a lot. Those with annual incomes of $200,000 or more represent 11 percent of the tax returns but account for 41 percent of the money donated, according to the report. But as a share of their income, the richest people in the U.S. are giving at a significantly lower rate than the less affluent. 

The study looked at tax returns for people with reported earnings of $50,000 or more from the year 2008 – the most recent year for which data was available. The report found that for people earning between $50,000 and $75,000, an average of 7.6 percent of discretionary income was donated to charity. For those earning $200,000 or more, just 4.2 percent of discretionary income was donated.

Turns out lower giving among the rich likely has much more to do with where they live and who they live near.

As this accompanying article from the journal notes, when the rich are highly concentrated in wealthy enclaves, they’re less likely to give as compared with the rich living in more economically diverse neighborhoods. The report found that in neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of taxpayers reported earning $200,000 or more, the average giving was just 2.8 percent of discretionary income.

In other words, concentration of wealth is also isolation from the less fortunate.

Paul Piff, a postdoctoral scholar in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, says he has conducted studies showing that as wealth increases, people become more insulated, less likely to engage with others, and less sensitive to the suffering of others.

There’s also an element of geography. The researchers found that in 1,906 ZIP codes where at least 10 taxpayers earned $200,000 or more and at least one household itemized its returns, none of the wealthy residents reported any charitable giving. Of these, 79 percent of the ZIP codes are located outside of major metropolitan areas – areas of far lower populations and densities that would also result in isolation from the problems of the less fortunate. And while philanthropy is not only focused on poverty and poor people, it does tend to have a focus on community betterment in all its various forms. Those farther out from metropolitan areas may be less focused on or concerned with such community development.

It’s not too shocking that some people give less than others, even among the rich. But it’s interesting to see how neighborhood location and composition can limit the power of the wealthy to give.”

Via: The Atlantic Cities

“atlas of suburbanisms

The University of Waterloo’s Atlas of Suburbanisms — a research project by the School of Planning’s Markus Moos and Anna Kramer — looks like a fantastic effort to understand Canadian suburbs on their own terms and as components of larger urban systems:

“…what if we mapped characteristics commonly believed to be telling of suburbs just to see where they actually occur? What if we went to the suburbs, figuratively and literately, and conducted research as if looking from one suburb to the other, or as if looking from a suburb toward the central city? The likely result is an understanding of suburbanism, and our cities more generally, that is richer and more diverse; an understanding that does not take for granted the political or historic development of cities as drawing concrete lines between what we believe is the suburban and the urban.”

To do this, the research relies on a shift from understanding suburbia primarily as a spatial format — defined by distance from the center of a city, by a certain level of density, or by particular ways of arranging streets and buildings — towards understanding suburbanisms as a kind of urbanity constituted by certain patterns of living: driving to work, gravitating towards demographic monocultures, retreating from public space towards semi-public and private space, owning rather than renting.”

Via: mammoth

Image: ”Toronto: Percentage of residents who drive to work, live in single-detached housing, and own their homes”, from Moos and Kramer’s Atlas of Suburbanisms

“Grassroots Mapping: How You Can Create Aerial Cartography for Under $100, and Use It to Do Good

Ben Jurvey.  3.7.2012

Historically, aerial mapmaking has been handled by governments and businesses alone. Who else could afford to put satellites in orbit or hire planes for private flyovers?

The notion that aerial imagery is only for the rich and powerful is being turned on its ear by an inspired group of DIY cartographers who have pioneered the field of grassroots mapping. The concept is simple: for about $100 in materials you can shoot aerial imagery that is higher resolution than any standard public satellite imagery. Using incredibly simple balloon and kite contraptions, you can capture the images on demand whenever you want, as often as you want.

Jeffrey Warren of MIT’s Media Lab came up with the basic concept, which he calls “Grassroots Mapping,” last year while working on a land-rights dispute in Lima, Peru. Then the BP oil spill happened, and the benefits of this method of mapping became urgently clear. Working with the Lousiana Bucket Brigade during the media blackout when FAA regulations prevented aircraft from flying lower than 4,000 feet above sensitive areas of the spill, Warren and the Grassroots Mapping team flew balloons and kites and captured incredibly vivid images of the oil spill’s impacts. Using simple online cartographic tools, the photos can be stitched together into bigger maps, like this one of the Lake Borgne wetlands east of New Orleans captured on June 11th of last year.

Of the oil spill work, the Grassroots Mapping team explained:

We’re helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming yeas.We believe in complete open access to spill imagery and are releasing all imagery into the public domain.”

Via: GOOD Magazine

Image:(cc) by GonzoEarth on Flickr.