For my FIRST EVER POST, I’m attaching links to two reports/studies that numbers geeks may find interesting. (I’m a numbers geek and I found these interesting.) As far as I know these haven’t been posted here before.
1.
Demographia – United States Central Business Districts (Downtowns)
This report was issued in 2014 and most of the numbers that went into the report are now 8 to 12 years old. But I still found it interesting. For example, the report says that of the people who work in the Chicago CBD, 57% take mass transit. I’m surprised the number’s not higher. I bet if you looked only at people who work in the Loop (a smaller area than the CBD), the percent who take mass transit would be over 70%. But in any case, Chicago’s number 2, behind only New York, where 76% take mass transit.
Compare this to Amazon HQ2 articles reporting that 11% of people who work in the entire Chicago metro area take mass transportation to get to work. This number (11%) seems to me to be irrelevant and maybe even misleading if a company’s thinking about relocating to downtown Chicago.
2.
Characteristics of Domestic Cross-Metropolitan Migrants
This article has five charts that
a. compare people moving into a city with people leaving the same city, in five different areas, and then
b. shows how the migration demographics correlate to each city’s housing costs.
On the whole, these charts make Chicago look pretty good but it’s a little tricky. For example, in the chart titled “Education”, Chicago scores higher than Boston. That doesn’t mean that Chicagoans are more educated that Bostonians. What it means is that migration in and out of Chicago is raising the city’s education level faster than it’s raising the education level of Boston.
I hope this works.