Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

GEOGRAPHIC ILLITERACY AGAIN

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

This morning CNN headlines the “research” that leads to identifying the 10 Best Places to live in the US of A.

Peachtree City, Ga a place I helped design and manage is number 8. I should be happy, right?

The real estate agents in “Vienna, VA” are happy because it came in number 4.

Unfortunately the whole story and the “research” behind it is more evidence of the Fundamental Thesis Number Two: Citizens do not know where they are.

Go to the “Contenders by State” listing and look up the 41 Virginia candidates. The headlines say these are “cities.” At first glance it appears that most are unincorporated places within counties. The ones that have the same names as cities have the populations of the postal zip codes with that name.

See “Where is Northern Virginia,” 11 August at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com for the reason knowing where one is important.

EMR

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  1. Will Vehrs Avatar
    Will Vehrs

    In Virginia, business licenses are issued by the city or county where the business is located. At the Virginia Business Information Center, calls come in all the time asking how to get a business license. When asked, “Where are you located?” 99% of callers say “Virginia.” When asked to narrow that down, it is amazing how many people don’t know where they are. Sometimes they are asked to go out to their car to check their sticker to tell if they’re in Leesburg or Loudoun, Fairfax County or Fairfax City, Richmond or Henrico or Chesterfield, etc., etc.

  2. Chris Brancato Avatar
    Chris Brancato

    Will, I agree with your comments but I think there are real reasons for the confusion.

    Many people in Virginia live in places without discrete zip codes as they live in unincorporated towns. Or conversely, people identify themselves by the closest identifiable city. (sidebar: Many Charlottesvillians simply cannot believe that people don’t know where Charlottesville is or that the UVA is located there. I laugh every time I see or hear it.)

    Additionally, this is something I find VERY humourous. People have an interesting method of defining distance in metrics of time measurement.

    For example: I only live 24 minutes from Charlottesville and readily identify myself as someone, for all intents and purposes, from Charlottesville. The fact that I live 18.5 miles from a certain part of Charlottesville is of little concern since I live in an entirely different community and even county. But I hear people describe where they live by the time it takes to get to Charlottesville when the questioner clearly wanted a distance metric. LOL!

    Another example that puzzles me…I hear people identify themselves as being from Northern Virginia. Really? You mean the discrete region that has over 2 million people? When does NoVA stop being NoVA? For people in Grundy, Charlottesville might just be NoVA despite it being firmly Central VA. Are the Northerners embarrassed to say they live in Fairfax, Arlington or some other metro DC area?

    This all makes me giggle!
    Cheers!

  3. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Will:

    Great example, thank you!

    Since human settlement pattern determines economic prospertiy, social stability and physical sustainability and because human settlement pattern is location, location, locaton it is critical that citizens know where they are.

    EMR

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    If we just call something by zipcode then you end up saying that Dumfries is a great place to live, when you really mean Montclair (though I understand Montclair just got a new zipcode). Everybody knows that nearly every square inch of Dumfries is NOT someplace to brag about being.

    Or do you say all of Prince William County is a great place to live – if we have to stick to “official” designations, we do. But maybe what you mean is Westridge, NOT Marumsco Village.

    Maybe the article just should have said “places” to mollify some of you nitpickers.

  5. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    NOT NITPICKING

    It is inappropriate for someone who chooses to hide their identity to call others “nitpickers.”

    The issue under consideration is a serious one and dismissals with name calling is counter productive.

    Like every other organic structure known to science, human settlement pattern has a discernible structure made up of components that are identifiable. The fundamental building block of contemporary civilization is the region, specifically the New Urban Region by what ever name one wishes to call it.

    Citizens must come to understand the importance of recognizing the organic structure of human settlement patterns. They must then evolve governance structure to correspond to economic, social and physical reality. The alternative is economic stagnation, social conflict and environmental unsustainability.

    In other words dysfunctional human settlement patterns that lead to traffic congestion, lack of affordable and accessible housing, loss of economic competitiveness, declining social services, bad air, poor water quality and declining quality, etc., etc.

    The confusion caused by the lack of a useful vocabulary that “anon” is more than a nitpicking concern.

    EMR

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    How on earth you tied the generic use of the word “city” to declining water quality and lack of affordable housing is beyond all intelligent comprehension.

  7. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Beyond your anonymous comprehension perhaps, not beyond intelligent comprehension.

    As we have noted, Geographic Illiteracy is a terrible thing especially for those who believe they are otherwise intelligent.

    EMR

  8. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    There is an old joke in which ends with Tonto saying “Me not lost. Me here. Trail lost.”

    I hear people describing where they live in many ways, usually it depends on how the question is asked. I don’t see that getting hung up on a particular kind of definition is helpful, in fact a more global perspective on where we live might be better.

    When people ask me where Delaplane is I jokingly tell them it is half way between Paris and Egypt (Two other equally nondescript “places”)

    Like Tonto, it is not nearly as important where we are as where we are going, So blaming all our ills on dysfunctional settlement patterns does nothing to settle the issues.

    I suppose it is fair to say that if we solve all those issues, then we will have achieved functional settlement patterns. That does not in any way support the idea that we should deliberately plan for some specific, pre-supposedly better settlement pattern that will cure all our ills, because no one knows enough to say in advance what that might be.

    There is no evidence that all our ills will be cured by development planning, or that new ills won’t develop to invalidate our plans.

    Probably the most organic thing about our settlement patterns is that they are subject to constant change in response to our environment.

    We should stop fighting change and embrace it as the only economic means to incremental betterment. That is a condition that we have the history to support.

  9. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    From the Loudoun Times:

    “Loudoun’s economy has changed and grown over the last 15 years, reflected in Ashburn, Leesburg and Sterling ranking in the top 10 (fifth through seventh, respectively) for job growth of 132.66 percent since 1990, according to the current issue of Money magazine, which listed its annual Top 10 for “Best Places to Live” Monday.

    So Loudoun is in the top ten for best places to live according to Money and Fauquier is on the list according to Progressive Farmer.

    With job growth like this in PW and Loudoun, who was it that said job growth in the suburbs was a myth?

  10. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    GEOGRAPHIC ILLITERACY AT WORK

    A sure sign of Geographic Illiteracy is the inability to understand the difference between percentage change and absolute change. (Check the number of jobs inside R=20 vs outside R=20 for 1990 to mid-2005, 1995 to mid-2005, 2000 to mid-2005. Also for these areas, check the value per square foot of space for the new jobs, or the amount of new construction as tabulated by the Post Business Section in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2005.)

    A second indicator of Geographic Illiteracy is one who cherry picks data in an attempt to justify preconceived conclusions.

    EMR

  11. Sam Conner Avatar
    Sam Conner

    The question is posted above as to what is Northern Virginia.

    Let me answer that.

    Some would suggest that for current political purposes it is that area in Virginia that is East of the Blue Ridge Mountains and North of the Rappahannock River.

    Former Delegate Tom Moncure used to say it is any county that borders I-95/395 North of the Chopawamsic Creek/River…which would be the Prince William Country/Stafford County line.

    I suggest that if you live in Virginia and you have get an emissions test for your car every other year, then you live in Northern Virginia!

    skc

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