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Science

Urban Youth Most Isolated in Largest Cities (nature.com) 101

GPS data reveal that young people encounter fewer individuals from diverse groups than do adults. The isolation of young people is exacerbated in larger cities, and for those living in poverty. Abstract from a paper: We find that students in major metropolitan areas experience more racial and income isolation, spend more time at home, stay closer to home when they do leave, and visit fewer restaurants and retail establishments than adults. Looking across levels of income, students from higher-income families visit more amenities, spend more time outside of the home, and explore more unique locations than low-income students. Combining a number of measures into an index of urban mobility, we find that, conditional on income, urban mobility is positively correlated with home neighborhood characteristics such as distance from the urban core, car ownership and social capital.
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Urban Youth Most Isolated in Largest Cities

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  • It's the cars (Score:2, Insightful)

    When you bulldoze all the public common space out of cities to make room for cars, where are people who can't drive supposed to go?
    • They can't take the bus? I've been to a number of cities for business or pleasure where I've been able to get around just fine and see all of the various amenities or other interesting things without a car. Sometimes I'm fortunate enough where many of those things are in walking distance, but even in cases where I've had to cut around a large metro area to get between parks or museums, the bus system has always been adequate even if not as convenient as a car.
      • There's city and then there's city.

        Philadelphia is a great example. The downtown is generally quite lovely, clean, and everything (offices, residential, universities, museums, hospitals, stadiums) is within walking distance of the Market Street or Broad Street subway or the central core of the Regional Rail.

        Then there's North Philly.

      • Re: It's the cars (Score:5, Interesting)

        by opakapaka ( 1965658 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @12:00PM (#64159953)
        Well, the problem with this study is it does not look at cities with real public transportation (e.g. NYC, DC) vs. those with a fragmented bus network (e.g. Miami, Houston, Bay Area). The study is actually pretty flawed in this regard. As to why not take the bus - if the only transit is a fragmented bus network, you can bet that the city has no real density aside from interesting pockets. A city with a fragmented bus network has been hollowed out with traffic sewers. Better to stay home. This is one of the horrible externalities of drive everywhere culture - life for our younger people sucks.
        • Re: It's the cars (Score:5, Interesting)

          by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @12:08PM (#64159977)

          Also let's consider the implications or travelling by bus in the summer in Miami or Houston where you likely could have multiple blocks to walk to the bus, to the next bus and to your destination.

          Florida has 4 major metros, all with no mass transit outside of busses. In every town the bus system is considered for "the poors" because they are sporadic, spread out and it's hot and humid as balls for more than half the city.

          Also the traffic in all these cities can be terrible and almost none of the lines are dedicated lanes so you are at the mercy of all the cars anyway.

          Yeah outside of NYC, DC or Chicago you basically require a car and even then NYC is the only city in America that has public transport close to level of most Asian or European metros.

          • by skam240 ( 789197 )

            Yeah outside of NYC, DC or Chicago you basically require a car and even then NYC is the only city in America that has public transport close to level of most Asian or European metros.

            God do I love NYC for this as I enjoy living without a car. When traveling there you dont even need to stay in the city itself to not need a car as Long Island is well set up with rail and accommodations are much cheaper out there.

          • As a resident of Orlando and with my knowledge of SoFLa, I can say that both metros do offer mass transit by train, although at least for Orlando, it's woefully inadequate (only useful for a super small contingent that live/work/play in a narrow north-south corridor) and so your point does still stand.

          • mass transit outside of busses

            Calling the busses in the Tampa Bay area mass transit is a joke.

      • They can't take the bus? I've been to a number of cities for business or pleasure where I've been able to get around just fine and see all of the various amenities or other interesting things without a car. Sometimes I'm fortunate enough where many of those things are in walking distance, but even in cases where I've had to cut around a large metro area to get between parks or museums, the bus system has always been adequate even if not as convenient as a car.

        Of course they *can*. For important events like medical appointments they probably do. The mobility described in the study does not refer to the possibility of moving around the city, rather the ease with which one *can* move around.
        Think of it like the age old quandary of going to the gym. Even with a gym on the other side of the city you *can* go there, but if you have one next door you are far more likely to use it. The issue is one of convenience and perceived time/effort spent without gain (time spent

      • So maybe you live in New York or San Francisco or something but outside of the major cities the bus system is basically non-existent. To get anywhere expect a two or three hour trip.

        If you're thinking, who cares their kids they've got nothing but time, that's not true anymore. Schools now give between 3 and 5 hours of homework at night on weeknights and more on the weekends. We've started to do the Japan style cram school thing with our kids because there aren't enough good paying jobs for all the peopl
        • I live in a much smaller city and the bus system is actually quite good here. I regularly don't use it as I have a car, but on some occasions where I've had to take it to the shop for maintenance or other work, or I might not otherwise want to drive, I haven't had any problems. I can walk about four blocks to a bus stop and get to any of the main areas in the city that I might want to get to in under an hour. I live on the edge of what would be described as suburbs.

          The idea that unless you live in a gian
          • The idea that unless you live in a giant metropolis like New York City that you can't possibly have good public transportation is simply not true.

            It's not that you can't possibly have good PT, it's that you don't. Because American cities are shit at it because they don't want to be good. I'm sure there are exceptions like your wonderful town but, like, it's pretty obvious.

            • I regularly don't use it as I have a car

              And when this is the prevailing thought we can't really question why there's no desire to develop it.

          • I also don't think your points about the suburbs being bad have any merit.

            There is a pretty large body of literature about the suburbs and the negative outcomes.

            Playlist: The Suburban Wasteland [youtube.com]

            This author of this video series cites all his research, it's a really interesting delve into the topic. It doesn't mean they're all bad or that people are bad for living in them but there are definite downsides, in terms of budgets (they rely on subsidies from their central city) , pollution, environmental concerns, mental health concerns, commuting, etc.

            Most studies don't actually reco

            • by HiThere ( 15173 )

              That the suburbs are bad is hard to deny, but what do you suggest that is actually both possible and better? All the good scenarios that I can think of START with a lower degree of difference between the upper class and the lower class. The next step is that nearly all people believe that they are treated fairly. This reduces social stresses. After that you can start worrying about where the kids can go to hang out. First you've got to make things relatively safe. Ideally this would be around the scho

              • It's a multi factor problem but by far the biggest change any housing advocate on both sides of the aisle agree on is zoning laws. Mixed use zoning, duplexes, quadplexes, 5 over 1's all these things helps. People don't have to be packed into Judge Dredd style megacities but it all starts with building housing where people want to live and also providing amenities for those people living there.

                Almost everything else kinda draws on that thread, safety, schools, greenspaces etc. The number one problem is no

              • Getting rid of single family zoning in already established neighborhoods and stop banning people from opening a business in their garage usually kickstarts the transition from car suburbia into something a lot more sustainable.
      • They can't take the bus?

        This is America. We don't have those here.

      • You're missing the point. People shouldn't have to commute to just hang out with their community, it should be an "open door, experience neighborhood" situation.
    • These same things were surely true well before cars.
      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Before cars people lived in ways that we can't even remember. Even the old silent films don't capture them. I do know that the cities were where the moderately rich lived, and the poor were the folks who ended up in the suburbs. Because of commute times. The European cities had "districts" where people of a common persuasion paid extra to live. Some of these were walled off from the rest of the city for security.

        You really can't extrapolate back from now to what things were like before cars. But ofte

      • You'd be mostly wrong.
    • AFAICS American suburbs are worse in that respect, yet they do better.

      Basically city living is just independently terrible.

      • They're only worse if you consider mechanized personal transport over moderate distances to be somehow worse than hoofing it over shorter distances as the default.

        It's a purely subjective determination given the large numbers of people who actively seek out both.

      • Do better? How? the concept is so flawed most cities haven't allowed new ones to be built without a HOA to assume 100% of utility and street maintenance costs because adding low-value, low-density sprawl turns streets and utilities into an unmaintainably expensive fractal.
    • Bollocks. People can and do walk around cities. They can and do use public transportation. Especially "the poors".

      • Bollocks. People can and do walk around cities.

        Yep. And walking makes them "stay closer to home when they do leave, and visit fewer restaurants and retail establishments" if they only go to places they can walk to.

        They can and do use public transportation. Especially "the poors".

        Depending on the city, of course, but public transportation in many American cities can be pretty slow and not always reliable, and especially in poor neighborhoods. And unless you're lucky, and where you want to go is on the bus line that stops in your neighborhood, you're likely to need one or two transfers, which can mean a ten minute car t

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          >and visit fewer restaurants and retail establishments

          That's a good thing, because it means you'll quickly notice it's all the same people. So you can go and talk to them. Form friendships. It's what people did for countless millenia in the past.

          The whole "but there are so many different places to visit" is a part of what fractures communities. Neighborhood bar is no longer a thing where everyone gathers to get a drink and exchange what's actually happening, talk about fun nothings that happen in everyon

        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Your "which can mean a ten minute car trip is an hour bus ride" understates the problem. It's correct IF both the origin and the destination are on major bus lines AND you only need a couple of transfers AND the connecting line is also a major bus line. But that's more of a restriction that is obvious. I've run into a case where both the origin and the destination were on major bus lines (officially once every 20 minutes or less) and only two transfers were needed, but the trip would have taken (official

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      In densely populated city? Walk. Get a bicycle. Or a scooter. Or take a bus.

      You remind me of the recent trending video from San Fransisco on the topic of "oh noes, we kept stealing from the store, the store is now closing and next nearest store if half a mile that way, WE'RE GOING TO BE A FOOD DESERT NOW" whining on camera from a bunch of obese blacks.

      Walk that half a mile there and back. Not only will you get less obese, you may actually encounter people on the way doing something you may join in. Play som

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        I used to ride a bicycle all the time. I stopped because the traffic got too dangerous. Partially this was due to increased population density, but partially it was that people became increasingly abusive of lax enforcement of traffic laws. And partially because larger vehicles overfill the lanes, and limit visibility (both by me and by them).

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          I've watched enough of Louis Rossmann's biking in NYC to and from work stream to know that this is not how it works. Yes, there are risks. There are always risks. But if you're local and know the local culture, you're going to be fine unless you're highly impulsive and/or stupid.

    • Not the case in the UK. All the common land is bulldozed for housing and the roads in the city centres are turned into pedestrian zones.

  • News at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @11:37AM (#64159863)

    People with more money have more options for how to spend their free time. Next up: Is water wet? The answer might surprise you!

    • That's the thing with science, even if it's "common sense" somebody has to do the work to actually prove it out. How much human brainpower has gone into just proving "1+1=2"

      Before germ theory it was "common sense" that sickness was caused by miasma or "bad humors"

      • That's the thing with science, even if it's "common sense" somebody has to do the work to actually prove it out. How much human brainpower has gone into just proving "1+1=2"

        Before germ theory it was "common sense" that sickness was caused by miasma or "bad humors"

        And then we spent many many millions just to learn that we were off by a single h.
        That may be the most expensive typo in the history of mankind.

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      And people who live where more things are within walking distance have a lower "average miles traveled from home" so of course their Urban Mobility Index will be lower. So I don't know what this article was trying to prove.

      • by kenh ( 9056 )

        I thought one of the perks of living in a major city was that everything is within walking distance, is that no longer the case? Is proximity to the things you want/need now a sign of "social poverty".

  • Class warfare (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by gosso920 ( 6330142 )
    Just in time for the elections.

    What we have here is... Failure to redistribute wealth.

    • Re:Class warfare (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @12:31PM (#64160065)

      If you’re wealthy enough you lobby the government to redistribute the wealth of the poorer folks.

  • Alternate headline: City Youth Find All They Need Close to Home.

    • by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Alternate-alternate headline: City Youth Forced to Make Do With What They Can Find Close to Home.

    • Alternate headline: City Youth Find All They Need Close to Home.

      Do they? I mean we've plenty of studies showing that depression, anxiety and loneliness are basically at record highs. I'm not sure crying into a bucket of icecream hits quite as well as going out with your mates.

  • And the problem is? (Score:4, Informative)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @12:19PM (#64160031)

    It wasn't so long ago that many Americans (if we're talking about Americans here) engaged in agrarian lifestyles in the boonies with very little human contact outside of a few neighbors and their immediate family. Pre-automobile (and more-importantly, pre-train), many humans would scarcely travel at all.

    • Back in the good old days, they couldn't even if they tried unless they got special dispensation from their local feudal lord.

      Today we're much more advanced. We have carbon credits and phone tracking that let's these things flow much more smoothly.

      • I wasn't gonna go that far back. If you really want to take it to extremes, pre-feudalism it was the same way (if we're talking about what is now the UK) unless they were involved in the tin trade. They would stay in a village or town and do whatever their chieftain would have them do.

        In any case, humanity could survive and even thrive in conditions where they did not travel very often and had little contact with outsiders. Yes, the technology was primitive and some of the social institutions (notably: g

  • "GPS Data" being data from Replica [replicahq.com] .. an Alphabet spinoff .. who are not very transparent about how the data is sourced [fastcompany.com]
  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @12:33PM (#64160071)
    That they just have that GPS data? I gather they bought it from a data broker named replica and naturally they were able to infer a whole bunch of stuff based on it. I question where replica is getting the data from though
    • I question where replica is getting the data from though

      All of the telcos in the US sell "anonymized" data. IIRC, it is all sold to one company that then resells it to anyone who has cash.

  • In the 60's and early 70's they tried bussing to help remediate this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    I was in the "suburbs" of Minneapolis in the early 1970s and they used to bus inner-city kids out to our school.
  • Humans learned to migrate back and forth between existing populations easily. It's after all how ideas are exchanged. So ask yourself; in terms of the most isolated urban communities are you interested enough in what they are doing to visit them? Logic works both ways.

  • by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @01:50PM (#64160267)

    "We find that students in major metropolitan areas experience more racial and income isolation, spend more time at home, stay closer to home when they do leave, and visit fewer restaurants and retail establishments than adults"

    Wait, seriously? Kids have more limited mobility than adults? There's a shocking thought that never could have occurred to me.

    And how do they distinguish between students, teachers, kids, adults, and income from GPS data? They actually can't, they just "infer it". From the study:

    "We have no direct information about the device’s user, so must infer whether a device is a student and any demographics, such as race and income, using the location histories of the device."

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      I am shocked to earn that kids have less disposable income to go to restaurants and go shopping with than their dual-income, no kids neighbors in the city... amazing!

      • I am shocked to earn that kids have less disposable income to go to restaurants and go shopping with than their dual-income, no kids neighbors in the city... amazing!

        So many amazing insights in this study

  • by whitroth ( 9367 )

    If adults don't take kids around their city, the kids won't go. Hell, there was a news story a few years ago, about some kid from southwest Chicago (black neighborhood) who literally did not know he could go downtown - he thought it was some other gang's territory.

    And smaller cities and strips of burbs are far, far worse. "Public transit"? When I lived on the Space Coast of FL, 20 years ago, I had to leave my vehicle for repair. Then catch the bus, which ran once and HOUR for "rush hour", and once every TWO

  • The issue isn't a lack of public common areas (parks) or mass transit, the issue is the evolution of parenting, the explosion of game consoles & gaming computers, streaming services, social media and more recently Covid.

    Nowadays parents prefer their children stay indoors, when I grew up (60s & 70s) it was popular to send kids out in the neighborhood to play, expecting them to stay out of the house till the street lights came on or they were called for dinner - forced socialization. Parents today are

  • Poor people spend less time buying things, News at eleven.

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