John August

Archives for 2009

Los Angeles myths, answered

Follow Up, Los Angeles

In February, I [linked to an article](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/los-angeles-transportation-facts-and-fiction/) by Eric Morris about pervasive Los Angeles transportation myths. He presented six statements, promising that two were (at best) half-truths, while the rest were flat-out myths.

[I made my guesses](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/los-angeles-myths), as did many readers. Over the past few weeks, he’s addressed the myths in follow-up articles, so I thought I’d provide some closure as well.

Here are the myths:

Los Angeles’s air is choked with smog.
—

I said false. He said [half-true](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/los-angeles-transportation-facts-and-fiction-driving-and-delay/).

According to the American Lung Association, Los Angeles has the second-worst air quality in the nation, after Pittsburgh. But “choked with smog” is an exaggeration. It’s vastly better than it used to be — and much better than its reputation:

> In 1979, the South Coast Air Basin (of which Los Angeles is a part) experienced 228 days above the state one-hour ozone standard; in 2007, the number of days in violation was down to 96. The change is even more dramatic when looking at individual communities. From 1979 to 2007, Pasadena dropped from 191 days over the limit to 13, Reseda from 138 to 22, Anaheim from 61 to 2, Pomona from 167 to 19, and West Los Angeles from 76 to 2. This story is replicated across the region. It is also broadly true for the other pollutants that comprise smog.

Los Angeles has developed in a low-density, sprawling pattern.
—-

I said half-true. He said [false](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/los-angeles-transportation-facts-and-fiction-sprawl/).

> As of the 2000 census, the Los Angeles region’s urbanized area had the highest population density in the nation. Yes, that was the word “highest,” not a smudge on your monitor. At 7,068 people per square mile, Los Angeles is considerably denser than New York-Newark, which ranks fourth at 5,309 people per square mile (behind San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose as well as Los Angeles).

I was fooled by the comparatively large percentage of single-family homes. But there’s an important distinction I overlooked:

> Los Angeles’s homes sit on very small lots, in part due to the difficulty of providing water infrastructure to new developments. (Other southwestern cities share this trait.)

Angelenos spend more time stuck in traffic than any other drivers in the nation.
—

I said true. He said [true](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/los-angeles-transportation-facts-and-fiction-driving-and-delay/).

> According to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2005 Mobility Report, Angelenos who traveled in the peak periods suffered 72 annual hours of delay. This was number one in the nation, by a large margin.

Traffic really does suck in Los Angeles, which is why you spend a lot of mental energy figuring out how to avoid it. Live near work. Or work at home.

Thanks to the great distances between far-flung destinations, and perhaps to Angelenos’ famed “love affair” with the car, Angelenos drive considerably more miles than most Americans.
—-

I said false. He said [false](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/los-angeles-transportation-facts-and-fiction-driving-and-delay/).

> According to the Federal Highway Administration, Angelenos drive 23 miles per resident per day. This ranks the Los Angeles metro area 21st highest among the largest 37 cities. The champions (or losers) are probably Houston, followed by Jacksonville and Orlando, all of which are over 30 miles per day.

That doesn’t mean you’re not potentially spending a lot of time in your car, though. You just might not be traveling many miles.

Los Angeles is dominated by an overbuilt freeway system that promotes auto dependence.
—–

I said false. He said [half-true](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/los-angeles-transportation-facts-and-fiction-freeways/).

> Los Angeles boasts an extensive freeway system. Counting Interstates and other expressways, the area ranks second in the nation in lane mileage, after New York.

> But taking into account the area’s vast size, the network is one of the most underdeveloped in the U.S. According to the Federal Highway Administration, of the 36 largest metro areas, Los Angeles ranks dead last in terms of freeway lane miles per resident. (Chicago is second to last, and New York is near the bottom as well. The most freeway-heavy big city by this measure is Kansas City.)

The general solution to LA’s traffic woes isn’t going to be more freeways — although in places, more capacity would make sense. Reducing demand is crucial, and increasing density is, almost paradoxically, a good way to do that.

Los Angeles’s mass transit system is underdeveloped and inadequate.
—–

I said half-true. He said [false](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/los-angeles-transportation-facts-and-fiction-transit/).

> But compared with the majority of U.S. cities, Los Angeles is not a transit wasteland. The region is second in the nation in transit patronage, behind only New York. Even on a market share basis (passenger transit miles traveled as a share of all miles traveled), Los Angeles’s ridership rate is relatively high: 11th among the 50 largest urban areas.

Here’s where I think he’s really stretching. Sure, Los Angeles may have a lot more public transit than other big cities, but that isn’t evidence of adequacy. By the standards he’s held himself on the other questions, I think this should be half-true. And he seems to sense this:

> Despite all of this, I can’t look you in the eye and tell you the car is not king in Los Angeles. It is. Our transit share is quite small: a bit under 2 percent.

Yes, two percent of 13 million is a lot of people. But when 98% of your population isn’t using your mass transit system, there’s a lot of opportunity.

Preschool, NYC edition

Follow Up, Los Angeles

Following up on my post about [getting your kid into preschool](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/getting-your-kid-into-preschool), reader bensitzer tipped me off to an upcoming documentary about the equivalent madness in NYC. You can see the trailer [here](http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/nurseryuniversity/).

Do you remember newspapers?

News

Clay Shirky’s piece [Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/) is worth all the links it’s been getting:

> When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

He’s writing specifically about print journalism, but it’s hard not to extrapolate the argument to all our paid and unpaid media. What does television look like ten years from now? We don’t know. We scramble to establish bulwarks and business models, all the while quietly suspecting that we’re going to guess wrong.

> The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.

Shirky’s article is a great candidate for the [Readability bookmarklet](http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/), by the way.

Growing sentences

Words on the page

I linked to this in [Off-Topic](http://johnaugust.tumblr.com/), but it’s worthy of some attention on the front page as well. Jason Kottke [reposted a set of instructions](http://www.kottke.org/09/03/growing-sentences-with-david-foster-wallace) by James Tanner for turning any normal sentence into a David Foster Wallace super-sentence.

Since screenwriting is an art of brevity, it’s a nice change of pace to see just how overstuffed a sentence one can write.

Following Tanner’s instruction, we start with a simple 10-word sentence:

John wanted to play ball, but he sat on the couch.

1. Use them in a compound sentence:
—

John said he wanted to play ball, but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames.

2. Add rhythm with a dependent clause:
—

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball, but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames.

3. Elaborate using a complete sentence as interrupting modifier:
—

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball — he told her where to find his mitt — but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames.

4. Append an absolute construction or two:
—–

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball — he told her where to find his mitt — but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, toes flexing at the most perilous virtual encounters.

5. Paralell-o-rize your structure (turn one noun into two):
——

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball — he told her where to find his mitt and shoes — but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, calf and toes flexing at the most perilous virtual encounters.

6. Adjectival phrases: lots of them. (Note: apprx. 50% will include the word ‘little’):
—–

When asked by his little sister, a ginger-haired cherub with little butterflies on her jean shorts, John said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled mitt and second-best athletic shoes — but instead he sat on the faded orange couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrilling and/or perilous virtual encounters.

7. Throw in an adverb or two (never more than one third the number of adjectives
—-

When asked by his little sister, a ginger-haired cherub with little butterflies on her jean shorts, John said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled mitt and, specifically, his second-best athletic shoes — but instead he sat on the faded orange couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrillingly perilous and/or maddeningly difficult virtual encounters.

8. Elaboration — mostly unnecessary. Here you’ll turn nouns phrases into longer noun phrases; verbs phrases into longer verb phrases. This is largely a matter of synonyms and prepositions. Don’t be afraid to be vague! Ideally, these elaborations will contribute to voice — for example, ‘had a hand in’ is longer than ‘helped’, but still kinda voice-y — but that’s just gravy. The goal here is word count.
—–

When asked by his little sister Bella, a ginger-haired suburban cherub with two make-believe horses and little yellow butterflies on her jean shorts, John definitely said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled mitt and, specifically, his second-best athletic shoes — yet seemed unaware that the white New Mexico sun was crossing the sky and sinking below the foothills as he sat on the faded orange velvet couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on a month-old magazine which was in turn resting on the ottoman, his calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrillingly perilous and/or maddeningly difficult showdowns with level bosses and their virtual henchmen.

9. Give it that Wallace shine. Replace common words with their oddly specific, scientific-y counterparts. (Ex: ‘curved fingers’ into ‘falcate digits’). If you can turn a noun into a brand name, do it. (Ex: ‘shoes’ into ‘Hush Puppies,’ ‘camera’ into ‘Bolex’). Finally, go crazy with the possessives. Who wants a tripod when they could have a ‘tunnel’s locked lab’s tripod’? Ahem:
—–

When asked by his little sister Bella, a ginger-haired suburban cherub with two make-believe Lipizzaners and little yellow lepidopterae on her Old Navy jean shorts, John definitely said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled Nokona mitt and, specifically, his second-best athletic shoes (the Nikes) — yet seemed unaware that Albuquerque’s ghost-white sun was charting its ecliptic path across the sky and sinking below the foothills as he sat on the faded orange velvet couch and played Fallout 3, his left heel resting on the face of Kristen Stewart, who graced the cover of a month-old Entertainment Weekly which was in turn resting on Pottery Barn’s cheapest ottoman, John’s calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrillingly perilous and/or maddeningly difficult showdowns with the Super Mutants of Vault 87 in pursuit of the Geck, a device he wasn’t sure he even wanted.

Thus, 10 words become 151. And absurd, but that’s the fun.

Some sample sentences to try on your own.

* Mary’s car would not start. Her sister was not surprised.

* Tom liked cheese. Eating too cheese much hurt his stomach.

* The lawn was brown. Tom didn’t know how to fix it.

If you decide to try it for yourself, post the final product, or leave a link in the comments if you’re showing your work.