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LRealist  6mo ago (text post)   1508 thread views

Political Survey

Some of you (OK so like... three of you) may remember the last time I ran a survey on political values; I was really happy with the responses everybody gave me at TheMotte, and now a few other people I know who post on Substack are wanting to use the results to answer some questions of their own. So long story short, here's another poll:

PLEASE TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

Don't worry if you think you're unusual and might skew the results - in fact we'd very much appreciate your perspective, whatever it is.

Thanks guys!

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Would you consider "one-to-two-storey, adjacent buildings share walls" to be urban or suburban? It's clearly higher-density than the "freestanding houses with green between" in your "suburban" picture", but way, way short of the skyscrapers in your "urban" picture.

So I actually was responsible for that question, and I began by thinking about population density, and thinking of sending people to Wikipedia, and wondered whether I should ask people to give their answer in terms of persons per square mile or square kilometer. Then I realized "Who am I kidding, this survey attempts to measure intellectual ability with two questions you can either get right or wrong; the granularity is so coarse and reliability so low that we'll need n ~ 200 to see anything anyway, just try this handy picture of idealized living spaces."

I would go with "urban", in Europe it would count as urban for sure, since there are not so many cities with skyscrapers' districts. And sharing walls as well as having common frontage is a distinct feature of a town.

How far do you have to walk to touch grass? If it's less than half a block, it's suburban IMO.

There is grass right outside my front door, but no one would consider it anything other than downtown. I don't think whether something is urban is determined by the density. I think it's determined by the proximity to the centre of the city or town.

Are we talking grass on residential properties, or any grass? There's a trade-school campus across the road with plenty of grass, there's a nature strip on the road a half-block or so down, and a public park a (small, 2 minute walk) block away, but I don't think there are any houses with grass around them in the immediate area.

I don't think there are any houses with grass around them in the immediate area.

I'd call that the deciding factor. It's not a super-principled decision, but the density you're describing doesn't sound suburban.

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