Stats and Urban Econ Notes - New Updates
An easier way to get updates on stats and built environment ideas
Easier Updates
I’m guessing most individuals reading this came from my xstreetvalidated (XSV) blog where I write about issues related to the built environment. Or perhaps you wandered here after reading finding my personal website, or the notes I put there on design based inference. Wherever you’re coming from - welcome! I started this Substack because I saw it as a much easier way to provide readers, and myself, with a centralized place to link to whatever and where ever I happen to be writing. It also doesn’t hurt that Substack’s email interface is way better than Blogtrottr’s.
How it works
I’m planning to keep these emails short with an update on whatever I may be working on or thinking about as well as a link to the post to the relevant XSV post or other site where you can find the longer and likely more technical content. If you somehow found me without having read any of the aforementioned posts, you can expect to find content here related to statistics and the built environment generally, with frequent citations to their relevancy to current public problems. Technical deep dives may be expected as well that require prior knowledge, though I do my best to have a paragraph or two that is higher level and more accessible.
Two Updates
For this initial post I have two updates.
A new XSV post with a review on Alain Bertraud’s book Order Without Design.
As linked earlier, I completed some notes on Thomas Lumley’s Complex Surveys book and associated software.
Going Forward
Like today’s updates, future posts will likely focus on both statistical and urban economics content – likely separate and together.
As stated at the end of the XSV post. I’m interested in learning more about urban economics. This theory aspires to directly address discussions happening right now in city government across the US in a principled manner.
For example, there’s currently a contentious back-and-forth in Pittsburgh about how to best address the housing affordability problem. There is a YIMBY group that wants to build more housing, full stop, and is against an effort by the Mayor to introduce an inclusionary zoning (IZ) policy. A separate camp that’s pro-IZ pitches themselves against the more market based reforms championed by the YIMBYs. The YIMBY’s argue that, according to classic economic theory, more supply will lower the market price of housing. The pro-IZ’s argument is less well defined as my reading from this and other interactions suggest that they do not disagree completely with the supply / demand argument but are strongly motivated by the population dynamics they see of lower income residents leaving the city at a high / increasing rate while higher income individuals move in — and further drive up housing prices. Untangling these two perspectives and gaining a better sense of the story driving the housing market is one motivation for learning more about what urban economics has to say here.
Statistically, I’m still interested in design based inference and hope to write more about different sampling algorithms and sampling on “non-standard” spaces. For example, are there more or less efficient ways to sample from a well connected graph? If these kinds of things interest you then be sure to subscribe!