I just spent the last 7 minutes listening to this brief historical overview of Seoul by The Urbanist, while I bounced around the city on Google Street View, admiring the coverage of their transit network and the density of their low-rise neighborhoods. 

I love Street View and I love using it to explore cities.

One of the things I liked about The Urbanist episode –  beyond it being a good soundtrack while I explored – is that it talks, albeit briefly, about why Seoul is located where it is today. 

I am always curious about this when it comes to cities. I mean, who was it that decided, yup, this is going to be the spot. Because it’s generally a pretty sticky decision once it is made.

You may also find this 2014 NASA photograph of the Korean Peninsula interesting. The nighttime sky renders up a pretty stark contrast between North Korea and South Korea.

“People get income for doing stuff, and they get income for owning stuff. Increasingly the latter. And the ownership share of income goes to a small slice of households that own almost all the stuff.”

This is a quote from a recent article by Steve Roth over at Evonomics, where he breaks down the share of US household income that is derived from “labor” vs. “capital.” In other words, how much money do households make from working (trading their time for money) and how much do they make from their existing wealth (that is, owning stuff)?

If I were to oversimplify how he calculates this (you can read all of the details, here), it is: (Income - Labor Compensation) / Income. Take all of the household income. Subtract the money made from doing stuff. And then divide it by total income to get the percentage made from “unearned property income.” There are gray areas and others things to consider, but that’s the gist of it.