I rediscovered the maps and work of Alasdair Rae this morning. (He has appeared on this blog before in posts like this one here.) Alasdair works in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield and is author of the blog, Stats, Maps n Pix. Recently, he's been publishing maps showing population densities around the world. He also gets into the details of how they're made. They are pretty cool to see.

Here are the Great Lakes.

And here is Brazil, as well as a map of the world (without any land shown). Canada and the United States barely register on this second one.

According to a recent study in the New York Times, the average age of a first-time mother in Manhattan is 31.1 years old. In San Francisco County, the number is nearly 32. And in the US as a whole, it was 26.3 in 2016.

This is what the national distribution looked like in 1980:

And this is what it looked like in 2016:

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest factor influencing the age of a first-time mother is education. Becoming educated and building a career takes time. First-time mothers tend to be older in big cities (particularly on the coasts) compared to rural areas.

The concern that researchers have with all of this is that it is symptomatic of growing inequality. Scrolling over the NY Times’ map, it would appear that there’s nearly a 10 year gap between the coasts and many parts of the country.

On the one hand you have people who are finishing high school and having kids fairly soon after. And on the other hand, you have people going to college, establishing their career, and waiting, in some cases a decade, to have kids.

This is significant because it can create a virtuous circle (excerpt from article):

“A college degree is increasingly essential to earning a middle-class wage, and older parents have more years to earn money to invest in violin lessons, math tutoring and college savings accounts — all of which can set children on very different paths.”

Unequal childhoods can lead to unequal outcomes.

Images: New York Times

https://500px.com/embed.js

On Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 at 8:33am, I wrote and posted this.

And that started a 2 year tradition of writing something on this blog, every, single, day, no matter how long or short it might be and no matter how insightful or not insightful it might be. It kick started a discipline.

For the most part, I tend to write about city building and everything that feeds into that, whether it be design, planning, transportation, technology, or real estate. But I also write personal posts, especially when I go snowboarding. And the longer I write this blog, the more comfortable I feel writing those sorts of posts.

Sometimes I feel guilty about those posts though, since I assume most of you are here to learn and talk about city building things. I assume you don’t want to hear about me. But at the end of the day, ATC is a personal blog. It’s not a business or corporate blog, and I like to think that the personal touches help make the content more engaging over time.

Regardless, a big thank you to everyone who reads, subscribes, and follows Architect This City. There are few things more gratifying than hearing someone say they love this blog and that they read it every morning when they wake up. 

That’s a huge commitment on their/your part and I am grateful for that. Because my commitment (writing this blog) wouldn’t be nearly as fun if you weren’t all around to engage with and learn from. And in the early days of writing this blog, there truly was nobody around.

So for today’s 2 year anniversary post, I thought I would share some readership stats. Last Friday I posted a map of all of this blog’s email subscribers (in anticipation of today’s post). But today we’re going to get into some hard numbers (from Google Analytics).

Here are the high level stats from the past year.

Here are the number of visitors (users) over the last year. It feels great to see it increasing. The spikes are posts that, for whatever reason, really took off.

Here’s how people discovered this blog. Almost half of the visitors to this blog are just searching around online and stumble upon it.

And finally, here are the demographics. I only turned this feature on a few weeks ago, so the data set isn’t as large as above. Still, it’s probably pretty accurate. I need to work on correcting the gender imbalance here.

And there you have it. Thanks again for reading. If you have any suggestions for the third year of Architect This City, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below. Here’s to another year!

I rediscovered the maps and work of Alasdair Rae this morning. (He has appeared on this blog before in posts like this one here.) Alasdair works in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield and is author of the blog, Stats, Maps n Pix. Recently, he's been publishing maps showing population densities around the world. He also gets into the details of how they're made. They are pretty cool to see.

Here are the Great Lakes.

And here is Brazil, as well as a map of the world (without any land shown). Canada and the United States barely register on this second one.

According to a recent study in the New York Times, the average age of a first-time mother in Manhattan is 31.1 years old. In San Francisco County, the number is nearly 32. And in the US as a whole, it was 26.3 in 2016.

This is what the national distribution looked like in 1980:

And this is what it looked like in 2016:

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest factor influencing the age of a first-time mother is education. Becoming educated and building a career takes time. First-time mothers tend to be older in big cities (particularly on the coasts) compared to rural areas.

The concern that researchers have with all of this is that it is symptomatic of growing inequality. Scrolling over the NY Times’ map, it would appear that there’s nearly a 10 year gap between the coasts and many parts of the country.

On the one hand you have people who are finishing high school and having kids fairly soon after. And on the other hand, you have people going to college, establishing their career, and waiting, in some cases a decade, to have kids.

This is significant because it can create a virtuous circle (excerpt from article):

“A college degree is increasingly essential to earning a middle-class wage, and older parents have more years to earn money to invest in violin lessons, math tutoring and college savings accounts — all of which can set children on very different paths.”

Unequal childhoods can lead to unequal outcomes.

Images: New York Times

https://500px.com/embed.js

On Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 at 8:33am, I wrote and posted this.

And that started a 2 year tradition of writing something on this blog, every, single, day, no matter how long or short it might be and no matter how insightful or not insightful it might be. It kick started a discipline.

For the most part, I tend to write about city building and everything that feeds into that, whether it be design, planning, transportation, technology, or real estate. But I also write personal posts, especially when I go snowboarding. And the longer I write this blog, the more comfortable I feel writing those sorts of posts.

Sometimes I feel guilty about those posts though, since I assume most of you are here to learn and talk about city building things. I assume you don’t want to hear about me. But at the end of the day, ATC is a personal blog. It’s not a business or corporate blog, and I like to think that the personal touches help make the content more engaging over time.

Regardless, a big thank you to everyone who reads, subscribes, and follows Architect This City. There are few things more gratifying than hearing someone say they love this blog and that they read it every morning when they wake up. 

That’s a huge commitment on their/your part and I am grateful for that. Because my commitment (writing this blog) wouldn’t be nearly as fun if you weren’t all around to engage with and learn from. And in the early days of writing this blog, there truly was nobody around.

So for today’s 2 year anniversary post, I thought I would share some readership stats. Last Friday I posted a map of all of this blog’s email subscribers (in anticipation of today’s post). But today we’re going to get into some hard numbers (from Google Analytics).

Here are the high level stats from the past year.

Here are the number of visitors (users) over the last year. It feels great to see it increasing. The spikes are posts that, for whatever reason, really took off.

Here’s how people discovered this blog. Almost half of the visitors to this blog are just searching around online and stumble upon it.

And finally, here are the demographics. I only turned this feature on a few weeks ago, so the data set isn’t as large as above. Still, it’s probably pretty accurate. I need to work on correcting the gender imbalance here.

And there you have it. Thanks again for reading. If you have any suggestions for the third year of Architect This City, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below. Here’s to another year!