In an enterprising bit of reporting, the Orlando Sentinel looked at suburban crime statistics in Orlando, comparing property crimes in gated and ungated subdivisions. The Sentinel's finding: "Crime rates in ungated subdivisions are often as low as those in their gated neighbors." The Sentinel found that vandalism and smash-and-grab car burglaries were less frequent in gated subdivisions, but the more serious property crimes (home burglaries and car theft) were about the same. Even the makers of these gates admit they don't offer real protection. Gates are ineffective because everybody knows the codes. Some residents post the codes on garage-sale signs out by the main road. "What people are buying is the perception of security," one academic who has studied gated subdivisions told the newspaper. "What they may be buying more is a sense of eliteness, and I guess that's worth something to people."
TRANSIT AND THE PROFIT MOTIVE
Public transit's greatest impediments to discretionary riders (those who own cars and have a choice about whether to drive or catch a train or bus) are fear and inconvenience. The fear is that they will have no way to pick up a sick child at school or visit a client who needs them on short notice. The inconvenience is that transit gets them close to work but not straight to work, leaving them no way to travel the last mile. A solution to the first problem is to offer emergency travel insurance when commuters buy monthly transit passes. That is, for an extra $10 or $15 a month, they could buy a certain number of heavily discounted taxi rides. Since most of the trips would be in the middle of the workday, their slow periods, taxi companies should be eager for the business. The last mile is a tougher problem, but there are many possible solutions, from encouraging office developers to provide van services to offering space near transit stations for riders to park cheap second cars--an in-town clunker for the final mile to work. Another possibility is to let companies into stations to rent Segways, the space-age scooters, for people to travel the last mile. It's going to take innovation and creative partnerships to draw people out of their cars and onto trains and buses. Lumbering, bureaucratic transit agencies haven't shown much creativity in tackling these obstacles in the past, but perhaps some smart entrepreneurs can show them how.
LARGE HOUSES ON SMALL LOTS
Most houses built today are two or more stories, but this wasn't always so. In 1978, only 30 percent had more than a single story, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. But that was before most Americans, including first-time homebuyers, decided they needed a lot of elbow room. There are several ironies here. First, families are smaller than they were in the 1950s, so a lot of families of six were squeezed into those compact ranch houses. Today, families of three roam around their spacious, two-story Colonial Revivals. Second, older people don't care for stairs, and the population is aging. But if spaciousness is the ideal, cost is the reality, and the key cost here is the price of undeveloped land, which has skyrocketed in many places. Lots are shrinking in size, even as the houses on them are growing dramatically larger. In the mid-1980s, the Times said, the average lot in California was about 7,500 square feet; today, it's about 6,400 square feet. That means Americans are climbing stairs in unprecedented numbers. "It's really only the senior citizens who want the single-story homes," one real estate agent told the Times. The good news here: Perhaps all that stair climbing will help out with America's obesity epidemic.
