As you may or may not know, 2013 marks the celebration of the International Year of Statistics, coined “Statistics2013” – a celebration to increase public awareness of the power and impact of statistics on all aspects of society. With that said, I could not help but bring to memory the phrase “Lies, d***** lies, and statistics,” which is claimed to have originated in England in the 19^th century, but made popular in America by Mark Twain in the 20^th century. The phrase describes the persuasive power of numbers to support an argument. But wait: is it fair to refer to statistics as the highest form of lying under any circumstance?

First, let’s define statistics.  In Gerald Hahn and Necip Doganaksoy’s book A Career in Statistics: Beyond the Numbers, the definitions include these parts:

1. The science of learning from or making sense out of data;
2. The theory and methods of extracting information from observational data; and
3. The art of telling a story with numerical data.

What grabs my attention is that statistics is defined as both a science and an art. Can statistics be both? Is this the source of confusion that leads ultimately to some people attributing statistics to all lies? For statistics to be a science, it must follow some standard and proven methodology to arrive at its conclusions.  For it to be an art, it must lend itself to some notion of manual skill, intellectual manipulation, or personal expression. My belief is that while statistics can be both a science and an art, it cannot be both at the same time.  The data is generated first using a scientific process (can be as simple as counting), then it can become an art when it is subjected to human interpretation. Human interpretation can be regarded as a lie only if others know the truth lies elsewhere, and the person giving the interpretation is aware of that.

Case in point: For the District of Columbia, the U.S. Census Bureau has multiple 2010 population numbers: 601,723 (Census 2010); 604,453 (American Community Survey [ACS] 2010 1-year data); and 604,912 (2010 population estimate). Which one is the true population number? The decennial Census, last held in 2010, is a count of the population at a specific point in time. ACS 1-year data is a sample of the population over a twelve-month period from January to December. The population estimate for a particular year is based on administrative data such as births, deaths and migration. The average person will not know the intricacies of the Census Bureau’s methodology and may be forced to conclude that none of these numbers are correct or that they are all wrong (or a lie). Scientifically, it can be argued that each is correct based on the method applied. Artfully, each number is subject to its own interpretation based on the information known or assumed in its derivation.

From my viewpoint, statistical interpretation is such that regardless of the issue or argument, people usually find a number that can be used to support it or they find another number that they believe should be used instead. Does this mean that statistics is a lie? Certainly not! However, for some, the jury is still out. Where do you stand?

Joy Phillips is the Associate Director of the State Data Center, OP

OP staffer Quoinett Warrick on Capital Bikeshare

If only biking in style was this easy.

As an urban planner in the District, I wholeheartedly embrace a walkable and bikeable model of urban life.  I cheer as Walk Scores for the District’s emerging neighborhoods exponentially increase as bike amenities and services are introduced.  I applaud our local pioneers who actually walk the talk by biking not only to work, but also to leisurely run errands and meet up with friends.  I even smile with amazement when I see my boss, OP Director Harriet Tregoning, stepping into a meeting in upper NW with helmet and bike in tow (yes, I’ve actually witnessed her biking from our office in SW to points WAY north in the District!). So as I get amped to begin my own biking soliloquy, somehow I get stuck at the door looking for my car keys instead. I know, I’m a hypocrite… but a well meaning one.

The reality for me is far deeper than just biking itself. It’s the after effects of biking that leave me perplexed.  The sweating, the change of clothes and the showering at work all require a level of dedication I’m simply not interested in. For those of us who remotely care about maintaining a business professional appearance during the day, I ask you, how do you do it?

Everyone has their own unique routine. I see the towels in the office shower air drying. I pass the bikers early in the AM with all their biking accoutrements from cute helmets to versatile biking shoes. Oh and the infamous rolled up pant leg, with the innovative Velcro fastener to secure it. And then I think, I can do this!  

DDOT staffer Monica Hernandez on Capital Bikeshare

 The last bike-to-work occasion I attempted required a fairly large back pack of necessities… shower gear, towel, deodorant, make-up and all other trinkets and essentials necessary to be work appropriate.  

Somehow the list of essentials grew, and my knap sack quickly grew to the size of a small mountain.  So with everything in tow, I managed to mount the bike without tipping over. Surprisingly, I arrived to work in about 20 minutes, but was completely drenched. On my way up to the shower, I noticed a colleague trekking behind me with not an ounce of perspiration visible. Off he went into the office as if he had just stepped out of a biking magazine.  Then I catch a glimpse of my reflection and realize I’m definitely the nerdiest and sweatiest biker chick ever. Not a title I’d like to carry stepping into the office.  And then I think, if this is embracing a bikable model of urban life, then I’d rather just cheer my peers on. Hip Hip Hooray, for those of you that have figured it out. Hip Hip Hooray.

By Tanya Stern

In April 2012, Mayor Gray released his Vision for a Sustainable DC to make the District the most sustainable city in the nation by 2032. The vision set out ambitious overarching goals and targets for nine areas related to sustainability.  These goals and targets served as the foundation for the creation of the final plan.

The Sustainable DC Plan comprehensively addresses four key challenges: creating jobs and growing the District’s economy; improving the health and wellness of residents; ensuring equity and diversity across the city; and improving the climate and the environment. The plan includes 32 goals and 31 targets, and offers 143 specific actions in the built environment, energy, food, nature, transportation, waste and water.

Actions in the Sustainable DC Plan include:

• Coordinating targeted workforce-development strategies and education programs to create jobs and foster business growth in the green economy;
• Building 1,000 more renewable-energy systems and enabling residents and businesses across the city to more easily invest in shared renewable facilities;
• Modernizing all of the District’s public school buildings to at least the LEED Gold standard under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED system and expanding sustainability-education efforts citywide.
• Controlling pollution caused by stormwater runoff with 2,000,000 more square feet of green roofs and a healthy tree canopy over 40 percent of the city;
• Completing 37 miles of streetcar network and 100 miles of citywide bike lanes;
• Establishing facilities to accept residential and commercial compost; and
• Providing tens of millions of dollars in innovative financing to promote private-sector energy- and water-efficiency retrofits.

The final Sustainable DC Plan and more details about Sustainable DC are available at www.sustainable.dc.gov.

DC Office of Planning (OP) Director Harriet Tregoning and District Department of Transportation (DDOT) Director Terry Bellamy co-authored this Washington Post op-ed that talks about how the District is planning for parking in a 21st Century Washington, DC. Of particular focus are proposals included in OP’s comprehensive update of the District’s 50+ year old zoning code: simplifying the complex parking minimum standards and eliminating parking minimum requirements downtown and in other higher-density, mixed-use settings near frequent mass transit.  DDOT also recently launched moveDC, a collaborative transportation planning effort to incorporate transit, vehicular, bicycle, pedestrian and freight uses into a single Multimodal Long Range Transportation Plan for the District of Columbia. The plan is scheduled to be completed in 2014 and will include recommendations to create a seamless and convenient transportation system for the District.

To learn more about the parking minimums proposals, please visit OP’s ZoningDC blog and this Parking factsheet.

To learn more about moveDC, please visit  www.wemoveDC.org or check it out on Facebook (www.facebook.com/WeMoveDC) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/wemovedc).

Recent articles and posts everywhere, including Greater Greater Washington, have talked about how housing is becoming unaffordable.  However, the graph below suggests that home prices may be more affordable now than they were in 1990.  It was constructed by calculating the purchasing power of household income using prevailing mortgage rates and comparing it to the growth of the Case-Shiller Index over time.

Source: HUD, FHLMC, S&P Case-Shiller, DC Office of Planning.

In 1990 the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated the Area Median Income (AMI) for the Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was $51,000, and according to FreddieMac the average interest rate for a home mortgage was 10.13 percent!  This suggests the typical household could afford a mortgage of about $144,000[1].  Over time the AMI went up and interest rates went down.  In 2012 HUD estimates the AMI is $107,500 and interest rates average 3.5 percent.  Using the same calculation, the same typical household can now afford a mortgage of $595,000.  When the average annual rate of change in the Case-Shiller Index is applied over time to the same starting point of $144,000, the index suggests a current home price of $527,000.

So yes, housing prices have outpaced household income, but this analysis suggests that it’s primarily due to increased buying power from low interest rates that has inflated housing prices and not a gap between supply and demand or other factors.  If this is the case, it raises some different, but vital questions the region should be asking:

• If prices are up in large part due to interest rates being kept perhaps artificially low?  What happens when those rates go back up? The Federal Reserve’s program of quantitative easing seeks to offer a soft landing to keep housing prices stabilized.  But unlike everything else, the saying for interest rates is “what goes down must come up.”    A simple increase in interest rates from 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent reduces purchasing power by $67,000 or 11 percent.  Renting will become more attractive. However, to the extent this affects housing prices, how will local budgets be affected by potentially even lower property values?
• The problem is perhaps not a shortage of housing, but where the housing is in relation to the jobs.  Drive till you qualify is certainly part of the problem.  OP’s study on housing & transportation costs estimated that lower transportation costs in the District can save a household on average $4,000 to as much as $16,000 annually compared to the outlying suburbs, but the lending industry doesn’t recognize the savings from low transportation costs or the expense of a high cost area when underwriting loans.
• It’s also the region’s overall imbalance, where all the jobs are to the west and all the lower cost housing is to the east.  In Prince George’s County the median sales price is $177,500 and demand has only recently taken note of the opportunity.  The imbalance adds to the region’s traffic congestion, longer commutes, etc.  Therefore, how can we fix the regional jobs/housing imbalance, and create greater housing affordability to the west and more jobs to the east and help people live closer to their work?
• Finally, the growing barbell distribution of household income is making it harder for a larger percentage of households on the lower end to afford homeownership.  Homeownership does confer several benefits of greater housing cost stability and asset development that can help raise intergenerational wealth.  How can these benefits be extended to a wider range of households while growing the stock of affordable units as population increases?

In the meantime, check out this 2011 study by OP and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, H+T in DC: Housing Plus Transportation in DC.

When it comes to hyperbole, “it’s got it all” might be the most overused, but with regards to describing what makes Columbia Road, NW from 19^th to 18^th Streets a successful urban street, it’s dead on.  Ok, so it doesn’t have a zip line into Rock Creek Park, but with the slope and the trees it could be fabulous.

There are three core elements to the best three blocks in DC and they start with Kalorama Park, which has huge shade trees, two playgrounds, a community garden, a basketball court and a beautiful westward facing slope for catching the sunsets.  It is the community’s center and without it, these three blocks would be far more ordinary.

Next it’s got people living in anywhere from six to eight story buildings, to row houses, to even a few single-family detached homes.  Through tools like rent control, limited-equity coops, and a few nearby subsidized buildings, all kinds of people live in the neighborhood including fixed-income retirees, a few low-income families and of course the ubiquitous young professionals.  That said, I wouldn’t disagree that some more affordable housing, so lower income families could be in boundary and send their kids to one of the District’s best public school at Oyster, would be a good idea.

Kalorama Park and surrounding apartment buildings at sunset (Photo: Art Rodgers)

The final core element is handy daily shopping including two local grocers, three competitive dry cleaners, a liquor store, a gallery/frame shop and an athletic shoe store. Not far away there is a hardware store, an electronics store, a post office, and several import stores.  The stores keep the sidewalks active with people running errands, picking up a carton of milk or other sundries or going out for a tasty frozen treat on a hot summer night. Did I mention the range of restaurants from fabulously affordable Mediterranean and Peruvian Chicken to Brazilian, French and Sushi and how they are adapting to the growing population of toddlers? No? Well I have now.

Note: The delicous new restaurant Mintwood Place almost made it into this graphic, but its too new to be a neighborhood institution, however a recent siting of President Obama builds a really strong case! (Graphic: Art Rodgers)

I must admit the rest of what makes the best three blocks in DC are an accident of location.  It’s bracketed by Rock Creek to the west, Walter Pierce Park to the north, 18^th Street’s entertainment strip and Marie Reed’s comfortably dog eared, but shaded and cool kiddy pool to the east.  Beyond the three blocks in the immediate neighborhood are two more supermarkets, and farther are the adjacent destinations of Woodley Park (Red Line Metro) across the fabulous Duke Ellington Bridge, Columbia Heights (Green Line Metro) connected by the DC Circulator and Dupont Circle (Red Line Metro) with all that they offer.

Others may wish to point out how the assets of their neighborhood make them such wonderful places to live, and that’s actually the point.  Let’s identify what are the elements of urban areas we love and make sure that all the neighborhoods of DC are provided the same opportunity for relatively sane (but never boring), if not high quality urban living.

(Click to animate) OP’s analysis of possible DC area federal office locations though 2027

What if the General Services Administration is right about telecommuting and stops renting office space?

We looked at where GSA puts federal workers today, and imagined where the workers might be in 15 years if plans for increased telecommuting proceed.  Existing rules already favor transit-accessible locations.

Our back-of-the-envelope analysis started with GSA’s current offices.  We dropped expiring leases each year to meet an aggressive schedule for consolidating space, ending leases farthest from mass transit first and consolidating jobs at the remaining sites.  After 15 years all of the leased space would be gone.  Look what that would mean for the density of jobs downtown!

(Click to animate) Federal job density in the DC-area over the next 15 years

We don’t believe the future will look exactly like this, but we’re trying to learn from the exercise.  Perhaps we’ll need to focus more on meeting the needs of part-time telecommuters.

What do you think?

Blind Dog – Image courtesy of blinddogcafe.com

By Elisa Vitale

No, it’s not the Pillsbury Doughboy, but a bakery or restaurant may be popping up in your neighborhood.  Pop-ups are temporary, or not so temporary, businesses that operate during off hours at bars or restaurants when the space would otherwise go unused.  In addition to enlivening spaces that are dark during the day, pop-ups bring new offerings to neighborhoods; allow entrepreneurs to gauge interest by local residents; and provide seasoned cooks, or those just starting out, a chance to see how they would fare in the risky restaurant business.

Noah Karesh, Jonas Singer, and Cullen Gilchrist launched Blind Dog Café in Darnell’s Bar on Florida Avenue in February 2012.  The café takes advantage of the bar’s space, including a kitchen, that sits empty during the day.  Gilchrist, a line cook at Ardeo + Bardeo, wanted to evaluate neighborhood interest in a coffee shop.  He is responsible for the menu and his sister runs her own start-up, Black Strap bakery, from the kitchen and supplies the café’s baked goods.  Blind Dog Café has proven so popular that the pop-up expanded to the Science Club’s patio at L and M Streets, NW for the summer.

While Blind Dog Café is a pop-up that’s here to stay, there are more temporary pop-ups around DC.  You might associate H Street NE with bars and live music, not brownies and baguettes, but stop by H Street Bakes and that could change.  H Street Bakes is a monthly pop-up bake sale (the venue rotates among bars) that features treats from local residents and employees.  Kim Moffatt, a local resident and the pastry chef (and waitress/hostess) at Granville Moore’s, who also provides desserts and baked goods for Boundary Road, started the pop-ups to determine neighborhood interest in a bakery on H Street.  You’ll also find Crunkcakes at H Street Bakes.  Faith Alice Sleeper and Raychel Sabath cooked up the idea for these boozy cupcakes while working together at the Rock & Roll Hotel.

Crunkcakes – Image courtesy of districtofcrunk.com

Erica Skolnik, of Frenchie’s, is looking for a permanent storefront for her bakery.  In the meantime, she sells her baked goods at Seasonal Pantry in Shaw.  She recently had the opportunity to take over the Seasonal Pantry space for a one day bakery pop-up when the gourmet market was temporarily closed.

Kera Carpenter, owner of Domku in Petworth, says that she would have benefited from a mentor and a space to test her concept – that’s why she’s working with Priya Ammu and DC Dosa.  Ammu is the winner of Think Local First’s StartUp Kitchen competition, which is targeted at providing resources for emerging restaurant businesses.  Over the fall DC Dosa took over the Domku space (Domku is closed Mondays), giving consumers the chance to test the dosa and provide feedback at this pop-up restaurant.

Is there a space in your neighborhood that would be perfect for a pop-up?  What type of restaurant would you like to see?