I'm kind of in a hurry but I always kept demographia.com's reports in some skepticism. But on a random surf, I found a demographia.com report on changing populations and densities in the 100 largest cities in the US. I know anyone could just easily go over to the US Census site and find this data, but here, right on demographia.com, was a report contradicting alot of the claims they made in other articles (such as on LA's "super" density, or the argument that Seattle was densifying faster than Portland, or comparison of San Antonio density to other smart growth cities). Are the demographia people just this... what's the word... blind?
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Demographia self-contradictions?
- Thread starter simulcra
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Without having looked at the specific problems you mention, I would refer back to the old cliche: There are lies, darn lies, and statistics.Solipsa said:
Demographia has a very specific opinion/position-and they deine boundaries, fudge factors, etc. to support their "religion" of sprawl.
jordanb
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A lot of Demographia goes beyond "fudging" and directly contradicts official statistics with no sources cited at all. I looked up the figure for Chicago CBD employment once. Demographia says it's like 8% of the metro or something, the State of Illinois says it's 16%. Of course, since there's no sources listed, how do you prove that they're lying?
The whole purpose of Demographia is to get a bunch of statistics on the web that support their position, presented in what looks at first glance to be a non-biased manner, so when a reporter writing a story hops on google to get a figure, Demographia popps up. They then write "According to the Wendell Cox Consultancy," in their articles and thereby appear to have fulfilled the requirments of journalistic rigor. I have seen so many articles where a clueless reporter cites Wendell Cox so it appares that Demographia is doing its job pretty well.
The whole purpose of Demographia is to get a bunch of statistics on the web that support their position, presented in what looks at first glance to be a non-biased manner, so when a reporter writing a story hops on google to get a figure, Demographia popps up. They then write "According to the Wendell Cox Consultancy," in their articles and thereby appear to have fulfilled the requirments of journalistic rigor. I have seen so many articles where a clueless reporter cites Wendell Cox so it appares that Demographia is doing its job pretty well.