Baltimore 2010 Census Results by Race

The 2010 Census results for Maryland are out, time to start the comparisons!

(data sources: QT-P5 data series for the 2000 census; P1-Race data series for 2010 census, note that if you follow the link you have to sort the table for Maryland counties)

Baltimore City lost population between 2000 and 2010. Not unexpected, although slightly worse than optimists (notably in city hall) expected. Overall Baltimore City is now home to 620,961 people, down 4.6% from 2000.

When that's broken down by race, here's how the changes from 2000 to 2010 look:

Now, replace an "i" with an "oun" and look what happens:
Interesting stuff. Baltimore County grew by 6.7% from a larger base, so the combined total population for Baltimore City + County increased. Interestingly, the proportion of census respondents listing their race as "White only" decreased in both Baltimore City and County! In fact, combining the two areas shows that "White only" has dropped from being a slim majority of respondents (54.6%) to a plurality (49.4%).

Looks like there are a lot of other interesting trends too. The more than doubling of "Some Other Race Only" as a response, the dramatic increase in respondents stating "Asian Only" in Baltimore County, and (of course) the huge increase in those claiming more than one racial heritage. Plenty more interesting data mining ahead.

In case you want to check out the data in tabular form:

Baltimore City Census Results
Race	2000	2010	Change
White alone	205,982	183,830	-10.8%
Black alone	418,951	395,781	-5.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	2,097	2,270	8.2%
Asian alone	9,985	14,548	45.7%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	222	274	23.4%
Some other race alone	4,363	11,303	159.1%
Two or more races	9,554	12,955	35.6%
Total:	651,154	620,961	-4.6%
Race	2000	2010
White alone	31.6%	29.6%
Black alone	64.3%	63.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	0.3%	0.4%
Asian alone	1.5%	2.3%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	0.0%	0.0%
Some other race alone	0.7%	1.8%
Two or more races	1.5%	2.1%
Baltimore County Census Results
Race	2000	2010	Change
White alone	561,132	520,185	-7.3%
Black alone	151,600	209,738	38.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	4,616	2,625	-43.1%
Asian alone	26,912	40,077	48.9%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	242	319	31.8%
Some other race alone	4,685	12,801	173.2%
Two or more races	5,105	19,284	277.7%
Total:	754,292	805,029	6.7%
Race	2000	2010
White alone	74.4%	64.6%
Black alone	20.1%	26.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	0.6%	0.3%
Asian alone	3.6%	5.0%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	0.0%	0.0%
Some other race alone	0.6%	1.6%
Two or more races	0.7%	2.4%
Baltimore City + County Totals
Race	2000	2010	Change
White alone	767,114	704,015	-8.2%
Black alone	570,551	605,519	6.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	6,713	4,895	-27.1%
Asian alone	36,897	54,625	48.0%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	464	593	27.8%
Some other race alone	9,048	24,104	166.4%
Two or more races	14,659	32,239	119.9%
Total:	1,405,446	1,425,990	1.5%
Race	2000	2010
White alone	54.6%	49.4%
Black alone	40.6%	42.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	0.5%	0.3%
Asian alone	2.6%	3.8%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	0.0%	0.0%
Some other race alone	0.6%	1.7%
Two or more races	1.0%	2.3%

I'm Still a Nerd

Long ago, when I was new to blogging, I commented that I was a huge nerd because I decided to plot my car mileage vs time. I never stopped being that nerd, now I just have a much larger sample size.


My car mileage is still fairly linear, but you can see that there has been a slight change in the slope over the last couple years. (You can also see that I got really bad about getting my car in for regularly scheduled oil changes in the late 2008, early 2009 timeframe, but let's not focus on that.)

Looking back at the data, I can see that between January 2005 and January 2008 I drove approximately 44,000 miles. Admittedly, I did drive a huge road-trip one Christmas (nearly 4,000 miles in less than two weeks), but that's still averaging just under 15,000 miles per year. Over the more recent 3-year period (January 2008 to January 2011), I drove only ~35,000 miles. The funny thing is, I've actually increased my commute distance by a couple miles per day since June 2008. How am I driving less?

I think the big change is that in June 2008 I moved close a train station that allowed me to occasionally take commuter rail to work instead of drive. Nowadays I can also take the light rail or bike to the train station. I have also, over the last few years, become a big fan of new urbanism, walkable neighborhoods, and public transit (I've always been a fan of biking places if possible). Also, more recently, I've moved in with my girlfriend and now make her drive me places sometimes because car pooling is more efficient or I'm planning to drink alcohol (or I'm feeling lazy and talk her into driving). Also, this last fall I had a problem with a bent wheel that I procrastinated on fixing because I didn't want to pay all the money since I knew I needed tires anyway.

All of this combined means that I drove around 11,300 miles in calendar year 2010. That's about 2,400 less than I drove the first 12 months I owned my car!

Finally, in what is definitely a miracle of Honda engineering, my car continues to get around 30-32 mpg on average. So by those numbers, I'm saving myself 75 gallons a year which was probably worth between $150 and $225!

Finally, in a particularly ironic turn of events, in my 2007 blog post on my driving I was pissed off to learn how much of my gasoline costs went to taxes. Now, in 2011, I've educated myself a lot more about transportation funding/policy and I've seen some income growth while inflation has been nearly non-existent. As a result, I'm now a huge fan of raising taxes on gasoline in Maryland (since the gasoline tax is not indexed to inflation and has not been increased since 1992), especially if its used to fund effective public transportation, bicycle transit improvements, or improve run-off control from existing highways.

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By the way, the latter part of the last decade was actually a period of time in which the US was becoming less car dependent. Some group called The Center for Clean Air Policy released a study that included a chart showing that from 1960 into the mid-90's GDP growth and growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tracked each other almost exactly. But around 1995, the two started to diverge, with GDP growth outpacing the growth in VMT. Very, very encouraging news! Good blog post with commentary from the New York Times.

Baltimore Murder Charts - Year End 2010 Edition

I haven't been the best at updating my blog recently, but one of the few original things I post regularly are charts covering Baltimore murders. My sources remain Murder Ink from the City Paper and the Baltimore Crime blog.

Murder trends for 2010 were not nearly as exciting as 2009. Murders declined again, but not by a large number. Most of 2010 looked like 2009, the main exception being that there were far fewer deaths classified as homicides due to prior year murders. As I've been doing, any homicides classified due to an act in a prior year are counted in that prior year (by going back and editing data). So using this methodology I get slightly different numbers than the official tally, but I think it's better for tracking trends.

In 2009 there were officially 238 murders in Baltimore, but 14 of them were due to acts of violence from prior years, so I count that as 224 murders. In 2010 there were officially 223 murders in Baltimore, but 4 of them were due to acts of violence in prior years (none of them from 2009 though, so no upward modification). So while the official numbers drop from 238 to 223 (a 6.3% decrease), my count drops from 224 to 219 (a 2.2% decrease).

Still, we've come a long way since 2007. The 2010 total is down 20% from 2007. The improvements are pretty obvious when you look at the homicides by month and the cumulative plot of homicides for the last four years.



In fact, 2007 was such a higher total than 2008-10, it's actually better to remove it to compare the more recent years.


So what do we have? Looks mostly like stability. Sure, from 2008 to 2010 there were about 14 fewer homicides in Baltimore, a total of a 6% decrease. Not terribly impressive, even if murders continue decreasing at this rate we'll have to wait until 2017 to see murders become something that happens only every other day. That's not a terribly cheerful prediction. Hopefully the continued focus on reducing illegal guns in the city will continue to lower shootings and homicide rate will drop faster.

It needs to. Baltimore's per capita murder rate remains one of the worst in the country. At 35 per 100,000 (my math based on 223 official murders and U.S. Census estimated population for 2009). However, if you are African-American in Baltimore the per-capita murder rate is unbelievable. According to Anna Ditkoff of Murder Ink, 90.6% of 2010's murder victims were African-American. Based on Baltimore's demographics, this indicates that African-Americans in Baltimore face a 50 per 100,000 per capita murder rate while residents of other races experience a 9 per 100,000 per capita murder rate. To put that in perspective, residents who are not African-American are safer in Baltimore than the average Albuquerque resident (source: Wikipedia article on crime in US cities).

Finally, my favorite chart that I create for tracking murder trends:


Vertical axis magnified:

Links to previous year's homicide summaries:
2009 Year End Summary
2008 Year End Summary

Christmas Shopping Strategy

When making Christmas shopping plans, it's best to start by systematizing your thinking.

New Neighborhood, Same Hobby

So I've moved to yet another Baltimore neighborhood, but like many urban neighborhoods I get frustrated by the litter I see when I walk around. Took a couple hours this afternoon and walked up and down the street picking up litter.

Results:

Given that my new neighborhood is a lot nicer than my old one it took a lot longer to pick up this much garbage. I did learn a few things about my neighborhood's litter patterns. Looks like a lot of the litter is due to single serving or individually wrapped junk food and discarded student bus passes. As you move farther from the middle/high school, the litter transitions to discarded take-out remnants and convenience store garbage. Litter peaked near the intersection with the main thoroughfare, likely because this is where vehicular douchebags have the most time to litter.

Overall, a much more pleasant experience than picking up garbage in my old neighborhood, where the overgrown city-owned property could fill up a garbage bag in 10 yards of deep cleaning. The only real problem I'm going to have is when my girlfriend gets home and discovered that our garbage can is completely full and we can't empty our own kitchen garbage can until Wednesday morning...

I actually believe that the biggest problem is that this is a long, well-travelled block with no public garbage receptacles. I'll have to see if I can call the city and have one put up. I think that the majority of litter is a crime of inopportunity - a combination of lots of foot traffic, single-serve junk food, and no garbage cans.

Admittedly, this is a pretty weak blog post, but after months of inactivity it's time to get back to writing about things that seem interesting.