[HN Gopher] Nobody lives here: Nearly 5M Census Blocks with zero... ___________________________________________________________________ Nobody lives here: Nearly 5M Census Blocks with zero population (2014) Author : sndean Score : 81 points Date : 2021-01-18 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (tumblr.mapsbynik.com) (TXT) w3m dump (tumblr.mapsbynik.com) | walrus01 wrote: | It would be interesting to see this compared as a 1:1 overlap | with BLM land in the western states. | sethhochberg wrote: | For anybody not super familiar with US government departments | and confused by reading this after seeing other headlines | coming out of the country in recent years, BLM in this context | is "Bureau of Land Management" and not "Black Lives Matter". | | The BLM is the federal department that oversees most | governmental land that isn't managed by some other department. | Broadly speaking, this is land which isn't run by a | local/state/tribal government, may not have any particular use | designated, and is (usually) uninhabited - or at least intended | to be. | walrus01 wrote: | Indeed, for reference, truly vast swathes of the rural | western states are federal government land. Not all is BLM, | some is national park and such, but same concept applies for | zero population in a census block. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands | richardwhiuk wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LruaD7XhQ50 is a pretty | nice intro to the topic. | bananabreakfast wrote: | While a lot of BLM land is uninhabited, it is not all like | that and not necessarily intended that way either. For | example, the entirety of California's coastline is BLM land. | | The BLM simply functions as the kitchen sink of land | management at the federal level, catching everything that is | not explicitly assigned to other agencies. | jeffbee wrote: | This is a very misleading statement. The area _off_ the | coast of California constitutes the California Coastal | National Monument. The actual land mass involved there is a | mere 8800 acres and nobody lives there. The other national | monuments in California add up to 2.5 million acres. BLM 's | total holdings in California are about 15 million acres, of | the state's 105 million acres. Most of what the BLM holds | aside from national monuments are grazing lands that they | lease out. | thanhhaimai wrote: | TL;DR: Blocks have zero population mostly because | | - physically restrictive (lake, swamps, mountains, deserts...) | | - legally/socially restrictive (commercial/industrial/military... | zones) | Razengan wrote: | > _Water features such lakes, rivers, swamps and floodplains are | revealed as places where it is hard for people to live._ | | Interesting.. | Lendal wrote: | Interesting that on this map, the only state boundary revealed by | this data alone is North Dakota. Any ideas why that might be? | quasse wrote: | Looks like the author updated the article to address that: | | >Update: On a more detailed examination of those two states, | I'm convinced the contrast here is due to differences in the | sizes of the blocks. North Dakota's blocks are more | consistently small (StDev of 3.3) while South Dakota's are more | varied in area (StDev of 9.28). West of the Missouri River, | South Dakota's blocks are substantially larger than those in | ND, so a single inhabitant can appear to take up more space. | Between the states, this provides a good lesson in how changing | the size and shape of a geographic unit can alter perceptions | of the landscape. | thanhhaimai wrote: | The author noted in the post that: | | > I'm convinced the contrast here is due to differences in the | sizes of the blocks. North Dakota's blocks are more | consistently small (StDev of 3.3) while South Dakota's are more | varied in area (StDev of 9.28). | caf wrote: | The New Mexico / Colorado border is also somewhat visible. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | previous discussion: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14433805 | pier25 wrote: | I wonder if Starlink will eventually have on impact on this, | maybe 10 years from now. | | Some years ago we lived in an off the grid cabin in the mountains | of Veracruz (Mexico) and the lack of connectivity was by far the | main reason we left. We now live on the outskirts of a small city | but I still really miss the absolute silence of living away from | civilization. | eloff wrote: | Yup, that will be one less reason to live in a city. I've also | theorized that work from home and self-driving vehicles are | other trends that may counteract the trend towards urban | living. If you have a self-driving vehicle (on the highway at | least), longer commutes may be less of an issue if you can | work, read, or watch tv (we're not there yet.) If you work from | home, commute doesn't matter at all. | | That being said, I work from home, but I live in downtown to | have easy access to activities, restaurants, and supermarkets | without needing a car. The difference in rent is dwarfed by not | having the cost or hassle of a vehicle. | ghaff wrote: | >self-driving vehicle (on the highway at least) | | I live about an hour outside a major city. I definitely will | drive in (normally) for activities like theater. With a self- | driving car--even just on the highways--I'd be _more_ | inclined to go in for an early evening get-together. But I | wouldn 't be popping in multiple times a week even if I | didn't mostly need to drive myself. | cnorthwood wrote: | If the population is truly zero, I wonder how many other | infrastructure concerns will come first? Primarily road | connections, but also electric grid and potable water. There | are alternatives to the latter 2 but it is a significant impact | uncoder0 wrote: | I am betting that Starlink will have an impact on where people | live. We have tons of beautiful empty land in this country but, | modern life requires broadband and that's not well distributed | yet. | reaperducer wrote: | _We have tons of beautiful empty land in this country_ | | It's beautiful _because_ it is empty. | | I think we should fill up all the vacant lots and surface | parking in the cities before we needlessly trample nature any | more. | curiousllama wrote: | Agreed, but also... | | There's like SO MUCH empty land. Growing up in the US, I | thought the most empty things got was Ohio. But turns out, | we're more like Russia - with the empty siberian frontier - | than we are like the UK or something. | | If everyone were evenly distributed, we'd still have <100 | people per sq mile | jeffbee wrote: | Ohio has about the same overall population density as | Spain. | adolph wrote: | My knee jerk reaction was to comment that modern life also | requires other things like healthcare; but then I thought | twice in that maybe some of the lifestyle diseases that drive | in some measure the important placed on healthcare | availability, maybe those core maladies and deleterious | choices are encouraged by living in close proximity to large | numbers of folks. | jeffbee wrote: | Which "lifestyle diseases" are you thinking of? Both | obesity and diabetes are markedly more common in rural | America compared to urban America, but there is a | confounding factor of poverty. | ghaff wrote: | Poverty is one thing. In a rural location, you also sort | of have to make yourself go out for a walk/run/hike | because you're not going to just organically walk from | place to place. (ADDED: Aside from house/yard | work/farming/etc.) I live in a semi-rural location | (nothing like what we're talking about here) and there is | basically no reason that I _have_ to do more than a | minimum level of walking on a given day. (Leaving aside | how big a difference that makes in the scheme of things.) | Mountain_Skies wrote: | Highly likely. I do wonder what impact this will have on mail | ordering. Currently rural deliveries are subsidized by the more | densely populated areas. Because the ratio of subsidized rural | dwellers to densely populated area dwellers is so lopsided in | favor of density, the subsidy doesn't matter much. If that | ratio changes, so might the economics of companies like Amazon | being able to deliver anywhere, usually by piggybacking on the | USPS's rural delivery infrastructure. That said, I've seen | Amazon's own delivery vans in some pretty low density rural | areas so maybe it works out somehow. | DavidPeiffer wrote: | Another interesting uninhabited zone is in Idaho. Summarized by | Wikipedia: | | _The Zone of Death is the name given to the 50 sq mi (129.50 | km2) Idaho section of Yellowstone National Park in which, as a | result of a purported loophole in the Constitution of the United | States, a criminal could theoretically get away with any crime, | up to and including murder._ | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone) | scottcha wrote: | I worked in that area on a SCA trail crew in 1996, in the | Bechlor ranger district, and its nothing we discussed then but | looking as the ref it seems this loophole was only noted in | 2008. | | The area is very remote and while in the park not often | visited. Its very beautiful with meandering rivers through | large grasslands as well as some canyons with the Tetons in the | distance. | giantg2 wrote: | Good luck getting the government to honor that. I can't even | get a local court and state trooper to follow their own rules | of procedures defined in code or basic civil rights. | genericone wrote: | On android device, both portrait and landscape mode, the right | side of the text is cutoff. Desktop view mode fixes it. | culopatin wrote: | Same as iPhone. I just moved from Android and after trying for | 1min I couldn't figure out how to get desktop mode in Safari. | Sometimes I find myself fighting things like that in iOS. I'm | just supposed to guess. | meowster wrote: | I miss how websites used to work with the original iPhone. | Websites looked like normal desktop sites, and you could | double-tap on a block of text and the browser would zoom into | that area. | | I just want normal websites, none of this mobile f*kery we | have today. | Jtsummers wrote: | For whatever reason the "Request Desktop Site" option is | hidden in Safari behind the icon in the address bar that | suggests it should just be about controlling the font (small- | cap-A, big-cap-A). I think it took me two years to finally | remember that consistently instead of just being frustrated | that I couldn't find it. | eznzt wrote: | Consider yourself lucky, a few years ago it was under the | "share" button. Yes, really. | Jtsummers wrote: | Yep. And I had finally gotten used to that when they | moved it. At least the "share" button in iOS is a bit of | a catch all (sharing with messaging apps, email, make a | bookmark, print it, add to home screen, copy, and more | actions), so it at least made _some_ sense. Moving it | behind a font control button makes _no_ sense. | mkr-hn wrote: | Tip you'll probably need soon: the address bar also functions | as the "Find in page" feature. | geraldcombs wrote: | Apparently people only live on the east side of the Mississippi | from ~ Cape Girardeau, MO to the gulf? | geerlingguy wrote: | Flood plains. Though... in some areas people live in them and | complain to the Army Corps and local government every time they | get flooded out. | NiceWayToDoIT wrote: | I am not sure how useful this map is, being uninhabited by humans | does not mean useless. It also does not mean "hey, lets build | something there". | | What about agricultural land, forests, water, forests, wild life | ? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-18 23:00 UTC)