Morning Metro: Decatur Teachers Awarded, Damn Yankees, and One World City
Decatur Metro | November 2, 2011
- City Schools of Decatur announce teachers of the year [CSD]
- Damn Yankees! Southerners report a decline in civility [NYT]
- Four Georgia cities among America’s “Brokest” [Daily Beast]
- Occupy Atlanta vows to reoccupy Woodruff Park on Saturday [AJC]
- Japan, you’re so urban your train system is privatized! [Atlantic Cities]
- If 7 billion people lived in one city, how big would it be? [FastCo Design]
That infographic is amazing. I wish they would have used Tokyo also, though. Which state would that be – Vermont?
Now this got me thinking about the population density of Decatur versus other places. Decatur says it is the most densely populated city in Georgia. We’re a little over 4400 people per square mile. Wikipedia says the densest city in the world is Manila (where some claim the 7 billionth baby was born) with 111,000 people per square mile, roughly 25 times more than Decatur.
And Jon, Tokyo isn’t even in the top 48. And, there’s only one on the list in the western hemisphere. Here’s the list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density
As for states, the densest is New Jersey and Vermont is way down the list at number 30:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density
When I did a school report once, if you counted territories, Puerto Rico was the densest part of the U.S. New Jersey–Puerto Rico–same thing.
It is pretty cool. Now if the entire world’s population could reside within an area of 4,343.2 people per square mile (like Decatur), they would fit into Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. That’s more compact than Houston, but not by all that much. Does this mean we’ll never be “the Paris of the South”?
“Paris of the South” – that’s Asheville, NC. At least that’s what “they” say.
As a native Southerner, I am baffled by this paragraph from the New York Times article: “Dana Mason, who teaches second grade in Birmingham, says manners have been at the lowest level she has seen in her 36 years in the classroom. Parents who move South tell her they don’t want their children to learn to say “yes, sir” or “yes, ma’am.” Too demeaning, they say.”
Demeaning to the children or the adults? I don’t see how being respectful of an adult is demeaning to a child. And when someone says “yes, sir,” to me, I appreciate it. It’s quite pleasant. Courtesy implies respect and I think our society could use more of that these days.
If civility is king in the south as many have claimed to be for years, how does that contrast with a heritage of segregation? The article points out that cilvilty was taught to maintain social order in a society where blacks and women were second-class citiznes.
Growing up in the North, it’s true that I don’t recall a lot of “Yes sir” and “Yes ma’am” but we did encourage the more formal use of names which I think accomplishes a lot of the same thing. It was always Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and never Mr. Keith and Miss Sarah.
I still prefer having children use last names as I think it encourages the respect that the familiarity of a first name does not. Back home, if you were familiar enough to have your first name used with a child, you became Uncle Keith, as I am to my closest friend’s children, instead of Mr. Keith.
Even now as an adult, my friends parents are still Mr. and Mrs. when I address them.
Well put Keith. That is exactly the way I was taught growing up in New England.
I found this didn’t work very well with my own children due to blended families and modern customs regarding married names. My young children couldn’t remember all the last names since friends often don’t have the same last name as their parents – or at least as their mother. We ended up resorting to either first names or “ma’am” and “sir” . With older adults (seniors) we use Miss or Mr with the first name.
Don’t get worked up about the manners article. It’s a fake trend invented by the NY Times. They do it all the time. And I’m a fan of the Times.