Howard County

I don’t normally do restaurant reviews, but I thought I’d do a quick one for the Coal Fire Pizza in Ellicott City, since it just opened and I was among the first crowd of folks who ate there. (For other reactions see the post at Howchow.) Basically it’s a nice “upscale casual” place with good pizza and other tasty offerings. It’s a tad expensive if you order a lot (over $70 for three people in our case, without any alcoholic drinks included), but I’d definitely go back. ...

(This is part 2 of a two-part post; for background on the Gini coefficient see part 1.) I previously discussed use of the Gini coefficient as a way to measure income inequality (or equality, as the case may be), and promised to discuss why Howard County is noteworthy in this regard. In brief, Howard County is one of only seven counties in the US (out of 800 counties and other geographic areas) that rank in the top 5% (positions 1-40) for both median household income and income equality (as measured by the Gini coefficient): ...

(This is part 1 of a two-part post; for the conclusion see part 2.) In a previous post I discussed the concept of median income and how it avoids certain distortions inherent in mean (average) income. However median income by itself is not adequate to characterize the economic status of households in Howard County (or anywhere else for that matter). In particular, the median income just provides the “midpoint” for income, i.e., the income value for which 50% of the households make more and 50% make less; it does not address the question of how income is actually distributed among the various households. ...

This doesn’t sound good: While researching a Howard County-related blog post today I happened to follow a Google search to www.columbia-md.com (a domain controlled by General Growth Partners), and got the following message: “This Account Is No Longer Active.” I guess when your stock’s in the toilet and you’re flirting with bankruptcy you’ve got more pressing things to worry about than keeping your web sites up.

In a previous post I investigated the question of whether those in Howard County with annual incomes of $120,000 or more truly constituted the “wealthy few” or not. (The answer: No.) Key to that investigation was the idea of median household income, as reported by the US Census Bureau in its annual Amercian Community Survey. It turns out that the ACS data provide some interesting insights into what makes Howard County special, and can help explain the nature of the conflicts that have raged over the future of Howard County in general and Columbia in particular. ...

Last night a post by local blogger Wordbones caught my eye. Based on a story in the Baltimore Sun, it discussed proposed plans for affordable housing in Columbia Town Center, housing that would be reserved for those with income of less than $80,000 (10% of total units) or those with income between $80,000 and $120,000 (another 10% of total units). Wordbones particularly noted a quote in the article from Alan Klein of the Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown: ...

For those Mozilla folks and others who’ve been following my full blog feed: I happen to live in Howard County, Maryland, between Washington DC and Baltimore.For a while now I’ve been following Howard County local bloggers but haven’t joined the conversation myself. I’ve now been prompted to write on at least one Howard County topic, and in the event I write more I’ve started a Howard County category for my blog and a corresponding feed. If you’re not interested in this stuff I suggest you consider resubscribing to just my Mozilla feed.