How highways can make it harder to make friends
Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Monday, April 14th.
NEW RESEARCH SHOWS LIVING NEAR A HIGHWAY CAN IMPACT YOUR SOCIAL LIFE. More on that next. But first... the headlines….
San Diego has a new US Attorney. Adam Gordon was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and sworn in last week (Friday).
Previously Gordon was an assistant U.S. Attorney. He also worked at the San Diego County District Attorney’s office.
Gordon replaces former Southern District U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath who was fired by the Trump administration.
She previously told KPBS the Trump administration is making federal agencies shift to immigration enforcement — which puts public safety at risk.
So we have these organizations that are specialized in really essential components of what keeps people in this country safe from mass shootings, from ghost guns, from fires, from fentanyl. And now those organizations are devoting significant time to immigration enforcement.
McGrath was one of 93 US attorneys let go.
DISAPPEARING SAND ON SAN DIEGO’S COASTLINES ARE A DAILY REMINDER OF THE NEED TO REPLENISH AND RETAIN BEACH SAND.
THE CITY OF OCEANSIDE NOW HAS ONE-POINT-EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS FROM THE CALIFORNIA COASTAL COMMISSION FOR ITS SAND REPLENISHMENT PROJECT.
AND THE SAN DIEGO ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNMENTS PLANS A 260-MILLION DOLLAR PROJECT FOR BEACHES FROM DANA POINT TO IMPERIAL BEACH.
JAYME TIMBERLAKE IS OCEANSIDE'S COASTAL ZONE ADMINISTRATOR.
what SANDAG is trying to do is make this a more cyclical program, where we, as coastal cities.collaborate together and work on this project together, share the costs of it, share the responsibility of overseeing the feasibility and the design of it and then move forward with this collaborative sand nourishment projects.
OCEANSIDE'S PROJECT INVOLVES AN ARTIFICIAL REEF TO SLOW DOWN OCEAN CURRENTS TO KEEP SAND ON THE BEACH.
TIMBERLAKE SAYS SANDAG AND THE COASTAL COMMISSION ARE BOTH INTERESTED IN SEEING HOW OCEANSIDE’S PILOT PROJECT PLAYS OUT.
A local police officer is making history.
San Diego Police Officer Mark Wright has become the only amputee motorcycle officer in the U.S., according to his department.
Wright recently graduated from the SDPD motorcycle training.
It’s a 120-day program that involves training on slow maneuvers, escort training, speed training and more.
After a car crash in 2022, Wright’s left foot had to be amputated.
He was able to return to SDPD eight months later with a prosthetic.
From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now. Stay with me for more of the local news you need.
LONELINESS IS A GROWING PROBLEM IN AMERICA. IT IMPACTS ALMOST EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES, FROM PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH TO ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES — EVEN EXTREMISM IN POLITICS. BUT WHY DO AMERICANS STRUGGLE TO MEET EACH OTHER AND BUILD FRIENDSHIPS? IN THE LATEST EPISODE OF HIS PODCAST, FREEWAY EXIT, METRO REPORTER ANDREW BOWEN DELVES INTO NEW RESEARCH THAT LINKS LONELINESS TO URBAN HIGHWAYS.
Why would living next to an urban highway make it harder for you to find friends? The very simple explanation is that those concrete monsters are literally hard to cross. That's Luca Aiello, a data science professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He's the lead author of a study published last month called "Urban highways are barriers to social ties." Here, the hypothesis is that by having a highway nearby, you are constrained in your short-range mobility. And if you're not walking around your neighborhood as much, you're probably not meeting as many of your neighbors. Aiello says highways can make it easier to meet people who live far away from you. But what you lose there is your ability and habit to move around locally. So as a result, if I might have a potential friendship to be built, but my potential friends are at the other side of the highway, this friendship will never happen. This barrier effect that transportation infrastructure can have on our social lives has actually been observed before — but the studies were small-scale and qualitative. Aiello wanted to do a quantitative study using big data. After years of looking, he settled on Twitter. Back in 2012 and 2013, by default, Twitter added your location to every post you made from a mobile device. That allowed the researchers to roughly map out where people live in the 50 largest cities in America. They could also estimate social connections by finding users who follow each other. This produced a dataset of 1 million users with 2.7 million social ties. So here the hypothesis is that we should be finding fewer social ties crossing highways than expected. In an imaginary world without highways, you would observe more ties crossing the path of the highway compared to the real data in which the highways are actually there. Here, what we did is a little bit of a statistical trick in a way. What you do is you measure the number of ties crossing a highway between two areas in the city, and then you compare this number of crossings with the number of crossings from a synthetic model where your social network is reshuffled at random. In this imaginary world, people connect with one another disregarding the presence of highways. Using this comparison between actual social connections and randomized social connections in the synthetic model, Aiello developed what he calls a barrier score. Cities with high barrier scores are where highways are disruptive to social ties. All 50 of the country's most populous cities had high barrier scores. That suggests even when you discount the positive effect that highways can have on meeting people who live far away from you, the negative effect of preventing connections with your neighbors is stronger. Including in San Diego. We have extremely high barrier scores for the Interstate 805, basically from the area of Normal Heights, down to Mexico. That whole segment is extremely high in barrier score. But also the I-5, separating downtown from the rest of the city, is very, very evident in terms of signal. Two of the, I believe, largest highways or motorways that are in San Diego are actually having an impact which is very, very high. Aiello says he hopes his research inspires governments, transportation departments and city planners to find ways to break down the social barriers that highways create. The bipartisan infrastructure law created a program to do just that, called Reconnecting Communities. It's funded bridges, parks over freeways, even freeway removals. But the funds have already been exhausted and the program was scrapped by the Trump administration. You can hear my full conversation with Luca Aiello by listening to the latest episode of my podcast, Freeway Exit, wherever you get your podcasts. Andrew Bowen, KPBS news.
NINE STUDENTS ATTENDING SAN DIEGO UNIVERSITIES HAVE HAD THEIR INTERNATIONAL STUDENT VISAS REVOKED. EDUCATION REPORTER KATIE ANASTAS SAYS IT’S PART OF A WAVE OF VISA REVOCATIONS HAPPENING ACROSS THE COUNTRY.
Four of the students attend San Diego State. F-1 visa holder One Naito wasn’t one of them, but the news still shocked her. She’s learning English and plans to study international relations. I think it’s good things, to connect the world and talk to other countries’ people. I want to be like that. But if they take my right to study here, how can I live here? It’s so crazy world. University officials say the federal government did not coordinate with the campus or provide advanced notice or explanation. F-1 visas allow people to enter the U.S. as full-time students. Information about them is stored in a federal database. UC San Diego says it learned of its five students’ visa revocations during a routine check of that system. SDSU says it’s looking for changes multiple times a day. Katie Anastas, KPBS News.
THE FAMILY OF A MAN ARRESTED DURING AN IMMIGRATION RAID IN EL CAJON LAST MONTH IS FIGHTING TO KEEP HIM IN THE COUNTRY. REPORTER GUSTAVO SOLIS SAYS HIS CASE SHOWS HOW ENFORCEMENT PRIORITIES HAVE CHANGED.
Jorge Lopez was among the men arrested in the El Cajon immigration raid last month. He’s now being held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center and faces deportation. Tessa Cabrera is the family’s immigration lawyer. “Jorge has been in the United States since he was 13. He is married to his U.S. citizen wife, they have four U.S. citizen children.” The Trump administration says federal authorities prioritize violent criminals and public safety threats for mass deportations. Lopez does not have a violent criminal record and is an active member of the community, Cabrera says. “I don’t think he is a risk to public safety. I think he is very deserving of being released on bond and being able to fight his removal proceedings in the United States outside of custody.” Cabrera says because Lopez is employed and has U.S. citizen children, he’d normally be released on bond. But that isn’t happening under Trump. “I think in prior administrations there would be more of an assessment of whether this person needs to be detained or not.” Gustavo Solis, KPBS News
LAST YEAR THE HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT STOPPED INCLUDING VETERANS BENEFITS IN ITS INCOME CALCULATION FOR A KEY HOUSING PROGRAM. MILITARY AND VETERANS REPORTER ANDREW DYER SAYS A NEW SENATE BILL COULD MAKE THAT CHANGE PERMANENT.
CALIFORNIA SENATOR ALEX PADILLA INTRODUCED THE BILL WITH ANOTHER DEMOCRAT AND TWO REPUBLICANS. THE HOUSING UNHOUSED DISABLED VETERANS ACT WOULD MAKE PERMANENT A BIDEN-ERA POLICY TO EXCLUDE DISABILITY BENEFITS FROM BEING COUNTED AS INCOME FOR HOUSING VOUCHERS. THE PROGRAM FROM HUD AND THE VA, CALLED HUD-VASH, PROVIDES RENTAL ASSISTANCE TO VETERANS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS OR WHO ARE AT RISK OF HOMELESSNESS. AZUCENA VALLADOLID IS THE EXECUTIVE VP OF RENTAL ASSISTANCE AT THE SAN DIEGO HOUSING COMMISSION. WHILE SHE SAID THE CHANGE IS GOOD POLICY, BECAUSE OF HIGH MEDIAN INCOMES AND THE COST OF LIVING, IT HASN’T MADE MUCH OF AN IMPACT HERE. WE HAVE NOT HAD TO DENY VETERANS IN A VERY LONG TIME FOR THE OVER INCOME AND WE HAVE NOT SEEN ANY SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN DETERMINING ELIGIBILITY AFTER THE RULE WAS APPLIED. A BIPARTISAN COMPANION BILL IS IN THE WORKS IN THE HOUSE. ANDREW DYER, KPBS NEWS
SAN DIEGO UNIFIED’S FREE BEFORE AND AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM IS GETTING A HEAD START FOR NEXT FALL.
APPLICATIONS OPEN TODAY FOR THE PROGRAM CALLED PRIME TIME, AND THIS YEAR THE DISTRICT IS USING A NEW SYSTEM TO STREAMLINE THE APPLICATION PROCESS.
TOBIE PACE WITH SAN DIEGO UNIFIED SAYS IT IS NO LONGER FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED.
“We've actually created a lottery system so that we really want it to be equitable.
PACE SAYS SOME STUDENTS WILL BE GIVEN PRIORITY IN THE LOTTERY.
homeless foster low income, low socioeconomic, that group of students. And then we're going to kind of go through the lottery system.”
APPLICATIONS WILL BE OPEN THROUGH MAY 2ND.
THE LOTTERY WILL BE HELD IN JULY FOR THE 16-THOUSAND SPACES IN THE PROGRAM.
That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. And be sure to check out the KPBS Midday Edition podcast. Today they’re taking a fresh look at housing and homelessness in the San Diego region. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great Monday.
