I’d expect the opposite to be true, actually—it’s my impression that property records are very well kept, and that we have good historical data for them.
but the data for the kind of factors she’s talking about (i’ve read the book, though it was a while ago) goes beyond what property records could provide.
They wouldn’t provide a complete picture, sure, but they’d still provide useful evidence for or against her hypothesis. For example, I’d expect it to be possible to use them to get some sort of measure of street diversity, and then compare that measure to city growth rates (or some other measure of success).
I’d expect the opposite to be true, actually—it’s my impression that property records are very well kept, and that we have good historical data for them.
but the data for the kind of factors she’s talking about (i’ve read the book, though it was a while ago) goes beyond what property records could provide.
They wouldn’t provide a complete picture, sure, but they’d still provide useful evidence for or against her hypothesis. For example, I’d expect it to be possible to use them to get some sort of measure of street diversity, and then compare that measure to city growth rates (or some other measure of success).
they might, though you have to be very careful in treating partial data as representative of the whole picture.