Monthly Archives: August 2011

Winner selected for new, greener Barbie house

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One columnist takes issue with the winning design selected for the new Barbie house that was intended to be a greener home:

What Li and Paklar imagined was a series of glass cubes stacked on top of each other with enough space underneath the beach mansion for a car or motorbike to park. Very chic, very elevated, very Le Corbusier. The interiors (pink, of course) look airy, clutter-free and, with 4,881 square feet of living space, lonely for a single person. There are bamboo floors and a roof garden with natural irrigation. But even those tiny eco-design gestures cannot offset the fact that Barbie gets to hog a massive house on three acres of pristine West Coast beach. Sorry, girlfriend!

America has been damned by the tyranny of the excessively large house. Check the explosion of square footage over the last half century of the private home, from the modest two-storey of Leave it to Beaver to the sprawling residential heaps featured on The O.C. Barbie once cavorted through her own shopping-mall playset. It was just something she had to have, like a purse.

The problem with the McMansion scenario? It’s unaffordable and unsustainable. But, like Barbie’s impossibly small waist, it’s a dream that everybody is conditioned to want…

Li and Paklar might have been tempted to design a compact, art-filled studio in the heart of Manhattan for Barbie. They might have edited her massive wardrobe down to a few edgy, well-designed outfits and given her a pair of workboots to wear on construction sites. If they had, my bet is they wouldn’t have won the design competition. In America, what suits Harvard-educated architects doesn’t really count. You have to think big, hungry thoughts to get ahead. Just like Barbie.

It sounds like this columnist thinks that McMansions can’t really be green.The fact that the home is large and has a large lot is simply too much to overcome.

Did anyone really think that Mattel would select something small, non-luxurious, or small? Perhaps the selection of this design suggests Americans want green and luxury to come together and don’t want to sacrifice much in order to be green. Therefore, acquiring smaller homes is driven more by economic trouble (people can’t access the actually homes they would want) or individualistic choices (wanting to declutter, simplify, improve, etc.) rather than the idea of sacrifice or helping the world.

The actual home design is more modern than I would have expected. How about a discussion about Barbie’s aesthetic tastes in homes?

“There Are No Children Here” 20 years later

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Alex Kotlowitz’s book There Are No Children Here is a modern classic that describes the life of children within some of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. Here is a little bit about the book and its aftermath:

“I’ve never thought about it being (a statement) about public housing,” Kotlowitz said while sitting in a cafe Friday near his home. “It could have taken place in any inner-city neighborhood.”…

Public housing now in Chicago is “not perfect, but it’s quite different from when we first started,” Popkin said, citing the transformation at Horner, the CHA’s commitment to resident services and the way that the agency is managed.

But many things remain the same. The poor are still extremely segregated, Kotlowitz said. Deadly violence still defines impoverished communities where rampant shootings are committed by a new generation of so-called cliques…

The brothers [Lafeyette and Pharoah Walton], now 36 and 33, have dealt with their share of adversity. They have both served time in prison and continue to struggle with poverty.

As Sue Popkin suggests, the book helped humanize the problems these children face. It is one thing to have stereotypes and broad ideas about what happens in poorer neighborhoods but another thing to get to know and start rooting for children who live there.

On the whole, it sounds like there is still a lot of work to do regarding public housing, poor neighborhoods, and helping children in these neighborhoods obtain a good education and reach a middle-class lifestyle. Would another, similar book help in this cause? These concerns rarely bubble up to the top of American public discussions.

Pictures of 9/11 Ground Zero memorial

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Here is an interesting set of pictures of what the 9/11 Ground Zero memorial is going to look like. The architect talks about his own experiences in putting this together here. See the official website here.

I assume there will be a lot of discussion about the memorial once it is fully open to the public. Does it adequately sum up American feelings and experiences regarding 9/11? Memorials not only invoke the past but also reflect our current understanding of past events and people. Such spaces can both provoke and inspire collective memories, meaning they can reinforce already existing narratives or ask people to develop their own (like the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial).

How sociology can “unravel the [London] riots”

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The president and vice-chair of the British Sociological Association explain how sociology can help explain the London riots:

One of the first things that disappears when considering disturbances such as these is perspective. One loses sight of the fact that nine out of 10 local residents aren’t rioting, that nine out of 10 who are rioting aren’t local to the area, and that nine out of 10 of these non-locals aren’t doing it to commit crime. That is to say, it is a tiny minority who are participating and, of those that are, it’s a tiny minority who are doing so solely to commit crime. Crime is a motive, but crowd behaviour is a more complex process, and it is sociology as a discipline that best understands crowd behaviour.

Crowds are irrational. Crowds don’t have motives – that’s far too calculating and rational. Crowd behaviour is dynamic in unpredictable ways, and reason and motive disappear when crowds move unpredictably. But has anyone made a connection with the two media events that dominated media coverage on the same day – the irrationality of crowds on the streets and of traders on the stock market? Both sorts of behaviour are moved by emotion not reason, passions not predictability, and reason disappears. Economists are lauded for their accounts of the irrationality of the market traders, but sociologists get criticised for suggesting that allegations of criminality are a poor account of the irrationality of crowds.

Sociologists seek to explain – not explain away – these events. An understanding of the impact of social inequalities and deprivation, youth unemployment, racism and ethnic conflict, and crime and policing forms a large part of the concerns of UK sociology. Since most politicians and the police seem to have been taken unawares by the events of the past few days, it seems we need more understanding and explanation, not less, if we are to be able to draw lessons from the current events and prevent their recurrence. The British Sociological Association would be happy to put London’s mayor and his staff in touch with sociologists who could add real understanding to the all-too-easy condemnations of these disturbing events.

Several things stand out to me:
1. I like the opening suggestion and make a similar argument to my Introduction to Sociology class: instead of asking why a few people commit crimes or are deviant, why not ask why most people are so willing to follow social rules and norms?

2. I like the comparison of the role of emotions in stock trading and crowd behavior on the streets. Arguably, emotions may a large role in social actions but generally get short shrift from commentators and researchers.

3. But, why suggest that sociologists are bitter because economists “are lauded” for their explanations?

4. I like the distinction between explaining and explaining away. I’ve seen some commentators suggest that we shouldn’t talk about the class status or alienation of the rioters because this may suggest that their actions are justified. But, at the same time, there is something that set off these riots and sociologists are often looking to understanding why something happened and not something else (to paraphrase Weber). We should not be afraid of explanations though determining how one should respond once the explanation is known is another matter.

How can great art be located in a McMansion?

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McMansions are often thought to be pretentious and low-brow. Therefore, it might be difficult to imagine that a renowned artist could live inside such a home:

The home of 81-year-old artist Dick Seeger doesn’t have a lot of curb appeal.

Located in a quiet, upscale neighborhood of North Scottsdale, it certainly doesn’t look like it’s the location of anything particularly remarkable. Half-hidden by scraggly creosote bushes, its unpaved circular driveway is littered with fallout from trees that surround the dun-colored house. It’s the least-groomed place in a neighborhood of typical North Scottsdale adoboid compounds dear to the hearts of Midwestern newcomers enthused about the Southwest. Its lack of distinction is exactly what compelled the octagenarian artist to purchase it…

Welcome to The Magical Mystery Spiritual Experience. That’s what Dick Seeger has dubbed the constantly transmuting, living-art environment he’s created, and continually reconfigures, in basically every square inch of what looks to be your average upper-middle-class home, on land that once sheltered horses and stables…

“It was amazing,” says Hampton. “He lived alone in a great big Scottsdale — I hate to say it — McMansion, which just made the contents of the place, including its artist-in-residence, that much more unlikely. The whole place was a constantly changing display of his collections and his own art that became a surreal art experience.”

What a great juxtaposition by the art expert (Hampton) who seems to suggest that a McMansion could never contain worthwhile art. I wonder why Seeger chose such a home if it would be reviled by others and whether anyone ever criticized the home in front of Seeger.

Perhaps the McMansion is simply part of the exhibit as ironic commentary about American culture: even within the heart of consumerism and materialism (represented by the McMansion), critical insights and aesthetic beauty can emerge (the art within the house).

(As a bonus: you can read a little about the artist’s community that developed in Scottsdale in the mid twentieth century.)

Determining which cities have a future

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SmartPlanet looks into an infographic that supposedly says whether “if your city has a future or it’s destined to turn into the U.S. version of a favela”:

Meanwhile, according to the chart from PPS (click on it for a larger version), Atlanta is easily the most massively dysfunctional metropolis ever to be un-designed by a conspiracy of developers and compliant local government. From comedian David Cross (”David Cross Doesn’t Like Atlanta” – NSFW) to peak oil theorist James Howard Kunstler (”The Horror of Downtown Atlanta“), everyone who has ever been forced to live in or visit Atlanta knows that it is a city as ill-equipped for walkability and sustainable transit as any in the U.S., with the possible exceptions of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and pretty much every other city in Texas.

Many cities are teetering right on the edge of acceptability, by PPS’s measures. Austin, Texas may sound cool in theory, but in the past 20 or so years it has become a suppurating pustule of sprawl and the bane of commuters throughout its metro area. Similarly, university town Gainesville, Florida has a marvelously walkable historic core surrounded by a not-so-tasty shell of tract homes, McMansions and cul-de-sacs…

Ultimately, though, all these efforts are piddling when compared to what our resource and finance-starved future is going to require: shorter commutes, more walkability, and a relocalization of just about all the essentials of everyday life. Everything, in other words, that was present in Brooklyn about the time that the Brooklyn Bridge went up. And despite that city’s incorporation into New York City as a borough, it retains, to this day, the local character that made it such a high-functioning metropolis a century ago. I may be be biased, but when I think of cities that work, Brooklyn will always be at the top of my list.

The infographic seems to be based on New Urbanist-type principles: walkable cities with vibrant street life where the infrastructure serves people and not cars. More broadly, the infographic presents either a sprawl or anti-sprawl perspective.

The discussion hints that cities can change from being on one side of the ledger to the other. But large-scale changes (across an entire city or region) take time compared to neighborhood-by-neighborhood approaches. Particularly in this time of economic crisis and budget shortfalls, how many cities can even have a discussion about big New Urbanist-type changes?

Will anyone bother looking at this infographic in ten or twenty years to see if the predictions were correct?

Helping PhDs find “alternative careers” outside of academia

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The academic job market is tough. Therefore, it’s not surprising to read about programs and seminars being held to help PhDs pursue job opportunities outside of academia:

“Ph.D.’s often don’t know how to leverage and sell themselves to a nonacademic world,” says Steinfeld. “We can do that for them.” Steinfeld and other career counselors at Wasserman stress that the discipline that is needed to earn a doctorate degree makes Ph.D. candidates attractive to financial firms like Morgan Stanley and service firms like McKinsey and Boston Consulting.

One recent Wasserman workshop on alternative careers, “What You Can Do With a Ph.D. in the Humanities,” featured Michael Shae, who earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale in 1992, and two years later began work at the New York Review of Books as an editorial assistant; he is now a senior editor. Another annual workshop, “Careers Outside the Academy: Sociology and Social Science Options,” featured a panel of career switchers with Ph.D.’s, including Preston Beckman, the executive vice president of scheduling for Fox Network. Beckman holds a Ph.D. in sociology from NYU.

Emi Lesure, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at NYU, says she attended the workshops every year for the past few years and found them heartening. The panelists, she says, noted the perks of their jobs over academic careers: intellectual stimulation, reduced hours, better pay. “I’ve lived the life of a poor, stressed-out, overworked grad student for seven years now,” says Lesure. “I can’t keep that up for another decade.”

The good news, says Steinfeld, is that considering non-academic jobs is no longer career suicide. “Years ago, if you were a Ph.D. student at NYU and you talked in public about looking outside of academia for a job, you were put aside as not a serious candidate,” she says. “Faculty today have a much more realistic understanding of the pressures of job hunting.”

A few thoughts about this:

1. How many big-name graduate programs in different disciplines present jobs outside of academia as viable options?

2. Do graduate programs advertise the fact that some of their students now work outside academia? Since most programs list their recent graduates and their jobs somewhere, someone could look into this.

3. It sounds like hearing from PhDs who have successfully worked outside of academia could make a big difference. It would be nice to have some sort of database of “career switchers” who have sociology PhDs.

4. With the growing prevalence of master’s degrees within certain fields, will the PhD become the next step for non-academic employees who want to get a leg up on their coworkers and competition? If so, will graduate programs be willing to accept more students who they know have no interest in careers in academia?

Not just single-family homes: McMansions can be townhouses

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McMansions typically refer to single-family homes. I had not seen this before but here is a reference to “McMansion townhouses” in a letter to the editor:

The proposal also appears to be extremely bad financially for the county. EYA proposes to build 30 McMansion townhouses on River Road at the Kenwood doorstep. Each household will have two to three automobiles, not counting transient maids, maintenance, deliveries and other service vehicles, adding to present traffic. Presently, this dangerously narrow bottleneck pours excessive traffic onto River Road at the Kenwood doorway. Furthermore, the proposal to allow an outlet onto Little Falls Parkway is bad precedent and the proposed inadequate land swap and will do nothing to solve the traffic impact. It will diminish the amount of “real” park land. Little Falls Parkway is already overly and dangerously congested — it is an extremely narrow road at the proposed outlet.

An earlier piece on the proposed development says the townhomes would be built on a former industrial site. More details from a report suggests there will be “25 market-rate townhomes and four Moderately Priced Dwelling Units.”

Even though I found several documents regarding this proposal, I don’t know exactly what the townhomes will look like. If I had to guess at what a McMansion townhouse might look like, here are some ideas:

1. The structure incorporating several townhouses would look cartoonish with large rooflines, bloated details (two-story pillars, three-car garages that stick out, etc.), and a disregard for nearby architecture.

2. The homes would take up a large percentage of the lots, prominently backing up to other developments who won’t be able to avoid the new construction.

3. These will be large homes, perhaps greater than 3,000 square feet.

But perhaps the usage of McMansion in this case is a little different. It could refer to:

1. The homes are newer construction. By virtue of being new, the townhomes get this moniker.

2. Larger processes of sprawl. Residents who already live in the area want to defend what they bought into, preserve open space (even if it is fairly ugly industrial land), and limit the density of development.

3. The term is simply meant to paint the townhomes in a negative light, regardless of their actual design.

I will have to keep my eyes open to see if others refer to McMansion townhouses.

As a side note, this letter contains a classic NIMBY argument: the new development will add too much traffic to the area and the development will not bring in the money needed to offset the services that will be required.

Leaving bookstores alone in the London riots

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Some people have noticed that the rioters/looters in London have ignored the bookstores:

While the rioters in England this week have looted shops selling shoes, clothes, computers, and plasma televisions, they’ve curiously bypassed one particular piece of merchandise: books. The Economist observes that while rioters have a centuries-old history of book burning, “books are losing out to high-end jeans and Apple-made gadgets” in London, with the Waterstone’s bookstore chain emerging unscathed and the WH Smith chain reporting only one incident (some stores closed as a precaution). In explaining that the store would probably stay open during the unrest, one Waterstone’s employee even felt comfortable enough to issue a dare to the rioters: “If they steal some books, they might actually learn something.” The exception to the rule is the gay bookstore Gay’s the Word, which had its front window smashed and its shopfront splattered with eggs (notably, no goods were stolen). “Our impression is that there are certain people who have an issue with a visible gay business and are using the excuse of chaos to cause anti-gay damage,” an assistant manager told PinkPaper…

So where does that leave us on the question of why the rioters refrained from looting and burning bookstores? The most likely explanation appears to be that the rioters were more interested in high-end clothing and electronics than books, for economic and personal reasons. But a Guardian article yesterday suggests the rioters may have been more principled about what they stole and what they didn’t than one might think.

Interesting. The image many people might have is that the rioters act indiscriminately, breaking and smashing things at will out of anger. But these different possible explanations suggest rioters follow some sort of logic. Yes, their actions fall outside the normal bounds of civil behavior but they are acting upon not-too-unreasonable logic (go for the high-end electronic goods). This reminds me of the work of Sudhir Venkatesh who suggests that gangs follow logical paths even though their actions may seem chaotic or unclear.

Perhaps I only think this as a sociologist or as someone who teaches research methods but it seems like these ideas about bookstores could be tested. Researchers could take different groups of people, perhaps split by socioeconomic status, and then give them a variety of free items that they could take including electronics, clothing, and books. Then, researchers could see what people would take and then could question them about their choices afterward. Of course, some of the same information could be obtained by asking this is a question or series of questions on a large-scale survey. These sorts of options could help provide some insights into where books fall among other desirable consumer goods. If I had to hazard a guess, I imagine American teenagers or emerging adults (18-29 years old) would also put books toward the bottom of the list of things they would desire.

From luxury item to throwaway good: cable TV

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Following up on Joel’s post from Wednesday, Figures from the last quarter suggest the cable TV industry continues to lose customers:

The phone companies kept adding subscribers in the second quarter, but Dish lost 135,000. DirecTV gained a small number, so combined, the U.S. satellite broadcasters lost subscribers in the quarter — a first for the industry…

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett estimates that the subscription-TV industry, including the untallied cable companies, lost 380,000 subscribers in the quarter. That’s about one out of every 300 U.S. households, and more than twice the losses in the second quarter of last year. Ian Olgeirson at SNL Kagan puts the number even higher, at 425,000 to 450,000 lost subscribers.

The second quarter is always the year’s worst for cable and satellite companies, as students cancel service at the end of the spring semester. Last year, growth came back in the fourth quarter. But looking back over the past 12 months, the industry is still down, by Moffett’s estimate. That’s also a first.

The article goes on to mention a number of reasons for this: a bad economy so consumers are cutting back, younger people don’t see the necessity of cable, and there is a lot of content available through the Internet.

More interesting to me is the idea that cable TV is no longer the luxury good that it once was. Once the industry began in the 1970s and later consolidated, cable moved from being a rarity to being a necessity. As late as mid 2009, “11% of U.S. TV homes only have the capability to receive TV reception “over the air”.” Having cable simply became part of how Americans spend their disposable income. Cable became prism through which many Americans viewed the world. Certain channels arose, such as MTV which has been getting a lot of attention recently because of its 30th anniversary or ESPN which was the subject of an interesting book, and became part of the national consciousness. These channels, for better or worse, came to represent American culture and were exported around the world. I wonder if having cable at home signaled a middle-class lifestyle even if other traits don’t match this standing.

But now the world may have moved on. (At the same time, despite all the articles suggesting people stop paying for cable, bad economic times, and more competition, the drop in subscribers was only 0.2-0.3%.) How exactly will cable companies convince people that their product is a necessity, particularly among the younger generations? What will be the new narrative regarding cable that will push people to include this in their lives?