Monthly Archives: December 2011

When a devastating wildfire leads to the construction of McMansions

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Here is brief mention of a situation when McMansions were built after a devastating wildfire:

Although dwarfed by other natural disasters, and probably forgotten by people without Bay Area connections, the Oakland Hills Fire 20 years ago killed 25 (many of them trapped in their cars, trying to escape), injured 150 and burned down more than 3,000 homes and 450 apartments and condos. The property damage has been estimated at $1.7 billion—the same (in today’s dollars) as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Overnight, a hillside brush fire was transformed into a major conflagration by a sudden “Diablo wind” that rose within minutes to 70 miles per hour and 100 feet high. Defying more than a thousand firefighters from all over the state, the winds (including flame-generated whirlwinds) hurled fire, flint and embers in a dozen different directions. At their peak, the flames were exploding 10 houses a minute—600 in the first hour alone. Sparks leapt over an eight-lane freeway. In two days, two square miles of wood-framed houses among the trees, built on steep slopes and narrow, winding roads (to capture the great views of San Francisco), had been reduced to a no-man’s-land of white ash and crumbled debris, pierced by dark spikes of leafless tree trunks among surviving stone steps and totemic chimney towers.

It is this ghostly, lifeless afterworld that Mr. Misrach captured by setting up his view camera along the empty streets of this miniature version of Dresden or Hiroshima a week or so after the fire. There are no people in his pictures; no cars except burned-out hulks with melted windows.

The first images I focused on were the remains of the burned trees. In most cases, only the hard, black, sharp centers of their trunks remained. Mr. Misrach found many ways of making these spiky shapes eloquent and expressive…

In the years since the fire, most of the empty lots have been filled with new houses, even if most of the residents from 1991 have left. Many of the rebuilders used their settlements to build new McMansions two or three times the size of the houses that were lost. The trees around them will take another 50 years to grow back. The handsome old houses of the Oakland hills are not what they were. But Mr. Misrach has captured the precise moment when one world ended and another began.

This is a unique situation compared to the typical complaints about McMansions that are built within an established neighborhood. In this case, a fire wiped out the existing neighborhood, wiping the slate clean. I would guess that the homes that were built after the fire would have been difficult, perhaps even impossible, to build before the fire. Additionally, this wasn’t just valuable land but also land on the sides of hills that had commanding views but could also probably be seen from a distance as well.

I imagine there could be a very interesting story to tell about these new homes and how the new neighborhood came to be.

IKEA neighborhood to be built in London

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IKEA is planning to build a sizeable east London neighborhood in the next few years:

The new district, Strand East, will include 1,200 homes, of which about 40 percent will have three or more bedrooms. Strand East will also have a 350-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel, 480,000 square feet of offices, shops, cafes, restaurants, a school, a nursery, and a health-care facility, allowing residents to accomplish daily errands and needs without having to drive.

The 26-acre neighborhood-in-progress is being designed to include car-free pedestrian zones, courtyards and landscaped grounds, while the planned underground parking means vehicles will be stowed tidily out of sight. The parcel is bordered on two of three sides by waterways, so the community might take on a Venice-like feel, with a water taxi service, a floating cocktail bar, and moorings that will be available for residents’ use…

Although some planning approvals are pending, construction is planned to begin in 2013 — after the Olympics — and is expected to take about five years. However, one section, Dane’s Yard (pictured at top) has been approved. It will feature a 40-meter-high (131-foot) illuminated sculpture in its public square, and a Grayson’s restaurant that will focus on ethically and locally sourced foods. It will also retain renovated versions of some of the historic buildings.

“We will turn it around for sure,” says Müller. “Not being arrogant, but for sure it will be a new hotspot in London.”

This isn’t IKEA’s first time pursuing something like this: the article suggests they have had “similar developments in Poland, the Baltics and Romania.” It is too bad the article doesn’t tell us more about those projects.

The redevelopment project itself doesn’t sound too startling; it sounds like they want to create a new vibrant neighborhood that will take advantage of some of the settings for the site which includes water access. What I assume will catch people’s attention is that the development company is part of IKEA. Does this immediately change the perceptions about the project? Compare this to Celebration, Florida – is it better or worse to have IKEA versus Disney build a neighborhood/town? How involved will IKEA be with the neighborhood after the neighborhood is constructed? What would happen if other retail companies, say Target or Walmart or Costco, decided to build neighborhoods?

I wonder how many jokes could be made about this. Do residents have to assemble their own homes out of a box? Will the design all be Scandinavian minimalism…?

“Arrival cities” see immigrants moving to cities and suburbs

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Immigrants to Sydney, Australia, an “arrival city” as termed by a Canadian journalist, are moving to the city and its suburbs:

London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Toronto, Mumbai, Istanbul, Jakarta, Shenzhen and Sao Paulo led the list, but Saunders writes that Sydney is on the cusp of this transition, a place where “the people renting the apartments and buying the houses and running the shops are mainly former villagers”.

The ”arrival city” is not so much the city as a whole but a ring of post-war suburbs, old enough to be a bit run-down but not old enough to be historic and charming, and usually far from the CBD…

Saunders studied rural-to-urban immigration in 20 cities on five continents and found that, despite the rhetoric of anti-immigrant populists, the clustering of migrants into particular suburbs brings more benefits than problems because the neighbourhoods often become centres of economic activity. In short, ethnic ”ghettos” are good…

Professor Phillip O’Neill, of the urban research centre at the University of Western Sydney, says Campsie, Lakemba and Punchbowl are also classic “arrival city” suburbs, where the gritty facades belie thriving neighbourhoods.

From what I can gather from this article, the new book Arrival City hints at a major trend in the United States and perhaps Canada and Australia: immigrants are commonly moving to suburbs, not just to ethnic neighborhoods within the big city. Attracted to wealthy metropolitan regions because of jobs and opportunities, more and more immigrants are going straight to the suburbs. This commonly occurs in inner-ring suburbs but can also occur in suburbs far out from the central business district.

This trend of immigration to the suburbs has been noted in the United States within the last decade. This can lead to a couple of concerns. One, it is a reminder that not all suburbs are wealthy and white; rather, some suburbs are “a bit run-down” which means they are generally cheaper and are good starting points for new immigrants. It is easy for commentators to generalize about all of suburbia but this new trend suggests this is not terribly accurate. Second, suburbs have to adjust to new populations. This might include changing school curriculum, thinking about the character of the suburb, and figuring out who can provide certain social services.

One thing that this article does not address: the movement of wealthy immigrants, such as those who might live in “ethnoburbs,” and how this immigration pattern looks different from that of more unskilled immigrants.

The “Trolley Problem” in virtual 3-D

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A psychologist has taken a classic experiment, the “Trolley Problem,” to the virtual realm:

Virtual reality, however, is emerging as intriguing new tool because it enables researchers, to some degree, test a subject’s claim by simulating just about any given situation. Recently, Carlos David Navarrete, a evolutionary psychologist at Michigan State University, applied the technology to shed light on how people might respond when faced with an ethical conundrum.The Catch-22 bind he chose to put his subjects in is a popular philosophical thought experiment known as the “Trolley Problem.” The classical version of it goes a little something like this: You’re a train worker who observes a runaway train moving down a track where five people are about to get run over. You can pull a switch that diverts the train onto another track but you would end up killing one person who happens to be walking on the alternative track unaware. What would you do? Think about the situation in a pragmatic sense (saving more lives) and pull the switch? Or do nothing, which can be viewed as a wash-your-hands-of-any-responsibility decision.

The virtual simulation version was devised by wiring up test subjects with eyewear that generated a 3-D re-enactment of such a scenario. Attached to their fingertips were electrodes that measured their heartbeat and other indicators of their emotional state as they were forced to make a difficult decision. Using a joystick, users can either re-route the runaway boxcar, killing a lone hiker, or do nothing and let the it kill the group of five hikers…

While the findings corroborated with the results of a previous study that relied on self-reported methods, the experiment also showed that participants who did not pull the switch were more emotionally aroused. This means that their inaction might not be so much a conscious choice but a result of freezing up during highly anxious moments, which is akin to a solider failing to fire his weapon in battle, Navarrete said. Perhaps if they had remained calm enough to process what was happening, the percentage of people who would have pulled the switch to save five and let one die might have actually been greater.

Several thoughts:

1. The finding about emotional arousal reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s summarizing in Blink: humans make different decisions in emotionally charged situations.

2. The article is set up by suggesting that this kind of virtual research helps get around the issue facing the social sciences that people say one thing and then do another. While I don’t disagree that this is a problem, people’s stated beliefs and attitudes are still consequential. Take a story I blogged about a few days ago: people may be getting married at lower rates but majorities still aspire to get married, reinforcing a social norm. We need data on both actions and beliefs.

3. I’m tempted to ask whether people’s responses in this virtual world are different than if they were in the real situation. Is there a larger body of research that suggests these virtual experiments are truly better than typical research experiments?

4. Whenever I have presented this experiment to students, they tend to find to find it interesting. Also, since this one is fairly straightforward (one life for five), introducing variants to it such as having to push a large man onto the tracks to stop the train, thus giving the bystander more culpability, can change people’s responses.

Jimmy Kimmel helps show what happens when Christmas gift-giving norms are broken

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A recent Jimmy Kimmel bit titled “I Gave My Kids a Terrible Present” exposes what happens when Christmas gift-giving norms are violated:

Judging by YouTube comments, some view the tears as an indictment of children’s materialism at Christmas. Others, including the playfully sadistic parents in some of the videos, just think it’s funny…

Some viewers have equated the tantrums of some of the children with greediness. But Lisa Wade, an assistant professor of sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, argued that while some children appear greedier than others, all are reacting to a perceived break in social rules about gifting.

“Because social rules are so complicated, when kids are little, they’re really trying to learn them, so they take them very seriously,” she said…

Some critics have called the videos cruel, as they did in November when Mr. Kimmel invited parents to pretend they had eaten all their kids’ Halloween candy. (That montage has more than 25 million YouTube views.) But, as Dr. Wade noted, learning to take a joke is another crucial social skill.

Are these the sort of sociological insights and life lessons one should share with someone else’s kids? After seeing the horrified and tearful reactions of some of these kids, would this easily get IRB approval?

Also noteworthy: giving young kids opposite gender gifts is very problematic. This hints at how quickly kids are socialized into gendered roles.

The sociological guide to giving Christmas gifts

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Here are nine sociological rules for giving gifts at Christmas. Several things to note:

1. This comes out of the long-running study of “Middletown,” otherwise known as Muncie, Indiana. I am still amazed at all of the material uncovered over the decades in this project.

2. These rules were originally published in a 1984 article in the American Journal of Sociology titled “Rule Enforcement Without Visible Means: Christmas Gift Giving in Middletown.” I tend to think of AJS as being austere so I’m not quite sure what to make of the inclusion of this article…

3. I wonder if some of these rules have changed in recent years.

4. One final question: if a sociologist started explaining his or her family’s gift giving practices in this way to the participants, how many families would have a favorable reaction?

Getting married to mark one’s social status

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With marriage rates on the decline, especially among younger Americans, one editor asks if marriage is the new status symbol:

It’s clear that the trends TIME noted in its cover story this time last year are not dissipating. But that doesn’t mean the tide has turned against marriage forever. The institution is losing its status as a social obligation, but not necessarily its desirability. Indeed, since marriage is now largely practiced among high-status, college-educated individuals, it may even be becoming more prestigious — the relationship equivalent of owning a luxury car.

With more education and money, marriage becomes a luxury good, desirable for some. If marriage is mainly for people of a certain social class, its effect on society could be more limited.

Two other quick thoughts:

1. Is this the conspicuous consumption of relationships?

2. I wonder how this ties in with a continued push for higher education in the United States. There will still be plenty of people who desire marriage. But this could get particularly interesting with the increased number of women earning college and graduate degrees.

3. How does this fit with the popular image of the defenders of marriage being conservative religious types who also are stereotyped to have less education and lower class standings? Could marriage also become a religious status marker?

Study: people tend to make friends on Facebook with people of similar tastes

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A recently published study of college students argues that people become Facebook friends with people of similar tastes:

“The more tastes that you and I share in common, the more likely we are to become friends,” said study author Kevin Lewis, a graduate student in sociology at Harvard University.

The findings seem to contradict the conventional wisdom that people are easily influenced by those around them. Instead, “we’re seeking out people we already resemble rather than learning new perspectives and liking new things,” Lewis said…

The goal of the study was to understand how people choose friendships, Lewis said. The researchers started with 1,640 students at an unnamed U.S. college in 2006 and tracked their Facebook friendships and tastes — in popular music, movies and books — until they were seniors in 2009…

The study found that “students who share some tastes in movies and music are more likely to become friends,” Lewis said. Shared tastes in books were less influential.

Sounds like an interesting study. I haven’t read the full study but there are two other things I would want to know:

1. The study is restricted to college students. Might this influence the results? Of course, these college students will become the adults of the next few decades.

2. How does this fit with existing research that shows that people tend to be Facebook friends with people they already know? Things are a little different in college where students are more willing to friend people in these classes (actual academic courses and year in school). But, most Facebook users are not going online to find new friends with whom they don’t previously have a connection.

3. The last paragraph I cited above makes me think of branding. Younger people in particular define themselves by some of their tastes and it doesn’t shock me that this is done more through music and movies than books. So are books more private tastes or are very few people in college reading?

A reduced Federal tax break for commuters?

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Many would argue that the United States has clearly privileged the suburbs in its fiscal policies including helping to make mortgages more available and providing money for highway funding. At the same time, buried within Washington’s recent debate over tax cuts is a little tax break for commuters:

The amount of income that commuters who use mass transit will be eligible to shelter from taxes to pay their fares drops on Jan. 1 to $125 a month from the current $230 a month, while the tax-free parking benefit for drivers will increase from $230 to $240 a month, officials said today.

The steep reduction in the transit provision is due to Congress’ failure to renew the higher limit in the Commuter Benefits Equity Act, officials said, adding that they are hopeful lawmakers will approve a higher limit sometime in 2012…

The cut in benefits will have a similar effect as a fare increase because riders whose employers participate in the transit benefits program will be able to shield a maximum of $1,500 in income from taxes in 2012, down from $2,760 this year.

It interesting that these changes would boost the break for parking/driving to work while lowering the benefits for mass transit (perhaps temporarily). I bet this law has a fascinating history.

If the public is not particularly interested in tax breaks for large corporations, are they in favor of tax benefits for commuting? Does the approval for this depend on whether someone claims the tax break?

Thinking about the larger topic, it would be interesting to see how much the average driver benefits or pays for driving and mass transit. How much of a typical tax burden goes for transportation? How much does the average driver or mass-transit commuter get in return for the tax money that they pay in? Of course, we could have a much longer discussion about what the government should promote in its policies but I assume this is not at the top of the discussion pile in Washington.