Monthly Archives: July 2012

Mayor Bloomberg, NYC want developers to build “micro-units”

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Tiny houses may just be catching on in urban areas: Mayor Bloomberg and NYC are pushing developers to build 300 square foot units.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday invited developers to propose ways to turn a Manhattan lot into an apartment building filled mostly with what officials are calling “micro-units” – dwellings complete with a bathroom, built-in kitchenette and enough space for a careful planner to use a fold-out bed as both sleeping space and living room.

If the pilot program is successful, officials could ultimately overturn a requirement established in 1987 that new apartments here be at least 400 square feet.

City planners envision a future in which the young, the cash-poor and empty nesters flock to such small dwellings – each not much bigger than a dorm room. In a pricey real estate market where about one-third of renter households spend more than half their income on rent, it could make housing more affordable…

Modern-day building codes and improved refrigeration and public health have changed what it means to live small, Bloomberg said. A typical mid-19th century tenement apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side might have been larger than one of the micro-units, measuring 325 square feet, but would have typically housed families with multiple children. The micro-units are to be leased only to one- or two-person households.

This could indeed be an interesting adaptation to demographic change. But I wonder: is New York City offering an incentive for developers to do this? Programs for affordable housing often come with some sort of incentive, something like if a developer builds a certain number of cheaper units, they are allowed to build a certain number of market-rate units. The article makes it sounds like there is significant demand for these smaller units in NYC which might negate the need for incentives. However, I haven’t yet seen any indication that developers believe building micro-units is worth it compared to what else they can build.

When your extra-large McMansion bathroom requires an extra-large vanity

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Several architectural traits of McMansions tend to draw attention: two-story foyers, Palladian windows, multiple extra rooms for hobbies and crafts and whatever else, and gaudy front exteriors. Yet, the bathrooms don’t get as much attention. Here is a blog post that suggests McMansion bathrooms present special challenges:

72″ seems to be the largest standard size for bathroom vanities. But what do you do when that is just not big enough? You know who you are, if you can fit a 5 piece bedroom set into your master bathroom then you are probably living in a McMansion. And if that McMansion was built in the 80’s or 90’s it is probably time to renovate.

So how do you find bath vanities larger than 72″ with a classic, high end feel to complement you expansive space? Here are some of my top picks.

I haven’t personally searched for vanities of this size but, if shows on HGTV are any indication, there does seem to be an upsizing of the bathrooms, particularly for the master suite. I’ve been intrigued by this: why expand the size of the bathroom instead of using the square footage elsewhere? Of course, if your house is already large (say over 3,000 square feet), perhaps you wouldn’t really need square footage elsewhere…

Thinking more broadly, it would be interesting to examine the features of homes, such as furniture, decorations, and appliances, to see how much their size has grown with the expansion of American homes in the last five decades.

 

Gallery of the “10 Ugliest McMansions in New Jersey”

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New Jersey is well-known for its McMansions and was this was mentioned frequently in my study of all of the uses of the term McMansion in the New York Times between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009. So I was intrigued to see a gallery of some of the ugliest New Jersey McMansions with this description at the beginning:

McMansions are one of America’s most notorious products. They have made it possible for people to live in large, cookie-cutter homes, which can be “customized” from a list of builder options. They have developed a reputation, however, as opportunities for perfect architectural disasters.

We have selected 10 of the most disproportionate, inharmonious, ostentatious, and just plain ugly McMansions to entertain you with (and show you what not to do if you are thinking of building a home). As an added bonus, we’ve also pointed out which famous architect would roll over in his grave if he saw it.

My favorite here is #7. Some common elements to these houses: their fronts are meant to impress; the designs often mimic notable architectural styles; there are a lot of big windows and pillars; and there are many gables. There is some consistency in this disparate architecture.

One quibble with this gallery: most of these homes are over 10,000 square feet and the homes are all very expensive. This is far beyond McMansion territory as homes this large are rarely mass produced. Imagine some of these mansions watered down a bit to save on costs and then mass produced in the New Jersey suburbs.

“The New Elitists” are cultural omnivores

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A sociologist writes an op-ed in the New York Times discussing one of the more interesting findings in cultural sociology from the last two decades: upper-class people tend to be cultural omnivores.

You can tell a lot about people by looking at their music collections. Some have narrow tastes, mostly owning single genres like rap or heavy metal. Others are far more eclectic, their collections filled with hip-hop and jazz, country and classical, blues and rock. We often think of such differences as a matter of individual choice and expression. But to a great degree, they are explained by social background. Poorer people are likely to have singular or “limited” tastes. The rich have the most expansive.

We see a similar pattern in other kinds of consumption. Think of the restaurants cherished by very wealthy New Yorkers. Masa, where a meal for two can cost $1,500, is on the list, but so is a cheap Sichuan spot in Queens, a Papaya Dog and a favorite place for a slice. Sociologists have a name for this. Today’s elites are not “highbrow snobs.” They are “cultural omnivores.”

Omnivorousness is part of a much broader trend in the behavior of our elite, one that embraces diversity. Barriers that were once a mainstay of elite cultural and educational institutions have been demolished. Gone are the quotas that kept Jews out of elite high schools and colleges; inclusion is now the norm. Diverse and populist programming is a mainstay of every museum. Elites seem more likely to confront snobbish exclusion than they are to embrace it…

And so if elites have a culture today, it is a culture of individual self-cultivation. Their rhetoric emphasizes such individualism and the talents required to “make it.” Yet there is something pernicious about this self-presentation. The narrative of openness and talent obscures the bitter truth of the American experience. Talents are costly to develop, and we refuse to socialize these costs. To be an outstanding student requires not just smarts and dedication but a well-supported school, a safe, comfortable home and leisure time to cultivate the self. These are not widely available. When some students struggle, they can later tell the story of their triumph over adversity, often without mentioning the helping hand of a tutor. Other students simply fail without such expensive aids.

In an information age and knowledge economy, cultural capital matters. As Khan points out, cultural capital isn’t randomly distributed in society. Whether the upper classes acquire this capital through early advantages (as discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers) or parenting styles (as discussed by Annette Lareau in Unequal Childhoods) or educational systems (as discussed by Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction), this is not simply a matter of taste as it can be parlayed into other forms of capital.

Wildfires threaten the vanity of McMansions?

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One journalist suggests it takes events like wildfires to remind us of the frailty of McMansions:

Nature makes a mockery of our vanity. We live in flood and fire zones, nurture stately oaks and take shade under pines holding the best air of the Rocky Mountains. We plant villas next to sandstone spires called the Garden of the Gods, and McMansions in Virginia stocked with people who have the world at their fingertips.

Then, with a clap, a boom and a roar, fire marches through a subdivision on a conveyance of 60 mile an hour winds. A platoon of thunderstorms so loaded with energy it has its own category name — derecho — cuts a swath from east of Chicago to the Atlantic.

The pines flame and hiss, shooting sparks on the house next door, a fortress no more. The oaks tumble and crush roofs. Almost 350 homes burn to the ground, and nearly 5 million people lose all electricity in sweltering heat. Lobbyists and congressmen curse at mute cellphones and sweat through their seersucker. The powerful are powerless.

No home can stand up against fires like that. I wonder if anyone is developing a “wildfire proof home”?

Redesigning the playground to free children and adults

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Here is an interesting example of architecture and design at work: putting together a playground in New York City that will free children and adults rather than burden them.

In Pamela Druckerman’s “Bringing Up Bébé,” the playground forms a fertile backdrop for her pop-sociological observations about child-rearing, French vs. American style. The upper-middle-class Manhattan moms (she can tell by the price of their handbags) follow their kids around the gated toddler playground narrating their activities. The French moms sit on the edge of the sandbox and chat with other adults. The Brooklyn dads follow their children down the slide. The French moms sit on a bench and chat with other adults. Her theory, a bestselling one, is that French parenting consists of more non, more équilibre, and thus more time for adults to be adults.

It never occurs to her that maybe it is the playgrounds that encourage parents to act this way. Most New York playgrounds are designed for the protection of children: padded surfaces, equipment labelled by age appropriateness, and a ban on unaccompanied adults. Frankly, it is hard to see why an adult without a child would want to enter. There’s often little seating, minimal shade, and no place to set down a coffee except in a stroller cup holder. As for those parents who don’t want to helicopter, the perimeter benches can be far from where children play, sight lines blocked by the bulky climbing structures. Standard New York playgrounds are made for a single activity—child’s play—not family socializing or even adult enjoyment.

The planners of New York City’s Governors Island, an ice-cream-cone-shaped piece of land a half mile from the end of Manhattan, see play somewhat differently, and are designing their first thirty acres of park and public space accordingly. “People spend several hours here” on the weekends, says Leslie Koch, president of the Trust for Governors Island. Free ferries from Manhattan and Brooklyn bring visitors in for extended afternoons. “You wander through the island, you have an idea or you may not, the kids run around. There aren’t precedents for that kind of place. It’s different than a beach or an urban park, or even a state park, where you go to barbecue.” She adds, “Early on we said we didn’t want to have playgrounds, but we didn’t say what that meant.”…

“If you create a park-like environment and people feel really free, adults hang out and participate like children do,” Geuze says. Contrast the concept for Liggett Terrace with the experience at Pier 6 at Brooklyn Bridge Park, an access point for the ferry to Governors Island. To date, Pier 6 consists of four landscaped, gated playgrounds, one with swings, one with water, one with sand, and one for climbing. There’s a separate beach-volleyball court, and a separate park building with food. If you aren’t pushing your kid on the swing, narrating every to and fro, the only place to sit is the springy rubber ground.

It would be interesting to hear more about how this new kind of park would change people’s behaviors. The article seems to suggest that certain park designs necessarily lead to certain behaviors; is this always the case? Does it require a critical mass of people

This reminds me of some arguments about parks from earlier days. Take Central Park in New York City as an example. Olmstead and Vaux designed the park to be more natural and take advantage of the natural topography and features. This was contrasted with more formal European parks which often had carefully cultivated gardens and water features. Central Park became beloved even as it is still fairly unusual in big cities as it can be difficult to find that much land and leave it relatively unencumbered.

 

Quick Review: When God Talks Back

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Anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann examines how evangelicals relate to God in this new book titled When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God. Here are a few thoughts about this fascinating read:

1. Luhrmann’s main argument is that evangelicals are trained to perceive the world in particular ways and this reinforces and upholds their belief in a personal God who cares about them. For example: evangelicals learn to pray in such a way that they believe they are interacting with God and can “hear” God. Another example is that evangelicals tend to read the Bible in such a way that every passage has an immediate application or relevance for their current circumstances. This kind of prayer and Bible reading does not necessarily come naturally: people have to be trained and it can take years to learn the process. Luhrmann spent more than four years in Vineyard churches listening to sermons, participating in small groups, and talking with and interviewing evangelicals.

2. The historical argument is interesting but underdeveloped. Luhrmann argues that the more individualized approach to Christian faith common in evangelicalism developed in Vineyard type (more charismatic) churches in the late 1960s and 1970s and then trickled down to all of evangelicalism. I have little doubt that most of this is true; I recently heard a sermon in an Episcopal church that shared many of the same themes of God’s immediacy and power. At the same time, the main mechanism by which Luhrmann suggests this approach spread is Fuller Seminary. While Fuller has had an impact, I wondered about several things: how did all evangelicals respond to this? Was/is there a backlash against this approach? What about evangelicals who wouldn’t claim this Vineyard/Jesus People background?

3. Luhrmann is an anthropologist but intriguingly is a psychological anthropologist. This means that there is a lot in this book about perceptions, thoughts, and how the brain adjusts to different ways of seeing the world. There even is a chapter that involves an experiment Luhrmann conducted on prayer to see if people can be trained to perceive God more vividly (and they could). Throughout the book there is a mix of anthropological observations, psychological experiments and explanations, and historical context.

4. The book is pretty evenhanded about the question of whether evangelicals believe in something real. There is a chapter that suggests that evangelicals (and other religious people) are not crazy for perceiving supernatural forces. I suspect this will help the book gain some traction in the religious world though it will be interesting to see the reactions. At the same time, I wonder if some will see this book as an attempt to explain away religious belief as a psychological trick that people can learn. Additionally, wow would theologians respond?

5. I suspect this book could be one that helps evangelicals understand themselves better.

6. This was not mentioned much in the book: how are children trained in this approach? The book contains a number of stories of teenager or young adult converts to faith who then have to learn this particular approach to God. However, it has little to say about people who grow up with this approach to God and how this affects adult spirituality.

Overall, this book discusses how evangelicals come to see the world in a certain way as they learn to talk to and hear from God and how to interpret events as God’s intervention. This is the value of this text: it goes beyond describing the evangelical viewpoint and argues for how this viewpoint is developed and maintained. This is an example of what good social science can do: explain why things are the way they are.

 

Culture affects how one gives directions

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A new study suggests that Europeans and Americans have different ways to give directions:

The researchers brought test participants into a lab and presented them with a map of a small district containing 17 landmarks and 29 streets. These wayfinders were then assigned a starting point and a destination and asked to provide directions to someone navigating the area. Half the time they were told the navigator was driving; the other half they were told the navigator was just looking at a map.The different navigator conditions were meant to encourage different types of directions. Hund and colleagues believed wayfinders would offer drivers more first-person descriptions (including landmarks) and would offer map-readers more third-person descriptions (including street names and cardinal directions).

These conditions did have some impact, but what really influenced the type of directions was the culture of the wayfinder. Americans were far more likely, across all tests, to give navigators a street name or a cardinal direction (i.e. north, east, south, or west). Dutch wayfinders, on the other hand, provided far more landmarks and left-right turn-descriptors…

The researchers note that many of the Dutch wayfinders became frustrated when asked to give map-readers directions. “They realized there might be a more effective way of describing the route on the map, but never came up with the idea to switch from left-right descriptors to cardinal terms,” Hund and company write. They suppose the Dutch would have improved considerably if given enough time to convert cardinal directions into relative terms — equating “east” with “right,” for instance.

I’ve wondered if it isn’t the culture that matters but rather the spatial arrangement of the places of which someone is familiar. For example, a good number of major Americans cities are laid out in grids. Think of Manhattan: the avenues are north-south, the numbered streets are east-west, and this makes it easy to find a lot of different routes to the same place. In contrast, some older settlements such as some older sections of European cities and several American cities like Boston are more prone to have winding streets that are more aligned to the topography. If you are from a grid area, you are used to giving cardinal directions because they are easy to follow. If operating in a less grid-like format, landmarks matter more as one can remain oriented even if the streets don’t seem to be headed in that direction.

I’ve also wondered how this changes in the suburbs. Are landmarks as easy to identify and utilize? Without as many tall buildings plus a landscape that contains more repetitive features (even if the strip malls and big box stores look different, they are not as distinctive), noteworthy landmarks can be hard to find.

A third option: are Americans used to traveling longer distances for each trip, making it more difficult to use verbal turn-by-turn directions?

 

Bringing the McMansion float to the July 4th parade

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The July 4th parade in Sudbury, Massachusetts was like many Independence Day parades in that it featured floats. However, this parade included one float about McMansions:

Spectators lined the parade route starting at the corner of Rte. 20 and Union Avenue, with adults waving flags as children scrambled for candy thrown from antique cars, fire engines and military vehicles.

About a dozen groups competed for ribbons awarded for the best floats.

Russell’s Garden Center re-purposed its Santa Claus mannequin into a Father Time display. The Sudbury Savoyards, the local Gilbert and Sullivan group, stuck a mock gondola for its upcoming production of “The Gondoliers” atop a VW bus. And the owners of the old Cutler Farm offered a visual commentary on how town open land has been developed first into “McMansions” and now condos.

For its float, the town chapter of the non-partisan League of Women Voters decorated a trailer with discarded water bottles, taking on a proposed but long-stalled expansion of the state’s bottle bill.

I’d really love to see this float. If I had to guess, I would think this was an anti-McMansion float decrying sprawl and promoting nostalgia for farm land and open land.

Measuring “peak car” in the United States

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With data suggesting congestion, the number of teenagers with driver’s licenses, and the numbers of miles driven has dropped in recent years, Scientific American asks whether we have reached “peak car”:

According to the Federal Highway Administration’s “2011 Urban Congestion Trends” report, there was a 1.2 percent decline in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) last year compared with 2010. The drop follows years of stagnant growth in vehicle travel following a peak in 2007, before the economic downturn…

Her observation is true for the entire country. Rather than maintain the 50-year legacy of a 2 to 4 percent increase in vehicle travel each year, the annual number of VMT in the United States has stalled and even gone into reverse. The total number of miles driven in the United States today is the same as in 2004…

The interesting thing for Roy Kienitz, transportation infrastructure consultant and former undersecretary for policy at the Department of Transportation, is that American drivers actually started changing their individual driving habits years before the recession started.

The overall number of miles traveled by road peaked just before the market collapsed, but the number of VMT per capita peaked in 2004 and declined over the next eight years until today, according to Kienitz’s research, which is based on publicly available data.

Interesting. But I’m not sure this is the best way to measure “peak car.” While miles driven by road may be important to note, there are other factors that matters. Here are a few:

-The number of vehicles bought.

-The number of vehicles licensed.

-The number or % of people with driver’s licenses.

-The average number of trips people make on a daily basis. This gives you different information than the number of miles driven per year.

-Whether travel by other modes has increased or whether overall miles traveled is down. This would help show whether people are using cars less or really all travel is down.

Looking at all of these figures would help provide a more complete picture of whether we are at “peak car.”

Also, even if Americans are driving less overall, this doesn’t necessarily mean that cars are valued less or are less culturally important. Driving less doesn’t automatically mean most or even a significant number of Americans want to get rid of their cars or the freedom and individualism they represent.