Monthly Archives: January 2013

Bill Gates: we can make progress with goals, data, and a feedback loop

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Bill Gates argues in the Wall Street Journal that significant progress can be made around the world if organizations and residents participate in a particular process:

In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal—in a feedback loop similar to the one Mr. Rosen describes.

This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of the total amount of money invested—and during the Cold War, by whether a country stayed on our side—but not by how well it performed in actually helping people. Closer to home, despite innovation in measuring teacher performance world-wide, more than 90% of educators in the U.S. still get zero feedback on how to improve.

An innovation—whether it’s a new vaccine or an improved seed—can’t have an impact unless it reaches the people who will benefit from it. We need innovations in measurement to find new, effective ways to deliver those tools and services to the clinics, family farms and classrooms that need them.

I’ve found many examples of how measurement is making a difference over the past year—from a school in Colorado to a health post in rural Ethiopia. Our foundation is supporting these efforts. But we and others need to do more. As budgets tighten for governments and foundations world-wide, we all need to take the lesson of the steam engine to heart and adapt it to solving the world’s biggest problems.

Gates doesn’t use this term but this sounds like a practical application of the scientific method. Instead of responding to a social problem by going out and trying to “do something,” the process should be more rigorous, involve setting goals, collecting good data, interpreting the data, and then adjusting the process from the beginning. This is related to other points about this process:

1. It is one thing to be able to collect data (and this is often its own complicated process) but it is another to know what to do with it once you have it. Compared to the past, data is relatively easy to obtain today but using it well is another matter.

2. Another broad issue in this kind of feedback loop is developing the measurements and what counts as “success.” Some of this is fairly easy; when Gates praises the UN Millennium Goals, reducing occurrences of disease or boosting incomes has face validity for getting at what matters. But, measuring teacher’s performances or what makes a quality college are a little trickier to define in the first place. Gates calls this developing goals but this could be a lengthy process in itself.

It is interesting that Gates mentions the need for such loops in colleges so that students “could know where they would get the most for their tuition money.” The Gates Foundation has put money into studying public schools and just a few weeks ago released some of their findings:

After a three-year, $45 million research project, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation believes it has some answers.

The most reliable way to evaluate teachers is to use a three-pronged approach built on student test scores, classroom observations by multiple reviewers and teacher evaluations from students themselves, the foundation found…

The findings released Tuesday involved an analysis of about 3,000 teachers and their students in Charlotte; Dallas; Denver; Memphis; New York; Pittsburgh; and Hillsborough County, Fla., which includes Tampa. Researchers were drawn from the Educational Testing Service and several universities, including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Virginia…

Researchers videotaped 3,000 participating teachers and experts analyzed their classroom performance. They also ranked the teachers using a statistical model known as value-added modeling, which calculates how much an educator has helped students learn based on their academic performance over time. And finally, the researchers surveyed the students, who turned out to be reliable judges of their teacher’s abilities, Kane said.

All this takes quite a few resources and time. For those interested in quick action, this is not the process to follow. Hopefully, however, the resources and time pay off with better solutions.

Daily Herald encourages new planning regarding housing in northwest Chicago suburbs

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Housing is a metropolitan issue that is often addressed community to community, if at all. The Daily Herald highlights recent efforts in the northwest Chicago suburbs:

In an era when housing development has slowed nearly to a halt, it can feel misguided to be talking about what kind of housing to build in a town and where to build it. But “Homes for a Changing Region” merits attention for a couple of reasons.

One, even the gravest cynic expects the economy will one day turn around and people again will be looking for comfortable homes in inviting communities. So, it’s best to begin preparing now for the types of homes they’ll be looking for.

Plus, the report — produced by the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and the regional Metropolitan Planning Council, all with the support of the five communities involved — introduces some new concepts that can help towns be smarter in their development. For one, it encourages cooperation among towns whose development futures seem intrinsically linked. For another, it focuses on reality rather than whim — the needs of residents a town is likely to have in the future rather than of residents it has today or even that it might hope to attract. It envisions an environment in which developers respond to the identifiable marketing needs of particular towns, rather than towns responding to the marketing goals of particular developers.

It’s a worthwhile approach, emphasizing data and efficiency. And it’s about to be applied in another collection of local communities — Carpentersville, East Dundee, Elgin and West Dundee. There, as in the Northwest collaborative, people may find the language more cumbersome and less thrilling than, to make a timely comparison, counting off the stats of a superstar quarterback or comparing defenses of teams from distant towns in the NFL. But. the end result can certainly have a more direct and beneficial impact on their quality of life at home.

Housing is a pressing issue in the Chicago region, particularly since affordable housing is lacking in the city of Chicago. Add to that the trend of decades-long job growth in and movement to the suburbs and there is also a lack of affordable housing in many Chicago suburbs, particularly in wealthier communities. While the Illinois legislature tried to address this in the 2000s, not much has changed.

Even with these new planning efforts, it remains to be seen how much this changes local communities. It sounds like there is a certain number of suburbs in one particular area who are interested but they need more support, not just across suburbs and regional groups, but within their own communities as they go forward with new housing plans. What happens if the suburb of Buffalo Grove, village of just over 41,000 and a median household income of over $91,000 and a poverty rate of 2.9%, and this planning group decides a development of affordable housing needs to be located near an upper-end subdivision? I imagine suburbanites would like the idea of developers responding to needs but what happens if these goals don’t line up?

More evidence for Canadian housing bubble?

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I wrote just over a week ago about a possible Canadian housing bubble and here is more evidence: Canadian housing is over-valued.

The distinction between higher prices and bubbly prices isn’t as subjective as it might sound. Like any other financial asset, there should be a fairly steady relationship between the price of housing and the stream of income — rent — it produces. Should be. The chart below, from The Economist, looks at the price-to-rent ratios across different countries, and measures how under-or-overvalued housing is, with negative numbers corresponding to the former and positive ones to the latter.
 HousingPrices.png…
Canada is quietly trying to deflate its bubble without any eye-catching headlines. And that means keeping interest rates low while making mortgages harder to get. Now, raising rates to pop a bubble sounds like the kind of hard-hearted long view central bankers pride themselves on, but it’s more hard-headed. Higher rates don’t just make housing (or any other asset bought with borrowed money) less affordable for new buyers; they make them less affordable for old buyers with adjustable-rate loans too. That sends prices spiraling down and savings racing up, as heavily indebted households, which Canada has no shortage of, try to rebuild their net worths. Higher desired savings outpaces desired investment — in other words, the economy collapses — and subsequently cutting rates, even to zero, won’t do much to reverse this, as houses and businesses are mostly indifferent to lower borrowing costs while they focus on paying down existing debts. It’s what economist Richard Koo calls a “balance sheet recession,” and it’s a good description of how an economy can get stuck in a liquidity trap.
But by keeping rates where they are and slowly tightening mortgage requirements, Canada hopes to engineer a more gradual price decline that won’t set off a vicious circle. In the best case, prices wouldn’t fall, except below the rate of inflation, so that real prices decline without hitting household net worths. This strategy is hardly unique — China has done the same the past few years — but it has the very Canadian name of “macroprudential regulation”.

This is something worth watching. I haven’t seen yet any speculation of how a downturn in the Canadian housing market might affect the United States. I don’t know how much connection there is between the Canadian and American housing markets. The Canadian market is certainly smaller than the US market; there was a big drop in Canadian housing starts from 2008 to 2009, a drop from 211,056 to 149,081, but housing starts in 2012 were back to 2008 levels at 214,827. In contrast, the US had 954,000 private housing starts in December 2012 alone. But, if a housing crash in Canada had a broader impact on the Canadian economy, then it may influence the American economy after all.

Decrease in young people in Illinois; how might suburbs be different with less children?

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The Chicago Tribune leads today with a story of demographic change in Illinois: along with some other states, Illinois has experienced a drop in its young population.

Demographers have long known that the baby boom of the 1950s was giving way to a baby bust nationwide. Now Illinois and the Chicago area are providing a vivid example of the trend: According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, from 2000 to 2010, Illinois had a 6.2 percent drop in children under 10, among the biggest declines in the country.

The impact is being felt in declining school enrollments and refashioned youth programs, officials say. In coming years, it will be felt in a workforce with fewer workers to replace retirees and help replenish pension coffers.

Changes in the youth population are especially pronounced in Chicago, which lost one-fifth of its young residents, particularly along parts of the lakefront, in Hispanic neighborhoods and in places where public housing high-rises once stood. But the trend is also under way in suburbs in Cook and DuPage counties…

Even suburbs such as Naperville and Winnetka — traditionally magnets for families — saw relatively sharp declines in their populations of children.

The impact of this could last for quite a while. I’m most interested in the bits about suburban communities. Since the post-World War II suburban boom, suburbs have been generally regarded as the best setting for children. With more space and good schools, kids could be safe and experience the middle-class life. This image coincided with a baby boom where lots of young families, including those of military veterans who had returned from the war, moved to the suburbs. So how would suburbs be different without as many children?

To start, as the article suggests, this would have a big influence on school districts. Communities that once had to build multiple schools to keep up with new developments might now have to contract schools. What will happen to the old buildings? Might this lead to smaller school district budgets which could then lead to less money from property tax bills going to school districts? I imagine a number of suburban residents would be happy at the thought that schools would cost less. Even as communities like Naperville were expanding, some existing residents were pushing for fewer houses so that their tax bills wouldn’t increase.

Going beyond schools, this could lead to changes for other taxing bodies such as park districts and libraries. But, even more broadly, this could change the character of many suburbs. Without as many children, the main focus of suburbs might change from familialism to something else. One big trend in American life today is the rise of single-person households, which could also become the plurality in the suburbs. There have also been rumblings about older suburbanites whose kids are growing up or have already left the house wanting to move to denser areas. Neighborhoods and communities that once revolved around children and their activities would have to shift their focus elsewhere. Imagine a Chicago suburb that becomes known as a haven for the 50+ crowd. Or a suburb where young professionals have a hopping cultural and entertainment scene.

Average new house size expected to drop to 2,150 square feet by 2015

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A short report on McMansions links to a National Association of Home Builders survey that suggests building professionals believe the square footage of the average new American house will fall by 2015:

Respondents expect the average, new single-family detached home in 2015 to be about 2,152 square feet, 10 percent smaller than the average size of single-family homes started in the first three quarters of 2010. Overall, 63 percent of respondents expect the average size of new homes in 2015 to be somewhere between 2,000 square feet and 2,399 square feet, 22 percent expect it to be between 2,400 square feet and 2,999 square feet, while 13 percent expect it to only be 1,600 square feet to 1,999 square feet (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Average Home Size in 2015

Data from the Census Bureau indicates that the average size of single-family homes completed peaked in 2007, at 2,521 square feet, was virtually unchanged in 2008, and then declined in 2009 to 2,438 square feet. Preliminary data for 2010 shows a further decline, down to 2,377 square feet. Although part of the recent drop in average home size may indeed be temporary due to hard economic times, a number of factors lead building professionals to expect home size declines in the long-run: consumers are focused on lowering the cost of heating and cooling their homes; they no longer have sizeable equity in their current homes to finance a much larger one; diminished expectations for house price appreciation has reduced demand for extra square footage in order to achieve appreciation on a larger base; demographics, 29 percent of the US population will be 55+ in the year 2020, demanding smaller homes; and strict mortgage underwriting for the foreseeable future. Combined, these factors will weigh on the consumer to purchase homes based on need more than want.

My interpretation of this is that a majority of builders think new homes in 2015 will be slightly smaller than new homes of today. Additionally, 23% still believe new homes will be larger than 2,400 square feet. Interestingly, there is not reported evidence of whether building professionals think these smaller new homes of the future will be cheaper.

And here is where square footage will be dropped from these future houses:

To save on square footage, the living room is high on the endangered list – 52 percent of builders expect it to be merged with other spaces in the home by 2015 and 30 percent said it will vanish entirely.

“As an overall share of total floor space, 54 percent of builders said the family room is likely to increase,” said Rose Quint, NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research. “That makes it the only area of the home likely to get bigger.”

In addition, the relative size of the entry foyer and dining room are likely to be diminished by 2015. However, opinions were fairly evenly divided on the fate of the kitchen, master bedroom and bath and mudroom, she said.

The survey methodology is also worth noting – it was sent to a lot of interested parties but the response rate was under 10%:

NAHB’s The New Home in 2015 survey was sent electronically to 3,019 builders, designers, architects, manufacturers, and marketing specialists. The sample was stratified by region of the country (to be proportional to housing starts in each of the four Census regions) and, among builders, by their number of units started.

A total of 238 responses were received, of which 30 percent came from single-family builders, 19 percent from architects, 26 percent from designers, 7 percent from manufacturers, and 18 percent from “other” building industry professionals.

At first glance, this suggests to me that the findings are quite untrustworthy.

Update on sociology becoming part of the MCAT in January 2015

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ASA’s Footnotes for December 2012 includes an article with more details on sociological material being included on the MCAT in upcoming years:

An important change in the MCAT® (the Medical College Admission Test) has the potential to have a significant impact on sociology departments across the country. In February 2012, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) “approved changes… that will require aspiring doctors to have an understanding of the social and behavioral sciences.” (Mann, 2012). The new version of the test, which will be in place by January of 2015, includes an entire section on the social and behavioral sciences. One implication of this change is that pre-medical curricula across the country may start requiring that students take an introductory sociology course (as well as an introductory course in psychology) in preparation for taking the MCAT (see, for example, Brenner and Ringe 2012)…

The exact content of sociology and psychology test questions is not yet finalized. Starting in January 2014 the new social science section of the MCAT will be included as an “optional” section. The cohort of students who take that first updated version of the MCAT are already enrolled in college. Students who choose to complete it will be compensated in some way. These trial runs will be used to modify the section before it “counts” as part of the MCAT score. Starting in January 2015 the test will include the required section on social and behavioral sciences.

The new section of the MCAT that tests sociology and psychology is described in a Preview Guide to the MCAT2015 Exam. The descriptions contained in that guide detail specific content areas within sociology (including “understanding social structure,” “demographic characteristics and processes,” “social stratification,” and “social inequality”) that will be covered on the test (AAMC 2012:12).

Two quick thoughts:

1. I’ve mentioned this change in my Intro classes a few times and I think some pre-med students were aware of what was happening. I can’t say for sure that I’ve had an uptick in students interested in medical fields but this article suggests this could happen in coming years.

2. While I think this makes a lot of sense for medical practitioners to have some knowledge of society and social life, I am amazed at times that more fields don’t explicitly train their students or ask them to take classes in social life. For example, isn’t business often about interacting with people as well as managing employees? Wouldn’t sociology provide insights into this?

Killing books with coordinated one-star reviews on Amazon

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I’ve posted before about the wild world of Amazon reviews and here is another example: a group of Michael Jackson fans succeeded in burying a new book about the late pop star.

In the biggest, most overt and most successful of these campaigns, a group of Michael Jackson fans used Facebook and Twitter to solicit negative reviews of a new biography of the singer. They bombarded Amazon with dozens of one-star takedowns, succeeded in getting several favorable notices erased and even took credit for Amazon’s briefly removing the book from sale.

“Books used to die by being ignored, but now they can be killed — and perhaps unjustly killed,” said Trevor Pinch, a Cornell sociologist who has studied Amazon reviews. “In theory, a very good book could be killed by a group of people for malicious reasons.”…

The retailer, like other sites that depend on customer reviews, has been faced with the problem of so-called sock puppets, those people secretly commissioned by an author to produce favorable notices. In recent months, Amazon has made efforts to remove reviews by those it deemed too close to the author, especially relatives.

The issue of attack reviews, though, has received little attention. The historian Orlando Figes was revealed in 2010 to be using Amazon to anonymously vilify his rivals and secretly praise himself. The crime writer R. J. Ellory was exposed for doing the same thing last fall.

This is an interesting world where arguments are being made that people have the right (free speech) to provide harsh and even untrue Amazon reviews.

I don’t envy Amazon for having to deal with this issue where reviews would have to be more closely monitored. Even with close monitoring, people could provide excessively positive or negative reviews as long as they couldn’t be identified as being relatives or bragging out their actions on Facebook (as one member of the Michael Jackson fan group did). It puts Amazon in an unenviable position of having to play the heavy and try to crack down on people.

It would be interesting to see arguments of when these tactics might be supported or praised. Imagine a neo-Nazi writes a book; is it ethical or effective to shut down their book on Amazon? What about an obnoxious political figure on the other side that you can’t stand?

Data suggests urban residents in some cities leaning toward bicycles and away from “war on cars”?

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Some recent data from Seattle, New York, and Toronto leads one writer to suggest the “war on cars” is over:

Here are some of the poll’s findings:

  • 73 percent of the 400 Seattle voters surveyed supported the idea of building protected bike lanes.
  • 59 percent go further and support “replacing roads and some on-street parking to make protected bicycle lanes.”
  • 79 percent have favorable feelings about cyclists.
  • Only 31 percent agree with the idea that Seattle is “waging a war on cars.”

The “war on cars” trope has long been a favored talking point for anti-bicycle and anti-transit types. But this survey and others seem to indicate that it might, at last, be wearing a bit thin, no matter how much the auto warriors try to whip up their troops.

Last year, a Quinnipiac poll of New York City residents showed that 59 percent support bike lanes, up from 54 only a few months earlier. Quinnipiac also found that 74 percent support the city’s sadly delayed bike-share plan. A New York City Department of Transportation poll about the Prospect Park Bike Lane – supposedly a bloody battleground of the war on cars that the New York Post insists the DOT is waging – found 70 percent of respondents liked the lane.

Toronto has also been a major front in this fight. The city’s embattled mayor, Rob Ford, famously declared that his election would mean an end to the city’s supposed war on cars. (He also said that when a cyclist is killed by a driver, “it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”) On Ford’s watch, Toronto removed some downtown bike lanes last fall, prompting protests and even an arrest for mischief and obstructing a police officer.

But the aftermath has been more constructive than martial. Tomislav Svoboda, the physician who was arrested for his act of civil disobedience, was recently joined by 34 of his medical colleagues in a call for faster construction of new bike infrastructure, asking the city council to “change lanes and save lives.” Even Ford seems to be feeling less combative. He came out the other day talking about a 2013 budget that will include 80 kilometers of new on-street bike lanes, 100 kilometers of off-street bike trails, and 8,000 new bike parking spaces.

Based on the data presented here, it sounds like these urban residents are moving toward a position where both cars and bikes can coexist in cities. This relationship is notoriously hostile as people have made zero-sum arguments: more bikes means less room for cars and vice versa.

But we could also look at why people have these opinions. Here are a few options:

1. Are bike advocates getting better at marketing or framing their cause (this is the suggestion at the end of this article)?

2. Are people generally less interested in cars (and this could be for a variety of reasons including cost and environmental impact)?

3. Are residents tired of paying for road improvements without little change in congestion (those new lanes just don’t help)?

4. Is there a genuine interest in shifting away from cars in cities and toward other forms of transportation (bicycling, more walkable neighborhoods, etc.)?

Can an older home be remodeled into a McMansion?

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Teardown McMansions are common but here is a less common scenario: an older home remodeled into what a neighbor claims is a McMansion. Here is the original complaint:

About four weeks ago, this project began with a slow stripping of the original cape on the site. The stripping got all the way down to just the chimney and a few original 2x4s. But in a week — boom! — a giant plywood box erupted as if from nowhere totally around and above the old house’s frame.

Why wasn’t the original modest house just razed? Surely it would have been easier for the builder just to get the old house completely out of the way first. Could there be a builder-friendly municipal regulation that gives special tax treatment to the builder of a “remodel” instead of a “new build?” Are builders being permitted to perpetuate a fiction of remodeling for lower taxes while really building anew for higher profits?

A believer in personal property rights, I don’t begrudge property owners (even speculating builders) to do as they wish on their own land. I accept that McMansions are now an unfortunate fact of Princeton life, even if I don’t like the crass, in-our-face, beggar-the-neighborhood architectural “lifestyle” expressions that some of them egotistically manifest.

As a local taxpayer, however, I (and many others) would have a big problem with any municipal sweetheart arrangements with the builders of these whales, permitting them by some perverse incentive to pay less than their fair share of local taxes on such imaginary “remodels.”

And then a reminder in the comments that people have been adding to houses for a long time:

There is no sweetheart deal going on. Working off of an existing foundation does simplify the permitting process because you are rebuilding or adding on to the “existing” house.

If you tear down the old house including the foundation you start off with a completely new house. This requires a new house permitting process. This may take time and money. Possibly hearings with public input if variances are required.

You might also want to take a tour of Princeton’s old houses. As happens today, houses were expanded and added to as families grew or as the family was able to afford more house. The issue was no different 200 years ago as it is today.

There is also a lot of pressure to preserve open space which restricts any kind of building which then puts pressure on rebuilding in existing areas.

Without knowing more details of this particular situation, it is hard to know whether this is a big remodel or an intention end-run against zoning regulations that make it difficult to build teardown McMansions. Is this a tactic that could be pursued elsewhere? I assume there are also some limits, or at least necessary permits, to remodeling so municipalities could respond by tightening those rules.

Additionally, one marker of a McMansion is a garish facade. If the remodeling is primarily done on the interior or the additions are to the back, this could mean the front still looks like a more traditional older home. The home could still be a McMansion due to its relative size compared to its neighbors but it may not appear from the front to be as much of a McMansion as other homes.

Behind the suburban scenes: Warrenville asks Naperville School District 203 to stop expensive lawsuit

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I posted last November about a Warrenville newsletter where the mayor expressed his displeasure that a new Cantera business had invited the mayor of Naperville to its opening but not the mayor of Warrenville. I was surprised at the reaction, which was quite unusual to see in a newsletter to the whole community, but I wonder it might be tied to a eight-year expensive lawsuit over tax revenue from Cantera:

Warrenville officials are campaigning to end an eight-year court battle over taxes with a Naperville school district.

The case returns to court Thursday, two days after leaders of five government bodies in Warrenville presented the Naperville Unit District 203 school board with a letter saying the lawsuit concerning a special taxing district has cost all parties involved more than $803,000 since 2005…

The lawsuit was filed by the district in March 2005 over the use of funds from the Cantera tax increment financing district. The Cantera development now includes a theater, shops, restaurants and corporate offices and provides about $3.2 million a year in revenue to District 203. Dave Zager, the district’s chief financial officer, said the Naperville district will continue to collect property tax revenue from the development into the future, but the amount will vary.

However, the school district alleges in the suit it is owed more than it has received. Brummel maintains the funds from the TIF district have been distributed legally and at the advice of attorneys.

The case has been dismissed twice, but the school district appealed twice, and litigation has continued.

Warrenville, its park district, fire protection district, Wheaton-Warrenville School District 200 and the public library district have spent a combined $357,000 defending the case. Naperville Unit District 203 has spent about $446,000. Part of the Cantera site is in District 203, and part is in District 200.

On one hand, this sounds like a lot of money to spend on a lawsuit that has still not concluded, but, on the other hand, tax revenue is hard to come by these days and lots of school districts could use this kind of money. I wonder if the length of the lawsuit is also tied to the economic crisis of recent years; in better times, District 203 might be better able to lose this revenue.

This is the first time I’ve heard of this lawsuit. Large battles between suburbs or suburban governmental bodies are fairly rare.