Monthly Archives: March 2013

The antidote to McMansions: tiny houses

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If you are suffering from McMansion disease, here is a cure: the tiny house.

Say what you will about tiny homes, the reasons behind their increasing popularity are pretty solid: Small houses are inexpensive and easy to maintain, and they also offer more privacy than your average apartment.

Micro-spaces are especially popular with eco-conscious homeowners invested in consuming less—a stark contrast from their McMansion-buying counterparts of years past. A tiny home pretty much guarantees less electricity and water will be wasted, which is always a good thing.

These mini-houses are from all over the U.S. and they’re selling for a fraction of what a regular home would cost. Even if you’re not up for the challenge of moving into one, they’ll at least inspire you to imagine a reality that’s less focused on accumulating stuff and more focused on living.

While I have read much criticism of McMansions in recent years, I’ve never before seen it compared to a disease or sickness. Are McMansions a sickness the United States needs to be rid of? I’ve tended to see such homes more as symptoms of some larger issues in the United States such as an emphasis on homeownership and sprawl. Talking about McMansions as a disease could contribute to a view that McMansions are a social problem that has been socially constructed. There may not be anything inherently wrong with such homes until they are compared to other homes that are seen as being more moral or decent.

New study finds CHA’s efforts to relocate public housing residents has found some success

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A new report from the Urban Land Institute suggests the Chicago Housing Authority’s efforts to move public housing residents out of public high-rise projects into other housing has been successful in several ways:

A new report released Monday by the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, paints a largely positive picture of the Chicago Housing Authority efforts. The study comes while the CHA is retooling its Plan for Transformation, an ambitious multi-year effort begun in 1999 that broke up concentrated high-rise developments…

Several years ago the Urban Institute told CHA that moving families wasn’t simply a construction issue; to succeed, residents needed services. Popkin said that steep learning curve for CHA has paid off after the housing agency implemented a strong resident service program in 2007.

Researchers say that vulnerable residents need intensive wraparound services to address mental health, low literacy and lack of job skills. The report suggests that residents who’ve received intensive case management have fared better. The services cost about $2,900 annually per household but can increase family stability and reduce depression. CHA families have grappled with the trauma of poverty: physical health problems, anxiety, high mortality rates.

But Popkin said it’s not all a pretty picture. Emphasis on adults has meant that improvements have not always trickled down to children. Relocation has been especially hard on them and causes disruption in school and socially.

“I worry a lot about the kids,” Popkin said. “The services that helped the adults do better don’t seem to have helped the kids. It’s an urgent issue. These are kids who have grown up in families who’ve lived in chronic disadvantage for generations and it’s going to take more than just moving to slightly safer places to help get them on a better trajectory.”

Some young people have struggled academically and have had a tough time adapting to new neighborhoods where they are perceived as outsiders. And they continue to live amid violence. The Urban Institute is currently working on CHA incorporating a dual generation approach at Altgeld Gardens, a public housing development on the southern edge of the city.

You can read the reports for yourself on The Urban Institute website here. It looks like the full story of relocated public housing residents is more complicated than this news story suggests. While there has been good movement on several factors, including more psychological factors like feelings of safety and fighting depression (which is what Popkin and several other authors also report in the very interesting 2010 book Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty), we don’t yet know the long-term effects of relocation. For example, the abstract for Brief 2 suggests:

Those who got intensive case management and supportive services through the Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration have significantly lower rates of depression, better physical health, and higher rates of employment. However, even with these gains, many adults struggle with extremely high rates of debilitating chronic illnesses that prevent them from finding full-time employment and many children still grapple with the fallout from growing up with chronic violence.

Relocation is not a quick fix when there are deeper issues involved including residential segregation, discrimination, poverty, and acquiring social and human capital. As Brief 1 notes, relocated residents would benefit from ongoing services…but this requires ongoing funding.

Studies suggest texting in class is related to lower grades, GPA

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Several studies in recent years have examined the link between students texting and using Facebook in in class and their grades. The Chicago Tribune summarizes the studies:

In the past five years researchers have published the results of five surveys and experiments that link texting and Facebooking with lower academic performance. In 2011, researchers at California State University reported that students who received or sent a high number of text messages during a video recorded lecture scored worse on a quiz than those who received or sent few or no text messages.

In a 2012 study, a researcher at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania surveyed 1,800 students about how often they Facebook, instant message, email, text, search online and talk on the phone in class. Among the results: 69 percent of students reported they had texted in class, and students who texted or used Facebook more frequently in class had lower overall semester GPAs. The author of that study, Reynol Junco, also co-wrote a study that linked texting and Facebooking during study time with lower GPAs…

“That I can be definitive about: That’s not working. If you’re going to search (online) during class, I don’t have any data telling you to stop. If you’re going to email during class, I don’t have any data to tell you to stop. But do not text or Facebook during class. Do not text or Facebook while you’re studying for your classes, because that’s another area where this is definitely a negative.”…

Junco’s evidence against texting and Facebooking is correlational, meaning that his studies show that students who Facebook or text more in class or while studying do worse academically, but not that the texting or Facebooking itself is causing the problem. It’s possible that, say, an easily distractible student is texting a lot and doing poorly in class, with the underlying cause of poor performance being the distractibility, not the texting. But Junco points to two other college studies in which researchers, not students, largely determined which students would do the most media multitasking in class.

In both the studies — the California State study and one published in 2012 in the journal Computers and Education — a form of media multitasking (texting or Facebooking) was linked to lower student performance.

It would be interesting to pair data like this with student’s perceptions of whether they are doing better or worse in a class because they are texting, browsing, or not. It would be one thing if students knew that texting was distracting and did it anyway and yet another thing if they were so used to texting that they were unaware of its possible effects.

Let’s say future studies more clearly establish a causal link. Would colleges then move to banning cell phone use or Facebooking in class? Or is this one of those areas that would generate a lot of negative feedback from students who would want the freedom to do more of what they want in class?

How boundary work helps explains false equivalence in the media

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Read here for an explanation of how the sociological concept of boundary work is applied to the issue of false equivalence in media coverage:

Boundary work is a kind of rhetorical work that is performed in public argument: something is asserted to be science by stressing what it is not (pseudo-science, or faith, or religion, or what have you). Even Tim Geithner did it in his exit interview when he painted his own work as just a kind of technocratic problem-solving rather than politics, see this analysis.

It seems to me that our political discourse also contains a similar kind of boundary work — between “politics” and “policy.” Our politicians will always say: what I’m doing is just plain old common sense or the right thing or just good policy, or just the solution to a problem; whereas what my opponent is doing is playing politics. And if one sees politics as actually a way of managing relations between conflicting groups of people, one can see why they do that.

For instance, reforming the American health care system is almost certainly a matter of redistribution: taking money from older people and giving it to others (the uninsured, younger people, etc.). But one can’t say that if one is a politician, and so there is a delicate balancing act: one’s own work is constructed as problem-solving and policy-making, the opponent is portrayed as playing politics (where politics is understood to be trading off between different social groups).

I think this kind of boundary work exists in journalism too (and more on why it exists later); it’s what you call false equivalence (and Yglesias calls bipartisan think). Here the newspaper is seen as above politics, which is what grubby politicians do. And therefore the contrast between the policy that the newspaper is advocating (which is not politics but merely good moral sensible stuff), and that what the politicians are doing. It is imperative, I think, in this model that both parties be painted in the same brush. Because if you don’t, then you agree with one of the parties, which therefore makes you political.

Why should the newspapers practice this kind of boundary work? My sense (which comes straight from Paul Starr’s history of the media) is that it’s a holdover from the times when the newspaper industry changed. As we all know now (from arguing about partisanship), newspapers in the 19th century were unabashedly partisan. They also catered to niches, and made money from subscriptions. And that changed sometime in the 20th century when newspapers started to make money from advertisements — and therefore they had to be less partisan and attract more people. Hence the objective tone of the reported stories (he says, she says) — and also I think the false equivalence of the editorials.

The concept of symbolic boundaries is an important one in the sociology of culture. Groups or organizations engage in drawing boundaries between what they are (by their own definition) and what they say others are. Policing these boundaries is a consistent and tricky task; the changes the other groups make might force a group to redraw its own boundaries. Or, outside social forces and circumstances might push all groups to redraw or double down on their boundaries. A good application of this concept to defining social class in the United States and France is Michele Lamont’s book Money, Morals, and Manners.

New York governor says local governments, schools should save money by merging

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo suggested one way local government can save money in this economic crisis: merge or consolidate.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo had tough words Friday for local officials facing fiscal crises and seeking more help from Albany, telling them they should consolidate services or whole governments and school districts rather than looking for relief from Albany.

“If it was really, really tough, you’d see that happen,” Cuomo said in his strongest comments yet on the local fiscal crises. “If you are a school district, or a city, or a town or a county, and you are looking for a fundamental financial reform, consolidation is one of the obvious ones.”

Cuomo said he believes local politics is standing in the way of mergers and consolidations that would save taxpayers money and improve efficiency of services. He said deciding to consolidate should be easy, yet “politically, it’s difficult … I get the politics.”

Despite years of hard times, Cuomo said you can count “on one hand” the number of consolidations among 50,000 local governments, school districts, fire and library taxing districts and more.

School districts and local governments say they are already consolidating and merging, but that’s not enough. They are asking for more laws than Cuomo has offered in his state budget proposal to cut labor costs, pension costs and more funding.

Advocates like Myron Orfield and David Rusk have been pushing for metropolitanization for decades – and if Cuomo is right, it might happen now because local governments will have little choice when faced with tough economic issues. However, there are three major issues standing in the way of government consolidation even when times are tough:

1. Local control and interests. This is part of the foundation of the American governmental system: residents should have some say in local government. Thus, local governments and residents will fight hard before they have to hand off decision-making to outsiders.

2. We could end up with situations where communities and governments that are harder off are pushed to consolidate while wealthier areas can hold out longer. This is then a different kind of inequality: wealthier residents would have more local control while poorer residents would have less control.

3. Consolidation might save money but what happens to the quality of the local services? Merging might lead to a reduction of services and some residents will not be happy about this. This is more of a quality of life issue that could influence crime rates, school performance, garbage pickup, and more.

Measuring audience reaction: from the applause of crowds to Facebook likes

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Megan Garber provides an overview of applause, “the big data of the ancient world.”

Scholars aren’t quite sure about the origins of applause. What they do know is that clapping is very old, and very common, and very tenacious — “a remarkably stable facet of human culture.” Babies do it, seemingly instinctually. The Bible makes many mentions of applause – as acclamation, and as celebration. (“And they proclaimed him king and anointed him, and they clapped their hands and said, ‘Long live the king!'”)

But clapping was formalized — in Western culture, at least — in the theater. “Plaudits” (the word comes from the Latin “to strike,” and also “to explode”) were the common way of ending a play. At the close of the performance, the chief actor would yell, “Valete et plaudite!” (“Goodbye and applause!”) — thus signaling to the audience, in the subtle manner preferred by centuries of thespians, that it was time to give praise. And thus turning himself into, ostensibly, one of the world’s first human applause signs…

As theater and politics merged — particularly as the Roman Republic gave way to the Roman Empire — applause became a way for leaders to interact directly (and also, of course, completely indirectly) with their citizens. One of the chief methods politicians used to evaluate their standing with the people was by gauging the greetings they got when they entered the arena. (Cicero’s letters seem to take for granted the fact that “the feelings of the Roman people are best shown in the theater.”) Leaders became astute human applause-o-meters, reading the volume — and the speed, and the rhythm, and the length — of the crowd’s claps for clues about their political fortunes.

“You can almost think of this as an ancient poll,” says Greg Aldrete, a professor of history and humanistic studies at the University of Wisconsin, and the author of Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome. “This is how you gauge the people. This is how you poll their feelings.” Before telephones allowed for Gallup-style surveys, before SMS allowed for real-time voting, before the Web allowed for “buy” buttons and cookies, Roman leaders were gathering data about people by listening to their applause. And they were, being humans and politicians at the same time, comparing their results to other people’s polls — to the applause inspired by their fellow performers. After an actor received more favorable plaudits than he did, the emperor Caligula (while clutching, it’s nice to imagine, his sword) remarked, “I wish that the Roman people had one neck.”…

So the subtleties of the Roman arena — the claps and the snaps and the shades of meaning — gave way, in later centuries, to applause that was standardized and institutionalized and, as a result, a little bit promiscuous. Laugh tracks guffawed with mechanized abandon. Applause became an expectation rather than a reward. And artists saw it for what it was becoming: ritual, rote. As Barbra Streisand, no stranger to public adoration, once complained: “What does it mean when people applaud? Should I give ’em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress?” The lack of applause, on the other hand — the unexpected thing, the relatively communicative thing — “that I can respond to.”…

Mostly, though, we’ve used the affordances of the digital world to remake public praise. We link and like and share, our thumbs-ups and props washing like waves through our networks. Within the great arena of the Internet, we become part of the performance simply by participating in it, demonstrating our appreciation — and our approval — by amplifying, and extending, the show. And we are aware of ourselves, of the new role a new world gives us. We’re audience and actors at once. Our applause is, in a very real sense, part of the spectacle. We are all, in our way, claqueurs.

Fascinating, from the human tendency across cultures to clap, planting people in the audience to clap and cheer, to the rules that developed around clapping.

A couple of thoughts:

1. Are there notable moments in history when politicians and others thought the crowd was going one way because of applause but quickly found out that wasn’t the case? Simply going by the loudest noise seems rather limited, particularly with large crowds and outdoors.

2. The translation of clapping into Facebook likes loses the embodied nature of clapping and crowds. Yes, likes allow you to mentally see that you are joining with others. But, there is something about the social energy of a crowd that is completely lost. Durkheim would describe this as collective effervesence and Randall Collins describes the physical nature of “emotional energy” that can be generated when humans are in close physical proximity to each other. Clapping is primarily a group behavior and is difficult to transfer to a more individualistic setting.

3. I have noticed in my lifetime the seemingly increasing prevalence of standing ovations. Pretty much every theater show I have been to in recent years is followed by a standing ovation. My understanding is that at one point such ovations were reserved for truly spectacular performances but now it is simply normal. Thus, the standing ovation now has a very different meaning.

Look for new wood skyscrapers in a big city near you

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According to one architect, skyscrapers are typically constructed of unsustainable materials and could instead be built out of wood.

Modern skyscrapers are typically made from concrete and steel, but as architect Michael Charters suggests, wood could be a viable construction material for tall buildings that would have a lower environmental impact. Charters recently designed ‘Big Wood,’ a prototype for a large-scale skyscraper made from wood for the 2013 eVolo Skyscraper Competition. The sprawling mixed-use complex would serve as a sustainable alternative to standard building materials, which are expensive and require a great deal of energy to produce.

The construction industry accounts for about 39 percent of all man-made carbon emissions—a figure that would be greatly reduced if more buildings, big and small, were made from timber. As we learned in high school science class, trees have the ability to capture and sequester carbon, and they continue to store carbon when used as a building material. Recent studies have demonstrated that it is possible to build 20- to 30-story structures from timber, writes Charters, and hybrid systems would enable builders to build even taller buildings.

Charters’ ‘Big Wood’ concept is a prototype for a large mixed-use university complex that would be located along the Chicago River in Chicago‘s South Loop. The mixed-use development would contain a mix of housing, retail, a library, and a community park. “Known as the birthplace of the skyscraper, Chicago is an optimal location for a prototype in mass timber construction,” writes Charters. “Similar to the rapid innovation in building technology that occurred in the early 1900s, ‘Big Wood’ is positioned to be a catalyst for a new renaissance in high-rise construction, changing forever the shape of our cities.”

I would have to know a lot more about this before I would allow 20+ story wood buildings in my city but the Chicago plans look cool.

Just how much wood do these buildings require?

Millennials want smaller, smarter, purposeful, customizable homes

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A new real estate survey from Better Homes and Gardens suggests Millennials have different tastes in homes:

Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate today released national survey findings of 18-35 year-old Americans that reveal the next generation of homeowners are rewriting the rules to homeownership and reinterpreting traditional norms to fit their values. Results indicate that the next generation of homeowners seeks essential, purposeful homes (77%) equipped with the technological capabilities they have grown accustomed to, as opposed to stereotypical luxury homes preferred by many in their parents’ generation. The findings also demonstrate that 82 percent of “Millennials” surveyed embrace their independence with gusto and prefer to handle home improvements on their own instead of turning to their parents for money; a stark contrast to the general misconception that paints young Americans as coddled or entitled.

“It’s critical that real estate professionals understand what embodies a quintessential home for the Millennial generation, which vastly differs from the traditional norms of generations before them,” said Sherry Chris, president and CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate LLC. “These survey findings allow our brand to continue to best serve the next generation of homebuyers and find homes that can or do appeal to their lifestyles and unique spirit. Understanding technologies to communicate with this generation is now only one piece of the puzzle for agents; ‘smart’ technological capabilities must now be ingrained into the home itself.”…

Unlike their Baby Boomer parents, 77 percent of Millennials surveyed would prefer an “essential” home compared to a grand stereotypical luxury home. This generation wants their living quarters to be as unique as they are; more customized and less “cookie cutter” (43%). To that end, Millennials seek for each room of their home to serve a purpose fit for their lifestyle. For instance, 1 in 5 of survey respondents agree that “home office” is a more appropriate name for their dining room based on what they typically use it for, and 43 percent would like to transform their living room into a home theater.

If this is true across the board for Millennials, what sort of current housing options appeal most to them? Gentrifying neighborhoods? Urban lofts? New Urbanist developments? It would be fascinating to see some builders and developers go after this age group like they might with Dell Webb type communities that are clearly intended for a certain age range. However, this might not be as lucrative as providing housing for older buyers and such a sales pitch might go against the independent streak of Millennials…

The global culture of the business office

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Photographer Louis Quail has a new book of photos of offices around the world – and they have a similar look:

Since 2006, Quail has photographed offices in Russia, South Africa, Germany, the U.S., the U.K., Cambodia, United Arab Emirates, Santo Domingo and China. Municipal departments, call centers, financial brokers and commodities traders all feature in Quail’s series, Desk Job…

“As we have moved into the technical and information age, there has been a shift towards more office-based work,” says Quail of globalization. “Whatever our job title or geographical location, our tools and environment are becoming similar. It is quite perverse; to travel around the world to photograph inside an office that looks like its in Croydon [U.K.].”…

“The employee is defined by the few cubic meters, which exist around them. They must not just work, but live, eat, pray and occasionally sleep as if ‘chained’ to the desk in perpetuity,” says Quail…

“Companies tend to strive for straight lines and uncluttered office spaces, where as individuals have an urge to colonize and personalize,” says Quail. “In these pictures we see the tension but ultimately workers are intrinsic to the organizations they serve and are best placed to change them if they choose.”

Quail argues this is a side effect of globalization. An office in Dubai looks like an office in Australia which looks like an office in the Chicago suburbs. And he hints at the root of this homogeneity across global offices: an interest in making money within a global business network.

It would be interesting to pair these photos with a history of how the corporate office look spread around the world. Where exactly did it start, who spread it (people or corporations or organizations), and how quickly did it catch on?

Drawing the line: an 18,000 square foot, $45 million home IS NOT a McMansion

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I know the line and price point between a mansion and a McMansion is not exact but this goes way over the line: an 18,000 square foot, $45 million home in the Hamptons is definitely not a McMansion.

Even in a rich man’s playground lined with one McMansion after another, the Linden Estate in Southampton, N.Y., stands out as one of the best. The stately — and gigantic — home sprawls across 18,000 square feet on a 9.11-acre plot, and it has not one but two outdoor pavilions and a bevy of resort-style amenities (including indoor and outdoor pools). But it seems like that might not have been enough to satisfy one tech tycoon.

James H. Clark, co-founder of Netscape (you remember that, right?), was reportedly under contract to buy the glorious property at a $49 million price tag last July — after the mansion spent a staggering four years on the market. Clark and his wife (both pictured at left) even gave Haute Living magazine a tour of the home’s immaculate grounds. But the sale was never completed, and now, less than a year later, the home is once again up for sale for $45 million, Curbed reported. It’s unclear exactly what happened, but man, what a bummer for the owner.

I’m not sure exactly what McMansion means in this setting. Mass-produced? Probably not homes of this size. A large house? This one is extra large, or gigantic as noted in the story. A home for the wealthy? Clearly.

I wonder if there is something else going on here. One idea about McMansions is that they are about excessive consumption. This often refers to the average American taking on too big of a mortgage or purchasing a lot of space that they don’t need. But, might this also refer to excessive consumption by the ultra-wealthy? Of course, the wealthy may not have the financial difficulties in purchasing some homes but the tone here might be that the even the wealthy don’t need a home like this. Then, the term McMansion applies even more broadly to any home consumption that might be considered out of the ordinary.