Monthly Archives: November 2013

New film “Tiny: A Story About Living Small” raises two questions

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Hear from a couple who put together a film titled “Tiny: A Story About Living Film” that aired this past weekend:

Smith: The Tiny House is about 124 sq ft. It has a living space with an 11-foot ceiling. There is a small galley kitchen, a small bathroom with a composting toilet and camping-style gravity fed shower and a sleeping loft. The main living space has an 11-foot ceiling, which helps the space to feel bigger than it actually is, with a small closet and two built-in bookshelves. There is also a built in desk and dining table that Merete made from scraps left over from our reclaimed hardwood flooring…

The whole concept of living tiny seems to fly in the face of the traditional American Dream of a big house with a big yard — how do you guys define the American Dream?

Mueller: One thing that we’ve learned from making our film about the Tiny House movement is that the American Dream is changing. The recent housing crisis and recession have made it harder for many people to attain the financial stability required for a big house in the suburbs and a car in the driveway, that old model of the American Dream. On top of that, we’ve found that many people in our generation are beginning to question and re-evaluate that old American Dream and are opting instead for lifestyles that are more flexible and less tied-down to one particular place. As a society, we’re in a place of transition. I think that many people — whether by necessity or by choice — are learning that quality of life isn’t necessarily tied to how big our houses are or how much stuff we own, but about the experiences we have and the quality of our relationships.

I think there is some truth to the last paragraph above – but I think it still raises some interesting questions:

1. Just how many people are willing to live in tiny houses versus smaller houses? It is one thing to downsize from 3,000 square feet to 1,500 feet. It is another to go to a couple of hundred square feet. At the end of the interview, they admit only one of the couple now lives in the tiny house. Tiny houses are stark contrasts to McMansions but how many people would actually live in them long-term?

2. More people today might be more transient, which could be good for people rethinking of the size of homes they need how much stuff they can accumulate. (There still could be an uptick in digital consumption and ownership – but it all fits in your laptop or smartphone moving forward). But, this isn’t necessarily good for forming quality relationships. If everyone is moving around more frequently to take advantage of cultural opportunities and jobs plus people are connecting more online, strong ties are hard to form and civic life suffers.

The opposite of a McMansion is a cabin in the woods

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Looking to live in the opposite of a McMansion? That might lead you to a cabin in the woods, according to an architect called a “cabinologist” who defines cabins this way:

It has to be simple. There’s no place in a real cabin for a master suite or a formal entry, a formal dining room, an attached garage. I have changed my mind a bit on size, though.

Originally, I wrote that a cabin ought to have a 1,200-square-foot size limit. I do a fair number of cabins that are two bedrooms, with two baths, and maybe a sleeping loft, with a modest kitchen.

I’ve come around a little bit on size. I think the maximum number might be closer to 1,800 square feet. After that, it becomes a lodge or a lake home. It’s not a cabin anymore.

At that scale, the homes start to get too big, they start to have a different kind of feeling. At 2,000 square feet, there’s more of a houselike feeling. In those houses, you’re less likely to smell the coffee brewing when you wake up.

There appear to be several key features to being the anti-McMansion:

1. While McMansions are seen as ostentatious, cabins should be simple.

2. Cabins should be smaller than McMansions – which probably start somewhere around 2,500 to 3,000 square feet – but the cabinologist cited above thinks cabins don’t have to be small.

3. It is not explicitly discussed in this interview but the cabin should be more immersed in nature. Whereas McMansions are often associated with suburbia and some limited exposure to nature (there may be a lawn but the house may cover much of the lot, the neighborhoods are dependent on cars), cabins are supposed to be in the woods or on a lake or in the mountains.

Even with this argument about what a “true” cabin should be, I suspect there are plenty of getaway homes that approximate McMansions today with lots of space and expensive features.

The best ROI in hipster neighborhoods

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If you are looking to make some money in real estate, check out these hipster zip codes:

Real estate data provider RealtyTrac conjured some numbers to support what everyone already knows or suspects— that, as a developer or landlord, investing in rental housing in “hipster” nabes is a solid idea. Chicago gets three hits on RealtyTrac’s just-published top 25 list of hip zips for high return on rental properties, in descending rank: 60625 (Ravenswood, Albany Park); 60647 (Logan Square, Bucktown); and 60642 (Noble Square, River West, Goose Island). Yup, they got all the usual suspects. The above chart, interactive and expandable at the source, shows the equation for investment success in “nascent hipster markets”: a high proportion of 25-34 year-olds; a ready stock of renters; a low vacancy rate; and a climbing but still low median home price relative to average rents. Wouldn’t you know it— these are the basic conditions for any successful rental investment, almost anywhere. Why all the fuss over hipsters? Probably because the “culture” that follows this trendy group around usually matches up closely to rapid gentrification. In other words, it’s the hipster as beacon. For the frugal renter trying to stay away from big money, there’s a different use for this list. Stay tuned for follow-up RealtyTrac analysis on “top hipster zips for fix-and-flip profits.”

While hipster may appear to be a lifestyle choice, this article is a reminder of the economic conditions involving hipsters. They also have money and are interested in moving into less-than-perfect neighborhoods that have the appropriate grittiness and authenticity. Thus, a savvy investor might find properties in neighborhoods on the rise and with the influx of hipsters make some money.

It would be interesting to then look at how these investment work out over time. Getting in at the right point is important but how does that investment then work out over a long period of time? What happens when hipsters stop moving in or the neighborhood is no longer the hot one? We need to see not only this data but a ROI curve.

Architectural sociology approach to why Las Vegas residents don’t know their neighbors

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Sociologists looking at why Las Vegas residents don’t know their neighbors explain that the design of their newer subdivisions are partly to blame:

“So that means squeezing a lot of houses into small lots, and it also means an architectural design in many cases that doesn’t facilitate the flow of people,” UNLV sociology professor Robert Futrell said.In 2010, UNLV professors conducted a survey of neighborhoods and people living throughout the Valley. They found that communities built after the construction boom of the 1990s include narrow streets, concrete walls, short driveways and few front porches. All of these things impede social interaction.

“While many developers have tried to create these master-planned communities to be high-functioning, high-interacting neighborhoods, many of them are not working that way,” Batson said.

Professors point to neighborhoods with short driveways as an example. People drive up to their homes, open the garage and drive in without talking to anyone.

The article goes on to say that residents in these communities truly do want to interact with their neighbors. But, design holds them back.

Is it completely the fault of design? The beginning of the article also notes that Las Vegas has many transient residents. If it is truly the design, we should be able to look at neighborhoods with different designs and measure higher levels of social interaction. Is this what we actually find? New Urbanists argue it is all about designing neighborhoods in a traditional way but they don’t as often bring up the data that would show the neighborhoods do what they say they should do. Other might counter that even with some better home design, people are still distracted from social interaction because of cars, air conditioning, television, the Internet, and more.

Another thought: would the residents of these new neighborhoods be willing to trade the size of their homes or the interior features of their homes for some more neighborly features?

Peter Berger: new atheist megachurches really about forming a denomination

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Sociologist Peter Berger offers his take on the news that some atheists are looking to form their own megachurches.

How then is one to understand the phenomenon described in the story? I think there are two ways of understanding it. First, there is the lingering notion of Sunday morning as a festive ceremony of the entire family.  This notion has deep cultural roots in Christian-majority countries (even if, especially in Europe, this notion is rooted in nostalgia rather than piety).  Many people who would not be comfortable participating in an overtly Christian worship service still feel that something vaguely resembling it would be a good program to attend once a week, preferably en famille. Thus a Unitarian was once described as someone who doesn’t play golf and must find something else to do on Sunday morning. This atheist gathering in Los Angeles is following a classic American pattern originally inspired by Protestant piety—lay people being sociable in a church (or in this case quasi-church) setting. They are on their best behavior, exhibiting the prototypical “Protestant smile”.  This smile has long ago migrated from its original religious location to grace the faces of Catholics, Jews and adherents of more exotic faiths. It has become a sacrament of American civility. It would be a grave error to call it “superficial” or “false”. Far be it from me to begrudge atheists their replication of it.

However, there is a more important aspect to the aforementioned phenomenon: Every community of value, religious or otherwise, becomes a denomination in America. Atheists, as they want public recognition, begin to exhibit the characteristics of a religious denomination: They form national organizations, they hold conferences, they establish local branches (“churches”, in common parlance) which hold Sunday morning services—and they want to have atheist chaplains in universities and the military. As good Americans, they litigate to protect their constitutional rights. And they smile while they are doing all these things.

As far as I know, the term “denomination” is an innovation of American English. In classical sociology of religion, in the early 20th-entury writings of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch, religious institutions were described as coming in two types: the “church”, a large body open to the society into which an individual is born, and the ”sect”, a smaller group set aside from the society which an individual chooses to join. The historian Richard Niebuhr, in 1929, published a book that has become a classic, The Social Sources of Denominationalism. It is a very rich account of religious history, but among many other contributions, Niebuhr argued that America has produced a third type of religious institutions—the denomination—which has some qualities derived from both the Weber-Troeltsch types: It is a large body not isolated from society, but it is also a voluntary association which individuals chose to join. It can also be described as a church which, in fact if not theologically, accepts the right of other churches to exist. This distinctive institution, I would propose, is the result of a social and a political fact. The denomination is an institutional formation seeking to adapt to pluralism—the largely peaceful coexistence of diverse religious communities in the same society. The denomination is protected in a pluralist situation by the political and legal guarantee of religious freedom. Pluralism is the product of powerful forces of modernity—urbanization, migration, mass literacy and education; it can exist without religious freedom, but the latter clearly enhances it. While Niebuhr was right in seeing the denomination as primarily an American invention, it has now become globalized—because pluralism has become a global fact. The worldwide explosion of Pentecostalism, which I mentioned before, is a prime example of global pluralism—ever splitting off into an exuberant variety of groupings.

The argument: a pluralistic society, created through a set of legal and social codes, encourages denominations. Thus, if atheists want to be part of an American landscape, they must adapt to the forms that give religious groups the ability to band together and rally to their cause.

I wasn’t sure why atheists would want megachurches when these don’t have the greatest reputations (though they may be popular and influential) but I’m even less sure that atheists would want to be part of denominations. Much of the story of American religion in the last 50 years is the decline of denominations, the trend toward more independent, non-denominational churches that are not constrained by hierarchies. Similarly, individuals have moved from seeking membership in religious organizations to a more individualized form of religious expression, immortalized as “shielaism” in Habits of the Heart and illustrated with the increasing number of “religious nones.” On one hand, denominations allow religious congregations to band together and exert more collective force but Americans also don’t like to be limited by social structures.

Anger directed at urban cyclists and city bike lanes really about fears that younger Americans don’t want sprawling suburbs?

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Complaints about urban biking and new bike lanes might be less about biking and more about what younger Americans don’t want: the sprawling suburbs.

All this sounds like a nightmare scenario if you live in the suburbs. Gas prices rise and housing prices fall, eating into liquid capital and equity. Families with the ability to move return back to the city, depressing housing prices even further. Declining property tax revenues and a fleeing upper-middle-class undermine previously excellent schools. At best, suburbanites take a huge hit on depreciating houses; at worst, they’re stranded in decaying neighborhoods, cut off by isolating new infrastructure…That’s where I see an undercurrent of Millennial resentment (we’ll spot Kass a decade or so on “grunge;” when you’re out across the county line, the news travels slower). The boomers escaped cities in decline, investing sweat equity earned in office parks into a house and two cars, the gas taxes they paid into epic interchanges, and their high property taxes into excellent schools.

And the little bastards who went to those excellent schools don’t want that inheritance. They want to ride their car shares from their rented apartments to mass transit, making the last-mile commute on shared bikes (they don’t even own bikes!) to virtual startups in work-share spaces.

From the perspective of postwar America, it looks like a whole lot of nothing, an unsettled and rootless future. Where they’re going, they don’t need… roads…

But it’s the future we’re being promised by a lot of people in position to make it happen, who threaten to reverse—to invert—what their parents spent a lifetime building. It’s scary, and not just on a merely economic level. And the people out there who are so angry about it aren’t just trying to outrun a few three-speed, step-through shared bikes; they’re trying to outrun the future, and you’re in the way.

Moser is arguing the bike lanes are just a sign of bigger trends at work, as suggested in books like The Great Inversion and The End of the Suburbs. This is really about a changed way of life, a different way of thinking about the American Dream, trading suburban spaces for new iPhones and exciting urban experiences the creative class desires. I think Moser is right to be skeptical; these changes will take time as well as a lot of collective action. At the same time, there is a lot of conversation about denser suburbs and returning to cities. Of course, this doesn’t mean such moves solve all the problems; there are still plenty of poor urban neighborhoods and suburbs that are left behind in the movement of what might be largely middle- to upper-class residents who can afford these changes.

How much irony is there here that the suburbs might have actually provided the “unsettled and rootless future” that younger Americans may now not want? Think about classic suburban critiques like American Beauty or the Arcade Fire album The Suburbs. The suburbs were viewed by many as the places to escape the problems of the city – everything from corrupt morality, dirtiness (factories, pollution, horses in the street everywhere, etc.), new populations – and yet the suburbs clearly have their own problems.

“Bewitching” look at state migration patterns is good when used interactively but not all together

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The Atlantic Cities has a cool graphic about migration between states but there is one problem – it is hard to read unless you use the interactive element.

Here is an explanation of how to read the chart:
The graphic may look like spaghetti pie at first glance, but it really is beautifully simple once you learn how to navigate it. Here’s Walker explaining about that:

The visualization is a circle cut up into arcs, the light-colored pieces along the edge of the circle, each one representing a state. The arcs are connected to each other by links, and each link represents the flow of people between two states. States with longer arcs exchange people with more states (California and New York, for example, have larger arcs). Links are thicker when there are relatively more people moving between two states. The color of each link is determined by the state that contributes the most migrants, so for example, the link between California and Texas is blue rather than orange, because California sent over 62,000 people to Texas, while Texas only sent about 43,000 people to California. Note that, to keep the graphic clean, I only drew a link between two states if they exchanged at least 10,000 people.

Without the interactive element, you can’t quite figure out what is going on. All you can rely on is the relative width and length of the arcs as there are no numbers for the migration (and that would get cluttered really quickly). For example, you can quickly see that it seems like California sends Texas a lot of people. Or that quite a few New Yorkers go to California or Florida. The middle is kind of a jumbled mess and can be hard to follow thinner strands.

This seems to be a fun graphic element when it takes advantage of the capabilities of the Internet – you can click on your state, cut out all the clutter, and see the numbers. Otherwise, I’m not sure it adds much and still requires a good amount of text to sort things out.

Using randomized controlled trials to test methods for addressing global poverty

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Here is a relatively new way to test options for addressing poverty: use randomized controlled trials.

What Kremer was suggesting is a scientific technique that has long been considered the gold standard in medical research: the randomized controlled trial. At the time, though, such trials were used almost exclusively in medicine—and were conducted by large, well-funded institutions with the necessary infrastructure and staff to manage such an operation. A randomized controlled trial was certainly not the domain of a recent PhD, partnering with a tiny NGO, out in the chaos of the developing world…

The study wound up taking four years, but eventually Kremer had a result: The free textbooks didn’t work. Standardized tests given to all students in the study showed no evidence of improvement on average. The disappointing conclusion launched ICS and Kremer on a quest to discover why the giveaway wasn’t helping students learn, and what programs might be a better investment.

As Kremer was realizing, the campaign for free textbooks was just one of countless development initiatives that spend money in a near-total absence of real-world data. Over the past 50 years, developed countries have spent something like $6.5 trillion on assistance to the developing world, most of those outlays guided by little more than macroeconomic theories, anecdotal evidence, and good intentions. But if it were possible to measure the effects of initiatives, governments and nonprofits could determine which programs actually made the biggest difference. Kremer began collaborating with other economists and NGOs in Kenya and India to test more strategies for bolstering health and education…

In the decade since their founding, J-PAL and IPA have helped 150 researchers conduct more than 425 randomized controlled trials in 55 countries, testing hypotheses on subjects ranging from education to agriculture, microfinance to malaria prevention, with new uses cropping up every year (see “Randomize Everything,” below). Economists trained on randomized controlled trials now work in the faculties of top programs, and some universities have set up their own centers to support their growing rosters of experiments in the social sciences.

If this is indeed a relatively new approach, what took so long? Perhaps the trick was thinking that experiments, typically associated with very controlled laboratory or medical settings, could be preformed in less controlled settings. As the article notes, they are not easy to set up. One of the biggest issues might be randomizing enough people into the different groups to wash out all of the possible factors that might influence the results.

This also seems related to the uptick in interest in natural experiments where social scientists take advantage of “natural” occurrences, perhaps a policy change or a natural disaster, to compare results across groups. Again, laboratories offer controlled settings but there are only so many things that can be addressed and the number of people in the studies tend to be pretty small.

Ten enviable, but not necessarily realistic, TV homes

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Take a closer look at the sometimes ridiculous dwelling places of ten well-known television shows.

There are few things quite as frustrating for those bunked away in crappy, overpriced rentals as watching sitcom characters putter around in homes that—in real life—would be astronomically expensive even with a steady income (which television characters often mysteriously lack.) Whether it be the NYC-based Friends apartment or the California-cool New Girl loft that’s causing a big dose of sitcom real estate envy, do have a look at some of television’s most enviable living situations—presented below in order of least to most realistic.

The Cosby Show and Big Bang Theory take the honors as the most realistic. Even as the average new American home has increased over the decades, might TV homes have increased even more?

As this is not the first article I have seen on this topic in recent months, I wonder what the outcomes of such analyses. One way to go would be to get into a discussion of how realistic TV shows should be. How much should television portray real circumstances of Americans who as a whole have a median household income around $50,000? In order to be good shows, do they have to present something close to reality? Or, do Americans prefer entertainment that is more aspirational? Perhaps there are audiences for both though the general trend seems to be that fans are not very worried about whether the homes are realistic.

A more interesting route would be to consider what effect these depictions of homes have on viewers. As sociologist Juliet Schor argues, does this give viewers a different reference group? Schor suggests when Americans see “normal” TV life – which, in reality, it typically upper class life even when the characters are supposed to be middle or working-class – they readjust their own consumption patterns to match those on TV. So, if viewers of Sex and the City see single women in New York enjoying rather large apartments, they then expect to find such places for themselves and might be beyond their means to make it happen.

A plea to “stop demonising McMansions”

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An Australian architecture lecturer argues we should “stop demonising McMansions”:

For quite a few years now, anybody who writes about these oversized single family homes has consistently demonised them as not just individually ugly, ill-designed and unsustainable, but as the building blocks of isolated suburbs devoid of a sense of community…

What all this McMansion bashing has in common is a set of assumptions that are ill-founded.

The first is the convenient lie that McMansions are the opposite of architect-crafted paragons of good design. This is easiest dealt with by visiting somewhere like Homeworld Kellyville, the display village west of Sydney…

The second anomaly is that a surprising proportion of available project home models are of notably good design. They make the most of small sites, with great connections between informal living areas and well sheltered outdoor al fresco rooms…

The third inconvenient truth?…He pointed out in 2006 that, of the major dwelling types, free standing suburban houses are the lowest energy consumers per occupant and appear to consume less water per occupant than contemporary apartments. That is data.

In the end, King argues that not all McMansions are bad. Yet, it is common practice to paint all McMansions with a broad brush. At the least, the term McMansion is effectively used to bludgeon certain kinds of homes, particularly big showy homes associated with suburban sprawl.