Monthly Archives: January 2014

Computer models of the effects of gerrymandering on urban and rural voters

Posted on by

A new computer simulation of voting patterns by geography in the United States suggests gerrymandering may not be the cause of Republican majorities in the House:

To examine this hypothesis, we adapted a computer algorithm that we recently introduced in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. It allows us to draw thousands of alternative, nonpartisan redistricting plans and assess the partisan advantage built into each plan. First we created a large number of districting plans (as many as 1,000) for each of 49 states. Then we predicted the probability that a Democrat or Republican would win each simulated district based on the results of the 2008 presidential election and tallied the expected Republican seats associated with each simulated plan.

The results were not encouraging for reform advocates. In the vast majority of states, our nonpartisan simulations produced Republican seat shares that were not much different from the actual numbers in the last election. This was true even in some states, like Indiana and Missouri, with heavy Republican influence over redistricting. Both of these states were hotly contested and leaned only slightly Republican over all, but of the 17 seats between them, only four were won by Democrats (in St. Louis, Kansas City, Gary and Indianapolis). While some of our simulations generated an additional Democratic seat around St. Louis or Indianapolis, most of them did not, and in any case, a vanishingly small number of simulations gave Democrats a congressional seat share commensurate with their overall support in these states.

The problem for Democrats is that they have overwhelming majorities not only in the dense, poor urban centers, but also in isolated, far-flung college towns, historical mining areas and 19th-century manufacturing towns that are surrounded by and ultimately overwhelmed by rural Republicans.

A motivated Democratic cartographer could produce districts that accurately reflected overall partisanship in states like these by carefully crafting the metropolitan districts and snaking districts along the historical canals and rail lines that once connected the nonmetropolitan Democratic enclaves. But such districts are unlikely to emerge by chance from a nonpartisan process. On the other hand, a Republican cartographer in these and other Midwestern states, along with some Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee, could do little to improve on the advantage bestowed by the existing human geography.

Perhaps this introduces a new strategy for political parties: the need to have more evenly distributed support rather than large clusters of support. But, as the bottom of the article notes, certain redistricting strategies like in Illinois or Maryland can provide Democrats some help in spreading out the effects of their urban voters.

More on luxury basements under London properties

Posted on by

The building of luxury basements under London properties continues:

A lack of room and strict planning laws dictate that the facade of many of London’s picturesque Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian-era neighborhoods must maintain their original character and outward appearance…

“The price per square foot (of basement extension) in areas we work in is probably £400 to £500 per square foot (between $660 and $830 per sq ft). The extra space this brings is probably worth double that,” he added…

“I think for any property with a value over £2 million ($3.2 million) a basement extension is certainly a consideration for the owners,” explained Rob Atkins of London estate agency, Domus Nova. “If you’ve lived in a house for 15 and 20 years and you cannot get a move for the right value then it is an option that can suit that growing family…

“Therefore I wouldn’t be surprised if you see that kind of basement living incorporated in houses for example in Paris, Rome, Vienna or Moscow in the future,” he added.

Without much regulation, it sounds like the incentives are generally there for wealthy owners to create these basements rather than move.

Many of these basements are being built in neighborhoods that are not the oldest in London. At the same time, I would be interested to hear about how such work could interfere with other underground services, whether that is sewers or the Underground or other properties.

Is there any place where this might work in the United States? It would likely have to be in a super-dense area where housing is in high demand. Perhaps Manhattan or San Francisco?

Americans want the “New Old House,” an older-looking home with McMansion amenities

Posted on by

The Wall Street Journal describes the trend of architects and builders putting together homes that look old and have character but have all the latest features:

“The first words that come out my clients’ mouths are, ‘We’d love to have a real old house. We just can’t find one,’ ” said architect Russell Versaci, who runs a Middleburg, Va.-based practice. “And the second thing they say is, ‘We are so sick of McMansions. We just want to get out and get back to reality.’ ”

What architects like Mr. Versaci—along with certain discriminating prefab builders and house-plan companies—offer instead is known as the New Old House: a sanely proportioned residence that’s historically accurate on the outside, but conceived for the needs of modern Americans on the inside. Austere Greek Revival farmhouses with roomy island kitchens. Time-travelesque Craftsman bungalows with startlingly open floor plans. Walk-in closets designed to hold more than a few Civil War-era muslin petticoats…

The exhibition is timely. According to Amy Albert, editor of Custom Home—a Washington, D.C.-based magazine that caters to architects, designers and high-end builders—a hankering for authentic traditional residential design is one of 2014’s big trends. That said, “People aren’t seeking exact replicas of historical houses,” she added. “They want architectural purity in the elevations and the details, but inside they want connectivity and open floor plans.” Discerning homeowners, she said, are demanding that custom builders bone up: “Mixing a Palladian window with a Craftsman column is not going to cut it. Even if people don’t have the vocabulary to articulate why it’s wrong, they instinctually know it is.”…

Both Mr. Versaci and Mr. Schafer acknowledged there’s something potentially inauthentic about recreating oldness, especially if you go to the extent of simulating patinas on stone (using coffee) or, as Mr. Schafer mentioned, importing $50,000 mature beech trees so your New Old House’s landscaping doesn’t look too new. “Making a mirage is an issue,” said Mr. Versaci. “My personal preference is to let a house age through natural processes. If you choose quality, natural materials like unlacquered brass, they will eventually age. But some 21st-century Americans, who are used to ‘add water and serve,’ just don’t want to wait.”

One of the more interesting parts of the new second edition of A Field Guide to American Houses is the last section on newer houses, dubbed Millennial Mansions, which discusses the differences between an authentic looking older home and a fake looking older home. For example, a new home in a Craftsman style might not have the correctly proportioned pillars on the porch or might be built on a slab when such older homes in this style usually had a basement.

Yet, the problem with historicity is not just about recreating the past. There is also an odd lack of interest in a historic interior as it is all about the exterior. If anything, this just reinforces the same mindset these people criticize about McMansions: it is all about making an impression with the exterior and then having a flashy interior. Would the people who complain McMansions don’t provide a good psychological fit make the same complaint about these new old houses?

Also, are these New Old Houses much smaller than the average McMansion?

Designing a McMansion that actually contains four townhouses

Posted on by

Check out a Fairfax County, Virginia McMansion that was intentionally built to contain four townhomes:

This is the Great House, a four-unit townhouse designed to look like a large, single-family home. Like DC and Montgomery County, Fairfax requires developers to build affordable units in new developments, but they often stick out like a sore thumb. When Carrington was being built in 2001, the county worked with builder Edgemoore Homes to help subsidized, $120,000 townhomes blend in with homes several times as expensive.

Each Great House is comparable in size to its neighbors and uses the same materials. But instead of one, 5,000 square-foot house, you have four, 1,200-square foot townhouses. Only one of the doors faces the street. A driveway runs around the back, where each townhouse has a two-car garage…

The Great House could be a particularly useful housing type as the region grows. A recent study from George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis estimates that the DC area will need 548,000 new homes over the next 20 years. About half of those units will need to go in the District, Montgomery, and Fairfax counties. And 60% of them will need to be townhouses or apartments…

Those things don’t really matter to neighbors who spend lots of time and effort to “maintain the integrity” of their single-family neighborhoods. But seeding their neighborhood with a few Great Houses that provide housing diversity while blending in could be a compelling alternative to building traditional apartments or townhouses there instead. Of course, they aren’t possible under most zoning laws, which only allow single-family homes in “single-family neighborhoods.”

This sounds like a fascinating compromise: help provide cheaper housing in a region that needs it while at the same time keeping the single-family home character of these neighborhoods. I wonder just how many “Great Houses” a typical suburban neighborhood could handle without social life changing or the McMansion owners complaining a lot.

I also suspect that some would argue building townhouses that look like this only perpetuates some of the problems of McMansions, including bad architecture and emphasis on sprawl and auto dependence. At the same time, a key factor in helping affordable housing succeed is that it needs to look like normal ousing so it doesn’t stand out and draw the attention of nearby residents.

Traffic deaths predicted to be 5th leading cause of death in the developing world

Posted on by

Even as the conversation about safer autonomous cars picks up in the United States, traffic deaths are an increasing problem in the developing world:

It has a global death toll of 1.24 million per year and is on course to triple to 3.6 million per year by 2030.

In the developing world, it will become the fifth leading cause of death, leapfrogging past HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other familiar killers, according to the most recent Global Burden of Disease study.

The victims tend to be poor, young and male.

In one country — Indonesia — the toll is now nearly 120 dead per day; in Nigeria, it is claiming 140 lives each day…

In 2010, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a “Decade of Action for Road Safety.” The goal is to stabilize and eventually reverse the upward trend in road fatalities, saving an estimated 5 million lives during the period. The World Bank and other regional development banks have made road safety a priority, but according to Irigoyen, donor funding lags “very far below” the $24 billion that has been pledged to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

It sounds like while diseases are well known and relatively well-funded, not many people have caught on to the problems of traffic deaths. This is all about social construction: where are the Bill Gates of the world to come in and tackle traffic problems in poorer nations?

Perhaps this gets less attention it is because cars are viewed as things that may help developing countries improve: owning them means citizens have more economic power and have more independence to get around as well as help their own economic chances (can carry things around, etc.). Particularly from an American point of view, cars are generally good things. But, of course, cars bring other problems in addition to safety concerns: pollution (a huge problem in many large cities), clogged streets, and an infrastructure that may not be able to handle lots of new cars on the roads (maintaining roads, having enough police, driver training, cities that have to redevelop areas to accommodate wider roads).

It will be interesting to see if this gets more attention in the coming years. It is one thing to discuss longer-term consequences of cars like increasing pollution but it is another to ignore large numbers of deaths each day.

Nice graphic on Chicago’s relative position as a global city

Posted on by

The cover story in today’s Chicago Tribune on Chicago’s status as a global city includes a nice graphic showing how Chicago matches up on a variety of dimensions.

This sort of multi-dimensional graphic is becoming more common. Its biggest advantage is that it can display a lot of information across a variety of dimensions. This graphic shows 10 different aspects of being a global city. It is also relatively easy to compare ranks of cities, if you know what you are looking at – the further out the area or the more area a city covers on the graphic means a higher ranking. Of course, the biggest downside is that is takes a little bit of time to figure out how to read it. Is a city better if it is closer to the middle or further away on each dimension? (It is is better to be further out – higher ranking cities cover more area.) It can also be a lot to take in at once.

It is a nice addition to add the seven comparison cities at the bottom with Chicago’s mass overlaid on each diagram. Just having Chicago’s rankings graphed would provide some information but do so without any context.

Claim: all media companies have a resident sociologist

Posted on by

This is all tongue-in-cheek but MTV suggests sociologists are in demand:

While falling in love can seem complicated at times, behavior experts can break down the science behind attraction in the simplest terms, so we called upon MTV’s resident sociologist (what media company doesn’t have one?) to deconstruct last night’s “Are You The One?” premiere using her Five Factors of Love thesis.

If there are not real sociologists on TV much, perhaps we could argue many networks and stations have people who play sociologists. Aren’t many of the talking heads pontificating about social forces?

On one hand, if these sociologists were primarily tasked with analyzing the latest reality dating shows, the job may not be that exciting. On the other hand, if there was a sociologist who was able to talk about important issues on TV, areas that consistently match with their research, and was afforded the ability to interact with other experts as well as TV personalities, it could be a very interesting gig. All together, this may mean MTV would not be the best place for a TV sociologist…

A McMansion and a Megamansion have a spirited debate

Posted on by

Listen as a 9,000 square foot McMansion and a 30,000 Megamansion debate their respective virtues. Who should really be called ostentatious? At least they can agree on their dislike for a nearby apartment building.

This is a funny series: you can also find a conversation between two trash-talking classic pieces of furniture, an argument between a blender and espresso machine, and two NYC bikes duke it out. Here is more about the short series:

Comedy writer Tom Saunders (Arrested Development, The Larry Sanders Show, Just Shoot Me), on the other hand, has long fantasized that the stuff around us actually talks, and he has created a series for DnA that proves it.

In Everything Talks, buildings and objects (often brand-name designer products) bicker over who’s best. They puff out their chests, brag and trash talk, trying to best their rival. The segment spotlights the thrill of rivalry and in doing so has fun with the status we humans attach to our objects.

Here is how Tom describes Everything Talks: “The idea that we could hear an actual conversation between, for example, a Vitamix blender and a Rancho Silvia espresso maker was science fiction only a few years ago. At last, a new computer app (connected to an ultra sensitive listening device) is able to translate, amplify and record otherwise inaudible discussions between inanimate objects without them knowing we are listening in!

Throw in some of the magic from The Twilight Zone and these braggart status could soon be taking over the world…

One part of this that is funny is that while humans use consumer goods as status symbols and measure themselves against others with these objects, they don’t always do this directly. This can be done through intermediaries or in one’s own head for a long time while trying to not let others know this is happening. This reminds me of the findings of the ethnography The Moral Order of a Suburb where a sociologist finds that suburbanites tend to get along by avoiding direct confrontation. In debates over McMansions, this might take the form of going to local government and objecting or writing a letter to the editor (though I’m sure there are occasionally face-to-face arguments about McMansions).

 

Mapping NYC’s manufacturing facilities in 1919

Posted on by

A 1919 map of New York City’s manufacturing facilities provides insights into the city’s manufacturing prowess:

In 1919, this list shows, New York produced more than 50% of total national output in twelve lines of manufacture, and was competitive in many more.

Geographer Richard Harris, writing about industry in the city between 1900-1940 in the Journal of Historical Geography, points out that because of the particular products New York was known for (lapidary work, women’s clothing, millinery), many industrial workers were women. In 1939, they represented 36% of the total workforce. Workers in Lower Manhattan, where many garment factories were located, were particularly female.

Harris points out that although factories tended to move outward into the boroughs after 1919, before WWII the city did retain many factories in its central core, bucking the nationwide trend of suburbanization of industry. In 1940, 60% of New York workers had manufacturing jobs.

In the midcentury period, however, development trends turned toward offices and corporate headquarters. Zoning regulations made building more factories difficult.

In recent years, the city’s economy has rested on the service and financial industries. While manufacturers still do set up shop in the city, the scope of their activities is specialized. According to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, industry now provides just 16% of private-sector jobs. New York still produces garments, textiles, and printed material, and has increased production of packaged foods (see this October 2013 report from the NYCEDC for details [PDF]), but city factories tend to be smaller and to employ fewer workers.

This is an impressive range of industrial capabilities in 1919. As the above section notes, today New York City doesn’t have much of a manufacturing image due to the rise of Wall Street, the finance industry, the sector, and entertainment industries. Yet, 16% of manufacturing jobs in New York City still adds up to a big number of employees and firms, even if these facilities are not in highly visible areas in Manhattan. Additionally, some of the more hip areas in New York City today, such as Williamsburg and SoHo, are places that were ripe for gentrification and redevelopment in recent decades after large industry left in the mid 20th century.

Argument: businesses should use scientific method in studying big data

Posted on by

Sociologist Duncan Watts explains how businesses should go about analyzing big data:

A scientific mind-set takes as its inspiration the scientific method, which at its core is a recipe for learning about the world in a systematic, replicable way: start with some general question based on your experience; form a hypothesis that would resolve the puzzle and that also generates a testable prediction; gather data to test your prediction; and finally, evaluate your hypothesis relative to competing hypotheses.

The scientific method is largely responsible for the astonishing increase in our understanding of the natural world over the past few centuries. Yet it has been slow to enter the worlds of politics, business, policy, and marketing, where our prodigious intuition for human behavior can always generate explanations for why people do what they do or how to make them do something different. Because these explanations are so plausible, our natural tendency is to want to act on them without further ado. But if we have learned one thing from science, it is that the most plausible explanation is not necessarily correct. Adopting a scientific approach to decision making requires us to test our hypotheses with data.

While data is essential for scientific decision making, theory, intuition, and imagination remain important as well—to generate hypotheses in the first place, to devise creative tests of the hypotheses that we have, and to interpret the data that we collect. Data and theory, in other words, are the yin and yang of the scientific method—theory frames the right questions, while data answers the questions that have been asked. Emphasizing either at the expense of the other can lead to serious mistakes…

Even here, though, the scientific method is instructive, not for eliciting answers but rather for highlighting the limits of what can be known. We can’t help asking why Apple became so successful, or what caused the last financial crisis, or why “Gangnam Style” was the most viral video of all time. Nor can we stop ourselves from coming up with plausible answers. But in cases where we cannot test our hypothesis many times, the scientific method teaches us not to infer too much from any one outcome. Sometimes the only true answer is that we just do not know.

To summarize: the scientific method provides ways to ask questions and receive data regarding answering these questions. It is not perfect – it doesn’t always produce the answer or the answers people are looking for, it may only be as good as the questions asked, it requires a rigorous methodology – but it can help push forward the development of knowledge.

While there are businesses and policymakers using such approaches, it strikes me that such an argument for the scientific method is especially needed in the midst of big data and gobs of information. In today’s world, getting information is not a problem. Individuals and companies can quickly find or measure lots of data. However, it still requires work, interpretation, and proper methodology to interpret that data.