Author Archives: legallysociable

More obnoxious in the suburbs: Prius with Coexist sticker, oversized pickup with Blue Lives Matter flag in the bed, or car with super-loud muffler?

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Cars are not just cars; they are an embodiment of who Americans are. Even as suburbanites like cars, here is a quick description of three noteworthy vehicles that might raise some suburban hackles:

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-The Prius driver with the Coexist sticker on the back. Not only are they already signalling their green bona fides with their car choice, they accentuate their tolerance for different religious groups. Prius drivers are not thought of as being aggressive but the bumper sticker suggests they are interested in trumpeting tolerance or pluralism.

-The large pickup truck with the American flag and Blue Lives Matter flag proudly waving from the truck bed. These are not usually small trucks; they tend to be big versions that tower over other vehicles and can afford the loss of fuel efficiency to show their pride in country and police.

-The vehicle that makes itself heard through an intentionally loud muffler. This is not the occasional car that needs a muffler repair; this is a vehicle that added the sound so that it could be heard a mile away on a quiet night. Seeing the green light at a traffic light is an aural experience with these vehicles.

Other options for vehicles that might irritate suburbanites:

-The cool Tesla drivers. They can’t show off their autopilot features in stop and go suburban traffic but the quiet, sleek vehicles make their own statement.

-The upgraded SUV drivers. They do not just have a CRV or Rav4; they have the latest Lexus version or the Porsche Cayenne or a luxury Escalade.

-The person who lives on a nice street who drives the rusting clunker. I know many of your below-the-radar American millionaires drive their Toyota Camrys or Honda Odysseys into the ground but there are expectations about what a vehicle should look like paired with particular residences.

-Anyone who drives strictly slightly below the speed limit. This has less to do with the vehicle and more with the driver but the cool factor of the car isn’t going to save someone from the ire of drivers.

Become suburban village president by 2 votes in the era of low local election turnout

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Local election turnout in 2021 was low in the Chicago area. And the final results of the village president race in one Chicago suburb illustrates one of the consequences of low turnout:

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On Wednesday, Khokhar was claiming victory in the village president race after unofficial results show him with 475 votes and Ontiveroz with 473.

A two vote margin of victory would be interesting in many elections, local or otherwise. Yet, the vote totals here are striking. The top two candidates received less than 500 votes each, fewer than 1,000 total.

Here is more information on the community in question: the Village of Glendale Heights. According to 2019 Census estimates, the community has 33,617 residents. Nearly a quarter of the population is under the age of 18. I do not know how many people are registered to vote. But, let’s say that roughly half of the adults (18+ years old) are registered to vote. This means the winning candidate for village president had roughly 3.9% of possible voters elect him (475/12,000 possible voters). If we take local turnout to be in the 15-20% range, 16.9% of voters elected the President (475/2,800 possible voters). The numbers suggest that not a whole lot of local residents cast a vote for village president.

The village president of Glendale Heights may not be able to, on their own, to make much change. On the other hand, communities elect such leaders for a reason. And Americans tend to like suburban local government and the ability of local citizens to help determine their own fate. So why don’t they turn out in greater numbers to vote for such officials? The fate of many suburbs and communities could hinge on this question.

A “weeping” statue at the library and religious phenomena

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Our local library has a sculpture outside its entrance of two children sitting on a bench reading. This is what the statue looked like on a recent morning:

This likely occurred because of the chilly morning giving away to normal spring temperatures.

However, I had just finished reading anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann’s latest book How God Becomes Real. She argues that religious people learn how to interpret phenomena many humans might experience, such as getting goosebumps or experiencing sleep paralysis, as religious experiences. Across people groups in the world and even within the same religious traditions, people interpret their bodily and mental experiences in different ways regarding religion. Yet, without these religious building blocks, what Luhrmann refers to as “kindling,” it is hard to maintain religious faith.

This relates to this particular statue because of the phenomena of weeping statues or art work or everyday objects that religious people sometimes interpret as divine activity. I have even seen this up close. When I was in college, my hometown had a tree in the downtown that started “weeping.” In a community with a sizable Catholic population, some viewed this is a religious sign. I heard about it and with a friend we went out at midnight or so – we were in college and had little else to do on a summer night in the suburbs – to see what was going on. The tree had some candles and religious items around it. Something was indeed coming out of the tree.

Could we conclusively say this was a religious sign? We could talk about the biology of what was going on. We could talk to different religious residents to hear their take. We could individually put this through our grid of beliefs and experiences and see what we made of it. I remember seeing it and thinking it was interesting. That was all. My religious tradition does not have much room for or focus much on such manifestations of the Divine. And so life went on.

Luhrmann’s work helps explain why some might see that tree – or statue – as something religious. On a lighter note, perhaps the weeping statue of a child reading is a signal of the lifelong joy of reading all can experience through the library. Or, perhaps it signals more.

Developers not willing to build a particular Chicago project because of affordable housing requirements?

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Chicago, like many American cities, asks developers of particular projects to include a portion of the space for affordable housing. But, developers argue this may make an entire project not worth their while. Here is a recent example from proposed developments on Chicago’s North Side:

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But those fees and the sites’ location within a pilot area where there are higher affordable-housing requirements – 20%, all on-site – have made some projects difficult to finance. The 700 W. Chicago project also has been made more difficult by the COVID-19 pandemic, which leaves a record level of vacant office space in downtown Chicago…

Omni Group appears to have been able to overcome financing challenges in part because it negotiated a lower purchase price for the site – $38 million, down from an initial $50 million deal with Greyhound – in response to the affordable-unit requirements

The firm is also known for keeping apartment buildings it develops, rather than selling them after they’re built and filled with renters. The decades-long investment strategy may help offset the 500-plus affordable units, which typically lose money for developers because of high construction costs.

The affordable housing requirements are not the only factor at work here but they are a regular part of proposals in many locations. The goal is to have some of the benefits of a new development in a desirable urban location – a valuable asset – address the important issue of affordable housing. If developers have no or little interest in constructing affordable housing on its own, the construction of desirable projects can still help lead to affordable housing.

What would be very interesting to know is how exactly the money, including financing, costs, and profits, works out with the requirements for affordable housing. Can the developers here not make any money or does it reduce their profits below acceptable levels? It is one thing if money will be lost but another if the affordable housing requirements limit the profit. How much return do they expect on a large project like this? Is the goodwill of participating in providing affordable housing worth anything (status, money down the road, favorable approaches to future projects, etc.)? While this is likely firm-specific proprietary information, I imagine some money still could be made.

Brooklyn Center, MN and the Fergusonization of suburbs

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Suburbs like Brooklyn Center, Minnesota and Ferguson, Missouri are places that have undergone significant changes in recent decades:

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U.S. Census Bureau data indicate that Brooklyn Center is the most rapidly segregating community in Minnesota. In 1990, the city was 90 percent white; its poverty rate was low, at 5 percent. Three decades later, the city is 38 percent white and its poverty rate has tripled, to 15 percent. It is now the poorest major suburb in the Twin Cities region, and it has a higher percentage of residents of color than any other major municipality in the area. Ferguson underwent nearly identical changes in the years before a police officer shot Michael Brown to death in 2014; the city transitioned from 85 percent white in 1980 to 29 percent white in 2010. Over the same period, its poverty rate almost quadrupled…

Suburbs usually remain vibrant and thriving as they become more racially integrated. But eventually a tipping point is reached, and the corrosive effects of racial isolation and segregation begin to be felt. When this happens, middle-class residents—mostly white, but not entirely—begin to leave in large numbers. Since 2000, Brooklyn Center has lost 42 percent of its white population; Ferguson has lost 49 percent. Economic opportunity has vanished too. Adjusted for inflation, the median income in Brooklyn Center has fallen by about $9,000 since 2000, and the city has lost a sixth of its middle- and upper-income residents. In Ferguson, median incomes have dropped by nearly $15,000 during the same period…

The suburbs that these dynamics leave behind replicate many of the same conditions that existed in segregated center-city neighborhoods in the 20th century. As in those enclaves, certain aspects of the relationship between residents and the powerful institutions with which they interact—police, elected officials, school systems, landlords, employers—appear colonial in nature. At the time of Brown’s killing, Ferguson’s mayor and almost all of its city council were white. Many police forces in resegregated suburbs are staffed with a large number of nonresidents, who also may be disproportionately white. Even private economic arrangements in segregated places can be extractive in nature. Before the 2008 financial crisis, Brooklyn Center was the largest suburban hub of subprime lending in the Twin Cities area. Tragically, the residents of resegregated suburbs face the same obstacles that many had attempted to escape by leaving major cities: struggling schools, unemployment, poverty, and police violence…

The Fergusonization of suburbs is a nationwide problem, uniting many far-flung communities whose residents and leaders may not even realize they have anything in common. Census data show that in 2010, more than 20 percent of the suburban population in major American metros lived in a predominantly nonwhite suburb reminiscent of Brooklyn Center or Ferguson, and that share has grown every year since. Because the forces causing resegregation are larger than any one municipality, individual suburbs are unable to solve this problem by acting alone. But solutions do exist.

The demographics of many suburban communities have changed in recent decades with more racial and ethnic minorities moving to and living in suburbs, including Ferguson, and more people in poverty in the suburbs. Yet, as the piece above notes, this does not necessarily mean new suburban residents are evenly spread throughout suburban regions. When new residents show up, white residents and wealthier residents tend to leave for other locations.

Sociologist Samuel Kye has research that looks at ongoing white flight in the suburbs. Here is the abstract for a published article from 2018 titled “The Persistence of White Flight in Middle-Class Suburbia”:

Scholars have continued to debate the extent to which white flight remains racially motivated or, in contrast, the result of socioeconomic concerns that proxy locations of minority residence. Using 1990–2010 census data, this study contributes to this debate by re-examining white flight in a sample of both poor and middle-class suburban neighborhoods. Findings fail to provide evidence in support of the racial proxy hypothesis. To the contrary, for neighborhoods with a larger non-white presence, white flight is instead more likely in middle-class as opposed to poorer neighborhoods. These results not only confirm the continued salience of race for white flight, but also suggest that racial white flight may be motivated to an even greater extent in middle-class, suburban neighborhoods. Theoretically, these findings point to the decoupling of economic and racial residential integration, as white flight may persist for groups even despite higher levels of socioeconomic attainment.

In the past, a move to the suburbs would have been positive for numerous groups. It represented success and finding the American Dream. This is not necessarily the case today; residential segregation patterns plus inequality in the suburbs means just living in the suburbs is not necessarily a step up.

Could housing bounce back even more unequally after COVID-19?

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Even as rents dropped in some major cities during COVID-19, might increased interest now reinforce existing issues in the housing market where those with resources have options and those with fewer resources cannot easily get a foot in the door? From Chicago:

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Trisler is among the buyers showing renewed interest in the downtown housing market after attention waned during the past year, as the lure of amenities and access to offices, restaurants and bars took a back seat in many cases to space and relative quiet…

In March, more homes were sold in the Loop and the surrounding neighborhoods than during any other month in at least a year, according to data from the Chicago Association of Realtors. A total of 531 homes were sold across those neighborhoods in March, compared with 418 in March 2020…

Low mortgage interest rates are making downtown condos more affordable to first-time buyers, such as those renting in luxury apartment buildings and looking to buy in similar buildings, he said. Homeowner’s association fees tend to be higher in buildings in dense neighborhoods, but the lower monthly mortgage payments can offset that. And buyers can negotiate good deals on homes in some parts of downtown, he said…

Despite the uptick in sales, lower-priced, one-bedroom condos have been slower to sell than bigger spaces, said @properties real estate agent Chris McComas. He speculated the smaller spaces appeal more to first-time homebuyers, who might have been furloughed earlier in the pandemic.

Some people did just fine during COVID-19. They had good jobs in particular fields that weathered the storm or even thrived during the pandemic. They may have been able to work from home. They already had homes, whether they owned or had rents they could afford.

Others had a tougher time. They have been laid off or furloughed. It could have been hard to find work. They might have become sick. Their housing situation might have been more precarious going in.

Now, as COVID-19 and its effects look like they are winding down, people can think about real estate again. Those who came out relatively unscathed will be able to more easily buy and sell. Those who did not will have a tougher time. This is not solely the fault of COVID-19; this bifurcated housing market has existed for some time. Starter homes are limited in number, somebody is buying the luxury condos that have continued to go up in the biggest cities, and younger adults have several obstacles that could limit their entrance into the housing market. At the same time, this could become another legacy of COVID-19: the ongoing splitting of the housing market.

Paying to dirty and clean up your (Sims) house

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Players of The Sims can now pay for the ability to dust and vacuum their homes in the game:

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In March, EA released new ways to enhance your Sims 4 experience called “kits,” which are more scaled down and less expensive than the game’s other downloadable content packs. Two of those kits, Country Kitchen and Throwback Fit, are pretty straightforward furniture and clothing packs that add new customization options to the game. In The Sims, you are essentially keeping these virtual people alive and designing their entire existence, from clothing to homes—these kits just offer a little more variety. But Bust the Dust is a little different than the rest, in that its primary purpose is to make your Sims’ lives dirtier. “Dust off the vacuum and tidy up in The Sims™ 4 Bust the Dust Kit!” the kit’s description boasts, making a mockery of the exclamation point by using it to try to sell one of the very worst IRL chores…

What makes Bust the Dust unusual is not just that it adds the new element of household grime to the game, but that it also only adds the new element of household grime to the game. Roaches and dog poop are very minor features of the aforementioned expansion packs, and even a more narrowly focused pack like Laundry Day, which gives your Sims the ability to wash their clothes, comes with a bunch of furniture and some new looks.But Bust the Dust isn’t interested in bells and whistles. It’s just … dust.

Maybe that’s not totally fair. The kit also provides vacuums you can buy (to bust the dust) and new character aspirations (so your Sims know how to feel about the dust and busting it). But mostly, paying $5 gets you a bunch of virtual dust, which accumulates over time on the floors of your Sim’s house, both in a thin coating and in interactive clumps around the room. Early reviews last month complained that the dust accumulated way too quickly—within a matter of in-game hours—but it took around two and a half in-game days for my house to go from clean to dusty. My Sim was thrilled when this happened, because it made the house feel “homey,” and presumably because Sims can’t have asthma. Around this time, a dust bunny moved in and became a kind of companion that you can feed (it eats dust) and pet (which again, is sentient dust).

One of the marks of adulting is the need to clean up after yourself. Dishes need to be washed. Laundry needs to be picked up, cleaned, and put away. Bathrooms need scrubbing. Dusting and vacuuming need to be done.

So why try to replicate this in a game? I suppose this is the point of the franchise: to simulate daily life. The various Sim titles over the years have replicated city building, ant life, towers, and more for multiple decades. Isn’t cleaning up part of daily life just as building water pipes?

Perhaps the odd thing here is paying for the luxury of doing this. The “Bust the Dust” is an add-on. And was this the plan all along: to get more money from users for the ability to clean? There are some people who like to clean. Some who will want the complete simulation. Others will want the twists here (you can feed the dust bunnies?). Some might have never known they wanted this until it became an option.

The commodification of the world continues: you can play a computer game where you pay to dirty and clean your house. Does it inspire players to stop the game and clean their own house? Does it stimulate the imagination? Maybe it is just fun to take what is often a mundane task and play it out on a screen.

The difficulty of measuring TV watching (COVID-19 and otherwise)

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Nielsen and TV networks are sparring over Nielsen data that suggests fewer people are watching television during COVID-19:

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Through the trade group Video Advertising Bureau, the networks are perplexed by Nielsen statistics that show the percentage of Americans who watched their televisions at least some time during the week declined from 92% in 2019 to 87% so far this year.

Besides being counter-intuitive in the pandemic era, the VAB says that finding runs counter to other evidence, including viewing measurements from set-top cable boxes, the increased amount of streaming options that have become available and a jump in sales for television sets…

The number of families, particularly large families, participating in Nielsen measurements has dropped over the past year in percentages similar to the decrease in viewership, Cunningham said. Nielsen acknowledges that its sample size is smaller — the company is not sending personnel into homes because of COVID-19 — but said statistics are being weighted to account for the change…

More people are spending time on tablets and smartphones, which aren’t measured by Nielsen. The podcast market is soaring. Sports on television was interrupted. Due to production shutdowns, television networks were airing far more reruns, Nielsen said.

This sounds like a coming together of long-term trends and short-term realities. The long-term trends include people engaging with media across a wider range of devices, it takes work to measure all of their viewing and finding people to participate in any data collection, and there are a lot of entertainment choices competing with television. In the short-term, COVID-19 pushed people home but it disrupted their typical patterns.

Will this affect the long-running place television has in the everyday lives of Americans? Even as of 2018, Nielsen reported that the average American watched more than 4 hours of television a day. TV might be conveyed through different formats – streaming, handheld devices, etc. – but it is still a powerful force and a significant use of time.

At the same time, how TV is consumed and how this affects what television means could be quite different moving forward. Watching streaming television on a smartphone while commuting is a very different experience than sitting on the couch after dinner for an hour or two and watching a big-screen TV. Teasing out these differences takes some work but a new and/or younger generation of TV viewers might have quite a disparate relationship with television.

How to (not?) add a parking garage to a charming suburban downtown

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The suburb of Wheaton, Illinois is considering adding another parking garage to its downtown. How does one add a large parking structure to a quaint downtown?

The idea of a parking garage is highly conceptual, one element of a broader study on parking needs, restrictions and the existing inventory downtown. The goal is to stay ahead of parking issues as new businesses take over long-vacant properties and bring more visitors to the shopping and dining district, especially on weekend nights…

City planners say replacing a surface lot behind city hall with a parking garage is a viable option because it’s city-owned property, eliminating the cost of land acquisition. It’s also tucked away from the main downtown arteries but still within walking distance of a Hale Street restaurant row.

Suess said a city hall garage would address neighborhood concerns about overflow parking on residential streets around Memorial Park, a summer magnet that recently underwent a $5 million restoration, the centerpiece of which is a new band shell…

Other council members said they still want to consider another location that’s been floated for a parking structure over the years: the east surface lot of the Wheaton Public Library.

There are practical matters that any community would need to consider: how much parking is needed? What is the cost of the structure? Is this the right location?

There are also bigger questions about what a suburban downtown is supposed to be. Many downtowns would like to have more people visit and spend money in shops, restaurants, and festivals. But, more people and traffic can change the atmosphere. This means more cars. Where to put them?

Parking garages offer a possible solution as multiple stories can pack in more cars than street parking. Wheaton already has a few parking garages so this is not a new idea. But, parking garages are rarely attractive structures. Do they fit in with the surrounding streetscape?

The proposed location above tries to mitigate some of these issues. Wheaton has done this with other parking garages; tuck them behind other buildings so they are not as visible. The proposed garage would be behind City Hall, hiding is from a main stretch of Wesley Street. Yet, it then backs up to residences on the west side, is on a different scale than City Hall to the south, is visible from Memorial Park (site of festivals and events that would drive people to the garage), and is across the street from a school and its green space to the north.

The other proposed site mentioned above has some similar issues. While it would be next to the library on one side and across the street from a multi-story apartment building on the other side, it faces single-family homes on the other side and smaller apartments on another.

Wheaton wants its downtown to exist on a particular scale so that it remains an attractive place for residents and visitors. More broadly, the community protects its character as a quieter, single-family home community (see how a discussion about zoning along a main thoroughfare played out). The city also wants to bring in people and address parking issues which can mar the experience on streets and in nearby residential neighborhoods. Is a four story parking garage the answer? Local leaders and the community will have time to discuss and decide.

“Digital nomads” wanted to enjoy city life but could not

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Researchers studying “digital nomads” detail their initial enthusiasm for big cities and later decisions to move elsewhere:

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Most digital nomads started out excited to work in career-track jobs for prestigious employers. Moving to cities like New York and London, they wanted to spend their free time meeting new people, going to museums and trying out new restaurants…

Although these cities certainly host institutions that can inspire creativity and cultivate new relationships, digital nomads rarely had time to take advantage of them. Instead, high cost of living, time constraints and work demands contributed to an oppressive culture of materialism and workaholism…

Although they left some of the world’s most glamorous cities, the digital nomads we studied were not homesteaders working from the wilderness; they needed access to the conveniences of contemporary life in order to be productive. Looking abroad, they quickly learned that places like Bali in Indonesia, and Chiang Mai in Thailand had the necessary infrastructure to support them at a fraction of the cost of their former lives…

The digital nomads we studied often used savings in time and money to try new things, like exploring side hustles. One recent study even found, somewhat paradoxically, that the sense of empowerment that came from embarking on a side hustle actually improved performance in workers’ primary jobs.

As the researchers note, this is a different perspective on the creative class that works in particular jobs and industries and pursues particular locations. Could these pieces detailed by Richard Florida be pulled apart; can the creative class jobs exist outside of the urban culture that Florida argues goes with it?

On one hand, numerous other locations other than big cities would love have to more creative class workers. These young professionals, often working in industries like tech, are desired by suburbs, smaller big cities, and many places because they represent status and potential long-time taxpayers and contributing members of society.

On the other hand, the creative class is supposedly not just looking for jobs with particular features: they also want to move to places with cultural opportunities and diversity. Can “digital nomads” find this outside of big cities? Maybe; there are suburbs and smaller big cities with diversity and vibrant creative scenes. Can these locations match the big city possibilities of places like New York or San Francisco or Austin?

These digital nomads have the potential to shape how communities look at jobs and residents in the coming years. Many will want them to locate in their community and yet the power of clustering together with other creative class people is strong.