Author Archives: legallysociable

Putin’s palatial McMansion?

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McMansions are big but not usually too big. At some point, they become a mansion. Does it make sense then to compare a structure that may have been built for Vladmir Putin to a McMansion? Here is the argument:

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That film is Putin’s Palace, an expose of the Versailles-scaled estate Russian President Vladimir Putin has allegedly constructed for himself on the Black Sea. Produced and narrated by Alexei Navalny, the now-jailed activist and opposition leader, the film runs to nearly two hours and has been viewed more than 106 million times on YouTube — almost certainly record viewing for any film on architecture…

Located outside the seaside town of Gelendzhik, it is almost comically lavish, a virtual Kremlin-on-the-sea, surrounded by vineyards and protected by multiple levels of security, including a no-fly zone overhead. According to the film, it has its own church, a sculpture garden, a boulevard lined by rare trees, an arboretum (with 40 gardeners to keep it up), an amphitheater, an underground hockey rink (Navalny: “Who needs a palace in which you cannot play hockey?”), an amphitheater, a guest house accessed by a 260-foot-long bridge, a power station, staff dormitories, an operations center, a pair of helipads and its own gas station…

But Cirillo is no Rastrelli, and so while the palace apes the scale and grandiosity of the Hermitage, it lacks the essential dignity of the original, its sense of imperial grandeur. It is, in effect, a McMansion scaled up to palatial level, with the kind of amenities you’d find in an upscale suburban development in North Dallas: indoor pool, home theater, gym, bar, closet space galore…

Besides the tawdry detailing and construction, the essential difference between the palace and its historical models is conceptual. The great palaces were not just residences, but public expressions of an all-encompassing philosophical framework that reflected the monarch’s godlike presence across the entire physical and intellectual space of empire.

With this argument, a McMansion is defined less by its size but more in how it tries to imitate established styles or buildings and fails. Imitating the palaces of the past is not necessarily easy to do and the project can instead turn into a farce.

I wonder if it can also go the other way: can a McMansion be scaled down to a much smaller size? Imagine a McMansion tiny house that attempts to replicate a larger dwelling. Or, even a relatively small house that tries to do too much in borrowing elements.

Perhaps this argument works an additional way. Labeling any house or building a McMansion immediately casts the structure in a negative light. Putin and McMansion can be an easy link for those critical of his actions. Of course someone like that would live in a McMansion rather than a coherent architectural marvel? I have read many stories of how powerful people create outsized structures meant to display their prestige and power. Do such people often create architectural marvels or do they tend toward McMansion territory?

Combining local government and company towns in a Nevada proposal

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A proposal in Nevada would create “Innovation Zones” where companies could form their own local governments:

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According to a draft of the proposed legislation, obtained by the Review-Journal but not yet introduced in the Legislature, Innovation Zones would allow tech companies like Blockchains, LLC to effectively form separate local governments in Nevada, governments that would carry the same authority as a county, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and justice courts and provide government services, to name a few duties.

Sisolak pitched the concept in his State of the State address as his plan to bring in new companies that are at the forefront of “groundbreaking technologies,” all without the use of tax abatements or other publicly funded incentive packages that had previously helped Nevada bring companies like Tesla to the state.

During his speech last month, Sisolak specifically named Blockchains, LLC as a company that had committed to developing a “smart city” in the area east of Reno that would run entirely on blockchain technology, once the legislation passes…

The draft proposal lays out the requirements for the zone, including the applicant owning 50,000 acres of undeveloped land, all within a single county but separate of any city, town or tax increment area. And the area would have to be uninhabited. The company would also need to have $250 million, and a plan to invest an additional $1 billion over 10 years into the zone.

This would appear to come at the nexus of trends. First, Americans generally like the idea of local government. They believe it to be more nimble and responsive to local needs as local officials can focus more on getting things done than getting bogged down in ideology or numerous competing interests.

Second, tech companies and other big companies like the idea of large campuses. Having a sizable portion of private land where employees can do all sorts of things, including work, is already a feature in some tech headquarters.

Third, governments want to attract businesses, whether headquarters or manufacturing facilities or office parks, that can help bring jobs, tax revenues, and status. This proposal provides different incentives compared to the traditional tax break.

Fourth, businesses like the idea of controlling activities regarding their company. Company towns are not new nor are ideas about creating regulation free zones for business activity. Being able to create local regulations, collect taxes, and more could be attractive to some companies.

Would such a proposal prove successful? It might depend on the definition of success: it could work out well for the business but perhaps not for employees or surrounding communities. And even if it does work, is it broadly transferable to other locations? The conditions in Nevada might be different than many other locations in the United States.

How searching for houses online became sexy

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With SNL poking fun at the ways people in their late 30s use Zillow to look at housing, what makes online home shopping such a current phenomena? I thought of the numerous factors that had to come together – here is an incomplete list:

SNL “Zillow”
  1. The rise of online real estate sites and apps. These have been around for years but between Zillow.com, Redfin.com. Realtor.com, Trulia.com, and more, potential sellers and buyers have a lot of easily accessible platforms. These options are now ubiquitous: people can search at any time from any location for any length of time. And now that some online listings have video tours and/or 3D models, viewers can get a good sense of what a property is like without ever getting near it.
  2. COVID-19 adds much to existing patterns. With some people interested in moving out of cities and health risks making it more difficult to see homes, online viewing may be the primary option.
  3. The SNL spoof targeted a particular age group – people in their late-30s – who might be in the middle of a housing dilemma. By this age, those interested in settling down somewhere may or may not have the resources (think school loans, unstable employment during COVID-19 and the last economic crisis in the late 2000s) to buy in the places they want. But, the browsing is free and all sorts of homes in all sorts of locations are available.
  4. The single-family home has always been an important part of the American Dream. Today, this is true and in new ways. The home is a respite away from COVID-19 and political polarization. It is an important investment as buying the right home is not just about enjoying day-to-day life; it should pay off in the future when the homeowner wants to sell and housing values have continued to rise.
  5. Americans also like to consume and compare their social status or possessions to others. With homes occupying such an important part of American mythology, these larger patterns carry over to these sectors. Browsing homes online allows for window shopping and comparisons on one of the most expensive investments. And homes are not just dwellings; they offer windows into lifestyles and neighborhoods.

Put all of these together and you get an SNL reflection on how home searching and purchasing happens today.

Asking tough questions of American athletes

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The story of a Danish journalist who covers the NFL and asks certain questions of players hints at cultural differences in approaching both sports and important social issues:

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Back in 2016, Kjærsgaard-Rasmussen lived in Burbank, Calif., for a year with his wife and son. It had always been his dream to spend some time in the States, so when his parent company asked him to help its esports arm transition from Twitch streaming to television studio production in Los Angeles, he jumped at the opportunity. He had a great house and a pool. He had friendly colleagues at work.

But what he noticed over time is that he’d end up having a version of the same conversation every day, one that never broke beneath the surface. He remembered, for example, being confused about a situation involving how to get the local water authority to turn the water on at his house and wanting to ask someone about it—a step beyond hello and how are you. He felt like there was an immediate recoil…

It shines a light on something that seems to permeate culturally, reverberating from the sporting world that Kjærsgaard-Rasmussen finds himself thinking so much about. Maybe it’s the end result of widespread, rigorous media training, which creates a fast-food experience of well-meaning words pieced nicely together but ultimately containing no substance, an appeal to our innate desire to move on. In some unconscious way, does our lack of exposure to actual humility and openness inform our default setting, which is to simply wince through the tough stuff and avoid it in real life, too?…

The phenomenon is not necessarily unique to the U.S. Kjærsgaard-Rasmussen saw, for example, the further any players drifted from Denmark (perhaps to the English Premiere League) the less likely they were to be interested in answering difficult questions or exhibiting any kind of remorse for something negative that had happened. It creates a situation where it feels for Kjærsgaard-Rasmussen like he is doing something wrongwhen he’s merely asking fair questions.

At the least, this story sheds light on how others in the world can view what many Americans would take as normal. The NFL is the NFL. Except when you are viewing it with a different lens. Americans also have the ability to watch many sports around the world through an American lens with an American network and broadcasters providing the commentary and interpretation.

At a deeper level, this asks what we expect to hear from athletes and others regularly in the public eye. Does it generally ring true that Americans just want to stick to sports, rather than consider the actions of athletes and those associated with teams? Probably, even as sports has been an important social scene regarding social change (and resisting it).

What the architecture of City Hall communicates

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A new book titled City Hall looks at the design of city hall across American communities:

“Our democratic heritage goes back to ancient Greece, and so it stands to reason that when America was born, so to speak, in the late 18th century, municipal buildings referred to the Greco-Roman architecture, with the pillars and pediments and cornices,” he says. But as the country matured, different forms of architecture began to emerge. “Then it becomes, ‘Do we still embrace the neoclassical style architecture, or do we start embracing our own time?’” he adds. (That argument more recently played out at the federal level, when former President Donald Trump tried to make neoclassical architecture the default style for all national buildings in his controversial “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” effort.)…

In many of these examples, governments used their city halls to express civic pride, and to be “at the forefront of progressive building technologies and changing architectural styles,” architectural historian Thomas Mellins writes at the beginning of Drooker’s book…

Regardless of the architecture, there is a recognition among mayors and architects that municipal buildings are ultimately places for the people, and that the designs need to convey a message of approachability. In San Jose’s new city hall, which opened in 2005, Richard Meier’s postmodern design made extensive use of glass, making a statement about government transparency as well as energy efficiency. The building’s unusual three-part structure emphasized that theme: There’s the rotunda and the city council chamber, and in between them at the heart of the complex is an open plaza that then-mayor Ron Gonzales and his administration wanted toserve as the “people’s living room.”

Public or civic buildings present a unique opportunity to highlight particular values and create public space to be used and enjoyed. This can be done in a variety of architectural styles or forms, affected by trends in architecture, regional differences, the size of the community, the resources available, and more.

This reminds me of James Howard Kunstler’s critique of Boston’s City Hall, a building designed by noted architect I. M. Pei. Kunstler argues that the space is not inviting and not a worthy public space. The Brutalist architecture does not necessarily invoke warm fuzzies about local government.

In contrast, many suburban communities opt for modest city halls in either more traditional styles or simpler postwar forms. Many suburbanites like the idea of smaller local governments and the suburban structures can highlight tradition and/or efficiency.

West Chicago City Hall depicted on Google Street View.

Part of the approachability of these a city hall or civic building involves how well they fit with the surrounding landscape. A Brutalist building could be more approachable with lush greenery around it. A plain suburban city hall could be more inviting if it did not sit behind a large parking lot. More broadly, American communities would benefit from inviting public spaces that are connected to civic buildings.

Seeing into the megamansions of celebrities

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The wealthy often live in large and lavish houses. Today, we have more access to some of these houses and the lives lived inside because the homes are part of what it means to be a celebrity:

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Sprawling celebrity homes exist across North America – like Drake’s 50,000 square foot Toronto mansion that’s large enough to house a regulation NBA basketball court (and does); John Travolta’s Ocala, Florida, property that makes up for its modest 6,500 square footage with two private airplane runways that lead straight to his front door; or Taylor Swift’s 11,000 square foot beachfront Rhode Island estate, which she immortalized in song-but the epicenter of celebrity real estate has always been Los Angeles. And homes there are only getting larger and more extravagant…

“American culture, to begin with, is unusually spacious, in the sense that people think of space as part of American culture,” Sonia A. Hirt, a professor of landscape architecture and planning, told The Atlantic in 2019. “This is partially part of the American promise-that you can have more room.”

But in the age of COVID-19, witnessing celebrities cloister inside their obscenely large houses and pander with “Imagine” sing-alongs can provide new reasons to scoff at their out-of-touch lifestyles. “Seeing celebrity homes [in 2020] took on new meaning in a potentially negative way,” said Andreas McDonnell, co-author of Celebrity: A History of Fame. “The pleasure of voyeurism was overshadowed by those feelings of resentment by regular people who are going through a really difficult time and are also confined to the home a lot more”…

As Instagram Lives and Zoom interviews allowed a more unfiltered look inside celebrities’ daily activities at home, the New York Times speculated that 2020 would bring about “the swift dismantling of celebrity culture.” But it’s unlikely they’ll stop buying insanely large homes any time soon. Luxury home sales surged nationwide in 2020, and Oppenheim noted that L.A. buyers have been eager to shed properties in cluttered, central neighborhoods like West Hollywood and seek more space and privacy further afield.

Homes are part of a package of conspicuous consumption: people with means can buy and do things in ways that others cannot and they can also display that to the world. A celebrity living a modest life may not get as much attention as someone flouting their purchases and lifestyle.A big house in a particular location denotes money, status, an interest in living near other elites. With social media and reality TV, part of being a celebrity today is inviting people into your life in more intimate ways. Through different mediums, observers can see the home and household. Yet, this leads to different expectations from viewers who have the opportunity to comment and critique.

Along similar lines, inviting people to see your home is a different kind of celebrity or status than an ability to stay out of the public view and not be observed. Some powerful or famous actors prefer to stay out of the limelight and physical residences are part of this. Perhaps it involves never allowing cameras inside their large home. Perhaps it means finding a home that is secluded and away from public attention, whether the house has gates and security or the residence is a unit in a high-rise that very few people can enter. Celebrity can bring the option of keeping the world out to a certain degree or inviting the world in, including into their home, in a way that very few people could.

Is there a connection then between seeing a celebrity megamansion and wanting something similar? It is one thing to observe the homes of celebrities. It is another then to act on acquiring a larger home and the life that goes with it. If Americans do see celebrities and others in media as reference groups, people with whom they compare their lives, then the megamansions might not just be fun; it may be part of a larger system that Hirt references where people expect that a higher status equals a bigger house.

Asking in San Francisco why a McMansion is allowed but a fourplex is not

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McMansions may not just be undesirable on their own. If a McMansion is built, another kind of dwelling is not. One proposal in San Francisco aims to address this:

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He will introduce an ordinance making it much harder to build giant homes — the ones increasingly dotting the hillsides above Glen Park that many San Franciscans deride as monster homes or McMansions, but which are perfectly legal to build.

He will also ask the city attorney to draft legislation making it legal for any corner lot in the city that’s currently slated for one home to allow up to four units. And, most significantly, the legislation will allow any parcel within a half mile of a major transit stop like the Glen Park BART Station to be converted into a fourplex — corner property or not. The extra units could be rented or sold.

Yes, in large swaths of San Francisco — this supposedly progressive bastion — it’s currently legal to build an enormous, over-the-top house for one family, but illegal to build a small apartment building of the same size for four families.

This question plagues many desirable neighborhoods in big cities and suburbs: should anything that disturbs the existing character and/or property values be allowed? If this is the driving question, a McMansion might be a threat because it is a different kind of home – derided by critics as too big, architecturally incoherent – compared to what is already there. At the same time, the McMansion is still a single-family home. If that single-family home was replaced by a multi-family unit, residents then express concerns about increasing densities. They might also have concerns about renters moving into what was a neighborhood of homeowners as many Americans assume renters are less committed to their community.

And, as the article notes, making changes like this often means neighborhood by neighborhood conversations to consider the implications. Will a change have different impacts in different communities? What might be some of the unintended consequences? What will neighborhoods look like in a few decades with changes?

San Francisco may have a particular need for solutions but so do many other locations. The answers might come slowly on a case-by-case basis.

An on-trend Amazon HQ2

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Many plans are made for large buildings in cities and metropolitan regions. Not all of them are built. But, when Amazon releases plans for their HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, people take notice because of the company and the design.

AboutAmazon.com

The centerpiece will be the site’s fourth and tallest tower, a 350-foot structure dubbed the Helix because it will feature two spiraling outdoor walkways with trees and plants from Virginia that twist to the building’s top…

Amazon’s new campus is the latest in a growing line of outdoorsy office projects, as companies try harder to offer a pleasant work environment and appeal to eco-conscious employees.

The Helix “will be an opportunity for people to literally go on a hike in the city,” said Dale Alberda, a principal at architecture firm NBBJ, which is designing the development across the river from Washington, D.C.

Plans for inside of the building also call for plenty of greenery, along with meeting space, offices and studios for artist residency programs. “You feel like you’re in a lush garden in the middle of winter in D.C.,” Mr. Alberda said of the interior design.

As someone who teaches Urban Sociology, this is right on trend in multiple ways.

  1. It is just outside the central city of the region but within a business district. (The Washington D.C. region has some unique features due to the government buildings at the center but the multinode region is found throughout the United States.)
  2. The building has numerous green features, both visible (such as lots of trees) and invisible (planning for efficiency).
  3. The design is more whimsical and playful compared to the more common glass and steel box. The structure will certainly stand out and attract visitors just to see it.
  4. The architects and the company say it is designed with people and well-being in mind, not just efficiency or costs.

Perhaps the only trend missing is a mixed-use component where the office space is combined with residential and commercial space.

All of this is for a tech company – perhaps the tech company right now – within an industry that hundreds of American communities would love to attract. Does this building work in the same way if it is built by an insurance company or as a municipal structure?

It will also be interesting to see how this interacts with surrounding buildings – including the other planned Amazon towers – and the broader community. Amazon says the grounds will be open to the public yet how many community members will be able to take advantage.

Homeownership up roughly 3% in 2020

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After the housing crisis of the late 2000s, the homeownership rate in the United States declined to 62.9% in 2016 and then slowly inched up. But, it jumped quite a bit from 2019 to 2020:

During 2020, the homeownership rate jumped to roughly 67%, up nearly 3% from a year earlier after remaining largely flat for a decade, according to the Census Bureau.

The article attributes this jump to COVID-19 and the shift of people from cities to suburbs.

This may be true. I have chronicled this here on this blog. However, there is limited overall data compared to reports from various cities (like New York and San Francisco) or population figures for states and communities.

If indeed homeownership jumped nearly three percentage points in one year, this is a big shift. In the historical data table from the Census (Table 14), it is rare to find huge jumps year to year. The fallout from the late 2000s happened in relatively small decreases.

A big jump in 2020 has implications for multiple actors: communities with new residents and others losing residents; those involved in the housing industry from develoeprs to realtors to investors to landlords; residents as those with resources took advantage of purchasing opportunities while others struggled to hold on and payments are looming.

How will these dueling pressures – buying homes amid COVID-19 and low mortgage rates at the same time as economic uncertainty – play out?

The current holy grail of sports: cheaper labor with stars, MVPs on rookie contracts

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Sports leagues have always had a few teams with a lot of money and a willingness to pay players. See the leaked details of Lionel Messi’s contract. These teams with resources tend to do well as their resources allow them to regularly compete for titles and pay to rectify mistakes.

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But, for the majority of teams, there is a regular pattern now: look for players on the cheap. Keep labor costs down. Do not pay too much for past performance. Sometimes this is due to limited resources, sometimes it is about ensuring profits, sometimes it has to do with salary caps or structures that try to ensure competitiveness.

This can occasionally lead to magical runs. The Leicester City title in 2015-2016 defied all odds. In baseball, teams like Tampa and Oakland regularly compete on the cheap and ship away players when they become too expensive. The Detroit Pistons could win an NBA title in 2004 without a major star. Tom Brady can be found in the sixth round.

But, these are rare. Without stars – who often are paid a lot of money – it is hard to compete year after year. Everyone hopes to strike gold now with a top pick, to find good fortune with home-grown talent, or to find diamonds in the rough missed by others. Hence, we see tanking and massive rebuilds as teams tear it all down and trust they can put together the right combination. This is the holy grail: have young players at a reasonable price and then hope it happens.

If it does not, teams often follow patterns. The Rockies pay to send the best third baseman of his generation to the Cardinals. The Lions and Rams paid big contracts to #1 overall drafted quarterbacks and now they swap them amid disappointment. The Blackhawks won multiple championships but now are burdened by big contracts paid to aging stars. Once these players command big money, it limits what else the franchise can do.

In each league, only one team can win it all each year. This would be true even if everyone spent all they could. But, when that does not happen, it is easy to see the interest in keeping labor and operational costs low as an impediment to winning. Even as the public debates inequality, the inequality in sports is real and affects outcomes and wages.