Author Archives: legallysociable

Designing your own Peytonville, Part 5

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In a new iteration of the Peytonville commercials from Nationwide, Peyton is in the big city that loomed at the edge of his region:

peytonville5.jpg

This is one broad avenue with at least four lanes of traffic and it looks like there are bike lanes on each side. There are plenty of trees on wide sidewalks. The buildings are not that tall and are setback a ways. They primarily look like newer structures – glass facades – with some older buildings (or at least structures clad with bricks).

Is this a typical American big city? This view looks like either a sprawling city found in the Sunbelt or a smaller big city in the Midwest.

Is this meant to be an inviting image? My first thought is that this is a city built for cars and not people or pedestrians. With such wide streets, the scale is slightly off (even though the sizes of the buildings showed here do not overwhelm the streetscape). For example, crossing the street at this traffic light would take some time.

I wonder what kind of urbanism Peyton Manning prefers. Would he prefer a college town? A mid-sized big city like he played in during his NFL career?

Toll Brothers, smaller homes, and “affordable luxury”

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Can a smaller home also be luxurious? Toll Brothers is looking to sell such an option:

In an effort to expand into new segments of the housing market that fit into its wheelhouse, Toll is putting a new focus on reaching out to the first-time homebuyer, particularly through its concept of “affordable luxury.”…

Historically, luxury in the housing market has meant McMansions. However, Toll Brothers has broadened its offerings to include luxury apartment buildings, and its newest effort: affordable luxury. The affordable luxury niche (Toll won’t refer to it as a “segment”) is geared toward the millennial buyer, who is buying later in life and often has more financial resources than the typical first-time homebuyer. Currently, 37% of Toll’s offerings now have price points below $500,000, and in some areas hit $375,000. Note, however, that these are base prices, and when customization and additional amenities push the prices higher. Still, affordable luxury properties fall well below Toll’s average selling price in the fourth quarter of $857,800. The increased density (meaning smaller units/properties built close to each other) of these projects will help Toll maintain margins despite the lower price points.

During the earnings conference call on Dec. 9, Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearly explained the concept:

“While affordable luxury crosses all buyer segments including move-up and active-adult, this initiative is driven in large part by a growing number of millennials who are older, more affluent, and more discerning when they buy their first home. Think of it as a BMW 3 Series, a great example of affordable luxury.”

While there is a lot of concern in recent years about developers constructing few new starter homes and millennials not being able to buy into the housing market, could this plan suggest another factor at work: are younger adults expecting more out of their first home? Having a dwelling is one thing; people need a place to live and store their stuff. But, when committing to homeownership for the first time, do buyers expect the features they see all over TV and in the homes they knew growing up: open kitchens and living spaces, nice appliances, custom finishes, designer touches, plenty of bathrooms and bedrooms?

Toll Brothers says they are aiming at people who want their first home to not be just a dwelling: they want “affordable luxury.” One could argue that if people really needed first-time homes, perhaps the tiny home industry should be booming (and it is not mainstream yet). This builder believes there is a market for buyers who do not just want a home; they want a distinguished home that feels good to live in and shows well to others.

I have noted before that having smaller homes in the United States does not necessarily mean they will forgo nicer touches or be cheaper. I would guess there are a good number of buyers who are willing to trade some square footage (there is some bottom limit – many people do not want to truly live in a really small house) for luxury items in the home.

Claim: “The physical environment feels depressingly finished”

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As Derek Thompson of The Atlantic considers innovation and Silicon Valley, he includes this paragraph regarding innovation in the physical and urban realm:

And if you look up from your smartphone, progress becomes harder to see. The physical world of the city—the glow of electric-powered lights, the rumble of automobiles, the roar of airplanes overhead and subways below—is a product of late-19th-century and early-20th-century invention. The physical environment feels depressingly finished. The bulk of innovation has been shunted into the invisible realm of bytes and code.

There are several pieces that can be pulled out of this an examined:

1. Has innovation in cities and urban areas slowed? Many of the major changes may have already happened – think the modern skyscraper, the car and all the roads to go with them – but I’m guessing there are some lesser-known changes in the last few decades that have made a major difference. (For better or worst, one would be the global shift toward and innovations in capitalism, neoliberalism, and the finance industry that has had large effects on numerous cities and neighborhoods.)

2. If “the physical environment feels depressingly finished,” does this mean a change in aesthetics or style could alter this? Science-fiction films and shows tend to depict cities as white, gleaming, and move curved than they are today. Think Her which merges city life and technological change. Or, find images of cities from researchers, activists, and architects who imagine much greener cities full of plants and life rather than hard surfaces and cars. Perhaps the problem is not innovation as it is described in this article; one issue is that the look of big cities has not changed much in the fifty years or so (even as some individual buildings or projects might stand out).

3. If the look and feel of cities has not changed as much recently, could “the invisible realm of bytes and code” bring significant changes to the physical environment in the next few decades? In contrast to #2, perhaps future innovation in spaces will be less about collective experiences and aesthetics and more about changed private experiences. Imagine Virtual Reality in cities that allows pedestrians to see or overlay different information over their immediate surroundings. Or, easier access to Big Data in urban settings that will help individuals/consumers make choices.

Turning a 55 year old suburban split-level into a LEED platinum home

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A couple in Arlington Heights is committed to a green home for the upcoming decades of its lifespan:

Amy Myers and Mike Baker could have torn down their 1964 split-level home in Arlington Heights and replaced it with a McMansion…

It will be the first LEED Platinum home renovation in Arlington Heights. LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is governed by the U.S. Green Building Council and serves as the most widely used green building rating system in the world.

The house has been designed with such features as net zero energy consumption, smart stormwater management and integrated rainwater storage. Plans include wrapping it in a tight thermal envelope and utilizing materials like airtight drywall to maximize the home’s energy efficiency…

“We’re really trying to do everything we can to make his a model of how you can recycle a 1960s home into something for the future,” Kollman said.

A Google Street View image of the home in question:

ArlingtonHeightsHome

This is a serious commitment to a fairly nondescript suburban single-family home. I would guess few suburbanites would make such an investment. At the same time, this does hint at possibilities for the many postwar suburban homes. Rather than being torn down for better homes, there might be relatively cost-effective ways to such homes operating as improved dwellings. (And this could apply to ranch homes as well as McMansions which are maligned early in this story.)

Does the green retrofitting of such homes help wipe out the more destructive aspects of suburban sprawl? Even if this house achieves LEED Platinum status, it is in a setting revolving around the car. The owners might have an electric or hybrid car – but driving is still required and making those vehicles is not all good for the environment. Would the reduced heating and energy costs be more efficient than living in a multifamily building? Do landscaping changes offset the changes subdivisions made to the landscape there beforehand?

I would be interested to see the possibilities of more LEED suburban homes, particularly if the costs are reasonable enough for homeowners to consider this as opposed to moving or tearing down the home. In the end, this would require more homeowners to think about keeping a home for a much longer scale and investing money in a way that might not lead to a huge return in their property values.

Graphing changing household arrangements from 1960 to 2017

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An article discussing changes in American household arrangements includes this graph:

HouseholdArrangements1960to2017

A summary of the data:

It all represents an increasing distance from the nuclear-family structure considered traditional for decades. The changes solidify shifts that have been mounting since then, erasing the notion of one dominant family type. In the early 1960s, two-thirds of children were raised in male-breadwinner, married-couple families. By contrast, today there is no one family-and-work arrangement that encompasses the majority of children, demographers say.

“That dominant model declined, but it’s not like it was replaced by one thing,” says Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. “It was replaced by a peacock’s tail, a plethora of different arrangements.”

The graph is most effective at showing the biggest change: the decline of the “mother-father married, father only earner” group over nearly six decades. Two other categories have significant increases – married and dual earners, single mother – while the five categories at the bottom involve relatively fewer households.

The graph is unusually skinny from left to right and this helps emphasize the straight lines up or down over time. Would a wider x-axis show some more variation over time or are the trends always pretty consistent?

The colors are a little hard to distinguish. I am not usually in favor of dotted lines and so on but this might be an opportunity to differentiate between trend lines.

Just thinking about other graph options, a pie chart for each time period might also communicate the big change well (though the smaller categories might not show up as well) or a clustered bar graph with the two years side to side could show the relative changes for each group.

In sum, graphing significant social change is not necessarily easy and this format clearly communicates a big change.

 

Celebrating new development – and recognizing what is lost

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Looking at a few 2010s retrospectives at Curbed, I enjoyed looking at one detailing some of the buildings and spaces lost in Chicago in the last ten years:

The losses in Chicago’s built environment go far beyond the buildings and their architectural features. These places are symbols of greater failures: vacant lots represent a dearth of affordable housing, church-condo conversions signal the absence of community spaces, and closed schools call attention to the city’s disinvestment in its neighborhoods.

This only covers a sliver of the demolitions and conversions that have occurred in the past decade. These spaces are still mourned today, and as we reach the end of a decade, let’s take a look back at what Chicago has lost.

This is an interesting collection. And it does not even address the significant changes that may have come to neighborhoods or smaller areas through new development. Addressing how a place changes in atmosphere and feel goes beyond just buildings.

What is the proper or best way to mark these losses? Growth is often seen as an inarguable good. Don’t residents and leaders want new buildings, new options, updated spaces? Here are a few ways buildings and spaces could be memorialized:

  1. Articles, books, and websites can help keep memories alive. A retrospective like the one above makes sense but such pieces need to keep coming, particularly as the years pass and new residents do not even know what used to be there.
  2. Some sort of public marker or display in certain locations. This would be hard to do for every structure that changes but imagine having both a new building or space and a public marker with an image and some text that records what also stood on that land. This would help future visitors visualize what used to stand there.
  3. How about a museum for a lost Chicago? I could envision exciting displays with pictures, videos, interviews, text, and immersive recreations (whether parts of buildings that are reconstructed or using virtual reality displays) that celebrate what used to be in Chicago. A history museum can do some of this as could a celebration of architecture but really focusing on buildings and spaces could be really interesting and worthwhile for a city that wants to celebrate its past.
  4. Of course, ongoing historic preservation efforts can help keep this in the public eye. While it may be difficult at times to agree on a balance between saving key structures and allowing for change and innovation, at least having public discussions about important structures helps provide reminders of how something can be lost even as something new looks promising.

Tiny homes that also come with community

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Fewer square feet than an average new house is one feature of tiny homes. For some tiny homes, they also come with built-in community:

With the tiny home lifestyle comes a certain determination to do more with less. Of course, this explains why tiny home owners are choosing to flock to dedicated subdivisions with like-minded individuals opting for a simpler life. According to Randy Hanson, the longtime developer behind Lake Walk Tiny Home Community in Greer, this shared philosophy has forged a strong connection between residents.

“Tiny houses create more of a close society and close community than anything else. I’ve been developing subdivisions all my life, and I’ve never seen this before. The people have formed almost like a family and they do things together,” says Hanson. “The houses are close enough together and they all have front porches. They sit on their front porches and holler back and forth like the old days.”

Sitting along the shore of Lake Cunningham, Lake Walk’s amenities include a dog park, community garden and picnic area, as well as a newly opened coffee shop. Of the community’s more than 60 lots, only three sites remain available…

After a year and a half of navigating the permitting process, Creek Walk Tiny Home Community in Travelers Rest is perhaps South Carolina’s newest tiny home village. Located along the Swamp Rabbit Trail and in prime distance of Greenville proper, Creek Walk offers access to downtown locales while also providing the peace and seclusion of nature. Whereas traditional, full-scale developments would require leveling a wooded area before construction could even begin, tiny homes are small enough to position among the trees. This means that rather than waiting a lifetime for the tiny sapling you planted in your yard to reach full size, you can enjoy the shade of a hearty forest on move-in day. In this way, tiny home communities can be about preservation as much as they are about destination.

Many homes are part of subdivisions. What makes these communities much different? Four possible answers:

1. The houses are still separate but are smaller and closer together. Unlikely townhomes and condos that allow residents to own their unit but are connected to other units, tiny houses have both the closeness and separation.

2. These tiny house communities may face unique zoning and regulatory challenges. As the article notes, not all municipalities are prepared for this.

3. More so than typical subdivisions, these communities might really bring people together for lifestyle reasons. Those who want a tiny house may be more alike each other than the typical homeowner.

4. Speculation on my part: because the homes are relatively small,residents spend less time inside or in private spaces and thus interact with each other more than typical homeowners.

Limiting suburban through traffic by putting up gates during rush hour

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Some neighborhoods and communities are fed up with people cutting through on their streets. A Denver suburb considers putting up gates:

The town of about 800 is now proposing gates at two main entrance/exit points, blocking access during the morning and evening rush…

“The traffic has become increasingly problematic both in volume and speeding. The Town does not have sidewalks and it is dangerous for residents to walk,” said Lisa Jones, mayor of the Town of Foxfield.

While two gate locations are recommended, there are still about a half dozen other entrances to Foxfield that would not be gated. The gates will be paid for by the Town of Foxfield.

I can imagine a driving landscape in a decade or so where only certain vehicles are allowed down certain streets. Imagine a large city banning Uber and/or Lyft during certain hours of the day. A wealthy suburb restricting access to delivery trucks in the early morning. Another community not wanting commuters to go through residential neighborhoods. A neighborhood not allowing certain size vehicles (like oversized pickup trucks).

All of these might help local residents feel better but they fail to help with the bigger problem: traffic is a regional issue. Communities should be working together on these issues, not walling themselves off. Creating more private space will only serve to make the problem worse for everyone.

I am not sure who exactly would have any sway in these matters. In the case above, it sounds like other communities could lodge objections and emergency services could require that the gates allow them access. Should state transportation agencies look into this? Can a legislature suggest restrictions cannot be put on public roads? Could a coalition of local and regional governments make a pact not to do this to each other? Perhaps this is not needed yet as few communities have gone too far down this road. But, it might come sooner than we think.

Black homeownership rates similar to before 1968 Fair Housing Act

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An article about homeownership among black millennials includes this statistic:

Homeownership levels for blacks reached 42.7% in the third quarter of 2019 (compared with 64.8% for the overall population), a near-record low that has virtually erased all of the gains made since the passage of the Fair Housing ACt in 1968, landmark legislation outlawing housing discrimination, census data show.

“African Americans are already being left out of the housing market and that’s exacerbating levels of inequality in this country,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist and senior vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors. “There’s a kind of urgency now within the housing community to bring younger African American buyers into real estate.”

Despite a decade of economic growth in the United States, including record low unemployment and higher wages for black workers, millennials of color make up only a small portion of the overall market for real estate, data show.

This cannot be good. Even as other economic figures might be good, owning a home offers a key way for Americans to build wealth over time. Going further, not having a home means being at the whim of landlords, perhaps more instability regarding having housing, and limited access to wealthier communities where a majority of residents own homes. Furthermore, this data suggests not much has changed in 50 years; does this hint that the gap between groups in the United States remains relatively unchanged?

If the next generation of young adults is struggling to purchase homes, that suggests the problem will continue for at least another 10-20 years. If there are politicians serious about fighting inequality, wouldn’t this be a good issue to take up, particularly given the persistent gaps between black and Latino homeownership and white homeownership?

A short history of the kitchen island

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The open concept kitchen and living space is ubiquitous these days and it often includes a sizable island that stands between the food preparation space and the living. How did that island develop?

The earliest islands were humble worktables in the center of the kitchen (think downstairs at Downton Abbey). The open kitchen and built-in island didn’t arrive until the 20th century.

“The iconic suburban image of the command-post kitchen where the woman of the house could do her work and observe the kids really resonated in 1950s America,” says Sarah Leavitt, curator at the National Building Museum in Washington. “The idea was to build this concept of family and togetherness right into the actual architecture and design of the house.”

While the island was an aspirational symbol of modern housekeeping, it was mostly a product of postwar construction of suburban single-family homes. It gained momentum through the 1960s and ’70s but didn’t become a mainstream design element until the 1980s and ’90s, when open-plan kitchens became the rage, buoyed by the popularity of the Food Network and HGTV.

Suddenly, the island wasn’t just a prep space but also a stage to perform for your guests, though visibility has its drawbacks. “It looks nice when it’s clean,” Leavitt says, “but given the potential for mess, it’s surprising that it continues to have widespread appeal.”

An interesting shift over the span of roughly one hundred years: from a surface for getting things done in the kitchen to a gendered command center to more of a performance space and status symbol. A few thoughts:

1. Would knowing the past history of the island – workspace, more out of sight in upper-class households, and place for wives/mothers to observe their household – change how current homeowners think about the island? Is the island now past all of these connotations and simply about appearances or modern conceptions of open family space? Do homeowners and visitors feel like islands are freeing or are they confining in new ways?

2. Could the pendulum swing back to using the island for essential duties? Imagine a continuing decrease in social interaction and less justification in buying entertaining spaces when entertaining in large numbers rarely happens. Or, a backlash against all the eating out leads to more people prepping food at home.

3. The full article suggests some have already reacted against islands by going back to tables which have some nice features in comparison. Is the perfect world then having space both for a sizable island and an intriguing table?