Author Archives: legallysociable

Celebrating the labor of those who build McMansions?

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The construction of single-family homes employs many Americans. When demand for homes drops, such as in the late 2000s with the burst housing bubble, many are out of work until the housing market heats up again.

Critics of McMansions would argue such homes should not be built. Instead, the land could be put to better use or developers and communities should focus on building other kinds of housing units that do not suffer from the same flaws.

But, the construction of McMansions employs people. Developers may build them to make more money than they could by building starter homes and communities may approve them in order to keep property values higher. And these homes provide work. Is this the case where a job is not worth it if the outcome is an undesirable product (in the eyes of McMansion critics)?

On this Labor Day, it would be interesting to consider how those who construct McMansions might be employed constructing other buildings. For many who construct McMansions, it could be hard to turn down the work if other opportunities are not present or the job pays okay. Should part of the fight against McMansions also include efforts to address labor issues?

Building Florida’s Metropica around retail

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A new development in Florida is built around a shopping mall:

Once safely inside, Kavana returned to explaining what that vision amounts to. Turns out it’s an Instagram-friendly mall that you can live in—one that happens to be smashed up against the side of an enormous swamp…

Approved for construction in 2014, the first residential tower of Metropica’s 4-million-square-foot planned community is set for move-in soon. On opening day, there will be a DJ spinning as buyers (and prospective ones) check out tennis courts and a state-of-the-art gym while enjoying gourmet popcorn. All this, Kavana said, is to showcase the conveniences and amenities that come with living inside a shopping center. He’s well aware that traditional retail is on the decline, but hopes he can buck the trend by bringing online players like Casper Mattress, which is heavily advertised by podcast hosts and Instagram influencers, to a brick-and-mortar location across from Tower One. Although Casper has yet to sign a lease, he hopes to court them and other retailers who might appeal to those millennials who hate malls but love “experiences,” as he put it…

Still, while it’s true that building your own jewelry at a Kendra Scott store is technically an experience, millennials are the most financially beleaguered generation in modern American history, and the only one to prefer urban environments to suburban and rural ones. Meanwhile, units at Metropica start in the mid six figures, and its $1.3 million penthouse overlooks two vast expanses, the juxtaposition of which defines the weirdness of South Florida’s bedroom communities. In full view is the Everglades Wildlife Management Area—facilitating regular clashes with wild animals—but also the parking lot of the BB&T Center, the arena where a different kind of wild animal, the Florida Panthers, battles visiting teams in professional hockey. With student housing, a building for active seniors, and an assisted living center also in the works, it might one day be possible to spend an entire lifetime in Metropica.

The question, however, is whether anyone will want to do that, or if the master-planned community will go the way of other Florida development boondoggles that were also advertised as utopias before falling into disrepair. Kavana is far from the first person to come to Florida and try to build something out of nothing, and perhaps as a result, the state has a long history of producing what sociologists call non-places. As the theory goes, there are three categories to describe where people spend their time in an ideal society: work, home, and a so-called third place where conversation is the main activity. In his book The Great Good Place, a guy named Ray Oldenburg said that might be a bar, a coffee shop, or the prewar concept of “Main Street”—no matter what form it takes, the third place has to be cheap (if not free), easy to get to without a car, and old enough to be embedded in the community.

Three quick thoughts:

  1. The rest of the article provides a quick overview of multiple large-scale Florida developments that did not work out as intended. At the same time, is it safe to say that development in Florida might have always been on a big scale? I remember visiting the Edison and Ford Winter Estates years ago and reading about how so few people lived on the Gulf Coast of the state then compared to now.
  2. The article does not say much about the funding for this project. As long as not much or any public money is on the line, the project going belly up may not be too harmful. (Of course, there are still environmental costs and partially developed land might be harder to develop in the long run.)
  3. It is also not clear who would move into Metropica outside of the appeal to millennials. Is this intended for Florida residents or people moving to the state? How does it compare to other developments in the area they could choose from? When I see major developments like this in urban areas that have more expensive housing, I always wonder who will move and/or invest in the property. (The Miami area is known for an interesting set of investors.)

Will there be more lawn mowing or less lawn mowing with climate change?

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If the climate is changing with some places predicted to receive more rain and some to receive less rain, how will this affect lawn mowing in the United States? A few quick thoughts:

1. If droughts (such as a few years back in California) and high temperatures are more common in certain places, more people could seek alternatives to lawns (looking for less water use or greywater use plus painting lawns or replacing them). Less lawn mowing!

2. If rain is more common elsewhere, this could lead to lusher lawns, the dream of many suburban property owners. More lawn mowing!

3. Producers of grass seed, lawn mowers, and others would have to adjust. This is a sizable industry that could pursue a variety of paths. Still sell the perfect lawn concept in wetter parts of the country while also selling lawn alternatives in drier regions? Selling hardier and less water dependent seeds in drier areas? I assume they already have plans. Perhaps more lawn mowing if people still want lawns and the right products are available?

4. This could affect how Americans regard the lawn. While the nicely kept green grass lawn seems fairly widespread, perhaps it will be a strong norm in some regions with significant variation elsewhere. How much this could affect other areas of homeownership and suburban life is hard to foresee. A wash for overall lawn mowing?

5. The doomsday scenario: perhaps other problems become so pressing that few care about lawn mowing. For example, why mow the lawn when food supplies are limited?

This question came to me after several stretches this year where rain and humidity constant for a few weeks. This required more mowing then and we have not experienced the typical July/August browning of the lawn because of the rainy spells.

Closer to blanketing suburban neighborhoods with cameras (via Ring doorbells)

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Police in hundreds of cities will now have access to Ring doorbell camera footage:

The doorbell-camera company Ring has quietly forged video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 police forces across the United States, granting them access to homeowners’ camera footage and a powerful role in what the company calls America’s “new neighborhood watch.”

The partnerships let police automatically request the video recorded by homeowners’ cameras within a specific time and area, helping officers see footage from the company’s millions of Internet-connected cameras installed nationwide, the company said. Officers don’t receive ongoing or live-video access, and homeowners can decline the requests, which are sent via emails that thank them for “making your neighborhood a safer place.”…

To seek out Ring video that has not yet been publicly shared, officers can use a special “Neighbors Portal” map interface to designate a time range and local area, up to half a square mile wide, and get Ring to send an automated email to all users within that range, alongside a case number and message from police.

The user can click to share their Ring videos, review them before sharing or, at the bottom of the email, unsubscribe from future footage-sharing requests. “If you would like to take direct action to make your neighborhood safer, this is a great opportunity,” an email supplied by Ring states.

See earlier posts about suburban police access to individual cameras and my own thinking about covering suburban neighborhoods with private cameras. Quoting from the latter post:

[I]f every square inch of suburban street and sidewalk (plus a lot of yards) are covered by cameras, is something lost? Is there more trust that can disappear between neighbors? Is it truly all suburbanites for themselves even as at least some of them are fairly financially, socially, and educationally secure?

At the same time, I suspect numerous suburbs would welcome this extra surveillance. Think of wealthier suburban neighborhoods or communities: wouldn’t they typically welcome more information on who is around their homes? This might not even be about crime but really about possible crimes or activity from ne’er-do-wells or even who should be around on streets and sidewalks (often delimited by race and class). Privacy concerns might be mitigated by the suggestion in the article that users still get to choose whether they share footage with police.

Maybe it will all quickly come to this: what about the resident in these communities who refuses to get a Ring doorbell or install security cameras? A small hole in the surveillance network could bring about pressure from neighbors to conform and protect the neighborhood.

Defining “blight” still matters for urban redevelopment

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The term “blight” might conjure up the urban renewal of the post-World War II era where the application of the term to poorer and non-white areas could lead to redevelopment. Yet, the term is alive and well: funding for the proposed Lincoln Yards project in Chicago is tied to the concept.

But the clock also was ticking for another reason. If Emanuel and Sterling Bay had waited much longer, the development no longer would have qualified for its record-high taxpayer subsidy, a Tribune analysis has found.

To get the money, the area had to meet at least five state standards to be considered “blighted.” The city could then designate it as a tax increment financing district. At the time of the vote, the area met the bare minimum.

Less than six weeks later, new property assessments were completed. The rising values of the Lincoln Yards land meant the TIF district no longer met one of the five standards, according to the Tribune analysis of the values of hundreds of parcels…

The Tribune’s finding comes as community groups are asking a judge to reverse the City Council’s decision. They say the area is not blighted and would be redeveloped without the taxpayer assistance, given that it’s centered on the Chicago River just west of Lincoln Park.

According to an Illinois government website, “blight” is not the only word used to describe land that might be eligible for TIF districts:

Funds may be used for costs associated with the development or redevelopment of property within the TIF, allowing blighted, declining and underperforming areas to again become viable, and allowing these areas to compete with vacant land at the edge of urban areas.

Not surprisingly, this is about money: how much public money would the developers get as they went about the project? As the article notes, such use of public money is contentious. In this particular project in Chicago, the location and size of the property is particularly valuable. Does a developer need much public money when there is so much that could be made on the project? Or, thinking in terms of opportunity costs, could such public monies be used to spur development in locations that are initially less attractive to developers?

More broadly, this gets at foundational questions about development in general. Who ultimately benefits from development: local residents, the city/municipality, and/or the developer? The growth machines model suggests development benefits local business leaders working with officials and other leaders who benefit from growth (and the status and revenues that come with that). Local residents could see some improvements through new development but the developers and business leaders are the ones who truly profit financially.

(See an earlier post regarding the term blight and its application to Foxconn’s development in Wisconsin.)

Suburban opposition to drug treatment centers

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The case of opposition to a proposed drug treatment center in Itasca, Illinois sounds similar to opposition last year to a center in Wheaton. On the Itasca proposal:

But opponents said the project would hurt Itasca’s economy. The hotel currently generates around $250,000 in annual tax revenue that would be lost.

Village officials also are trying to determine how the proposal would affect police, fire and emergency medical services.

While they agree DuPage needs treatment options, the residents said they would prefer the facility be more centrally located in the county.

“When direct questions were asked regarding the impact on Itasca, they were all pushed back toward the needs of DuPage,” the residents’ statement reads.

“They (Haymarket) found a facility that fit their needs in Itasca, but we believe overlooked the impact of putting it in such a small town with limited resources.”

Residents say they understand the need for the facility but do not want it in their town. The concerns are similar to those that any suburban residents might lodge against a new development: a loss of tax revenue and concerns about the size of the facility (which could be related to traffic, noise, use of municipal services).

Residents say such a facility should be more in the center of the populous county…like in Wheaton? The problem facing less desirable but necessary land uses is this: what might be good for a region on the whole is often undesirable for individual communities who suggest it should be located elsewhere. Since zoning and development decisions are left to municipalities, whole regions could suffer.

This does not just affect facilities that might be less desirable. In Wheaton, the conversation about a drug treatment center included the people who would be treated as well as crime rates around the facility. But, imagine the case of a hospital or medical clinic. People need medical care and these do not usually have negative connotations. Yet, any medical facility may not generate tax revenues like commercial uses. The size or design of the facility might clash with the character of the community.

There is no easy answer. In an ideal world, the process might look like this: a metropolitan planning board would consider the needs of the population and then find locations throughout the region that would best serve residents. There is just one big problem: Americans, particularly suburbanites, like local control over land use decisions. Few metropolitan regions in the United States can do this and place important infrastructure or facilities where they are needed because Americans place local control as a higher priority.

It will be fascinating to see how Haymarket will respond with this particular facility. If Itasca says no, what is the next suburb to approach? Additionally, how many people will go untreated as the wheels of zoning approval turn?

Exact numbers on how many religious buildings have sold in the last five years

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I have tracked the fate of religious buildings both professionally and on this blog (such as conversions to residential units). I have also asked: just how many conversions of religious buildings to residences are taking place?

Some hard numbers to start answer this question recently arrived:

More than 6,800 religious buildings have sold in the past five years and more than 1,400 are currently for sale in the U.S., according to the commercial real estate database CoStar.

Some will be sold to other congregations, while others will become something entirely different — like a nun-themed coffee shop.

And some helpful context for these numbers:

“The buildings we have that were built in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s are not really functional for today’s perspective,” said Simons, author of Retired, Rehabbed, Reborn: The Adaptive Reuse of America’s Derelict Religious Buildings and Schools. “Too many classrooms, a little bit too big.”

These large religious buildings can fall into disrepair, placing a financial burden on shrinking congregations. The process is a “vicious circle,” said Simons, because congregations in deteriorating buildings may have trouble attracting new members, which in turn reduces donations.

The numbers are helpful: out of roughly 300,000 religious congregations in the United States, roughly 1,350 religious buildings a year are sold. Alas, we do not get more data on what happens to those structures. The rest of this news story follows a format similar to earlier stories: religious buildings can be turned into all sorts of things! This is true – there are lots of possibilities. How many are demolished? Converted into businesses or residences? Made into schools, community centers, or homes for non-profit groups? And while the angle of a religious buildings becoming a secular structure is interesting, the number of times one religious group sells to another – a fairly common occurrence and often a very helpful option for the purchasing congregation – is ignored.

Going further, the numbers on sales only tell so much when the range of costs to rehab or reuse the building could be high. The suggestion from the story above is that a number of the buildings need significant work. Selling a building may often be a last resort of a congregation, meaning the group may not have had the resources to take proactively keep up the building for a while. The sale of the building might just be the first step in a much longer process of transforming the building (which my research suggests could then lead to issues in the community regarding making changes to an established structure).

Resistance to 5G: technological progress versus local zoning and control

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Americans like local control and they like technological progress. So what will happen when municipalities refuse to install or significantly slow down the installation of 5G units the federal government has approved?

If someone is tracking all of these cases, it would be interesting to know how many communities are resisting this because of (1) alleged health threats or (2) resistance to being told that they must install these or (3) that some of these boxes are located near homes. Of course, it could be a combination of the three in some places but even then, I wonder what is the more convincing argument at (1) the local level and (2) at higher levels.

In the long run, I assume federal requirements would supersede local land use restrictions. But, what if there are scores of communities that resist? Or, what if the resisters are more powerful communities and residents? Infrastructure is a pretty important feature of modern society and allowing some communities to opt out may not be optimal. There is always some cynicism that wealthier communities can resist land use changes better because their resources allow them to challenge change. Would 5G installations then go in places that cannot as easily resist? Does this foreshadow a technological landscape where resources and ideology lead to more uneven distribution of basic technological infrastructure?

One possible compromise in many communities: ceding that the federal government has approved this but then refusing to install them in residential areas. I do not know how this would affect 5G coverage but I imagine moving the units out of sight of homes and residential units could do a lot of good.

Nostalgia for shopping malls amid decades of critique

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Many shopping malls are in dire straits. The potential end of shopping malls can also induce nostalgia and good memories. Add to the decades-long critique of how shopping malls have harmed communities and societies and we have an odd moment: should we celebrate or lament the end of shopping malls?

A few reasons why there is nostalgia:

  1. The shopping mall was a prime social space, let alone a business space, for at least a generation or two. Hanging out at the mall as a teenager was a sign of independence for many and it is glorified by media narratives and images.
  2. The shopping mall is a marker of the past and those growing older can often lament the disappearance of what they knew. Perhaps they did not even like shopping malls or visit them very much but they are a marker for a particular era.
  3. The shopping mall was a significant shift in the shopping experience by providing a collection of chain stores in a single place surrounded by plentiful parking. While we have since moved to big box stores and now to online shopping, the shopping mall transformed retail.

But balance the nostalgia with the critiques:

  1. Shopping malls killed downtowns, from big cities to suburbs to small towns, across the country.
  2. Shopping malls are part of suburban sprawl that wastes resources and land (and contributes to more driving)
  3. They contributed to mass consumption and commercialization. As one quick example: would the commercial celebration of Christmas today be the same without the development of the mall?

How shopping malls end up in the collective memory down the road still remains to be seen. Once the generations that spent so much time in shopping malls is gone, what will their legacy be?

 

“Trophy ranches” may disappear with Baby Boomers

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One segment of the luxury property market does not appeal to younger buyers or those who do not understand the appeal of a “trophy ranch”:

Decades ago, a generation of America’s wealthiest, raised on television shows like “Howdy Doody” and “The Lone Ranger,” headed west with dreams of owning some of the country’s most prestigious ranches. Now, as those John Wayne- loving baby boomers age out of the lifestyle or die, they or their children are looking to sell those trophy properties…

Jeff Buerger, a local ranch broker with Hall & Hall in Colorado, said there are more large trophy ranches on the market right now than he can recall in his nearly three decades in the business. There are about 20 ranches priced at over $20 million on the market in the state, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of listings…

Unlike other sectors of the U.S. high-end real-estate market, ranches can’t fall back on international purchasers. Broker Tim Murphy said there is virtually no demand for ranches from international buyers, many of whom “don’t get it.”…

“The last wave of buyers was the baby boomers who fell in love with John Wayne and wanted that experience for themselves,” Mr. Buerger said. “Today, it’s more about conservation. You’re starting to hear more landowners talking about wildlife habitat enhancement and ecological work.” Other targeted groups include wealthy families from the East Coast or Silicon Valley.

I would guess this is not just about baby boomers: it is about broader conceptions of what is the ideal property if someone came into significant money. The implication in the story above is that media, particularly John Wayne films, created a desire for these locations. Presumably, other media depictions would fuel desires for other properties. Depending on the tastes and background of buyers, this could range from:

1. Pricey downtown condos or penthouses in the middle of urban action (whether in well-established wealthy neighborhoods or in up-and-coming places).

2. Suburban McMansions that offer a lot of space and unique architecture.

3. Traditional mansions with sprawling homes whose size and design imply old money (in contrast to the flashy yet flawed McMansions).

4. Impressive vacation homes right on desirable beaches.

Perhaps the trick of any of these is to try to ensure that there are future buyers for your property. If demand drops, your hot high-status property may not hold up as a desirable location for the long-term.