Author Archives: legallysociable

How can a city reduce driving by 45%? Sustained effort over decades

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Paris has significantly reduced traffic since 1990 but this was not an easy or quick task. This article suggests sustained effort from the city’s mayors was critical:

  • Jacques Chirac, Paris’ famously conservative (and public fund-embezzling) mayor from 1977 to 1995, helped encourage pedestrianism by increasing the number of bollards to prevent illegal sidewalk parking, Héran writes. Chirac also rehabilitated the Champs-Elysees into a true public promenade, with widened sidewalks, street parking eliminations, and refreshed green spaces.
  • Chirac’s chosen successor, Jean Tibéri, came under fire for not cracking down hard enough on Paris’ air quality problems (and was accused of election fraud!), but he does get credit for banning cars in the Place de la Concorde. In an effort to reduce traffic, he also introduced the city’s first bike plan in 1996, which established paths along the city’s main arteries and lower-speed neighborhood zones, Héran notes.
  • Elected Paris’ first openly gay mayor in 2001, the socialist Bertrand Delanoë “vowed that automobile interests would no longer dominate the city and he would focus on improving public spaces,” wrote Stephane Kirkland for the Project for Public Spaces in 2014. Delanoë made good on those promises during his 13-year tenure (while largely avoiding scandal): A number of streets were reconfigured to accommodate dedicated bus lanes. Some 400 miles of bicycle lanes were created. The banks of the Seine began to close to traffic in the summertime to make way for public “beaches.”And in 2007, the city introduced its bikeshare program, Vélib, now arguably the largest and most used such system in the West.
  • Delanoë’s protégé and current Mayor Anne Hidalgo is an outspoken environmentalist responsible for “some of the most systematically anti-car policies of any major world city,” CityLab’s Feargus O’Sullivan wrote last year. Hidalgo has implemented a ban on older cars on roads during weekdays, and has pedestrianized the lower quays of the Seine. “Car space is being slashed in many major squares, while car-free days have been introduced annually as a form of publicity campaign for a future without automobiles,” O’Sullivan wrote. (Furthermore, recent trip data from city hall do not support the claim by some motorists that Mayor Hidalgo’s car-free policies have made congestion worse. There’s been a sharp decline in the kilometers-traveled within the city, but only a small dip in kilometers-per-hour.)
  • Paris’ commitment to public transport far surpasses that of any city in the U.S., where it has been more than 30 decades since any new system opened. RATP, the public transport operator for the Île-de-France region, has increased its reach with new bus rapid-transit lines and a steadily growing suburban tram network whose first line opened in the early 1990s. New routes have been accompanied by sidewalk improvements, bike paths, and a variety of traffic calming measures. The lines are frequent and fast. Some are even driven autonomously.

Three quick thoughts regarding this brief history of Paris:

  1. Sustained effort across mayors and local government officials is not easy to do. This article covers 25+ years where different actors from different perspectives contributed to a desirable outcome. The amount of emphasis on reducing traffic probably differed quite a bit across administrations yet the small and big steps added up over time. Significant social change in large cities does not often happen quickly.
  2. The reasons for pursuing less car traffic are varied. Some might decry the environmental issues. Others might want more space for bicycling. More public space might motivate others. I wonder if any of these one reasons would have been enough to motivate these actions and push forward big changes. But, put together multiple reasons and people with different interests might be more likely to come together and promote fewer cars.
  3. How much easier is it to pursue such plans in a European city versus an American city? Additionally, this is Paris, a tourist hot-spot where people want to walk around and experience charming sights and neighborhoods. American cities may also desire less traffic – who wants to be delayed? – yet this is difficult to reconcile with American desires for individual transportation. At the same time, a chart in the article suggests London and Berlin are more like New York City in terms of driving.

The two best sociological books on suburbs I know

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I recently worked a project that involved looking over a number of studies of suburbs undertaken by sociologists and other scholars. After being immersed in these works for a while, I was reminded of my two favorite sociological books about the suburbs:

#2. Baumgartner, M. P. 1988. The Moral Order of a Suburb. New York: Oxford University Press.

This work is relatively short and simple for an ethnographic study: it examines the social interactions of suburbanites in a New York suburb. The main finding is that suburban community is built around limited interactions as well as interactions that keep the peace. Open conflict is limited. Privacy and autonomy are very important. The residents are fairly transient and mobile but the community is held together by the social norms that limit open or consistent conflict. The study is not comprehensive regarding suburban life yet its insight about what holds suburban communities together is hard to match.

#1. Gans, Herbert J. 1967. The Levittowners. New York: Pantheon Books.

Gans moved into one of the early Levittowns and proceeded to study the community from the inside for several years. His work both provides one of the most comprehensive looks into post-war suburban life (many discussions about schools, interacting with neighbors, raising kids) as well as interacts with common critiques and stereotypes of such suburbs (some of which have some validity while others are not true). I have not found another sociological study of suburbs of this magnitude.

Watching for the rise of Accessory Dwelling Units

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A new book suggests Accessory Dwelling Units – ADUs – are going to become more common in the United States:

Eight years later, Peterson works full-time helping others build ADUs, preaching the granny-flat gospel via classes for other Portland homeowners. The number of ADU permits the city issues has risen dramatically; in 2016, it was 615. In Vancouver, Canada—an ADU pioneer—more than 2,000 ADUs have been built citywide in the last decade. But for most cities in North America, steep legal barriers are preventing this form of housing from taking off: Many cities ban them outright, and those that don’t often have severe restrictions on size, owner occupancy, and parking. Only a handful of cities have adjusted their regulations to encourage more ADUs—mostly on the West coast, where severe housing affordability is a growing problem. But Peterson and other ADU advocates are predicting that the country is on the verge of welcoming more of them.

 

And a short portion from the interview with Peterson regarding the benefits of ADUs:

ADUs allow people housing flexibility over time. You can design an ADU in which to age in place, and then rent out your main house, allowing you to stay in your neighborhood as you grow older, and at less cost. Parents, caregivers, or adult children can also live in ADUs.

ADUs use fewer resources like gas and electricity due to their size, and because they’re often built in walkable and bikeable areas, their residents generate less of an environmental impact that way as well. They also reduce the per capita residential footprint. This is important because there are a lot of one- and two-person households in cities, but not the housing to match that demographic. ADUs can help fill this need.

And ADUs generally don’t have a significant infrastructural impact on a city, in contrast to, say, a 400-unit apartment building. They bring more housing to an area organically, and the city doesn’t have to build new infrastructure to accommodate it.

If these do catch on, in which neighborhoods would be become most popular? I would guess they would be most attractive in working-class and up-and-coming neighborhoods where homeowners are looking to generate extra income and where they are more open to having close neighbors. In contrast, I think it would be more difficult for these to catch on in wealthier neighborhoods. After all, don’t Americans tend to think that one of the benefits of having a larger and more expensive home is the ability to be separate from other people?

 

Calculating and using the Gini index for suburbs

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The Gini index is often invoked for countries but it would be interesting to see it regularly utilized for suburban communities:

There are multi-million dollar McMansions and blue-collar families just trying to make ends meet. Across New Jersey, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to get wider.

But how are things changing in your town?

The Census calculates income inequality using a measure called the Gini index, which assigns a value between 0, which would mean complete equality, and 1. The closer a score is to 1, the more wealth is concentrated among fewer people and the bigger the income inequality.

My first thought is that I wonder how much income hetereogeneity suburbs have. There can be quite a bit of income or class segregation across different suburban communities but some of the larger suburbs could have quite the variation.

Then, it would be interesting to see how such information would be used. Would suburbs with less inequality use this as a selling point? Would community groups and activists be able to pressure suburbs into change with this statistic?

Finally, it would probably take a lot of work for this figure to become as widely known for suburbs as it is across countries. Yet, at this point, there is not an agreed-upon figure that works like this in order to compare suburbs. Median household income or the poverty rate can be used in this manner. Population figures probably matter the most for suburbs: it gives a sense of the character of the community and also hints at the growth that may be taking place.

Five decades later, white evangelicals commonly invoking MLK

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In recent years, I think I noticed something within white evangelical circles: a regular use of the words of Martin Luther King Jr. I do not know if this is a certifiable trend or not; it simply popped into my mind after a few recent experiences.

On one hand, this could be viewed as a positive sign. White evangelicals are turning around to addressing issues of race and justice. They recognize the importance of the work of MLK. They are willing to learn from others outside of their theological tradition.

On the other hand, I wonder if this is all five decades too late. Are the evangelicals of today the same “white moderates” King criticizes in “Letter From a Birmingham Jail“? Is King now acceptable for use because his words and ideas are a normal part of American society? Are those invoking King today willing to go to the same lengths as King and other Christians to fight injustice?

May this Martin Luther King Day help lead to true justice.

 

Comparing the costs of tearing down versus renovating a home

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Could it cost less money to buy and teardown a home than to renovate it? Here is one data point from a 2015 story about teardowns in the Chicago area:

The teardown candidates aren’t just tiny bungalows this time. Developers are targeting larger houses as well, particularly if they sit on coveted property. Antiquated plumbing, the absence of upscale amenities such as media rooms, and the high cost of gut rehabbing (roughly $300 a square foot, versus $200 for new construction) are pushing homes on North Shore lots near the lake into early retirement. Two properties that sold for around $4 million each in 2014—one in Wilmette and one in Winnetka—are on their way to the scrap yard, says Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff agent Joseph Nash. Both were on three-quarter-acre lots with private beaches, and the Winnetka house had seven bedrooms—big and nice, but apparently not nice enough.

At various points, I’ve thought about what might happen to much of the aging suburban housing stock in the United States. Many of those homes, small or large, will be slowly renovated over time. Depending on the neighborhood as well as the desirability of the individual homes, renovation could take place at faster or slower rates. Yet, will there be a point when many of the older suburban homes will be demolished? How long can they be maintained or renovated? If they need to be demolished, who has the money to replace them and if they are replaced, will the residents be able to stay?

From an economic perspective, presumably the money spent renovating the older homes will at some point surpass the cost of building new ones (that may also be of better quality and more up to code) and living in those. Yet, this ignores a lot of features of homes and their construction:

  1. They are part of neighborhoods and communities. People often enjoy having a certain character when they purchase in a particular place. This character is often related to the homes present as well as to a unified character on streets.
  2. Some will want to keep renovating them. (Clearly, however, others will not – hence, we have teardowns.)
  3. They may be able to last a lot longer than critics gave them credit for. (One of the common complaints about mass produced suburban homes is that they are of poor quality. While this may be true, it does not necessarily mean that they are uninhabitable or cannot be improved over the decades.)
  4. Replacing large swaths of suburban housing requires both foresight and funds. Who is willing to look that far into the future? Who has the resources to undertake large projects in this domain rather than working with the occasional house here and there?

For now, most of the news we hear about replacing suburban homes tends to be in wealthier communities where teardowns are desirable. This may change in the near future.

More details on Google’s urban plans for Toronto development

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Google’s plans for a Toronto neighborhood have been in the works for a while and here are more details:

A self-contained thermal grid would recirculate energy from non–fossil-fuel sources to heat and cool buildings, while a food-disposal system would keep food waste out of landfills. For cars and trucks, Quayside would be less hospitable than other areas in the city: Part of the neighborhood would prohibit non-emergency vehicles entirely, while bike-share stations, transit stops, and cycling and walking paths—kept useable through the Canadian winter with sidewalk snow melters and automated awnings—would offer “efficient alternatives to driving, all at lower cost than owning a car.” An autonomous transit shuttle would rove some streets. (Waymo, a leading developer of self-driving-vehicle software, is also an Alphabet subsidiary.)

Buildings would be largely prefabricated using eco-friendly materials, to cut back on waste. With a “strong shell and minimalistic interior,” they could be adapted to multiple uses, morphing from residential to retail to industrial, and back again. To support such a futuristic vision, Quayside would test a novel “outcome-based” zoning code focused on limiting things like pollution and noise rather than specific land uses. If it doesn’t bother the neighbors, one might operate a whiskey distillery in the middle of an apartment complex…

Yet what has drawn the most concern and curiosity with regards to Quayside is a uniquely 21st-century feature: a data-harvesting, wifi-beaming “digital layer” that would underpin each proposed facet of Quayside life. According to Sidewalk Labs, this would provide “a single unified source of information about what is going on” to an astonishing level of detail, as well as a centralized platform for efficiently managing it all…

It’s the kind of all-seeing urban omniscience that would stir the heart of any utopia builder. But to whom, and how, would this data be made available? And what would such an arrangement mean for any Quaysider who doesn’t wish to be monitored? In Toronto and beyond, the depth and details of the data collection have sparked public debate. At the first public forum on the project, and in a list of questions related to the project compiled by the journalist Bianca Wylie at Torontoist, privacy questions and fears have come up again and again.

This is a good mini test case for tech companies entering the urban development realm. The questions raised by residents and local officials should not be surprising: does such a company have the best interests of the community and residents at heart or is this primarily a profit-making enterprise based on intense data collection?It is interesting to consider how this might go in an American city. The proposed project is in Toronto, a prosperous Canadian city that is now larger than Chicago. How would such plans for Google be received in San Francisco or Austin, cities known as tech hubs? Or, in contrast, might there be more open arms in a city that needs development help, such as Cleveland or Detroit? I suspect the move to develop property in Toronto was very intentional yet the outcome could be quite different if positioned in a different North American city.

 

Wide buildings ripe for use for wide-open workplaces

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Several recent high-profile deals for large Chicago buildings suggests spacious floor plans are in:

The recent deals demonstrate how perceptions of those buildings and others with ultrawide floor plates, such as the Merchandise Mart and the former Apparel Center next door, have evolved. Long considered inefficient albatrosses, with too many large columns and not enough natural light, the buildings today are coveted by employers such as technology and creative firms.

Wide floors allow firms to have hundreds, or even thousands, of employees together on one floor. Open layouts and abundant meeting areas are designed to promote collaboration.

As a result, seven of the 17 largest new office leases in downtown Chicago since 2012 have been in buildings with floors of at least 50,000 square feet, according to a study by Chicago office leasing broker Matt Ward of Newmark Knight Frank. Those deals of 200,000 square feet or more include relocations or large-scale expansions within a building.

“This thinking of different floor, different planet is finding its way into every boardroom,” Ward said. “The idea of us getting out of our offices and being together is seen as a necessity in today’s business.”

The trend continues toward open floor plans where employees can interact and discuss ideas beyond their immediate isolated tasks, both theoretically leading to an outpouring of creativity and cross-pollination. This evolution of office design is chronicled well in Cubed.

At the same time, I have read about enough feedback from workers in response to these open plans to know that this is not universally beloved. The open plans limit privacy and inhibit focus. Some of the organizations that went to radically open plans later had to scale back to once again provide some more private spaces.

It would be worth going back to some of these wide structures in a few years to see how firms have organized the large spaces differently.

Percent of homes worth over $1 million quadruples in last 15 years

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Rising housing values, particularly in certain markets, mean that there are now more American homes worth over $1 million:

The share of homes valued at more than $1 million has surged more than fourfold since 2002, according to new data from real estate site Trulia, which analyzed the luxury real estate market in the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas. Across those regions, about 4.3 percent of homes are now worth at least $1 million, compared with about 1 percent in 2002, said Trulia senior economist Cheryl Young…

The share of homes valued below $1 million is “decreasing at a rate we’re surprised by,” Young said. “It was 98.9 percent in 2002, and now it’s 95.7 percent. That is pretty shocking.”

Rising real estate values, tight inventory and a lack of new construction are contributors the surge in million-dollar homes. Yet another factor may be at play: rising income inequality, which has benefited the bank accounts of America’s richest families…

It may explain why the share of homes worth $5 million or more is growing even faster. This segment is what Trulia describes as “the most luxurious homes available.” To be sure, it remains a tiny part of the real estate market, accounting for just 0.28 percent of overall sales. Still, that figure is five times higher than in 2002, Trulia said.

In the abstract, who is opposed to rising housing values and the benefits that confers to homeowners and communities? Yet, the flip side of rising housing values is that more homes might then be out of reach for average or even well-off residents.

Three related thoughts:

  1. While those fighting for more affordable housing have discussed this flip side for decades, I wonder at what point it may be viewed as immoral to live in an expensive dwelling.
  2. Expensive homes do not usually exist in isolation. For example, it would be very unusual to drive down a street of low-value homes and all of the sudden see a large expensive home. Expensive homes are often part of larger projects – buildings or developments or subdivisions – that give way to a whole wealthier lifestyle that include expensive homes. In other words, this is not just about the value of individual homes: it is about clusters of homes and locations that help elevate some housing values.
  3. Related to both #1 and #2, can we expect some residents to underestimate their housing values or sell at lower price points than they could get?