Author Archives: legallysociable

How Naperville can present its suburban sprawl in its proposed bicentennial museum

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Naper Settlement officials suggested they want to build a museum for the city’s 200th birthday:

Naperville’s 200th birthday is still about 16 years away, but Naper Settlement officials already are thinking about what the city should give itself to mark the occasion.

Their answer is Scott’s Block, a history museum made to look like a downtown building that existed between 1854 and 1975 as a bank and a gathering hall.

Imagined as a 31,000-square-foot museum to be built on the Naper Settlement campus at 523 S. Webster St., Scott’s Block would give Naperville’s historical stewards space to tell stories beginning with the city’s founding era in the 1830s. Stories of war heroes, women business leaders, even iconic ice cream shops could be displayed in the new space the settlement hopes to build in time for Naperville’s bicentennial in 2031, said Rena Tamayo-Calabrese, president and CEO…

Scott marked the nation’s 100th anniversary by building a gathering place, and the city marked its first 100 years in 1931 with the creation of Centennial Beach. Next for the city’s 150th anniversary came the Riverwalk, and Tamayo-Calabrese says now it’s time to think about what should commemorate the 200th year…

Having additional space would let the settlement bring many of the 55,000 artifacts it has in storage out for all to see in themed exhibits that could rotate throughout the year.

Naper Settlement primarily emphasizes the city’s early decades after the community was founded in the early 1830s. While these are important years, Naperville was quite small until after World War II. It is since then that the community grew to over 140,000 people and over 35 square miles. The Naperville of today is built on some of these early decisions but looks quite different now. So, what could Naper Settlement present about this era? I offer three key things Naperville residents and leaders like to discuss and one other feature that might be a bit harder to present:

1. The role of Harold Moser, known as “Mr. Naperville.” Moser ended up building dozens of subdivisions as the city expanded. The first major one was Moser Highlands just to the southeast of downtown. Moser was also involved in the community, giving lots of money and serving in a variety of roles.

2. The opening of Bell Labs in the mid 1960s just northwest of the intersection of Naperville and Warrenville Roads. The East-West Tollway opened in 1958 and Bell Labs announced the construction of a large facility in 1964. The arrival of high-tech white-collar jobs helped kick off a boom in such positions in Naperville. Today, the city is home to a number of notable companies.

3. The construction of the Riverwalk about the DuPage River. This park was part of a mid-1970s plan to help revive Naperville’s downtown that was facing stiff competition from areas like the newly-opened Fox Valley Mall (where the developer had sided with Aurora rather than Naperville). Volunteers and civic groups helped put together the first small stretch and the Riverwalk has expanded since then. It is a lively attraction during the summer and helped bring people and businesses to the downtown.

4. The one feature that might be harder to present because it doesn’t emphasize a particular person or event is the willingness of Naperville to annex land. After World War II, many suburbs across the United States had opportunities to expand. Naperville truly pursued this, annexing multiple large chunks and expanding to the north to encompass land around the interstate (capturing some of this white-collar job growth) and particularly to the south and west until finally running into other communities (Aurora in the 1970s, others in the early 2000s). One of the remarkable features of Naperville is its size and wealth; few communities its size have its level of wealth, good jobs, low crime, and low poverty.

Organizations can’t keep up with the statistics of how many people ISIS have killed

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Measuring many things rests on the ability to observe or collect the data. But, a number of organizations have found that they can’t keep up with the actions of ISIS:

He and his colleagues have (alone among wire services) built up a detailed spreadsheet total of civilian and combatant casualties, but faced with the near impossibility of verifying multiple daily reports of massacres in provinces rendered inaccessible since the early weeks of ISIS’s June offensive, they now largely restrict its use for internal purposes.Officials in UN’s Iraq mission (UNAMI) are similarly downbeat about the accuracy of their records.

“Since the armed conflict escalated, I would say that our figures are significantly under reported,” said Francesco Motta, Director of UNAMI’s human rights office.

“We are getting hundreds of reports in addition to those we verify that we are just simply not able to verify owing to our limited access to areas where incidents are taking place,” he added…

It’s the sheer magnitude of the slaughter that’s overstretching these groups’ resources, but ISIS’s murderous approach to the media has compounded the problem. On top of the much publicized recent beheadings of two American journalists, ISIS also has killed dozens of Syrian and Iraqi reporters. Body counts rely heavily on local news articles for coverage of incidents in towns and rural pockets far from Baghdad, and the jihadists’ seizure of up to a third of Iraq has complicated attempts to report within their areas of control.

It may be a macabre task but an important one. As the article goes on to note, this matters for political ends (different sides will spin the available or estimated numbers in different ways) and for public perceptions. In fact, social problems are often defined by the number of people they affect. Higher numbers of deaths would tend to prompt more reaction from the public but overestimates that are later shown to be false could decrease attention.

Argument: Sociologists should learn more statistics to get paid like economists

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A finance professor suggests the wage gap between economists and sociologists can be explained by the lack of statistical skills among sociologists:

Statistics is hugely valuable in the real world. Simply knowing how to run, and interpret, a regression is invaluable to management consultants. Statistics is now permeating the IT world, as a component of data science — and to do statistics, economists have to learn how to manage data. And statistics forces economists to learn to code, usually in Matlab.

As Econ 101 would tell us, these skills command a large premium. Unless universities want to shrink their economics departments, they have to shell out more money to keep the professors from bolting to consulting and financial firms.

If sociologists want to crack this bastion of economists’ “superiority,” they need to tech up with statistics. Sociologists do use some statistics, but in general it’s just much less rigorous and advanced than in economics. But there is no reason why that has to continue. Sociologists work with many quantitative topics. There are vast amounts of quantitative data available to them — and if there is a shortage, survey research centers such as the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research can generate more.

Using more and harder statistics will probably require more quantitative modeling of social phenomena. But it won’t require sociologists to adopt a single one of econ’s optimization models, or embrace any economics concepts. It won’t require giving one inch to the “imperialist” economics of Gary Becker’s disciples. All it will require is for sociologists to learn a lot more advanced statistics, and the data management and coding skills that go with it. The best way to make that happen is to start using a lot more sophisticated statistics in sociology papers. Eventually, the word “sociologist” will start to carry the connotation of “someone who is a whiz with data.” I’m sure some departments have already started to move in this direction.

I imagine this would generate a wide range of responses from sociologists. A few quick thoughts:

1. Using more advanced statistical techniques is one thing but it also involves a lot of interpretation and explanation. This is not just a technical recommendation but also requires links to conceptual and theoretical changes.

2. Can we statistically model the most complex social realities? Would having more and more big data make this possible? Statistics aren’t everything.

3. Any way to quantify this anecdotal argument? I can’t resist asking this…

Reactions “when your childhood home becomes a ‘teardown’”

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A reporter describes seeing her childhood home make way for a teardown:

I understand why the house is being torn down. The stairs aren’t up to today’s construction codes. The bathrooms and kitchen are small. When someone slams the door in the garage, you can feel the vibrations upstairs in my brother’s old bedroom. The plumbing, windows and electric wiring haven’t been touched in decades. The metallic wallpaper with blue flowers in the bathroom my brother and I once shared says it all: The house is clearly outdated.

Still, I dread its rendezvous with a wrecking ball. When my childhood BFF’s century-old house was bulldozed last spring (goodbye high ceilings and ornate mantelpieces), the teardown trend in our old neighborhood suddenly became personal. Was some nefarious force—McMansion mania? Voldemort?—out to destroy my childhood haunts?

And what might explain such emotions?

Irene Goldenberg, a family psychologist and professor emerita at the University of California, Los Angeles, says teardowns can be more traumatic for former owners, and their children, than sales in which a house survives.

For one thing, she says, it’s hard to escape the finality of a teardown, which makes it all the more obvious “that you can no longer go back to the safety and comfort” of childhood. “It’s in your face,” she says.

There is also an obvious analogy to my aging parents. With new construction springing up all over the neighborhood, the house suddenly looks like a relic of another era. Still, when I came across the property records in my parents’ files last spring, the comparison that immediately sprang to mind was to myself. Although I had always assumed the house was older, it was actually erected just a few years before I was born in 1964.

For many people, childhood homes function like a psychological safety net, says Gerald Davison, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. “Even if you don’t feel comfortable knocking on the door, it’s nice to know that it’s always possible to do so” and reconnect with childhood, he says.

Neighborhoods do change over time but homes often represent permanence. This hints at the broader ideology of the American Dream as well as childhood. The first refers to the emotional attachment to single-family homes on plots of land, places that people can call their own. The second involves the development of childhood as a sort of “golden age” in the lifecourses filled with good experiences and exploring the world.

It would be interesting to hear more about the expression of and limits to such emotions. Perhaps we can add “McMansion mania” to the list of childhood bogeymen…

The revival of big city downtowns not about recreating economic hubs?

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Joel Kotkin suggests revived downtowns of big American cities aren’t exactly bringing back the old days where they served as economic hubs:

Instead what’s emerging is a very different conceptualization of downtown, as a residential alternative that appeals to the young and childless couples, and that is not so much a dominant economic hub, but one of numerous poles in the metropolitan archipelago, usually with an outsized presence of financial institutions, government offices and business service firms…

The better numbers reflect then not a mass “back to the city” movement but an uptick in the market appeal of city centers. And it’s unlikely that the old urban cores will ever come close to recovering the economic preeminence they once enjoyed. In American Community Survey data from 2006-08, the central business district of the New York metro area was the only one across the country that accounted for over 20% of regional employment; downtown’s share topped 10% in just six other metro areas: Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Richmond, Chicago and Hartford. This contrasts with the kind of employment dominance seen in the 1950s when Manhattan’s commercial core accounted for more than 35% of employment in the New York area. Of course, the decline is a natural outgrowth of the massive physical expansion of the New York area during the past half century, a pattern seen in other major regions.

From 2000 to 2010, the share of jobs dropped somewhat in the nation’s biggest urban cores, but employment declined far more in the inner ring suburbs, according to an analysis by demographer Wendell Cox. In contrast the fastest job growth was in suburban and exurban areas, paralleling their gains in population. This has become clearer since the recession ended; the consultancy Costar notes between 2012 and 2013 office absorption grew quicker in the suburbs than the core, accounting for 87% of new office demand. Overall suburbs account for nearly 75% of all office space in our metropolitan areas…

This resurgence in L.A., and elsewhere, is no mean accomplishment, but it also does not constitute sea-change in fundamental economic geography. Downtowns are back, but more as a lifestyle option than as a dominant feature of the metropolitan landscape.

Could big city downtowns be more urban lifestyle centers? Compared to suburbs, these downtowns offer more cultural options: museums, large urban parks, restaurants, theaters, non big box shopping. Suburbs have more cultural options than they did in the past – and the stereotypes that all suburbs were bedroom suburbs with no other activities was never true – but cities offer a higher concentration. And could city condos be a clear status symbol of today’s upper-middle or upper class?

Another piece of data that might help here are reverse commuting patterns. Looking at these downtown census tracts and blocks, how many residents work nearby or in the city compared to past decades?

How life stages affect decisions about housing

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Life stages, including cohabitation or kids leaving the house, can trigger different housing choices:

Unmarried. Singles are more likely to rent and live in locations that are closer to entertainment and employment, which is why these areas are more in demand today than usual.

Togetherness. Cohabitation has been on the rise in recent decades, but homeownership rates for these couples are much lower than rates for their married counterparts.

Marriage. Marriage often increases the desire to own a home; many location and housing choices depend on income and nearby family.

Children. The addition of little ones makes owning a home feel like a necessity for many, given the desire for yards, good schools and social circles for the kids.

Children moving out. An empty nest often results in lifestyle changes, including different home-size preferences, social circles and floor-plan needs. Locational preferences also begin to shift.

The first two stages suggest a decrease in homeownership, the next two based around marriage and kids involve the more traditional American Dream, and the last seems to revert to the first two when more options are available. Are we headed toward a housing market where owning a home is primarily about kids? This has always been a key factor in moving to and living in the suburbs, which is closely linked to homeownership.

The flip side of this is to ask how real estate agents and builders will respond to these life stages. Can they afford to target each stage with specialized housing? Are there ways to have more flexible housing that can transition as the lifecourse changes?

“The ghetto has moved to the suburbs”

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Several sociologists discuss the patterns of residential segregation in the American suburbs which are increasingly non-white:

Logan found that, despite a decline in racial segregation and improvements in incomes marked by the rise of the black middle class, blacks and Hispanics continue to live in the least desirable neighborhoods – even when they can afford better – and their children attend the lowest-performing schools…

“Moving to the suburbs was once believed to mean making it into the mainstream,” he said. “There is something to this idea that moving on out is moving up … Yet minorities are not finding equal access to the American dream.” When neighborhoods where blacks live are compared to those where whites or Asians live, “the inequality is quite stark,” he said…

But suburban diversity clearly does not equal racial integration. Just over 10 percent of the suburban population was black in 2010, but the average black suburbanite lived in a neighborhood that was more than 35 percent black. And although about 69 percent of suburban residents were white, fewer than 45 percent of the average black suburbanite’s neighbors were white…

“Thirty years ago, it would’ve been in the city of St. Louis, but blacks moved out of St. Louis to this place [Ferguson], and whites fled,” Anderson said. “The ghetto has moved to the suburbs. It’s happening to many places in the country.”

The suburbs are no longer the sole retreat of wealthier whites but they are not exactly equal either. The study discussed here corroborates a lot of evidence that shows that even as the suburbs become less white and less wealthy (more people in poverty than cities), people are not evenly spread throughout suburban areas. Just as cities have wealthier and less wealthy neighborhoods, suburbs have a variety of communities and a number where wealthier residents have found ways to limit the arrival of others. (Property values, exclusionary zoning, gated communities, a lack of affordable housing, a lack of social services, etc.)

In other words, residential segregation is alive and well in the United States even if more people have “made it” to the suburbs.

“New Apps Instantly Convert Spreadsheets Into Something Actually Readable”

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Several new apps transform spreadsheet data into a chart or graph without having to spend much or any time with the raw data:

It’s called Project Elastic, and he unveiled the thing this fall at a conference run by his company, Tableau. The Seattle-based company has been massively successful selling software that helps big businesses “visualize” the massive amount of online data they generate—transform all those words and numbers into charts and graphics their data scientists can more readily digest—but Project Elastic is something different. It’s not meant for big businesses. It’s meant for everyone.

The idea is that, when someone emails a spreadsheet to your iPad, the app will open it up—but not as a series of rows and columns. It will open the thing as chart or graph, and with a swipe of the finger, you can reformat the data into a new chart or graph. The hope is that this will make is easier for anyone to read a digital spreadsheet—an age-old computer creation that’s still looks like Greek to so many people. “We think that seeing and understanding your data is a human right,” says Story, the Tableau vice president in charge of the project.

And Story isn’t the only one. A startup called ChartCube has developed a similar tool that can turn raw data into easy-to-understand charts and graphs, and just this week, the new-age publishing outfit Medium released a tool called Charted that can visualize data in similar ways. So many companies aim to democratize access to online data, but for all the different data analysis tool out on the market, this is still the domain of experts—people schooled in the art of data analysis. These projects aim to put the democracy in democratize.

Two quick thoughts:

1. I understand the impulse to create charts and graphs that communicate patterns. Yet, such devices are not infallible in themselves. I would suggest we need more education in interpreting and using the information from infographics. Additionally, this might be a temporary solution but wouldn’t it be better in the long run if more people know how to read and use a spreadsheet?

2. Interesting quote: “We think that seeing and understanding your data is a human right.” I have a right to data or to the graphing and charting of my data? This adds to a collection of voices arguing for a human right to information and data.

Where is the best place to live in Russia? A city in Siberia

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I’ve tracked some of the best American places to live but what is the equivalent in Russia? A booming oil city in Siberia:

Siberia’s booming oil capital Tyumen has been named Russia’s best city for quality of living. A study, conducted by sociology experts from the Russian Government’s Financial University, ranked the city ahead of the likes of Moscow and St Petersburg.

Founded in 1586 and located on the Tura River, the experts studied parameters including the standards of medical care, access to education, wealth, and life expectancy. Whether people felt satisfied with their own lives was taken into account, along with aspects such as whether they were happy with the quality of roads and their own salaries…

The authors of the new survey wrote: ‘When we analysed the data, it showed people’s satisfaction with life is mostly affected by how good communal housing services in the cities are and how well they manage properties in terms of maintenance and repair, as well as how well developed the city is in general, their level of incomes and the work of health care institutions…

Tyumen was the first ever Russian settlement in Siberia and was founded to support the eastward expansion. Over the centuries it has progressed from a small village located on important trade routes, to a military settlement, and now a large industrial city and vital business centre.

The Tyumen Oblast is a vast oil-rich region stretching from Kazakhstan to the Arctic Ocean and it is home to a number of major Russian companies.

There are three universities and the city is a popular tourist destination, particularly for German visitors.

While this description is suspiciously similar to the Wikipedia entry on Tyumen, I’ve never heard of this city of over 581,000. I saw the headline involved the word Siberia and didn’t imagine this kind of vibrant city. Granted, this is located in the southwestern part of Siberia – not as far away from western Siberia as is much of Siberia. But, oil money can apparently do wonders for quality of life in Siberia…

Looking for needed bridging ties online

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A new book argues the Internet doesn’t connect people like it could do and part of the issue has to do with bridging ties:

The Chinese activist and journalist Xiao Qiang and I started using the term “bridging” to describe the work bloggers were doing in translating and contextualizing ideas from one culture into another. Shortly afterward, the Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan gave a memorable talk at the Berkman Center as part of the Global Voices inaugural meeting. Hossein explained that, in 2004, blogs in Iran acted as windows, bridges, and cafés, offering opportunities to catch a glimpse of another life, to make a connection to another person, or to convene and converse in a public space. I’ve been using the term “bridgeblogger” ever since for people building connections between different cultures by means of online media, and “bridge figures” to describe people engaged in the larger process of cultural translation, brokering connections and building understanding between people from different nations.

To understand what’s going on in another part of the world often requires a guide. The best guides have a deep understanding of both the culture they’re encountering and the culture they’re rooted in. This understanding usually comes from living for long periods in close contact with different cultures. Sometimes this is a function of physical relocation—an African student who pursues higher education in Europe, an American Peace Corps volunteer who settles into life in Niger semipermanently. It can also be a function of the job you do. A professional tour guide who spends her days leading travelers through Dogon country may end up knowing more about the peculiarities of American and Australian culture than a Malian who lives in New York City or Sydney but interacts primarily with fellow immigrants…

Merely being bicultural isn’t sufficient to qualify you as a bridge figure. Motivation matters as well. Bridge figures care passionately about one of their cultures and want to celebrate it to a wide audience. One of the profound surprises for me in working on Global Voices has been discovering that many of our community members are motivated not by a sense of postnationalist, hand-holding “Kumbaya”-singing, small-world globalism but by a form of nationalism. Behind their work on Global Voices often lies a passion for explaining their home cultures to the people they’re now living and working with. As with Erik’s celebration of Kenyan engineering creativity, and Rosenthal’s passion for the complexity and beauty of South African music, the best bridge figures are not just interpreters but also advocates for the creative richness of other cultures…

It’s not simply the number of acquaintances that represent power, as Gladwell posits. It’s also their quality as bridges between different social networks. Lots of friends who have access to the same information and opportunities are less helpful than a few friends who can connect you to people and ideas outside your ordinary orbit.

Without trying to be too pessimistic about the Internet and social media, it has tended to reproduce existing kinds of social relationships: limited public spaces, domination by corporations (particularly the nascent tech industry), creating echo chambers where people only find the content and people who agree with them, and not always having the open and fair-minded dialogue that might help bring people together. Yet, I’d be curious to know if there are workable and effective solutions to creating lasting online bridging ties. In my own social media use, I rely on a number of Facebook friends who consistently discuss or post regarding topics further from my own personal orbit.