Author Archives: legallysociable

Modernist homes doomed by being too small?

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Here is an interesting suggestion regarding modernist homes like those found in New Canaan, Connecticut: the homes were just too small to compete with McMansions.

Among the houses that Philip Johnson designed in New Canaan, Conn., the suburban enclave that became a laboratory for postwar Modernist design, the Robert C. Wiley house, completed in 1953, remains one of his most elegant. It is a strikingly simple composition of two rectangular boxes: one, a glass and wood pavilion with a single, 15-foot-tall living, dining and kitchen space, is cantilevered over the other, a stone and concrete base that contains, among other things, four small bedrooms, bathrooms and a sitting room. The 3,000-square-foot house typifies Modernism’s insistence on efficient use of space, but by the advent of the McMansion era, despite its architectural pedigree, it merely seemed quaintly, and unsalably, tiny.

The house had been on the market for some time when an enlightened buyer — Frank Gallipoli, the president of Freepoint Commodities, an energy trading firm — bought it in 1994. “I wasn’t looking for a Philip Johnson house,” he recalled, but given the price of land in New Canaan, the building, along with the six acres on which it sits, offered good value. “It had the utility of a house,” Gallipoli said, “but I was getting an art object.” And art is a subject close to Gallipoli’s heart: he owns an extensive collection that includes works by contemporary British artists like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Jenny Saville and Marc Quinn. Many of these pieces are too big to show in a domestic setting, so Gallipoli began to think about converting a barn on the property (it also served as a garage) into a private gallery. About 10 years ago, he asked Johnson himself to come up with a design, but the architect’s idea for a series of domed structures was never built. Ultimately, Gallipoli commissioned Roger Ferris, of the Connecticut firm Roger Ferris + Partners, to design the barn, along with a pool house, a new garage and a substantial restoration of the existing house. (Ferris also did some work on Gallipoli’s Manhattan house and designed a “surf shack” for him in the Hamptons, which includes a pink Corian aboveground lap pool.)

I know the point of piece is to discuss the intriguing rebuild of this home but I find the suggestion at the end of the first paragraph fascinating. The tone of the piece is that people should recognize the beauty of the home and it took an “enlightened” buyer with a true interest in art to see it for what it could be. But, alas, Americans got bogged down with buying humongous homes like McMansions and lost interest in homes with “architectural pedigree.”

I’ve suggested this before: if given a choice, I don’t think most Americans would select a modernist home. I’m not sure square footage is the only reason for this. Critics and architects may not like these choices but it also doesn’t necessarily mean Americans only go for the largest space, the best bang for the buck, the kitschiest house, or the most impressive space. Perhaps many Americans imply aren’t trained to know what critically praised architecture looks like or to appreciate it. Indeed, where is this training supposed to take place and when should it occur? (I don’t think it happens much in the curriculum from kindergarten through college.) Or perhaps it has to do with how Americans view social class and the suspicion Americans tend to have toward educated opinions and movements. Additionally, hiring an architect to design a home requires money that is likely out the reach of many Americans.

Burr Ridge seeking donations from public to meet city’s needs

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In an era of declining revenue, a few communities are trying a new tactic: ask residents to donate money for needed city purchases.

The leaders of west suburban Burr Ridge have a list of dozens of items they want for the community, including a new patrol vehicle, a portable Breathalyzer and even a cordless saw.

But because they didn’t make it into the budget, they have put them on a wish list and are asking residents for help…

Stricker said village officials came up with the idea last year after learning that west suburban Riverside has a similar program. He said the village is still establishing a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) program, but added that residents have already given funds.

In 2011, Burr Ridge resident Alan Rose, the CEO of Rose Paving Co. in Bridgeview, donated $5,800 to the Police Department for new Taser devices, according to village documents. Resident Joyce Walsh also donated $5,000 to the Police Department in 2011 for its efforts in protecting the village.

As the article notes, Burr Ridge is pretty wealthy. The village of just over 10,500 residents, the median value of owner-occupied housing units is over $706,000, the homeownership rate is just over 95%, and the household median income is over $143,000, and 2.4% of the residents live in poverty. Perhaps in this sort of setting a donation program could work.

But, I can’t picture this as a viable long-term strategy for most communities. Could a local government wait for benevolent citizens? Could residents or businesses make donations and expect something in return like policies or decisions that benefit them? Public-private partnerships and cooperation in places like Chicago are one thing but relying on the public for donated money seems bound to lead to more trouble.

I wonder if this also could raise significant questions about what local communities really do need to purchase: if an item doesn’t make it into the budget, is it really necessary in the first place? Take the Burr Ridge items mentioned above: how worse off will the community be if the government doesn’t have a cordless saw or portable Breathalyzer?

Portland so progressive that it ignores issues of race?

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A sociologist who teaches about race at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon suggests the city is comfortable discussing and dealing with a lot of issues but not so much when it comes to race:

Miller, who is writing a book tentatively titled “Blacklandia” about the racial awkwardness she’s observed in Portland, says the small black population in Multnomah County (5.7 percent) has made it too easy for white people to avoid ever having to mix with blacks, much less become comfortable with them…

Miller’s point isn’t that Portland is a particularly racist city. In fact, she doesn’t think that at all. But people here are so satisfied with their progressive self-images, she says, that they are neglecting issues that affect the black community. As a result, she says, Portland becomes a less livable city for everybody.

Miller says she’s constantly being reminded that whites here have a lot of bottled up feelings about race they’d like to get out of their system. But they don’t know how.

She spends a lot of time alone at local bars. Miller says they are great places to do sociological research. Often, white people in Portland who start chatting with her in bars learn she has a Ph.D. Invariably after that, Miller says, all they want to talk about is race, as if after a lifetime of searching they’ve finally found an educated black person to whom they can talk.

“I feel like Oprah,” Miller says. “I can’t even sit there and have a cocktail.”

I don’t think Portland, Oregon is the only place where it is difficult to have conversations about race. This is an American issue not just limited to places with relatively lower percentages of minorities.

Comparing the brain to building around an ancient city

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In describing the brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor makes a comparison to building around an ancient city:

The human brain is in some ways an even more extreme example of a process that is far more creative than destructive. We effectively have three evolutionary versions of brains in our heads. Our brains are rather like a city that has existed since ancient times. In Cambridge, for instance, the historic center is squashed inside a fertile bend in the river Cam. This is the core of the city. Here there used to be a castle on a small hill, originally built by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century. The oldest parts of the university, along with old churches and so on, are still there. Over the centuries, housing, university colleges, and research departments have sprung up around this central district. And now, around this second band of somewhat old structures, there are the outer suburbs, with modern housing along with large technology and business parks. Although an unromantic person might be tempted to replace the oldest buildings of the city and the narrow winding roads of the core area with efficient modern streets and buildings, all these ancient places still serve some purpose today. The expense of such renovations simply wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

An interesting comparison. However, even in revered ancient cities, changes have been made in the core, whether it is the rise of some modern buildings or the widening of streets to accommodate cars or the burrowing underground for subways or an updated infrastructure for features like sewers and fiber optic cables.

h/t Instapundit

21st century mapmaking, Google style

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Here is a fascinating look into how Google has developed its mapping abilities. It takes a few steps:

“So you want to make a map,” Weiss-Malik tells me as we sit down in front of a massive monitor. “There are a couple of steps. You acquire data through partners. You do a bunch of engineering on that data to get it into the right format and conflate it with other sources of data, and then you do a bunch of operations, which is what this tool is about, to hand massage the data. And out the other end pops something that is higher quality than the sum of its parts.”

This is what they started out with, the TIGER data from the US Census Bureau (though the base layer could and does come from a variety of sources in different countries)…

And that’s just from comparing the map to the satellite imagery. But there are also a variety of other tools at Google’s disposal. One is bringing in data from other sources, say the US Geological Survey. But Google’s Ground Truthers can also bring another exclusive asset to bear on the maps problem: the Street View cars’ tracks and imagery. In keeping with Google’s more data is better data mantra, the maps team, largely driven by Street View, is publishing more imagery data every two weeks than Google possessed total in 2006.

One cartographic historian thinks this is a big deal:

It’s probably better not to think of Google Maps as a thing like a paper map. Geographic information systems are a jump like the abacus to the computer. “I honestly think we’re seeing a more profound change, for map-making, than the switch from manuscript to print in the Renaissance,” University of London cartographic historian Jerry Brotton told the Sydney Morning Herald. “That was huge. But this is bigger.”

Perhaps this is one of those technological advances that seems normal or inevitable now but with some historical perspective years later, we might see it as a major improvement.

I’d be interested in seeing studies that examine how this new technology changes the way people view space and maps. Has it improved our spatial capacities and perceptions? Do we read maps differently? Does it significantly impact our social life?

Biden and Ryan redefine working class for their own purposes

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Both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions featured efforts to portray their leaders as having blue-collar roots. However, as this analysis points out, these testimonies were working with altered definitions of what it means to be blue-collar.

Merriam Webster’s defines blue-collar labor as “of, relating to, or constituting the class of wage earners whose duties call for the wearing of work clothes or protective clothing.” But the Washington definition of blue-collar is different. From an analysis of punditry, the qualities that define blue collar are being white, being male, being religious — especially Catholic — being from the interior, and having mainstream cultural interests totally unrelated to social class, such as “liking hockey” or “liking 1970s rock music.”…

Actual Blue-Collar Credentials: “My dad never wore a blue collar,” Biden said in June. “Barack makes me sound like I just climbed out of a mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania carrying a lunch bucket. No one in my family worked in a factory.”…

Blue-Collaryness Rating: Worn Chambray. “This campaign, Biden — with his blue collar background — is focusing on helping Obama where the president tends to be weak: in appealing to blue collar and swing state voters,” the Associated Press reported Friday. “One of the weapons used by Obama to court white men is Vice President Joe Biden, who has a kinship with blue-collar voters, particularly in critical battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan,” The Dallas Morning News said Thursday…

Washington Blue-Collar Credentials: Ryan is Catholic, and from a state where there are farms. Ryan likes Led Zeppelin, which is somehow blue collar despite inspiring countless blacklight posters in dorms nationwide. He has other hobbies that require equipment you buy in malls. “I was raised on the Packers, Badgers, Bucks and Brewers. I like to hunt here, I like to fish here, I like to snowmobile here. I even think ice fishing is interesting,” Ryan said on August 12. “I got a new chainsaw… It was nice. It’s a Stihl.” Homeowner Stihl chainsaws run between $179.95 and $359.95 at the local Janesville Stihl dealer. “He is very grounded in roots that weren’t so glamorous coming up in life,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told PBS before the Republican National Convention.  “And the American people will hear his story tonight, hear how he lost his father and had to work hard and assume hourly wage jobs when he was young.” Yes, friends, Ryan’s Dickinsian youth involved a part-time job at McDonalds. (In fairness, it does not appear that anyone in Washington has ever claimed Eric Cantor has “blue collar appeal.”)

This helps illustrate several points about social class in the United States:

1. Categories of social class can often be quite fuzzy. Often, income is used to mark off different classes but social scientists and the public themselves have difficulty deciding where exactly these boundaries should be drawn. For example, we could also look at how Romney and Obama talk about and promote middle-class values yet neither are currently living middle-class lives according to their income.

2. Social class is not just about having a certain level of income; there is also a cultural dimension, certain behaviors and tastes associated with different classes (a la Bourdieu). For both Biden and Ryan, it sounds like they want to claim some of these cultural markers which plenty of Americans might also share.

3. I wonder how much the media and American voters want to discuss such claims from politicians about social class. Compared to some other countries, Americans are more reluctant to talk about class and sometimes talk and act like it doesn’t even exist. For example, Rick Santorum said on the campaign trail that he didn’t even want to use the term middle-class because it is divisive.

Figures: more deaths per capita in horse accidents in NYC in 1900 than in auto accidents today

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I ran across an article titled “From Horse Power to Horsepower” that contains these interesting figures:

Horses killed in other, more direct ways as well. As difficult as it may be to believe given their low speeds, horse-drawn vehicles were far deadlier than their modern counterparts. In New York in 1900, 200 persons were killed by horses and horse-drawn vehicles. This contrasts with 344 auto-related fatalities in New York in 2003; given the modern city’s greater population, this means the fatality rate per capita in the horse era was roughly 75 percent higher than today. Data from Chicago show that in 1916 there were 16.9 horse-related fatalities for each 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles; this is nearly seven times the city’s fatality rate per auto in 1997.

Of course, as the article notes, there were other issues with having thousands of horses on the street each day.

I’ve written before about the risks of driving today, particularly compared to other behaviors which many might think are more dangerous but are not. Yet, these figures are a reminder that we are safer today on the city streets, at least while driving something in the streets, than in the past. It may not seem to be true but I suspect this has more to do with how much we hear about accidents (and crime) more than the actual reality of how dangerous it is.

Kotkin: Obama coalition now about urban professionals, not blue collar workers

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Joel Kotkin writes about the shift in the Democratic coalition under President Obama away from blue collar workers and toward urban professionals:

The gentrification of the Democratic Party has gone too far to be reversed in this election. After decades of fighting to win over white working- and middle-class families, Democrats under Obama have set them aside in favor of a new top-bottom coalition dominated by urban professionals—notably academics and members of the media—single women, and childless couples, along with ethnic minorities.

Rather than representing, as Chris Christie and others on the right suggest, the old, corrupt Chicago machine, Obama in fact epitomizes the city’s new political culture, as described by the University of Chicago’s Terry Nichols Clark, that greatly deemphasizes white, largely Catholic working-class voters, the self-employed, and people involved in blue-collar industries…

The traditional machine provided him with critical backing early in his political career, but Obama owes his success to new groups that have taken center stage in the increasingly liberal post-Clinton Democratic party: the urban “creative class” made up mostly of highly-educated professionals, academics, gays, single people, and childless couples. It’s a group Clark once called “the slimmer family.” Such people were barely acknowledged and even mistreated by the old machine; now they are primary players in the “the post-materialistic” party. The only holdovers from the old coalition are ethnic minorities and government workers…

Focused on the “upstairs” part of the new political culture, the administration—confident in minority support—has done very little materially to improve the long-term prospects of those “downstairs.” Minorities, in fact, have done far worse under this administration than virtually any in recent history, including that of the hapless George W. Bush. In 2012, African-American unemployment stands at the highest level in decades; 12 percent of the nation’s population, blacks account for 21 percent of the nation’s jobless. The picture is particularly dire Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where black unemployment is nearly 20%, and Detroit, where’s it’s over 25 percent.

Fascinating. If correct, this could be a boon for the powerful in big cities, people interested in big ideas and big projects and big returns, but not necessarily for those in the struggling neighborhoods. It’s too bad Kotkin doesn’t link this approach to specific policies Obama and the new Democrats have pursued – what exactly does this look like? Have the first four years provided concrete evidence that these Democrats are opposed to the suburbs, as conservatives suggest? On the other hand, we might look at the lack of policies directly aimed at the urban working and lower classes and draw conclusions from that.

I’ve suggested before that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a pragmatic kind of Democrat in the mold of Bill Clinton, liberal but clearly pro-business and interested in things like public-private partnerships. If Obama is more interested in the “upstairs” of the Democratic Party, does he approve of Emanuel’s moves and kinds of actions?

Honduras moving forward with the construction of three private cities

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Honduras is moving forward in allowing three private cities to be built though some have voiced objections:

The “model cities” will have their own judiciary, laws, governments and police forces. They also will be empowered to sign international agreements on trade and investment and set their own immigration policy.

Congress president Juan Hernandez said the investment group MGK will invest $15 million to begin building basic infrastructure for the first model city near Puerto Castilla on the Caribbean coast. That first city would create 5,000 jobs over the next six months and up to 200,000 jobs in the future, Hernandez said. South Korea has given Honduras $4 million to conduct a feasibility study, he said…

The project is opposed by civic groups as well as the indigenous Garifuna people, who say they don’t want their land near Puerto Castilla on the Caribbean coast to be used for the project. Living along Central America’s Caribbean coast, the Garifuna are descendants of the Amazon’s Arawak Indians, the Caribbean’s Caribes and escaped West African slaves…

The president of Honduras will appoint “globally respected international figures” without financial interests in the projects to nine-member independent boards that will oversee the running of the cities, whose daily operations will be administered by a board-appointed governor. Future appointments to the board will be decided by votes by standing board members, Strong said.

I could understand how this would be alluring for governments that are struggling to attract foreign capital and create jobs. However, privatization on this scale sounds daunting and possible problematic. It is one thing to have developers own and run neighborhoods or particular projects; but a whole city? With separate international powers and not having to follow Honduran law? With a future promise of allowing citizens to vote? I could imagine some of the responses from urban sociologists who write about the privatization of public space. What happens when these developers run afoul of citizens or Honduran law and conventions? What kind of free speech rights will citizens have and will they have any say in what happens? It is one thing to have to follow the rules of corporations in private-public spaces in American cities (see these examples in San Francisco) but another when the whole city follows the guidelines of developers or “respected international figures.”

Assuming this moves forward and the cities are built, it will be fascinating to see what happens.

What would you bring to a “McMansion Condo Dinner Party”?

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On the website The Daily Meal, I ran across an interesting location in Denver, Colorado: McMansion Condo Dinner Party.

The address given for this event, 209 Cook Street, might indeed be considered a McMansion by some. According to Zillow, the condo has these features: it was built in 1993, has 2,908 square feet, an attached garage, 2 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and the price Zestimate is around $843,000.

So what does one bring to dinner at a McMansion condo? If McMansions are often considered to be locations that are all about impressing others and showing off wealth, what food would fit this party compared to the food one might bring to a “regular” new house or a larger mansion? Perhaps if the food is prepared using stainless steel appliances and on granite countertops, this overrides the food itself…

I wish people would list the “Best Dishes” they brought to the McMansion Condo Dinner Party!