Author Archives: legallysociable

Hyperbole: we are a country of McMansions and sprawl everywhere

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In a real estate blog at Boston.com, I ran into a reader’s comment who made some common claims about how much space we have used in the United States:

America is a country of excess. We have such suburban and exurban sprawl that we’ve covered almost every square inch of land with some ugly McMansion. Part of the “American Dream” was born out of the pioneer, self-sufficiency school of thought – so that everyone’s goal is to have at least, a 2,500 sq foot house on 2 acres with no neighbors close by. It’s wasteful. It’s also why we have bears and moose in the suburbs – the animals have no place left to live! How much to we pay to keep all of that up? How much do we spend on gas (and time!) driving the huge distance between work and the exurb where we can afford that big beast? How much water do we waste on watering those massive lawns? We’ve become so isolated and insular in this country.

I think Europeans have it right. Density and living in smaller spaces is more conducive to a higher quality of life. To watch a footy game, most Europeans go to the neighborhood pub, where everybody knows your name and neighbors actually speak to and know one another. Here, we barricade ourselves in our McMansions and watch the game in our great room and miss out on the social interaction.

I’ve always been a champion of living below my means. I seem to be the exception, not the rule.

In Europe, when the toaster breaks, they get it fixed. Here, we throw it out and buy a new one. Over here, I doubt you could find anyone who still fixes toasters.

Opponents of sprawl could make their case more effectively without resorting to unnecessary hyperbole. “Almost every square inch of land” has been used? Only about 3% of land in the United States is in urban areas. And then all of that land is covered with McMansions? The average new house has been around 2,500 square feet in recent years and this is probably not big enough to qualify as a McMansion. Homes larger than 3,000 square feet are a small percentage of new and existing homes. Everyone wants 2 acres of land? Most suburban plots are much smaller than this, often less than .25 acres. One growing housing segment in recent decades, townhouses and condos, take up much less land. The desires and actually buying patterns of Americans are not exactly the same thing, owning 2+ acres in many communities would be prohibitively expensive, and some communities wouldn’t even allow this zoning.

The comparison to densities in Europe is more effective. Americans do promote sprawl, driving, and private property more than some other countries. This has been tied to some declines in civic life such as outlined in Bowling Alone or Suburban Nation. Excessive consumption is an issue larger than houses and sprawl though they could be indicative of American habits of spending larger amounts of discretionary income.

My takeaway: limit the hyperbole and stick to more defensible comparisons to other ways of living.

A Best Buy no longer?

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Wired argues that the decline of Best Buy’s business is linked to the decline of exurbia generally:

You can’t trace a precisely parallel line charting Best Buy’s decline alongside exurbia’s economic cratering. Technology and consumer preference have also taken a toll. Sales of physical media like DVDs and the players to play them have dropped as consumers stream more and more movies and music. Apple stores have seduced customers with a boutique approach that Best Buy plans to copy in some locations. Amazon and other online retailers have likely siphoned even more.

Despite these factors, the twilight gathering around Best Buy feels more than anything like part of the darkness that snuffed out the exurban dream. These signature outposts of [David] Brooks’ new world [described in his 2004 book On Paradise Drive] filled new homes with flatscreens bought with home equity loans that have since left victims of the crash drowning in debt. Like so many exurban homeowners, Best Buy banked on false promises of perpetual prosperity as contrary economic realities lurked.

I would also add that Best Buy has has to contend with expanded (and cheaper) electronics offerings at other big box stores, notably Walmart and Target.  Given the number of factors involved, is it really fair to characterize this as a “exurban problem”?

Quick Review: the Sherlock Holmes stories

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One of my reading projects this summer was to read all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories (56) and novels (4). I enjoyed reading these classics and here are a few thoughts about the well-known detective and his sidekick Watson:

1. I don’t read a lot of mysteries but I can see that more recent detectives (books, TV, movies) have hints of Holmes. Holmes is the classic scientific detective, reasoning his way through tough cases. There has to be a line from Holmes to Hercule Poirot to Adrian Monk. Of course, Holmes’ emphasis on science also emerges as the larger society moves more toward a belief of science and progress.

2. I’m not sure that I like Sherlock Holmes in the end and I’m not sure Doyle wanted people to like him but rather wanted people to be impressed by him. Holmes certainly has a sharp mind but he is given to mood swings, using opium, and rarely shows a non-scientific side. For example, there are a few points in the later stories where Watson seems thrilled that Holmes reveals some warm feelings for his companion. Holmes is a sort of modern renaissance man but is a limited person.

3. Even with the presence of Professor Moriarty, there was one big difference with recent stories: there is a lack of a major villain. Indeed, Holmes does a lot of one-off cases and there are a few recurring characters.

4. After reading all of these stories, I’m not sure I could remember the details of many of them. I liked the four novels the most as there was room to develop the cases and have more twists and turns.

5. I had the opportunity to read most of these stories in the Oxford annotated editions (see an example here). At first, I thought this would be a hindrance (that long introduction, the extensive footnotes) but I really grew to enjoy this. This particularly came in handy with the novels The Gang of Four and A Study in Scarlet as the footnotes described how Doyle built the stories around interesting true events. I didn’t read all of the footnotes (and they truly seemed to be extensive – and occasionally esoteric) but the introductions were helpful.

6. I wish I had read these all in chronological order.

7. I suspect it would have been very different to read these all in the serial form in which they were released.

If your lawn is all brown, just paint it green

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Americans will go to some lengths to keep their lawn green – including painting it.

As the worst drought in decades hits two-thirds of the USA, residents and businesses in normally well-watered areas are catching on to the lawn-painting practice employed for years in the drier West and Southwest…

Perazzo said the dyed lawns will hold their look for a few months…

In the frequently parched Phoenix area, Brian Howland said he started Arizona Lawn Painting after the nationwide foreclosure crisis left scores of homes empty and their lawns neglected.

Some customers have been residents fearful that their homeowners’ associations will penalize them for letting their lawns fade.

This is either an example of American ingenuity, fear of homeowner’s associations, or a strange quest to maintain face/status as a homeowner.

I would love to know if neighbors look down on their neighbors who have to dye their lawn. In other words, how much status can one recover through this method? Another way to think about this would be to look at whether homes on the real estate market with dyed lawns do better or worse in terms of time on the market and sales price. The best thing that can come out of dyeing seems to be that those unfamiliar with the lawn and neighborhood might not know any better.

Working with old Nike missile sites in the Chicago suburbs

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If one looks closely, there are still a few remnants of the Cold War in the Chicago suburbs: old Nike missile sites. One such site is being cleaned up in Vernon Hills:

The weapons and the equipment needed to fire them were removed decades ago, but the hatches and the concrete pad — and the bunkerlike magazine buried deep beneath them — remain…The Chicago area was home to more than a dozen Nike bases. They could be found in the city and in Addison, Arlington Heights, Naperville, Palatine and other communities, as well as at Fort Sheridan near Highland Park.

The Vernon Hills base included six underground missile magazines, a barracks, a headquarters building and other facilities, all surrounded by what was then cornfields.

Along with the other Chicago-area bases, the site represented a last-ditch effort to destroy any enemy bombers targeting the Windy City. Coastal defenses and air-to-air combat efforts would already have failed to stop invading planes.

Here is a list of the 265 Nike bases across the United States and the website for the Nike Historical Society.

The site in Naperville has since been remade into Nike Park. I suspect some younger residents might think this is named after the shoe company instead of anti-aircraft missiles. At the time of its use, this plot of land was outside of town though it is now clearly part of the I-88 corridor.

I wonder how much interest many communities would have in cleaning up and displaying these sites. Indeed, the Daily Herald article says the “the nation’s only restored Nike base, complete with a museum and public tours” is located in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. In addition to the money this would require, these sites are decades old and they aren’t exactly conducive to the idyllic image many suburbs and communities would like to display. It is one thing to let someone else take care of the history in a museum somewhere and another to remind residents that there was once a military base in their sleepy community.

Aren’t the Olympics the domain of well-funded athletes from wealthier countries?

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While watching some events from the Olympics, I was struck by how much training must go into this. But this endless training reminded me of what Malcolm Gladwell discusses in Outliers: only a small number of people get the advantages that allow them to have all of this training. In other words, you are more likely to experience the “Matthew effect” if your parents, social network, or country has the resources to allow you to do all of this training. This doesn’t mean that these competitors aren’t skilled but it is not like all of the world’s population has an equal opportunity to take the path toward the Olympics. (Of course, not everyone would want to, either.)

I’m sure someone has already had this idea but what about some sort of “everyman Olympics”?

Daily Herald: Emanuel, Chicago raiding the suburbs without committing to “regional partnership”

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I posted Sunday about Chicago gaining Motorola Mobility and the suburbs (Libertyville) losing the firm. It is not too surprising that the Daily Herald, a newspaper serving Chicago’s suburbs, is not too fond of the move but they make a larger claim in an editorial: there isn’t much evidence yet that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is committed to “regional partnership.”

But today, Gov. Pat Quinn and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel play by a different set of rules. This isn’t the first time Emanuel has raided suburban business with no significant attempt to forge any sort of regional partnership.

And while we appreciate Quinn’s efforts and relative success at keeping Illinois businesses in Illinois, his favoritism toward Chicago at the expense of the suburbs, at least in this case, is clear.

Though he was under no obligation to do so, Quinn signed off on the agreement to transfer Motorola Mobility’s incentive package to its move to Chicago.

And the thing is, that didn’t happen five minutes before the deal was announced. Yet, suburban officials were kept largely in the dark until the deal was done.

This is an ongoing point of contention in the Chicago region. When I heard Mayor Daley speak at Wheaton College, I noted that he talked about regional cooperation but evidence of this happening for some of the biggest issues has been lacking. Mayor Emanuel has made some overtures about the need for regional efforts but it appears that theDaily Herald(and perhaps others?) don’t think this has truly happened yet.

I wonder what it would take for the two sides, Chicago and suburbs, to truly feel like the other side is cooperating. If everything was equal, say both sides got the same number of large firms, would they each be happy? The Chicago area has a long history of many taxing bodies (see the example of 45 mosquito abatement districts in DuPage County here) and it is difficult to get all of these groups working together. Here is my short-term prediction: I suspect both sides will appeal for regional cooperation when they need outside help or funds from other groups but it will be very difficult for them to acknowledge regional partnerships when they might lose something.

The extra-real sound of the Olympics

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For those interested in sounds, this is a fascinating read about how the sound from the Olympics sounds so (hyper)real:

For the London Olympics, Baxter will deploy 350 mixers, 600 sound technicians, and 4,000 microphones at the London Olympics. Using all the modern sound technology they can get their hands on, they’ll shape your experience to sound like a lucid dream, a movie, of the real thing.

Let’s take archery. “After hearing the coverage in Barcelona at the ’92 Olympics, there were things that were missing. The easy things were there. The thud and the impact of the target — that’s a no brainer — and a little bit of the athlete as they’re getting ready,” Baxter says.

“But, it probably goes back to the movie Robin Hood, I have a memory of the sound and I have an expectation. So I was going, ‘What would be really really cool in archery to take it up a notch?’ And the obvious thing was the sound of the arrow going through the air to the target. The pfft-pfft-pfft type of sound. So we looked at this little thing, a boundary microphone, that would lay flat, it was flatter than a pack of cigarettes, and I put a little windshield on it, and I put it on the ground between the athlete and the target and it completely opened up the sound to something completely different.”

Just to walk through the logic: based on the sound of arrows in a fictional Kevin Costner movie, Baxter created the sonic experience of sitting between the archer and the target, something no live spectator could do.

Television is supposed be able to bring you live events (I know this doesn’t necessarily qualify for the Olympics) – I know I don’t think much about what technology this requires. But this article suggests the sound is even better than real: there is no one at the Olympic archery range who is even hearing what televisions viewers can hear.

Does this make watching all of those Olympics commercials a little more bearable?

What I suspected: new homes might be slightly smaller but buyers want more amenities

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Here is a little evidence from the Hartford Courant of something I suspected might happen: people might buy smaller homes but this doesn’t necessarily mean they will be cheaper or have fewer amenities.

While “downsizing” may be the housing buzzword of recent years, not everybody’s doing it. And even those who are buying smaller homes are spending big on upgrades like granite countertops and hardwood floors, area builders say…

The houses may be slightly smaller than the 6,000-square-foot-plus “McMansions” of the past, but “people still want size,” according to Greg Kamedulski, president of the New England division of national builder Toll Brothers, which is building Weatherstone…

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be huge, the house,” said George Santos, sales and marketing director at Plainville-based By Carrier Inc. “A lot of people want new construction because they want to be able to customize the home the way they want it to be.”

“There has definitely been a shift in … the popularity of those very large houses in exchange for those relatively smaller homes but with the same amenities,” said Bill Ferrigno, president of Sunlight Construction, which recently completed Knoll Lane in Avon. Houses on Knoll Lane range from 2,700 to 3,700 square feet…

“People are very concerned with interior appointments — trims, a more sophisticated decorating package, numerous wall colors,” he said. “All these things cost more money, of course.”

So people know that having a home of a certain size is either unnecessary or is frowned upon (it may even be morally wrong) but having the nice interior features is still desirable. Perhaps this is because these interior appointments are not immediately apparent from the outside? Perhaps people now value their own experience of their home and what they want versus what they think people want to see on the outside?

This fall, more than half of college students will be living at home

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New figures suggest that more than half of American college students will be living at home during the fall 2012 semester:

For American students, heading off to college has traditionally also meant physically going away to college. But now, at a time when college costs are soaring, and when news of young people being saddled with burdensome student loan debt is unavoidable, today’s students are trying to trim college expenses in every way possible. More than half of students, in fact, will be living at home when the fall semester begins—up significantly from the 43% of students who commuted a couple of years ago…

The argument that a so-called “higher education bubble” really does exist—and may be in the process of popping—gets a boost especially because it looks like students in wealthier American families, who should be able to pay for pricey colleges, are choosing to stay home in increasingly higher numbers. As USA Today points out:

This year, 47% of students from high-income families, those making more than $100,000, are living at home, nearly double the 24% who did two years ago.

It would be interesting to see this broken down by type of institution. In other words, are students at pricier liberal arts and research schools living at home in greater numbers?

Are there studies that show the impact of living on campus versus commuting? Does it have any impact on learning? Does it have a demonstrable impact on social adjustment and well-being? I assume colleges and universities will have to do more to justify having students live on campus or having them pay so much…

h/t Instapundit