Author Archives: legallysociable

Naperville: best place to protest in DuPage County?

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On Saturday, there was a march in downtown Naperville to honor Trayvon Martin:

More than 130 people walked through downtown Naperville on Saturday to honor the memory of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American who was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., in late February.

But they also wanted to give notice that racism cannot be tolerated.

“We’re walking for Trayvon and everybody who’s been a victim of violence,” said Kelly Ingram, of Naperville, who helped organize the rally and a one-mile walk…

Word of the Naperville event circulated via Facebook and other social media…

Naperville’s nearby carillon tolled as the racially diverse crowd gathered under bright blue skies at Centennial Beach on West Jackson Avenue. Many wore hoodies, as Martin had when he was slain.

Considering the vocal discussion of and reactions to this case, I’m not surprised. But I was interested to see that this took place in downtown Naperville. This march comes not long after an Occupy Naperville group met in and marched in downtown Naperville. Why all this activity in Naperville and not in other suburban communities? I think there are two big reasons for this:

1. Naperville has a thriving downtown. Thus, a protest group is going to be seen by a decent number of people who happen to be in Naperville for shopping, eating, walking about the Riverwalk, or going to the library. Just standing on one of the busier street corners, like Main and Jefferson, is going to draw attention. In contrast, many suburban communities don’t have this kind of well-populated public space. While other suburbs may have quaint downtowns or thriving strip malls and/or shopping areas, these places aren’t going to have the same kind of foot traffic as downtown Naperville.

2. Naperville is a wealthy, mainly white, and fairly conservative/Republican community so protesters may believe protesting about issues such as race and class will particularly cause a stir. In this line of reasoning, having a protest in Aurora or Elgin or Joliet or Oak Park or another large suburb might not be so appealing as compared to going to Naperville and pushing the envelope further.

Let’s say that from this point forward Naperville does continue to draw protesters who are attracted by a popular downtown and a wealthy community: how will Naperville respond?

Trailer for documentary about tiny houses: “Tiny – A Story About Living Small”

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A supporter of tiny houses has put together a new documentary titled “Tiny – A Story About Living Small.” Read a little bit about the personal experiences behind the film and see the trailer here.

Not Christopher Smith, 30, and his girlfriend Merete Mueller who are building the tiny home of their dreams. 

The couple’s house, set in the mountains of Fairplay, Colorado, is ‘about 125 square feet’ and ’19 feet long wall to wall’…

Apparently a ‘good home’ simply consists of a sitting area, kitchen, bathroom and a queen-size bedroom (set in a vaulted ceiling that makes space for a loft). 

‘The interior looks a lot bigger than the exterior,’ Miss Mueller told ABC News.

Not only is their new home economical in space, it’s also energy efficient and runs on solar power and has a composting toilet…

Mr Smith was so inspired by the miniature buildings he visited that he decided to make a documentary about the project called Tiny – A Story About Living Small.

Visit the official website for the documentary here. I’ll have to get my hands on this when it is released.

Artists imagine post-apocalyptic world in terms of empty cities

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Two artists from France have put together a collection of photographs that feature famous city settings – with no people:

In Silent World, artists Lucie and Simon have taken the world’s most familiar and populous cities and removed all but one or two people to create the illusion of a lonely world.

In the thought-provoking work, places like the normally bustling Times Square and Tiananmen Square appear absent of their crowds.

Lucie and Simon are a duo of artists based in Paris, France, who have been working together since 2005.

According to their website, the award-winning artists focus on blurring the line between reality and fantasy in their work.

The pictures are interesting and there is even a video with the photographs and some ominous music.
But I’ll be honest: I don’t find these photos to be too jarring. There are two other forms in which I think these scenes are much more powerful:
1. Post-apocalyptic movies do a decent job with this. However, I think too many of them go for the destruction angle rather than the emptiness angle. Additionally, they often try to drive home the point too much with things like eerie music and/or loud wind noises.
2. Real life. While these artists have removed people and vehicles, you can approximate some of this in places by walking or driving around very early in the morning. That way, there is still some light but there may be no one else around. This can be very strange: the buildings are around and it looks like there should be activity but there is no one there. Or another example: walking through the Loop in Chicago later at night. Without the business activity, it is a lonely place.
What would be most disconcerting in these scenes if you were there all day by yourself. I’m reminded looking at these pictures that many of these cityscapes are not built to a human scale. For example, a lone person in Times Square without people around is simply dwarfed by the buildings. It is not just about being alone; it is also about the massive buildings around you that make you feel insignificant. Similarly, large plazas or wide highways are also not often conducive to human activity but we forget some of this when they are full of people. It reminds me of Jane Jacob’s work in The Death and Life of Great American Cities: it is more human-scale neighborhoods that people flock to anyway, not downtowns and their skyscraper canyons. In a post-apocalyptic world, people will look for other people and the majority of New Yorkers don’t live in places like Times Square. What might be even more jarring would be walking around an empty Greenwich Square.

The role of emotions in buying a McMansion

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“Financial journalist and author” Jean Chatzky discusses her rules about money and hints that buying a McMansion and working with money in general is complicated by emotions:

Have money rules changed with the recession?

I don’t know that the money rules have changed, but I think the recession has made people realize the importance of some of the money rules. For example, Money Rule #26 is “Just because someone will lend it to you, doesn’t mean you should borrow it.” I think it’s the lesson of the housing crisis. We over-borrowed. We took out bigger mortgages than we could truly afford because the banks were willing to give it to us. Every unfurnished McMansion proves that point. For everybody who’s ever felt house-poor or student-loan poor or credit-card poor, the recession has hammered that home.

Why do people tend to overcomplicate money?

It’s really emotional. If I had a bottle of champagne and I opened it with a group of friends, there would be this feeling that we should divvy it up fairly. But if I said, “I have some extra money,” people start making value judgments. There’s morality involved with how we divvy up the money.

Combined with that is the fact that we’re not taught about money as kids or in the schools. There’s not room for it in the curriculum. Getting financial literacy into every school in the country is a very important thing to do, but it’s an uphill battle. The combination of those two things makes many of us feel insecure when it comes to making the right decisions about our money, whether we’re spending it, saving it, or investing it.

Her rules seem meant to limit the emotional side of money. If you have rules to follow, you can sidestep the emotional aspects. While the rules may be helpful, this is a good reminder that economic activity is often emotional. We often talk as if humans make decisions purely for economic reasons when the real story is much more complicated. Stock trading and investing in stocks, purchasing consumer goods, and saving money are laden with emotions.

So what emotions lead to purchasing a McMansion? I haven’t seen an academic study that addresses this. However, critics of McMansions have made a number of arguments about why people buy McMansions: they want to impress other people, they have little sense of style or design, they have money to burn, they don’t realize they can get by with less space, they are unaware of how others might negatively view their home, and they are obsessed with getting a deal without thinking about quality. Critics generally argue that McMansions are attempts at displaying a particular status to others and this causes the buyer to overlook some concerns to which they should pay attention.

I’m guessing that McMansion purchasers wouldn’t give the reasons that critics suggest. At the same time, purchasing a home, usually the biggest purchase of someone’s life, is full of emotions. Buying a dwelling is one thing but when you add up a mortgage plus the idealization of a home in the American Dream and it becomes much more than that.

US government (and “statistical bureaucracy”) looking to measure well-being

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The federal government is looking into ways to measure well-being as a new indicator of social life:

Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a panel of experts in psychology and economics, including Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, began convening in December to try to define reliable measures of “subjective well-being.” If successful, these could become official statistics.

But as the United States ventures into the squishy realm of feelings, statisticians will first have to define happiness and then how to measure it. Neither is a trivial matter. There is even some doubt whether people, when polled, can accurately say whether they are happy…

The panel, organized by the nonprofit National Academies, has already met with two of the key figures in the U.S. statistical bureaucracy: Robert Groves, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau, and Steve Landefeld, the director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal agency that puts out the gross domestic product figures.

According to proponents, a measure of happiness could help assess the success or failure of a range of government policies. It could gauge the virtues of a health benefit or establish whether education has more value than simply higher incomes. It might also detect extremes of inequality or imbalances in how people divide their time between work and leisure.

I’m not sure why there is opposition to this. There are plenty of social scientists who study this topic and have developed established measures of “happiness.” I’ve written on this topic a number of times looking at the effect of income on happiness, how religion leads to greater life satisfaction through interaction with others, and an argument that we need to study flourishing rather than happiness. As I’ve noted before, measuring happiness requires looking at both short- and long-term satisfaction. This panel may have to work on applying these measures onto a national scale but they are not creating a whole new field of study.

The cost issue may be driven more by the current budget troubles than anything else. If you are studying the effectiveness of programs and policies, why not include a measure of well-being? We tend to measure many things in terms of economics and pragmatic factors alone. Overall, it could make government statistics more holistic. A measure of well-being doesn’t have to be the only number that matters in the future but it can play an important role.

Three other thoughts:

1. The panel might consider avoiding the term “happiness” as this seems too subjective to a lot of people. In popular usage, the emotion is considered to be ephemeral. Instead, stick with well-being or life satisfaction.

2. Tying this panel to the idea of the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence seems silly. This doesn’t provide evidence for or against this sort of panel.

3. I’m very amused at the mention of a “statistical bureaucracy.” This might be the worst nightmare for some people: statistics plus government. Just a reminder: one member of the bureaucracy, Robert Graves at the Census Bureau, is a sociologist with a lot of experience with surveys.

 

Lost in the Trayvon Martin story: the mindset behind gated communities

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Lost in the Trayvon Martin story is the location where this all occurred: a gated community. While these are common in some places, particularly in Florida, one author explains the unique mindset in gated communities and how this might have contributed to the situation:

From 2007 to 2009, I traveled 27,000 miles, living in predominantly white gated communities across this country to research a book. I threw myself into these communities with gusto — no Howard Johnson or Motel 6 for me. I borrowed or rented residents’ homes. From the red-rock canyons of southern Utah to the Waffle-House-pocked exurbs of north Georgia, I lived in gated communities as a black man, with a youthful style and face, to interview and observe residents.

The perverse, pervasive real-estate speak I heard in these communities champions a bunker mentality. Residents often expressed a fear of crime that was exaggerated beyond the actual criminal threat, as documented by their police department’s statistics. Since you can say “gated community” only so many times, developers hatched an array of Orwellian euphemisms to appease residents’ anxieties: “master-planned community,” “landscaped resort community,” “secluded intimate neighborhood.”

No matter the label, the product is the same: self-contained, conservative and overzealous in its demands for “safety.” Gated communities churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders. These bunker communities remind me of those Matryoshka wooden dolls.  A similar-object-within-a-similar-object serves as shelter; from community to subdivision to house, each unit relies on staggered forms of security and comfort, including town authorities, zoning practices, private security systems and personal firearms.

Residents’ palpable satisfaction with their communities’ virtue and their evident readiness to trumpet alarm at any given “threat” create a peculiar atmosphere — an unholy alliance of smugness and insecurity. In this us-versus-them mental landscape, them refers to new immigrants, blacks, young people, renters, non-property-owners and people perceived to be poor.

This account lines up with academic research on the topic: gated communities are intended to be safe places. They are generally in the suburbs and residents move there to feel more secure. While not stated explicitly, these communities are meant to help keep issues like poverty, race, social class, and crime outside the walls and fences.

Here are the three best works I know on the subject:

1. McKenzie, Evan. 1994. Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.  

2. Blakely, Edward and Mary Gail Snyder. 1999. Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.

3. Low, Setha M. 2003. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. New York: Routledge.

One of the ironies revealed in these works is that these gated communities are rarely completely sealed off from the outside world. The ones that are tend to be the province of the wealthy and have very controlled entry points. For many gated communities, while there might be fences or walls, not all communities have manned gates and there are often multiple entrances into a neighborhood. So the gated nature of the community is more about a feeling of security than an actual sense that no unwanted outsider can get in.

In the end, gated communities do not necessarily lead to more violent action against outsiders. At the same time, the mindset in these communities is explicitly about safety and protection from the outside world.

Economist Robert Shiller: “we will never in our lifetime see a rebound in these [housing] prices in the suburbs”

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Economist Robert Shiller suggests there is a “real chance” we may have a long way to go before the US housing market recovers:

Many young people are choosing to live at home for a longer period of time instead of buying. Moreover, would-be homebuyers are settling into modern apartments and condominiums, further hindering a housing rally. Shiller says the shift toward renting and city living could mean “that we will never in our lifetime see a rebound in these prices in the suburbs.”

A perpetually sluggish housing market, which Shiller believes has become “more and more political,” might push the country in a “Japan-like slump that will go on for years and years.”

I imagine there are a lot of people who hope Shiller is very wrong. If you watch the full video here, Shiller also suggests there is a chance for a rebound. The discussion is based on this data:

Home prices in January were flat compared to the prior month, suggesting stabilization in the market, but home values fell for the fifth-straight month and prices dropped to their lowest levels since 2003, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Housing prices declined 3.8 percent on a year-over-year basis. The index measures the value of home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan cities.

The key prediction here is that suburban housing prices may not rebound for decades. What are the implications of this? I wonder if this means that we may finally witness a suburban growth plateau, meaning that because people will have more difficulty moving in and out of their houses, suburban growth will have to slow. Of course, this may change after a few years as people adjust to their mortgages and either move out of being underwater or pay enough off to make some money when they sell. But there would still be fewer people looking for homes, leading to less demand for new homes.

 

Atheists rally but still have a long way to go in the field of public opinion

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Atheists may have held the “Reason Rally” last Saturday in Washington D.C. but data suggests they have a long way to go in countering negative public perceptions:

Atheists remain an enigma for many people. In fact, a study released last year found that religious people distrust atheists almost as much as rapists (National Post):

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Oregon conducted a series of studies that found a deep level of distrust toward those who don’t believe in God, deeming them to be among the least trusted people in the world — despite their growing ranks to an estimated half billion globally. “There’s this persistent belief that people behave better if they feel like God is watching them,” said Will Gervais, lead study author and doctoral candidate in the social psychology department at UBC. “So if you’re playing by those rules, you’re going to see other people’s religious beliefs as signals of how trustworthy they might be.” … “It’s pretty shocking that we get the same magnitude of distrust towards atheists simply because they don’t believe [in God],” said the researcher, who is himself an atheist. “With rapists, they’re distrusted because they rape people. Atheists are viewed as sort of a moral wild card.”…

So, one rally didn’t change perceptions too much … that’s not hard to believe. Gregory Paul, an independent researcher in sociology and evolution, and Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology, are puzzled by the dislike of atheists, but they see some positive signs for the nonbelievers’ future:

More than 2,000 years ago, whoever wrote Psalm 14 claimed that atheists were foolish and corrupt, incapable of doing any good. These put-downs have had sticking power. Negative stereotypes of atheists are alive and well. Yet like all stereotypes, they aren’t true — and perhaps they tell us more about those who harbor them than those who are maligned by them. … As with other national minority groups, atheism is enjoying rapid growth. Despite the bigotry, the number of American nontheists has tripled as a proportion of the general population since the 1960s. Younger generations’ tolerance for the endless disputes of religion is waning fast. Surveys designed to overcome the understandable reluctance to admit atheism have found that as many as 60 million Americans — a fifth of the population — are not believers. Our nonreligious compatriots should be accorded the same respect as other minorities.

It looks like there will be plenty of material to study in this area in the coming years.

I’d be interested to hear Paul and Zuckerman’s argument about surveys being titled toward religiosity. Do questions about religion suggest that the socially desirable answer is to be religious or does this pressure come mainly outside the survey? What questions produce higher results?

Three bold aspects of Emanuel’s $7 billion infrastructure plan for Chicago

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A proposal for a $7 billion infrastructure plan in Chicago during a tough financial time for many municipalities catches the attention of the New York Times:

“There is tremendous interest in doing something different — people aren’t waiting for the federal government to raise the gasoline tax or pass the carbon tax and have money raining down,” [Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution] said. He cited successful campaigns in “can-do states” that include Colorado, Washington, Arizona and Virginia to finance economic development projects with public-private partnerships, and Los Angeles’ vote in support of a major transportation referendum in 2008…

In the speech, to be delivered at the Chicagoland Laborers’ Training and Apprentice Center, Mr. Emanuel will describe the financing for the sprawling plan. Some of it will come from the newly created Chicago Infrastructure Trust, an initiative announced this month by Mayor Emanuel and former President Bill Clinton, who has long had an interest in infrastructure and energy efficiency. The fund, a nonprofit corporation, pools outside investment and applies it to a wide range of possible projects.

Other funds will come from cost cutting, some from the savings in energy and water use from retrofitting buildings, and some from user fees, but “none of these funds will come from an increase in property or sales taxes,” according to the speech. A copy was provided to The New York Times through the mayor’s office. Depending on the project, some of the investment would be paid back through interest on loans, others through profit sharing.

Still, economic development efforts in the past have tended to disappoint, Mr. Puentes noted, because they tended to pay businesses to relocate or threw money into projects like stadiums. Some public-private partnership projects have been criticized as giveaways to the private businesses that take them over — including two prominent cases in Chicago itself, the privatized Chicago Skyway and the city’s parking meter system, which obligate the city to leases that span generations. Mr. Emanuel says that the city has learned an important lesson, and that “I am not leasing anything,” or selling off the city’s assets, he said in an interview. “I’m using private capital to improve a public entity that stays public.”

This sounds bold on several levels:

1. The high cost of the project. Chicago has some large budget issues (a projected deficit of $635 million for 2012) as do some other local taxing bodies like the Chicago Public Schools who have a projected $700 million shortfall for next year. The cost itself, however funded, will be a difficult sell to some.

2. Infrastructure itself can be difficult to sell to the public. However, this is a growing issue for many cities that are working with decades-old infrastructure yet wanting to be part of the 21st century. At some point, these problems will have to be fixed and a good case can be made that cities (and the country) should be more proactive rather than waiting for bigger issues to arise.

3. I think the key here is the idea of a public-private partnership to fund infrastructure. Can this truly work on a large scale? Will the public believe that they won’t end up being on the hook if the private funding doesn’t work out? Can the process be fairly transparent and not done in the shadows? This idea is a big part of Emanuel’s plans for Chicago; a recent plan for Chicago’s business future was heavily dependent on the World Business Chicago group. As I’ve suggested before, if Emanuel can leverage the business community in areas like successful infrastructure improvements, he will likely get a lot of accolades.

Reminder in Willowbrook mosque case: IL municipalities have zoning jurisdiction 1.5 miles beyond boundaries

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As the Willowbrook mosque situation continues, the Village of Willowbrook clarified an important detail regarding Illinois municipalities and zoning:

Village consultant Jo Ellen Charlton said the village has decided to release a zoning map showing its area of influence for planning purposes after receiving questions from MECCA about whether it had the right to express its opposition.

A dotted line forming a box along 91st Street, just past the proposed location, is now shown on the map to indicate the village’s intention to exert influence over planning decisions in the area. Because the proposed location lies within 1.5 miles of a Willowbrook boundary line, it is considered within the village’s “planning jurisdiction,” officials said.

Even though the proposed site for the mosque is outside the boundaries of Willowbrook, Illinois law gives incorporated municipalities zoning control over land within 1.5 miles of their boundaries. This control was confirmed by a 1956 Illinois Supreme Court decision in favor of Naperville’s subdivision control ordinance, which said developers had to follow certain guidelines for streets and other subdivision features, extending to the 1.5 mile zoning boundary land. If two communities both could control the same land within the 1.5 mile boundary, either the two communities had to reach an agreement or the control would be set at a line in the middle of the two community’s actual boundaries. Land outside any community’s zoning boundaries is then controlled by the county.

This law has led to some interesting circumstances. For example, the suburb of Warrenville finally incorporated in the 1960s after many attempts because Naperville was expanding and would soon be able to control land around and possibly in Warrenville. At least several DuPage County suburbs have grabbed extra land through annexations in order to extend their zoning boundaries and therefore control land uses, particularly looking to avoid undesirable land uses.

This reminds me of a larger point: while zoning may seem arcane to the average citizen, it is a key tool communities can use and they (officials and residents) will fight hard to utilize these powers rather than let other people decide what “their land” will be used for.