Author Archives: legallysociable

NYC proposal for an underground park

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Parks are often considered places to find open sky and sunshine but a recent proposal from two architects for an underground park in New York City turns these ideas on their head:

The pair want to turn the rundown, graffiti-covered trolley terminal under Delancey Street into an underground park, reports CBS 2?s Don Dahler.

“It’s part historical rediscovery of an amazing space; it’s part science-fiction. And I think it’s part just sort of a green, magical community renewal,” Ramsey said…

The ambitious duo were inspired by the overwhelming success of the “High Line” project, an elevated old train line turned park. The proposed “low line” park would take up three blocks underneath the Lower East Side, and would feature actual trees and greenery, thanks to technology straight out of science fiction…

The proposed park, which would be free to the public, has gotten a positive response from the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and although the developers aren’t sure yet how much it would cost, they’ve already started raising funds for their subterranean vision of the future.

Sounds pretty interesting to me, particularly in the plans for bringing natural light underground. Some people do have a fascination with being underground – see an earlier posts about a proposed underground skyscaper and an “underground temple” and the tunnels below Paris that have become a big tourist attraction.

If anything, New York City should move forward with this just to promote something that is sure to become a big attraction. The allusion to the “High Line” is telling: these architects want to take another abandoned part of the city and turn it into an attractive public space. I could imagine NYC becoming a unique hub for these sorts of spots, leading the world in redesigning brownfield sites into places not only for tourists but for city dwellers looking for an escape.

The only thing that could really derail this is the cost: who is going to pay for this?

Australian critiques of suburbia

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As part of a larger discussion about the green (or not-so-green) features of high-density living, an Australian academic describes typical Australian critiques of suburbia:

The intellectual misadventure of high-rise urbanism also perpetuates a pernicious bias in Australian environmental debates in which less affluent suburban dwellers are treated as environmentally unsophisticated “bogans” – a stereotype recently denounced by Melbourne University’s David Nichols.

It fits within a long and regrettably continuing Australian tradition of denigrating suburbia whose recent version sneers at “aspirationals” in suburban “McMansions” driving “monster-trucks”. That complaints about suburban consumption lack objective scientific foundation, raises suspicions that the anti-suburban prejudice serves to deflect scrutiny from the more harmful consumption patterns of wealthier – and typically denser – inner urban households.

Those who criticise high-rise urbanism, though, risk being cast as apologists for urban sprawl. Disagreeing with Sydney’s Barangaroo proposal, for example, doesn’t equate to support for the latest fringe growth area splurge.

More single, detached dwellings in low density estates at the suburban fringe also causes harms. These range from the destruction of bio-diverse habitats to the social isolation of new residents from work and services. My own work on household oil vulnerability clearly reveals the future perils from higher fuel prices already planned into the fabric of many of our car-dependent fringe suburban zones.

The argument here is that being green isn’t so easy as simply saying suburbs are bad and cities are good. Unfortunately, the suburbs tend to receive blanket criticism.

It would be interesting to trace the rise of these attitudes in Australia compared to the United States. The US has a long history of these critiques which emerged quickly after World War II, particularly as examples of mass-produced suburbs like the Levittowns became widely known. Out of all of the countries in the world, Australia might have the most similar suburbs to the US (see a recent debate about McMansions in Australia as an example). Did Australian critics of suburbia simply borrow American critiques or did they develop their own independently? Sounds like a very interesting comparative project.

Not something to be thankful for: the US as world leader in incarceration

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The United States is a world leader in incarceration:

The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The U.S. prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail.

Proportionally, the United States has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times as many as Canada or China, eight times as many as Germany and 13 times as many as Japan…

There’s also a national election in the United States soon. This issue isn’t on the agenda. It’s almost never come up with Republican presidential candidates; one of the few exceptions was at a debate in September when the audience cheered the notion of executions in Texas.

Barack Obama, the first black president, rarely mentions this question or how it disproportionately affects minorities. More than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of the population.

The fact that this isn’t even part of the political discourse is very interesting in itself. I suspect it is because that no politician can afford to look even somewhat soft on crime. Why is this? Two quick reasons not mentioned in this article:

1. We tend to emphasize punitive punishments in the United States. Not all countries have this same belief – Norway is a good example of a contrasting approach.

2. Crime is so sensationalized and the average citizen really does believe that they are at risk. If people really think they could be victims at any time, it is little surprise that we put so much money into fighting crime and housing prisoners.

And, as the article suggests, there is no arguing that race and social class play a role.

Sociologist argues that SATs not the best predictor of college success

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In another round of the battles over standardized testing, a Wake Forest sociologist argues that the SAT is not the best predictor of college performance:

His conclusion? SATs don’t tell us much about how well a student will perform in college.

A better predictor of college success lies in a student’s high school grade-point average, class rank and course selection, Soares said…

Soares is editor of a new book, “SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions,” that takes a critical look at the SAT while calling for a rethinking of the college admissions process…

When it dropped the SAT option, Wake Forest revamped its admissions process, beefing up its written response section and encouraging students to be interviewed by an admissions officer, a move that created a huge logistical challenge for the school.

This is not a small argument: as the article notes, this is a multi-billion dollar industry.

I wouldn’t be surprised if more schools continued to play around with the admissions processes, both to get around some of the difficulties with particular measures but also to get a competitive advantage in grabbing good students before other schools realize what is going on (the Moneyball approach to admissions?).

Occupy Wall Street to occupy Black Friday?

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There is a report that some Occupy Wall Street protesters want to take the movement to national retailers on Black Friday:

Some demonstrators are planning to occupy retailers on Black Friday to protest “the business that are in the pockets of Wall Street.”

Organizers are encouraging consumers to either occupy or boycott retailers that are publicly traded, according to the Stop Black Friday website…

“The idea is simple, hit the corporations that corrupt and control American politics where it hurts, their profits, ” states the Occupy Black Friday Facebook page.

A few of the retailers the protesters plan on targeting include Neiman Marcus, Amazon and Wal-Mart.

Besides wondering how many people will do this, it raises other questions:

1. Would most or even a sizable minority of shoppers welcome the protesters? I would guess not. People might think that the income and power situation in the United States is unequal but that shouldn’t get in the way of good sales.

2. Why are certain corporations singled out in this list (though they do suggest going after the top 100 retailers)? Why not Target? Walgreens? Kroger’s? Costco? If it is all big corporations that are the targets, will the protesters be evenly distributed or will they go for the typical targets like Walmart and McDonald’s that are often tied to sprawl and excessive consumption?

3. How exactly does one have a visible protest at Amazon.com? I guess the group could take over the comment boards. If Deadspin can prompt so many responses that ESPN can’t keep up, maybe Occupy Wall Street can do the same.

4. If protesters show up en masse, what will the response of stores be? Is the parking lot of Walmart a public space? (I assume not.)

On Facebook, it’s not 6 degrees of separation but rather 4.74 degrees

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One effect of globalization is that people are more aware of world events and are better connected to others. A new study using Facebook data suggests the average user is separated from any other user in the world by just 4.74 degrees:

On Facebook, however, the average user is only 4.74 degrees away from any other Facebooker…

That conclusion comes from a non-peer-reviewed study of 721 million active Facebook users, released by Facebook in collaboration with the Università degli Studi di Milano, the blog post says…

The Palo Alto, California, company says 99.6% of all Facebook users studied were separated by five degrees or less from any other Facebook user; 92% were separated by only four degrees…

“The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74,” Facebook says.

While this is indeed an interesting finding (particularly since it is related to Stanley Milgram’s six degree studies decades ago), there are bigger questions at stake here. With people 4.74 connections away, how exactly does this impact a user’s life or positively influence their life? We know that information and culture passes through networks but how exactly does this work on Facebook? Can the life of a user in Siberia really affect the life of a college student in Arizona?

One issue here is that Facebook itself currently allow for limiting connectability between users. Sources like The Facebook Effect suggest that Mark Zuckerberg would really like a more open network where people could see each other’s information and actually interact with others beyond the “friends” structure. However, it doesn’t appear that most users would want this at this time – most Facebook friends are people users are already know and there are concerns about privacy. How does the company move people into accepting a more open network so that users can openly take advantage of those chains 4.74 people long?

Also, who tend to be the people in the networks that help connect people the most? College students? People who live in larger metropolitan areas? People with the most friends? People with the most diversity in their own friend lists?

The Main Streetification of shopping malls

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Perhaps you have seen the advertisements for Small Business Saturday – it will be fascinating to see if this campaign works. While the national retail market is not good overall, this piece suggests that “Main Street [is] making a comeback at the expense of the shopping mall.”

In short, the most successful malls usurped the role of Main Street as the commercial and even cultural center of the communities they served.

Now, however, many shoppers want Main Street back.

Development of new malls has almost completely stopped, with only two being erected in the country since the beginning of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Outdoor town center concepts, featuring brick sidewalks, streetlights and even public clocks evoking the Main Street of yore, are climbing to a degree that many owners of enclosed malls are considering dramatic makeovers, some including plans to tear off the roof of, or “de-mall” enclosed shopping centers.

I feel this headline is a bit misleading: we’re not talking about a return to traditional downtowns. Rather, it is taking older shopping malls and adding “older” elements, creating a 21st century facsimile of what retailers and Disney want you to think old downtowns were like (but with modern amenities). This isn’t that different than the strategies a lot of older downtowns have pursued in order to become a little more mall-like. Perhaps the real story here is that we are moving toward an amalgamation of shopping mall and downtown where people want to purchase the latest and greatest but really feel like they are in a community setting. Perhaps we could call these new facilities “Main Street malls.” (Though I wonder how these are different from some of the new “lifestyle centers,” particularly the New Urbanist ones.)

I am a little miffed that the article provides little evidence that shoppers really want “Main Street malls.” Are developers not building malls because they are not needed or have the tastes of shoppers changed?

What is “The Big Data Boom”on the Internet good for?

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The Internet is a giant source of ready-to-use data:

Today businesses can measure their activities and customer relationships with unprecedented precision. As a result, they are awash with data. This is particularly evident in the digital economy, where clickstream data give precisely targeted and real-time insights into consumer behavior…

Much of this information is generated for free, by computers, and sits unused, at least initially. A few years after installing a large enterprise resource planning system, it is common for companies to purchase a “business intelligence” module to try to make use of the flood of data that they now have on their operations. As Ron Kohavi at Microsoft memorably put it, objective, fine-grained data are replacing HiPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinions) as the basis for decision-making at more and more companies.

The wealth of data also makes it easy to run experiments:

Consider two “born-digital” companies, Amazon and Google. A central part of Amazon’s research strategy is a program of “A-B” experiments where it develops two versions of its website and offers them to matched samples of customers. Using this method, Amazon might test a new recommendation engine for books, a new service feature, a different check-out process, or simply a different layout or design. Amazon sometimes gets sufficient data within just a few hours to see a statistically significant difference…

According to Google economist Hal Varian, his company is running on the order of 100-200 experiments on any given day, as they test new products and services, new algorithms and alternative designs. An iterative review process aggregates findings and frequently leads to further rounds of more targeted experimentation.

This sounds like a social scientist’s dream – if we could get our hands on the data.

My big question about all of this data is this: what should be done with it? This article, and others I’ve seen, have said that it will transform business. If this is just a way for businesses to become more knowledgeable, more efficient, and ultimately, more profitable, is this enough? Occasionally, we hear of things like discovering and/or tracking epidemics by looking at search queries or tools like the “mechanical turk” to crowdsource small but needed work. On the whole, does the data from the Internet advance human flourishing or concentrate some benefits in the hands of a few or even hinder flourishing? Does this data give us insights into health and medicine, international relations, and social interactions or does it primarily give entrepreneurs and established companies the chance to make more money? Are these questions that anyone really asks or cares about?

An argument for historic districts: repel McMansions!

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A common argument for historic districts is that they limit the destruction of older homes and the construction of McMansions. Here is an example of this argument in Fort Lauderdale:

However, if communities wait around for that history to age, new development might wipe it out before it has a chance to be saved.

That fear has residents of Fort Lauderdale’s Colee Hammock neighborhood thinking about seeking historic district designation for their community.

“We’re constantly inundated with development issues, people wanting to come in and build too much, too high, too big,” said Jackie Scott, president of Colee Hammock’s neighborhood association. “It gets to a point where you’re sick and tired of always having to come out and fight for your neighborhood. It’s not an enjoyable way to live.”…

“We have some beautiful homes that have been built and are new construction. They fit perfectly with the neighborhood,” Scott said. [A historic district] prevents people that want to come into an area like this to start ripping things down and creating McMansions.”

While McMansions are often tied to sprawl and new subdivisions, teardowns are also a common scene for debates over the merits of McMansions. In this particular example, a McMansion is contrasted with new homes that “fit perfectly with the neighborhood.” Many American communities have created some guidelines so that teardowns can’t be anything a homeowner might desire but there is a spectrum between more permissive and less permissive communities. The advantage of declaring a historic district is that the community has more control over what can be demolished and built within the district. At the same time, some consider historic districts to be quite restrictive.

I would be interested to hear what resources those pushing for the historic district have utilized from outside groups. For example, the National Trust for Historic Preservation even has a page titled “Teardowns and McMansions.” Here is the lead paragraph:

Across the nation a teardown epidemic is wiping out historic neighborhoods one house at a time. As older homes are demolished and replaced with dramatically larger, out-of-scale new structures, the historic character of the existing neighborhood is changed forever. Neighborhood livability is diminished as trees are removed, backyards are eliminated, and sunlight is blocked by towering new structures built up to the property lines. Community economic and social diversity is reduced as new mansions replace affordable homes. House by house, neighborhoods are losing a part of their historic fabric and much of their character.

With such resources available, I wonder if local groups are now more effective in adopting historic districts.

Sociologist predicts shift in American unskilled, immigrant laborers: they will come from China rather than Mexico

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While the economic downturn has reduced the interest in immigration reform, a sociologist suggests a new trend in the immigrant unskilled labor force in America: in the future, such laborers will come from China rather than Mexico.

Q: Why might Chinese immigrants overtake Mexican immigrants in low-wage, unskilled jobs here?

A: Mexico for decades has supplied our country with low-wage laborers, legal and illegal, but that’s grinding to a halt. Increased border surveillance and high unemployment are keeping people away from the United States. Other things are holding people in Mexico. They have a lower unemployment rate than we do. And what a lot of people don’t realize is that their fertility is dropping to 2.2 children per woman. It used to be six or seven children a few decades ago. There are fewer young people available (to take jobs), and fewer mouths to feed. There are about 4 million or 5 million undocumented Mexican immigrants in our country (and about 11 million illegal immigrants total). They pick up garbage, work construction, agriculture – all the things in big cities that the local people don’t want to do. Who’s going to do that work? There’s already a network of migration from China to our country; probably 200,000 to 300,000 undocumented Chinese are here. They’re mainly on the East Coast, in Houston and Los Angeles. They’re mainly doing restaurant work. Undocumented Mexicans are much more visible.

Q: Why would they leave China for the United States?

A: You have all of these rural-to-urban migrants inside China who are essentially driving the Chinese economy, doing all the work in the big cities, doing all the construction, the nanny work, the low-level jobs. They’re not going to do that forever. The economy is starting to slow down in China. The first people to lose their jobs will be these rural-to-urban migrants. In China, to move from one place to another, you have to get permission at both ends. That never happens, so people move unofficially. There are already 10 million unemployed rural-to-urban migrants. There’s already a China-to-U.S. network of undocumented migrants.

Several pieces of this argument strikes me:

1. The Chinese economy slows down. This would be a big issue for the global economy. Would there even be much of a flow of people round the globe if this happens?

2. The urbanization process in China may only be picking up steam. Here is a 2009 report from the McKinsey Global Institute on the topic. Is China prepared for this?

3. Mexican laborers are finding it harder to come to the United States and have more reasons for staying in Mexico. Does this mean that the debate over immigration from Mexico is essentially over?

4. If this shift does happen, would the immigration debate simply turn to China and away from Mexico? If so, what might be the implications of this for the US-China relationship?