Author Archives: legallysociable

Even Shakespeare doesn’t like McMansions

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As the debate over the value of certain college majors continues, William Shakespeare responds and defends the liberal arts and also knocks McMansions:

See, when I wrote all those plays back in the day, I had no intention of helping the bright-eyed brats of the future find their way to high-paying jobs and McMansions in the ’burbs. No, I was after something else altogether. (If you don’t understand this, please do not feel alone; this great stage of fools is plenty crowded.) To be sure, one should not attempt to mine A Midsummer Night’s Dream for literal fortune, unless, of course, you’re in the tights-and-tunics trade. But that’s another matter…

Students can do worse than to take literature courses, like ones devoted to my work, or to that of Toni Morrison, or even to depressing saps like Melville. To study literature is to practice critical thinking; to write about texts is to hone writing skills. The very things that the masters of industry demand in their employees, no?

Shakespeare seems to have heard the selling points for a liberal arts education.

The phrase that interests me: “the bright-eyed brats of the future find their way to high-paying jobs and McMansions in the ’burbs.” This seems to be a broad indictment of how students (and others?) view college: it is about making money and living comfortably as one pursues the American dream. In contrast, the liberal arts promotes thinking and wrestling with the big questions that humans have sought to answer throughout history. But do McMansions and critical thinking have to be mutually exclusive? McMansion seems to refer here more to the homeowners themselves who are only interested in making money, getting ahead, and enjoying life. Is the opposite implication that critical thinkers would never purchase or build a McMansion because they would see its faults? Do critical thinkers (and liberal arts majors) only live in homes with character and history in the city?

Why we need “duh science”

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There are a lot of studies that are completed every year. The results of some seem quite obvious than others, what this article calls “duh research.” Here is why experts say these studies are still necessary:

But there’s more to duh research than meets the eye. Experts say they have to prove the obvious — and prove it again and again — to influence perceptions and policy.

“Think about the number of studies that had to be published for people to realize smoking is bad for you,” said Ronald J. Iannotti, a psychologist at the National Institutes of Health. “There are some subjects where it seems you can never publish enough.”…

There’s another reason why studies tend to confirm notions that are already widely held, said Daniele Fanelli, an expert on bias at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Instead of trying to find something new, “people want to draw attention to problems,” especially when policy decisions hang in the balance, he said.

Kyle Stanford, a professor of the philosophy of science at UC Irvine, thinks the professionalization of science has led researchers — who must win grants to pay their bills — to ask timid questions. Research that hews to established theories is more likely to be funded, even if it contributes little to knowledge.

Here we get three possible answers as to why “duh research” takes place:

1. It takes time for studies to draw attention and become part of cultural “common sense.” One example cited in this article is cigarette smoking. One study wasn’t enough to show a relationship between smoking and negative health outcomes. Rather, it took a number of studies until there was a critical mass that the public accepted. While the suggestion here is that this is mainly about convincing the public, this also makes me think of the general process of science where numerous studies find the same thing and knowledge becomes accepted.

2. These studies could be about social problems. There are many social ills that could be deserving of attention and funding and one way to get attention is to publish more studies. The findings might already be widely accepted but the studies help keep the issue in the public view.

3. It is about the structure of science/the academy where researchers are rewarded for publications and perhaps not so much for advancing particular fields of study. “Easy” findings help scientists and researchers keep their careers moving forward. These structures could be altered to promote more innovative research.

All three of these explanations make some sense to me. I wonder how much the media plays a role in this; why do media sources cite so much “duh research” where there are other kinds of research going on as well? Could these be “easy” journalistic stories that fit particular established narratives or causes? Do universities/research labs tend to promote these studies more?

Of course, the article also notes that some of these studies can also turn out unexpected results. I would guess that there are quite a few important findings that came out of research that someone at the beginning could have easily predicted a well-established answer.

(It would be interesting to think more about the relationship between sociology and “duh research.” One frequent knock against sociology is that it is all “common sense.” Aren’t we aware of our interactions with others as well as how our culture operates? But we often don’t have time for analysis and understanding in our everyday activities and we often simply go along with prevailing norms and behaviors. It all may seem obvious until we are put in situations that challenge our understandings, like stepping into new situations or different cultures.

Additionally, sociology goes beyond the individual, anecdotal level at which many of us operate. We can often create a whole understanding of the world based on our personal experiences and what we have heard from others. Sociology looks at the structural level and works with data, looking to draw broad conclusions about human interaction.)

Problems at the DuPage Housing Authority

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As part of a story about corruption at the DuPage Housing Authority, the Chicago Tribune provides an update on the recent history of the organization:

But investigators have asked plenty of questions lately about how DuPage housing officials spend the $22 million in federal funds they get annually.

Since 2009, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has audited the DuPage Housing Authority three times, concluding the troubled agency violated numerous federal regulations and must pay back $10.75 million in misused tax money.

HUD has determined DuPage must repay that money to its Section 8 housing program because it didn’t allow competition for projects, failed to properly document whether many tenants were eligible to get subsidized rent, made inappropriate credit card purchases and, in some cases, overpaid benefits.

This is not a whole lot of federal money, particularly in a county with a population over 900,000 and a poverty rate of around 6% (this site has 2009 figures of a poverty rate of 6.5% and the 2008 Census had an estimate of 5.8%). But the DuPage Housing Authority has an interesting history. If I remember correctly from research I have done, the group was formed in the 1940s and had some federal money to work with. But by the early 1970s, the Housing Authority had not built any units within the county and HOPE, an organization now in Wheaton, sued the county for housing discrimination, primarily for exclusionary zoning practices. The court case, Hope v. County of DuPage (the 1983 version here), lasted for over a decade and here is a brief summary of the conclusion in a law textbook.  It is only within recent decades that the Housing Authority has developed units.

This is perhaps not too unusual considering the political conservatism of a county that has been solidly Republican since the the 1860s. But as the lawsuit from the early 1970s alleged, the county has continued to change: more immigrants and minorities have become residents, housing values went up, a number of communities limited construction of apartments, and there are a good number of lower-paying jobs in wealthier communities. Add this all up and there are affordable housing concerns within a wealthy county and this extends beyond the common suburban debate about “work-force” housing for essential government employees like teachers or policemen or providing cheaper housing for young graduates and/or older residents.

TED curator on moving away from McMansions to better-designed cities

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TED Curator Chris Anderson recently spoke at Harvard and envisioned a bright human future in cities rather than McMansions:

Designers have the answers to “the most important question we all face,” TED curator Chris Anderson told imminent Graduate School of Design graduates on Wednesday. “Can the coming world of 10 billion people survive and flourish without consuming itself in the process?” The key lies in finding “better ways to pattern our lives,” he added: “There is nothing written into our nature that says that the only path to a wonderful, rich, meaningful life is to own two cars and a McMansion in the suburbs.”…

Much of a successful future lies in “re-imaging what a city can be,” Anderson said. People will live closer together—“if only to give the rest of nature a chance,” and cities already offer “richer culture, a greater sense of community, a far lower carbon footprint per person—and the collision of ideas that nurtures innovation.” But architects have the means to incorporate “light, plant, trees, water, and beautiful forms into the city’s structures and landscapes” and imagine new ways for people to work and connect “without sacrificing your grandchildren.”

Technological trends in computer-assisted programs and construction techniques and materials, he said, make design more adaptable and effective than ever in terms of large-scale projects that affect millions of lives. “Suddenly the fractals and curves of Mother Nature are a legitimate part of the architectural lexicon.” Moreover, cultural and intellectual notions around common human values are changing. “The toxic belief that human nature and aesthetic values are infinitely malleable, and determined purely by cultural norms” is dying, Anderson asserted. In its place, there is growing agreement that “we should think of humans differently, that far from living in separate cultural bubbles, we actually share millions of years of evolutionary biology.”

Anderson is right about the powerful cultural narrative of the American dream of a single-family home in the suburbs: it is a narrative that could change in the future. McMansions and suburbs seem to operate here as the antithesis of Anderson’s vision: sprawling, mass produced places that separate people into different “cultural bubbles.” This story suggests that Anderson thinks designers can offer an alternative that would change how Americans think about the city. Besides participating in TED, how exactly would designers make this pitch to the broader culture?

I wonder what exactly Anderson’s cities might look like and what cities (or city neighborhoods/areas) might serve as models.

Become friends with your Toyota

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Companies are looking for ways to leverage social networking sites for their own purposes. Now Toyota announces plans to create their own social networking service where you will be able to become friends with your car:

Toyota is setting up a social networking service with the help of a U.S. Internet company and Microsoft so drivers can interact with their cars in a way that’s similar to posting on Facebook or Twitter.

Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. and Salesforce.com, based in San Francisco, announced their alliance Monday to launch “Toyota Friend,” a private social network for Toyota owners…

With the popularity of social networking, cars and their makers should become part of that online interaction, [Toyota’s president] said.

“I hope cars can become friends with their users, and customers will see Toyota as a friend,” he said.

There is the whole purpose of this: strengthen the relationship between customer and product. I wonder if Toyota owners would really flock to this concept. They might be loyal customers because of the value and reliability of Toyotas but is there a fervent fan culture that would want to be part of a social network?

But there is an interesting phrase in this article: “cars can become friends with their users.” Perhaps it was not intended this way but it implies that cars have agency. The article talks about how newer cars, such as plug-in electric vehicles, need more monitoring and so users will be open to getting more information from their cars. But in the end, these cars are just cars, machines that help people get around. We are a ways from having cars that could hold human-like conversations with their owners (see this recent piece on progress in tackling the Turing Test).

While some commentators have lamented the difference between off-line and online friends, perhaps this is the next controversial step forward: friendships with products. Right now, you can be a “fan” on Facebook but a friendship implies a closer and more interactive relationship.

Columnist cites FBI data regarding Ray Lewis’ football lockout crime claim

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Earlier this week, I posted about Ray Lewis’ comment that if there is a football lockout, crime rates will increase. While Lewis has taken a media beating, I suggested that I hadn’t seen anyone cite data to refute (or support) Lewis’ claim. A columnist in Salt Lake City does look at some data that perhaps sheds light on the relationship between football and crime:

Well, it turns out that crime rates among the general population do actually decrease during the football season. The FBI believes the trend is not connected to football, but to the change in weather and the end of summer break for students. Apparently, criminals like to do their work in warm weather and when they’re not on vacation.

Research indicates that the only crime connection to football might be the increase in domestic violence on NFL Sundays when home teams lose emotional games. Maybe Lewis is wrong; maybe the lockout will reduce crime in the home.

I wish there were specific citations in this column but here is the gist of this cited data: overall, crime goes down in fall (compared to summer) and domestic violence goes up after certain game outcomes. The problem here is that it is difficult to separate the effects of fall (weather, kids back to school, etc.) from the effect of football games themselves. And if there are no close football games, then domestic violence cases might go down. Per my earlier post, I still think we could get more specific data, particularly comparing crime rates on Sundays with or without games and crime rates on other nights with football games (Monday, Thursday, Saturday) versus those same nights without games.

This columnist also throws out another idea that I had thought about:

Then it occurred to me: Maybe Lewis didn’t mean the fans would go on a crime wave without football; maybe he meant THE PLAYERS.

That’s not a big stretch. Look how Antonio Bryant has fared in recent months without football. Look what Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress and Ben Roethlisberger, among many others, did when they were away from football. Idle hands and all that. Maybe what Lewis meant was that we better end this lockout before the players starting (ran)sacking villages and throwing innocent bystanders for losses and intercepting Brinks trucks and so forth.

This image would fit with research suggesting NFL players are arrested at fairly high rates.

A sociology class final exam: create and be part of a flash mob

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I bet there would be quite a few sociology students who would prefer to take a final exam that included being part of a flash mob:

Montgomery County High School students who’ve spent the year studying the world’s different cultures in sociology class took their class to the streets Wednesday, or at least the sidewalks, for a head-turning final exam…

The excitement was brewing and, suddenly, a sociology class broke out. The music cranked up. One student started dancing right on the sidewalk between Uncle Julio’s and Joe’s Crab Shack. In seconds, he had company. Soon there were 55 Wootton High School students…

The kids were instructed – not just to dance, but also to study how people reacted…

It’s part of their final exam and a reminder that not everybody just follows along. Their sociology teacher is Amy Buckingham.

“Violating social norms. Doing things that are a little outside the realm of what you would normally do,” says Buckingham.

A few questions spring to mind:

1. How exactly was this graded? The story suggests students were also to be on the lookout for crowd reactions and perhaps they had to write something up about this.

2. Is this exactly what a “flash mob” is? I remember the early days of this phenomenon and if I remember correctly, the term described situations where strangers would come together to do something and then go their separate ways. What worried or perhaps excited people was that these were collections of people who didn’t know each other and who might never interact again. Now, a “flash mob” refers to a choreographed group that shows up, does something, and leaves together. These are not the same things. Imagine if the assignment was tied to the first definition and students had to recruit strangers to participate in their activity.

3. How long until these “flash mobs” are passé?

Can you replace a $4.1 million dollar Malibu home with a McMansion?

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The typical image of a teardown McMansion is something like this: in an older neighborhood, a 1950s ranch home is purchased, torn down, and replaced with a 3,500 square foot new home that dwarfs its neighbors. While this is a concern for many communities across the United States, can you possibly have a teardown McMansion in Malibu that would replace a $4.1 million dollar home?

Shangri-La was recently listed on the Malibu real estate market for $4.1 million — the first time it’s been for sale in over 30 years. Known best as Bob Dylan’s recording studio, Shangri-La was also a studio and hangout for other rockers like Clapton, Robbie Robertson, Joe Cocker and Pete Townsend. More recently, the house hosted Adele and Kings of Leon while they each spent time in the recording studio…

Listing agent Shen Schulz of Sotheby’s International explained that the current owners are looking for a buyer who will carry on the property’s legacy.

“This is a very special property,” Schulz said. “They don’t want it to be torn down and turned into a McMansion. We want a musician that will carry on the energy and pass the baton.”

Although perched on the bluffs above picturesque Zuma Beach, this home doesn’t look like a typical million-dollar beach retreat in ritzy southern California where median Malibu home values are over $1.5 million. While the home doesn’t have a pool, it does have two recording studios — an extensive one in the lower level of the home as well as a smaller one in the vintage Airstream trailer parked on the lawn.

The price of the home would suggest that it is not just any old ranch home. It is difficult to find specifics about the home itself rather than its recording legacy – even the listing or the house’s own website doesn’t say much about the actual home. The real estate listing does say that the home was built in 1958, it has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, and has a total of 4,449 square feet. This is a rather large ranch home.

But all of this makes clear that this particular home should not be bought because of a remodeled kitchen or even the views of the ocean. A buyer of this late 1950s ranch will be buying into rock history. The idea that the home would be replaced by a McMansion seems to suggest that the term McMansion here refers to a home without true character. Shangri-La certainly has character and a new home simply can’t compete with a background as a bordello and analog recording studio. While a typical argument against teardown McMansions is that they change the character of a neighborhood, the argument here is that a teardown would deprive musicians (and others?) of hallowed ground. You could build a beautiful and bigger new home with even more recording space (and egads, digital equipment?) and it just wouldn’t be the same.

By the way, this is one of the most expensive positive teardown properties I’ve ever seen. Is the price high because of the ocean views, the house’s history, or is it an effort to discourage someone from tearing down the home?

The recent fate of suburban “lifestyle centers”

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In sprawling suburbia, there can often be a lack of central spaces where people come together. One recent solution proposed by developers is to build “lifestyle centers,” basically walkable outdoor shopping areas where people can park and spend a day. Here is an update on how these facilities have fared in recent years:

All forms of real estate were punished by the financial crisis, but among the hardest hit was the category that includes the Arboretum. Known as lifestyle centers, they are upscale suburban and exurban developments fashioned as instant downtowns, replete with lush landscaping, communal gathering spaces and a faux Main Street vibe. Eschewing traditional anchors and recession-proof tenants such as grocery stores, the centers promote traffic-building events such as wine tasting, concerts and exhibitions.

Nationally, lifestyle vacancy rates grew faster than any other retail segment, and rents declined the most, an average of $7.38 per square foot, during the last three years, according to CoStar…

Across the Chicago market, shopping center vacancy rates have made slow progress, dropping to 8.6 percent in the first quarter from a high of 9 percent last year, according to the CoStar Retail Report. In 2007, prerecession vacancy rates were below 7 percent…

The lifestyle center blueprint is generally credited to Poag & McEwen, a Tennessee-based developer that pioneered the concept outside Memphis in 1987. The firm has since built more than a dozen centers nationwide, including the north suburban Deer Park Town Center, which opened in 2000 as the area’s first…

I’ve been to a few of these facilities in the Chicago area and the experience is fascinating . I haven’t seen any sociological research on these relatively new spaces but here are some interesting facets:

1. This article suggests these centers can be “instant downtowns.” It would be interesting to see whether these facilities are typically built in places that already have downtowns (so they are competition or supplementary if the community is quite large, like the center at the northwest corner of Route 59 and 95th Street in Naperville) versus being built in suburban communities that never had downtowns (so these facilities are more like replacements). I would also imagine that many suburbanites also have a different image of downtown, more similar to a “Main Street” commonly found in small towns (and enshrined at Disneyworld). But perhaps “a faux Main Street vibe” is good enough for suburbanites. What would it take for one of these facilities to really catch on in a suburban community and replicate some of the functions of a downtown?

2. Can these really be “public spaces”? Do people actually come here regularly to sit and interact with others or are they more like outdoor shopping malls? It seems like there needs to be a critical mass of people who would visit these facilities and would also commit to them before they would be more than shopping malls. These places are a long way from the neighborhood life suggested by people like Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (I also wonder how much of these facilities are actually private property versus public property.)

3. How many of these facilities are accessible by anything other than cars? It is one thing to push New Urbanist concepts (walkability, denser spaces, more traditional architecture) but another to plop New Urbanist designs in the middle of typical auto-centric communities.

4. What sort of lifestyles are promoted by such centers? It is likely the typical American consumerism of middle and upper-class suburbia that one can find elsewhere with perhaps a few events or activities might to provide a touch of color and attract people (wine tastings, exhibitions, etc.).

5. Is an investment in a facility like this better than an investment in strip malls or more conventional shopping centers? I imagine communities might find them more visually attractive but do they generate more sales tax revenue?

Thinking about the lack of outdoor basketball courts, Part 2

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Yesterday, I wrote about a discussion a friend and I had about what we perceive as a lack of decent outdoor basketball courts. Perhaps we aren’t the only ones who think this is an issue. Here are the thoughts of one writer in Burlington, North Carolina:

One thing I’ve noticed as an adult is that there are fewer outdoor courts than there used to be. There’s not a single one in my neighborhood, which does have a pool, tennis courts, fields, walking trails, a lake and a playground. Those portable goals you find along streets in the suburbs don’t count.

I don’t know if residential developers at some point came to see basketball courts as hotbeds for malfeasance, but I think it’s ridiculous that in the middle of one of the three-most basketball-crazed states in the Union I can’t walk to a basketball court from my house.

Here is another example from a writer in Lima, Ohio, though he seems to be referring also to basketball hoops in driveways:

Taking my game to Bradfield was not exactly breaking down a barrier, but it was a difficult step for a 15 year old looking for the best competition in the city. I sat on the sidelines for two days before one of the older players, Cleo Vaughn, picked me for his team. Vaughn, whose own athletic odyssey was stuff of dreams, took me under his wing and I owe much of my own emergence as a player to his guidance. Cleo began picking me up in his car and taking me to courts all over the city. Each one of these basketball courts was unique and presented its own challenges.

Whittier playground offered great full-court games with a colorful and vocal crowd of onlookers but if you lost, you were forced to wait for hours because there were so many young players waiting their turn. The most physical games could be found at Mizpah Mission in the deep south end. There was only a single basket there at the time, but those three-on-three games were the most intense in the city. You could always find a great game at Northside playground but the courts were so long it felt like you had run a marathon when the game ended. And there were many other great outdoor venues, all unique in their own design and makeup.

But my favorite courts remained the outdoor courts at Bradfield Center and the most memorable times were the nights that the flame from the Standard Oil Refinery was turned up full blast and the light it shed was powerful enough to allow us to play late into the evenings and avoid the heat of midday.

Both of these stories talk about particular places and are also tinged with nostalgia. These columnists have good memories of playing on outdoor courts and now see fewer young adults playing on outside courts. The first writer suggests developers may not be interested in building courts while the second suggests kids grow up playing indoors in organized sports rather than free-wheeling games in driveways or neighborhood parks.

Of course, this is anecdotal evidence and these two columnists disagree about the cause of this.

The problem may not just be limited to the United States: here is an online petition signed by 554 people asking for at least one nice outdoor basketball court in all Australian cities:

Kids around Australia, as well as teenagers and young adults, always email us (MSF) and tell us that the new highschool court in their area is closed after school hours… so what’s the point of having a facility when the local youth can’t use it to it’s full potential? Where’s the night lights? Where’s the support for the people who want to play sports instead of hanging out with friends at nightclubs or at home playing video games? not just at night though, we’re talking about during the day also. The youth do not have enough positive recreational facilities to unite at. And if there are a few, the basketball courts are usually ALWAYS the cheapest and worst quality that end up steering kids away. Fact.

Our proposition; on behalf of millions of other Australians; build ONE Superior outdoor basketball court in each Australian City… central to all suburbs. Close to transport. Secure and Safe. Night lights. Open 24 hours. The highest standard of ring systems and surface. And then you will all see; the Domino Effect. These superior outdoor courts will become populated with positivity and energy; believe it. And once it succeeds in one community, other communities and councils will follow in these footsteps.

It is interesting that this petition tries to flip Reason #1 for fewer basketball courts (they create more problems with the people they attract) on its head by suggesting these courts are actually helpful in combating other social problems. If kids play on outdoor courts, they are not just sitting around playing video games and they are not getting into more active trouble elsewhere. If this argument is correct, could this then a NIMBY issue where immediate neighbors don’t want the basketball courts even though the courts would benefit society as a whole? If this is what happens, the neighbors win out, courts can’t be built near where people actually live, and fewer communities decide to build outdoor courts overall. Parks themselves, basketball courts or not, can become NIMBY sites as their public space threatens nearby public space.

(At least New York City claims to have plenty of outdoor courts: “There are hundreds of outdoor courts in New York City. In the basketball capital of the world, it’s possible to find a game within walking distance of any location. Recreation Centers in all five boroughs have indoor courts as well.”)