As a follow-up to a recent piece looking at the top 10 segregated cities in the United States (see my discussion here), a Salon writer discusses five myths people have regarding this data.
An interesting read and several sociologists contribute to the myth-busting.
One aspect of McMasions is that they are large houses. But here is a description of 32,000 square foot home that is called a McMansion:
Coeur d’Alene is interested in all things Hagadone. Even dated things. So I browsed the 20-page, color-photo, online spread in the Robb Report that named Duane Hagadone’s Palm Desert hilltop hideaway as the “2009 Ultimate Home.” Huckleberries has visited Hagadone’s mega-manse before, during the construction phase, when lesser millionaires and townspeople were fighting city approval that allowed the Coeur d’Alene tycoon to construct his 32,000-square-foot McMansion in the viewplane on one of the area’s few buildable hilltops. Now, according to the Robb Report, Hagadone prides himself on having to point out the location of his spread to golfing buddies because the color schemes and the footprint make it hard to see from the plain below. Of all the items featuring Hagadone sizzle enumerated in the article, none impresses Huckleberries more than the three-sided, 4,000-gallon aquarium tunnel leading into the dining area, featuring a shark tank on the ceiling. Mebbe the shark tank is to remind well-heeled Big Fish at Hagadone’s brunches of their humble beginnings.
In my thinking, a 32,000 square foot home is simply a mansion.
So what might make this extra large home a McMansion? Based on this short description, a few possible reasons come to mind:
1. The McMansion idea refers to the recent growth in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. Could this be referring to sprawl and building on one of the areas “buildable hilltops”? (But at the same time, this hints that the home has to be pointed out because it is “hard to see” from below.
2. There is something about the quality or design of the home that is reminiscent of other homes. So it is a big home but more so looks like a copy of other homes, hence the “Mc” prefix.
3. Is this term used just because McMansion is a pejorative term?
When Will County officials look at a map of Metra commuter rail lines in the Chicago region, they see limited services for a growing region. Indeed, communities like Joliet and Plainfield are quickly growing. Will County officials came together Monday to praise a new study that will look into improving train options for this area:
Several communities have pegged developments to improved service on the Heritage Corridor. But those suburbs have been frustrated in recent years by the slow pace of adding Metra trains.
Local officials said Monday they were pinning their hopes on the Heritage Corridor to help residents get downtown now and in the future.
“I truly believe the need is there more than ever, and the consensus is we are going to see Will County in the next 20 years jump to (more than) 1 million people to become the second-most populated behind Cook,” said Will County Executive Larry Walsh.
The study will help establish the line as part of the proposed high-speed rail corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, Hannig said.
Several pieces of information are interesting:
1. Many might think that the railroad ceased to be important for suburbs around the time that interstates were built (late 1950s in the Chicago area). But these railroad lines still play an important role: they are a commuting option but also give suburbs a flow of people in and out of the downtown as well as a center for which development can be anchored. Along other Metra lines, numerous communities have built condos and mixed-use developments.
2. Will County will have more than 1 million residents in 20 years? This would require growth rates like the county has experienced since the 1950s: in every decade except the 1980s, the county has experienced at least 30% growth. I wonder what DuPage County, the current 2nd most populous county in the region, thinks of this projection.
3. There is some Metra service to Chicago but the options are limited. The article suggests that this limited service leads to limited use: this line is “Metra’s least-used line, with an average weekday ridership of 2,600 passengers.” (A little comparison with these numbers: I believe both Naperville train stations easily exceed this each weekday.) So if the rail service is improved, will this necessarily lead to more riders as the political leaders suggest? Why can’t the officials look at some commuting data to figure out how many Will County residents work in Chicago versus in other suburbs?
A piece in the Chicago Reader discusses the results of a new University of Michigan study that showed Chicago is the third most segregated city in the country, trailing only New York City and Milwaukee. A few notes about this study:
1. Like many other studies of its ilk, this is based on dissimiliarity index scores. Here is how this is calculated:
The dissimilarity index is a system used by sociologists to measure segregation, with the highest score – meaning total segregation – being 100. The lowest – complete integration – is 0. The numbers reflect the percentage of people from one race (black and white are measured here) that would have to move in order to create complete integration.
There are some other measures like this with different calculations but the dissimilarity index seems to be used most often. There are a number of easily-found sites online that provide instructions on how to calculate the dissimilarity index (here is eHow’s explanation).
2. The Chicago Reader article and another piece at Salon (with some nice maps and explanations for each city) focus on white-black segregation. The original study also calculated the dissimilarity index for other pairs of races, such as whites and Latinos. These figures are generally lower than those for whites and blacks as the Great Migration of blacks from the south prompted increasing levels of segregation in Midwest and Northeastern cities during the early decades of the 1900s.
In terms of the white-Hispanic findings from the original study, the top 5 segregated cities are Springfield, MA, Los Angeles, New York, Providence, and Boston. On this list, Chicago is tenth.
The original study also look at white-Asian segregation: the top 5 cities here were Buffalo, Pittsburgh, New York, Syracuse, and Baton Rouge.
3. A little more on interpreting the figures regarding Chicago:
-Along with the other 52 most white-black segregated cities, Chicago had a drop (4.8) in its dissimilarity index between 2000 and 2010. The 53rd city, Greensboro, NC, was the first on the list to have an increase (0.9).
-In the Salon piece, there is a little bit of history about how this segregation came to be in Chicago and black migration, public housing, interstates, and Mayor Daley are mentioned. The conclusion is this:
Oak Park was one of a handful of places around the country where progressive whites made common cause with blacks. But in the Chicago area, it’s the exception, not the rule. Today, middle-income blacks are increasingly moving into Chicago’s suburbs. And though Quillian says that there isn’t white flight like there was in the past, many communities appear to be resegregating. The problem now is white avoidance.
It would be interesting to hear more about this idea of “white avoidance.”
-The Chicago Reader piece also suggests that Pekin, Illinois (a town whose high school has had some issues regarding race and its mascot – link from Wikipedia) is the most segregated city (white-black) in Illinois. However, the story doesn’t add the caution regarding Pekin: there are 857 blacks in the community. The CensusScope page of Illinois cities by dissimilarity index adds this disclaimer:
When a group’s population is small, its dissimilarity index may be high even if the group’s members are evenly distributed throughout the area. Thus, when a group’s population is less than 1,000, exercise caution in interpreting its dissimilarity indices.
It would be helpful if this were added to the story regarding Pekin.
A new set of rankings suggests that North Dakota is the #1 state in which to live. Here are some of the reasons:
• Lowest unemployment rate among the 50 states. North Dakota’s 3.8 percent unemployment rate is less than half the national rate.
• Statewide GDP growth of 3.9 percent ranked third in the nation in 2009 behind Oklahoma and Wyoming (2010’s figures are not yet available.)
• Best job growth last year. A Gallup survey reported that North Dakota businesses had the best ratio of hiring to firing among the 50 states.
• Stable housing market. Across the nation, nearly 1 in 4 homeowners with a mortgage are underwater. In North Dakota, just 1 in 14 have negative equity, the fourth lowest negative-equity ratio among all the states. The state also has the third-lowest home foreclosure rate. Affordable homes are a big part of the story here; let’s just say you don’t need to overstretch to own. According to Zillow, the median home price in North Dakota is below $150,000. That’s less than three times the state’s median household income. By comparison, even after sharp post-bubble price declines, the median priced home in California is still about five times median household income.
• Low violent crime rate. The incidence of violent crime per 100,000 residents in North Dakota in 2008 (latest available data) was the fourth lowest in the country and nearly 60 percent lower than the national average.
• Lowest credit card default rate. According to TransUnion, North Dakotans seem to have a handle on spending within their means.
The article goes on to say that Gallup recently found North Dakota to be the 3rd happiest state in the county.
One way of thinking about this ranking is to address the typical questions about such rankings: how dependent is the ranking on what factors were considered and how they were weighted? This plagues rankings of everything from states to colleges to communities to country’s well-being.
But another way to look at this is to ask whether the ranking will have any impact in the real world. This seems akin to the issue of substantive significance: statistics or data might suggest several variables are related but this doesn’t mean that this relationship or finding makes a big difference in everyday life. If North Dakota really is #1 based on a variety of useful measures, does this mean more people will move to the state? People move for a variety of reasons: jobs, to be by family, for certain climates (warmer weather) or atmospheres (the excitement of creative class cities or more sophisticated places), for education, to escape certain issues (crime, poverty) and benefit from the advantages of certain places (schools, parks, family-friendly, kid-friendly). But would anyone ever move to North Dakota based on this ranking? Will it lead to more businesses taking a second look at locating in North Dakota rather than big cities (or their suburbs) like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or elsewhere?
Another possible area of impact are perceptions about the state. Will the state’s status or prestige increase due to this ranking? If the state is seen as successful by other states, they might emulate North Dakota’s policies.
Overall, if North Dakota was #1 for decades, would anything really change?
(A related issue: if people did start moving to North Dakota in large numbers, would the state be able to maintain its top rank on this list?)
Green projects seem to have a good amount of general support. But when plans are made or carried out in particular locations, residents can become upset at how this changes the neighborhood. A recent example involves a plan to install small solar panels on a large number of utility poles in New Jersey:
Residents and politicians in Ridgewood, Wyckoff, and several other posh suburban towns just outside New York City are attacking local utility company PSE&G for putting up solar panels. Specifically, in an attempt to double the Garden State’s solar capacity, the company has been installing 3-foot-by-5-foot solar modules on utility poles. And the reactions are less than positive: “It’s just horrible,” said Ridgewood’s Deputy Mayor Tom Riche, according to an article in The Record, of Bergen County, N.J. on Sunday.
PSE&G wants to add 40 megawatts of solar capacity to the energy mix by 2013 as part of its Solar4All program, and the company is putting 180,000 solar panels on utility poles, schools, and other structures at a cost of more than half a billion dollars. Among the objections (followed by the utility’s responses):
- Crews install the panels without any warning. (PSE&G owns the poles.)
- Residents gripe that the panels are “crammed” onto some blocks while some blocks have none at all. (Poles must have southern exposure and meet other criteria.)
- Town officials are worried about liability caused by falling ice and snow. (Liability is actually PSE&G’s problem.)
Jerseyans aren’t the only ones raining on solar’s parade with an “ugliness” charge.
Three things strike me about these complaints:
1. Suburbanites tend not to like any changes in a neighborhood if they were not given prior warning. Or, we might even make a stronger argument: perhaps suburbanites just simply don’t like any changes to their neighborhood unless they have direct control over the changes being made.
2. As the end of this post points out, the utility pole is not exactly a paragon of beauty to start with. I currently live in a neighborhood with underground wires and fairly regularly I’m grateful that I don’t have to look at utility poles. Perhaps there are people out there who like their utility poles just the way they are – but this seems to go back to the first thought above.
3. This actually sounds like a clever idea on the part of the utility company. Since they already have the poles in place, why not put them to use and generate a decent amount of electricity through a distributed system? I wonder if the utility company predicted any outcry from citizens – and if so, perhaps they should have announced giant wind farms or something like that first so people would later be willing to settle for utility pole solar panels.
The Kansas City Royals have a rich history including a 1985 World Series victory. However, the last two decades have been difficult: the team has had three winning seasons since 1990, no playoff visits during that time, and seven straight losing seasons. So why do fans keep rooting for the team? A sociologist suggests that rooting for the Royals is tied to Midwestern values:
Yet the Royals likely will sell out Kauffman Stadium on opening day, draw more than 2 million fans and continue to have a loyal following on the blogosphere.
“Loyalty in the face of hard times is a long-held Midwestern value, and dealing with hard times is a regular challenge for anyone whose livelihoods depend on agriculture and related businesses,” said Jay Coakley, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. “However, we must go deeper than this value to explain the loyalty of Royals fans over the past decade.”…
“The fans’ connection with a team becomes a part of their identity,” said Coakley, the author of the textbook “Sports in Society.”
“Fans everywhere reaffirm those identities for each other so that they feel special — and they often make a special point of doing this when teams are unsuccessful and they need extra reaffirmation to justify their support in the face of regular losses. Over time, this pattern of identity reaffirmation becomes regularized, and the fan identity serves as an important basis for their sense of self as well as their social lives and everyday conversations with fans and nonfans alike.
“Losses and losing seasons become topics of conversations much like the last hailstorm or dry season that ruined crops. Of course, some people eventually become weary of predictable bad times and leave their farms or fan identities behind.
“But many stick it out year after year because it is who they are, and giving up on yourself is a hard thing to do.”
Coakley is suggesting that an rooting interest in a sports team becomes internalized and the basis for a kind of community. Fans identify with the team and the city (see this recent post on the differences between the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants). I wonder if we could look at the times that fans use the term “we” to refer both to themselves and the team to get an idea of how much these identities have merged.
But it is particularly interesting that Coakley ties fan’s devotion to the Royals to Midwestern values derived from farming and agriculture. Would a sociologist in Boston come up with a different cultural explanation for why Red Sox fans are so devoted? This seems like a fairly convenient explanation that might not hold up in other places.
Atlanta is often held up as an example of Southern sprawl. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on a new lawsuit filed against some recently created suburban communities north of Atlanta:
The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus filed a lawsuit Monday against the state of Georgia seeking to dissolve the city charters of Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, Milton and Chattahoochee Hills…
The lawsuit, filed in a North Georgia U.S. District Court Monday, claims that the state circumvented the normal legislative process and set aside its own criteria when creating the “super-majority white ” cities within Fulton and DeKalb counties. The result, it argues, is to dilute minority votes in those areas, violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution…
Sandy Springs, created in 2005, is 65 percent white and 20 percent black. Milton, formed a year later, is 76.6 percent white and 9 percent black. Johns Creek, also formed that year, is 63.5 percent white and 9.2 percent black. Chattahoochee Hills, formed in 2007, is 68.6 percent white and 28 percent black, while Dunwoody, created in 2008, is 69.8 percent white and 12.6 percent black.
Emory University law professor Michael Kang said the case is unique because the Voting Rights Act focuses on redistricting, whereas this lawsuit challenges the legality of cities. Kang, who has not reviewed the case in its entirety, said the plaintiffs will likely have to show evidence of discriminatory purpose to have a strong claim. Kane said the case has interesting implications.
“If we look at this realistically, there is some white flight going on. The creation of these Sandy Springs-type cities enables white voters to get away from black voters,” he said. “It does strike me that the Voting Rights Act might have something to say about this, but it’s unknown what the courts will say about it.”
There is little doubt that there are exclusionary practices that take place in suburban communities, whether this is through zoning for particular uses (typically to avoid apartment buildings or lower-income housing – read about a recent debate over this in Winnetka, Illinois) or high real estate prices.
But the idea that incorporation itself is exclusionary is an interesting idea. Certainly, this is done along class lines: wealthier communities have incorporated in order to help protect their status and boundaries. Cities and suburbs have a long history of annexation in order to expand their own boundaries and their tax base (see this argument that Detroit should annex surrounding areas to help solve some of its problems). But was this done intentionally in regards to race (as opposed to just class or other issues) in these Atlanta suburbs? And what sort of evidence would a court find persuasive in this argument?
We have blue-collar, white-collar, and pink-collar. In time for Opening Day of the 2011 baseball season, how about “green-collar baseball“:
There’s a sociological genius at work in the Oakland Athletics marketing department. The current slogan for the franchise, “green collar baseball,” speaks volumes about the culture of the bay area, and why I have become such a devoted fan of the Oakland A’s…
Across the Bay Bridge, you’ll find a better stadium (AT&T Park), a team with a higher payroll, fancier concessions, and fancier fans. You’ll find doctors, lawyers, and San Francisco techie types taking in an afternoon game, reveling in the see and be seen crowd. On the San Francisco side, baseball is very much en vogue. If you search hard enough, you might even find a fan in the crowd who can tell you what a change-up is or explain the infield fly rule.
Trot back over to the Oakland side, and you’ll see where that marketing slogan is coming from. The Oakland Coliseum is clearly a Soviet spin on the baseball stadium, a concrete gulag if there ever was one. The concession options are minimal, the team operates on a shoestring payroll, and the fans are decidedly less cosmopolitan.
All these shortcomings are what bring me to love the authentic experience of Oakland Athletics baseball, and loathe the corporate, plasticized feel of the Giants. There’s an old Taoist saying that it’s “better to be alive in the mud than dead in the palace.” Count me as one who’s happiest to feel alive in the mud of the Oakland A’s.
Having spent time watching both the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park and the Oakland Athletics at Oakland-Alameda County Stadium, I have a few thoughts on this subject:
1. There is no comparison in stadiums: AT&T Park is nice and has great views while the A’s play in a concrete circle. One website goes so far as to say that the A’s stadium “represents everything that’s wrong with baseball stadiums.”
2. The two teams do seem to have differences in the number of fans: AT&T Park is regularly full while the A’s struggle to even fill the bottom portion of the stadium, even when the team was good in the early 2000s.
3. Both teams have potential: the Giants, of course, won the World Series last year while the A’s seem to have put together a dark horse candidate to win the AL West based around young pitching (just like the Giants). The baseball in each place should be relatively similar.
4. San Francisco and Oakland are very different kinds of cities. Both have a grittiness to them but Oakland is known for crime and gangs while San Francisco has more glittering pieces. Ultimately, I think this is really what is behind this idea of “green-collar baseball”: Giants’ fans are painted as plastic because this is how Oakland residents view their neighbor across the bay. Oakland, both the city and its baseball team, are the underdogs, the team with a limited number of fans, limited funds, and a limited stadium. What is sociological about the use of this marketing slogan is that it invokes issues of social class and status.
I wonder if these sorts of descriptions only pop only in cities that have multiple franchises in the same sport. Almost the same argument occurs in Chicago: the Cubs fans are only at Wrigley Field because it is the cool thing to do while the White Sox fans are the working class people who really care about baseball.
Municipal employees and officials are somewhat beholden to residents and their tax dollars. Therefore, it would be interesting to know the reaction of public officials to an April Fool’s prank regarding snow removal published yesterday in a community newspaper in Evanston, Illinois:
As WBBM Newsradio 780?s Mike Krauser reports, Evanston is dealing with a budget crisis, and a huge bill for the blizzard back on Feb. 2 and 3, which dumped 21.2 inches of snow on the Chicago area.
So, the Roundable reports, their solution is to charge for snow removal.
The Roundtable reports under the new plan developed by the city’s Snow Czar, Pearl Le Blanc, anyone who wants snow removed in front of their homes will be required to buy a “snow removal sticker.”
The plan was approved at a heated City Council meeting on April 1, the Roundtable said.
Residents who participate will rent orange traffic cones from the City of Evanston, and will affix daily snow removal stickers to the cones. The stickers will cost $2.25 per day, the Roundtable reported.
I would imagine that officials at City Hall might not have been too pleased at receiving phone calls from angry residents.
Is it too outlandish in these days of budget shortfalls to suggest that a community could increase revenue by requiring such a sticker?
Legally Sociable 