Category Archives: Places

The best state to live in is North Dakota; will this change anything?

Posted on by

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?)

NIMBY reactions to small solar panels on utility poles

Posted on by

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.

Sociologist ties rooting for the Kansas City Royals to Midwestern values

Posted on by

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.

Lawsuit over “super-majority white neighborhoods” in Atlanta suburbs

Posted on by

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?

The sociological pitch for the Oakland A’s: green-collar baseball

Posted on by

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.

April Fool’s prank in Evanston about snow removal sticker

Posted on by

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?

Elijah Anderson on “the cosmopolitan canopy”

Posted on by

Sociologist Elijah Anderson, well-known for his books Code of the Street and Streetwise, talks about the idea of “the cosmopolitan canopy” (which is the title of his just-released book)

Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson writes about those parts of the American city that allow “complete strangers to observe and appreciate one another” across racial barriers. Anderson calls these spaces “cosmopolitan canopies,” and says they let ordinary people become amateur anthropologists, watching and, eventually, reaching out to people of whom they’d be more wary in other places. His broader question: can we encourage the growth of cosmopolitan canopies? Or do they only grow from the bottom up?…

Why do cosmopolitan canopies like Reading Terminal [in Philadelphia]work? (Anderson points to many others: parks, transportation hubs, sports stadiums, even the Whole Foods.) These are safe spaces, separate from the street, made warm and intimate by a shared experience — food, shopping, travel, cheering on a team. But there’s also an intangible ingredient: a mood, Anderson writes, of “civility” that allows people “to stretch themselves mentally, emotionally, and socially,” and to develop “the growing social sophistication that allows diverse urban people to get along.” Because they’re so hard to replicate, Anderson argues, they ought to be treasured and protected — and those of us who enjoy them ought to treat them “not as ‘time out’ from normal life but as a model for what social relationships could become.” That’s how cosmopolitanism spreads.

I may have to check out this book if only for Anderson’s thoughts on the Reading Terminal Market: I have been to this central Philadelphia location several times and it is indeed an interesting place. Between the mix of people and the various food offerings, it is a great place to people watch.

But I guess I will have to read the book to find out whether Anderson thinks the openness of such places is only available to regulars (as this article hints) or whether tourists and sporadic visitors can also participate in this different kind of place. Also, I would be interested in Anderson’s thoughts regarding whether these sorts of spaces can be intentionally constructed and whether these spaces are different when they are privately owned (this would get at some of the debates in sociology over “public spaces”).

Battle in Winnetka over affordable housing plan

Posted on by

The community of Winnetka, Illinois is a northern suburb of Chicago that is quite wealthy: the Census says the median household income is $201,650 (in 2009 inflation-adjusted dollars). The Chicago Tribune reports on a recent debate over a plan to introduce affordable housing to the wealthy suburb:

Winnetka’s plan calls for a land trust to provide for-sale and rental property to those who make far less than the median household income of $201,650.

Under Winnetka’s proposed plan, owner-occupied units must be affordable to households earning at least $75,000. Rentals must be affordable to those earning at least $45,000 or more. Current residents and senior citizens would receive priority.

A lot of suburban communities talk about affordable housing but few propose plans like this. It would be interesting to know how the local government was able to even put this plan forward.

The plan itself describes the change that has occurred in Winnetka over recent years as the community has become even more exclusive:

Over the past several decades, Winnetka has become less diverse in age and income, and it contains a more transient population, according to the plan. The report states that Winnetka lost much of its housing market diversity with the demolition of older, smaller homes that were replaced with larger, more expensive houses. Between 1980 and 2000, the village also lost 262 rental units — a 38 percent reduction — due to the conversion of downtown apartments into commercial offices.

Between 1990 and 2000, the number of homes valued at less than $500,000 declined to 975 from 2,004, according to the report.

“Winnetka’s housing stock increasingly serves only one kind of resident — a family at the peak of its earning years and with school-age children,” the report states.

It sounds like teardowns have become quite an issue.

There has been some vocal opposition to the plan:

“There is plenty of affordable housing in neighboring communities,” said Carry Buck, chairman of WHOA, or Winnetka Home Owners Association. “Most people in Winnetka are conservative and they do not want more involvement from government.”

In a 25-page publication mailed to Winnetka residents last week, the homeowners association called the village Plan Commission’s proposal un-American, predicting it will lower property values, attract criminals and force residents to subsidize those who rely on “hand-outs.”

While this language might be more blunt than what one might typically find in such NIMBY debates, there are plenty of suburbanites who hold such views. Anything that might lower property values or might detract from the community that they bought into is seen as a threat.

The Tribune story suggests that an interfaith group is on the other side of the debate:

The lightning rod for complaints is the Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs, a Winnetka-based nonprofit that supports the plan. The center, which advocates for fair and affordable housing and investigates housing discrimination complaints, is accused by WHOA of infiltrating village boards and commissions with “social engineers” who depend on federal funding.

Interfaith’s executive director, Gail Schechter, described the opposing arguments as absurd.

“Social engineering is what got us to look the way we do,” she said. “The way Winnetka looks today is not just pure market forces.”

Sociologists would tend to fall on this side: the suburbs were not just created by people voting with their dollars and feet. Rather, the whole suburban system is upheld by a massive system of government policy (building highways, promoting homeownership, tax breaks or incentives for developers and those with financial resourcse) and cultural values (emphasis on the single-family home and automobiles, an anti-urban bias, a desire to move away from problematic areas, etc.).

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. In my own research on suburban communities, I found such open debates (where each side clearly lays out their intentions and/or fears) to be relatively rare. Additionally, such debates are rarely just about particular development proposals; rather, they are about the broader character of the community. Here, it sounds like the debate is also about the image and status of Winnetka: is it just a upper-class suburb or should it be something different?

An argument for expanding Detroit rather than contracting it

Posted on by

In the last few years, a number of commentators have suggested contracting cities like Detroit or Youngstown. So it might seem strange to suggest expanding Detroit instead – but this idea is rooted in some interesting recent works:

I’ve come to learn my friend’s idea is a favorite thought experiment among a certain subset of Detroit-area urbanophiles. Sometimes they will reference David Rusk, the former Albuquerque mayor whose book Cities Without Suburbs makes the case for the economic vibrancy of “elastic” cities (like Houston, Austin, Seattle and Nashville) whose central hubs have the capability to annex or otherwise regionalize their surrounding suburbs into a unified metropolitan area.

The takeaway from the census stories was that Detroit plummeted to 19th place on the U.S. city-size list, behind Austin, Jacksonville and Columbus (Columbus!). But the Detroit metropolitan area — which we’ll define, for these purposes, as Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties — still retains a population of nearly four million. If our territorial-expansion fantasia could have been magically enacted with even two-thirds of this figure, the Greater Detroitopolis would easily vault past Chicago to become the third-largest city in the U.S., behind New York and Los Angeles. This would translate into more state and national clout (and allocated funds, many of which are based on population) and eliminate the need for much of the wasteful duplicate spending inherent in maintaining dozens of tiny separate municipalities, especially at a time when many of these suburban communities have announced their own cutbacks. (In February, the westside suburb of Allen Park announced plans to eliminate its entire fire department.)

Super-sizing Detroit could also translate to better policy. When Indianapolis enacted a similar “Unigov” city-suburbs merger in the late Sixties (under Republican mayor Dick Lugar), the region experienced economic growth (and the benefits of economy of scale), AAA municipal bond-ratings and a broader, more stable tax base. The same could happen in metropolitan Detroit, which sorely needs to attract young people and entrepreneurs in order to fill the void left by the region’s dwindling manufacturing base. Elastic cities are less segregated and have fewer of the problems associated with concentrated areas of poverty. And though sprawl wouldn’t necessarily be reigned in, the region could finally adopt a sensible transportation policy to unite its businesses and residential areas. At the moment, suburban Detroit maintains its own bus system, separate from the city’s, and a planned $150 million light rail project, slated to run from downtown Detroit up the main thoroughfare of Woodward Avenue, would nonsensically stop at 8 Mile Road, the suburban border. That’s a formula to limit, not maximize, growth.

David Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, has written several books (Cities Without Suburbs and Inside Game/Outside Game) about this subject. Rusk’s argument in both books revolves around this idea of “elasticity” which is the ability for cities to expand their boundaries. According to Rusk, more modern cities (particularly those in the South and West) have been able to annex more land compared to older cities like New York City, Chicago, and Detroit. With more land, Rusk argues these cities have lower rates of residential segregation, a broader tax base, and more beneficial outcomes.

Of course, these plans are not easy to implement. The trick is convincing suburbs that they should vote for annexation by the large city. Why would wealthier Detroit suburbs want to become part of the City of Detroit? Historically, such annexations in Midwest and Northeastern cities stopped in the early 1900s as suburbs no longer needed the city services big cities offered and the city was increasingly viewed as a dirty, problematic place.

The last city I recall reading about (in The American Suburb by Jon Teaford) that was able to successfully do this was Louisville, Kentucky. Teaford described how the city was able to convince the suburbs that the annexation would improve the city’s business standing, particularly through having a larger population.

The Atlantic piece suggests this annexation would be difficult to implement:

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s benign proposal to ease the ability of state counties to merge into loose metropolitan authorities has been a non-starter in the Detroit area. “I don’t think anyone would support it,” Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano told the Detroit News.

With a decreasing population (a “staggering 25% in ten years”), Detroit will have to make some decision about moving forward.

A proposal to rid European Union cities of cars by 2050

Posted on by

The European Commission, part of the European Union, recently proposed getting rid of “conventionally fueled cars” in all EU cities by 2050:

Top of the EU’s list to cut climate change emissions is a target of “zero” for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU’s future cities.

Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto “alternative” means of transport.

“That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres,” he said. “Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour.”

The Association of British Drivers rejected the proposal to ban cars as economically disastrous and as a “crazy” restriction on mobility.

“I suggest that he goes and finds himself a space in the local mental asylum,” said Hugh Bladon, a spokesman for the BDA.

“If he wants to bring everywhere to a grinding halt and to plunge us into a new dark age, he is on the right track. We have to keep things moving. The man is off his rocker.”

Mr Kallas has denied that the EU plan to cut car use by half over the next 20 years, before a total ban in 2050, will limit personal mobility or reduce Europe’s economic competitiveness.

This would be a radical change, even in countries with lower rates of car ownership and more mass transit use compared to the United States. I can only imagine the outcry if such a plan were introduced in the United States.

It is interesting to see that one British commentator brings up mobility and the economy. I would think mobility is more of a proxy for freedom, the ability for an individual citizen to hop into a car and drive wherever they want. This idea is particular prevalent in America where freedom is paramount and the suburbs are built around this idea of driving where one wants. I’m not sure about the economic issue: surely, cars and related industries (gas, maintenance, insurance, etc.) are an important part of the economy. But I am more skeptical that such a ban would lead to a “new dark age.”