Category Archives: Places

The of effects tech company shuttle buses from San Francisco to Silicon Valley

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A number of Silicon Valley workers live in San Francisco and a number of the biggest tech companies offer private shuttle buses for employees. This has led to changes in a number of San Francisco neighborhoods:

Take the public transportation provided by corporate shuttle buses from the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook, and others. It’s not news that these shuttles, and the big digital tech companies that run them, are changing the fabric of San Francisco as we’ve known it. What feels new is that it’s not enough to say that change is coming soon. It’s already, very much here…

On one hand, some have called the shuttles “a vivid emblem of the tech boom’s stratifying effect in the Bay Area” because they allow the “techy progeny” of Silicon Valley to be “launched into SF proper.” That the shuttles are “alienating everyone who isn’t in technology” — or that there’s simply too much tech for one city to take.

Others are of the mind that it’s simply time to get over it and recognize a new reality; cities change, neighborhoods rise and fall. That in fact a paradox of Silicon Valley is in its “distributing meaningful equity” to ordinary people who wouldn’t otherwise access such wealth. (And then there’s the logic that wonders whether public transportation is yet another bit of infrastructure that should be upended by the Valley’s “meritocratic“ spirit.)…

What we’re talking about isn’t simply the replacement of presumably authentic recent immigrants by their presumably younger, whiter, or better educated new neighbors. What we’re talking about is the replacement of an entire system of urban inter-relationships, built up over generations and stratified in ways that make sense within an urban context — now short-circuited by the inexorable demands of the (suburban) digital technology landscape.

This is a reminder of a few things:

1. The arrival of “the creative class” is not just a positive occurrence. This is a group many big cities would love to have for their wealth (think of the tax money!) as well as their innovative and creative spirits. Yet, as the term gentrification describes, this group can at the least change the character of places and more problematically push out existing residents.

2. This hints at the interdependence within metropolitan regions. Tech workers may like their jobs in Silicon Valley but San Francisco offers a more exciting, urban, and cultured place to live. And, San Francisco benefits from its business connections to Silicon Valley. It would also be interesting to consider the role of San Jose which offers a bigger city closer to Silicon Valley but one that has less of a reputation for social life.

With these changes, it puts officials in San Francisco in an interesting position. Existing urban residents tend to resist major changes to their neighborhoods. But, as noted above, cities have a hard time turning down new money.

Aircraft carriers sailing off the shores of Chicago in World War II

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Chicago may be inland but during World War II, aircraft carriers sailed in its waters. See lots of pictures here.

Chicago has a history of military production and training, though it is hard to tell this now.

“The McMansion Man” builds larger houses in the Hamptons

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The Hamptons have long been known as a retreat for the wealthy but the recent actions of one builder suggest the houses are getting bigger and nicer:

“We’re as busy as we’ve ever been,” said Joe Farrell, the president of Farrell Building, during a recent interview and tour of his $43 million, 17,000-square-foot home here. The estate, called the Sandcastle, features two bowling lanes, a skate ramp, onyx window frames and, just for fun, an A.T.M. regularly restocked with $20,000 in $10 bills…

With a customer base composed largely of Wall Street financiers, Mr. Farrell has more than 20 new homes under construction, or slated for construction, at a time, making him the biggest builder here by far. He has plans for more, many of them speculative homes built before they have buyers…

“Houses have gotten smaller over all but not entirely: 8,000 square feet was the norm, now 6,500 is,” Mr. Farrell said. “Everyone wants six or seven bedrooms and their pool and their tennis.”

Where Mr. Farrell built speculative homes that sold for as much as $20 million before the recession, he now specializes in properties that sell for between $3 million and $10 million. “Mostly, though, $3 million to $6,” he said. “I love that market — there are probably 10 times as many people in that market than to buy an eight- or nine-million-dollar house, right?”

I’m not quite sure what the issue is. The Hamptons are for the wealthy and this man builds houses for the wealthy (though they are smaller and cheaper than a short time ago). But, the article suggests there might be several things going on:

1. Even the wealthy in the United States have to be careful to not completely flaunt their wealth. In particular, when economic times are bad it doesn’t look great to keep spending at high levels when other people are struggling.

2. There is an ongoing tension between old money and new money. The older homes, associated with older money, have more character and have been part of the community for decades. The new homes, associated with new money from the finance sector or from celebrities, are seen as gauche.

3. The construction of more spec/mass housing means the whole area will suffer by appearing more generic. Any historic architecture will disappear under a flood of mass-produced McMansions.

These are interesting arguments in themselves but I suspect (1) many Americans can’t relate and (2) there is enough money involved that it doesn’t really matter – just help pave over the issues with some more money. In other words, this provides a small window into how the wealthy view change within their own neighborhoods.

Looking at inequality in NYC by translating wealth differences into building heights

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It can be difficult to visualize inequality but here is an innovative way of doing so: imagining wealth as buildings in New York City.

In his most recent visualization project, the Pittsburgh-based artist and researcher re-imagines what the city’s skyline would look like if building height were a direct reflection of a neighborhood’s net household wealth. “I was inspired to create this project after standing atop Mt. Washington in my hometown of Pittsburgh and looking at the Pittsburgh skyline,” he explains. “I thought to myself, ‘What if you could actually see inequality?’ This relatively even landscape would look much different.”

Lamm, who is responsible for other viral visualizations like Normal Barbie, translated Esri’s map of median household net worth in New York City (based on 2010 Census data) into the bright green 3-D bars you’re looking at. Every $100,000 of net worth in a section on Esri’s map equals one centimeter in height on Lamm’s visualization. So if one section (which appears to consist of multiple blocks) had a net worth of $500,000, Lamm’s rendering would measure 5 cm high. Similarly, if another section had a net worth of $80,000, the green would appear at a much flatter 0.8 cm.

Of the maps/visualizations available here, the best one is probably the first one that shows much of Manhattan from the northwest looking southeast.

Choosing to visualize wealth rather than income is a strategic choice. Much talk about inequality involves income but this may be the wrong metric. Income is more about short-term access to money but wealth may be more important for longer-term outcomes (purchasing a house, etc.) and the wealth differences between groups are quite a big larger. For example, the differences in wealth between the top 5% and the rest of America are astounding as are the differences between whites and blacks as well as Latinos.

Additionally, singling out New York, particularly Manhattan, is an interesting choice. The differences here are indeed stark. Manhattan is the seat of the financial sector. But, few places in the United States would have this much wealth inequality.

LA’s modernist homes threatened by hot housing market and McMansions

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The modernist homes Los Angeles are in danger of being replaced by McMansions and other big homes:

The Backus House still hovers on the same Bel Air hillside where Grossman built it. But because of the sprawling megamansions that have sprung up around the property, and because of the increasingly overheated state of the Southern California real estate market, Grossman’s elegant modernist creation—one of the few surviving examples of residential architecture by a groundbreaking woman now ranked among the finest designers of her era—may not survive much longer.

There’s an irony here. Starting in the 1920s, the combination of climate, terrain, and a young, progressive community of (largely European) architects and clients triggered an efflorescence of modern residential design in Los Angeles that culminated in the famous Case Study House Program (1945–66)—a series of experimental model homes sponsored by the local magazine Arts & Architecture and designed by some of the period’s greatest architects. The modern single-family dwelling may have been invented in Europe, at the Bauhaus and elsewhere, but many believe it was perfected in Southern California…

But a certain kind of modernist property—namely, a lesser-known house situated on a prime lot in an expensive neighborhood—is still at risk, and may be especially imperiled in Los Angeles’s current residential market, which has posted the nation’s largest increase in average sale price (20.7 percent) over the last year. “An economic downturn is always a good thing for preservation,” says Regina O’Brien, chairperson of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “A lot fewer developers are making a lot less money, and therefore they have a lot less motivation to pursue these profit-oriented flips. But the problem is that the opposite is true when the market picks back up.”…

“Most modernist homes are considered very modest by the standards of these neighborhoods, where people want far more house than they need,” says Nate Cole of Unique California Property, a Long Beach brokerage specializing in modernist architecture. “Buyers see anything that they deem a compromise, and out come the bulldozers.”

There are several issues at work:

1. It sounds like there are questions about individual property rights versus community-wide preservation efforts. Should property owners be able to cash in during a good housing market? This is a common issue across all sorts of communities debating teardowns and historic preservation.

2. These modernist homes are part of southern California’s image. Elsewhere, modernist homes might elicit more negative reactions but they are part of LA’s coming of age narrative. Part of the argument here is that the replacement homes don’t really add much to LA’s character.

3. Who exactly is supposed to pay to preserve these houses? As if often the case with preserving homes, supporters of the modernist homes are hoping for buyers who want to preserve and fix-up the homes. But, if those people don’t come, it is less clear what might be done.

4. The irony: a down real estate market is good for historic preservation. Not only might the old buildings survive, it might be easier for those interested in preservation to purchase the homes. But, who would wish for leaner economic times simply in order to preserve buildings? All of this suggests historic preservation might be partly about timing and having the opportunity to purchase property that might not be as marketable.

Saskia Sassen on three possible futures for cities: optimistic, dystopian, articulation

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Sociologist Saskia Sassen shares three possible visions for cities in the future:

ArchDaily: What will cities be like in the future?

Saskia Sassen: Well I have two scenarios: a very optimistic one and a very dystopian one. The dystopian scenario is that we will have a lot of private cities. Abuja is de facto a private city. It is how not to be in Lagos in Nigeria. The mechanism is very simple. Everything is super expensive. The milk, the houses, everything. It de facto eliminates all kinds of people. But I think we’re going to take it further. Songdo is sort of a private city. There are now big firms that sell you a city. They will build you a city. And some of them will rent you the city. So that’s the dystopian scenario. That’s the dystopian scenario; in other words we will have vast settlements with probably many toxic conditions, where a lot of people—modest, middle-class people—will be living in slums. In a country like Brazil, many people who are in the civil service of the government live in the slums. Same thing in India. This is contrasted with these brand new perfect cities that aren’t really cities in that full robust sense of the term.

At this end, my utopia is that when so many new people come to cities there is going to be a lot of making—making of sub-economies, not the economy. Making of urban agriculture, making of buildings that work with the environment. People of modest means will use their imaginations; they will understand how to make air circulate so that mosquitos are less likely to come in. They will work and have that knowledge—that is my optimistic scenario. So even a modest, poor slum will have people that know that the shack that they are building is part of larger systems. Then of course, the rich will be the rich and the upper-middle class will be the upper-middle classes. I think the modest middle-classes will keep on splitting up. The splitting up of the middle class has been happening for 25 years. I wrote about it in the late 1980s and people didn’t believe me. They said, “That’s not happening. We’re all becoming richer.” Well, no. Now we know that.

On a larger systemic map about cities, I think that the desirable, optimistic format is multiple articulations of the territory—not one endless metropolitan zone. I think we will have understood that the vast metropolitan area does not work.

The option is articulations. China is building all of these cities so they build nine small cities around Shanghai rather than letting Shanghai become an endless stretch. In my optimistic view, I see a different way of articulating the urban with territory. Moving away from metropolitanization.  Now, my Dutch, practical sense tells me that we’re not going to be able to do that. We’ll build something unmanageable and then the elites will move out and build a new private city.

The three visions: private cities where the wealthy can control everything versus cities where all, or most, people will be able to make things that improve their lives (though the scales of these improvements will likely differ) versus smaller big cities that are more manageable. To some degree, all of these are happening now so its unfortunate Sassen doesn’t go on to explain how these three scenarios might play out and under what conditions.

Something refreshing in this brief analysis: it sounds like Sassen is thinking about cities around the world and not really thinking about American cities. American urban sociology would do well to keep considering the changes to major cities elsewhere in the world…

“The United States Redrawn as Fifty States with Equal Populations” leads to interesting names in the Chicago area

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Here is a fun map/solution/art project regarding reforming the American electoral college: have all the states have equal populations.

electorally reformed US map

Here is the methodology for the map:

The map began with an algorithm that grouped counties based on proximity, urban area, and commuting patterns. The algorithm was seeded with the fifty largest cities. After that, manual changes took into account compact shapes, equal populations, metro areas divided by state lines, and drainage basins. In certain areas, divisions are based on census tract lines.

The District of Columbia is included into the state of Washington, with the Mall, major monuments and Federal buildings set off as the seat of the federal government.

The capitals of the states are existing states capitals where possible, otherwise large or central cities have been chosen. The suggested names of the new states are taken mainly from geographical features:

  • mountain ranges or peaks, or caves – Adirondack, Allegheny, Blue Ridge, Chinati, Mammoth, Mesabi, Ozark, Pocono, Rainier, Shasta, Shenandoah and Shiprock
  • rivers – Atchafalaya, Menominee, Maumee, Nodaway, Sangamon, Scioto, Susquehanna, Trinity and Willimantic
  • historical or ecological regions – Big Thicket, Firelands and Tidewater
  • bays, capes, lakes and aquifers – Casco, Tampa Bay, Canaveral, Mendocino, Ogallala, Salt Lake and Throgs Neck
  • songs – Gary, Muskogee and Temecula
  • cities – Atlanta, Chicago, Columbia, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Washington
  • plants – Tule and Yerba Buena
  • people – King and Orange

The words used for names for the name are drawn from many languages, including many American Indian languages.

Interesting naming conventions. However, I don’t understand what is going on in the Chicago area. While it makes sense to name Chicago and some of the nearby suburbs “Chicago” (though I’m guessing a number of these suburbs would not want to be lumped in with Chicago), why in the world would the new state made up of the outer regions of the current Chicago area be called Gary? I’m sure people would ask why an industrial boomtown now ghost town (it isn’t quite this bad yet this is the sort of reputation Gary has), an exemplar par excellence of the Rust Belt, would lend its name to a full state. Gary has a bad reputation (which other suburbs, particularly the wealthier ones, would not want to be associated with), it is not the largest city in the area (Milwaukee, Rockford, Joliet are larger), it is located on the eastern side of the new state so isn’t exactly central, and Joliet is the named capital.

It is also interesting to see the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan regions are also split up. However, they don’t appear to be quite split on the lines of concentric rings like the Chicago area.

Crazy city plan of the day: fill in the Hudson River for development in NYC

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I’m convinced all major cities have these sorts of crazy plans floating around in their past. Here is one from New York City: dam up the Hudson River so that the land is available for development.

The quest to turn the Hudson into New York’s trendiest new ‘hood, which today no doubt would be stamped with a sexy name like West Chelsea or Watertown, received an amazing five pages of coverage in the March 1934 edition of Modern Mechanix, that non-stop malfunctioning megaphone of bad ideas. Sper seemed earnest in his appraisal of the fill job being within the “abilities of modern engineers,” who were coming off a hot streak of major infrastructure projects…

Critics might cry that the proposal would destroy what remained of the natural beauty of the urban Hudson, ratchet up air pollution and the heat-island effect, and destroy almost half of Manhattan’s beloved and valuable waterfront real estate. But just think of the possibilities of a sixth borough in New York, Sper argued. The mythical land mass would double the number of avenues in Manhattan, relieving daily traffic jams (to those about to point out there would be much more parking and thus more cars, shush). Then there would be the boost to the economy from the construction of electric and commuting infrastructure, as well as the profitable leasing of buildings on 99-year plans, because nothing says desirable location than “sited below a dam.” The subterranean commuters’ labyrinth also would be a “great military defense against gas attack in case of war,” Sper’s reasoning went, “for in it would be room for practically the entire population of the city.”

This was not the first scheme to transform one of New York’s rivers into money-growing terra firma. “I recall some years ago a man named Thompson had a plan to fill in the Harlem River and eliminate the East River entirely,” said one prominent engineer interviewed for the Mechanix piece. And in 2009, Charles Urstadt, the former head of the Battery Park City Authority, suggested doing the same thing by damming the Harlem on both ends to create “thriving neighbors.” As he put it in an editorial in The New York Times: “To ignore today’s opportunities would leave Manhattan lagging behind other forward-looking places like Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and the Netherlands, all of which have reclaimed land from the waters around them.”

In hindsight, this plan seems ridiculous. Yet, it does raise some interesting questions. What if Manhattan wasn’t such a dense island because there was more room to expand? Filling in the river might lead to more economic growth plus more affordable housing. What exactly does New York City do with the Hudson right now anyway? Compared to some other places that have used the waterfront as a means for spurring development as well as creating parks and recreational areas, the Hudson doesn’t quite have the same reputation.

One idea to take away from this is that cities and leaders shouldn’t necessarily fill in land just because they can. At the same time, plenty of important urban land was fill-in. Try to imagine Chicago ending at Michigan Avenue.

Including city smells in urban sociology

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The word Chicago may be linked to smelling onions so why not try to track down distinctive smells in Chicago?

It’s a gorgeous Friday afternoon in July, and we’re walking through Archer Park with Diego and Juliet’s nine-year-old daughter Paula. We’ve gone in search of Juliet’s latest smell interest, an odor she noticed last fall when Paula was taking tumbling classes at the park. While Paula practiced forward rolls, Juliet and Diego killed time at the playground. And that’s where she smelled it: the unmistakable, nostalgic odor of Silly Putty.

Haven’t heard about Silly Putty in a while or maybe never? Well, it’s the putty that bounces, stretches, and (most bizarrely) snaps when given a blow, and it comes in a plastic egg. According to Juliet, it also has a distinctive “plastic-y chemical type of smell.” It’s this smell she recalls wafting over the playground from Archer Park’s industrial western edge on those fall evenings…

All this assumes of course that the city’s odor detectives are successful in tracking down an odor’s source. What happens, I ask, in cases like ours where investigators show up only to find that the smell has left the building? Omenazu says this happens a lot, and unfortunately, there’s not much the city can do.

“Odor is very transient,” he says. “It might be intense now, but in the next ten minutes, it’s gone.”

Smell also poses the additional challenge of being a moving target. “Sometimes it’s from Indiana” Omenazu says. “Sometimes it’s from as far away as Peoria. There was a case of a gas smell that everybody was smelling. … People’s Gas discovered that [the leak] wasn’t even in Chicago.” One complaint and one investigation may yield nothing, but Omenazu suggests persistence usually wins out. When I ask him how often he inspects facilities, he says if there are complaints “then we visit them as many times as we get complaints.”

All of this makes me think that somehow urban sociology has failed to deliver on urban smells. What we often say or show about cities often has to do with sight and sounds. Think of maps, impressive photos, words on a page, movies. But isn’t a key part of the urban experience the smells? For example, walking around in New York City during ASA two weekends ago was not only an impressive visual and auditory experience: there were plenty of competing smells. And, I would contend that midtown Manhattan smells a little different on the whole than Chicago’s Loop.

There is no easy way to put smells back into descriptions of cities outside of visiting them. However, it is a key part of experiencing cities and should not be overlooked.

Why the UN is in New York CIty, not suburban Connecticut, San Francisco, Philadelphia, or the Black Hills

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I recently read Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations by Charlene Mires. The story of how the United Nations ended up on the East River in New York City in the late 1940s is a pretty interesting tale and I will summarize who was in the running.

1. The Black Hills. From the beginning of the UN process involving multiple conferences and committees, the Black Hills tried to attract the United Nations. This was primarily through the efforts of one persistent booster. The argument was that the location represented a new frontier near the geographic center of the United States with plenty of room for a headquarters.

2. San Francisco. The city successfully hosted the 1945 UN San Francisco Conference and represented a world shift toward the Pacific. In the end, the city was eliminated from the running rather early on because delegates from Europe refused to travel that far.

3. Suburban Connecticut. After focusing on the American East Coast, suburban New York, particularly in Westchester County or near Greenwich, Connecticut was the primary option. UN members did not want to be located in New York City, partly because of a lack of connection with nature and partly because of an interest in building a whole new United Nations city. At one point, the UN had plans developed for several plots of land that would involve tens of square miles for this new city. However, NIMBY concerns from suburban residents put these plans to rest: suburbanites were worried the international organization would disturb their idyllic communities.

4. With the New York suburbs essentially taking themselves out of the running, Philadelphia emerged as a viable option. The city made their pitch as the birthplace of modern liberty. The UN was concerned about corruption in the city. As they wondered if Philadelphia would be possible…

5. New York emerged as the winner after the Rockefeller family put together a deal for land to be offered to the UN on the East River (the current site). While New York wouldn’t allow a large city within a city development, there was enough land for a large building and delegates could take advantage of Manhattan’s amenities. As the UN was deciding on its permanent home, they had been temporarily located on Long Island but the facilities were located near eyesores and the commute was too much for many participants.

To me, the most interesting part of the story was the competition and fervor of boosters from around the United States. Dozens of communities lobbied the United Nations – though some had many more resources than others and only few had realistic chances from the beginning. They envisioned the United Nations providing status as well as economic opportunities.

If New York City suburbanites hadn’t lobbied against the headquarters, we might today know a UN city located 20-50 miles outside of Manhattan. But, of course, it seems natural today that the UN is located in the #1 global city.