Category Archives: Places

Places that represent America, in memes and other forms

Posted on by

Ohio is a running meme in social media:

Photo by Mohan Reddy on Pexels.com

According to Know Your Meme, treating Ohio as a joke started in 2016 after the meme “Ohio vs the world” went viral on Tumblr. User @screenshotsofdespair posted a photo of a digital marquee in an unknown city that read, “Ohio will be eliminated.”

At the time, the joke was Ohio was secretly plotting to take over the world, hence the photo calling for its silencing. By the time 2020 rolled around, jokes about the state had evolved…

Now, most memes about the state are saying “so Ohio” or “only in Ohio” about something bizarre or random. It’s usually tied to images, GIFs or videos that highlight something ridiculous. The memes imply that Ohio is a place where strange things happen. Ironically, it’s actually been named one of the “most normal” states in the U.S.

Describing the internet trend, Know Your Meme explains how the memes have essentially re-branded Ohio. Now it is “an American middle place, existing as a capitalist wasteland of chaos and mayhem, akin to creepypastas, lore and randomness, becoming an imagined epitome of American signifiers such as Breezewood, Pennsylvania.”

The Ohio memes have become so near-constant that they’ve taken on a life of their own. To date, the hashtag #Ohio has 33 billion views on TikTok, while #OnlyInOhio has about three billion. In some cases, people have made memes about the memes.

I am intrigued by this idea of particular places embodying America, whether normal or weird. Breezewood? I look forward to driving by it several times a year. The Midwest as the “heartland”? In the sociological tradition, how about “Middletown” and the long set of studies devoted to this community (which was Muncie, Indiana)? Or, what about the claim that Chicago is the most American city? Or, the idea that one can see real America at Walmart or at an emergency room on a weekend night? Perhaps this has a long tradition, even if it is now taking the form of memes.

And then there could be places and communities that are known but cannot embody all of America. Could New York City all about America or does its status as the leading global city and its particular history and character mean that it cannot embody all of the United States? (Perhaps normal American cities are Cleveland.)

Trying to diversify a city economy through sports

Posted on by

Las Vegas has gambling and all that goes with it, including significant recent investments in sports:

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In under a decade’s time, the desert city long known for its casinos, food and live entertainment has become the home to four major league sports teams (the latest being MLB’s Athletics), six minor league teams, a major sports organization in the Ultimate Fighting Champion, and four large sports venues playing host to events such as NCAA tournament games, NFL Pro Bowls, and, coming this February, Super Bowl LVIII.

At least a half-dozen more venues are in the planning stages, and the city appears poised to be one of the top picks for an NBA expansion team and an MLS team, as well…

The initial economic impact estimates for Sunday’s Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix and the February 2024 Super Bowl were $1.3 billion, and $500 million, respectively. (But this was before ticket prices slid for F1 when the championship was won earlier in the season).

That total would match the estimated $1.8 billion contributed to the metro area by all sporting events from July 2021 to June 2022, according to an economic impact study released this summer by the Center for Business and Economic Research at UNLV’s Lee Business School.

Earlier research on public money used for new stadiums suggested teams benefit the most from that spending. Will the money spent here on facilities increase the size of the economy, generate additional new jobs, and other benefits or does it simply shift money around? Will residents and businesses move to Las Vegas just because of sports?

Perhaps the pitch with Las Vegas is that it has the added bonus of lots of tourists. If some of them can be enticed to sporting events and other local attractions, this is extra money. This might work for major events, but I would guess it is harder for a regular season MLB game.

Here is just one guess of how this all might look in 10-15 years: local officials will say that sports helped enhance the city’s status, the team owners will be happy with their facilities and revenues, and the local economy will not be enhanced much just because of sports (when accounting for the debt and costs associated with sports).

Is Times Square beautiful?

Posted on by

While busking as Mario, one writer describes Times Square in New York City:

Photo by Vlad Alexandru Popa on Pexels.com

Times Square is beautiful when you judge it by aesthetics alone. Yes, plenty of great American sights are more spiritually fulfilling than this Cathedral of Stuff, but if you’re willing to set aside those exasperating anti-capitalist ethics for a few moments, I recommend letting the financial majesty of midtown wash over you. There is truly no joy quite like becoming entranced by a particularly sublime Coca-Cola advertisement, or being inexplicably inspired to take a picture of the Disney Store, and letting your brain cells atrophy away in dumbstruck glory. No, the only problem with Times Square is the obnoxious people who occupy it, and as I stood under the scarlet glow of an H&M sign, dressed in full Super Mario garb, gesturing toward the young families hurrying by—who were doing everything possible to finish up their Manhattan vacation without getting hustled into oblivion—I felt as if I was finally doing my part to make this city worse.

It is for sure a spectacle. Lights, noise, crowds. Activity at all hours. A place to see things and be seen. Can feel like the center of a universe.

Whether it is aesthetically pleasing is a whole different question. How do we judge beauty in cities? I suspect we could ask dozens of New Yorkers about what they find beautiful in their city and get even more responses. Is the problem the people who get in the way of the beautiful modern capitalist tableau?

There is nothing “natural” about Central Park

Posted on by

Humans like to cultivate nature in the city. Central Park in New York City is a great example. This 13 minute video from Architectural Digest explains.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

From the video:

Vaux and Olmsted’s design called for a radical departure in the thinking of what a grand civic garden should be. They rejected the idea of highly formal rigid gardens like those designed exclusively for the wealthy. Instead, they proposed a naturalistic setting, filled with meadows, woodlands, gurgling streams, and surprising vistas. The resulting work involved shifting over 5 million cubic yards of soil, planting over 500,000 trees and shrubs, and excavating more than seven lakes and other bodies of water, all done by hand. In fact, the boulders like this one, which the bolt is sticking out of are the only original pieces of natural landscape in the park, and even many of these were unearthed, scraped, and cleaned to appear as they do today.

It is hard to imagine New York City without this park yet it radically transformed the setting.

One of the world’s wealthiest men has a plan for Miami and thinks it could eclipse New York’s financial sector

Posted on by

Ken Griffin has a lot of money and big hopes for Miami:

Photo by Elvis Vasquez on Pexels.com

“We’ll see how big Wall Street South becomes,” Griffin said in an interview Tuesday with Bloomberg News at the Citadel Securities Global Macro Conference in Miami. “We’re on Brickell Bay, and maybe in 50 years it will be Brickell Bay North how we refer to New York in finance.”

Titans of Wall Street have flocked to South Florida in recent years, attracted by warm weather and lack of state income tax. But Griffin, who moved to Miami last year, plans to outdo them all by changing the face of the city with a more than $1 billion waterfront tower that will serve as Citadel’s headquarters, as well as political and philanthropic donations ranging from a children’s hospital to soccer.

Griffin, who is worth $35.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, still has high praise for New York, where Citadel maintains a considerable presence and intends to build an office tower. Citadel is planning a massive new Manhattan skyscraper that could rise to roughly 1,350 feet (411 meters) with 51 office floors and seven terraces…

“Miami, I think, represents the future of America,” he said.

Griffin has a vested interest in this matter. He just came from Chicago, a place where his politics did not necessarily align with others. He suggests Miami is pro-growth. He wants to spend his money locally.

It is true that New York City does not necessarily have to be the global financial capital forever. Places change, statuses rise and fall, industries shift and move. But, it would take a lot of change for New York City to be eclipsed by Miami as a financial center. For example, one ranking of global cities does not include Miami in its top 30 and New York City is #1. And the financial center aspect of New York is just one part of a city with numerous features and resources.

This sounds like boosterism. Griffin wants to raise the profile of Miami. He wants others to come to join him. He and the city can ascend together. There is money to be made in Miami – and in New York and in Chicago and in numerous other cities.

The largely unbuilt California City once intended to rival LA

Posted on by

A planned large city in the California desert never bloomed the way it was hoped:

Photo by Ricky Esquivel on Pexels.com

“For lack of a better description, [developers] really understood and pitched California City as an alternative and potentially competing city with Los Angeles,” Shannon Starkey told SFGATE. Starkey is an associate professor of architecture at University of San Diego and has spent years researching the city.

Piecemeal development was responsible for Los Angeles’ traffic problems, California City’s developers thought. They believed that LA, which appeared to be pressing against its population ceiling, was unprepared for California’s postwar population boom. New communities would need to pick up the slack. California City was designed to fit the bill: a sprawling, self-sufficient city in the desert. In the original plan, Starkey said, the city was projected to hold 400,000 people…

The town was incorporated in 1965 with a population that hovered around 600. According to Gorden, who moved to California City early in the decade, nearly everybody gathered in the newly built elementary school, which hadn’t yet opened, for a big dance. Mendelsohn and California’s lieutenant governor took turns sharing remarks. The mood in the 1960s, Gorden said, was one of “absolute expectations.”…

Grievances over false advertising culminated in a civil penalty issued against Great Western by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC found Great Western responsible for deceptive sales practices, requiring the company to refund $4 million to over 14,000 of its customers. (Great Western Cities also had developments in Colorado and New Mexico.) At the time, it was the largest refund ever issued by the commission. 

Shortly afterward, the Hunt brothers, who were heirs of an oil tycoon, acquired the company through a hostile takeover. According to Efford-Floyd, the Hunts only bought the company to drain its accounts, which they did as fast and as hard as they could…

Perhaps part of the reason that the city’s population never exploded is that it never developed an economic base of its own. “For many years, this was considered a bedroom community,” Jim Creighton, who serves on California City’s City Council, told SFGATE.

This would not quite be a ghost town as people do live there. However, it is an example of another common feature of the American landscape: a developer once had big plans but they did not pan out. Here, the eventual development did not match the grand vision. Elsewhere, other development might have eventually landed on top of what had once been planned. Either way, the community did not reach the lofty goals once set.

Should there be a name for such places? We would have to account for the scale of the plans. The ambitions here of a big city with hundreds of thousands of residents is different than a big subdivision that never quite got off the ground. We retell the stories of some of the planned communities that did happen, such as Levittown, New York or Columbia, Maryland or River Forest, Illinois. How many other places did not make it in the same way?

Branding when the airport code is SUX

Posted on by

Sioux City, Iowa is working with its airport code:

Photo by Marina Hinic on Pexels.com

Sioux Gateway Airport, or SUX as it appears on tickets and bag tags, has been the butt of jokes in Iowa and beyond for decades.

After complaints and failed efforts to change the code, Sioux City decided to lean into its unfortunate designation and, more recently, has expanded it well beyond the airport. Area businesses are increasingly embracing the branding and SUX is popping up all over the place.

Poo SUX is a pooper scooper service for pets. RentSUX is a leasing company. Cleaning SUX is a commercial-cleaning firm. Radon SUX helps people mitigate radioactive gas from their homes. The Art SUX gallery is downtown. And the SUX Pride festival is held in June…

FLY SUX has been the centerpiece of this city’s airport marketing since 2007. Before that, the Federal Aviation Administration offered five alternatives—GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY—but airport trustees stuck with SUX, the Associated Press reported at the time…

Mike Collett, an assistant city manager who serves as the airport’s director, said SUX has become so common for people in the area that “everyone thinks of it as a positive statement.” When the city lobbies airlines to keep or expand their service, representatives often hand out T-shirts, caps and other SUX tchotchkes.

Cities and communities in the United States need to find ways to stand out. Whether they are trying to appeal to businesses, potential residents, or tourists, they try to provide a reason their particular community should be chosen when there are thousands of other options.

Here are my guesses at how Sioux City thinks it is presenting itself by leaning into this airport code (though the story makes clear that not everyone in the community does): it is a place that can have fun, they can turn difficult situations into good ones, and they are a little edgy. This puts them on the map, even if some might find the language distasteful.

Does this branding work? It is one thing if local grab hold of this and make it part of local life. It is another if this helps the city and area attract people.

The modern box houses of Los Angeles

Posted on by

In the last few decades, more modern box houses have come to Los Angeles:

Photo by Fomstock .com on Pexels.com

During the 20th century, Los Angeles home styles were as eclectic as its populace. Wood-shingled Craftsmans mingled with white stucco bungalows. Depending on the neighborhood, you might get an ornate Victorian, chic Midcentury Modern or even a Mayan Revival-style showplace — something that begs you to look at it, admire it. A house that invites an opinion, good or bad.

But although the box houses’ bulk draws attention, its design is basic. They’re like an iPhone: simple and smooth. Clean lines, glass walls, simple shades of white or black. Critics see them as soulless and inert.

Modern homes don’t have time or money for a turret, overhanging eave or stained-glass windows. Sloped ceilings, skylights and other superfluous accents take away from the bottom line — the largest amount of square footage possible for the cheapest possible construction price…

When such homes started popping up in the wake of the housing crash in 2008, some assumed the trend would be temporary. But demand for the style still rages on today…

The “bento boxes of today,” as Parsons calls them, are shiny, sleek and sexy, but he said they’ll be tomorrow’s tear-downs.

The article suggests these architectural styles are cyclical: builders, developers, real estate agents, municipalities, buyers, and others are involved in changing architectural styles. So, then the question here is whether these homes are here to stay or whether another style will emerge and the modern box home will fade?

If I had to guess, I would suggest the modern box home will hang on as a consistent but small presence in the LA housing market for several reasons. They are simple and relatively cheap to build. They offer a lot of space. In uncertain economic times and pricey housing markets, these are hard factors to overlook.

There is also a segment of the market that finds them attractive. The modernist home has been around for decades. Most Americans might not choose it as their preferred style but some would. In a large metropolitan region like Los Angeles, some will prefer this design.

Given the unique housing market of Los Angeles, perhaps the real question is whether modern homes are catching on elsewhere in the United States. When housing costs are not as high, is the modernist house one people want? In my area, several such homes come to mind but they are rare.

What allowing “build[ing] more houses on less land” in Austin could lead to

Posted on by

Austin, Texas recently changed its regulations to allow property owners to “build more houses on less land”:

Photo by Abigail Sylvester on Pexels.com

Homeowners now have increased flexibility to build more houses on less land, after the lot size required for a home was reduced from 5,750 square feet to 2,500 via the HOME initiative (Home Options for Middle-income Empowerment). The policy also increases the number of housing structures that can sit on that 2,500 square feet from two to three. 

The debate over these changes continues:

The debate around a policy like this comes down to whether someone believes increased density (more housing for more people on smaller footprints) will help the situation, or will lead to overbuilding, crime, and rental cash grabs. The latter tends to sound a lot like NIMBY talking points more concerned with preserving the charm of longstanding Austin neighborhoods.

Some developers and homeowners feel that the resolution alleviates just a small part of Austin’s building woes, since the zoning codes are still complex and difficult to navigate. Jason Kahle, who owns Small Home Solutions, LLC, says he and his 10 employees are “going to be all over” the changes in a market where it seems everyone with a large-enough lot has considered building a granny pod, mother-in-law suite, or backyard office. 

But being free to build on a smaller lot is not the same as being able to feasibly do it within existing rules, Kahle points out. “There’s a lot of wheels turning at the same time,” he says. “Austin Energy is a challenge. We have protected trees, impervious cover, floor-area ratio rules, the level of detail the city requires on civil engineer plans, the subchapter McMansion ordinance, temp drawings. It’s a lot to deal with.” The McMansion regulations, also known as “Subchapter F” in the city’s housing code, set detailed and strict limits, including height and setbacks from the edges of a lot.

Laura Boas, an Austin physical therapist, is building an “accessory dwelling unit” for her family behind her 1950s-era, 720-square-foot cottage in the Brentwood neighborhood. She’s seen massive 2,500-square-foot homes go up in her area, and her lot is big enough to support additional buildings. Boas lives alone and jokes, “I’m part of the problem.”

It sounds like the goal is to allow for more housing units without changing many existing lots and allowing for smaller lots. This is a different approach than promoting more multi-family housing or larger structures containing more residential units. These changes keep the single-family character and the scale of the neighborhood similar while adding more units and people.

It will be interesting to see if an approach like this solves the problems it was intended to solve. Will the number of new McMansions decrease as property owners pursue other options? Does this add enough units? Does it ease housing affordability? If not, what changes would residents and the city be willing to enact? I hope researchers and policy experts are keeping track of the changes in cities that have enabled similar regulations. This could help determine whether adding ADUs (such as in Portland) is helpful.

One prediction that Dallas/Fort Worth-Houston-Austin will replace New York-Los Angeles-Chicago by 2100

Posted on by

moveBuddha has a prediction about which three US cities will have the most people by the end of this century:

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
  • The future belongs to Texas.  America’s three biggest cities by 2100 will be #1 Dallas, #2 Houston, and #3 Austin. Fast-growing San Antonio also ranks at #11.
  • The Sunbelt keeps rising. Phoenix is projected to be the 4th-biggest U.S. city by population in 2100. Other Sunbelt cities in the top 10 are #6 Atlanta, #9 Orlando, and #10 Miami.
  • NYC and L.A. are currently the top two biggest U.S. cities, but they’re projected to fall to #5 and #7, respectively, by the year 2100.

The methodology to arrive at this?

We wanted to know at moveBuddha what U.S. metropolitan areas would see the biggest population growth by 2100. We did this by using the compound annual population growth rate of the biggest U.S. metro areas (250,000 residents or more) between the 2010 and 2020 U.S. Census estimates and extrapolating it over 80 years.

This was an inexact science, and growth rates are bound to change. But it gave us a rough idea of which American cities may rise to the top by the dawning of the 22nd century. Climate change effects, migration patterns from climate change, and other unforeseen events could change things.

Two parts of this projection seem implausible to me. First, extrapolating the current rates of growth to last for more than seven decades. Growth rates will likely rise or fall across different metropolitan regions. It is hard to imagine many places will be able to keep up high rates of growth for that long. Second, the size of these regions. There is no US region currently near the predicted populations in 2100. Would this come from significant increases in density in the central areas or even more sprawling regions? It would be interesting to see where all those people would live and work.

Of course, at this point it is hard to bet against the ongoing population growth of the Sunbelt.

And what would this do to the status of New York City and Los Angeles? Chicago has some experience with this but could NYC handle this well?