Category Archives: Places

Sociologist reflects on his research about the LA Riots

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Sociologist Darnell Hunt studied how perceptions of media coverage of the 1992 LA Riots differed by race in Screening the Los Angeles ‘Riots’: Race, Seeing, and Resistance. Hunt recently reflected on his research:

Darnell Hunt was a graduate student at the time of the riots, studying race and media.

“I was looking for a case study,” he said. “And then the riots happened.”

He immediately focused on the reaction to the news coverage of the riots, which would later form the basis for his dissertation. Hunt took his camcorder down to the center of the protests and left the VCR running, he said, so he could compare the media’s take on the events that day compared to the reality just outside as part of his research.

Hunt is now a sociology professor at UCLA, and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. While he witnessed firsthand much of the upheaval across the city while conducting his research, he said he found optimism in the clean-up period following the six days that the riots took place.

“People saw (the aftermath) as this moment when people came together around a common cause, across racial lines, and talked about the possibility of coalitions and achieving some type of progress,” he said.

Hunt’s research from 20 years ago, which he continues to observe and build upon, showed that people of different ethnicities perceived media depictions differently.

Thursday, he spoke at a UCLA event that explored the role played by the media during the L.A. riots.

Hunt recalled the riots still being fresh in the minds of many when he started out as a professor, but now only a couple of hands go up when he asks who remembers them in his lectures, he said.

But the issues that contributed to the riots are still relevant, he said. Unemployment and economic disparity have not necessarily improved in the city, he said.

“It’s been a couple steps forward, a couple steps back,” Hunt said. “One positive development is that we do have more communication across racial and ethnic lines.”

Several quick thoughts:

1. This seems to be a good example of taking advantage of a research opportunity. Does this illustrate the advantages of being at a school in a big urban center where a lot of things are going on?

2. Though the remarks above are brief, it sounds like Hunt is suggesting that not much has changed in regards to race in Los Angeles?

3. I’m amused that Hunt says that students don’t remember these events. Of course, traditional students in college today would have been born between 1990 and 1995 so it would be difficult to remember events from 1992. At the same time, this illustrates the need for faculty to keep up with research: if the careers of faculty are mainly based on their dissertation, this could become outdated or uninteresting to new generations rather quickly. That doesn’t mean students shouldn’t know about what a professor researched but the passage of time can make it harder to make a case for its relevance.

Argument: we need to question today’s economic equations that are based on the suburban experiment

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Here is an interesting argument regarding the American suburbs: Charles Marohn suggests the economic equations behind suburban development need to be questioned.

I’m struck by how strongly our culture associates growth and prosperity with highway construction and expansion. Tom Friedman, a respected left-of-center columnist with the New York Times, had an entire chapter in his most recent book, That Used to Be Us: How America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back, devoted to the concept that “our winning equation” is, in part, to invest in infrastructure and then watch prosperity flourish, just like it did in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Of course, this ignores that fact that our investments during the first generation of America’s Suburban Experiment (1950-1975) were higher return investments that generated a lot of positive cash flow. I like to point out that, when we built the 35W bridge here in Minnesota for the first time, it connected far flung areas of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan region in a way that had not been done before. Following that investment, new commercial real estate was developed, new residential housing went in and the resulting influx of tax receipts made us feel wealthy. When the bridge fell down and had to be rebuilt, we didn’t experience all that new growth, just the costs of construction and delay. Maintenance has an entirely different set of financial metrics than new construction…

Unfortunately, we base this belief on the illusion of wealth that was created in the early years of the Suburban Experiment, where the first life cycle of horizontal expansion had produced growth for our economy and that pesky overhang of maintenance was still a decade or more away. We should know better by now, but there are few in a position to change the system that don’t benefit, at least in the short term, from it being perpetuated…

Now let me drop the bomb I’ve been alluding too: Those “benefits” that we kind of think of as prosperity, wealth or GDP; they really aren’t. There are derived from a set of narrow correlations between time saved and prosperity that we witnessed in the early 1950’s when we built those initial highways. We connected these far flung places — places only served by railroads or poorly constructed roadways prior — and we saw all kinds of economic gains. We then used that knowledge to build equations to justify expansion of the system. Nobody ever questions those equations today (why would they) and nobody stops to consider the diminishing returns of the system.

So there is not actually any money here, just a few seconds of saved time here and there that economists and engineers equate with money when they are trying to justify a project. Do you take home more money, generate more wealth for the economy or spend more of your income when you can arrive at work 45 seconds more quickly? Not me either. These equations are a joke. (If you want to learn more, read our 2010 series on Costs and Benefits.)

An interesting update to an old argument: the suburbs are unsustainable in the long run because they are based on new growth and continuous reinvestment. In the end, there won’t be enough money left to sustain it all, even if we could keep the infrastructure up to date.

Is Marohn really saying that the economic growth of the United States since the 1950s is largely an illusion? I’d like to hear about more of this aspect of the argument…

This reminds me of some of my research on suburban communities that are approaching build-out. In their earlier growth phases, these communities could expect a certain amount of money to flow in from new development and fees. However, once this stopped (and combined with the recent economic crisis), these towns are left scrambling for money. Without a good amount of new development, the budgets aren’t increasing much even as residents continue to push for equal or increased levels of service plus everything is aging (infrastructure, housing stock which makes it less attractive, municipal buildings, etc.). Is this an analogous situation?

Bonus: you even get a financial analysis of a diverging diamond interchange!

Chicago’s Lathrop Homes added to the National Register of Historic Places

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I’ve discussed before the implications of public housing projects like Cabrini-Green disappearing. Essentially, the disappearance of these buildings means that some of our collective memory regarding public housing simply fades away. Therefore, I was interested to see that one of the earliest public housing projects in Chicago, Lathrop Homes, was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places:

For more than six years, residents, preservationists and community advocates have been pushing to save the Lathrop Homes from demolition and to rehabilitate the public housing complex.

Their efforts got a boost Monday when state officials announced that the site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places…

The listing does not automatically preserve Lathrop’s collection of low-rise brick buildings and ample green space, officials said. But it makes the site eligible for federal tax credits and financial incentives. The designation also triggers a review by state historic preservation officials if federal or state funds are used to demolish the site…

Built in the 1930s, Lathrop Homes were once celebrated because of their vibrant mix of residents, rich history and ornamental touches rarely found in public housing. Lathrop Homes were designed by architects like Robert S. DeGolyer and Hugh M.G. Garden, who were out of work because of the Great Depression.

In recent years, the 925-unit complex has become a battleground over the CHA’s plan to transform the homes into a mixed-income development. As of January, 170 units in the complex were occupied.

We’ll have to wait and see how much preservation takes place in the years to come. I wouldn’t be surprised if the CHA drags its feet…such things have happened before.

It is interesting to note that the Lathrop Homes are on the north side of Chicago as was Cabrini-Green. I wonder how much this geography affected the ability and interest of residents in fighting to save the buildings.

If these buildings were preserved, how many people would be interested in visiting? In a related matter, does the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago generate much interest the buildings and people who lived in them? Here is how the museum describes its purpose:

The National Public Housing Museum is the first cultural institution in the United States dedicated to interpreting the American experience in public housing. The Museum draws on the power of place and memory to illuminate the resilience of poor and working class families of every race and ethnicity to realize the promise of America.

It sounds like there is potential here…although I don’t know how popular this might ever be, it doesn’t mean it isn’t worth pursuing.

How important are long-time residents to a neighborhood or a community?

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A profile of a New York City woman who has lived 100 years in the same neighborhood (along a 1,200 foot stretch) raises an interesting question: how much do long-time residents contribute to a community?

Ms. Jacobs is already a demographic rarity: she was one of 2,126 city residents 100 and over recorded in the 2010 census. But even though very few New Yorkers can claim a century spent in essentially one place, the notion of maintaining roots on a street is not entirely uncommon, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College sociologist.

A decade ago, Professor Beveridge recalled, one of his students interviewed a man of about 100 who had lived his entire life in the same house in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Bruce D. Haynes, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis, who grew up in Harlem, said that his own father spent the better part of 65 years in a house on Convent Avenue in its Sugar Hill section, until his death in 1995.

“I’d argue that these are the people who make the city what it is,” said Professor Haynes, whose grandfather, George Edmund Haynes, was a co-founder of the National Urban League. “They are the character of the city.”

At first glance, it seems hard to argue with this: people who live in a community for decades are anchors and connect newer generations to what has happened in the past. However, doesn’t this presuppose that these long-term residents are active in their community, meaning that other people know who they are? Just because one lives long in a community does not necessarily mean one is active in it. Additionally, don’t the younger people have to want this connection? Bruce Haynes comments are a great example: his grandfather was involved in an important civic group. Particularly in their older years, might not some long-time residents end up isolated (an issue sociologist Eric Klinenberg discusses in Heat Wave)? Are there studies that have actually measured what the positive effects of having long-time residents in the community?

More broadly, this article celebrates Ms. Jacob’s rootedness. This is a common tension in American life: should people be rooted in their communities or should they be mobile, responding to changing circumstances? On the whole, we tend to be a mobile nation where on average people move at least once every ten years. Yet, we also like the idea that some people care about their community so much (or can’t afford to move?) that they stay put in one place.

 

The exterior vs. the interior of the Brady Bunch house and architecture in TV and movies

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The managing editor of Entertainment Weekly makes an interesting point regarding a famous house in American television: the exterior shots of the Brady Bunch house don’t match the interior shots.

And I grew up obsessing over a particularly brazen TV blunder: The exterior and interior of the Brady Bunch house do not match. At all. Not one bit. In case you never noticed: The interior set depicts a soaring two-story home with the second story over the structure’s right side; the outside is a low-slung split-level with a second story over the left side. (In fact, the second-floor window was fake.) How could they let this happen? Sherwood Schwartz once explained to the Los Angeles Times that the San Fernando Valley house used for the exterior shots was chosen because “we didn’t want it to be too affluent, we didn’t want it to be too blue-collar. We wanted it to look like it would fit a place an architect would live.” In other words, the exterior struck the right emotional note for audiences, and logic be damned. I can live with that. In fact, audiences will forgive almost any lapse in logic if the story does its primary job well – and that is to move us, scare us, tickle us, and give us characters worth knowing. The Brady house made no sense, but I still wanted to live there. And while it may not be necessary to cross the Golden Gate Bridge to get to the San Francisco Airport (unless you’re coming from Sausalito), it makes for a nice aerial shot loaded with symbolism. The best purveyors of pop culture know that poetic truth trumps literal truth every time.

Six thoughts about this:

1. I’m not someone who looks for or particularly cares about inconsistencies in movies and television shows. And yet, this still seems pretty egregious: the sides of the house don’t even line up?

2. Is this house really befitting of an architect? Would any architect worth his salt really want to admit that he lived in a stereotypical split-level? While some might defend the ranch as an exemplar of post-World War II American life, are there people who defend the split-level?

3. The explanation from Sherwood Schwartz is very interesting: the home is supposed to invoke a certain American middle-classness. Another way to think about it is the home is supposed to invoke a particular emotion and then fade into the background.

4. I bet there would be a fascinating study in looking at TV and movie depictions of American homes. As Juliet Schor suggested in The Overspent American, the “middle-class house” on TV has really gotten big and more luxurious over the years.

5. The exterior of the house is interesting but what about the astro-turf lawn?

6. It can be a little bit strange to visit these television homes on the set. Two years ago, we toured the Warner Brothers studio and saw a number of sets. Here are three shots: the emergency room exterior for ER, Lorelai Gilmore’s house on Gilmore Girls, and their oft-used street scene.

After seeing these in person, I imagine there is some room for commentary about the reproducibility of more modern architecture, the impermanence of place, and how it can easily transition from one film to another TV show to a miniseries and so on…

100 year old Wilmette L station illustrates suburban exclusion

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A celebration today for a 100 year old L station in Wilmette illustrates some of the issues between cities and suburbs:

The station [today serving more than 315,000 people per year] originally came as an unwelcome overnight surprise. After coming to loggerheads with village officials, a crew secretly worked “under cover of darkness” to create a small depot at Fourth Street and Linden Avenue.

According to a story in the Chicago Tribune on April 3, 1912: “During the night the Northwestern Elevated company invaded the suburb with a large force of men. At dawn the evidence of their work was plainly visible.”

Back then, the people of Wilmette enjoyed their lakefront, and their seclusion.

“Exclusive residents opposed the entrance of a new line largely because they believe trainloads of picnic parties will be dumped there in summer,” the Tribune story said.

Some things haven’t changed. During a recent Wilmette Park District discussion regarding a fence to limit access to the south beach at Gillson Park, resident Fred Fitzsimmons referred to nonresidents picnicking lakeside as “freeloaders.”

The period one hundred years ago was an interesting period for relationships between cities and suburbs. Prior to 1900, many cities annexed adjacent suburbs. These suburbs were generally agreeable to this as they needed the infrastructure that cities could provide (sewers, water, fire protection, etc.) and the status of being part of the growing city was exciting. But around 1900, things changed. More suburbs rejected annexation. Building their own infrastructure became cheaper. Being part of the big city, seen more and more as big, dirty, and home to many new residents, was no longer a draw. It was at this point that the size of many cities in the Northeast and Midwest drastically slowed.

Thus, a new L stop was seen as a threat in Wilmette, a means by which the city could still come to the suburbs. Back then, just as today, part of the reason for moving to Wilmette was to get away from the city and its residents, not to have encounter them through public transportation. It is intriguing that the Chicago Tribune ties these old concerns to current concerns in Wilmette. In this sense, the suburban mindset promoting exclusivity has not changed much in a century. (At the same time, I assume many in the Wilmette area see the L stop as a nice amenity since it means they don’t have to drive into Chicago.)

Another thought: could this also illustrate why suburbanites might be opposed to public transportation? There could be more than just the idea that cars are considered more convenient; public transportation could be associated with different kinds of people. If you can afford it in the United States, you generally pay (outside of a few denser cities) to avoid having to ride public transportation.

Fighting for presidential votes in the French suburbs illustrates a different kind of suburbia

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American suburbs are often considered home to a lot of white and wealthy residents who have fled the city. This is not how suburbs work in some European settings: two stories about politicians fighting for presidential votes in France illustrate these differences.

It was here that Marine Le Pen managed to secure the greatest percentage vote for any village in the country; of its 60 residents, nearly three quarters put the far-Right candidate above all others…

“What has worked has been to turn this campaign towards rurality, and the far suburbs, poor France,” said Bertrand Dutheil de La Rochère, one of Miss Le Pen’s campaign spokesmen. “Her people versus the elites seems to have taken root.”…

According to sociologist Christophe Guilluy, these rural areas, along with many middle-sized towns hit by de-industrialisation and layoffs represent, 40 per cent of the electorate.

Here is another report:

But “rural” areas today does not mean villages full of farmers. It means small provincial towns, and the new housing-estate commuter belts being built on the distant outskirts of the cities.

“The rural underclass is no longer agricultural. It is people who have fled the big cities and the inner suburbs because they can no longer afford to live there,” says Mr Crepon.

“Many of these people will have had recent experience of living in the banlieues (high immigration suburbs) – and have had contact with the problems of insecurity.”

In this semi-urbanised countryside, people feel the hopelessness of a life in poverty uncompensated-for by the traditions and structures that would have made it bearable in the past.

In these stories, the wealthy live in cities and inner-ring suburbs while the poor live in more far-flung suburbs (what Americans might call “exurbs”) and more rural areas.

If Americans read about this run-off in France, I wonder how many will notice this difference in suburban life in France compared to the United States. Actually, I wonder if many Americans simply think that Americans suburbs are a common feature of metropolitan areas around the world rather than a more unusual case.

Quiet issue: over 60,000 on CHA waiting list

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While this story is mainly about why the Chicago Housing Authority has 3,400 unoccupied units, there is another long-running issue here: the CHA has over 60,000 people on a waiting list for housing.

The CHA currently operates 20,000 properties that serve about 57,000 families, but about 3,400 units remain unoccupied. CHA’s wait list was almost 60,000 families as of March…

We are in the business of affordable housing; our goals are generally aligned with those of the (Chicago Housing Initiative),” said CHA spokeswoman Kellie O’Connell-Miller. “But from our perspective, we’re moving forward as quickly as we can. This is a multiyear redevelopment plan. The biggest challenge is the part of the plan that requires some units to come offline.”…

O’Connell-Miller said wait list standings aren’t made public because it’s not a fair assessment tool.

“It’s not a straight numbering system. Placement is dependent on family size and what bedroom need is,” she said. “The turnover varies on what the tenant needs. There are so many variables.”

The CHA is planning to take a fresh look at its Plan for Transformation this year under new leadership, Woodyard said, and welcomes suggestions and input from the community.

There are a couple of problems with this large waiting list:

1. The waiting list has been long for year and has continued to grow. In my article “The Struggle Over Redevelopment at Cabrini-Green, 1989-2004,” here is what I found about the waiting lists:

By 1984, 24,000 people were on CHA waiting lists for apartments, while another 56,000 households were waiting for CHA Section 8 vouchers…

The waiting lists for public housing continued to be long; in 2002, 48,000 families were waiting for public housing, while 38,000 more waited for Housing Choice vouchers.

2. The CHA says they are working on this issue. This might be believable if we haven’t heard similar things for decades and we haven’t seen many projects being delayed. Taking a “fresh look at its Plan for Transformation”? Sheesh.

3. The issue of affordable housing needs to be addressed on a broader scale, preferably throughout the Chicago region. Even if more affordable housing is made available in Chicago, are there good or at least subsistence jobs available in the city? Both cities and suburbs need to work on this. Unfortunately, neither the City of Chicago or suburbs have really shown a willingness to tackle this. See, for example, the contentious of affordable housing in Winnetka and Westchester County.

In sum, even if these 3,400 units were suddenly occupied, there are still over 50,000 people in Chicago looking for housing. This is an issue that needs to be addressed more comprehensively.

Dallas Morning News covers my McMansion study

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This seems appropriate: after I examined all the mentions of the word “McMansion” in the Dallas Morning News from 2000 to 2009 (while also doing the same in the New York Times), the Dallas Morning News covers my findings:

In researching issues related to housing and suburban development, Miller “began to notice that the term McMansion was being used to describe wildly different things.”

To some, a McMansion is simply a big house. (But what constitutes “big”?) To others, it’s an excessively big house. (But what constitutes “excessive”?) To others, it’s a big, garish house. (But who’s to say that a certain design is “garish”?)…

The sociologist analyzed each appearance of the word, and concluded that its usage tended to imply “one of four general meanings: a large house, a relatively large house, a home with bad architecture or design, or a symbol for other issues, especially sprawl and consumerism.”

The use of “McMansion,” he concluded, “is often a judgment call, and almost always negative.”

Not a bad summary. It would be interesting to hear reactions of people in Dallas to my findings.

Suburbs: a middle ground between cities and rural life?

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I was making the case in a recent conversation that the American suburbs could be seen as an adaptation between city and rural life. Illustrating this point, here is a testimonial from a mother describing the benefits of living in River Forest, Illinois:

We were house poor in New Jersey and miserable in an Ohio McMansion. In the Oak Park area, we found our ideal town: River Forest is close enough to the city to have some diversity and urban edge, yet distant enough to give us a tiny backyard…

They too logged many miles in the stroller, but they played at playgrounds and the library, meeting other babies with whom they will go to school. Finding playgroups for them was actually easier and less transient than in the city.

The steep price of private education drove us out to the suburbs, but attending public school has been an amazing experience. Our oldest two children have thrived in their public school. They have gym every day, as well as a rich music and art programs, and when they walk to school, the crossing guards greet them by name.

In the suburbs, we’ve been able to make our home the neighborhood hangout house. Our children’s friends are always around: in our house, on our teams, and at our local pool. Our house is noisy and busy, but it’s a happy chaos that lets me really get to know my children’s friends.

Great restaurants and culture are just a few exits away, but being so near Chicago keeps us aware of crime and poverty. Bikes are stolen, shopkeepers are held up at gunpoint and the food pantry has long lines. We enjoy the perks of small town life without losing touch with the urban reality of the Chicago skyline we see from our yard.

I wouldn’t want my children growing up any other way.

Here are the trade-offs:

-Cities provide exposure to culture, diversity, and “real life.”

-Rural areas or small towns provide close-knit communities where people know each other, safety, and more open space.

The suburbs provide a little of both worlds: close access to the gritty authenticity of big-city life but good schools and friendly neighbors. Notice I didn’t say “the best of both worlds” but rather access to some of the characteristics of rural and urban life. They may not be ideal places but a majority of Americans live in these communities.

I wonder how living in River Forest itself affects how one might view the suburban life. According to the Census, River Forest is 84.8% white, 76% of those 25 and older have bachelor’s degrees, the homeownership rate is 89.9%, and the median household income is $116,528. Overall, River Forest may have lost 4% of its population between 2000 and 2010 but this is still a mainly white and wealthy suburb. Sure, it is close to more diversity in Oak Park and Chicago but this is upper-middle class suburbia and this may just skew this rosy interpretation.