Category Archives: Places

Kotkin on American population shifts: away from California, into “heartland” growth corridors

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One of the biggest (and unsung) shifts in American life since World War II is the population movement away from the Northeast and Midwest to the Sunbelt, an area stretching from the Southeast over to California. Joel Kotkin suggests some of these trends are changing, particularly an increase in the flow of people out of California:

Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families…

So if California’s no longer the Golden land of opportunity for middle-class dreamers, what is?

Mr. Kotkin lists four “growth corridors”: the Gulf Coast, the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, and the Southeast. All of these regions have lower costs of living, lower taxes, relatively relaxed regulatory environments, and critical natural resources such as oil and natural gas.

Take Salt Lake City. “Almost all of the major tech companies have moved stuff to Salt Lake City.” That includes Twitter, Adobe, eBay and Oracle.

Then there’s Texas, which is on a mission to steal California’s tech hegemony. Apple just announced that it’s building a $304 million campus and adding 3,600 jobs in Austin. Facebook established operations there last year, and eBay plans to add 1,000 new jobs there too.

Kotkin attributes a lot of this to political and social change in California that is threatening the middle class. I wonder if we could look at this in a more positive light rather simply in the negative light Kotkin, a self-admitted “Truman Democrat,” paints California: these other states and areas may just have competitive advantages that they didn’t used to have. For example, the story behind California’s growth is well-known: gold rushes, available land, the rise of Hollywood in the early 1900s, government help such as the opening of military bases and defense contracts and highway construction, the growing connections between the United States and East Asia (Japan, China, Korea, etc.), and the weather. Places like Texas and Salt Lake City have learned how to compete against these factors and offer a different vision of the “good life” that is now appearing more attractive to residents and corporations.

I also wonder if there is a cultural story here. California was the place to go for decades. It was the land of sun, innovation, and fortune. In other words, it was “the cool place to be.” This same story isn’t as appealing today, particularly to conservatives who think of California as a liberal bastion. I don’t think Salt Lake City will acquire the same kind of cultural allure as Los Angeles but it is appealing to some who are looking for a different American narrative. Additionally, places like Austin and other “creative class” communities (Birmingham, AL as another example) offer enough “cool” without having to go to California.

h/t Instapundit

There goes the neighborhood, vacant suburban lot full of dandelions edition

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As I was walking near campus, I spotted a yard that may just be in many suburbanites’ nightmares: a vacant corner lot full of dandelions.

DandelionLawn

Granted, these dandelions might be temporarily in bloom but this is a potential disaster for many neighboring yards. Even worse, this yard sits at a corner on full display. Interestingly, the lot also contains a “for sale” sign. Does the sight of dandelions discourage anyone from purchasing it? Would it better to have a barren yard than this spectacle?

It can be hard and laborious to fight off the dandelion scourge if others around you don’t keep up. The picture isn’t quite wide enough to show it but there is a very clear line where the yard to the right begins because of the absence of dandelions. How long can that pristine yard to the right hold out? My neighborhood has some similar issues; when dandelions are in full bloom, on windy days the air can be full of white seeds blowing around. I’ve had to act as a dandelion vigilante, digging out the root at first sight of the yellow bloom. Until this point, I’ve been able to keep things under control without herbicide but that would be much more difficult if I lived next to this lot. Is there a proper etiquette or protocol to follow in order to get a nearby homeowner to tackle the dandelions in their own lawn?

And thus continues the battle between suburbanite and nature, man versus weed. When homeowners are not vigilant, all lawns can suffer.

(I think this issue is related to one I raised a few weeks ago: it may not be a pretty sight if everyone lets their dog use the common areas in a neighborhood for a restroom.)

The Thomas Kincaide housing development in Vallejo, California

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With the recent passing of Thomas Kincaide, one columnist takes a look at a development in Vallejo, California built with Kincaide’s name on it:

Named the Village, a Thomas Kinkade Community, it promised residents a “vision of simpler times” with “cottage style homes that are filled with warmth and personality.” Its slogan: “Calm, not chaos. Peace, not pressure.”…

The homes in the Village look a lot like other tract homes in Hiddenbrooke, but with Kinkadean touches such as steeply gabled roofs covered in faux-slate tile, gingerbread trim, front porches and stone facades.

Residents see their homes and neighborhood as unique and distinctive.

Teri Booth, an original owner, says she bought her home because “it didn’t look like every other McMansion.”

Homes here average 2,400 square feet. The four models were named after Kinkade’s daughters – Merritt, Chandler, Winsor and Everett. The styles might be described as pseudo Victorian, pseudo French provincial, pseudo New England cottage and pseudo arts and crafts.

The streetlights (electric) look like Kinkade’s gaslight logo and the walkways (stamped concrete) resemble cobblestones.

This reminds me of the Disney-built Celebration, Florida and Martha Stewart homes. Some homebuyers are looking for a distinctive house, a world of not “every other McMansion” but rather a Thomas Kincaide McMansion! (Interestingly, this article suggests that the Kincaide homes are a pastiche of styles, a common complaint about McMansions. These homebuyers also seem to like being tied to a famous person or company. Perhaps this is reassuring or perhaps it means that there might be a bigger market for the homes as they are distinctive. (Alas, as the article suggests, home prices in a Kincaide neighborhood can fall as well.) The Village also seems to promote nostalgia and traditional neighborhood life, as do many other developments and builders.

Why have just a painting when you can buy a Thomas Kincaide house?

Sociology grad student taking photos of Chicago’s demolished buildings

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The Chicago Tribune has an interesting profile of a sociology graduate student who photographs buildings that the city of Chicago is about to demolish:

Since January, Schalliol, who is working on a sociology doctorate at the University of Chicago, has been documenting the city’s demolitions with photographs…

But even the worst houses, the ones that aren’t worth the work to keep, give Schalliol pause.

“There isn’t a time,” he said, “when I look at a building that I don’t think, gosh, this is a waste.”

He feels that most acutely in wealthy neighborhoods, such as Lincoln Park and Lakeview, where nice old homes that in a different place or era would be coveted as vintage jewels are routinely torn down merely to make space for mansions and big condo developments.

He photographs them all with equal care, with appreciation and attention to detail, the way you might dress a corpse for burial.

“I want to respect the people who made the building,” he said, “who maintained it, who lived in it. I want to see the building not just how it is, but how it was.”

I wonder what Schalliol will do with all of this, particularly if it is for more academic purposes. I think there is a lot of potential here: buildings are a kind of collective memory. Styles of architecture, the people who live, work, and meet in them, and the collection of buildings in a neighborhood constitute particular social worlds. When the buildings disappear because of old age or disrepair, that social world disappears as well. For example, the demolition of the public housing high-rises in Chicago and many other American cities may be beneficial in reducing concentrated poverty but it also helps remove the concepts of poverty, race, and related issues from the immediate reach. (To be clear, this is likely exactly what some wanted – get rid of the high rises so the problems aren’t so visible. Unfortunately, this doesn’t deal with the root issues.) It can be easy to simply build something new in place of something old but this does help cover up what came before.

At the same time, I also don’t believe that all buildings should simply be preserved because they are old. Should Brutalist buildings be preserved to remind us of a particular architectural moment? Deciding what buildings should stay and go is a complicated process but at the least, I approve of people at least recording by photograph what buildings used to stand in particular locations.

Urban Decay cosmetics

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As an urban sociologist, I am always interested to examine popular depictions of cities and suburbs. So I was intrigued when I found this advertisement for Urban Decay in the Sunday newspaper:

According to the ad, this line of cosmetics includes products like “Sin Eyeshadow Primer Potion” and “All Nighter Makeup Setting Spray.”

Here is the story of Urban Decay:

Our story opens 15 years ago, when pink, red, and beige enslaved the prestige beauty market. Heaven forbid you wanted purple or green nails, because you’d either have to whip out a marker, or risk life and limb with that back alley drugstore junk. Flying in the face of this monopoly, Sandy Lerner (cofounder of Cisco Systems) made a bold decision: if the cosmetic industry’s “big boys” couldn’t satisfy her alternative makeup tastes, she’d satisfy them herself.

Fatefully, Sandy’s business manager, David Soward, introduced her to fellow visionary Wende Zomnir. A creative businesswoman (and makeup addict almost since birth), Wende also recognized the color void and determined a shake-up was in order. Over high tea, the two forged a pact that led to renegade nail polish mixing sessions in Wende’s Laguna Beach bungalow. Sandy, David and Wende unleashed Urban Decay in January of 1996 with a line of 10 lipsticks and 12 nail enamels. Inspired by seedier facets of the urban landscape, they bore groundbreaking names like Roach, Smog, Rust, Oil Slick and Acid Rain. The first magazine ad queried “Does Pink Make You Puke?,” fueling the revolution as cosmetics industry executives scrambled to keep up…

Our ever-expanding global presence proves what Wende and Sandy always knew – makeup wearers everywhere crave alternatives, hence our longevity well past the death of 90s grunge. In the US, hundreds of UD products now fill purple shelves at Sephora, Ulta and Macy’s, as well as the virtual pages of Beauty.com. Growing numbers of retailers in Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Singapore and the Middle East stock our line, too. And although UD fans around the world might approach our products in wildly different ways, we’ve noticed they share an independent spirit that unites them…

We’ve now become the largest independently owned color cosmetic company in the United States. Our moms are proud. “Urban Decay” is no longer such a crazy name for a makeup company. And young women today have never known a world where they couldn’t get purple nail polish over the counter. Mission accomplished.

What is interesting to me is the commodification of a particular location and style. The name brings back images from the mid-twentieth century as many Americans fled large cities for the cleaner, greener, and safer suburbs. Governments responded by clearing urban blight and instituting programs of urban renewal. Today, urban decay is more fashionable. It seems gritty and authentic – see the passages above about the banality of pink and how darker colors subvert these ideas. It brings to mind ideas of adventure, being a renegade, standing out from the crowd. Perhaps it is tied to ideas of gentrification and finding the exciting yet improving parts of cities. Think of places like Times Square that just a few decades ago were seedy locations and even with the glitz and glamor of today still retain some of this urban excitement that simply can’t be replicated in the shopping mall or on Facebook. And, of course, you can have all of these ideas if you are simply willing to spend a little money on a line of cosmetics.

Is there a suburban alternative to this, something like Suburban Passion or Desperate Suburbs?

Ruminating on the American parking lot

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Here is part of a review of a new book that discusses better ways to design large-scale parking lots:

Mr. Ben-Joseph does offer some parking-lot success stories, few that there are. He introduces us to the Herman Miller factory in Cherokee County, Ga., whose segmented, 550-car lot is sympathetically integrated into the surrounding woodscape. He also approvingly notes the canopied car plaza in front of the Dia:Beacon Museum in Beacon, N.Y. (a collaboration between American artist Robert Irwin and the architecture firm OpenOffice), where the angled planters separating the parking spaces point the way to the museum entrance. Renzo Piano, redesigning the old Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin, Italy, took a similar approach, creating dense and splendid colonnades of trees…

Mr. Ben-Joseph is also guilty of sociological overreach. “Parking lots are a central part of our social and cultural life,” he writes, calling them “a modern-day common.” Wait, what? They are? Yes, teenagers gather in parking lots for one rite of adolescence or another: fighting, racing, dancing. True, community farmers markets spring up over the weekend in business and municipal parking lots; tailgating is a ritualized feasting before sporting events; RV drivers form impromptu villages in Wal-Mart parking lots, a practice known as “boondocking.”

But these interactions happen despite the forbidding nature of open parking lots, not because of them. I find parking lots to be intensely anti-social. I do not engage with strangers on my way to or from the car, and because these tracts are typically shelterless, there is no architectural cue as to where to congregate even if you wanted to. One can’t let go of a child’s hand in a parking lot for even a second. If you’re in a car, a parking lot is an obstacle course to negotiate. If you’re on foot, it’s a place to escape unscathed.

Surface parking lots don’t have to be the minimalist slabs of nowhere-ness we’ve grown accustomed to, Mr. Ben-Joseph suggests. Maybe. And yet there are few signs that this aspect of our infrastructure will get much better anytime soon. For now, I was glad to reach my car and drive away.

I think you could make a case that parking lots really do matter beyond what kind of social activity takes place in them. Thinking more broadly, parking lots represent the American love affair with the car and development based around driving. The zoning laws about the required number of parking spots suggest that one of the worst things we can imagine in everyday life is the lack of an easily available parking space. Shopping malls and big box stores and fast food restaurants are dependent on these giant lots. In cities, parking lots are often profitable holding operations until the land is profitable enough to justify a large development. Overall, the big parking lot is emblematic of a whole lifestyle built around cars and trucks that took over America starting in the 1920s.

Naperville government leads Illinois’ top 20 cities in social media use

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Naperville is used to accolades – see this well trumpeted #2 ranking in Money‘s Best Places to Live in 2006. Here is a new measure of excellence: Naperville is #1 in a suburban government’s use of social media.

A University of Illinois at Chicago study ranks the western suburb No. 1 among local government websites in a study of social media use by Illinois’ 20 largest cities.

Researchers from the university’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs analyzed the websites using at least 90 criteria to determine how well each provided residents with information and the opportunity to interact with officials. Chicago and Elgin round out the top three…

In addition to its main website, Naperville uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS feeds and about two dozen e-newsletters to communicate with residents. It also is looking into starting a mass notification system that Community Relations Manager Nadja Lalvani likened to a “reverse 311.”

“It’s very important for us to be able to communicate effectively and efficiently with residents and other constituents,” Lalvani said. “Social media is very prevalent and another tool to make sure the message is penetrating our audience.”

The UIC study also found increasing use of social media by cities around the country. In 2011, 87 percent of the 75 largest U.S. cities used Twitter, compared with 25 percent in 2009. Likewise, 87 percent used Facebook, compared with 13 percent two years prior.

It doesn’t surprise me that Naperville would lead the way: they seem to have the resources to make this happen as well as the interest in being efficient, taking advantage of new technology (see the ongoing debate over wireless electricity meters – the city’s view and an opposition group), and communicating with people.

I wonder if the study included talking to residents to see if these efforts are reaching them. This is an on-going issue for many communities: the city/village/town claims that they are putting out information while residents suggest they are blindsided at the last minute or aren’t informed at all. I think both sides are often right: many communities have newsletters and websites where information can be found. However, searching out and reading this information does require some effort on the part of residents. Add in the issue that many communities are without local newspapers and it is more difficult to transmit this information broadly. If this plan of attack in Naperville is successful, I imagine more communities will follow their lead.

A second issue could still limit the effectiveness of the social media outreach. I was reminded of this by a talk I heard last week: governments may make information publicly available but they don’t necessarily make the information easily understandable. For example, a community may release some data or an important report but the language and data requires interpretation that the average citizen may be incapable of doing. There is a translation issue here from technical or government speak to what people can understand and then react to. Or a large dataset may be public but it requires knowledge of statistics and specialized software to make some sense of it. Granted, it can be hard to boil down complex issues into newsletter items but it also shouldn’t be the case that newsletters and tweets only cover basic stuff like brush pick-up and meeting times.

 

Economist argues best restaurants often in “dumpier locales”

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Over at the Atlantic, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen explains why excellent restaurants consistently appear in the “cultural wasteland” of suburbs:

Low-rent restaurants can experiment at relatively low risk. If a food idea does not work out, the proprietor is not left with an expensive lease. As a result, a strip-mall restaurant is more likely to try daring ideas than is a restaurant in, say, a large shopping mall. The people with the best, most creative, most innovative cooking ideas are not always the people with the most money. Many of them end up in dumpier locales, where they gradually improve real-estate values…..

I love exploring the suburbs for first-rate ethnic food. Many people consider suburbs a cultural wasteland, but I am very happy searching for food in Orange County, California; the area near San Jose; Northern Virginia, near D.C.; Somerville, Massachusetts; and so on….It is especially common to see good ethnic restaurants grouped with mid-level or junky retail outlets. When it comes to a restaurant run by immigrants, look around at the street scene. Do you see something ugly? Poor construction? Broken plastic signage? A five-and-dime store? Maybe an abandoned car? If so, crack a quiet smile, walk through the door, and order. Welcome to the glamorous world of good food.

Cowen’s argument about restaurants reminds me of another Atlantic piece celebrating “low road” buildings which Brian previously discussed.  It’s not surprising that great work–and great food–often happens in low rent locales like “junky” suburban strip malls and office parks given their lower (financial) barriers to entry and lower operating expenses that free up more cash to flow each month into improving their tenants’ business.

Still, it strikes me that the financial health of restaurants is more location-dependent than for many of the business populating “low road” office parks.  Whereas many office-based business are not dependent on high volumes of foot traffic for survival, restaurants almost invariably are.  (Unless, of course, that particular restaurant focuses primarily on a delivery and/or catering business model.)  A less prestigious restaurant location is a good value for the owner (and likely to survive long term) only if the drop-off in foot traffic/customers due to the “bad” location is more than outweighed by lower rent.

Gearing up for a “quick-take” approach to the land for the Illiana Expressway

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The Illiana Expressway has been talked about for decades but now it looks like the government is determining how to acquire the land:

Compounding the fear for the couple and hundreds of others who live along or near the 47-mile corridor is legislation pending in the Illinois House that would give the state controversial “quick-take” power to acquire land for the project.

Quick-take allows local governments to act fast in seizing land for public projects, skipping the possibly lengthy legal proceedings under eminent domain condemnation.

Anxiety levels are sky-high among many farmers and homeowners who could be affected by the expressway that would connect Illinois and Indiana. Public meetings have been standing room only. Property owners in Lake County, Ind., and Will County have been flocking to an interactive map at illianacorridor.org to see whether their homes, businesses, backyards or back 40s are within the path.

“There’s no question property can be condemned for a highway. The state or whoever is going to get it,” said Dan Tarlock, a professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. “The question is how much the landowner is going to get paid. Quick-take is designed to take first and then fight about the money.”…

State Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Chicago Heights, sponsored the quick-take legislation in the Senate, where it passed 44-8 on March 28. She said the measure is necessary to streamline the process so that ground can be broken for the Illiana by 2016…

Hutchinson, whose district includes much of the Illiana corridor, said the project is vital for job creation and economic development in southern Cook and northern Will counties.

This is a classic situation pitting the interests of the “greater good” versus individual property owners. The article also suggests there is little or no opposition to the project itself, rather the opposition is to how the land is seized. I wonder why the article doesn’t talk more about what prices landowners get for their property in the quick-take process compared to a more protracted process. Isn’t that what is at stake here?

Looking at the proposed routes for the expressway, who exactly is this supposed to serve? Here is the overview of the project:

Previous studies have indicated possible benefits for an east-west transportation corridor extending from I-55 in Illinois to I-65 in Indiana. These include providing an alternate route for motorists traveling the I-90/94 corridor, relieving traffic on the I-80 Borman/Kingery Expressway and U.S. 30, serving as a bypass for trucks around the congested metropolitan highways, providing access to one of the largest “inland port” intermodal freight areas in the U.S. and the proposed South Suburban Airport, supporting economic development in this area, and the potential for substantial job creation. Will County, IL was one of the fastest-growing counties in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010, adding 175,000 residents and increasing demand for additional transportation options.

This doesn’t seem aimed at the Chicago area really because a better route for the Chicago region might be to extend I-355 south and then loop it over to I-65. Is this primarily for warehouses in Will County so they can have easier access to both I-55 and I-65? Are there expectations for more suburban growth south of Chicago?

A reminder: some of funding for studying the Illiana Expressway was to come from the increased tolls on Chicago area highways.

YMCA survey: 58% of Americans would move if they could

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A new survey commissioned by the YMCA suggests that more than 50% of Americans want to move out of their current neighborhood:

The Y Community Snapshot found:

  • 58 percent of respondents say they would move away from their community right now if they could, but the economy and their financial situations make moving increasingly difficult and not an option. Unable to move, Americans are putting more responsibility on local governments and themselves to impact change;
  • 63 percent of respondents say they will get more involved in their communities this year and will contribute goods, services, facilities or other non-monetary resources to a worthy cause or organization;
  • 76 percent of respondents say they are concerned about crime in their community, and according to a recent Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans say there is more crime where they live today than there was a year ago. A safe environment ranked as the most important quality in building a strong community;
  • The vast majority of respondents (72 percent) reported that budget cuts by government, social services and non-profit community organizations have had a negative impact on themselves and their families, with 22 percent saying they’ve felt a big negative impact.

The results to the individual questions may make sense: Americans have always been a mobile people (though mobility is down in recent years due to the economic crisis), Americans tend to be worried about crime even when crime rates are down (how likely is it that major crime rates are down and more than 50% of Americans say crime is up in their particular neighborhood?), and people are unlikely to respond favorably to budget cuts that impact them.

But I’m intrigued by how you would put all of these figures together: do Americans think there are a lot of wealthy, low crime, service-rich neighborhoods out there? Is this simply a case of “the grass is greener on the other side” or is everyone truly aiming to reach these fantastic neighborhoods? Even if there are enough neighborhoods that might fit this bill, how many of these great neighborhoods would not throw open their gates but would instead hunker down and restrict access and new development that might change their paradise?