Category Archives: Places

Reminder in Willowbrook mosque case: IL municipalities have zoning jurisdiction 1.5 miles beyond boundaries

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As the Willowbrook mosque situation continues, the Village of Willowbrook clarified an important detail regarding Illinois municipalities and zoning:

Village consultant Jo Ellen Charlton said the village has decided to release a zoning map showing its area of influence for planning purposes after receiving questions from MECCA about whether it had the right to express its opposition.

A dotted line forming a box along 91st Street, just past the proposed location, is now shown on the map to indicate the village’s intention to exert influence over planning decisions in the area. Because the proposed location lies within 1.5 miles of a Willowbrook boundary line, it is considered within the village’s “planning jurisdiction,” officials said.

Even though the proposed site for the mosque is outside the boundaries of Willowbrook, Illinois law gives incorporated municipalities zoning control over land within 1.5 miles of their boundaries. This control was confirmed by a 1956 Illinois Supreme Court decision in favor of Naperville’s subdivision control ordinance, which said developers had to follow certain guidelines for streets and other subdivision features, extending to the 1.5 mile zoning boundary land. If two communities both could control the same land within the 1.5 mile boundary, either the two communities had to reach an agreement or the control would be set at a line in the middle of the two community’s actual boundaries. Land outside any community’s zoning boundaries is then controlled by the county.

This law has led to some interesting circumstances. For example, the suburb of Warrenville finally incorporated in the 1960s after many attempts because Naperville was expanding and would soon be able to control land around and possibly in Warrenville. At least several DuPage County suburbs have grabbed extra land through annexations in order to extend their zoning boundaries and therefore control land uses, particularly looking to avoid undesirable land uses.

This reminds me of a larger point: while zoning may seem arcane to the average citizen, it is a key tool communities can use and they (officials and residents) will fight hard to utilize these powers rather than let other people decide what “their land” will be used for.

 

New Census figures: population 80.7% urban, most dense cities in the West

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The US Census Bureau released Monday some figures about cities in America. Here are the updated 2010 statistics about urbanization:

 The nation’s urban population increased by 12.1 percent from 2000 to 2010, outpacing the nation’s overall growth rate of 9.7 percent for the same period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau…
Urban areas — defined as densely developed residential, commercial and other nonresidential areas — now account for 80.7 percent of the U.S. population, up from 79.0 percent in 2000. Although the rural population — the population in any areas outside of those classified as “urban” — grew by a modest amount from 2000 to 2010, it continued to decline as a percentage of the national population.

Translation: the proportion of Americans living in urban areas didn’t change very much over the last 10 years. In comparison, the urban population jumped 6% from 1970 to 1980, 3% from 1980 to 1990, and 3% from 1990 to 2000 (see figures on pg. 33 of this Census document). Does this mean we are nearing a plateau in terms of the proportion of Americans living in urban areas?

And here are the new figures for the densest metropolitan areas:

The nation’s most densely populated urbanized area is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif., with nearly 7,000 people per square mile. The San Francisco-Oakland, Calif., area is the second most densely populated at 6,266 people per square mile, followed by San Jose, Calif. (5,820 people per square mile) and Delano, Calif. (5,483 people per square mile). The New York-Newark, N.J., area is fifth, with an overall density of 5,319 people per square mile…
Of the 10 most densely populated urbanized areas, nine are in the West, with seven of those in California. Urbanized areas in the U.S., taken together, had an overall population density of 2,534 people per square mile.

These new figures continue to support one of the trick questions about cities: which city is the most dense? A common answer is New York City because of Manhattan but the densest is actually Los Angeles. Of course, some of this has to do with Southern and Western cities having more space because of the drying up of annexation opportunities in Midwestern and Northeastern cities in the early 1900s.

While these are very interesting figures, where is the percentage of Americans who live in suburbs?

Ambitious new plans for Gary, Indiana

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Chicago recently profiled the new Harvard-graduate mayor of Gary, Indiana and her ambitious plans to turn the city around:

To improve Gary’s desperate financial situation, the mayor has put together a blockbuster plan that includes a land-based casino, improvements to the airport that could finally make it an attractive and viable field for commercial and cargo flights, a transportation and shipping facility next to the airstrip, and possibly a teaching hospital for the Gary branch of Indiana University. The price tag for all this? “It really is too early [to say],” she says, “but our current plan is that the dollars that will be leveraged from the land-based gaming will be invested in the airport and other parts of the industrial corridor.”

Her plan is hardly a slam dunk. Freeman-Wilson can’t make it happen without approval from state legislators, who in recent years have been cool to massive spending proposals for Gary—understandable given the mismanagement and corruption that have marked some previous efforts. And believe it or not, the Indiana legislature is in recess from March through mid-November in even years like this one. The soonest her bill could come up for vote, insiders say, is early 2013.

“Gary is Gary,” says Maurice Eisenstein, an outspoken professor of political and social sciences at Purdue University. “Nothing really changes.” While Eisenstein says he holds no personal animosity toward Freeman-Wilson, he sees her falling into the same trap as her predecessors—a sort of “brass ring” syndrome. “They don’t want to do the nitty-gritty, the day-to-day stuff, the difficult things. They want the brass ring: If we can just win the lottery, we’ll be back on top.”

“In the past we have gone for the home run, the economic development effort that would be the be all and end all,” Freeman-Wilson responds. “The difference about my solution is that I’m looking to build on existing assets. I don’t have to build a stadium. I don’t have to build an interstate. I don’t have to build a rail line. I don’t have to build an airport. I don’t have to build a lake or create our proximity to Chicago. These things already exist.”

The mayor is busy laying the groundwork for the vote on her bill. “She has spent a lot of time in Indianapolis, meeting with the right people,” says Ed Feigenbaum, a longtime observer of the political scene in northern Indiana and the publisher of Indiana Legislative Insight. “She’s got a lot of allies down there, people who want to see Gary succeed.”

Her admirers include not just fellow democrats but two conservative Republicans: Greg Zoeller, Indiana’s attorney general, and Luke Kenley, a state senator. “Karen is very bright, very direct, and very focused on where she thinks she’s going,” Kenley says. “She has a chance to do a lot of good for Gary.”

Freeman-Wilson isn’t focusing only on macro solutions, mind you. For example, she has issued a call for volunteerism, including an adopt-a-park program. That’s both an appeal to civic pride and a reality-check acknowledgment that while big-ticket changes are afoot, there’s little room in the budget for block-to-block cleanup. Gary’s citizens, she says, are going to have to do their part.

When I ask her about the “savior” talk, Freeman-Wilson doesn’t exactly look comfortable, but neither does she back down. “I know people are expecting a lot. I understand people need hope. But this is so not about me. I don’t have a magic bullet.” And then it appears again: the Smile. “But I do have vision,” she says.

There is some interesting stuff here about the decline of Gary and previous big plans that have failed. There are a few cities in the United States that tend to get attention for “failing.” For example, see this earlier post about shrinking cities and a list of “dying cities.” Detroit is one that has received a lot of attention in recent years. Cities like Cleveland, Flint, and Buffalo get some similar attention. Gary is another classic example: it was heavily dependent on the steel industry which tanked and the population dropped from a peak of just over 178,000 people in 1960 to just over 80,000 in 2010.

But this article suggests that Gary hasn’t failed just because of a lack of ideas. Rather, the ideas haven’t worked or the ideas weren’t any good in the first place. What would it really take to stabilize the city? Is it realistic to even think that the population might grow again? This makes me wonder if a team of urban sociologists could prove helpful here (a sociological version of a charrette?). If we put some of the best urban sociologists into a room and tell them to develop workable and sustainable ideas for the city, could they reverse the tide? Why should sociologists wait for the mayor of Gary to call – why not convene a one-day conference in Gary or Chicago and put a plan together?

Discussion over “Prairie Modern” McMansions in the Atlanta suburbs

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A historian discusses “Prairie Modern” McMansions that have been built in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur:

For the past several years Decatur architect Eric Rawlings has been designing homes in a style he describes as “Prairie Modern.” Rawlings considers the eight Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired homes to be among the best examples in his portfolio. Others in Decatur’s Oakhurst neighborhood call them out-of-place McMansions. All but one of the Prairie Modern homes have been built at teardown sites, single-family residential lots where smaller homes were demolished to make way for the Prairie Moderns…

Rawlings defends his Prairie Modern design and he strongly disagrees that his Prairie Modern homes are McMansions. He left this comment in a 2011 blog post:

I have over 60 built projects in Oakhurst alone and only 8 are Prairie Style, only 22 are New Construction. I have about 40 renovations, many of which preserve the original building with a minor addition not even visible from the street. KC Boyce’s house is only 2100sf with 4 beds and hardly a McMansion by the actual definition. Susan Susanka, author of the Not So Big House, invented the term McMansion and would completely disagree with your interpretation of the definition. His 2 story house with low slope roof is barely taller than the houses near it with steeper roofs. The house on the left is sitting more than 6ft lower because of grade elevations. Scale does not mean height or floor area. It refers to the proportion and size of the pieces and parts that make up the structure. A simplistic two story cube is out of scale compared to a one story house made of smaller forms. A larger house made of the same sized pieces and parts is in Scale with a smaller house made of the same size pieces and parts. The Fayetteville house is 25ft tall, 10ft shorter than the Decatur Zoning limit of 35ft. [Copy pasted as received.]

Despite Rawlings’s assertions that his Prairie Moderns are not McMansions, they are more than twice the size of the homes they replaced. They are also larger than neighboring homes that are contemporaneous to the ones torn down. And, they draw from an architectural vocabulary that is out of character with the community. All attributes that conform to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s definition of a McMansion.

Lots of interesting pictures of homes to illustrate the argument. Several things are worth commenting on:

1. Susan Susanka did not invent the term McMansion. The term dates roughly to the late 1980s.

2. There seems to be some discussion of what exactly constitutes a McMansion:

2a. The historian draws from a definition from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and it seems that the teardown dimension is big here: these houses are bigger than the surrounding homes.

2b. But there is an architectural congruity issue as well: Prairie style homes don’t fit in this particular community. This amuses me: the Prairie style is well-known in the Chicago area because of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in Oak Park and Chicago and you could find a number of “Prairie Moderns” in the region. I suppose this style is tied to Prairie regions (Midwest) but wouldn’t the Prairie style make more sense than stucco houses in the Atlanta area? Of course, one could argue that neither style or perhaps any “foreign” styles are appropriate.

3. Adding to the intrigue is that one of the “Prairie Moderns” won an award from Decatur for “Sustainable Design and Energy Efficiency.” So perhaps not everyone has an issue these homes. If so, this would be common in teardown situations: you can often find people arguing for newer homes and owners being able to do what they want for their property and others arguing that new houses should have some architectural congruency with the existing neighborhood and that there should be some design guidelines or standards (perhaps through the creation of a historic preservation district).

h/t Curbed National

Sociologist: Canadians and Americans are more alike than people might think

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A Canadian sociologist argues that Americans and Canadians are quite similar:

But experts suggest English Canadians — though the QMI Agency poll found we’re still divided whether stereotyping is widespread — are alike on most fronts.

In fact, so much so that most of us could blend in with our U.S. cousins, according to one scholar.

Ed Grabb, a professor in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Sociology, has begun a new course outlining how Canadians and Americans, while not identical, are more alike than most of us would have thought.

In fact, on things like attitudes toward health care, government and individuality, research has found we’re very similar.

Even differences in religion are shrinking. In 1991, Americans were 16% more likely than Canadians to take in a religious service at least once a week.

By 2006, that number had dropped to 11%.

While Grabb sees regional differences in both countries — during national elections, Quebec generally pulls Canada to the left just as the southern U.S. pulls that nation to the right — he’s also noticed a softening of old hackneyed chestnuts.

“I do think the Alberta redneck jibe is an endangered species,” Grabb said.

“I think that the assumption that all Ontarians are affluent is also going by the boards.

It would be interesting to see comparisons across the board: income, political and social views (both at home and abroad), religion, education, and consumer purchases and entertainment choices. Then, compare these to what Americans and Canadians think about each other. Why do I think Canadians would know way more about Americans than the other way around?

I also want to know how to explain this. Both the United States and Canada are settler colonies but we have different histories as Canada has had a different relationship with Great Britain in the last few centuries. Perhaps people might fall back on the frontier hypothesis since both countries pursued territorial expansion and span between two different (geographically and cultural) coasts. Perhaps today we tend to share a lot of media and cultural influences. For example, how many Americans care or would they have been able to tell without being told that Justin Bieber is Canadian. Perhaps our geopolitical position away from major international wars has led to similar ways of viewing the world. Perhaps the better way to differentiate between the countries is to refer to the “Jesusland” map where Canada joins with the East and West American coasts plus some of the Great Lakes states and red America is the south, great plains, and mountain west.

“Black flight” to Charles County, Maryland?

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Charles County, a suburban county south of Washington D.C. has experienced population growth in recent years, possibly as the result of “black flight”:

From 2000 to 2010, Charles County’s population rose by 21.6 percent, going from 120,546 to 146,551, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. At the same time, non-Hispanic whites dropped as a proportion of the county’s total population from 67.3 percent to 48.4 percent.

In a decade, the county went from being whiter than the state of Maryland to being a minority-majority jurisdiction.

“You think about the notion of white flight, there’s also the notion of black flight, or Latino flight,” said Kris Marsh, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who specializes in the study of the black middle class.

“As Prince George’s County moves from a white-dominated county to a black-dominated county, there could be some black households that decide that they don’t want to live in a black-dominated community, so they move out to Howard County … or out to Charles County,” Marsh explained.

“White flight” is a well-known phenomenon that covers the movement of whites away from growing minority populations, particularly in large cities or denser suburbs. I’ve never heard the term “black flight” before though conversation about the movement of the black middle class has generated academic discussion for several decades now. It would be interesting to know how the communities in Charles County, and in some of the other nearby counties which are also mentioned in this story, are adjusting to new populations in areas that still have relatively few people.

Overall, this is a reminder that minority and immigrant populations are growing in suburban areas even though many still think of the suburbs as homogenous white, middle- to upper-class areas.

The “gravity law” vs. the “radiation model” in predicting intercity mobility

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Here is an overview of two ways to model intercity mobility: the “gravity law” and the “radiation model” which was just recently proposed in Nature:

The reigning model of intercity mobility, used to predict patterns of movement from commuting to the spread of infectious disease, is called the “gravity law.” It was developed in the early 1940s by a Harvard lecturer named George Zipf and is, of course, based on Newton’s law, which says gravitational force increases when the mass of two objects is great and the distance between them is minimal.

In that same spirit, Zipf’s “gravity law” of mobility assumed that movement between two cities would be most frequent when their populations were large and their separation small. In reality, however, the “gravity law” doesn’t do a great job estimating the intercity movement it was intended to predict. While Zipf’s law frowns on the notion that people travel frequently between distant cities, recent research on so-called “super-commuters,” outlined by our own Richard Florida, shows that a considerable subset of urban populations is actually willing to commute quite far…

The “radiation model,” as the new idea is called, makes several assumptions the gravity model does not. For starters, it downplays the distance between two cities and emphasizes not only the cities themselves but the density of the areas surrounding them. That enables the model to estimate the number of jobs in a region more accurately. It also accounts a bit more for actual human behavior: while the radiation model presumes that people choose a job based on a balance of proximity and benefits, it recognizes that they’re willing to make long commutes if few jobs in their region satisfy their requirements.

As a result, the radiation model out-predicts the “gravity law” in direct competition. As an example, the researchers looked at mobility between two pairs of counties in Utah and Alabama. Both counties of origin had similar populations, as did both destination counties, and both pairs are more or less equidistant from one another. Actual Census data shows that 44 people make the commute in Utah, while six do in Alabama.

This sounds very interesting and required advances in data collection on this topic as well as modeling social networks and demographics. The main finding seems to be this: distance is not the only factor that matters in looking at trips between cities. As the case of the super-commuters suggests, people will live one place and work in another place far away in the right circumstances. Perhaps we should have already known this because of the relative importance of different cities: world-class cities or cultural centers or centers for certain industries (New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, respectively) would draw people from longer distances compared to “average” big cities (St. Louis? Denver?). Or, if we put this in world systems theory terms, certain cities sit at the center of American urban life and businesses and industries tend to concentrate within them while other cities are in more peripheral positions.

I would be interested to know whether the “radiation model” can suggest whether the number of super commuters will increase in the long-term and how this is affected by the strength of the overall economy and housing market.