Category Archives: Places

Nearly six thousand hours to make the best map of the United States

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Here is some insight into what it takes to create maps and particularly the hard work needed to create the “best American wall map”:

So what makes this map different from the Rand McNally version you can buy at a bookstore? Or from the dusty National Geographic pull-down mounted in your child’s elementary school classroom? Can one paper wall map really outshine all others—so definitively that it becomes award-worthy?…

According to independent cartographers I spoke with, the big mapmaking corporations of the world employ type-positioning software, placing their map labels (names of cities, rivers, etc.) according to an algorithm. For example, preferred placement for city labels is generally to the upper right of the dot that indicates location. But if this spot is already occupied—by the label for a river, say, or by a state boundary line—the city label might be shifted over a few millimeters. Sometimes a town might get deleted entirely in favor of a highway shield or a time zone marker. The result is a rough draft of label placement, still in need of human refinement. Post-computer editing decisions are frequently outsourced—sometimes to India, where teams of cheap workers will hunt for obvious errors and messy label overlaps. The overall goal is often a quick and dirty turnaround, with cost and speed trumping excellence and elegance.

By contrast, David Imus worked alone on his map seven days a week for two full years. Nearly 6,000 hours in total. It would be prohibitively expensive just to outsource that much work. But Imus—a 35-year veteran of cartography who’s designed every kind of map for every kind of client—did it all by himself. He used a computer (not a pencil and paper), but absolutely nothing was left to computer-assisted happenstance. Imus spent eons tweaking label positions. Slaving over font types, kerning, letter thicknesses. Scrutinizing levels of blackness. It’s the kind of personal cartographic touch you might only find these days on the hand-illustrated ski-trail maps available at posh mountain resorts.

A few of his more significant design decisions: Your standard wall map will often paint the U.S. states different colors so their shapes are easily grasped. But Imus’ map uses thick lines to indicate state borders and reserves the color for more important purposes—green for denser forestation, yellow for population centers. Instead of hypsometric tinting (darker colors for lower elevations, lighter colors for higher altitudes), Imus uses relief shading for a more natural portrait of U.S. terrain.

I’ve always loved maps but I can’t imagine spending this much time on hand-crafting a map of the United States. It would be interesting to hear why Imus pursued this: a hobby? Is he a professional cartographer? Did he want to win a prize? Is there money in this? Was he simply irritated with existing maps?

The second half of the article goes on to talk about the continued need for large maps even in an era where many people have maps in their phones and computers. I tend to agree with this view: as a kid, I would spend a lot of time simply browsing through an atlas or looking at a wall map because it is interesting to know where everything is in relation to everywhere else. A close view of the world, say with Google Maps on my phone, has difficulty displaying this interconnectedness. Several features of Imus’ map also add to the imaginative possibilities of maps: the topography and cultural attractions.

One question I have: supposedly map-making companies include little mistakes so that they can tell if someone has simply copied them. Did Imus do something similar or does he even have these same mistakes (this gets at where he got his geographical knowledge from)?

Bonus: Imus responds in the comments section. Here is one interesting comment: “If a map doesn’t depict the uniqueness of the places on it, to me that map is merely a spatial arrangement of data. I wanted to give my readers more than data. I wanted to give them the sense of place that has been missing from our maps. The USA is a place, not a space.”

Thinking about the future of suburbs in Levittown

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At the end of a retrospective article about Levittown, CNN considers the future of the suburbs:

It’s a hot issue in academia to think about what suburbs may become.

An upcoming exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art, called Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, proposes several visions, including one that would integrate nature more sustainably into the suburbs and another that would try to make suburban neighborhoods denser.

Something has to change, said Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s curator for architecture and design, or we will “roll the suburban carpet across all the open land that is left.”

“It’s just irresponsible to have a model that encourages moving out onto green fields and leaving behind decaying rings of an ever-fattening tree,” he said. “I’m interested in not just letting the path of least resistance exist. It’s cheaper for a developer to build on virgin territory, but it’s not cheaper for people to live on it or get to it.”

This year, another group of designers descended on Levittown to imagine “a future suburbia” in the place where the concept was hatched…

For a day, a designer named Claudia Linders turned Dwyer’s Levitt home into an “Attention Clinic.” Patrons sat in her living room and waited for a chance to receive advice, attention and/or hugs from Dwyer and two actors.

The idea was to make suburbia profitable rather than just a place where people live.

“They kept choosing me (for advice), I guess because I was older and wiser,” Dwyer said, cracking a smile. “Because these actresses, they were beautiful.”

All this attention confused Dwyer, who said she was happy to give out advice to strangers but felt somewhat unqualified to make life decisions for them.

There was a real chance here to share with the public what academics forecast for American suburbs. For my six predictions for American suburbs for 2012, read here. But here is what this article went with:

1. A typical critique that suburbs take up too much open land and by focusing resources on suburbs, other locations are impoverished. These opinions aren’t necessarily wrong (indeed, the densification of the suburbs is a popular topic today) but these ideas have been around for decades.

2. This last bit about the “Attention Clinic” seems more like performance art than a viable option for American suburbs. What exactly is this supposed to illustrate?

This is a puzzling selection of “what the suburbs may become.” While the earlier parts of the article hit some key elements that make Levittown unique including its mass production and its race relations, the last part of the article is a missed opportunity.

Considering unwalkable cities

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Felix Salmon discusses an unwalkable part of Jerusalem:

One look at the map and you can tell this is not a walkable neighborhood. Yes, Jerusalem is hilly, but there are lots of walkable hilly cities: San Francisco and Lisbon spring to mind. This area, to the west of the city, is relatively new; it was clearly built with the idea that people would get around first and foremost using their own personal cars.

What’s more, the Holyland development seems to be targeted at Americans, who are used to the suburban lifestyle, like it a lot, and are attracted by developments which can claim to be “surrounded by 15 acres of green park”. Residential towers can be fine things, but they become very bad neighbors when they’re surrounded by nothing.

I suspect that what’s going on here is a classic case of Nimbyism: Jerusalem has a growing population, it needs a lot more residential square footage, but the locals in Jerusalem proper refuse to allow developers to build up. So those developers retreat to the hills, where, attempting to make a virtue out of necessity, they create luxury towers as removed as possible from the bustle of urban life.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this post. Salmon seems to have highlighted just one part of Jerusalem and then tries to expand the conversation to the city level. Here are a few thoughts in response:

1. My guess is that these “unwalkable” parts tend to be more modern and it’s interesting that Salmon notes that this was intended to appeal to Americans. There are cultural differences about what counts as “good” or “desirable” development. I wonder how much Jane Jacob’s classic (which Salmon cites as a model of good development) has been utilized in non-American settings.

2. Perhaps the better question to ask here is what cities have effectively used zoning and other regulations to limit developments like this. Some cities use zoning more than others.

3. The NIMBY conjecture is interesting but it sounds like the reverse of the American context: the large building is pushed to the edge of the city because tall buildings don’t fit the character of the historic central area.

4. This reminds me of a paper idea I had years ago about the grid system found in places like Manhattan. This format is not just physically simpler to navigate or plan but it also reduces the cognitive work pedestrians must do. Because everything is similar and relatively easy to find, the grid is an example of “extended cognition.”

5. Does Jerusalem have walkability scores?

HUD investigating DuPage County Housing Authority who is also naming a new director

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In an update to a story I noted last year, HUD is conducting an investigation of the DuPage County Housing Authority.

Investigators with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General are examining the housing authority’s development of Myers Commons, a 91-unit senior housing project in Darien, the sources said.

The investigation comes after the Tribune reported last year that the housing authority’s board and executive director violated federal regulations by allowing a former board member to develop the project. The housing authority also failed to follow federal regulations by not allowing competition to develop the project, the Tribune reported.

The irony here is that this is a black mark for the county and it involves an agency that many conservatives in the county may not even want (or want it to do much).

Additionally, the agency is naming a new director:

In the latest step to improve its standing with HUD, the DuPage Housing Authority will name David Hoicka as its new executive director Thursday, Board Chairman Thomas Good said.

Hoicka has served as chief operating officer for the housing authority in El Paso, Texas, worked as an adviser to the housing ministry in Bahrain, managed the New Orleans housing authority, and worked as branch chief for Hawaii’s Housing and Community Development Corp. He has written three manuals on HUD regulations.

It would be interesting to hear more about why someone who has presided over housing authorities in decent sized cities such as El Paso and New Orleans would want to work in DuPage County. Clearly, there is this issue to clean up but DuPage County could provide some interesting challenges: it is a wealthy county with a growing population of poorer residents and a need for affordable housing. Additionally, the DuPage Housing Authority has a mixed legacy and it is trying to operate within a conservative county that at least in the past has tried to resist such efforts.

Crumbling McMansions as “wildlife habitats”

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Mix together a few recent stories about animals encountering people in the suburbs and you can reach an interesting conclusion: McMansions could become “wildlife habitats”.

Great news for folks who have watched the value of their exurban McMansions circling the drain over the past few years: These fringe habitations can be returned to nature to find new life as wildlife habitats. It’s basically the real estate version of composting.

Okay, so there’s not really an official effort to make subdivisions into sanctuaries, but apparently nobody told bears that. In Hopatcong, N.J., a cable TV repairman recently descended into 85-year-old Frank Annacone’s basement and found a 500-pound black bear slumbering there. The folks at Gothamist dubbed it the “Reverse Goldilocks Bear,” and in a true case of lopsided justice, it was quickly tranquilized and subjected to an “examination” (yikes) before being released back into the wild. (What did Goldilocks get, a good scare and a few hours of community service?)

It’s not the first time wild animals have done the “creative reuse” thing on the outer edges of civilization. BldgBlog has dredged up tales of bobcats lounging around foreclosed exurban mansions, bees that turned a California home into a honey factory, and a pack of coyotes that squatted in a burned-out house in Glendale, Calif.

These sort of animal/human interactions are no small issue in some suburbs. In this area, discussions about coyotes were hot not too long ago.

Trying to imagine McMansions as wildlife habitats is an interesting exercise. One far-fetched solution: some wealthy activist buys up a large McMansion neighborhood and turns it into a preserve. Perhaps people would even pay money to tour the odd preserve. This sounds like it could be a Hollywood thriller where some poor visitors end up trapped in this dystopian world. (Imagine Jurassic Park without dinosaurs and in a neighborhood of crumbling McMansions.) A second option: someone creates art that depicts crumbling McMansions returning to nature and full of animals.

If anyone has images or stories of full neighborhoods that have been “returned to nature,” I’d be interested in seeing them.

Six predictions for American suburbs in 2012

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Since this is the time of year for predictions, here are my six broad predictions for American suburbs in 2012:

1. The suburbs will continue to be the space of choice for Americans even as critics argue they are bland, environmentally untenable, and ultimately unsustainable.

2. At the same time, because of the economic crisis, continuing trends in design, and different tastes among Millennials and retiring baby boomers, suburbs will be pursuing denser projects with more certain long-term outcomes.

3. Many suburbs and other local taxing bodies (school districts, etc.) will struggle to find revenue. The budget deficits at the federal and state levels will continue to trickle down. Many communities will struggle to fund basic services.

4. Minorities, immigrants, and lower-class residents will continue to move to the suburbs and more strongly challenge the image of suburbs as lily-white havens. Some suburbs will struggle to adapt. Wealthier suburbs will continue to look for ways to limit these changes.

5. The issues of funding and revenues will trump concerns like providing social services for new populations, being environmentally-friendly, and providing affordable housing. Some will argue these communities would likely stonewall these concerns regardless.

6. Regarding single-family homes: McMansions will continue to be disparaged, the size of the average new home will drop again, the problems with foreclosures will continue, the President and Congress will continue to express how the single-family home is the foundation of the American Dream, and affordable housing will still be unpopular.

(Note: I’ve written about these trends throughout 2011 and I plan to keep writing about them in 2012. While these predictions are somewhat vague, it is difficult to describe trends across all suburbs as they are a varied lot.)

Migration after a “millionaire’s tax”

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A number of states are considering raising taxes for wealthy residents and some have argued that such taxes push wealthy people to move to another state. Here is a brief summary of some research on what happened in New Jersey after a millionaire’s tax was implemented in 2004:

A 2004 “millionaire’s tax” in New Jersey had little effect on migration, according to a study by Stanford University sociologist Cristobal Young and Princeton University sociologist Charles Varner published this year in the National Tax Journal. Moving from California to escape taxes is even more difficult.

“Many people in New Jersey could move 30 or 40 miles and find themselves in lower-tax Connecticut or Pennsylvania,” Young said in an email. “If you are in the Bay Area, it is a 500- to 700-mile move to competing urban areas such as Las Vegas or Phoenix. That is a tough move – you will be starting a new life.”

The New Jersey Department of the Treasury issued its own research in October that countered the Young-Varner study. The department is led by an appointee of Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a vocal opponent of a new “millionaire’s tax.”

In a state with 8.7 million residents, the department said that all tax increases – not just those on the wealthy – resulted in 20,000 fewer taxpayers.

So it sounds like both research studies could be right? Though I haven’t read either study, the loss of 20,000 taxpayers from New Jersey doesn’t sound like much. Additionally, there are a lot of reasons people could move and taxes are just one part of the larger business climate and cultural setting. Without clear trends in the data or interviews or surveys with people who leave, it would be hard to know that taxes were what pushed people out of the state.

The argument that it might be more difficult to move out of California because of greater geographic isolation is intriguing. I would think that distance matters less than other characteristics that draw people to California such as the weather and exciting cities. If geographic isolation is a key factor, we would see more movement in metropolitan areas that straddle states, such as New York City or Chicago where residents who want to protest or move because of taxes could live over the border in Indiana or Wisconsin and still be part of the region.

When states consider higher taxes for millionaires, why haven’t more millionaires acted like corporations who then threaten to leave and force tax breaks? Would it be too easy to vilify individual wealthy residents?

In the end, I wonder about the validity of arguments that people move solely in response to tax rates.

States with the highest percentages of homegrown residents

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The Census Bureau recently released statistics about which states have the most residents who were born in that state:

Nationally, on average, 60 percent of people are living in their native state. According to a Governing Magazine analysis, states in the interior South and Midwest tend to have a higher percentage of natives. Louisiana tops the list, with 79 percent of its population born there.

Among large metro areas, Birmingham ranks near the top: 74 percent of the metro population was born in Alabama, the 6th-highest percentage of homegrown residents among the top 50 U.S. metros…

Jim Williams, executive director of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, has spent years trying to persuade governments to adopt changes to governmental practices developed in other states. Progress is difficult, he said…

There is a lot of literature in sociology and psychology establishing that a lack of contact with other groups tends to maintain stereotypes, Fording said. Conversely, contact between groups tends to overcome stereotypes.

Here is the list of the top 10 states: Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Iowa, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama.

It is a little difficult to look at this list and see the exact traits these states share. The regions and the cultures are similar in the South and Midwest though this doesn’t apply to Pennsylvania (maybe the western half but not so much the eastern half?) or maybe West Virginia. Other factors that may be influential:

1. Immigration rates.

2. Lack of world/global cities which tend to attract diverse groups of people.

3. Lower levels of education?

4. Density of population/more rural areas.

It would be interesting to ask residents of these states why they stay. It is one thing to stay because one likes the place versus the opportunities to move elsewhere are lacking. While Americans might romanticize small town life and talk about establishing roots, this likely varies from place to place. Certain values, such as interacting with people different from oneself or having access to cultural amenities or always being willing to move to follow job opportunities, could then trump geographic stability.

The social factors that influence your tip for the doorman

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Tipping the doorman is influenced by a number of social factors:

What this means is that even after you’ve rifled through the data and researched the gratuities administered by your neighbors and friends, you don’t know what you don’t know. Your superintendent could tell you what Mrs. Parsons in 5F gave him, but presumably he won’t. And Mrs. Parsons, if you ask her, is likely to abstain from the truth.

This habit of dishonesty is confirmed in “Doormen,” a generalized but thoroughly convincing book about the relationships between Manhattan doormen and tenants, by Peter Bearman, a Columbia University sociologist. In a chapter devoted to Christmas tipping, Mr. Bearman determines that people frequently understate the amount they are giving for the purpose of driving down the contributions of others, and thus distinguishing themselves as among a building’s more generous residents…

If Mr. Bearman were to arrive at Christmas dinner and listen to you fret about whether you tipped your doorman or your super sufficiently this year, he would not quell your anxieties but, instead, tell you that they were utterly justified. Tipping, in this view, is a complicated affair in which it is virtually impossible to establish uniformity. Tipping too little is embarrassing, but so is tipping too much, which can come with distasteful implications of hierarchy and servitude…

Tipping is affected by an infinite number of variables, not the least of them personal affinity. Most doormen will tell you that everyone tips something at Christmas, but that’s not quite true.

This small act is complicated by the relationship one has with the doorman, the setting of the building and the general socioeconomic status of the residents (as the article suggests, comparing the East and West sides), and wanting to appear somewhat but not too generous. It strikes me as well as the issues of tipping could be very unique to American culture where we talk about being egalitarian and therefore don’t like to talk about or even bring up differential positions of power (doormen vs. wealthier residents) but still want to appear nice (supplementing their salary with tips).

Another thought: couldn’t tipping be eliminated if the unionized salary for doormen in New York City was raised so that tips were not necessary to supplement incomes?

I wonder if anyone has solved this problem in a way that the doorman still receives a similar take and residents still tip something. Imagine if there was a website devoted to tipping that included real-time figures for different buildings in New York City. If residents had real data on what other people were tipping, not just suggestions from advice columnists, would this help them make tipping decisions? I suppose this would all depend on residents reporting their true tip, not the socially acceptable value.

When a devastating wildfire leads to the construction of McMansions

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Here is brief mention of a situation when McMansions were built after a devastating wildfire:

Although dwarfed by other natural disasters, and probably forgotten by people without Bay Area connections, the Oakland Hills Fire 20 years ago killed 25 (many of them trapped in their cars, trying to escape), injured 150 and burned down more than 3,000 homes and 450 apartments and condos. The property damage has been estimated at $1.7 billion—the same (in today’s dollars) as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Overnight, a hillside brush fire was transformed into a major conflagration by a sudden “Diablo wind” that rose within minutes to 70 miles per hour and 100 feet high. Defying more than a thousand firefighters from all over the state, the winds (including flame-generated whirlwinds) hurled fire, flint and embers in a dozen different directions. At their peak, the flames were exploding 10 houses a minute—600 in the first hour alone. Sparks leapt over an eight-lane freeway. In two days, two square miles of wood-framed houses among the trees, built on steep slopes and narrow, winding roads (to capture the great views of San Francisco), had been reduced to a no-man’s-land of white ash and crumbled debris, pierced by dark spikes of leafless tree trunks among surviving stone steps and totemic chimney towers.

It is this ghostly, lifeless afterworld that Mr. Misrach captured by setting up his view camera along the empty streets of this miniature version of Dresden or Hiroshima a week or so after the fire. There are no people in his pictures; no cars except burned-out hulks with melted windows.

The first images I focused on were the remains of the burned trees. In most cases, only the hard, black, sharp centers of their trunks remained. Mr. Misrach found many ways of making these spiky shapes eloquent and expressive…

In the years since the fire, most of the empty lots have been filled with new houses, even if most of the residents from 1991 have left. Many of the rebuilders used their settlements to build new McMansions two or three times the size of the houses that were lost. The trees around them will take another 50 years to grow back. The handsome old houses of the Oakland hills are not what they were. But Mr. Misrach has captured the precise moment when one world ended and another began.

This is a unique situation compared to the typical complaints about McMansions that are built within an established neighborhood. In this case, a fire wiped out the existing neighborhood, wiping the slate clean. I would guess that the homes that were built after the fire would have been difficult, perhaps even impossible, to build before the fire. Additionally, this wasn’t just valuable land but also land on the sides of hills that had commanding views but could also probably be seen from a distance as well.

I imagine there could be a very interesting story to tell about these new homes and how the new neighborhood came to be.