Category Archives: Places

Would wealthy homeowners rather live in or next to a McMansion or modernist house?

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A short look at a Great Falls, Virginia modernist house got me thinking: would the typical wealthy homeowner rather live next to a McMansion or a modernist home? Here is how this house is described on Curbed (and there are lots of pictures as well):

A wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., Great Falls, Va. is better known for it’s sprawling McMansions than its modernist masterpieces, but this glassy new construction in the woods is adding to the town’s architectural street cred. Distinguished by stark white walls and huge expanses of glass, the sleek home was designed by architect David Jameson and won the 2011 Washington DC AIA Award of Excellence. Thanks to the broad swaths of glass, the modern house achieves a connection to nature that would evade one of NoVa’s typical Italianate McMansions. Worthy of special note is the courtyard, which utilizes a frameless glass railing.

So what makes this modernist house more attractive than a McMansion? Several reasons are given here:

1. It has “architectural street cred.” Namely, it was designed by a known architect and won an award.

2. It is better connected to nature than McMansions.

3. It is not an Italianate facsimile of which the articles suggests there are too many. This house is unique.

But I would be interested in knowing how many suburban residents would choose to live in or live near this modernist house versus choosing a McMansion. The modernist style is not common in the suburbs; unless this house is in a unique neighborhood or has a really big lot, it may stick out from surrounding houses. For the average suburbanite, do the looks of this structure really invoke feelings of home? Might this be of architectural interest but not somewhere people could imagine living?

“City residents still yearn for the rural experience”?

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Beside a story about the declining rural areas of Iowa, a sociologist talks about the link between cities and rural areas:

Even city residents still yearn for the rural experience, says Paul Lasley, the Iowa State University sociologist who founded the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll. He describes a gradual cultural blurring of urban and rural Iowa: Cities are preserving rural culture as a reaction against the “massification” of recent decades.

Consider the boom in farmers markets, he says: 7,175 nationwide this year, a 17 percent jump over 2010, as measured by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Iowa claims 237 markets.

A couple of thoughts come to mind:

1. The most noticeable place where the cities and rural areas blur is the suburbs. From the beginning, picturesque suburbs like Llewellyn Park, New Jersey had winding subdivision lanes and big lots that were meant to invoke country life. Even today, many suburbanites can fairly quickly drive to Forest Preserves or out to the metropolitan fringe where there are still some open fields.

2. Are farmers markets really the best evidence that city dwellers want more of the rural life? Don’t these simply make the rural life a caricature or another commodity that can be purchased? There have to be some other ways in which city dwellers really show an interest in rural life.

In the end, I wonder how much city residents really would want to live in rural areas or spend significant amounts of time there opposed to just visit. Surveys like the “2011 Community Preference Survey” show that roughly 30-40% of Americans would want to live in small towns or rural areas but we know more than 50% of Americans live in suburbs and 30% live in central cities (around 80% total). So if preferences don’t exactly match up with realities, what exactly do urban residents, urban or suburban, want from “the rural experience”?

Discussing the rise in suburban poverty in the Pittsburgh region

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After a recent report discussed the rise of poverty in the suburbs and the inability of many suburban governments to provide services for those in poverty, here is how this plays out in the Pittsburgh region:

In Western Pennsylvania, the increase of suburban poverty is not because poor people are moving into those areas. Instead, people living in the suburbs are becoming poor. Chris Briem, of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social & Urban Research, said local areas with high rates of poverty are “not necessarily places that are poor because of out-migration from the city.”…

Alexandra Murphy has been living in Penn Hills for the past three years studying the suburban poor for a doctorate in sociology from Princeton University. She said the working class, which was “on the brink of making ends meet” before the recession, found itself what she termed “poor in place,” and needing access to food banks and help with bills just like the traditional poor in the cities.

Murphy said the difference between urban poverty and suburban poverty is that the latter “doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to meet the needs.”…

Mike Irwin, associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Duquesne University, said that kind of a shift can result in “social disorganization” in some communities, which can lead to increased crime. The deterioration some communities have experienced over the past few decades could soon occur in more places, he said.

More and more suburban communities will encounter these issues. Considering the budget shortfalls faced by many municipalities and other units of local governments (school districts, park districts, etc.), how can they find money for social services?

If anything, this does provide an opportunity for religious congregations and organizations to step up and not only meet subsistence needs but also to think creatively about providing jobs and housing for the long term. Instead of just sending money to the inner city or overseas, wealthy suburban churches can now help out in their own backyards and help boost local economies.

Fighting over McMansions in Mission Hills

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In the wealth Kansas City suburb of Mission Hills (named earlier this year one of “America’s Most Affluent Neighborhoods“), residents have been fighting over whether McMansions should be allowed:

“There’s a group that wants to build whatever the hell they want,” says lawyer Ann Alexander, a Mission Hills resident who in 2009 sued a neighbor over lot setbacks, “and there’s a group that wants renovation and vibrancy, but who want to do that in the context of the community.”

Think of it as the property-rights set versus the Mission Hills traditionalists…

But what is Mission Hills? After failing to define that with regulations and zoning laws, the city last spring hired a Los Angeles planning consultant named David Sargent to define it.

The hope is that Sargent could help end the squabbling by coming up with a set of design guidelines that would allow for housing upgrades — both teardowns and add-ons — but preserve, as he puts it, “the pastoral, garden character of the community.”

Sargent’s first draft came out this month, and now some are waiting to see whether the recommendations, when they’re in final form next year, will bring peace and understanding in the extraordinary city.

Sounds like a typical standoff: residents who want to protect the historical character of the community versus those who want to live in a well-known location but in a new big house with all the modern amenities.

This planning consultant has his work cut out for him. However, many other communities have adopted guidelines or planbooks that at least offer some guidance to what new houses might look like. Without declaring neighborhoods historic districts (which are often the strictest option – see an example here), guidelines can help opponents and proponents of teardowns work with a common set of expectations as they try to decide what their neighborhood should look like in the future.

Thinking further about this, I wonder if anyone has done research on what suburban residents expect their neighborhood to be like in the future. I don’t think I’d be alone in expecting that many residents would want the neighborhood to stay about the same as when they moved in. I recently heard someone cite Mark Twain saying, “Everyone likes progress, but no one likes change.” Are things that could be changed in a neighborhood that a majority of residents would see as positive?

The shopping malls that track your shopping patterns

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Two shopping malls are starting a new program where they track the shopping patterns through shopper’s cell phone signals:

From Black Friday though to the end of the December, two malls in southern California and Richmond, Va., will be following shoppers by tracking their cell phone signals. When somebody walks out of the Gap, into the Starbucks, out through the Nordstrom and on to the Auntie Annes pretzel stand, the mall will be monitoring.

Creepy? Maybe. But the information is anonymous and won’t be used to target individual shoppers. Instead, it’s part of a quiet information revolution among retailers to figure out how crowds move, where they cluster, and what stores they ignore. Tracking crowds isn’t new. Tracking crowds through their cell phones is.

If you’ve got a problem with malls paying attention to your smart phone, you might want to stay away from the mall for, say, the rest of your life. The future of shopping, according to retail analysts I spoke with for a recent special report, is malls and phones talking to each other.

When I saw this story last week, my first thought was “what took so long?” This doesn’t sound too different than what is going on while you surf the Internet: there are a number of people very interested in the data generated by your browsing and shopping patterns. You the shopper/browser are in a closed system and you are a very valuable data point. This is also a reminder that shopping malls are not public spaces: just like large stores, retailers and mall operators want to funnel you in certain ways such as past the food court (good smells can be positive for spending money) and past a number of attractive displays, advertisements, and storefronts (all meant to get you to open your wallet and act upon unrecognized desires).

One other thought: I wonder how shoppers at a mall might fight back. How about turning off one’s cell phone while inside? How about walking in “unusual patterns,” whatever that might look like? How about boycotting malls that practice this? How about using this as another rallying point for shopping local – they can’t (or at least shouldn’t) track you while shopping on Main Street. How about forcing malls that do this to post signs about what exactly they are doing? If the shopper does indeed have valuable information and money, why not get some concessions from the mall operators who would like to have this data?

Shifting resources away from the “fringe suburb[s]”

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In an op-ed in the New York Times, an academic argues that “fringe suburb[s]” are dying and we should shift resources to communities that need reinvestment:

Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift — a reversal of what took place in the 1950s, when drivable suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities emptied and withered.

The shift is durable and lasting because of a major demographic event: the convergence of the two largest generations in American history, the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and the millennials (born between 1979 and 1996), which today represent half of the total population…

Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their fringe housing will only add to the glut. Nothing the federal government can do will reverse this…

For too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. Those retail centers and subdivisions will never be worth what they cost to build. We have to stop throwing good money after bad. It is time to instead build what the market wants: mixed-income, walkable cities and suburbs that will support the knowledge economy, promote environmental sustainability and create jobs.

This is not an unusual argument. Based on survey data, a number of commentators have suggested that the demand for the sprawling suburbs will shrink and builders and governments should get ahead of this shift. The suburban critiques delivered by academics and others since the post-World War II suburban boom may have finally gained some traction as the young and old seek out community over a big, cheap house. How much of this shift will be “durable and lasting” remains to be seen but it would certainly be helped if “the market” goes in this direction.

Two claims in the final sentence of this op-ed are intriguing. The argument that density = greener neighborhoods is common but the arguments about benefits for the knowledge economy and creating jobs is less common. A little more about each of these:

1. I assume the knowledge economy bit is tied to ideas like “the creative class” from Richard Florida. Younger adults, in particular, want to live in places with some culture and neighborhood life, not on the metropolitan fringe in bland neighborhoods. These places become centers of innovation and culture, attracting more residents and businesses.

2. The jobs claim is a bit less clear to me. If money was spent redeveloping older neighborhoods, this could create jobs – but so could building new balloon-frame homes in new subdivisions. Perhaps the creative cities will create so much innovation that this leads to job growth? Does Richard Florida have data that shows a link between the creative class and job expansion overall?

Overall, this is another voice calling for a new urban strategy where the government and businesses stop subsidizing sprawl and start providing money to promote denser, more New Urbanist type developments that some Americans desire.

The racial disparities in the Chicago blues scene

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An article in a series about the blues in Chicago explores how the white, downtown clubs are thriving while the older, black clubs on the south and west sides are struggling:

Two clubs, two worlds, one music: the blues. That’s how it goes in Chicago, a blues nexus crisply divided into separate, unequal halves. A sharp racial divide cuts through the blues landscape in Chicago, just as it does through so many other facets of life here, diminishing the music on either side of it.

The official Chicago blues scene — a magnet for tourists from around the globe — prospers downtown and on the North Side, catering to a predominantly white audience in a homogenized, unabashedly commercial setting. The unofficial scene — drawing mostly locals and a few foreign cognoscenti — barely flickers on the South and West sides, attracting a mostly black, older crowd to more homespun, decidedly less profitable locales.

Not all the grass-roots places are dying as quickly as the music room at the Water Hole. Some, such as Lee’s Unleaded Blues, on the South Side, attract a small but steady crowd on the three nights it’s open each week.

But how long can this go on? How long can a music that long flourished on the South and West sides — where the blues originators lived their lives and performed their songs — stay viable when most of the neighborhood clubs have expired? How long can a black musical art form remain dynamic when presented to a largely white audience in settings designed to replicate and merchandise the real thing?

Lots of interesting history. Additionally, the conversations about authenticity and tourism are intriguing: why doesn’t Chicago promote its music and culture more and would a major push in this direction water down the product?

It would probably be very interesting to talk to Chicago and suburban residents about blues music. How many of them know its an available option and if they do know this, how many would choose it over other entertainment activities? How many students in the region know that the blues has such a rich history in Chicago? How many colleges teach about American music (blues and jazz and their contributions to the development of rock ‘n’ roll) as opposed to classical music? How much does like for the blues cut across racial lines? Is the blues most acceptable to educated whites (in more sociological terms, cultural omnivores)?

Modern “cities that have vanished”

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Who needs Atlantis and El Dorado if there are interesting tales of modern “cities that have vanished“?

This reminds me that we tend to think that cities and countries will tend to grow in population regardless of what happens. Obviously, this isn’t true in every circumstance. Particularly in situations involving natural disasters or ecological change (the focus of books Collapse by Jared Diamond), cities can become inhabitable. But, this modern lists also highlights that political decisions can lead to vanishing cities.

In more American terms, this could lead to some interesting discussions about whether cities should be contracted or whole areas of development need to disappear. In two hundred years, might people be talking about a mythical Detroit that once was an economic powerhouse?

NYC proposal for an underground park

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Parks are often considered places to find open sky and sunshine but a recent proposal from two architects for an underground park in New York City turns these ideas on their head:

The pair want to turn the rundown, graffiti-covered trolley terminal under Delancey Street into an underground park, reports CBS 2?s Don Dahler.

“It’s part historical rediscovery of an amazing space; it’s part science-fiction. And I think it’s part just sort of a green, magical community renewal,” Ramsey said…

The ambitious duo were inspired by the overwhelming success of the “High Line” project, an elevated old train line turned park. The proposed “low line” park would take up three blocks underneath the Lower East Side, and would feature actual trees and greenery, thanks to technology straight out of science fiction…

The proposed park, which would be free to the public, has gotten a positive response from the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and although the developers aren’t sure yet how much it would cost, they’ve already started raising funds for their subterranean vision of the future.

Sounds pretty interesting to me, particularly in the plans for bringing natural light underground. Some people do have a fascination with being underground – see an earlier posts about a proposed underground skyscaper and an “underground temple” and the tunnels below Paris that have become a big tourist attraction.

If anything, New York City should move forward with this just to promote something that is sure to become a big attraction. The allusion to the “High Line” is telling: these architects want to take another abandoned part of the city and turn it into an attractive public space. I could imagine NYC becoming a unique hub for these sorts of spots, leading the world in redesigning brownfield sites into places not only for tourists but for city dwellers looking for an escape.

The only thing that could really derail this is the cost: who is going to pay for this?

Australian critiques of suburbia

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As part of a larger discussion about the green (or not-so-green) features of high-density living, an Australian academic describes typical Australian critiques of suburbia:

The intellectual misadventure of high-rise urbanism also perpetuates a pernicious bias in Australian environmental debates in which less affluent suburban dwellers are treated as environmentally unsophisticated “bogans” – a stereotype recently denounced by Melbourne University’s David Nichols.

It fits within a long and regrettably continuing Australian tradition of denigrating suburbia whose recent version sneers at “aspirationals” in suburban “McMansions” driving “monster-trucks”. That complaints about suburban consumption lack objective scientific foundation, raises suspicions that the anti-suburban prejudice serves to deflect scrutiny from the more harmful consumption patterns of wealthier – and typically denser – inner urban households.

Those who criticise high-rise urbanism, though, risk being cast as apologists for urban sprawl. Disagreeing with Sydney’s Barangaroo proposal, for example, doesn’t equate to support for the latest fringe growth area splurge.

More single, detached dwellings in low density estates at the suburban fringe also causes harms. These range from the destruction of bio-diverse habitats to the social isolation of new residents from work and services. My own work on household oil vulnerability clearly reveals the future perils from higher fuel prices already planned into the fabric of many of our car-dependent fringe suburban zones.

The argument here is that being green isn’t so easy as simply saying suburbs are bad and cities are good. Unfortunately, the suburbs tend to receive blanket criticism.

It would be interesting to trace the rise of these attitudes in Australia compared to the United States. The US has a long history of these critiques which emerged quickly after World War II, particularly as examples of mass-produced suburbs like the Levittowns became widely known. Out of all of the countries in the world, Australia might have the most similar suburbs to the US (see a recent debate about McMansions in Australia as an example). Did Australian critics of suburbia simply borrow American critiques or did they develop their own independently? Sounds like a very interesting comparative project.