Category Archives: Sociology

The small scale of American homebuilding prior to World War Two

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A new book on the work of the Levitts – Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia – includes this section about developers building at scale prior to the Second World War:

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The company had averaged more than two hundred houses per year at a time when just six firms nationwide were constructing as many as twenty-five homes annually in Levitt’s price range. Eighty-six percent of pre-war builders put up two or fewer houses a year, and 60 percent built only one. In 1947, the editors of Fortune magazine called homebuilding “The Industry Capitalism Forgot.” (17)

This is an important feature of postwar suburbia: the construction of single-family homes happened at a scale unknown in previous eras. Before then, many builders built few homes. It took time to put together a block. Neighborhoods and communities grew more slowly. After the war, subdivisions and communities with thousands of residents could emerge within a few years. Fields or woods could be turned into flat land for building quickly. Housing frames went up, the trades came through and did their parts, people moved into completed homes.

The scale and efficiency is hard to compare between these two eras. It is like two completely different processes. The Levitt company argued the new approach allowed them to get needed homes into the hands of people, particularly veterans (but not Black residents), at an affordable price point. Critics said the process led to conformity and a lack of true community. Either way, new communities quickly developed and the processes were adopted by other builders and developers.

The American flag…everywhere

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On July 4th, a day of American flags and celebrations, I was looking through old pictures in which the American flag was present. And it is all over the place – see examples below – including public spaces, sports stadiums, schools, churches, parks, clothing, train stations, dams, and more.

A vast majority of Americans within range for a 3 hour or less delivery from Walmart

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If Walmart’s rise in the decades at the end of the twentieth century included logistical prowess, their CEO recently discussed how many Americans can get quick deliveries:

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CEO Douglas McMillon announced that Walmart is close to reaching 95% of the U.S. population with three-hour or less delivery, with a 91% increase year-over-year in deliveries under three hours in Q1.

This is remarkable to consider: 95% of over 340 million Americans can be reached by a Walmart delivery within 3 hours. Need something from Walmart? It can get to the vast majority of Americans within 180 minutes.

What is required to make this happen? Numerous locations, including warehouses and stores. Lots of employees and equipment. A strong inventory system. And more.

With this level of delivery possible, how does this change the calculus regarding all of the Walmart stores? Will fewer people visit them in the future because they prefer delivery? Will more of these stores be about deliveries rather than in-person shopping? Could Walmart significantly reduce its store footprint while continuing to extend its reach?

Upper middle class defined in part by living “in a more expensive neighborhood

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How do you know if you are part of the upper middle class? A list of 8 signs includes this:

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You Live in a More Expensive Neighborhood

Another way to see if you’ve made it to the upper-middle class is to simply look at where you live. According to Rose, if “your home is in a ZIP code where folks want to live,” that’s a good sign that you’re there.

Keep in mind that it’s not all about appearances. People in the middle class might try to keep up with the Joneses — that is, they might compare themselves with their neighbors and try to match their level of wealth or status.

Those in the upper-middle class, however, do not. They don’t need to worry about whether their house is big enough or their car is luxurious enough. They can afford many of these high-end things without stretching their financial means.

Those in the upper middle class have the financial resources to live in places with higher housing prices. This means the houses may be bigger, the local amenities more plentiful, and the population more exclusive.

While the description above hints at this, why not just say that the upper middle class can afford a house that costs more? And how “expensive” is this neighborhood? In a typical metropolitan area, what percent of neighborhoods or communities are upper middle class, beyond the reach of the middle class or those around the median income and below the super wealthy enclaves?

How often then do those in the upper middle class use their community or neighborhood to signal their status? Just as a vehicle driven or a college attended or clothes worn or hobbies engaged in might signal class status, how much do they mention their community to highlight their status? If they say they live in “X,” is such a place widely known as being upper middle class?

NIMBY has come to sprawling Sun Belt metropolitan areas

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Recent research looks at why housing costs have increased so much around numerous Sun Belt cities:

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Although the Sun Belt continues to build far more housing than the coasts in absolute terms, Glaeser and Gyourko find that the rate of building in most Sun Belt cities has fallen by more than half over the past 25 years, in some cases by much more, even as demand to live in those places has surged. “When it comes to new housing production, the Sun Belt cities today are basically at the point that the big coastal cities were 20 years ago,” Gyourko told me. This explains why home prices in the Sun Belt, though still low compared with those in San Francisco and New York, have risen so sharply since the mid-2010s—a trend that accelerated during the pandemic, as the rise of remote work led to a large migration out of high-cost cities…

The Sun Belt, in short, is subject to the same antidevelopment forces as the coasts; it just took longer to trigger them. Cities in the South and Southwest have portrayed themselves as business-friendly, pro-growth metros. In reality, their land-use laws aren’t so different from those in blue-state cities. According to a 2018 research paper, co-authored by Gyourko, that surveyed 44 major U.S. metro areas, land-use regulations in Miami and Phoenix both ranked in the top 10 most restrictive (just behind Washington, D.C., and L.A. and ahead of Boston), and Dallas and Nashville were in the top 25. Because the survey is based on responses from local governments, it might understate just how bad zoning in the Sun Belt is. “When I first opened up the zoning code for Atlanta, I almost spit out my coffee,” Alex Armlovich, a senior housing-policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank, told me. “It’s almost identical to L.A. in the 1990s.”

These restrictive rules weren’t a problem back when Sun Belt cities could expand by building new single-family homes at their exurban fringes indefinitely. That kind of development is less likely to be subject to zoning laws; even when it is, obtaining exceptions to those laws is relatively easy because neighbors who might oppose new development don’t exist yet. Recently, however, many Sun Belt cities have begun hitting limits to their outward sprawl, either because they’ve run into natural obstacles (such as the Everglades in Miami and tribal lands near Phoenix) or because they’ve already expanded to the edge of reasonable commute distances (as appears to be the case in Atlanta and Dallas). To keep growing, these cities will have to find ways to increase the density of their existing urban cores and suburbs. That is a much more difficult proposition. “This is exactly what happened in many coastal cities in the 1980s and ’90s,” Armlovich told me. “Once you run out of room to sprawl, suddenly your zoning code starts becoming a real limitation.”

Glaeser and Gyourko go one step further. They hypothesize that as Sun Belt cities have become more affluent and highly educated, their residents have become more willing and able to use existing laws and regulations to block new development. They point to two main pieces of evidence. First, for a given city, the slowdown in new housing development strongly correlates with a rising share of college-educated residents. Second, within cities, the neighborhoods where housing production has slowed the most are lower-density, affluent suburbs populated with relatively well-off, highly educated professionals. In other words, anti-growth NIMBYism might be a perverse but natural consequence of growth: As demand to live in a place increases, it attracts the kind of people who are more likely to oppose new development, and who have the time and resources to do so. “We used to think that people in Miami, Dallas, Phoenix behaved differently than people in Boston and San Francisco,” Gyourko told me. “That clearly isn’t the case.”

This is an interesting American phenomenon: people benefit from moving to new development that they can afford and then later they resist efforts to offer some of the same opportunities to others who might want to live in the same places but happened to get there later. The residents would surely talk about changes more development would bring. Countless examples of arguments about changes in character, more traffic, more noise, how those who live in apartments do not contribute to the community in the same way. These residents found suburbia just as they loved it and they often do not want it to change. I have seen this across my research and unless there is a major movement in the other direction, it seems like it is going to continue.

This puts people today in difficult situations. Can sprawl keep going and going beyond what already exists? How many people have the resources to live in places with higher housing costs? Will new places become the Sun Belt of today? How these questions are answered will affect American metropolitan regions in the decades to come.

When mass transit is or is not for suburbanites

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As Illinois politicians debate what to do about multiple mass transit agencies in the Chicago region, a group of suburban mayors weighed in:

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The Suburban Mayors Coalition for Fair Transit criticizes new taxes proposed in a bill approved by the state Senate to avert a $771 million shortfall facing Metra, Pace and the CTA in 2026.

A $1.50 delivery fee on online orders, excluding groceries and medications, dubbed the “pizza tax” is “regressive, (and) disproportionately burdens low- to moderate-income families,” officials said.

Mayors also panned expanding a real estate transfer tax from Chicago to the suburbs, and allowing the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority to acquire or develop land near train stations for projects such as condos with retail space.

That concept would strip away power over zoning and parking from municipalities and give it to an nonelected board, they argued.

Three major issues seem to be at stake for suburban officials:

  1. Taxes and funding. Will more funds be raised from the suburbs? Will that tax money then be sent in ways that benefit suburban communities and residents?
  2. A loss of local control. More taxes affecting local residents imposed by other government bodies. Not having complete control over local land.
  3. Representation on the board that would oversee a new regional transit agency. How many suburban officials should be there? Should it be evenly balanced between suburban and Chicago interests?

All of this gets at a major reason suburbanites like the suburbs: they like local control. They generally do not like the big city dictating what will happen. They want what they think is best for their suburban community.

Perhaps this is elsewhere in the letter but it strikes me what is missing is a sense of how regional mass transit could be used by suburbanites and improve suburban life. Take the issue of suburban traffic: single communities cannot often address these issues as suburban residents commute from suburb to suburb. Could mass transit help? Or could mass transit help provide suburban residents access to more jobs and housing opportunities?

If the funding and representation issues were worked out, would a majority of suburban communities then want a regional mass transit agency? How many would be interested in more mass transit present in their communities?

Sanctifying Suburbia reviewed in Christianity Today

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My book published in early 2025, Sanctifying Suburbia: How the Suburbs Became the Promised Land for American Evangelicals, was just reviewed in Christianity Today. I found two quotes from the review helpful for summing up the argument of the book and its implications. From earlier in the review:

In light of all this, it would be surprising if suburban sensibilities have not shaped evangelical faith and practice. As Miller argues, “It is not enough for researchers and pundits to consider the theological positions and political behavior of evangelicals; accounting for their spatial context is part and parcel to understanding the whole package of white evangelicalism” (italics mine).

And from a later part of the review:

Miller’s point is that the evangelical cultural toolkit appears to have been calibrated by patterns, experiences, and commitments common to suburban life. He’s careful to avoid claiming a direct, causal relationship between suburban norms and prevailing traits among evangelicals. But he makes a compelling case for drawing arrows of motive, means, and opportunity.

It should be easy enough to accept a narrower version of Miller’s thesis that suburban evangelicalism is “formed in regular moments in daily life and in interaction with the social and physical realities of the American suburbs.” It will be harder for many to accept that American evangelicalism in general is essentially suburban in its values and sensibilities…

In the aggregate, as Miller sees it, these institutions take a fundamentally suburban vision and prescribe it as an objectively Christian vision that can guide evangelical faith and practice in any environment. This doesn’t feel like a stretch to me. My own ministry experience and professional work has primarily involved churches in rural and urban environments. Pastors in both places frequently lament that the resources they rely on are clearly tuned to social realities outside their own. It’s fair to say, at minimum, that suburban sensibilities dominate American ministry materials.

Thanks to the magazine and Brandon O’Brien for reviewing the book.

Changing racial and ethnic diversity in the Chicago region

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New estimates from the Census Bureau show changing populations in the Chicago region:

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Metro Chicago’s Asian population is growing faster than any other racial or ethnic group, Census Bureau estimates show. Of the estimated 9.4 million people in the Chicago metropolitan statistical area in 2024, roughly 764,000 are Asian — almost 80,000 more than in 2020, data show. During that span, the Hispanic population also grew from about 2.22 million to more than 2.32 million. Meanwhile, the metro area’s white and Black populations both declined. White population fell from 4.83 million to 4.64 million, and the Black population declined from about 1.56 million to 1.50 million.

If these patterns continue, what significant changes could come to communities and the region? How does this affect residential segregation in the region (thinking back to the high levels of white-Black segregation documented in American Apartheid)? Or political representation and policies? Or day to day lives of residents? Looking at the regional level could obscure important differences at other levels.

I am also reminded how the city of Chicago has had roughly similar sized populations of white, Black, and Latino residents in recent years. Do the patterns above suggest that the city might be headed toward four groups being roughly evenly sized at some point?

Who will lead the way to address the need for hundreds of thousands of housing units in Illinois?

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A new study suggests Illinois needs a lot of new housing:

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Illinois has a shortage of about 142,000 housing units and must build 227,000 in the next five years to keep pace with demand, a number that would require recent annual production rates to double, according to a new economic study.

The joint study published Tuesday by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that although the rental and for-sale housing markets in Chicago and Illinois as a whole remain more affordable than many coastal cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, and some other states, Illinois still faces a severe housing shortage that is escalating affordability challenges.

National housing shortage estimates are wide-ranging, with Freddie Mac citing 3.7 million and the National Association of Realtors reporting 5.5 million.

And the recommendations for how to do this?

The authors suggest a variety of solutions, some of which Chicago officials and other state leaders are already working on, including easing zoning restrictions, quickening permitting processes, offering tax incentives to convert commercial buildings to residential units and increasing surtaxes on short-term rentals such as Airbnb. Aldermen recently took a step toward giving themselves the power to ban Airbnb and other short-term rentals from opening in their wards, a move that could potentially lead to an increase in housing supply.

This is not a new issue. And even drastic changes right now would not lead to 227,000 new units in five years. This is a long-term project that needs to be addressed.

One thought: this is an opportunity for Illinois to do something that could help lead the way in the United States. Here is why. It is a blue state and Chicago and its region dominates politics and perceptions. (This is not to ignore those living outside the Chicago area; there are just fewer of them.) It has more affordable costs compared to numerous other important cities. Chicago is still an important, world-class city. If Illinois could make a serious dent in providing affordable housing across the state, it could become a model for numerous other places. What works in Illinois might not work at all in New York City or Seattle or San Francisco or other super-heated housing markets. But it might work in Cleveland, Nashville, Denver, and other American metropolitan regions. Figure it out and Illinois and lots of areas could benefit.

For numerous reasons, it seems like politicians and business leaders in American cities and regions are hesitant to truly tackle affordable housing. But those who get out ahead of it can (1) help people living there and (2) provide models and tools for others to learn from and use.

The allure – and disappointment? – of suburbs like Penn Hills

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In August Wilson’s 1979 play Jitney, one of the Pittsburgh characters is working to buy a suburban home for his young family. In the opening scene of Act 2, Youngblood describes where the home is:

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I asked Peaches if she would go with me to look at houses, cause I wanted to surprise you. I wanted o pull a truck up to the house and say, “Come on, baby, we moving.” And drive on out to Penn HIlls and pull that truck up in front of one of them houses and say, “This is yours. This is your house baby.”

And a little later in the same conversation:

Wait till you see it. It’s real nice. It’s all on one floor . . . it’s got a basement . . . like a little den. we can put the TV down there. I told myself Rena’s gonna like this. Wait till she see I bought her a house.

In this conversation, the home in Penn Hills is part of achieving the American Dream: a pleasant place where a family can settle in and children can achieve.

Later in the same scene, the older character Becker hears of the potential move and approves of the community:

Good! They got some nice houses out there. That’s a smart move, Youngblood. I’m glad to see you do it. Ain’t nothing like like owning some property.

The vision of a suburban property contrasts sharply with the fate of the jitney station as the city will soon board up the property with some vague notion of redeveloping the land in the future.

But there are also hints that Penn Hills might not be a paradise. In the final scene (Act Two Scene 4), another character comments on Penn Hills:

They ain’t as nice as the houses in Monroeville. Most people don’t even buy houses in Penn Hills no more. They go out to Monroeville.

Reading this reminded me of Benjamin Herold’s book Disillusioned that includes Penn Hills as part of the argument of how the American Dream of suburban living did not extend beyond white families. Penn Hills grew quickly after World War Two, increasing from over 15,000 residents in 1940 to over 62,000 in 1970. But since then white families left (as development extended to Monroeville and other places), the population declined, and Black families who moved to the community found a suburb struggling to maintain its tax base and fund local infrastructure.

Penn Hills may have looked in the early 1970s to hold out hope regarding a successful suburban life but Herold suggests it cannot now promise the suburban American Dream. By the late 1970s, it was changing. The struggles of and in Pittsburgh neighborhoods that Wilson describes extended out to Penn Hills. What was a place of hope turned out to be different than depicted.