Category Archives: Sociology

Selling the perfect bookshelf to Zoom users

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With all the videoconferencing taking place during COVID-19, the business of selling books to people for their backdrop picked up:

Books by the Foot, a service run by the Maryland-based bookseller Wonder Book, has become a go-to curator of Washington bookshelves, offering precisely what its name sounds like it does. As retro as a shelf of books might seem in an era of flat-panel screens, Books by the Foot has thrived through Democratic and Republican administrations, including that of the book-averse Donald Trump. And this year, the company has seen a twist: When the coronavirus pandemic arrived, Books by the Foot had to adapt to a downturn in office- and hotel-decor business—and an uptick in home-office Zoom backdrops for the talking-head class.

The Wonder Book staff doesn’t pry too much into which objective a particular client is after. If an order were to come in for, say, 12 feet of books about politics, specifically with a progressive or liberal tilt—as one did in August—Wonder Book’s manager, Jessica Bowman, would simply send one of her more politics-savvy staffers to the enormous box labeled “Politically Incorrect” (the name of Books by the Foot’s politics package) to select about 120 books by authors like Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Bob Woodward. The books would then be “staged,” or arranged with the same care a florist might extend to a bouquet of flowers, on a library cart; double-checked by a second staffer; and then shipped off to the residence or commercial space where they would eventually be shelved and displayed (or shelved and taken down to read)…

Located in Frederick, Wonder Book’s 3-acre warehouse full of 4 million books is a short jaunt from the nation‘s capital. While the company ships nationally, it gets a hefty portion of its business from major cities including Washington. And, over the past two decades, Books by the Foot’s books-as-decor designs have become a fixture in the world of American politics, filling local appetite for books as status symbols, objects with the power to silently confer taste, intellect, sophistication or ideology upon the places they’re displayed or the people who own them…

Another force at work, however, was the rise of the well-stocked shelf as a coveted home-office prop. When workplaces went remote and suddenly Zoom allowed co-workers new glimpses into one another’s homes, what New York Times writer Amanda Hess dubbed the “credibility bookcase” became the hot-ticket item. (“For a certain class of people, the home must function not only as a pandemic hunkering nest but also be optimized for presentation to the outside world,” she wrote.) And while Roberts makes an effort not to infer too much about his clients or ask too many questions about their intent, he did notice a very telling micro-trend in orders he was getting from all across the United States.

A lot could be said about books as status symbols. In certain circles, books imply a certain level of education, curiosity, and acquisition. Books and refinement and culture go together. Just having the books present is meant to impress in the same way a flashy car might be impressive driving down the street or the same way a McMansion looks to impress people passing by with its facade.

Think about the supply side of these books. There are companies that can acquire many many titles for relatively cheap. They can store all of these books until someone is willing to pay a decent price to put those books in their spaces. These books with all of their accumulated knowledge and status are simply another commodity that can be moved around to boost someone’s status when needed. And when COVID-19 ends or video conferencing slows down? The books can be discarded until needed again as a status symbol.

An interesting contrast would be between certain commentators and networks. I have seen at least a few bookshelves behind sports commentators. They often have a few books but also more prominently features sports equipment or trophies. The bookshelf is not just about education; the books are mixed with symbols of achievement or fandom.

Without asking how the books in the backdrop were acquired, viewers or other participants might ask about favorite books or how many books have been read. I have been asked this multiple times in the last few years, whether with bookshelves in my office and at home. It could be interpreted as an invasive question – taken as a challenge about whether the books are just there as status symbols – or provide an opening for the person to explain more about their reading (and the connected education and status) and/or share about books that really matter to them.

One expert says roughly 25% of shopping malls will survive

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Shopping malls were in trouble before COVID-19 but add that in and experts suggest many malls will need to shut down or transform:

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Of the roughly 1,100 malls left in America, Kniffen believes only 278 are viable in the post pandemic world where online shopping will reign even more supreme. These would be the best of the best malls — or “A” malls as experts call them — that are in densely populated areas and target higher income shoppers…

The pandemic has just sped up the day of reckoning for vast stretches of zombie retail real estate. America had a glut of retail space before COVID-19, with twice as many square feet dedicated to shopping as any other country in the world. Retail is oversupplied by six square feet per capita compared to Europe, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers for U.S. merchants, a New York-based retail trade group…

In the U.S., 20%-25% of retail spaces will become vacant in the next few years due to the pandemic, Crowe estimates. Half of the malls in America will disappear over time, said Najla Kayyem, senior vice president of marketing for Pacific Retail Capital Partners, a California-based retail investment and management company…

In the end, the concept of a community gathering place known as a mall still makes sense, experts believe. But the days of malls simply being stuffed with pizza places, apparel stores and various kiosks are over. COVID-19 hasn’t killed the mall, rather accelerated its rebirth into something far more useful for the modern era.

Such changes could have wide-ranging effects:

  1. This could produce nostalgia for the era of thriving shopping malls. Imagine a lot more television shows and movies portraying life between the 1960s and 2000s featuring the shopping mall as something from a bygone era.
  2. If many malls need to close, what happens to all the debt involving these properties? Someone will be on the hook for this though perhaps some of the problems could be averted if the pace of closings is slower and some malls are reinvented.
  3. Where will people go to gather? While shopping malls were never public spaces, they did provide space for people to be around each other.
  4. This will likely affect different communities in different ways. Shopping malls in wealthier areas will likely have a better chance of survival – continuing to bring in revenue for communities – while malls in other communities will close and communities will struggle to fill the land.
  5. As is noted in the article, this presents a lot of redevelopment opportunities. Will there be a common approach across shopping malls that everyone tries to copy or will this look different from mall to mall?

Continuing suburban life next to a Karen

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The suburbs often operate under a code of moral minimalism. But, when open conflict does occur, it involves race, and it goes viral, how do suburban residents move on? A case from Montclair, New Jersey involving a reaction to the construction of a small patio:

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“It shouldn’t have started any conversation,” Norrinda replied. The Hayats spent most of the summer hoping the conversation would die out, if she was being honest. In the end, they didn’t write back to the people vowing to curse Schulz on their behalf; they didn’t take that discount at the restaurant. They chose not to cooperate with the prosecutor. “Personally, I think if [Schulz] had been prosecuted and found guilty in any way, even just paid a $500 fine, I think this would have gone away for her a lot faster,” suggested a Montclair resident who had tracked the situation…

Fareed posed a question in one of our talks: “White supremacy that’s alive and well and a part of all of us,” he said, “and the question is, How much of it are we going to reject? And how much are we willing to sacrifice ourselves in order to continue to move forward?” He asked it from an intellectual distance, as if he were delivering closing arguments or posing a question to his class. But at close range, the question simply is, Would my neighbors step up to defend me again? And will they continue to want to have this conversation about race now that the immediate drama is over?…

As for Schulz, Norrinda thought she once saw her in the grocery store. Fareed told their boys they needed to be careful with the balls in the yard. He doesn’t want things to escalate. They finally have peace. Everyone wants it to stay that way.

But sometimes, well, often, when he’s standing in his house, looking out over the fence, he sees Schulz in her yard, or even just the empty yard, and it hits him. Just for an instant. Maybe it was silly or naïve or too optimistic, but there was an expectation that in Montclair he could be aware of the reality of being Black in America without having to confront it or acknowledge it in his daily life. But now, “we do actively acknowledge it,” he said. “It’s just a reminder of that reality.”

The American suburbs are built in part on a legacy of exclusion. Yet, racial incidents in wealthier suburbs might be rare and so surprising when they do occur (see other examples) for multiple reasons:

  1. There are relatively few interactions between wealthier suburbanites and Blacks and Latino neighbors. If wealthier communities have policies, housing, and character that discourage certain people from living in the community, there are fewer opportunities for being neighbors or regular interaction.
  2. As I noted in the introduction to the post, moral minimalism suggests open conflict in suburbs is undesirable. Instead, conflict is mediated through other actors or institutions such as schools.
  3. As the article notes, wealthier communities would often say they open to diversity. But, given #1 and #2 above, this does not mean they are really welcoming of residents different than the majority.

Even without the viral incident/open conflict, this does not mean suburbs are open to all. Technically, yes. In practice, not really.

Peytonville, the suburbs, and football

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With the return to the airwaves of Peytonville ads from Nationwide, I noticed something in the commercials I had not thought about before (see Peytonville Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5): the possible connection between suburbs and football. Notwithstanding a possible caveat that Nationwide might want to appeal to suburban customers, here are some ways the suburbs, football, and Peyton Manning might go together.

First, the majority of Americans live in suburbs. It is a slight majority but the percent in suburbs outnumbers the percent living in cities by a little more than 20%. Where is football played the most? Which communities have the most interest in football? The romanticized image of a football community might be a small town in the Heartland obsessing about football on fall Friday nights but much of the activity might be happening on suburban fields and on suburban television screens.

Second, the Peytonville commercials at least hint at college and pro football as well as suburban and urban life. For both college and pro football, where are the majority of fans? For college, perhaps the thousands of alumni for major football schools have largely settled in suburbs. With a college degree, people have the opportunity for higher-paying jobs and put those resources into suburban single-family homes. For pro teams, the majority of residents in a metropolitan region are suburbanites. Take Chicago as an example: there may be a lot of Bears fans in Chicago but there are over 6 million more residents in the suburbs than the city.

Third, the social and cultural life of the suburbs might lend itself to football (and other sports as well). With games on the weekend, many suburbanites are free to sit at home and watch or attend games. For kids, families have the resources to enroll them in activities and there are plenty of organizations ready to funnel kids into high school and college football.

Perhaps this is off yet certain sports are associated with certain places. Is football truly a suburban sport or does it belong to all of American places?

How garbage is moved out of suburbs

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With suburban residents expressing concerns about a possible waste transfer station, this Daily Herald article explains how suburban garbage reaches its final destination:

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The waste transfer station would allow filled garbage trucks to temporarily dump refuse on the ground. The refuse would be hauled away from the site by semi trucks to landfills, meaning no garbage would be stored at the West Chicago facility.

Suburbanites do not want to think about or smell garbage around their single-family homes. They want to be able to put out the cans, have it picked up quickly with little fuss or noise, and then taken away. All at minimal cost and inconvenience to their life.

Yet, Americans generate a lot of garbage. Packaging. Wasted food and food scraps. Plastic everything. Old clothes. Accumulated junk. The weekly garbage pick-up has to happen and the garbage has to go somewhere. Just keep it away from the nice residential neighborhoods.

Hence, the need for a waste transfer station. After making their daily rounds, the trucks need a central point where they can put their garbage. Landfills would not be acceptable near many suburban communities. The transfer station is just that: the garbage is transferred to another truck to take to the far-off landfill.

Of course, it may not always have been like this. The landfills used to be closer before the suburbs kept growing further and further out from the city. Not too far from the proposed waste transfer facility suburbanites can find old landfills now serving as parks.

Presumably, the current landfills are sufficiently far from suburban residences that the suburbanites have little knowledge of where the garbage goes and fewer people live near the new sites. All the suburbanites know is that the garbage is gone – until the next trash day.

Videogames under the tree to sizable global industry

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The flood of new gaming consoles and new game titles to Americans for the Christmas season hints at the size of the video gaming industry:

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Global videogame revenue is expected to surge 20% to $179.7 billion in 2020, according to IDC data, making the videogame industry a bigger moneymaker than the global movie and sports industries combined. The global film industry reached $100 billion in revenue for the first time in 2019, according to the Motion Picture Association, while PwC estimated global sports would bring in more than $75 billion in 2020…

The videogame industry has boomed in recent years because of the variety of ways to play games. Gone are the days when all one had to track were console sales and games sold for their respective consoles and PCs. With the rise of digital-copy game sales, mobile games, in-app purchase freemium games, cross-platform games that aren’t limited to a specific console, streaming game services like Microsoft’s Game Pass, games-as-a-subscription models, and online distribution services like Steam, along with varying levels of transparency, anyone wanting to make apples-to-apples comparisons encounters an unwieldy fruit basket.

While console sales will get a boost from new versions, that’s not the biggest chunk of the industry, nor the fastest-growing. The biggest gain is expected to come from mobile gaming, with China playing a big role in smartphone and tablet gaming revenue, Ward said. Excluding in-game ad revenue, world-wide mobile gaming revenues are expected to surge 24% from a year ago, to $87.7 billion.

The gamification of the world is well underway.

Seriously, it is interesting to compare the status of videogames compared to the two industries mentioned in the article: movies and sports. These are established industries with prominent actors around the world. They have been established for decades. Videogames, on the other hand, are more recent – only several decades in the hands of the global public – and still have negative connotations for many (too violent, a waste of time, played only by a certain segment of the population, etc.). Since videogames are big business and part of their spread is due to the smartphone, which many have, will videogames have a different status in a few years?

US with lowest population growth over a decade in its history

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New Census estimates suggest sluggish population growth in the United States between 2010 and 2019:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/12/22/the-2010s-saw-the-lowest-population-growth-in-u-s-history-new-census-estimates-show/

The new statistics permit an estimate of the U.S. population on Census Day (April 1, 2020) to have been 329.2 million people. If that turns out to be the case, the decade growth rate between 2010 and 2020 will be the lowest decade growth in U.S. history.

Figure 2 displays population growth rates for 10-year periods between the first U.S. census (taken in 1790) and projected results for the 2020 census (downloadable Table A). The projected growth of 6.6% between 2010 and 2020 is lower than in any previous decade, including the Great Depression years of the 1930s, when the nation registered 7.3% growth. It is roughly half the growth rate of the 1990s, a time of rising immigration and millennial-generation births.

The 2010s decade was one of fewer births, more deaths, and uneven immigration (downloadable Table C). Although immigration may have become unusually low due to recent federal restrictions that led to a decline in the noncitizen foreign-born population, low natural increase levels—fewer births, more deaths—will likely continue regardless of federal policy, as a result of the aging of the population. Some of this change can be attributed to lower fertility rates and the aging into adulthood of the last of the millennial population. However, census projections show older populations—especially those over age 65—will continue to display far higher rates of growth than youth.

In the United States, population growth is good. It implies status, expansion, success, new markets, getting bigger, being an attractive place for people from elsewhere to come. And without immigration, what would the population change be?

At this particular moment, I would guess that relatively few people are aware of such data. The Census Bureau continues to pump out information about communities and the country. The average resident may not need to be following such information. Is daily life significantly changed if the decade growth rate was 5% versus 8%? What are the effects of these different numbers on social life, politics, and the economy? Yet, in the broader view, these numbers might be more interesting.

I could imagine multiple ways leaders and the American public might take this data about growth. Is there an appetite for more population growth or an underlying assumption that America – and everything about it – will continue to grow at much higher rates? Is this slowdown in population growth taken as a sign of decline or indicative of multiple social issues? Perhaps other concerns are far more important today that basic demographics. And I suppose other might note that higher percentage population growth requires a lot more people than it did historically when the United States was much smaller.

The American communities paying people to move there

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At least a few American communities are offering financial incentives to try to entice new residents:

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Some cities and regions in America’s heartland are offering this sum — and more. They’re seeking to bring energy and vitality to their towns by attracting dynamic workers. With legions of people working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, these programs are getting a lot of attention as people in congested cities seek more space and affordable housing.

Northwest Arkansas launched its program this year, in the middle of the pandemic. Other cities in the nation’s heartland have similar incentives: Topeka, Kan.; North Platte, Neb.; Hamilton, Ohio; and Newton, Iowa…

The city had its sights set on the growing number of “laptop workers” who can do their jobs from home — or at the local co-working space or coffee shop — when it launched the program two years ago. Since 2018, it has welcomed nearly 500 new residents, according to Stewart…

The urbanist Richard Florida has worked with both Tulsa and northwest Arkansas on their efforts to attract remote workers. And he thinks these types of campaigns will benefit small cities in the heartland. But only if they’re attractive places to live. Cash incentives won’t do the trick on their own.

This story profiles communities largely in the center of the country that want to attract residents but likely have limited population growth (perhaps due to low birth rates, low numbers of immigrants, and some younger residents moving away) and are not in the public eye. Without long-term population growth, many communities may feel they are stuck. Growth is good – and population stagnation or less is unspeakable.

But, as the story hints, these incentives have not exactly led to a flood of people moving to these locations. For how many people would a payment like this make all the difference? On one hand, people often do desire good jobs – higher pay, that provide opportunities for advancement, in exciting fields, etc. – and some may be able to go where those jobs are. On the other hand, people live where they do for more than just new opportunities or a financial incentive: they may have social and personal ties to a community, be coming from an area that has lots of options, and moving can be costly. Sometimes, people talk as if all people need is a good job or money to move somewhere new. It does not exactly work this way.

I also wonder how these incentives line up with different pressures the people being targeted by communities face. The article said communities are interested in remote workers. I also imagine these communities – and many others – are interested in young professionals. What do these workers want? A financial incentive, a cheaper cost of living, and a slower pace of life in a smaller community might be attractive. But, so might urban neighborhoods in exciting cities with lots of cultural opportunities and plenty of tech jobs and corporate entities nearby. Or, perhaps a walkable suburb is attractive with jobs and culture available via a reasonable commute. In other words, these remote workers could go anywhere they can afford. We are not at the level yet of communities acting like they do to attract major companies with tax breaks but I would not put it outside the realm of possibility in the future.

Major highway projects continue in the year of COVID-19

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The old Chicago joke goes that there are two seasons each year: winter and construction. During COVID-19, road construction goes on even with less driving, limited budgets, and the potential for sickness to spread among workers. First, an editorial update from the Chicago Tribune on the long-lasting Jane Byrne Interchange work in Chicago:

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The arrival of 2021 means we’ll soon be in Construction Season Nine of a notorious project that the Illinois Department of Transportation initially said would take four and a half years to complete.

We refer of course to the glacially paced reconstruction of The Jane Byrne Construction Museum. We use that respectful moniker — always capitalize The, like The Ohio State University — for what old-time Chicagoans used to call the Jane Byrne Interchange…

Whatever the reason, drivers who didn’t abandon the interchange years ago have, in recent days, found the final four rebuilt ramps open. Museum work has shifted to the mainline Dan Ryan and Kennedy expressways — although we trust that, somewhere, IDOT also is building a museum wing to house its excuses for the years of delays and cost overruns: poor soil conditions, unhelpful rules from Chicago’s City Hall, mistakes by engineering firms, utility rerouting, the diversion of resources to emergency repair projects elsewhere, and on and on…

Surely you aren’t surprised that the cost has grown by some 48%, from $535.5 million to $794 million. Most museums recruit donors to cover their big projects. The Jane Byrne Construction Museum instead gets public dollars. Which has us wondering how many gazillion gallons of amply taxed gasoline burned into the atmosphere as all those mummified motorists sat and sat.

Second, a group puts together an annual list of road construction boondoggles. About this year’s selections:

Highways often get greenlit for expensive work because they require engineering upgrades or significant maintenance. The projects in PIRG’s least-wanted list go beyond those basic needs. Like the group’s previous boondoggle roundups, this one calls attention to taxpayer-funded projects set to consume environmental resources, cut through existing communities, and lock in decades of new carbon emissions, for what PIRG argues is little payoff in congestion relief or economic growth. The 2020 report arrives as the ongoing pandemic clobbers state and local budgets and dramatically reshuffles travel patterns.

The largest on the list is Florida’s M-CORES project, a $10 billion, 330-mile plan to build three toll roads through rural southwest and central Florida. Dubbed the “Billionaire Boulevard” by critics who characterize the project as a handout to developers, a state task force recently found a lack of “specific need” for any of the roads, which would run through environmentally sensitive areas.

There’s also the Cincinnati Eastern Bypass, a $7.3 billion highway set to loop around the eastern side of Cincinnati. Originally proposed by a local homebuilder as a replacement (and then some) for the aging bridge that leads into downtown Cincinnati, the 75-mile, four-lane bypass is designed to divert trucks passing through the region on Interstate 75, easing congestion for local drivers, boosters claim. But the report’s authors state that the highway is projected to add thousands of new vehicle trips per day, encouraging sprawl and contradicting Cincinnati’s goals to increase “population density and transit-oriented development” and decrease fossil fuel use by 20%.

No highway policy critique would be complete without a contribution from Texas. The $1.36 billion Loop 1604 Expansion in San Antonio would add four to six additional lanes on 23 miles of an existing four-lane highway, as well as new frontage roads and a five-tier interchange with Interstate 10. Texas DOT says that the new lanes are needed to keep up with population growth, but transportation planners say that the principle of induced demand would cancel out the benefits while adding pollution. The PIRG report puts it this way: “Additional capacity causes more driving and congestion.”

These summaries of major highway projects provide good reminders of several features of such undertakings:

  1. They often require years of planning and years to complete. From start to finish, this could cover a decade-plus. They take a lot of effort to get going across numerous agencies, governments, and actors and have their own kind of inertia as they move toward completion.
  2. These projects are often intended to make driving easier. Adding lanes and capacity can also attract more drivers. In a country devoted to driving, these contradictory ideas can go together. And the roads and systems for driving keep expanding and evolving.
  3. The costs are huge and the efforts required massive. Yet, the average driver may think about nothing but the congestion caused by the construction.
  4. When completed, such roads (and other significant infrastructure projects) can be impressive in their scale. (Whether this is the best use of the land or moving people around leads to other arguments.)

While these articles do not address this, are there significant infrastructure projects that drivers and residents would be pleasantly surprised to find that had been completed during COVID-19?

Political pollsters sitting out the holidays in Georgia

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The Senate run-offs in Georgia are attracting a lot of attention but pollsters are largely not participating:

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After a disastrous November election for the polling industry, when the polls again underestimated President Donald Trump (who lost regardless) as well as GOP candidates down the ballot, pollsters are mostly sidelined in the run-up to the Jan. 5 Georgia elections, which most observers regard as toss-ups.

The public polls that drove so much of the news coverage ahead of November — and generated tremendous distrust afterward — have all but disappeared in Georgia, and they are set to stay that way:Some of the most prolific, best-regarded media and academic pollsters told POLITICO they have no plans to conduct pre-election surveys in Georgia…

Part of the reason public pollsters are staying away from Georgia is the awkward timing of the races. With the elections being held on Jan. 5, the final two weeks of the race are coinciding with the Christmas and New Year’s holidays — typically a time when pollsters refrain from calling Americans on the phone. The voters who would answer a telephone poll or participate in an internet survey over the holidays might be meaningfully different from those who wouldn’t, which would skew the results.

Most major public pollsters are choosing not to field surveys over that time period, but the four campaigns don’t have a choice in the matter. The closing stretch of the races represents their final chances to shift resources or make changes to the television and digital advertising — decisions that will be made using multiple data streams, including polling.

Trying to reach members of the public via telephone or text or web is already hard enough. Response rates have been dropping for years. New devices have new norms. Figuring out who will actually vote is not easy.

Imagine trying to get a good sample during the holidays. On one hand, more people are likely not working and at home. On the other hand, this is time for family, getting away from the daily grind, relaxing. How many people will want to respond to talk about politics? Add in the post-national election letdown, COVID-19 worries, and this could be an extra challenging task during December 2020.

I know answering the door is not in vogue, even before COVID-19, but I wonder how well a door-to-door strategy for polling in Georgia might work. Such an approach would require more work but the races are limited to Georgia. Given that people are likely to be at home, this could reach some people.