Category Archives: Sociology

Sociologist Herbert Gans and The Levittowners

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Earlier this week, sociologist Herbert Gans passed away. From what I have read of postwar sociology studies of the growing American suburbs, I would place his 1967 book The Levittowners at the top of the list:

Similarly, Dr. Gans challenged conventional wisdom about postwar suburbia in “The Levittowners” (1967). For more than two years, he lived in Levittown, N.J., later renamed Willingboro, and concluded that the residents had strong social, economic and political commitments, and that notions of suburbanites as conformist, anxious, bored, cultureless, insecure social climbers were wrong.

Here is my summary of the book in the Oxford Bibliographies entry on “Suburbanism”:

Gans moved into one of Levittowns, located in New Jersey, in its infancy and lived there for several years. The book challenged several critiques of mass produced suburbs including homogeneity, blandness, and that suburbs damaged families and individuals. However, Gans suggested Levittown had its own problems including limited activities and space for teenagers, ongoing conflict, difficulty engaging with pluralism, and unresolved tensions between private home life and community structures.

For example, here is what Gans concluded about what shaped the community in the new suburb:

Perhaps the most significant fact about the origin of a new community is that it is not new at all, but only a new physical site on which people develop conventional institutions with traditional programs. New towns are ultimately old communities on new land, culturally not significantly different from suburban subdivisions and urban neighborhoods inhabited by the same kinds of people, and politically much like other small American towns. (408)

On this point, he thought the Levittowners showed similar characteristics to what De Toqueville found in American civil society.

At the same time, he expressed critiques of the new suburban life. Here are my notes from pages 431-432 about his recommendations: “(1) most important priority for future suburban planning is the population mix (2) suburbia must be made available to all who can and want to come – especially made available to poor and nonwhite families (3) communities should be planned with block homogeneity and community heterogeneity.”

Many others have studied suburban life and communities but this thorough study set a high bar.

Flipping mobile homes for profit

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Fixing up mobile homes offers an opportunity for some to make money:

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This is mobile home investing, an unsexy, little-known sector that happens to be recession-proof, meeting a nearly bottomless demand, and earning some of the best returns in the housing industry. Its low price of entry is allowing an entirely new crop of entrepreneur — many of them Black, as the Sellerses are, or coming from very modest backgrounds. (A 2021 survey by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers found that 73 percent of industry workers are white males.) With housing costs rising across America, many mobile home flippers are finding the opportunities so plentiful that they’re now training other wannabe real estate moguls in the practice, earning a significant chunk of their income from mentorships and tutorials that help more people like them enter the field.

While they don’t get a lot of attention, mobile homes — “manufactured housing” per marketing and policy wonks, or “trailers” in other circles — are the country’s biggest source of unsubsidized low-income housing, providing shelter to 21 million Americans. As the nation’s housing crisis grows, they’re becoming increasingly attractive to people who can’t afford a traditional site-built home. Between 2014 and 2024, the number of new manufactured homes shipped across the country increased by over 60%, according to census data…

The work does require a lot of elbow grease. Some units just need a good cleaning and a fresh coat of paint; others have rotted subflooring, old insulation, and broken windows that all need replacing. After that, the investor will have to market and sell them on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, either outright to a buyer or wholesaler, or through seller financing. Investors say the downsides of the mobile homes business aren’t much different from those of other real estate fields: homes that turn out to be in worse condition than the buyers had thought, difficult tenants, unscrupulous contractors.

The sector’s high returns are often characterized by desperation. Facing a lost spouse or job or some other hardship, sellers are often willing to dispose of a home cheaply because they need the quick cash. Buyers are hungry for something, anything, they can afford. They aren’t looking to build equity; they’re seeking shelter, at a time when both conventional homeownership and rentals have soared out of reach for many. Mobile homes exist in an alternate reality, one where a home purchase can be completed in a day without the help of attorneys or appraisers, where the cost of a used unit floats depending on its actual value to the buyer and seller.

An interesting look at the intersection of flipping culture – who doesn’t want to make money on housing? – plus a big need for affordable or cheaper housing across the United States.

Several questions come to mind:

  1. At what point do the returns on flipping mobile homes limit investor interest?
  2. How many people might be priced out of mobile homes because of flipping?
  3. Does any of this help raise the status of mobile homes which tend to have a stigma in many places?
  4. Would we ever see an HGTV show on flipping mobile homes? (Maybe not given their audience.)

How long zoning disputes can take in court, Haymarket and Itasca edition

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I have been following the efforts of Haymarket Center to open an addiction treatment facility in the suburbs of Wheaton and then in Itasca. Haymarket filed a lawsuit in federal court and the case is ongoing. Here is where it stands now:

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Nearly six years after Haymarket Center announced a plan to open an addiction treatment facility in Itasca, the nonprofit remains locked in a legal fight with the DuPage County town.

Itasca trustees unanimously voted in November 2021 to reject Haymarket’s request to convert a former Holiday Inn into a 240-bed facility for patients with substance use and mental health disorders. In response, Haymarket filed a federal lawsuit against the village in January 2022, arguing that Itasca officials violated antidiscrimination laws.

In the latest twist, a federal judge has ruled the U.S. Department of Justice cannot join Haymarket’s lawsuit against Itasca…

According to the court docket, the two sides continue to depose witnesses and experts and exchange documents. The next court hearing is in July.

Sometimes zoning issues can be resolved fairly quickly. A change is proposed, decisions are made quickly at the municipal level, and matters are concluded.

But this case shows what can happen if the process goes to court. The article says the lawsuit was filed in early 2022. The next hearing is in July 2025. We are three and a half years in and it is not clear when it all might end in court (or be resolved otherwise).

This has consequences for both parties. They have to pay lawyers. The process takes twists and turns. The company and municipality have to keep an eye on everything. They have to commit money and time to an ongoing process with no clear end date.

Is it worth it? I would guess both sides are convinced of their own cause. Is this more of an issue of how courts operate that this amount of time can go by?

Changes in gym spaces by gender and age

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If gyms are places that can be segmented by gender and age, some of the older patterns may be changing:

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The message from Americans is simple: Jogging on a treadmill or sweating over a stationary bike in a room full of strangers is out; moving heavy objects is in. But, in a twist, it’s not muscle-bound men who are changing America’s workouts. It’s women and older Americans who’ve made gyms prioritize strength training. “More older people, more women, more young people, even, are lifting weights than ever before,” says fitness author and influencer Casey Johnston. “When I started lifting, there was still a lot of apprehension around it in terms of ‘it’s really macho, it’s too intense for most people.’”…

The current fixation is being triggered largely by social media. If the treadmill is dying, internet influencers are the killers. Open most apps, and the message is clear. For men, bulging biceps and broad shoulders. For women, toned arms and sculpted glutes. “Swole” is the marker of peak physical health…

The increasing number of women and older people getting into weightlifting has been a striking cultural change. Wiedenbach, the New York gym owner, recalls that gyms were more gender-segregated in the early 2000s. “Back then it was very much split: There were treadmills—those were for girls—and there were weights, and those were for guys. And never the two groups would meet,” he says. In those days women made up just 10% of his clientele; now it’s closer to 40%.

Older Americans are hitting the weight room more often too. “Everybody talks about longevity now, and having strength and having muscle mass is a key indicator in longevity,” says Noam Tamir, founder and CEO of TS Fitness, which offers small workout classes in Manhattan.

This highlights broad shifts across a lot of locations. What does this mean for:

  1. The day to day experience of gym-goers. How much has this changed users’ sense of their workouts? Their interactions? Their willingness to stick with that gym or change facilities?
  2. How spaces within the gym are constructed. It is one thing to swap out one set of equipment for another; how else (if at all) have the spaces changed?
  3. Have broader conceptions of gyms and who goes there changed? It might now be a different experience (see #1) but it could take a while for the general public to catch up with this. Where might people learn about gyms?
  4. Do these changes mean more people will exercise? Are gyms now regarded as more inclusive or welcoming or are there barriers to learning about using weights?

Prominent crosses Christian congregations feature outside, inside, and online

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Working on some recent research involving religious buildings and also celebrating Easter yesterday, I was reminded of how many Christian churches feature crosses. Here are several local examples of church exteriors:

Not all churches have crosses on the outside. Some congregations want to avoid looking like a church and this could include eschewing traditional features like crosses or steeples. But many do feature crosses on the sides of buildings, on roofs, and on signs.

Similarly, if one were to walk into Christian churches, crosses are often present. They may be behind an altar or hanging on a side wall or incorporated in art or a bulletin.

And in looking for religious congregations online, I found many also feature crosses in the images they use. For example, in Facebook profile pictures and cover images, many Christian congregations feature a cross somewhere. In searching for congregations, a cross is a very common image one will find on social media and websites.

For these congregations that feature crosses, they likely see it as part of their theological foundations and part of their message of who they are. Christians are people of the cross and they share that image with the world. Whether one finds a congregation in a storefront, a school, an older religious building, or an online space, they are likely to find a cross somewhere and often prominently displayed.

Rapid population growth in Florida and Texas now slowing?

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What happens if communities in Texas and Florida are now not growing as fast as in recent years?

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Fewer Americans are moving to boomtowns in Florida and Texas – once red-hot destinations that saw surging populations and soaring home prices.

Tampa, FL, had a net inflow of just 10,000 residents last year, according to fresh data from Redfin. That is less than a third of the 35,000 in 2023…

Meanwhile, Dallas – one of several Texas cities that boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic – saw a net inflow of around 13,000 residents in 2024, also down from 35,000 the year prior. 

Americans had previously been drawn to Sun Belt cities due to their warm weather, low tax rates and affordable housing compared to coastal cities.

But that appeal is fading fast. The cost of living has jumped, thanks to rising mortgage rates, skyrocketing home prices, and higher fees for insurance and HOAs – particularly after a string of natural disasters.  

Several long-term consequences come to mind in addition to the effects on the local real estate markets:

  1. Growth is good in the United States for a place’s status. To not grow – or even to level off – is considered bad. These places will be viewed as less desirable overall if they are not rapidly growing.
  2. How does this change local planning and revenue projections? Imagine you see growth going at a particular pace for a certain time. If that growth does not occur, there could be major changes in budgets and land use. (Whether these possibilities should have been factored in is another matter; who would have factored in a global pandemic?)
  3. What other places will take over as being the fast-growing places? Will places in Arizona or Idaho (or the West more broadly) look more attractive? Or perhaps just population growth as a whole slows in ways that few American places are growing quickly?

Beat the lottery odds by buying all the lottery tickets

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I have used a similar example in Statistics class when learning about the central limit theorem: for a better chance to win the lottery, buy more tickets to get closer to certainly winning.

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Bernard Marantelli had a plan in mind. He and his partners would buy nearly every possible number in a coming drawing. There were 25.8 million potential number combinations. The tickets were $1 apiece. The jackpot was heading to $95 million. If nobody else also picked the winning numbers, the profit would be nearly $60 million.

Marantelli flew to the U.S. with a few trusted lieutenants. They set up shop in a defunct dentist’s office, a warehouse and two other spots in Texas. The crew worked out a way to get official ticket-printing terminals. Trucks hauled in dozens of them and reams of paper.

Over three days, the machines—manned by a disparate bunch of associates and some of their children—screeched away nearly around the clock, spitting out 100 or more tickets every second. Texas politicians later likened the operation to a sweatshop…

Over the years, Ranogajec and his partners have won hundreds of millions of dollars by applying Wall Street-style analytics to betting opportunities around the world. Like card counters at a blackjack table, they use data and math to hunt for situations ripe for flipping the house edge in their favor. Then they throw piles of money at it, betting an estimated $10 billion annually.

How representative sampling works: get a large enough sample with characteristics that mirror that of the larger population and you can have confidence that the sample results are within several percentage points of results if you measured the same things for the whole population. And as your sample size increases, you get closer and closer to the characteristics of the whole population.

Buying one lottery ticket means the buyer has really small odds of winning. Super small. Buy more tickets and the odds of winning increase. Buy nearly all the tickets and your odds go way up. Buy them all and you win.

It sounds like the gamblers above compare the cost of buying all the tickets to the jackpot and go all in when there is a large enough gap. But the central limit theorem suggests they could drastically increase their odds without buying every ticket; might that be worth it financially?

Could American suburbs not be a “hollow imitation of the place they aspire to be”?

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A common critique of American suburbs – and numerous other American places – is in a review of the recent film Holland:

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The town thus becomes representative of people like her, it’s merely a hollow imitation of the place they aspire to be in, but comes nowhere close.

The critique of the suburbs means that the suburbs are not what they say they are, that the American Dream of single-family home ownership, middle-class life, and success is more illusion than reality.

I have also heard this critique applied to retail spaces, Disney World, and resorts. They project one image but they are not what they seem. They are real places – you can walk around, you can buy things, etc. – but not real at the same time. They lack authenticity. (This might imply there are places that are authentic, not imitations. They are what they are. This is another matter.)

Are there suburbs that are real places, where the facade is not a facade, that feel like what they actually are? Or suburbs that are honest about the challenges they face alongside the possibilities they might offer? How accurate is the narrative that the American suburbs are inauthentic or is this more prevalent in cultural works?

Castle houses and McMansions

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How might a large suburban house that looks like a castle fit the definition of a McMansion?

The home is large, roughly 12,000 square feet. It has lots of rooms and amenities:

The five-bedroom, seven-and-a-half-bath house, which is in the 3000 block of Lincoln Street, features a master-bedroom suite that takes up about 2,500 square feet. The listing says the house is 12,000 square feet.

It has a wine cellar, a movie-screening room, room for a pool table and a Ping-Pong table, a bar and an exercise area, all in the basement, an outdoor swimming pool, and a four-car garage.

This is the first trait of McMansions: they are large. I have suggested that being over 10,000 square feet should be considered mansions as they are beyond McMansions.

The other primary trait that might connect this home to McMansions is the architecture. It is a suburban home intended to look like a castle. Is it a pastiche or gimmick? How about the quality of the construction?

The walls average more than 20 inches thick, and there is 10-inch reinforced concrete between the floors.

Perhaps the builders were serious about making this a castle? This may not be the builder-designed cookie-cutter home that McMansions are often said to be; this could be a house more carefully designed to look outside and inside like a castle.

Thus, I am inclined to suggest this is not a McMansion castle. It is a mansion castle designed in a more coherent way.

Finding “the perfect day” from American Time Use Survey data

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A recent study looking at how Americans spend their time led to this model for the perfect day:

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That’s Best Day Ever = 6 hours with family + 2 hours with friends + 1.5 hours of extra socialising + 2 hours of exercise + 1 hour of eating and drinking – with less than 6 hours of work, indulging in only 1 hour of screen time, and a 15-minute commute.

That sounds like a busy day. Imagine this list of activities were given to a random sample of Americans: how many would see it as perfect or close to that? Or is this list more of a collection of things Americans tend to like but not everyone would see as a great combination?

So imagine instead a company or destination that promises to put together perfect days for different types. A day for the book-reading introvert. A day for the 8 on the Enneagram. A day for the hard-charging athlete. A day for the ENTJ. A day for the aspiring social influencer. And so on.

Or imagine a movie that featured numerous people in different settings living out their perfect days. Perhaps such a movie would need more drama but the contrast between the different perfect days could be interesting to see.