Category Archives: Sociology

New apartments in the US also getting smaller

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As the median size of new homes in the United States drops, so does the size of new apartment units:

According to a recent analysis of apartment sizes by RentCafe, newly built apartments, in general, are 5 percent smaller than those built 10 years ago. The average U.S. unit built in 2018 boasts 941 square feet, down roughly 52 square feet. According to the study, Chicago ranks third in the nation for the smallest average apartment sizes (a tie with Manhattan at 733 square feet).

Census Bureau data from 2017 on the median square footage of multifamily units suggests something similar with a drop from a peak in 2007.

Three quick responses:

  1. While the square footage is dropping, I assume the rental price has not dropped at the same rate. Fewer square feet for the same or a higher price?
  2. According to the same Census data, more multifamily units were constructed in 2017 than in any year in the table (going back to 1999). Do smaller units mean builders and developers can now squeeze in more units?
  3. This data from RentCafe is connected to a rise in microapartments. The Census data suggests the percent of multifamily units under 1,000 square feet has not increased over 10 years between 2007 and 2017.

So is there a significant trend toward smaller rental units? Maybe a small one that could be worth watching but it could take quite a bit of change for microunits to really be built in large numbers.

Building a 1,000+ foot skyscraper in a rural town of 7,000 residents

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Skyscrapers and cities are tightly linked. Can one be built in a small town in the countryside?

Until a local company announced plans to send a 320-metre skyscraper soaring over the surrounding countryside, most people in Denmark had only the haziest idea where Brande, a town of 7,000 people in rural Jutland, even was.

The Bestseller Tower, designed by star architectural studio Dorte Mandrup, will not only be the tallest building in Denmark, but the tallest in western Europe, besting the Shard in London by a crucial 10.4 metres…

It won’t be the first rural skyscraper. At the height of Japan’s property bubble back in 1991, a 41-story residential tower, Sky Tower 41, was erected among fields.

But in Jutland, the surrounding landscape is so flat that the tower will be visible from 60km away. Visitors to Jelling, the royal seat of Harald Bluetooth, the Viking king who united Denmark, will see its slender form jutting up from the horizon, as will visitors to Legoland 30km away.

While the article suggests it will not be the only rural skyscraper in the world, they are certainly rare. They are rare enough outside of sizable central business districts that numerous tall buildings in the Chicago suburbs – probably in the 20 to 30 stories in height – attract attention as unusual and sticking out in the landscape in a metropolitan region that takes pride in its tall buildings and architecture.

It is certainly possible to build such a structure almost anywhere but I wonder how this will all work out in day-to-day life in this community. Small towns and rural areas have a particular scale that people are used to and that is human scaled or even dominated by nature and landscapes rather than human creations. Constructing a building over a 1,000 square feet disrupts all of this: it will be visible for miles, it will dwarf anything nearby, and it will cast shadows and block the sun from certain angles. It is not slightly out of scale for this community; it is a massive change. It could be beautiful, modern, and efficient and still have negative consequences for the community.

 

Suggestion that Hudson Yards and other urban megaprojects threaten suburbs

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The glitz of the new Hudson Yards in New York pushes one theater critic to argue such spaces threaten suburbs:

A problem faced by suburbs becomes all too clear at Hudson Yards. Affluent Americans are almost all going to live in cities, starving urban centers of affordable housing just as they’ll choke up the traditional suburban resources. No suburb, I kept thinking, can compete with this. And Hudson Yards, or Lincoln Yards, or whatever comes next, are far from done.

Such large developments in significant urban neighborhoods are worth keeping an eye on because of all the change that comes at once plus what is included in the new spaces.

But, I don’t think Hudson Yards or the proposed megaproject on Chicago’s north side or the development around Staples Center in Los Angeles will threaten suburbs in the long run:

  1. These spaces do not have the same combination of factors that Americans like in suburbs starting with the emphasis on single-family homes and family life. Projects like these have elements of what suburbia can offer but primarily offer a different experience: bustling activity, diversity of dining and cultural options, presumably a greater mix of people. Suburbs can indeed compete with this by offering a different lifestyle.
  2. The housing available in these new projects is primarily for wealthy urbanites, likely appealing to young professionals and older adults who like all the activity and the newness. This may indeed continue to help concentrate the affluent in certain urban neighborhoods but there will be plenty of working to middle-class residents who will be priced out and will find suburban housing more affordable.
  3. Surveys continue to suggest that even young Americans desire a suburban life in the long run, particularly when they reach a certain age or have families. From my vantage point, the emphasis on the rush to the big cities is overplayed.

Both sizable and exciting urban megaprojects can find success alongside suburban life. Perhaps they may even draw on different people groups in the long run, segmented by age as well as resources. And perhaps we should continue to keep paying attention to who has difficulty finding a true home in either type of space.

Suburban ministry accepts notorious convicted murderer as resident

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Suburbanites do not want to be associated with crime, particularly notorious ones. So a recent action by a Christian ministry in Aurora is notable:

Wayside Cross Ministries of Aurora officials said Monday that by accepting “Ripper Crew” murderer Thomas Kokoraleis as a resident, the organization is doing what God commands everyone to do: Show kindness and mercy to all, even enemies, the ungrateful and the wicked.

“We are mandated by our Lord Jesus Christ to love our neighbors. According to Luke 16, anyone in a genuine need is a neighbor,” Executive Director James Lukose said in a news release that Wayside Cross also posted on its website, waysidecross.org…

Kokoraleis, 58, was released from prison Friday after serving half his 70-year sentence. He is not on parole, and is free to live where he wants, as long as he informs police…

Kokoraleis was one of four men suspected of killing as many as 17 women in Chicago and the suburbs in the early 1980s. His younger brother, Andrew, was one of them and was executed in 1999.

The Chicago Tribune wrote an editorial several days ago on Kokoraleis’s release:

A judge chose to sentence him to life in prison. But his conviction was struck down over legal errors, and the case was resolved with the defendant pleading guilty and being sentenced to 70 years. Thanks to the rules in effect back then, which allowed him to cut his time in half through good behavior, Kokoraleis was released Friday at age 58. He is expected to live at a Christian-oriented facility in the Wheaton area…

We won’t relitigate Thomas Kokoraleis’ case or his guilt. But we feel no hesitation in saying that life behind bars should have been the certain sentence for what he did. There is something profoundly exasperating about seeing someone who took part in such wanton slaughter being allowed to walk free among civilized people.

I wonder if this will cause any furor long-term in Aurora and the surrounding area. UPDATE APRIL 2, 2019 – The mayor of Aurora is not happy about this.

“In light of the unspeakable nature of the crimes committed by the Ripper Crew, I would hope that Wayside would reconsider the decision that brought Kokoraleis to Aurora — particularly given the Ministries’ close proximity to parks, churches and day care centers,” Irvin said in a statement Monday evening. “I absolutely disagree with Wayside Cross Ministries’ decision to allow Kokoraleis to reside at their facility in Aurora.”

Presumably, there are plenty of nearby residents with possible competing loyalties in this particular case: they would claim Christian faith and also be at least hesitant about living near such a murderer. There would be few suburban cases at this level that could push suburbanites to consider balancing justice and forgiveness – and both suburban and American history suggest they would almost always settle on the side of justice and keeping the issue as far away from their homes and community as possible.

I hope there will be a follow-up either way, whether Kokoraleis lives quietly or falls into trouble again.

Fighting discrimination in online housing ads

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the ACLU are going after discriminatory online housing listings:

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development filed charges against social media giant Facebook on Thursday, alleging that its advertising platform violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing lenders and realtors to target Facebook users on the basis of race, gender, religion, familial status, disability, and national origin.

“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson in a statement. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”

According to Axios, HUD and Facebook were close to a settlement. Citing anonymous sources, the Axios report says the decision to file charges could be motivated by a desire to appear on the offensive on housing discrimination prior to Carson’s meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill next week.

The charges are somewhat surprising as Facebook just settled five similar cases with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last week. Under the settlement, the company agreed to create a separate advertising portal for real estate listings where advertisers’ options for targeting are limited. Facebook also settled a housing discrimination case with the state of Washington last summer.

The features that make online advertising so attractive – the ability to target particular consumers rather than addressing larger populations – do not work so well in the real estate field where housing is supposed to be available to all.

This reminds me of the conclusion of American Apartheid where the sociologists suggest the necessary rules are in place to combat housing issues but the political will is lacking. If the online realm is now indeed where a lot of housing is rented or sold, then discrimination in online listings needs to be addressed when it does occur.

Add these online occurrences to the ongoing findings of audit tests suggesting differential treatment and there is likely plenty of housing discrimination still to battle. While the 1968 Housing Act banned discrimination on the basis of “refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of his race, color, religion, or national origin,” many American communities – including the suburbs on the basis of race and class – are what they are today because of exclusion.

McMansion literary tales: a proposed teardown leads to local dysfunction

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The McMansion continues to feature in literary works. A new book from a Washington D.C. area author uses a proposed teardown McMansion to highlight suburban issues:

Coincidence or not, Langsdorf’s success comes after leaving her longtime suburban existence. Following her 2012 divorce, Langsdorf moved to Adams Morgan in the District and devoted herself to writing while teaching yoga on the side. And yet, the book takes her back to that former life: “White Elephant” seems to channel all of the frustrations she felt juggling her identities as a mother and creator in a stifling suburb. The novel follows the residents of the fictional enclave of Willard Park — inspired, in part, by Langsdorf’s hometown of Kensington, Md. — where an interloper’s plans to build a McMansion amid the cozy bungalows leads to angry town halls, scandalous romantic dalliances and shady high jinks.

Like Langsdorf, two of the main characters in her ensemble are mothers grappling with their identities beyond being wives and mothers. Allison Miller, who has lived (mostly) happily in Willard Park for more than a decade, wonders what to do with her photography — more than a hobby, less than a career. Her new next-door neighbor, Kaye Cox, can’t figure out who to be, caught between her role as a fixture in her husband’s behemoth of a house and her own interest in interior decoration. These women and their author are well-acquainted with the eternal dilemma for parents, the pull between caregiving duties and other interests, professional and personal…

Almost every neighborhood in the D.C. region has experienced a version of the changes in “White Elephant.” Even Adams Morgan: The Line hotel, for example, occupies a building that was once a church. Langsdorf laughs about some of the struggles she’s seen in her own building, hastening to add that her fellow co-op residents are all great neighbors.

The residents of Willard Park come to realize that houses matter less than their inhabitants — and that the suburbs aren’t for everyone. Langsdorf understands this, too; in her current existence she feels more herself. “My life is much more vibrant,” she says. “I love being able to walk everywhere, and I do have more time to write.”

That a proposed McMansion could lead to “dalliances” and “high jinks” is intriguing to consider…the angry public meetings are much easier to verify.

While it would not have been possible to discuss McMansions before the 1980s since the term did not exist, it sounds like this new work draws on several common suburban critiques featured in novels, films, television shows, and other cultural products. Suburban residents, particularly women and mothers, feel trapped by suburban expectations and a landscape that does not easily lead to human connection or diverse experiences. They then look for ways to break free of the suburban mold and explore different outlets.

These works tend to emphasize those that feel “the suburbs aren’t for everyone.” At the same time, many Americans live in the suburbs by choice and I assume a good number of suburbanites feel their existence is at least okay. Is it because cultural works need crises to overcome (the hero on their journey must overcome something) or are the suburbs are a unique target because they are so common in the United States (over 50% of residents live there) and so reviled?

The growing influence of mascots: a short history of Benny the Bull

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In addition to providing fun and distracting from what may be poor play by the team, sports mascots are important brand symbols. The symbolic nature of their existence and their importance in developing and sustaining a brand is highlighted in this summary of Benny the Bull’s life:

Benny accompanied Richard M. Daley to China. Benny has been sued and Benny has been ejected from games. Benny has topped the Forbes list of the most popular sports mascots and Benny has been arrested at the Taste of Chicago. Off the court, the people who played Benny didn’t get health insurance from the Bulls until the Jordan era (or a 401K plan for even longer). One owned a deli in Skokie, another was an evangelical Christian…

I know who Benny has been since he was born; seven people (and countless understudies) have slipped into Benny’s shoes since he debuted Oct. 17, 1969. I know the name and job title of the person playing Benny right now but agreed not to reveal it, because, well — for the sake of the children. The Bulls want to retain some mystery with Benny, so we will honor that — to a degree. As Benny developed as a brand, the Bulls have treated him increasingly as Disney treats Mickey: No one plays Benny! No one is inside Benny! Benny is Benny! That is, a cottage industry, and like any mascot, the face of a franchise. Players come and go, but only Benny remains….

As the Jordan era waned and the business of the Bulls rolled on, Benny gained new relevance. He acquired an entourage — including Lil’ Benny, Mini Benny, and, notoriously, Da Bull, Benny’s angrier brother. Bring up Da Bull to the Bulls today and they look at you as if you asked for a loan: The Chicago man who played Da Bull was arrested in 2004, near the United Center, for selling 6 ounces of marijuana (and later received probation)…

And so this summer Benny — who is being inducted into the new Mascot Hall of Fame in Indiana and getting a new van for appearances — also will be busy. The Bulls say he gets a work-life balance; and he is paid well (low six figures, whisper some close to the job). But the job itself never ends. Asked if he can relate to workaholic Benny, Landey Patton, the first Benny, said he couldn’t dribble, never mind dunk. He said, “It’s all razzmatazz and dancing now. And so corporate, you know? When I was Benny, families could afford tickets. And what are Bulls tickets now — $10?”

Four quick thoughts:

1. This relatively recent emphasis on mascots mirrors big shift in sports in recent decades: it is big business and big entertainment, in addition to being about winning games. The mascot can be an important part of the show that needs to go well to help enhance what are booming values of teams. The most recent valuation by Forbes suggests the Bulls are worth $2.9 billion and Benny is part of a well-oiled machine.

2. The article hints at this but I have to think much of this is about attracting kids and hoping they become lifelong fans (and customers).

3. Sports run on certain schedules, usually emphasizing the games, but mascots help the teams and sports stay in the public consciousness all year round. These are now year-round activities, even if the games stretch from late October to early June.

4. I have not attended many Bulls games over the years but I have always been partial to the Benny the Bull blimp who had plenty of airspace to navigate when the team moved to the more expansive United Center in the mid-1990s.

One truck accident can impact a large area

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Traffic patterns in a metropolitan region can be disrupted by what happens to just one vehicle. See this Washington, D.C. example involving a tanker truck:

A tanker truck overturned on the Inner Loop on the American Legion Bridge Thursday afternoon, closing the road and snarling traffic all over the D.C. area for hours.

Complicating the situation: That truck is loaded with 8,500 gallons of fuel, requiring a cleanup that will continue into the night. As of 8:45 p.m., about a quarter of the gasoline had been offloaded…

WTOP Traffic reporter Bob Marbourg stressed how tough it is to predict when lanes will reopen….

The accident occurred around 1:50 p.m., according to Corinne Geller of the Virginia State Police. Another vehicle struck the tanker as it overturned.

The same trucks that are essential to societal functioning can cause big problems. It sounds like there were some special circumstances in this case: the particular cargo of this truck – a flammable liquid – plus the location of the accident on a bridge within a region with a major river flowing through it with the accident occurring before evening rush hour. Change some of these variables – a less problematic cargo or a different location or an accident at 9 PM – and the problem would be less.

At the same time, it may be depressing for drivers that just one accident could cause such a ripple effect. Traffic flow throughout a vast region can be a complex enterprise with hundreds of thousands of vehicles of different kinds traveling on different kinds of roads. Accidents are bound to occur as are other possible events that could impede traffic flow (construction, police activity, weather, etc.). With so many moving parts, it may not take all that much for traffic to slow down and then that delay to ripple through time and geography.

Are there ways to build more resilient road systems? What could be done to prevent such occurrences? Having multiple road options could help though duplicating highway destinations can be difficult. Limiting what kinds of vehicles are on certain roads could cut down on more rare accidents (like this one). Having response teams that can quickly respond to and clear accidents helps. Autonomous vehicles might be an answer in the long run. Thinking more broadly, relying more on transportation options like trains that move more people at a time could the stress on roads.

All of this may not be terribly relevant to the driver sitting in traffic because of this truck crash. Yet, thinking about how to minimize such incidents in the future could have large payoffs in terms of recovered time and energy.

 

Communities, inertia, and change from a sociological point of view

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After recently reading Market Cities, People Cities and hearing a talk by one of the authors plus having several conversations with people about how sociologists think about how communities and organizations develop and change, I wanted to outline how cities and suburbs change over time. Here is how I would describe it:

  1. A community or organization is founded. Relatively small in size at the start, it takes on characteristics and activities of its founder(s). These initial traits can have effects down the road but are not necessarily deterministic of where the community will end up. Inertia and founding energy carry the social collective along.
  2. Two major categories of social phenomena can lead to change. One option is outside social forces or pressure. Examples for communities could include broader shifts (such as new residents moving there from elsewhere, changes in government policies or funding, large-scale economic shifts, or changing cultural norms in the broader society) as well as more local changes (such as requests for new development, budget issues, a critical mass of new residents in the community, changes brought by local elections). A second option is internal decisions made to go a different direction (or reaffirm the existing inertia/path). These decisions are often a reaction to outside forces but they can also spring up from internal discussions and thinking. Examples of this could include requests for new developments, budget issues, and a critical mass of new residents.
  3. A period of inertia then follows until another major period of decision/reaction to outside forces takes place.
  4. The community or organization then goes on until it doesn’t.

To sum up: communities tend to follow a particular path of development and community life until something happens externally and/or internally that often allows space to have a discussion about a different vision. This “something happens” could be the result of external forces or internal forces or decisions. Emerson and Smiley rely more on steps toward developing a social movement while my own suburban work suggested “character moments” could lead to new paths. This collection of founding characteristics plus key moments then comprises the unique character of a community or organization that can differentiate it from an organization of community of the same broader kind.

Police violence leading to joint suburban and urban activism

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Responses to recent acquittal of a police officer in a shooting of a black man in the suburb of East Pittsburgh illustrates how concern crosses community lines in a metropolitan region:

East Pittsburgh is a small municipality that sits just outside of the city of Pittsburgh. It disbanded its police department in January, largely because of the Rose killing. And while Rashid’s clap-backers are technically correct about the differences between the police departments involved, the spirit of his tweet is still sound. For African Americans in greater Pittsburgh, there is little safety afforded to them when approached by police, whether in cities or suburbs. This is a concern for African Americans in almost every urban setting in the nation, but especially so in suburbs.

For Rose’s case, distinguishing between East Pittsburgh police and Pittsburgh police isn’t entirely clarifying in these moments. The fault line is not between Pittsburgh and its suburbs; it’s between the criminalization of blackness and the exoneration of whiteness. In that regard, the city of Pittsburgh could help bridge that divide if it recognizes that it shares this common problem with its smaller municipal neighbors…

It is true, as some have been quick to point out, that Pittsburgh police have more training than the police programs in surrounding smaller municipalities. Much of that training was imposed on Pittsburgh police after the federal government found a pattern of corruption and brutality throughout the department in the 1990s. Pittsburgh was the first major city entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to reform its police department. Meanwhile, there is no uniform police trainings across the state to ensure that small suburban departments are skilled on par with officers from larger city departments. But this is besides the point: What, to the victim of police violence, does it matter what jurisdiction’s name is on the clothes of the officer who shot him?…

In the event of police violence against people of color, the fate of cities and their suburbs are intertwined. Many of the high-profile police killings of black people of the past few years have actually happened in suburbs. But the neighboring major cities in those instances have felt the impacts regardless. The cries of the oppressed do not recognize municipal boundaries.

In work I have read about metropolitanization and addressing regional issues, policing is rarely discussed. The largest issue is usually economic: how to ensure that the wealth of the region, often limited to certain neighborhoods or suburbs and linked to numerous issues like housing and school funding, can be spread throughout a region to help all residents.

Americans tend to like to have a police force for their own community. Regional policing or ceding police authority to an outside group – like a county sheriff – would strike many as undesirable and only an option if the community could not pay for their own police force. There is something about having even a small local police force that looks out for local residents and answers to those same residents that many suburbanites find reassuring. (Making that link to local suburban control and race and exclusion would be interesting.)

It would be helpful to know if there is a metropolitan region that tackles the issue of police violence and disproportionate responses to minority residents well. Are there regions where police from various departments train together on this issue? Can such an effort help all departments, big and small?