Category Archives: Sociology

A new account of the rise and fall of Cabrini-Green

Posted on by

Journalist Ben Austen has a new book titled High-Risers that chronicles the development and tearing down of the Cabrini-Green housing project on Chicago’s north side:

But what caused Cabrini-Green to deteriorate almost immediately after its opening? In “High-Risers,” Austen suggests the repeated, systematic failure of the institutions and people enlisted to run Cabrini-Green fueled its notoriety and downfall. “In every area we examined, from finance to maintenance, from administration to outside contracting, from staffing to project management, from purchasing to accounting, the CHA was found to be operating in a state of profound confusion and disarray,” wrote Oscar Newman in the book “Defensible Space,” which Austen quotes. “No one seems to be minding the store; what’s more, no one seems genuinely to care.”

And yet, Austen’s book is not a detailed deconstruction of the causes of Cabrini-Green’s difficulties. Instead, he uses a novelistic structure to weave a tale about the other side of Cabrini-Green: its inhabitants.

Austen offers the stories of a few Cabrini-Green residents as they move in and out of the projects. There is Kelvin Cannon, a highly intelligent and charismatic resident who grows from precocious and superstitious kid to convicted criminal to high-ranking gang member in only a handful of years. There is Willie J.R. Fleming, who leaves Cabrini-Green after relocating to south suburban Dolton with his mother, only to return less than a year later. The quiet of the suburbs proved too uncomfortable for Fleming, who, despite the promise of a college athletic career, squanders it all away back in Cabrini-Green after throwing a punch…

Austen writes with a lyrical, poetic affection for the four main characters. Here we see there are as many Cabrini-Green origin stories as there were people living in Cabrini-Green. To merely stereotype is to willfully ignore each resident’s humanity. Austen deftly tells the stories of Wilson, Fleming, Cannon and another woman, Annie Ricks, without distance, bringing readers intimately into their lives. It is compelling writing, sure to separate Austen’s work from other, more anthropological examinations of Cabrini-Green.

Rarely does public housing in the United States, let alone a notorious project, receive much attention from journalists, scholars, or the public. Yet, this is a unique site. This kind of change does not occur often in American urban neighborhoods: poor black neighborhoods are not typically the target of gentrification efforts.

The story of this project is still not complete: even though the high-rises are no longer there and the buildings and neighborhood now there are hard to distinguish from other up-and-coming Chicago scenes, there are still public housing residents present (in addition to former residents who are now elsewhere) as well as memories (which could fade with generations but that could also remain in more institutionalized forms like a public housing museum in Chicago). Like many other urban neighborhoods, Cabrini-Green may be erased from a map or largely from sight but it may continue to shape not only that particular space but the whole city.

Transforming LA parking lots into housing for the homeless

Posted on by

To help speed along a plan to provide housing for the homeless, Los Angeles is targeting the development of city-owned parking lots:

The idea of converting public parking to housing has been around for decades in L.A. but has gained little traction. In the 1980s, Mayor Tom Bradley proposed leasing rights to developers to build multifamily housing, but there was no follow-up…

The new parking lot review grew out of an urgency to implement Proposition HHH, the $1.2-billion bond measure approved by the voters to help fund the construction of 1,000 permanent supportive housing units each year.

With taxpayer funds now committed, a new obstacle emerged. The scarcity of suitable land in the city’s highly competitive real estate market could add years to the start-up time for new projects…

In almost every case, the scale of the project would change the character of a neighborhood, potentially bringing new life to aging business districts, but almost certainly stirring opposition in some. The strategy is getting its first test in Venice.

This is a clever way to jumpstart such a project – finding land is always difficult and the city already owns these lots – and one that is likely to encounter lots of opposition. How many businesses or residents next to these parking lots will desire these changes?

Yet, opposing the redevelopment leaves the nearby people arguing in favor of parking lots. This is not typically what people want to see: parking lots are visual blights, they may not receive much use, they include lots of traffic noise, lights, and pollution, and they are less preferable to nice buildings that help bring in revenue and improve the quality of the streetscape (and by extension improve property values). If a developer was to go into a typical urban or suburban neighborhood, very few people would be in favor of transforming an existing building or lot into a parking lot (unless that lot or building was a complete eyesore or vacant for years or some extreme case).

And if you can’t build housing for homeless on these lots, perhaps because of opposition from neighbors or because the lots themselves do not work for housing units, where else could you build?

How a significant snowfall transforms a suburban neighborhood

Posted on by

Snowfalls of 6+ inches do not occur that often in the suburbs of Chicago. After this most recent one, I thought about how it alters a suburban neighborhood:

  1. The first thing I notice when going outside is the quietness as the snow is falling. Yesterday, when I went outside at 6:20 AM, it was dead silent. As the snow continues to fall and with a significant snow cover on the ground, the suburban neighborhood simply becomes quieter: less traffic noise, less likelihood of train (just a few weeks before with no snow on the ground, I’m pretty sure I heard a train horn from 3+ miles away) and airplane noise.
  2. Particularly in the mornings as people try to get to work, the snow can bring people outside. It still may not lead to much social interaction – though one of my neighbors did come by with a snowblower earlier in the week to uncover our sidewalk – but at least you see some people alive in the winter.
  3. With a significant amount of snow, it is a little harder to see the differences in landscaping, architectural features, and even size of different dwellings. Enough snow helps everything kind of blur together. All those things that homeowners do to set themselves apart – from yard statues to flowerbeds to shrubs to flags – are obscured.
  4. A big snowfall can bring kids back outside again – something that can be pretty rare even when the weather is good. Having no school for the day also helps. About a half mile from our house is a sizable retention pond where where lots of kids gather to sled despite the numerous signs saying no activity should take place there. (I have done some searching: this may be the biggest hill in a 1.5 miles radius of our home.)

When all this snow melts, we will be back to the blotchy green/brown lawns and empty and foreboding trees that characterize a typical suburban scene in winter.

How Census questions muddle race and ethnicity for Latinos

Posted on by

Sociologist Richard Alba explains how the Census does not accurately capture racial and ethnic change:

Sticking with the two-question format means that the great majority of young people with mixed Hispanic and white origins will be categorized only as Hispanic — and therefore as “nonwhite,” in census terminology. This classification will often contradict how they perceive and experience their identity, and how they’re treated by the world around them.

And it is sociological nonsense. A growing body of data reveals that individuals from mixed families look more like whites than they do like minorities — except for those who are partly black. The exception demonstrates, it should be emphasized, the persistent and severe racism that confronts Americans with visible African heritage.

 

And these measurements then affect projections for the future as well as political reactions:

And classifying those from mixed Hispanic and white families as “nonwhites” results in Census Bureau population projections of a majority-minority society by the mid-2040s. But such projections are grossly misleading because of the binary thinking that undergirds them and the misclassification of individuals who are partly white and partly minority…

In the 2016 presidential election, according to research Michael Tesler has reported here at The Monkey Cage, President Trump appears to have gained many votes from whites because of their anxiety about a rapidly changing society that would soon leave them as part of a minority.

At the least, we should keep in mind that racial and ethnic definitions can and do change over time due to a variety of factors: understandings within particular groups (self-understanding), understandings from other groups in society (pressures from the outside, particularly dominant groups), and how race and ethnicity are measured.

This could also raise questions about forecasts for the future of society – especially decades out. On one hand, we want to be able to prepare for changes and trends. On the other hand, demographic trends and shifts in behaviors and attitudes are not set in stone. Both researchers and leaders need to be flexible – or in terms of one of the current buzzwords, resilient  – enough to adapt.

Bringing art and renovation to outdoor basketball courts

Posted on by

Project Backboard seeks to both renovate and bring public art to urban basketball courts:

The transformation of mural-style courts across America has its roots in Memphis, where Daniel Peterson noticed the majority of courts had fallen into disrepair. It was then, in 2014, that Peterson founded Project Backboard, a nonprofit that has renovated public basketball courts in cities from Los Angeles to St. Louis. More renovations in Memphis, Maryland, and New Rochelle, New York, are underway, and Peterson has consulted on projects in Oregon, Virginia, and Belgium, and talked to several other urban parks departments.

In Memphis, where one in four residents lives beneath the poverty line, Peterson found in 2014 that around two-thirds of basketball courts across the city didn’t even have basic lines: foul, three-point, or out-of-bounds. Backboards were tagged with Coke logos or vinyl stickers. The courts just didn’t work. Today, mostly teen boys and young men play on more than 20 renovated courts, whose 30 public works of art include whimsical silhouettes on Lewis-Davis Park, bright profiles and symbols in Chickasaw Park, and geographic shapes in Pierotti Park.

All of this is in the context of making basketball courts more inviting spaces. This is not necessarily easy to do when some residents dislike outdoor courts:

Fear-driven efforts to shut down outdoor courts seem to disproportionately affect people of color. A so-called “kill-the-hoops movement” has spread across small towns and cities, including Chicago, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, as a maneuver against guns, noise, fights, and drugs. In 2016, a neighborhood group in Brooklyn proposed replacing basketball courts with tennis courts to curb crime, and was accused of racist motivations.

“Obviously, I don’t subscribe to the belief that inviting more people into an area is going to have a negative impact on your community,” Peterson said. “We think the more people you bring into the community, into public spaces, the more positive impact it’ll have in the community.”

See these earlier posts from 2011: Thinking about the lack of outdoor basketball courts – Part One and Thinking about the lack of basketball courts – Part Two. Compared to some other park options, basketball courts can be relatively low maintenance (concrete, poles and backgrounds, replace the nets fairly regularly) and they require participants to bring little more than a basketball (and you may only need one for a large group). Yet, basketball courts tend to attract young males and this may not be welcomed by nearby residents.

The idea of infusing public art with outdoor courts is a clever one but I am curious about the long-term effects. Do the courts help attract a broader range of nearby residents? Is the artwork maintained? Does the artwork change behaviors on and near the court or perceptions from insiders and outsiders about the neighborhood? I could see some interesting opportunities arise with artwork and competitions; NBA and college teams have similar gotten into some crazier court designs in recent years to create a home court advantage as well as attract attention.

Does having a small or tiny house make it easier to have your home stolen?

Posted on by

A couple reported that their Madisonville, Texas vacation home had disappeared:

Jo and Lonnie Harrison told Eyewitness News someone stole their entire home off their property in Madisonville, Texas. They bought the 10-acre property with a prefab home on site last year.

It’s a one-bedroom, one-bathroom home with a green roof and wood siding…

“Nothing. Nothing that I wanted to see. I didn’t see the house,” said Harrison. “All I saw were blocks and pipes sticking out. The whole house gone. Everything except the blocks.”…

“I said, ‘You know this is really going to sound strange, but I need to report a stolen house.’ They were like, ‘A house?’ I said yes. We have 10 acres and had a little cabin and the cabin is gone,” said Jo Harrison. “Give us a call. Call the Madisonville Sheriff’s Department and let them know what you see. We really would like to have our house back.”

One of the features of these smaller homes is that they can be easily moved. Load it onto a truck or tow it away (since some of the homes have wheels) and you can move your home from here to there. Depending on your family and friends as well as your tastes, you could keep a vacation home moving every once in a while and still feel like you have a home to return to.

But, those same features may just make it easier for someone else to take that home. What is the equivalent of a strong bike lock for a small house or tiny house? Embed a GPS tracker somewhere hidden? Mount a security camera high up in a tree nearby? The flip-side of the mobility – and I have not seen any figures on how often the typical tiny house owner would actually move – could be less security.

And one other thought about security: larger homes tend to provide spaces where an occupant can hide if someone is outside or trying to break in. Smaller homes may not offer the same possibilities for staying out of view or escaping out of an alternative exit. So, when will we see the tiny house with a panic room or with significant features for the security conscious?

Side note: this is not typically a problem with larger homes – though if the home was secluded enough and the owners away for long enough, something could happen there too. Perhaps the larger size would attract too much attention from someone nearby or on local roads.

CA city to test universal basic income…with $500 a month?

Posted on by

Stockton, California is about to embark on a social experiment providing a universal basic income:

Stockton is one of many Bay Area cities on the fringe of the wealth accumulating in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The Central Valley city went bankrupt in 2012, and for decades it has been trying to diversify its agriculture-based economy…

Tubbs is coordinating an effort to test a new way to sustain residents: universal basic income, or UBI. For one year, several dozen Stockton families will get $500 a month, no strings attached.

Dorian Warren co-chairs the Economic Security Project, which is contributing $1 million to the initiative. He said the goal is to gather data on the economic and social impacts of giving people a basic income.

In addition to tracking what residents do with the money, Warren said they will be monitoring how a basic income affects things like self-esteem and identity.

While the commentary I’ve seen so far on this story focuses on the long-term viability of universal basic income, I would raise another issue: how much of a test can $500 a month provide? That is not a big sum at all. Stockton is a relatively average place to live regarding costs and quality of life – see here and here. How far can $500 stretch, particularly for those that have a family and/or do not have a decent full-time job? That amount would not pay for an average rent or it could take some work to get food and essentials for a family for a month.

One of the larger questions that will need to be answered about universal basic income involves the amount of money provided. At least in the experiments I have seen thus far, the money is not necessarily meant to be the primary source of income. Yet, isn’t this supposed to provide a floor of income so that everyone can survive? If it is a smaller amount like $500 a month, it is one income source among several that an individual or family would need to put together. I would guess that many would say an extra $500 a month would be helpful but would it make enough of a meaningful difference for the people who need it most?

Locating a supersized home for the young and wealthy

Posted on by

A recent report from Luxury Portfolio International suggests some young wealthy Americans want giant houses:

About 40% of wealthy younger buyers — those aged 25 to 49 — told real estate broker Luxury Portfolio International they hope to own a house larger than 10,000 square feet, long considered the upper range for McMansions, in a survey published this week. Nearly a quarter — 23% — said they want a home 20,000 square feet or larger.

If you didn’t think people bought houses that big, you’re kind of right. The average U.S. home size was about 2,400 square feet in 2016, according to government data. The survey’s respondents, who were an average of 37 years old with assets of $1 million or more, want a house about eight times that size.

Need help picturing that? Think four times the size of Kendall Jenner’s $8.55 million Los Angeles spread or about the size of Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island estate and DJ Khaled’s Florida mansion — combined.

And the size of their desired home differs quite a bit from what older Americans with wealth want:

ElbowRoomBloombergGraphic

As the first article above notes, these are not just large homes: they are supersized homes. Beyond following some celebrity model or some cultural image of what constitutes a significant home, I wonder if this is also affected by where these different generations want to live. To have such a large home, an owner probably needs a sizable property in a more suburban setting. In contrast, those 50+ and wealthy may prefer smaller places but in urban centers. Those city homes or condos or penthouses may not be much cheaper or any cheaper but they certainly are connected to a different kind of life compared to the suburban estate.

Amazon jobs vs. no jobs in American cities and suburbs

Posted on by

With Amazon expanding in many locations across the United States, are these the kinds of jobs communities should seek? Here is the conclusion of one recent discussion of the issue:

It’s true that cities desperate for jobs may find it difficult to attract companies if they pass minimum-wage mandates or other labor laws. But the alternative, it seems, is jobs that don’t create a middle-class lifestyle for residents, which in turn affects local spending, the housing market, the tax base, and leads to a poor standard of living. Many cities, San Bernardino included, are calculating that any job creation is good news. They may soon find that with Amazon, that calculation does not apply.

This is not a new issue although Amazon might be the most visible manifestation of concerns right at the moment. Walmart has and still does face such questions. Fast food and retail jobs as larger categories attract this scrutiny at points.

For two reasons, I do not see most American communities during down these jobs, even if they are not ideal or even good positions of employment.

  1. Every politician from the local to federal level wants to promote job creation. It is still hard to have a deeper conversation about the kinds of jobs being created. What tends to matter are the numbers. If you are the politician who can claim adding jobs (and very rarely is this the result of one person or a short process), you have a powerful political weapon.
  2. What is the alternative to not accepting these jobs? Companies might move right over the border. This happened in Chicago when they insisted on certain with Walmart. The company responded by opening locations right over the border and the jobs and revenues went to other communities. If a community turns down jobs, will they be able to attract others? Until we have either regional cooperation where sets of communities set these conditions or states pass overarching regulations (or a third option of universal basic income?), individual communities will be forced to make tough decisions: promoting less than ideal jobs or possibly having no jobs.

This issue will continue whether with Amazon or other companies.

Jesus had a favorite suburb

Posted on by

The forward written by pastor Leith Anderson in The Suburban Church: Practical Advice for Authentic Ministry starts this way:

Bethany was Jesus’ favorite suburb. He often commuted the 1.8 miles into the city of Jerusalem where much of his ministry took place. Bethany was home to three of his best friends – Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Jesus ate there, slept there, and performed his top miracle in Bethany when he brought Lazarus out of the grave alive. (ix)

This is possibly both incredibly anachronistic – cities outside of Jerusalem in the first century AD did not look like or function like the American suburbs of today – and clever – trying to connect Biblical themes to the places where many American Christians now live. Is this the sort of claim only evangelicals would make?