Category Archives: Sociology

How postwar DuPage County used zoning to limit poorer and non-white residents

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I was recently reading the 1976 political science book Poliscide and part of Chapter 8 on the postwar zoning practices of DuPage County caught my attention:

Although no county can place guards at the county line to inspect the socioeconomic and racial characteristics of newcomers, such powers as zoning and control over subdivision and building codes make the county a highly effective arbiter of the types of structures to be built and, hence, the final arbiter of the types of people who will live in its jurisdiction.

For example, DuPage County enacts a subdivision ordinance requiring a developer to retain a large portion of his prospective subdivision for public facilities such as parks and schools; the county combines this with a zoning ordinance requiring single-family dwellings and a large minimum lot size. This effectively prohibits a developer from profitably building anything but high-cost housing not accessible to lower-income persons.

Stringent county building code standards, requiring expensive building materials and high-quality plumbing, wiring, and heating systems, also serve to increase housing costs. The county’s industrial zoning policy restricting heavy industry serves to limit job opportunity for lower-income persons and to prevent a decline in residential property values surrounding an industrial development – which might create housing opportunities for lower-income groups. Moreover, the county’s relations with various financial institutions make it difficult for a developer to secure financing for a project not approved by the county. Indeed, because of the obstacles the county is capable of placing in the path of a developer, the county’s objection may be sufficient to convince a financial institution that investment in a project would be unwise.

The county’s relations with other units of government give it yet another means of influencing the course of residential and industrial development. It is not, for example, an uncommon practice in Illinois for the county forest preserve district to condemn, at the count government’s behest, land on which an unwelcome development is planned…. And courts have made it a point not to intervene. If the acquisition was for a “public purpose,” there is no inclination to examine the underlying motives. (179-180)

And, as the political scientists point out, these were all legal procedures. Local governments, whether at the municipality, township, or county level, often have the power to dictate what can be built on the land over which they have jurisdiction.

At the same time, there have been court cases seeking to reverse these zoning powers. In 1971, DuPage County residents and a local fair-housing group brought suit against the county for exclusionary zoning practices. The Mount Laurel cases in New Jersey led to famous decisions suggesting municipalities cannot completely restrict cheaper housing (even if implementation has been messy).

More broadly, Sonia Hirt argues zoning in the United States serves one primary purpose: single-family homes. When wealthier suburbanites or urban dwellers get the opportunity to live in the homes they want or ones that have plenty of desirable traits, they tend to resist efforts to include cheaper housing nearby. (For a more recent urban case, see Portland.)

To some degree, the plan worked for a while in DuPage County. The authors of Poliscide say the county was the 3rd wealthiest in the nation, businesses were growing, and much of the development was relatively high-end. Yet, things changed over time. In the 2010 Census, DuPage County was the 62nd wealthiest county in the United States. (It would be interesting to analyze what role zoning played in vaulting all those other counties above DuPage County.) In the same census, the white along population was just over 70%. Some of this might be due to how the authors of Poliscide suggest municipalities fought back against the county: they moved to incorporate themselves as well as annex land so that they took over jurisdiction of land and DuPage County had less control over new development.

Increasing the density of London’s suburbs

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The mayor of London recently released a new planning document for the city and it includes more housing in the city’s suburban areas:

Often, [suburbia] stays under the radar of urban theorists and policymakers. But it is emerging as a major untapped resource and, therefore, a battleground in the struggle to find somewhere, anywhere, to put new housing. Last week, the mayor, Sadiq Khan, revealed his draft for the new London Plan, the document that will guide the planning decisions of the city’s boroughs. He wants – and who wouldn’t? – more housing, more of it affordable, well designed and energy-efficient, complete with spaces that encourage walking, cycling and the use of public transport. He has limited powers – he can’t, for example, ordain the large-scale public housing programmes that even the estate agents Savills now thinks are necessary – but he can manipulate the planning system to promote some kinds of development over others.

His eyes alighted on the suburbs. Between the First and Second World Wars, while London’s population increased by 17%, its land area doubled, a reflection of its rapid suburban expansion at a much lower density than its historic centre. In theory, this means that if suburban densities could be nudged up, very many more homes could be accommodated within London’s boundaries. As Professor Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, says, Greater London could house 20 million people if it was all built to the same density as the inner borough of Islington.

So Khan wants to encourage, within 800 metres of transport links, developments that provide more housing in the same space. In doing so, he hopes to encourage smaller-scale developers and lower-cost housing, in contrast to the luxury towers promoted by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, in the name of meeting housing needs. This might mean building on gardens or building at four storeys instead of two.

He has, say Tory opponents, “declared war on the suburbs” and will make them “overcrowded and harder to get around”. Yet making suburbs denser could make them better. In principle, having more inhabitants means more life in town centres and high streets, which makes shops and businesses more viable and makes it easier to sustain such things as local bus services.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Building suburbs to higher densities is a popular idea among a number of architects, planners, and urbanists in the United States for many of the same reasons but opposition from established suburbanites can be fierce as increased density is perceived to threaten a suburban way of life (more land, more driving, more exclusivity in terms of class and race).

I wonder if the solution in the London area is in the part cited above: keep the higher densities to mass transit nodes. Plans do not necessarily have to include higher densities everywhere in suburbs; rather, transit-oriented development could concentrate more and cheaper housing in locations where new residents can easily access mass transit options for the entire region.

How a foreclosure can slow momentum toward the American Dream

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The effects of foreclosures after the burst housing bubble may be long-lasting for many individuals and households:

A foreclosure is a one-time event, but for many families it’s something that never ends, wrecking years of their lives and the hopes they once had. The story of the Santillans’ foreclosure illustrates the way that the recession changed the American economy, and for millions of Americans, forever changed their lives. Some nine million families lost their homes to foreclosure or short sale between 2006 and 2014. But many lost more than that: They lost their momentum, too. Families like the Santillans had been moving up a ladder towards the American Dream, and fell off into a deep pit. They’re still at the bottom of the ladder a decade later, trying to get back to where they had been…

A foreclosure set them back them even further. Academic studies point to the many negatives associated with foreclosure: Families in foreclosure have more frequent emergency-room visits and worse mental-health outcomes. Their children do worse in school and have higher truancy rates. They are more likely than other families to rely on the social safety net. Losing a home can also mean becoming disconnected from the community where you lived, and the connections that might have helped you find a new job or get a loan, Roberto Quercia, the director of the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told me. It’s for these reasons that many of those families are still struggling today. White families had largely recovered financially from the Great Recession by 2013, according to the Federal Reserve, while even today, the median income for black and Latino households has still not reached 2007 levels…

But they learned what many American families did during the financial crisis—that while America prides itself on being a place where people can climb up the economic ladder, it’s also a place where people can fall fast, and far. “We just can’t forget, that in any given moment, things can change,” Karina told me. This has implications beyond the fates of these individual families. The American economy thrives when people are in the jobs they want, being as productive as they can, and when they feel financially stable enough to make purchases that will raise their standard of living. The aftermath of the foreclosure crisis and recession means that many families have not felt secure like that in a long time.

Three points stick out to me:

  1. Social mobility in public conversation usually means moving up the class ladder but people also can fall down that ladder, particularly with major changes like loss of a job, foreclosure, or a major medical issue.
  2. It will be interesting to see how long it will take to truly recover from the burst housing bubble. Ten years? A full generation or two?
  3. There has long been a gap in homeownership and wealth between whites and both Latinos and blacks. The foreclosure issues only seem to have exacerbated these issues as whites as a whole have recovered while blacks and Latinos have not. How will these long-lasting ill effects of foreclosures affect inequalities between racial and ethnic groups?

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel takes a shot at defining a McMansion

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Spurred by complaints regarding McMansions in a white and wealthy Milwaukee suburb, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel explains the concept:

Neighbors say the newer homes, which boast about 5,000 square feet, dwarf the other homes on the street, which have an average size of 2,000 square feet.

Merriam-Webster definies McMansion as “a very large house built in usually a suburban neighborhood or development; especially one regarded critically as oversized and ostentatious.”

The issue that the residents in the aforementioned Whitefish Bay neighborhood have is that overly large homes are being built on properties that once had a more modest home.

That dictionary definition has a lot packed into it and could conceivably cover a lot of homes. However, it seems the residents of Whitefish Bay are most concerned about the relatively size of the new homes which are more than double the size of surrounding homes.

The article then asks whether three pictured homes from the Milwaukee area would qualify as McMansions. Based on the pictures provided, I would say no to all three though the first could be. Unfortunately, the pictures are too tight on the home – they do not give much indication of the relative size of the home, the full facade and roofline, how the home and lot fit together, and the neighborhood in which the home is situated.

Google Street View, machine learning, and social patterns

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I have wondered why more researchers do not make use of Google Street View. Here is a new study that connects vehicles in neighborhoods with voting patterns and demographics:

Abstract: The United States spends more than $250 million each year on the American Community Survey (ACS), a labor-intensive door-to-door study that measures statistics relating to race, gender, education, occupation, unemployment, and other demographic factors. Although a comprehensive source of data, the lag between demographic changes and their appearance in the ACS can exceed several years. As digital imagery becomes ubiquitous and machine vision techniques improve, automated data analysis may become an increasingly practical supplement to the ACS. Here, we present a method that estimates socioeconomic characteristics of regions spanning 200 US cities by using 50 million images of street scenes gathered with Google Street View cars. Using deep learning-based computer vision techniques, we determined the make, model, and year of all motor vehicles encountered in particular neighborhoods. Data from this census of motor vehicles, which enumerated 22 million automobiles in total (8% of all automobiles in the United States), were used to accurately estimate income, race, education, and voting patterns at the zip code and precinct level. (The average US precinct contains ∼1,000 people.) The resulting associations are surprisingly simple and powerful. For instance, if the number of sedans encountered during a drive through a city is higher than the number of pickup trucks, the city is likely to vote for a Democrat during the next presidential election (88% chance); otherwise, it is likely to vote Republican (82%). Our results suggest that automated systems for monitoring demographics may effectively complement labor-intensive approaches, with the potential to measure demographics with fine spatial resolution, in close to real time.

And a little more explanation from a news source:

The researchers created an algorithm to identify the brand, model and year of every car sold in the US since 1990.

The types of cars also provided information about the race, income and education levels of a neighborhood, the study said.

Volkswagens and Aston Martins were associated with white neighborhoods while Chryslers, Buicks and Oldsmobiles tended to appear in African-American neighborhoods, the study found.

This study seems to do two things that get at different areas of research:

  1. Linking lifestyle choices to voting behavior as well as other social traits. Researchers and marketers have done this for decades. For example, see this earlier post about media consumption and voting behavior. This hints at the work Bourdieu who suggested class status is defined by cultural tastes and lifestyles in addition to access to resources and power.
  2. Connecting different publicly available big data sets to find connections. Google Street View is available to all and election outcomes are also accessible. All it takes is a method to put these two things together. Here, it was a machine learning algorithm by which different kinds of vehicles could be identified. It would take humans a long time to connect these pieces of data but algorithms, once they correctly are identifying vehicles, can do this very quickly.

Of course, this still leaves us with questions about what to do with it all. The authors seem interested in helping facilitate more efficient national data-gathering efforts. The American Community Survey and the Dicennial Census are both costly efforts. Could machine learning help reduce the effort needed while providing accurate results? At the same time, it is less clear regarding the causal mechanisms behind these findings: do people buy pick-up trucks because they are Republican? How does this choice of a vehicle fit with a larger constellation of behaviors and beliefs? If someone wanted to change voting patterns, could encouraging the purchase of more pick-up trucks or sedans actually change voting patterns (or are these more of correlations)?

Live-in home managers help sell (expensive) homes

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A profile of home managers highlights one of the newest techniques for selling expensive homes:

The 7,800-square-foot home where the couple currently live, at 1334 Fox Glen Drive in St. Charles, is on the market for $1.5 million. It has a six-car garage with a “motor court” driveway (the owner’s Porsche 718 Boxster is still parked inside), six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a tennis court, and 2 acres of land. It’s four times the size of the Callahans’ townhouse in Geneva.

“Sometimes I walk in and think, ‘Really? I get to live here?’ It’s like a fairy tale land,” Janine said, while standing in a stunning living room with giant windows that overlook a backyard koi pond and waterfall. “It’s a privilege for us to do this. … It’s like we’re living someone else’s life for a while.”…

Realtors hire home managers to live in vacant luxury homes that they’re trying to sell because it saves the seller money, Mike Callahan says. It lowers their staging costs, since home managers bring their own furniture…

They’ve lived in 12 houses over the past eight years in Batavia, Wayne, Geneva, Elburn and St. Charles. They’ve stayed as few as 45 days and as long as 16 months. Every time they move in, Mike carries Janine across the threshold. “It’s just our thing,” he says…

“You can’t be spontaneous because it always has to be clean. The home must always be ready to show. You have to be ready to turn all the lights on and get out (for a showing),” Janine said, noting that it’s not unusual for a Realtor to call at random times and say, “We’re sitting in the driveway, can we come in?”

This sounds like it has reality TV potential, particularly if the live-in managers stayed in homes for relatively short periods. The show could track the staging and home showings alongside the lifestyle that comes with moving from nice home to nice home.

I also wonder if such managers can up their rates when they have a proven track record of selling homes (1) quickly and (2) at higher prices. The true value of a home manager might not just be saving money (such as lowering insurance costs and spotting potential problems) but moving homes for good prices.

Finally, what is the home value where having a live-in manager is not worth it? The home mentioned at the beginning of the article is an expensive one but could a typical suburban homeowner (think more of the $400-800k range) benefit from and/or afford a live-in manager?

Linking environmental degradation and McMansions

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A recent op-ed discussing how to respond to the extinction of species suggested building McMansions is not the way to go:

The solution is simple: moderation. While we should feel no remorse about altering our environment, there is no need to clear-cut forests for McMansions on 15-acre plots of crabgrass-blanketed land. We should save whatever species and habitats can be easily rescued (once-endangered creatures such as bald eagles and peregrine falcons now flourish), refrain from polluting waterways, limit consumption of fossil fuels and rely more on low-impact renewable-energy sources.

This is an interesting perspective of McMansions: they all include clearing broad swaths of land for giant houses and large lawns. If they all had 15 acres, these would be some pretty expensive McMansions. Indeed, I’m guessing these would be far out of the reach of the typical McMansion buyer (or builder) and this is territory for the true mansions.

At the same time, it hints at one of the key critiques of McMansions: they are an unnecessary use of resources. Because of their large size, they often require sizable plots of land to add the yard that is often required for American single-family home life. This does not even include how the resources to build the McMansion were procured. McMansion critics would often rather to build denser housing on smaller lots with more sustainable materials rather than carve out a large domain for one home in a large house.

Presumably, there is some middle ground between 15 acre McMansions and more acceptable McMansions. What if they did have much smaller lots? (This then often leads to complaints that they are too big for their lot.) What if they could be made with sustainable materials? What if they could be net-zero energy homes? What if they were built in denser areas where driving was not as necessary? (This can lead to concerns that they do not fit the character of denser neighborhoods.) There are some possibilities here that might render the McMansion more environmentally friendly.

The architecture of stars versus what emerges in cities

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Ron Grossman contrasts Chicago’s architectural gems and the more organic ways that neighborhood buildings developed:

The architecture of affluence breeds anonymity.

Nearby sidewalks don’t play on my heartstrings like those in a blue-collar neighborhood. Walking a block in Pilsen is like looking at Chicago history through a kaleidoscope.

Narrow three-story structures are topped with elaborate false fronts and a bit of Baroque ornamentation reminiscent of the Czech homeland of its original owners. A side wall may be painted in the vibrant palette of Orozco or another of the celebrated muralists of the current occupants’ Mexican homeland.

In Bronzeville, construction crews can be seen pulling jury-rigged partitions out of brownstone mansions. Built in the 19th century for the city’s wealthy, they were divided into sleeping rooms for poor blacks during the Great Migration of the 20th century. Now the neighborhood is gentrifying.

In many American cities, the past – written into stone and other materials in the form of buildings – will disappear unless specific preservation efforts are made. And, if the new structure can be a showpiece, something designed by a noted architect or firm and offering an unusual take, so much the better.

Two quick responses in my own mind:

  1. What will future city residents, say a few decades or centuries down the road, think about the construction booms taking place in many wealthier neighborhoods? If those future residents continue to prize progress, perhaps the loss of more original structures won’t matter.
  2. Like many culture industries, trends come and go in architecture. Is a rejection of cold, impersonal modern architecture more about that trend or more about letting individual properties and neighborhoods develop on their own without intervention from starchitects or government leaders? These are two different issues: whether you like the latest trends and whether you think architectural decisions should be made on a small scale and under the control of local residents.

Several of the large tax breaks offered by cities for Amazon’s HQ2

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One reporter went digging into the proposals cities made for Amazon’s second headquarters and some of the offers are extraordinary:

Example: Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever, Amazon would get to keep it all instead…

Most of the HQ2 bids had more traditional sweeteners. Such as Chula Vista, California, which offered to give Amazon 85 acres of land for free (value: $100 million) and to excuse any property taxes on HQ2 for 30 years ($300 million). New Jersey remains the dollar king of the subsidy sweepstakes, having offered Amazon $7 billion to build in Newark…

Boston has offered to set up an “Amazon Task Force” of city employees working on the company’s behalf. These would include a workforce coordinator, to help with Amazon’s employment needs, as well as a community- relations official to smooth over Amazon conflicts throughout Boston. (Surely Amazon can handle these things itself?)…

Fresno promises to funnel 85 percent of all taxes and fees generated by Amazon into a special fund. That money would be overseen by a board, half made up of Amazon officers, half from the city. They’re supposed to spend the money on housing, roads and parks in and around Amazon.

And he has not even been able to see a significant minority of the proposals. It is as I suggested: a tax break bidding war is underway. It would be great to hear public leaders questioned about these offers and why they are willing to give up so much. How might such offers change their communities? How much will a city really benefit from the second headquarters if they give so much away?

A side thought: what if Amazon’s call for a second headquarters is really a way to flesh out what big cities are willing to offer for a major headquarters? The project has to have enough size and prestige that cities would make big concessions. Once they fall over themselves for this, can’t other corporations ask for similar deals?

Portlanders turn conservative when cheaper housing is proposed near them

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The Oregonian addresses housing issues in the Portland area:

As progressive as Portlanders like to believe themselves to be, there’s no issue like population growth and housing to bring out their inner conservative. As the city’s population has surged, established neighborhoods have sought historic designation to guard against change. Homeowners in wealthy enclaves are posting yard signs decrying demolitions. And longtime residents are bemoaning the loss of “neighborhood character” amid the growth.

So it’s not surprising that the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is pulled in different directions, trying to calm irked neighbors while laying the groundwork for how the city will absorb new residents. Unfortunately, some of the proposals in the bureau’s draft “Residential Infill Project” – a plan for updating development rules in single-family neighborhoods – lean too heavily on ensuring the comfort of existing homeowners rather than helping create new ones…

But Tracy said the bureau felt it important to continue discussion about the challenges and opportunities that these narrow lots provide. The bureau’s right and deserves both credit and support for being willing to push forward the issue. Because for as much as people want to blame Portland’s housing crisis on greedy landlords or “McMansion” developers or rich California transplants, the problem boils down to the dispassionate laws of supply and demand. There are far too few homes and apartments in the city at far too few affordable price points for far too many people who need them.

I do not think it is easy anywhere in the United States to convince wealthier homeowners that cheaper housing should be built near them. It is one thing to suggest that wealthier residents should pay more taxes or promote affordable housing in the abstract. It is whole other deal to suggest that such homeowners should have to live near those people who need the affordable housing.

Another way to put it: if Portland with its well-known liberal politics and metropolitan planning boundary cannot promote affordable housing, who can?

(A side thought: it would be interesting to hear more from local experts how race plays into this. Portland may be a progressive city but it is also quite white – “the whitest big city in America.”)