Category Archives: Sociology

Housing deed fraud via AI

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Fraudulently filing for a property deed might be easier with AI:

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One of AI’s hallmarks is its ability to learn and digest enormous amounts of information. Property data is readily available to the public, and in some states, a simple search can unearth appraisal data, blueprints, transaction records, and even pictures of executed deeds. With AI, fake documents could be created faster and more realistic-looking.

“They’re just creating these AI models that are reading all of the public records and public data that they can possibly get their hands on, that are then creating a means by which they can manipulate that information,” Adams said. “So it’s like the ingestion is now automated because of AI models, and then the impersonation is a lot more sophisticated.”

An AI tool might be able to recognize a vacant property in a database faster than a human could or identify homes without mortgages attached to them (which could mark them as targets for a refinancing scheme).

The amount of personal information available to fraudsters also makes impersonation easier.

Kiar said his office has handled hundreds of fraud cases. Only two of those cases so far have involved AI, but he remains concerned that more are on the way.

Public databases have numerous advantages. People can search information more quickly. Processes can be automated. Local governments can demonstrate transparency. Researchers can access information.

But this story hints at the down sides. Anyone – or any system – could access the information. Those with malicious intent might be able to make something of the information intended to serve the public good.

The article suggests a need for verifying the identity for those filing a deed. Two-factor authentication for local government transactions! Could such verification require non-online actions, thus negating some of the advantages of online transactions?

Suburb without a traditional downtown to replace shopping mall with mixed-use development

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A Chicago area suburb with a dying shopping mall and no traditional downtown hopes to convert the mall into a thriving mixed-use space:

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Golf Mill Shopping Center opened in 1960 as an open-air mall. Later, it was enclosed, and the iconic Mill Run Playhouse was built on the grounds. The theater, before it closed in 1984, hosted acts such as Chicago native Shecky Greene and Frank Sinatra.

Today, the mall has more than 1 million square feet of leasable space in addition to a nine-story office tower. Target and JCPenney are two of its biggest anchors, alongside AMC Theatres, Ulta, Burlington and Ross…

Alpogianis and other city officials see the future of the 80-acre site as “live, work, play” — an increasingly popular phrase for mixed-use developments that have virtually everything a resident could need on site. The Golf Mill Shopping Center redevelopment — to be called Golf Mill Town Center — will aim to be one of Niles’ premier destinations in the absence of a traditional downtown.

The first phase of redevelopment will include an overhaul of the mall’s retail, along with new luxury apartments and restaurants, Alpogianis said.

He said the project will be 70% retail and entertainment and 30% residential and other uses — the latter of which includes the “very good” possibility of a hotel and office, depending on market conditions.

The shopping mall redevelopment described here is common these days: add housing, restaurants, and different retail options to what was a mall with declining activity and revenue. The goal is more of a 24 hour a day place where a combination of residential, commercial, and recreational activity makes it more like a lively neighborhood.

What struck me here was the idea that such a redevelopment could help address a different issue in the suburb: no traditional downtown. In the Chicago area, such a downtown would typically be located along a railroad line connecting suburbs to downtown. Niles is more of in-between two railroad lines and the community had a small population until a population explosion in the 1950s (over 400% growth).

While the shopping mall is often viewed as a postwar substitute for public space, could all of these mall redevelopments lead to new suburban downtowns? The mixed-use developments are often intended to be more walkable, at least to the new residents who live there, and provide social spaces. Whether this actually happens is another matter; will the redeveloped malls be connected to a larger walkable grid in suburbia? Will people still need to drive to the redevelopment? Once people are living on site, how many will regularly make use of the nearby amenities as opposed to driving elsewhere?

The shopping mall may come and go in many suburbs but the quest for something like a downtown may continue.

Finding the end of the airport

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With time to spare on a recent trip, I walked all the way to the end of the airport:

This is both what I expected to find and not what I expected to find. On one hand, there are few spaces that look quite like an airport. The big open space surrounded by banks of chairs, a particular kind of carpet, and plenty of windows to see outside interspersed with a lot of doors no one can enter unless they are officially open.

On the other hand, there was no one at the end of the airport. Well, one person on the left taking advantage of the relative solitude. No planes waiting at this area and actually no used gates even near the end. This is not what I commonly see in the two Chicago airports where it seems the opposite issue is present: there are not enough gates for all the flights and airlines and some people have to wait on a tarmac.

Depending on your point of view, this might be an oasis or an opportunity or a waste of resources. Could this provide a refuge from the hustle of the airport near the center where all the concourses branch out? Could the airport do with fewer gates, thus leading to lower costs for maintenance and staff? Or might this lead to a future of more flights with room to grow? Is this space best experienced when filled with activity and travel?

The (American) city of bridges?

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Pittsburgh has a lot of bridges:

Smaller versions can even serve as bike racks:

According to a few sources (here and here), Pittsburgh might claim the most bridges in the United States. Other people disagree (such as here).

All communities have features that they regard as unique or noteworthy. Bridges are an interesting choice: beyond having a lot of them, they are easy to see and are necessary for transportation.

Like in many matters, it may depend on measurement for claiming this civic title: what counts as a bridge?

What if some suburbs enforce certain non-moving vehicle violations and others do not

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The suburb of Naperville, Illinois is concerned about loud mufflers and the police are acting accordingly:

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Noisy mufflers were among the top complaints at a recent “chat with the chief,” and city council members also have fielded complaints coming from the downtown district and the south end of Naperville near 95th Street.

The noise from engines revving and modified mufflers can get loud enough to be heard blocks away, said Mayor Scott Wehrli, who lives near the city’s downtown district. This summer, for example, motorcycles revving their engines through one of the parking decks created enough noise to disrupt an outdoor summer band concert, he added…

Under state law, it is illegal to have a modified muffler on a vehicle, Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres said. Naperville police have been issuing citations based on that law.

Between Sept. 1 and Oct. 8, police issued 26 citations. Two of them resulted in guilty pleas on Wednesday and about $300 in fines for each citation, officials said…

Arres, who noted complaints about noisy cars is not unique to Naperville, is hopeful word will travel fast that loud cars aren’t welcome in town.

Two questions quickly came to mind when I read this:

  1. Will loud cars and vehicles now avoid Naperville? It is a big community with lots of locations for locals and visitors to travel to.
  2. What if nearby suburbs do not enforce this state law? Say Naperville continues to enforce this law and issue citations and some of the drivers do indeed stay away; will these drivers simply visit nearby suburbs? Will they get their vehicles fixed or modified? While Naperville is indeed big, nearby suburbs could many of the same kinds of places to drive to.

This is not just limited to loud cars; what about enforcing having proper license plates or tinted windows that are too dark or other vehicle issues that are not moving violations? If a number of communities do not enforce this, will it make that much of a difference?

It will take some time to see if the issue is addressed to the satisfaction of Naperville leaders and residents. And will the problem shift to neighboring suburbs?

AI generating a new history through pictures?

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AI platforms can create images that might look they are historical photos. This could be a problem:

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Widely shared on social media, the atmospheric black and white shots — a mother and her child starving in the Great Depression; an exhausted soldier in the Vietnam war — may look at first like real historic documents.

But they were created by artificial intelligence, and researchers fear they are muddying the waters of real history…

For now, Amaral and Teeuwissen believe they can still tell fake historical images from real ones just by looking at them.

AI-generated photos often have tell-tale glitches: too many fingers on a hand, missing details — such as the lack of a propeller on the Wright brothers’ plane — or, on the other hand, compositions that are too perfect.

“AI-generated pictures can recreate the look, but they miss the human element, the intent, the reason behind the photographer’s choices,” said Amaral.

With AI text and images, history could be all redone. What is available online, often the first or primary source for many, could provide different historical accounts and evidence.

Of course, history to some degree is always in flux as different actors and different contexts affect how we understand what happened in the past. There are things that happened and then perceptions and interpretations of those happenings that often take time to develop and solidify. AI joins an already existing process.

Do AI images then pose a unique threat to historical knowledge and narratives? If history is primarily created and understood through images online, perhaps. Will others find ways to demonstrate that certain images are truly from the past?

Some difficulties in directly studying the effects of social media use on mental health

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As more actors express concerns about how social media use affecting the mental health of “children and teens,” this article suggests it can be hard to directly measure this link:

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It doesn’t help that mental health is influenced by many factors, and no single treatment works for every person. “It’s not as straightforward as: What is the right antibiotic for that ear infection?” said Megan Moreno, a scientist and pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and co-director of the Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health at the American Academy of Pediatrics…

Among the reasons that make it difficult to isolate the role of social media in kids’ mental health is that the relationship between mental health and tech use is a two-way street, the panel from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said. A person’s mental state might influence how he or she uses the platform, which in turn affects his or her state of mind. 

Randomized, controlled studies on whether social media caused the mental-health crisis are impractical because exposure to social media is now everywhere, researchers say. In addition, platforms are constantly changing their features, hobbling efforts to run long-term studies, they say.

A decade ago, Munmun De Choudhury, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, was part of a team that showed that groups promoting disordered eating were skirting Instagram’s moderation efforts. De Choudhury says that such studies probably would be impossible today because social-media companies no longer allow access to public data, or charge hefty fees for it…

Research into the roots of distress in young people has found that other factors—bullying, or lack of family support—have stronger associations with mental-health outcomes, compared with social-media use.

These are different issues. This includes having access to data from platforms as well as data over time. Additionally, it takes work to separate out different influences on mental health. Randomized controlled trials that could help with this are difficult to put together in this situation. Other factors are shown to influence mental health.

Some think there is enough data to make the argument about social media use influencing mental health. For example, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts together evidence in his latest book The Anxious Generation. His approach is one that social scientists can take: there seem to be consistent patterns over time and other factors do not seem to account as well for the outcomes observed. And if there is a growing consensus across studies and scholars, this is another way for scientific findings to advance.

This is an ongoing situation as policy efforts and research efforts follow sometimes intertwining paths. If a state restricts social media use for teenagers and then mental health issues drop, would this count as evidence for social media causing mental health distress?

Adding hundreds of luxury apartments to a shopping mall – and not affordable housing

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Why add affordable housing to the suburban shopping mall when a developer and community can add hundreds of luxury apartments to the mall? Such a plan is under discussion in Skokie, Illinois:

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The Skokie Village Board gave tentative  approval at its Oct. 8 meeting for developers to build hundreds of luxury apartments across three buildings at the upscale Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center.

The first phase of construction would create 425 apartments between two mixed-use buildings, one five stories tall and one seven stories tall. The second construction phase would be for an additional seven-story building that could be used for more apartments or a hotel, said Stephen Fluhr, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s senior vice president of development…

The additions to the mall were met with criticism by an affordable housing group, which blasted the Village Board for approving plans they saw as having too few affordable apartments.

The first phase would put two buildings in the area of the former Bloomingdale’s retail space in the northwest part of the mall, south of Old Orchard Road and east of Lavergne Avenue.  The developers’ intention is to create a new neighborhood complete with parks, restaurants and spaces for concerts and farmers markets, according to Fluhr. The development is a partnership with the mall’s owner URW and Focus, a development group that is also in the process of building apartments near malls in Vernon Hills and Aurora.

Many malls would like to add housing to their property (examples from the Chicago suburbs to southern California): it makes use of vacant shopping space and provides local residents who might visit stores, restaurants, and entertainment options at the mall.

I would also guess many mall and community would like to add luxury apartments. These apartments will attract certain kinds of residents, those with resources to spend more in the community and contribute to a certain status. Luxury apartments at malls would go along with the idea that only the wealthiest malls will survive.

But, as communities consider affordable housing, why not include affordable housing as part of redeveloped housing at the mall? Many suburbs have limited greenfield development options so redevelopment provides an opportunity for affordable housing. Or affordable housing could provide housing for people working at the mall or working near the mall as shopping malls tend to be close to all sorts of businesses and jobs.

The bigger issue at hand is likely this: how many suburbs are truly willing to add affordable housing? And if they say they want to add such housing or have local regulations that require it, where will they allow it be located?

Who may and may not benefit from going off the electric grid

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With the declining price of solar panels and an increasing ability to go off the electric grid, who could benefit?

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These trends, coupled with increasing grid electricity costs and decreases in both solar and battery costs, have made economic grid defection a salient issue.

But this also raises concerns about potential “utility death spirals,” where as more customers leave the grid to save money, the ones who are left face higher electricity costs, prompting even more to leave until the utility is bankrupt.

This trend raises two major concerns. First, those who can’t afford to leave the grid — often the poorest households — will end up paying the most for left-over fossil fuel electricity from the grid. Leaving the grid requires a hefty up-front cost, and not everyone can afford it.

Second, our research shows that the diesel generators used as back up for off-grid solar and battery systems will cause significant pollution — even more than the grid in some locations.

Large-scale infrastructure often serves large numbers of people. Without a large user base – whether it is a highway or an electrical grid or a sewage system – it is harder to justify its construction and maintenance. When most, if not all, the population participates, resources can be pooled and the infrastructure can serve the common good. The shift to mass society can with systems that (theoretically) served all.

If not everyone participates, things can get interesting. We see this playing out in a number of areas. What if more people start purchasing electric cars? The gas tax resources that fund roads start to shrink so there are ways to make up that revenue. What if health care is a multi-tiered system where those who good jobs and insurance can access better care? Then the public option might suffer in terms of quality and prices.

The vision above hints at a two-tiered electric system: those who have the means to produce their own electricity and those who cannot and need to keep paying for an aging system. If the trends described keep going, it could lead to interesting discussions and choices made about how to provide electricity in the United States in the 21st century.

Update to where suburban voters lean in presidential race

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One poll suggests a slight change in voting preferences among the numerous suburban voters in the United States:

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Suburbanites, who make up about half of the U.S. electorate and are as racially diverse as the nation at large, are a key prize. Biden beat Trump in suburban counties by about six percentage points in the 2020 presidential election.

Before Biden dropped out, Trump was leading him 43% to 40% among suburbanites in Reuters/Ipsos polls conducted in June and July, reflecting the Democrat’s struggle to energize supporters.

Harris began closing the gap when she launched her campaign in July and led Trump 47% to 41% among suburban voters in polling across September and October. That represents a nine-point swing in the Democrat’s favor, according to the analysis of six Reuters/Ipsos polls that included responses from over 6,000 registered voters…

Winning the middle – whether nationally or in the election’s key states – won’t necessarily crown the victor. Democrat Hillary Clinton, who got nearly 3 million votes more than Trump nationwide in the 2016 election and beat him in suburban counties by about 1 percentage point, still lost the election when Trump flipped six states that had voted Democratic in 2012.

Several thoughts in response:

  1. This follows patterns from recent election cycles: how suburbanites vote, particularly in key states, is important for the outcome.
  2. Suburban voters are a sizable block of voters as this is where a majority of Americans live. Do all suburbanites vote the same? No, suburbia is increasingly complex with people in suburbia have different experiences and backgrounds.
  3. Related to the previous point, do suburbanites see themselves as a voting bloc? If I were to take the Chicago metropolitan area as an example, voters across the region might not see themselves as similar to others in the region’s suburbs.
  4. Will the presidential candidates appeal more directly to suburban life in the last few months? If the economy is the biggest issue for voters (as the article suggests), is talking about the middle-class direct enough? Trump in 2020 spoke directly about suburbs; will both candidates do this in 2024?