Category Archives: Sociology

Trying to cut through a street grid on a diagonal to save time and distance

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Street grids have benefits, including offering multiple routes should congestion arise at one intersection or certain routes are off-limits. But what if a driver or pedestrian wants to move quickly through the grid at a diagonal?

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Different communities may offer options for this. Perhaps there are alleys one can cut through. These back ways offer even more alternatives through the grid if the main streets are congested. Or there might be an occasional diagonal roadway that crosses at an angle to other roads. Depending on the way one is traveling, the diagonal route might be more direct.

Chicago is a good example of having both options in numerous neighborhoods. The flat Midwestern city primarily has a road grid that stretches for miles. East-west and north-south streets can go a long way from one end of the city to the other (and beyond). At the same time, alleys and diagonal streets provide other travel options. The diagonal roadways can create some interesting intersections – these present travelers with different visuals and traffic patterns than they might be used to – but offer more direct routes at an angle to the grid. Numerous alleys take some pressure off the roads for garages, garbage, and other uses.

I imagine other places might offer different options. Any city offer an underground grid at a 45 degree angle to the ground-level grid? Or pedestrian skyways or tunnels that offer paths that cross the grid in different ways?

City residents and suburban residents going back and forth between those places

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Hints regarding new driving patterns in metropolitan areas could be found in a Chicago Tribune editorial about downtown traffic during Mexican Independence Day weekend:

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And they didn’t help you get from one neighborhood to another or back home from a night out to the suburbs…

Many businesses rely on suburbanites coming downtown for the weekend to eat or watch an artistic offering as the fall season kicks off.

Chicago is a big city so there are plenty of trips taking place solely within the city. Additionally, many big cities and people within are used to the idea that people from the suburbs travel into the city.

But these two short passages highlight a back and forth between both city and suburb. There are some traveling from city to suburbs, perhaps even for a night out (some suburbs are cool?). Others are traveling into the city to take advantage of particular opportunities offered in the city (or for work).

These newer patterns complicate efforts to address traffic. The predictable rush hours into the city in the morning and out of the city in the afternoon and evening have morphed into more traffic headed in all directions at more times. Traffic can be present around the clock, even without special events or celebrations.

Counting the hours spent talking about the possibility of merging Chicago area transit agencies

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As conversations take place regarding possibly merging transit agencies in Chicagoland, I wondered if it would be possible to count all the hours of talking, making deals, and working out details. What would the number be? I imagine someone working to provide an accurate count or estimate might run into a few methodological issues:

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-Which conversations to count? Is this primarily about formal debate in the legislature or public hearings about the possibilities? Can media reports (whether TV, print, radio, others) count as time? Do digital conversations (texting, emails, in particular apps) count?

-How to count less formal conversations. If conversations take place behind the scenes as opposed to in public settings, can they be found or discovered? What kind of work is needed to track these down?

-Are people willing to talk about their talking? Some might be more willing, some less so. Or perhaps people would be more willing to talk after some major decision is made.

-Do we have some ballpark numbers of how many hours go into major decisions in governments or organizations? What is a “typical” range?

Given the scope of possible changes and the implications whether change occurs or not, the process and the time devoted to it could be worthy of study.

Suburban sounds near the start of fall

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During the pandemic, some who were at home described the noises they heard from their residences that they may have missed in going to work regularly or being out more.

As summer winds down on the calendar and fall approaches, I noticed some different sounds in the suburbs. I described some of the suburban noises of summer back in 2018. Here are a few of the notable changes heading into a new season:

-Geese flying overhead regularly and standing around in fields and near water. The picture above includes geese honking and milling around in the early morning suburban mist on a soccer field set up for the fall season.

-Fewer lawnmowers at work and less yard work noise. It also has not rained much recently. The spring and summer hum of outdoor machines has lessened.

-The occasional sound of marching band practices and performances. We are more than a mile from a high school but we can hear the band at work (cannot hear cheering).

-No cicadas at this point of the year, particularly compared to earlier this summer in our area.

-Less noise from kids in the neighborhood during the day with school in session. Of course, people living near schools likely hear a lot more noise now during the middle of the day compared to the summer.

This is a particular suburban soundscape soon to change with leaves blowing around and crunching underfoot and later snow dampening outdoor noise.

Aiming for zero road deaths in Chicago

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Bicycle fatalities are down in the last year in Chicago. Could this help lead to zero road deaths in the city?

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It was the only bicyclist death so far this year, suggesting what some hope signals the beginning of a decline in such fatalities.

Some even contend the number of all traffic deaths in Chicago — cyclists, motorists and pedestrians — could be reduced to zero with the right improvements.

Others are more guardedly optimistic.

Before that August crash on the West Side, Chicago had gone 10 months without a cycling death. That was the longest such duration dating back to at least the beginning of 2019, the earliest year available from the city’s daily traffic crash data.

“Statistically, this drop appears too large just to be entirely good luck,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a transportation professor at DePaul University. “It’s not likely the fatalities will stay at this level, unfortunately, but this is encouraging.”

The rest of the article talks about methods that could be implemented to make roads in Chicago safer.

As I have read about similar efforts in recent years, reducing traffic deaths seems to go well with multiple other efforts:

  1. More sustainable cities with fewer cars on the road and other viable non-driving transit options.
  2. More inviting and lively streetscapes with less emphasis on motorized vehicles.
  3. Encouraging walking and biking, which are healthier options.

Safety alone may or may not be a compelling reason to change conditions but combine safety with other interests people have and perhaps there will be a steady shift away from only emphasizing driving.

What happens when a place is no longer growing quickly, Florida edition

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Populations and demand in housing markets can ebb and flow. What happens when a state known for growth for a while starts to lose its luster?

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Florida was one of the epicenters of the pandemic’s great migration, but while crowds of people are trying to settle into places like Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville, many Floridians want to dump their homes and get out.

The exodus is mainly being driven by higher housing costs, a higher cost of living, and souring attitudes toward the influx of people who moved to Florida in recent years. Those factors combined are making daily life in the state way more difficult, current and former Florida residents said.

While 730,000 people moved to Florida during 2021 and 2022, nearly half a million people left, according to US Census data.

The state, meanwhile, just lost its status as the most moved-to region this year, according to an analysis conducted by the Florida-based moving service PODS. South Florida, in particular, ranked among the regions people were most keen to move out of, the report said.

Waning enthusiasm for the state is evident in housing activity, which has fallen from its pandemic highs. The number of homes for sale in Florida has soared 42% compared to levels last year, according to Redfin.

In the United States, growth is good. A growing population is connected to an increasing status that hopefully just brings in more people and business.

But population booms do not last forever. A good number of American communities have had periods of rapid population growth, including many big cities and numerous suburbs, and then other periods of slow growth or even population loss.

From the evidence above, it sounds like Florida’s growth has slowed. It is another matter if the state starts losing residents. If that happens, dire descriptions can emerge such as it being a “failed” state.

If growth slows in Florida, what other states might take up the mantle of those with rapid growth? Can they have a sustained run of growth that brings prestige?

Improving a home’s interior design so it does not feel like a McMansion

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Is a house a McMansion regardless of what it has inside? One recent discussion of interior design hints that it depends on what the inside looks like:

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Everyone loves a good feature in a house. Wainscotting adds texture to a boring room, stone on a fireplace makes a living room cozier, and a simple ceiling beam can elevate an entire room. These architectural flairs make a house feel more memorable. Without them, a space can feel like a developer rather than an architect created the design, building something of a McMansion. But while it’s important to add thoughtful features, HGTV’s Drew Scott points out that there can be too much of a good thing. While one of those accents can help make a house feel special, muddling them all together can make everything too busy.

Often, the features of McMansions are visible from the outside: a large size, a mish-mash of architectural styles, and/or a location in a suburban subdivision of similar mass-produced homes.

But could a McMansion be redeemed if the inside does not look like a McMansion? Or could a home be a McMansion if the outside does not look like it but the interior has McMansion features? Imagine a 2×2 table:

McMansion interiorNot McMansion interior
McMansion exterior
Not McMansion exterior

The “typical” McMansion is in the top left cell: the outside and inside shows McMansion traits. The mixed categories are what is at stake here with the emphasis on interior spaces. Have the right design element inside and it could push a home out of the McMansion category.

I am not sure how this works. Who gets to render the ultimate McMansion judgment? Since McMansion is a negative term, does any shade of McMansion-ness mean the home is a McMansion?

Wildfires approaching homes in sprawling suburbia

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Wildfires threaten communities and homes fairly regularly in the United States. How often are these wildfires in suburban communities? Here is a current example outside of Los Angeles:

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Driven by triple-digit heat, gusting winds and tinder-dry vegetation, the three fires burned at speeds firefighters have never witnessed, scorching over 110,000 acres (44,510 hectares) – an area twice the size of Seattle.

The Bridge Fire, California’s largest current wildfire, swept through communities in the San Gabriel Mountains less than 40 miles (65 km) northeast of central Los Angeles, where people priced out of the city have built homes…

Southeast of Los Angeles, the Airport Fire has destroyed homes in the Elsinore Mountains and injured at least 10 people…

“The Airport Fire remains a significant threat to Orange County and Riverside County communities,” emergency agencies said in a statement.

One way to think about this is that metropolitan areas keep spreading outward. This provides more space for fire to threaten and more interaction with space and land less developed.

A second way to address this is to consider how suburban development – housing, roads, land uses, etc. – can encourage or discourage wildfires starting and spreading. Do yards and the ways homes are built contribute to wildfires? Does the design of American suburbs as we know them help fires spread?

Could this also be addressed in terms of financial trade-offs? Some might move to further-flung suburbs or new subdivisions on the edges because housing prices are cheaper. But how much cheaper is it if there are increased threats of wildfires?

It is one thing for wildfires to be in places with few residents and another if they are regularly occurring in suburbs and close to population centers.

A more diverse suburbia and “liv[ing] together in difference”

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This quote from the end of historian Becky Nicolaides’ new book The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles after 1945 is worth noting:

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The new suburbia emerged as a crucial site where people of different backgrounds, races, classes, and identities coexisted as neighbors, where people were trying to figure out how to live together in difference.

Building on decades of ideology, policy, and patterns in social relations, the American suburbs that grew quickly immediately after World War Two were often single-family home communities with white and middle-class and above residents. But as suburbs changed, particularly in more recent decades, they have become a different landscape. They are more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity and social class. They include numerous immigrants. They can contain different kinds of housing. Suburbanites live in a variety of communities distributed across a metropolitan landscape. Los Angeles is a good place to see these changes in action but this has happened in numerous metropolitan areas across the United States. All of this has led to a more complex suburbia.

Given the quote above, I also wonder if suburbs then can end up being places where Americans do “figure out how to live in difference.” Suburban history is full of examples of exclusion by race and social class. Do suburbanites on a whole today work together to address issues they all care about? Are the suburbs as a whole welcoming places? Can local tensions be resolved effectively? What places and/or groups can help bridge differences in suburbs? Or are suburbs a patchwork of exclusion and different kinds of development that holds together under the place category of suburbs?

Papal visits and large crowds

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Pope Francis visited East Timor earlier this week and many people came out to see him:

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opes are popular. So much so that nearly half the population of East Timor gathered Tuesday in a seaside park for Pope Francis’ final Mass in the small Southeast Asian country whose people are deeply Catholic…

East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, has been overwhelmingly Catholic ever since Portuguese explorers first arrived in the early 1500s and some 97% of the population today is Catholic. They turned out in droves to welcome the first pope to visit them since their independence in 2002, on the same field where St. John Paul II prayed in 1989 during the nation’s fight to separate from Indonesia.

Here is how this crowd compares to other crowds for papal visits:

Other papal Masses have drawn millions of people in more populous countries, such as the Philippines, Brazil and Poland. But the estimated crowd of 600,000 people in East Timor was believed to represent the biggest turnout for a papal event ever in terms of the proportion of the population…

While the East Timor gathering stands out, experts caution against relying on crowd counts that cannot be independently verified. The Vatican communicates crowd estimates that come from local organizers — who have an interest in overestimating the popularity of the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Crowd counting can be a tricky process. Does it get more difficult if it is a religious crowd as opposed to another kind of crowd?

More broadly, is the experience of a religious large crowd different? It is a unique experience to be crowds of hundreds of thousands of people or more. It does not happen often. The crowd can have a collective experience that is hard for individuals to have on their own. Such a crowd can help produce change or sentiment.