Category Archives: Sociology

Chicago second in nation, fifth in world for Starbucks

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Chicago is a world leader in Starbucks, even if it is sometimes insecure about its place on the world stage:

Chicago is home to 164 Starbucks, ranking the city second in the United State behind New York City–and fifth in the world, according to Starbucks store data compiled by Chris Meller.

There are 64 locations in an area bounded by DesPlaines, Oak Street, Congress Parkway and Navy Pier. That’s 40 percent of the city’s total…

At O’Hare International Airport alone, there are 17 Starbucks locations, including spots in baggage claims, terminal concourses, food courts and near gates.

The South Side has only nine stores south of 33rd Street. There are no Starbucks on the West Side–at least none west of Ashland.

The common factors behind the Chicago locations seem to be the wealth and number of tourists in different locations. In other words, Starbucks tends to locate where there are more people with more money to spend on coffee. This may be a little different than the vision the store promotes for serving as a “third place” – these third places are for certain kinds of neighborhoods.

Update on the Internet versus other forms of media

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Derek Thompson provides an update on how people use the Internet in comparison to television and other media:

Eyes move faster than ads. It was true for TV: In 1941, when the first television ads appeared with local baseball games, radio and print dominated the media advertising market. Now it’s true for mobile, which is practically a glass appendage attached to working Americans and commands more attention than radio and print combined, even though it only commands 1/20th of US ad spending. Google and Facebook own the future of mobile advertising, for now. But the present of mobile monetization isn’t ads. It’s apps…The second chart that really struck me from the Meeker report shows the growth of the mobile biz since 2008, which has exploded from $2 billion to $38 billion. I never would have guessed that two-thirds of the mobile business comes from paid apps rather than advertising. It’s an interesting reversal from the desktop ecosystem, where just about every Internet property I use is free and supported with third-party advertising. When you combine this graph (basically: Mobile is an app industry, with a side of ads) and the previous graph (basically: The future of attention is mobile), you begin to see just how important it is for media companies to promote high-quality apps for their stuff…

If you’re wondering why Facebook spent a bajillion dollars on WhatsApp and Instagram (and offered more bajillions to Snapchat), just look at this graph for a split-second. The Internet as you know is essentially a series of tubes optimized for facilitating the distribution of photos. Although Facebook’s share of that photo market isn’t growing, WhatsApp and Snapchat have exploded. This feeds into a larger point that Meeker makes in the presentation, which is that the mobile Internet has been a boon for discrete, simple functions. WhatsApp is simple. Snapchat is simple. Timelines are simple. Simple actions and interfaces are thriving on mobile, more than services like Facebook which offer a more complex suite of functions…

– British people watch the most TV.
– The Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russians spend the most time on desktop computers.
– Nigeria is the most addicted to their smartphones.
– Nobody loves tablets more than the Philippines and Indonesia.

Some fascinating info. The quick rise of the mobile device is truly remarkable but it is worth noting that it hasn’t supplanted television and other media just yet. In fact, perhaps part of its appeal is that it is able to co-opt other forms of media: print, TV, and radio can all migrate to a single smartphone screen.

How much more expensive is it to completely repair a McMansion versus buying one new?

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I saw this story about a Bellevue, Washington McMansion that suffered a costly fire:

A new Enatai area ‘McMansion’ that was not yet occupied suffered more than $750,000 worth of damage during a fire early Monday morning.  The cause of the blaze is not immediately known but being investigated by authorities.  The house was not occupied yet, and no one was injured – although a Bellevue firefighter endured a big scare.

Once a home has suffered this kind of damage, is it simply cheaper to buy a new one rather than completely repair the existing home? Homes are usually built with economies of scale as builders work on multiple homes in an area and have materials and workers on hand. I’ve had this thought about cars as well: if you had to replace all of the individual parts, your costs would likely rise past the full value of the vehicle. Since the home was unoccupied (it does not note whether it was owned yet), I suspect it may just be torn down and a new home rebuilt on the spot.

Remodeling dated and garish McMansions

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Some buyers of McMansions do quite a bit to update the homes:

The towering (and disintegrating) stucco walls, pretentious interior columns, two-story great room, and four vinyl garage doors that greeted visitors didn’t do much to distinguish it from its neighbors.

“We knew it was, inherently, a version of a McMansion. So one of our challenges was: How do we bring a new identity to it?” said Seip, vice president of Chase Building Group, based in Doylestown.

As the region’s stock of oversize – but often under-designed – suburban tract houses ages into its teens and 20s, some homeowners are looking to reverse the gravest missteps and most ludicrous larks of prerecession developers. They’re ripping out never-used master-bath Jacuzzis, lowering space-wasting cathedral ceilings and replacing builder-grade finishes with more personalized selections…

“If you have a house that was cheaply built with bad materials, with a short-term development mentality . . . it will always plague whatever you do,” he said. “We can solve for a badly planned house. But we can’t change a badly made house into a well-made house.”

This is one answer to the question of what will happen to McMansions several decades later: some of them will be remodeled to fit new trends. New owners often want the latest features and want to avoid the appearance of dated finishes.

There are several possible responses to this:

1. Not all McMansions are likely to be significantly remodeled. What happens to them and how many will there be?

2. The last quote in the passage above is interesting: the changes can only go so far to fix earlier features of the house.

3. Critics of McMansions might suggest no one should buy these homes in the first place but it is interesting to note that there are homebuyers who think McMansions can be “fixed” or changed to better meet their needs. Even if significant remodeling is desired, is square footage still a key drawing point of these homes?

4. The stucco McMansion finishes in Pennsylvania seem to draw quite a bit of attention. Are there no stucco McMansions further in the Northeast? Perhaps builders got a little carried away with this exterior finish in an area that has more roots in northern European architecture.

When fast-growing suburbs like Plano face build-out

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Plano, Texas has had incredible growth in recent decades to over 270,000 residents but it is nearing build-out:

Of that 8 percent, 6.6 percent — or 3,052 acres — is earmarked for commercial development. A mere 1 percent — or 428 acres — is left for housing…Buildout, to Plano Mayor Harry LaRosiliere, simply means “a new phase of the city’s life.”…

Instead of McMansions, Plano’s future housing could include more five- to 12-story high-rise buildings and mixed-use urban centers clustered around DART’s Parker Road Station, at Park Boulevard and Preston Road, and the Collin Creek Mall, according to the 2006 Urban Centers Study.

Apart from new development, efforts are also focused on revitalizing aging retail areas and neighborhoods, said LaRosiliere, noting the new Great Update Rebate program provides cash incentives to residents who update older homes.

Maintaining property values and retaining and attracting new businesses, he said, are critical to the city’s main sources of revenue: property and sales taxes.

Very interesting. For a while now, Plano has been known for its rapid growth and sprawling development with lots of big houses. Some choices facing the suburb moving forward (partly based on my own research on Naperville, another suburb that experienced rapid growth and is now facing build-out):

1. As is noted here, that rapid development led to money added to the city’s coffers and a slow-down in building would limit new income and possibly lead to budget problems in trying to keep up with an aging infrastructure. Keeping up with the costs for local services and amenities can prove tricky in suburban communities when residents continue to clamor for a relatively high quality of life.

2. What happens to a community when denser development is introduced? One way to do this is to build up but this may not be viewed favorably near single-family homes. Building taller can introduce very visible landmarks that may not mesh with the character of a single-family home community. In contrast, transit-oriented development is popular in many places and doesn’t have to be that tall.

3. Retrofitting older spaces can be cool and create new centers of activity. For example, older shopping malls can be reconfigured to be more mixed-use and walkable. However, this can also prove more costly for developers than building new buildings in more sprawling locations. Additionally, demolishing older buildings can lead to issues with neighbors.

Overall, this transition stage for suburbs between growth and build-out is relatively understudied. Many American suburbs have already faced this issue, particularly those founded before the post-World War II suburban boom, and have had a range of outcomes. Yet, many of the post-war suburbs are facing this issue and it is not necessarily an easy change.

Buying or renting smaller spaces related to less consumer spending

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If Americans turn away from McMansions and toward smaller homes or renting, they may also spend less on other items:

The apartment/renting moves have two implication for consumer spending. First, less space means less stuff. Second, rental units typically aren’t fitted with high-end appliances and finishes.

Looking at real spending for certain home goods, the data show annual increases in spending on items like appliances, furniture and window treatments are averaging less than they did during the boom years. That means that, like home construction, demand for home goods isn’t supplying the boost to economic growth that it did before the recession.

The Demand Institute, a joint initiative of The Conference Board and Nielsen, looked into the shift’s impact on consumer spending in a 2012 study. The DI analysis expected demand for home goods to pick up as housing recovers, but “value-oriented brands are likely to see the greatest growth,” the report said, a short-run trend “driven by landlords and renters who want to spend less on fixtures and furnishings than homeowners [do].”

Renting households also tend to own fewer vehicles, said the DI report, in part because their finances are worse than homeowners but also because parkingspots are limited. That shift will limit future car sales

All together, this links spending in one large area – housing – to spending in other sectors. Take owning a large suburban house. Such a home tends to support a more robust housing industry including construction and real estate. Such homes are often built in more sprawling suburban neighborhoods, leading to more cars and more road construction. Bigger homes require more furnishings, landscaping, and opportunities for improvements and repairs, supporting more suburban big box stores and other retailers.

I do wonder how much this is a case of spurious correlation versus indicating broader shifts: is this all linked to people having less disposable income? If they feel they have less money, they might make different choices about housing as well as consumer goods. Or, due to the economic crisis and relatively stagnant income for many Americans, consumers might be shifting their preferences in a number of ways that could upset traditionally important economic sectors. It could be a move away from expensive and more durable goods (houses, cars) toward electronics (like smartphones) and entertainment (the creative class).

Explosion in car ownership, oil consumption in China

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Driving may have peaked in the United States but more Chinese own cars and are buying gas:

Over the past decade, the number of cars sold in China has jumped from 2 million a year to nearly 20 million. No surprise, then, that oil consumption soared from 250,000 barrels a day to 2.25 million barrels a day between 2003 and 2013, according to a new report from United States Energy Information Agency. As a result, since 2009, China has been forced to import half of its oil.

That hockey stick-like growth has, of course, exponentially worsened China’s catastrophic pollution and so the government’s latest 5-year plan calls for 500,000 electric and hybrid cars to be on the road by 2015, with 5 million by 2020. To hit those targets, China has invested billions of dollars to jump-start the country’s electric car industry. It’s also providing subsidies to get the motoring masses to go fossil-fuel free.

Buying a car isn’t just an isolated decision: it is linked to numerous areas in a society.

1. Gas consumption. This can help drive the oil industry, boost the import of gasoline, and affect the price.

2. Environmental effects. More cars means more smog.

3. An infrastructure of roads and other assorted services like gas stations and repair places.

4. Lifestyles that can be designed around the car. This includes more sprawl, fast food, and big box stores.

5. Perhaps a growing cultural emphasis on the independence and status related to owning a car.

All of this is quite a change.

Cutoff price for luxury home differs by region

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A new survey suggests the point at which an expensive home becomes a luxury home differs by region:

But the starting point for making such a judgment, the price, seems to vary significantly by region. The price tag for a luxury home is perceived to start at $1 million in the Northeastern, Pacific and mountain states (Montana, Colorado, Utah, et al.). But in the Midwest and South, consumers’ notions of luxury begins at $500,000, according to a survey by Realtor.com.

By the way, sales of those million-dollar homes are doing rather well nationally, but a major player in homebuilding is taking an unexpected turn — one that speaks of the real estate world of long ago.

D.R. Horton Inc. is rolling out a new division that plans to appeal to the bare-bones, nothin’ fancy, first-time buyer. Its Express Homes line, to be built initially in Southern and Western states, will range from $120,000 to $150,000. And what you’ll see at these developments is what you’ll get — there won’t be any upgraded features, no optional finishes.

Horton CEO Donald Tomnitz told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the company believes the next segment of the real estate market recovery will be led by entry-level buyers, presumably older ones.

The regional differences in price could be due to a variety of factors. It might be linked to relative income levels. It could be tied to housing inventory – less room might lead to higher prices overall. Or, there might be differences in home styles and expectations. The mountain states seem to stick out in amongst these regions as they often have plenty of space and prices aren’t as high as the Northeast or Pacific Coast. However, perhaps there are plenty of luxury mountain homes, whether they are vacation or resort homes.

It would be interesting to know exactly in which markets D.R. Horton intends to build these cheaper homes. Given the need for affordable housing in many areas of the United States plus the need for more good housing at the bottom end of the market, I imagine there could be a market for such homes. Yet, these homes probably can’t be built everywhere as neighbors in more expensive homes would view cheaper homes as threats to their property values.

South Barrington has the “Ultimate McMansion”

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Curbed Chicago highlights a 21,000 square foot South Barrington home as the “Ultimate McMansion”:

If you looked up the word McMansion in the dictionary, a photo of this house would appear next to the definition. And no doubt, South Barrington is a place where folks like to live large. The suburb is known for being the home of the fourth largest church in the country, for having a movie theater that’s the size of most small airports, and a plethora of McMansions that were built in the last couple of decades. And of all the McMansions for sale in South Barrington right now, this 21,000 square foot home may just take the cake. The manse sports a six car garage, four master suites, a 3,000 square foot rec room and a private beach. The huge seven bedroom home also has some pretty interesting interior design going on as well, complete with clouds painted on the ceiling in some rooms and a basement that looks like something you’d find in Vegas from the 90s. For $3.87M, this ultimate McMansion could be all yours.

Quite the interior and exterior. But, this is a classic case of an expensive home that is way past McMansion with its square footage. What would the average McMansion owner do with 21,000 square feet? Most of the photos show rooms that are simply much too large for even a good amount of furniture. I would argue that once you get past nine or ten thousand feet

The connection of the big home to other big features of South Barrington is also intriguing. Do people who live in McMansions tend to like to live in places in large churches or movie theaters? Perhaps the connection is the level of wealth in the community but having a lot of big houses is not necessarily related to having one of the biggest churches nearby

Guide to finding and maintaining love in a tiny house

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Living in a tiny house may just require approaching a relationship in some new ways:

Tip #2: Consider dating exclusively within the tiny house community…

Tip #3: You’re going to need to talk about your stuff…

Tip #7: Let go of any previously held notions of privacy…

Tip #9: Decide how important those precious “child-free” moments really are to you…

Tip #12: There will need to be some indoctrination involved.

Given the propensity of more Americans to live alone plus other indicators (like social media) that suggest Americans prefer relationships on their own terms, living together in such a small space may be asking too much. Tip #8 does provide an out by suggesting two tiny houses can be parked side by side but the larger issue remains: how many Americans want to be that close? Isn’t physical space often viewed as something that is good for modern relationships, something that gives those involved room to be independent and be fulfilled outside of their close relationships?

The tiny house movement is still really small at this point so it would be difficult to look at how relationships in these settings fare compared to relationships lived in larger homes. Additionally, just because one lives in a tiny house doesn’t mean that those involved can’t be elsewhere – this all assumes private home space is the most important space in life (a common American assumption) but people in other countries and societies have some different ideas about how this can work.