Category Archives: Sociology

US government behind in regulating automated features for cars

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As car makers pursue new technologies including driverless cars, the US government is struggling to keep up with the changes:

While truly self-driving cars are years away—if they ever arrive—consumers are seeing far more car models bearing sophisticated semi-autonomous features. These include radar assisted cruise-control, which can keep a fixed distance from the car ahead; systems that warn drivers if they veer out of their lanes; and technologies that can prevent oversteering or even apply the brakes when they detect that a crash is imminent (see “Self-Driving Tech Veers into Mid-Range Cars” and “Proceed With Caution Toward the Self-Driving Car”)…

With three states and the District of Columbia having passed legislation to allow researchers to test such prototypes on real roads, Washington is grappling with how to regulate the cars. John Capp, the director of active safety systems for General Motors, says federal regulators are “trying to understand these things and trying to figure out what role they should have.”…

Unsurprisingly, NHTSA’s statement said that fully autonomous technology isn’t ready for the general public. But the fact that the agency is calling for more study is a reminder of the glacial pace of regulation: in the case of lane-departure warnings and crash-avoidance systems, it’s studying technologies that have already been on the market for several years.

See my post last week on the NHSTA statement. More broadly, this raises interesting questions about technology and the ability of regulators to keep up. For those who want to push technology forward, how much in terms of time, convenience, and dollars is lost if the government slows down the process? At the same time, how much regulation is needed to help protect the public? There is likely some sort of sweet spot when the government has time to declare technology safe and inventors and producers can still get things to the public in a reasonable amount of time…but I suspect this could vary widely across different sectors and the politics involved could change quite a bit. Take, for example, the scandal a few years back involving Toyota and the lack of findings. It cost the company quite a bit, the government still had a duty to step in, but there was little conclusion – except that perhaps we’re all going to have black boxes in our cars  soon. Imagine a few incidents like this happening with a new widespread technology like driverless cars. How much could that set the industry back and feed perceptions that the technology really wasn’t ready?

Smart Midwesterners flock to Chicago?

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An excerpt from a new book about the Rust Belt looks at why Chicago attracts so many educated Midwesterners:

The North Side of Chicago is such a refuge for young economic migrants from my home state that its nickname is “Michago.” In 2000, a quarter of Michigan State University graduates left the state. By 2010, half were leaving, and the city with the most recent graduates was not East Lansing or Detroit but Chicago. Michigan’s universities once educated auto executives, engineers, and governors. Now their main purpose is giving Michigan’s brightest young people the credentials they need to get the hell out of the state.

In the 2000s, Michigan dropped from 30th to 35th in percentage of college graduates. Chicago is the drain into which the brains of the Middle West disappear. Moving there is not even an aspiration for ambitious Michiganders. It’s the accepted endpoint of one’s educational progression: grade school, middle school, high school, college, Chicago. Once, in a Lansing bookstore, I heard a clerk say with a sigh, “We’re all going to end up in Chicago.” An Iowa governor once traveled to Chicago just to beg his state’s young people to come home…

As Chicago transformed itself from a city of factories to a global financial nexus, its class structure was transformed in exactly the way globalization’s enemies had predicted. “Many Chicagoans live better than ever, in safe housing in vibrant neighborhoods, surrounded by art and restaurants, with good public transport whisking them to exciting jobs in a dazzling city center that teems with visitors and workers from around the world,” wrote Richard C. Longworth in Caught in the Middle, his 2008 book on the modern Midwest. “And many Chicagoans live worse than ever.

I look forward to reading the more complete argument. This excerpt suggests the changes that have made certain Chicago locations so attractive, places like the Loop, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Bucktown, etc., come at a cost as other areas of Chicago have seen little improvement.

This also seems related to the ideas of Richard Florida and the creative class. Florida tends to rank all US cities on his creative scale indexes. Could there be regional creative class cities? Chicago isn’t at the top of Florida’s rankings but it might attract a sizable number of the Midwest creative class. A city doesn’t necessarily have to attract the creative class from throughout the United States to experience some of their influence.

It would be helpful to see data on this. Who exactly is moving to Chicago? For example, looking at a place like Michigan, where do college graduates and other young adults go if they leave the state? Or, looking at the Chicago area itself, do they tend to stay in the metropolitan area at similar rates to other major cities like New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, and others (and there could be very different patterns going on in each of these major cities)?

CNN says “McMansions are making a comeback” but the data is limited

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CNN reports that McMansions just may be on the way back:

During the past three years, the average size of new homes has grown significantly, according to a Census Bureau report released Monday. In 2012, the median home in the U.S. hit an all-time record of 2,306 square feet, up 8% from 2009.

During the recession, Americans downsized and the average new home shrunk in size by 6% over two years to 2,135 square feet. At the time, many industry experts said the days of the McMansion were over.

The shrinkage was supposed to indicate that a new era had begun, with young buyers seeking to live closer to urban cores and settling for smaller places and baby boomers downsizing after their kids had flown the nest.

But it wasn’t that consumers wanted less space, many just couldn’t afford more, said Jeffry Roos, a regional president for home builder Lennar. And now that the economy is improving, they’re demanding bigger homes again, he said.

This is what I suspected might happen: once the housing market picked up again, some Americans would go back to buying bigger houses. But, this article has a few problems as it relies on (1) the median home size and (2) talking to several large builders.

Regarding home size: the figures cited more often is the average home size. The average size for new houses went from roughly 900 square feet in 1950 to nearly 2,500 in the mid-2000s. The median home size might be more accurate as the extra big homes can’t skew the data as much but the average is used more often. Also, the median hasn’t changed all that much in the last few years – this is only a difference of 150 square feet, a 12×12 room. Why can’t we see figure about the number of big homes that have or have not been built rather than relying on these overall figures that are a snapshot of a varied housing industry?

Relying on just a few large builders also does not reveal the big picture. The builders cited, particularly Toll Brothers, are big players but the housing market has a lot of different builders and developers. Overall, how are lots of different builders feeling about big houses? Are they actually building these bigger houses? What do real estate experts say? The news for Toll Brothers has looked good recently but there is more to the big house market than just Toll Brothers.

This seems like an article that would benefit from better data and also may not really be able to be written until some more time has passed and the trend is more clear. In the meantime, simply invoking the term McMansion and discussing a possible trend is apparently enough…

UPDATE 6/5/13: As the CNN story is repeated across the web, there is some confusion. For example, look at how this retelling mixes the idea of an average or median:

A new Census Bureau report says the average size of a new home has grown eight percent in the last three years, up to a record 2,300 sq. ft. in 2012…

According to the National Association of Homebuilders, buyers prefer a median home size of just over 2,200 feet, in line with the Census average.

Two different figures for the “middle” size mean two different things…

Experts: cities like Chicago may lose population but they don’t shrink

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A group of experts at a recent conference suggest Chicago may have lost population but it is not shrinking:

Chicago’s population may have dropped 20 percent since 1950, but experts who gathered at the DePaul Center yesterday said the rise of developments on the city’s south and west sides are promising signs that the city isn’t “shrinking,” according to Medill Reports.

“Physically, cities don’t shrink,” said Brian Bernardoni, director of government affairs for the Chicago Association of Realtors. “What does shrink is productivity, jobs and job opportunity, tax bases and population.” The Chicago Association of Realtors’ seminar that looked at the concept of “shrinking cities” (places with sustained population loss and spiking levels of blight and abandoned properties) found recent developments like Oakwood Shores and Park Boulevard, and potential future megaprojects such as plans to convert the old South Works steel mill site to a mixed-use city within a city or McPier’s McCormick-area arena and hotel proposal, may protect us from the unflattering moniker.

According to Medill’s recap, “of all North American cities with a million people, Chicago recorded the greatest population loss in the last census,” but the city officials, urban planners, and developers at the event – including Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th); Scott Freres of The Lakota Group; Joe Williams of Granite Companies, Myer Blank of True Partners Consulting; and DePaul professor Joe Schwieterman – seem to hold a hardy optimism.

This may be parsing words. In a popular sense, cities that lose population do not look good. For example, Rust Belt cities that have lost population, including Chicago, are seen as having major problems. On the flip side, cities that gain population, like Sunbelt cities in recent years, are seen as successful and making progress. In a more technical sense, these experts are probably right: it takes a long time for the physical footprint of a city to significantly decrease. This is an issue Detroit is facing right now. The population has dropped significantly but what is to be done with vacant houses and land? And what happens if development blooms at one spot in a city, like at the old South Works steel mill site, while other parts of the city really languish?

There are important long-term issues to consider. Chicago still faces an uphill battle in terms of fighting the trends of recent decades and it will take quite a bit of money and work to pull off these new projects. In cities growing at faster rates, growth does not necessarily lead to good outcomes even if it is often viewed as a good sign.

Adding creative endeavors to GDP

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The federal government is set to change how it measures GDP and the new measure will include creative work:

The change is relatively simple: The BEA will incorporate into GDP all the creative, innovative work that is the backbone of much of what the United States now produces. Research and development has long been recognized as a core economic asset, yet spending on it has not been included in national accounts. So, as the Wall Street Journal noted, a Lady Gaga concert and album are included in GDP, but the money spent writing the songs and recording the album are not. Factories buying new robots counted; Pfizer’s expenditures on inventing drugs were not.

As the BEA explains, it will now count “creative work undertaken on a systematic basis to increase the stock of knowledge, and use of this stock of knowledge for the purpose of discovering or developing new products, including improved versions or qualities of existing products, or discovering or developing new or more efficient processes of production.” That is a formal way of saying, “This stuff is a really big deal, and an increasingly important part of the modern economy.”

The BEA estimates that in 2007, for example, adding in business R&D would have added 2 percent to U.S. GDP, or about $300 billion. Adding in the various inputs into creative endeavors such as movies, television and music will mean an additional $70 billion. A few other categories bring the total addition to over $400 billion. That is larger than the GDP of more than 160 countries…

The new framework will not stop the needless and often harmful fetishizing of these numbers. GDP is such a simple round number that it is catnip to commentators and politicians. It will still be used, incorrectly, as a proxy for our economic lives, and it will still frame our spending decisions more than it should. Whether GDP is up 2 percent or down 2 percent affects most people minimally (down a lot, quickly, is a different story). The wealth created by R&D that was statistically less visible until now benefited its owners even those the figures didn’t reflect that, and faster GDP growth today doesn’t help a welder when the next factory will use a robot. How wealth is used, who benefits from it and whether it is being deployed for sustainable future growth, that is consequential. GDP figures, even restated, don’t tell us that.

On one hand, changing a measure so that more accurately reflects the economy is a good thing. This could help increase the validity of the measure. On the other hand, measures still can be used well or poorly, the change may not be a complete improvement over previous measures, and it may be difficult to reconcile new figures with past figures. It is not quite as easy as simply “improving” a measure; a lot of other factors are involved. It will be interesting to see how this measurement change sorts out in the coming years and how the information is utilized.

A society that develops deep readers

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Sociologist Wendy Griswold has written about what it means to develop a reading culture and recent research about “deep reading” suggests people have to learn to have to do it:

Recent research in cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience has demonstrated that deep reading — slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity — is a distinctive experience, different in kind from the mere decoding of words. Although deep reading does not, strictly speaking, require a conventional book, the built-in limits of the printed page are uniquely conducive to the deep reading experience. A book’s lack of hyperlinks, for example, frees the reader from making decisions — Should I click on this link or not? — allowing her to remain fully immersed in the narrative.

That immersion is supported by the way the brain handles language rich in detail, allusion and metaphor: by creating a mental representation that draws on the same brain regions that would be active if the scene were unfolding in real life. The emotional situations and moral dilemmas that are the stuff of literature are also vigorous exercise for the brain, propelling us inside the heads of fictional characters and even, studies suggest, increasing our real-life capacity for empathy…

To understand why we should be concerned about how young people read, and not just whether they’re reading at all, it helps to know something about the way the ability to read evolved. “Human beings were never born to read,” notes Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Unlike the ability to understand and produce spoken language, which under normal circumstances will unfold according to a program dictated by our genes, the ability to read must be painstakingly acquired by each individual. The “reading circuits” we construct are recruited from structures in the brain that evolved for other purposes—and these circuits can be feeble or they can be robust, depending on how often and how vigorously we use them…

This is not reading as many young people are coming to know it. Their reading is pragmatic and instrumental: the difference between what literary critic Frank Kermode calls “carnal reading” and “spiritual reading.” If we allow our offspring to believe that carnal reading is all there is—if we don’t open the door to spiritual reading, through an early insistence on discipline and practice—we will have cheated them of an enjoyable, even ecstatic experience they would not otherwise encounter.

If we put this in sociological terms, it sounds like the research suggests that deep reading is a socialized experience. Deep reading is a developed skill, perhaps explicitly modeled and taught and also observed and absorbed. For those who see the benefits of deep reading, the next logical question seems to be how to continue this socialization process. When Griswold studied reading culture in Nigeria, she discussed the role of printing presses and publishing companies, educated authors, citizens have the money to buy books, and citizens having the time to read novels and longer works. There are not the same kinds of issues in the United States: there are plenty books, authors, and potential readers with the time and money for deep reading. Instead, the issues are things like a lot of competition for reading and a value system that privileges progress, novelty, anti-intellectualism, and pragmatism.

What happens then if a society is post deep reading, having advanced past that stage according to the practices of many residents? Does this affect civic and social life in meaningful ways? Or, if a society is divided along reading and non-reading lines? There has been plenty of discussion about inequality regarding the Internet but what about with books and reading?

Sprawl disturbs cicada cycles

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Clearing land for suburban development disrupts cicada cycles:

“They have a tight connection with the tree,” says Dan Babbitt, the manager of the insect zoo at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Cicadas spend their underground years feeding off the roots of trees. Then when they’re ready to come up, they crawl back out along the tree trunk to the branches where they lay their eggs, all in the hopes that the next generation of cicadas will fall back into the soil, burrow down to the roots, and feed there for another 17 years.

This is why leafy residential neighborhoods often have some of the best cicada sightings (and sounds). It’s also why the absolute worst thing we could do to the creatures is clear-cut whole stretches of once-rural land for new development while they’re down there. Get rid of the trees, and you get rid of the cicadas. And re-planting those sad saplings common along many freshly paved roads in the exurbs won’t help…

“When they go out and build these things around Champaign-Urbana, they cut the trees down, they bring in the bulldozers, they pull up the top soil, and they stick the houses down,” Cooley says. “None of the cicadas in the ground there would have survived that. None of anything in the ground would have survived that.”

Some periodical cicadas do well in older, tree-lined suburbs, Cooley says, those places where houses were built slowly over time, “where they didn’t take the big trees.” Across history, it’s hard to tell if the shape and geography of broods has altered significantly around the footprint of expanding cities. Early records on when and where they appeared – and which broods were which – aren’t all that reliable. Some “straggler” cicadas also appear off the cycle of the rest of a brood, further confusing history’s witnesses.

Just another way that suburban development disrupts natural habitats. But, I’m still left with two pressing questions:

1. Would the average suburbanite see this as a problem? For those who live in the areas with more cicadas, are they viewed as a big nuisance even if they are only around every 17 years?

2. There is no indication in this article about how destructive this is. How bad is it if suburban development wipes out cicadas? What are the side effects? This is related to Question 1: perhaps suburbanites would be friendly toward cicadas if they knew they were making their lives and the habitat better.

A “brain gain” in rural America?

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A rural sociologist argues that rural America is experiencing a “brain gain” of young adults:

Hjartarson is among what University of Minnesota Rural Sociologist Ben Winchester coins the “Brain Gain,” in rural America.

“Discussions about the future of rural communities can have a negative tone, but this isn’t your grandfather’s rural,” Winchester said. “You look at the numbers and you can see the rural narrative is being rewritten.”…

However, the actual number of people living in rural areas in the United States increased between 1970 and 2010 from 53.5 million to 59.5 million. Urban areas grew, too, but at a rate faster than rural areas, resulting in a proportional decline of the population living rural.

“When it comes to 30- to 40-year-olds, one in five live in a rural area today,” Winchester said. “There is a growth in rural areas among the 30- to 35-year-old cohort, an age when a lot of people are re-examining their lives and looking for low density living. That’s also the cohort we are seeing decreasing in numbers in many metro areas.”…

“When it comes to the reasons 30- to 40-year-olds say they want to move to a rural area, jobs isn’t even in the top 10,” Winchester said. “Quality of life is No. 1. Others are a slower pace, lower cost of housing, and safety and security. Many of these people are creating their own jobs.”

Sounds interesting but we would have to see more data to tease this out. If the rural population increased 6 million between 1970 and 2010, how much of this was due to birth rates in these areas versus new residents moving in? How does the rural population growth rate compare to that of cities and suburbs? That to me is the real comparison: how do rural areas stack up against the dominant place of living for Americans: the suburbs.

Also, it sounds like this could be a class issue based on the quality of life issues pushing people toward rural areas. Who exactly are the 30-40-year-olds moving to rural areas? Would it be safe to guess that they are generally well educated and have the abilities and training for creating their own jobs?

Micro-apartments in Seattle

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Here is an overview of the growth in micro-apartments in Seattle:

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is on record in support of micro apartments, as is City Council member Richard Conlin.

“The private market is building affordable housing for people who want it,” Conlin said. “Fundamentally, this is a good thing.”

Young people starting out, service workers and retirees on limited incomes all need affordable housing, Conlin and other supporters said.

Forty-one micro housing projects have come through the Seattle Department of Planning and Development since 2006, spokeswoman Cyndi Wilder said. Of those, 28 received permits and 13 are under examination.

The planning department is aware of the debate over the review process for micro apartment buildings, she said, and the Seattle City Council “is going through an information-gathering process.”

It would be interesting to hear more about why Seattle and a few other cities are approving more micro-apartments while not as much is happening in other cities. This isn’t necessarily happening in the densest urban areas so is this more about regulation or the willingness to try new housing arrangements (perhaps in cities that are more “bohemian”)?

This article also presents an angle that I haven’t seen much thus far in news coverage: nearby residents who oppose large numbers of micro-apartments. I wonder if micro-apartments are encountering typical NIMBY concerns such as traffic and changes to the neighborhood or whether opposition is focused on unique attributes of the units like higher density and the type of people who might live in such units.

Arguing over whether spires and antennas at top of skyscrapers count for a building’s height

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There is an ongoing argument, including this opinion piece from a “Chicago partisan,” about what at the top of a skyscraper should count toward the building’s official height. The latest round of argument involves the new World Trade Center building:

So far, nothing is official: the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the international organization of skyscraper engineers, designers and builders that certifies a building’s height, will weigh in only when One World Trade Center is completed. At an expected, historically symbolic 1,776 feet, the New York tower seems to have a solid claim.

But Chicagoans who live in the shadow of the 1,451-foot tall Willis Tower, which has held the title of nation’s tallest for some 40 years, should cry foul — because deciding just how tall a building is turns out to be more complicated than it might seem…

The council has three categories for measuring the heights of tall buildings: height to “architectural top,” “highest occupied floor” and “height to tip.” This may seem like splitting hairs, but the differences can be considerable.

The meanings of “height to tip” and “highest occupied floor” are self-evident. But “architectural top,” the category the council uses to officially crown the tallest building, is less clear; it includes “spires,” but not “antennas, signage, flag poles or other functional-technical equipment.” This wording deliberately makes the short, pointy tops of the Petronas Towers count, but leaves out the much taller antennas that crown the Willis Tower.

The way this argument is going, it seems like city partisans want to change the definition of building heights in a way that best advantages their tallest structure. Why? This is more about status and prestige than anything else. The city with the official tallest building can claim something about themselves. Certain cities, like Chicago and New York, are known for their skylines and have historically dominated this international race.

I’m not sure why exactly this matters for certain cities. On the one hand, these tallest buildings can dominate a skyline. Being at the top of the record books can bring some attention, though it is unclear what exactly it leads to. On the other hand, the square footage of residential or commercial space that one building can add doesn’t make or break a business district (unless, perhaps, it is the only really tall building). Also, the tallest building can be built nearly anywhere, whether in New York, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, or Dubai. Does the tallest building really signal architectural or engineering competence? Doesn’t it tell us something that not every major or global city is chasing this record?

In other words, this might be a record that only a few cities and boosters really care about.