Category Archives: Sociology

Want goods delivered quickly? There are numerous local impacts

Posted on by

An overview of warehouse construction in southwest Chicago and southwest suburbs highlights a current conundrum in American life: people want cheap goods delivered quickly to their home or business. But, making this happen has consequences for neighborhoods and communities. Here is how the article ends:

Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

Whatever the outcome, Archer Heights and Joliet already illustrate one of the stark lessons of Chicago’s warehouse boom — that Americans can’t expect to enjoy the benefits of rapid, ever-growing freight shipments without paying for the necessary infrastructure and without encountering increasingly sophisticated demands from the towns being smothered by trucks.

Some of the listed negative consequences of all this trucking and shipping: traffic, noise, air pollution, extra stress on roads, and industrial neighbors for residents.

The primary positive consequences for a community: money from the land use and local jobs. The indirect consequence for many inside and outside the community: goods get to them faster.

Is it worth it? Would it work better to have giant shipping and trucking zones outside metropolitan areas where the pollution and noise and traffic could be minimized for nearby communities? This would require both foresight and resources. It reminds me of airports that are now surrounded by development or other major necessary infrastructure that is now folded into metropolitan landscapes.

Could one city or region figure this out? Imagine a special trucking and train zone outside of the metro region. The transportation actors get some tax breaks to locate there. The revenues from the land use are shared throughout the metropolitan region. Some current facilities are relocated to the new area.

Trucking may be essential to the American economy but it does not necessarily have to conflict with goals local residents and leaders have for their communities. It would require acting creatively and quickly to move shipping facilities away from people.

Exurbs, suburbs, and the Trump campaign

Posted on by

Can Donald Trump attract enough exurban and suburban voters?

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

But a POLITICO analysis shows there’s also a significant bloc of voters who did not want Trump in more exurban, red-leaning counties — the kinds of places that were skeptical of Trump in the 2016 GOP primary and, while largely voting for him in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, have remained somewhat resistant to his takeover of the Republican Party…

They’re farther away from urban areas. They’re less densely populated, and they have fewer voters with college degrees. These places — which include North Carolina’s Republican-leaning exurbs, and conservative but less Trump-inclined counties several hours north of Michigan’s major cities — still vote predominantly for Republicans, both at the presidential and local levels. In 2016, when both parties held contested primaries, the Republican voters in these counties backed candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over Trump, and in the general election they voted for Trump at lower rates than the deep-red rural areas.

Republicans are banking on the fact that partisanship usually wins out. This is far from the first contentious primary to leave bruised egos and hurt feelings, and usually the vast majority of voters come home to their party’s presidential nominee eventually. By Election Day, voters tend to return to their partisan camps.

The middle to outer suburbs have been a primary battleground in recent election cycles. Voters in big cities and suburbs close to big cities tend to vote Democratic and voters in rural areas and exurbs tend to vote Republican.

The analysis above seems to hinge on whether exurban voters are enthusiastic for Trump or not. Perhaps the more interesting question is whether some exburban areas are becoming more suburban. As suburban populations grow and more educated and wealthier voters move in, does this shift voting away from Republicans? Particularly in the South and West, metropolitan regions continue to expand and this could change voting patterns.

Religion in the American suburbs: data sources and recommended readings

Posted on by

To explore religion and the American suburbs further, I briefly discuss available data sources and recommended readings. These are not meant to be exhaustive but rather to be starting points. There is much to consider and the particular variations of suburban faith in specific settings means there is much to discover.

Photo by Emily on Pexels.com

First, two sources of data I have found valuable. The 2020 U.S. Religion Census sought religious congregations by county throughout the United States. Available at theARDA.com, anyone can look up congregations in a county. So, if you know a suburban county (and these are critical to defining metropolitan areas), you can get a sense of the number of religious congregations and adherents across places.

The second source is more local. Within a neighborhood or community, a resident should be able to research local congregations and religious activity. Such work could include: visiting local religious congregations; talking to members of religious communities, clergy, and community members about religious activity; seeking out records of congregations at a local historical or genealogical society; examining old printed Yellow Pages and searching social media and websites for congregations; and reading local histories. Doing one of these or some of these can reveal a lot about religious groups.

In terms of existing research, here are twelve books that I have found very valuable and have cited multiple times in work I have done. These works highlight different religious traditions and suburban settings:

Cavillo, Jonathan. 2020. The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City. New York: Oxford University Press.

Diamond, Etan. 2000. And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Diamond, Etan. 2003. Souls of the City: Religion and the Search for Community in Postwar America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Dochuk, Darren. 2011. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. New York: W. W. Norton.

Eiesland, Nancy L. 2000. A Particular Place: Urban Restructuring and Religious Ecology in a Southern Exurb. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Howe, Justine. 2018. Suburban Islam. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hudnut-Beumler, James David. 1994. Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream in its Critics, 1945-1965. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

McGirr, Lisa. 2001. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mulder, Mark T. 2015. Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Mulder, Mark T. and Gerardo Martí. 2020. The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Numrich, Paul D. and Elfriede Wedam. 2015. Religion and Community in the New Urban America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wilford, Justin G. 2012. Sacred Subdivisions: The Postsuburban Transformation of American  Evangelicalism. New York: New York University Press.

My own published work explores some of these areas – find these works listed here. I look forward to more reading and research in this area and continuing to learn from the work of others.

Religion in the American suburbs: religious practices interacting with a suburban lifestyle

Posted on by

What does religious practice, activity, and belonging look like in the American suburbs? Is it different than religiosity in other settings, particularly urban and rural settings? This can be hard to parse out. Because more Americans live in suburbs than other settings and because of the pervasive features of American religion, it can be difficult to know how different religious faith in the suburbs is from religious activity in the United States as a whole. But, here are three consistent ideas from scholars and pundits regarding what marks suburban religiosity.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

First, suburban religiosity is an individualized faith occasionally set within larger religious communities and traditions. If “Sheilaism” from Habits of the Heart was true generally of American religion in the 1980s, it could easily be placed in suburbia. Suburban residents, often with some means, make decisions for themselves about what to believe and practice. They have numerous options to explore, ranging from highly individualistic practices unique only to them to being part of large religious organizations with broad reach and influence. This individualistic approach has consequences; religious faith may be centered in nuclear families or religious small groups or disconnected from larger neighborhood or regional concerns.

Second, megachurches are often in suburbs. They are not exclusive to suburbs. But, the megachurch that we think of now begins to emerge in the postwar, suburban-dominated decades. These congregations are often in easy to access locations (near major roadways), offer high energy experiences, and draw people from near and far. The majority of American religious congregations are smaller with a median congregation under 100 people but suburban megachurches, think of a Willow Creek or Saddleback, have exerted outsized influence.

Third, religious congregations and practice have adapted to suburban lifestyles and patterns. This was a concern of critics in the postwar era: how could relatively wealthy suburbanites in comfortable settings practice their faith? Could religious faith challenge their lifestyles? It may be the concern of new residents in the suburbs today who wonder how their faith mixes with American life in the suburbs. Even with the amount of religious activity in the suburbs, can traditional religious practices, beliefs, and belonging in different traditions survive an encounter with American suburbs and their particular emphases? Given the amount of religious activity in suburbs, the answer appears to be yes – religion has survived – but it is probably not the same after interacting with suburbia.

How do we know these features of religiosity in the suburbs? The final post will look at sources for exploring this subject.

Religion in the American suburbs: numerous religious buildings and buildings used by religious groups

Posted on by

Imagine a stereotypical suburban downtown in the United States. It has two story brick buildings with storefronts on the first floor. There are some offices and places to eat. A few people walk around while cars drive past parked vehicles. There may be train tracks and a station marking the ability to commute to the big city. Not far from such a streetscape are often church buildings of various denominations and traditions.

Photo by Jatuphon Buraphon on Pexels.com

Not all suburbs have downtowns. Many of the postwar suburbs are agglomerations of subdivisions, commercial areas, and industrial parks. But, religious buildings are there too. Go to a major intersection involving a highway; is there a megachurch nearby? Are there congregations meeting in former big box stores and in strip malls? There may not be an obvious walkable center to these suburbs but there are still plenty of congregations.

Religious buildings dot the suburban landscape. They may not be the most desirable land use with congregations not paying property taxes for their property and the opportunity costs of how valuable land might instead by used. Neighbors and local leaders may object to constructing a new religious building or a religious group altering an existing building. However, numerous residents attend these congregations. A number of these congregations and buildings are fixtures and centers in their communities. These congregations host services and can provide services to and space for the community.

These buildings range in size and architecture. Some of this depends on religious traditions. Some traditions have a particular approach to a building. Other traditions have more flexibility. People of faith in the suburbs may meet in a traditional-looking church – even as a member of a faith that is not Christian – or in a school, a movie theater, a mall, an office building, or a home. These approaches might be guided by financial resources or by concerns that certain styles may inhibit people from joining their community.

Thus, the American suburbs can include large Hindu temples, mosques and Islamic community centers, megachurches, and traditional religious buildings large and small. They can meet in old and new structures. They can move between locations as their congregations grows or shrinks, acquires resources or has difficulty finding resources.

Religion in the American suburbs: a diverse religious landscape

Posted on by

In the postwar era, Will Herberg described American religion as primarily involving Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. The same was assumed to be true in the suburbs. With suburban populations growing, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews moved in and added to existing congregations and founded many new ones.

Photo by Zac Frith on Pexels.com

These groups also had to adjust to suburban life. Practicing faith in the suburban context looked different than in urban neighborhoods or rural areas. Critics within these traditions suggested the suburban version of their faith had serious deficiencies. Supporters of the suburban faith highlighted new possibilities and energy.

With changes to the population in the United States, including changes prompted by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the suburban religious landscape changed. Today, there are still plenty of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish congregations in the suburbs but they are located near the congregations of Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Orthodox, Sikh, and other religious traditions. Increasing racial, ethnic, and class diversity in the suburbs goes alongside religious change. The complex suburbia of today includes a complex religious landscape.

Add to that the growing number of residents of the United States who do not identify with a religious tradition or faith. The suburban landscape may include religious activity throughout the week but it also is full of residents with no religious affiliation or other understandings of religion and spirituality.

This is easy to see in many suburban areas. Pick a populous county outside a major city – whether Washington, D.C. or New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles – and you can find religious and non-religious activity all over the place. The suburban landscape may be dominated by single-family homes and roads but there are plenty of congregations in a variety of traditions. It is visible when driving down major roads. You can see it in county-level counts of religious congregations.

This means any quick description of suburban religion is hard to do given the number of practices, beliefs, and belonging present in American communities. One way to see this diverse religious landscape is in the religious buildings of the suburbs – this is the subject of the next post.

Religion in the American suburbs: a unique context with a particular history

Posted on by

Both religion in the United States and the American suburbs are unique phenomena. Put them together over multiple time periods and you have a particular combination with varied expressions across contexts.

Photo by Chris F on Pexels.com

From the beginning of the American suburbs, congregations gathered and individuals practiced religious faith. By the decades after World War Two, when postwar suburban life centered on single-family homes and driving took off, American religious activity may have peaked. The growing number of suburbanites worshiped in suburban congregations old and new as suburban communities expanded.

The American suburbs continued to grow even as religious activity subsided. The 1960s were the first time more Americans lived in suburbs than either in cities or rural areas. By 2000, a majority of Americans lived in suburbs. The changes in American religion at the end of the twentieth century and the start of the next century, such as a emergence of evangelicalism and the increase in those claiming no religious affiliation, interacted with suburban life.

The following posts will detail some of the specific features of suburban religion. Before getting to those traits, I want to highlight three broader patterns in these intertwined phenomena:

  1. The rise of suburbs and their populations paired with the relatively decline in urban populations contributed to a perception that suburbs are more religious and cities are more secular. Reality is more complex than this as American cities and urban neighborhood can contain lots of religious activity and diversity while suburban areas might not be.
  2. Both religion and suburbia influenced each other. It is not just a one-way street where growing sprawl changed religious patterns. Did changing religious patterns also legitimate and support sprawl? Could the American suburbs have occurred as they did without support of religious groups and adherents?
  3. The religious landscape in the suburbs is not flat or always trending in one direction. It is varied and dynamic with forces internal and external to religion and place shaping patterns.

The next post will detail the diverse religious landscape now found in the American suburbs.

The Rust Belt as potential “climate refuge”

Posted on by

If climate change prompts people to move, could the Rust Belt provide good places to live?

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

Gibbons, who now works at the climate consulting firm Farallon Strategies, sees Michigan’s future in the Californians unsettled by wildfire. Those people are going to move somewhere. And so they should be persuaded to come to Michigan, she says, before they move to places like Phoenix or Austin. The Great Lakes region should market itself as a climate refuge, she thinks, and then build an economy that makes use of its attributes: the value of its water, its land, its relative survivability. In her vision, small northern cities, invigorated by growing populations, somehow manage to blossom into bigger, greener, cleaner ones.

“There’s no future in which many, many people don’t head here,” Gibbons told me. The only question is whether “we don’t just end up being surprised by it.” And so Gibbons wants to see the Great Lakes states recruit people from around the country, as they did during the Great Migration. Back then, recruiters spread across the South to convince Black people there that opportunity awaited them in the factories of the North: That’s what helped make Ypsilanti.

Internal migration has shaped the United States before, such as in the Great Migration cited here and the move of many West in different waves. But, has decades of decline in an entire region been reversed by internal migration?

Later in the article we read that some residents would not be thrilled with the idea of lots of outsiders moving in. I wonder how this might play out. Take a city like Detroit. Once one of the most populous American cities, the city lost hundreds of thousands of residents. The city’s status has dropped precipitously. Lots of people moving in could change things but don’t Americans tend to see population growth as a sign of health and vitality?

One last thought: would Rust Belt communities be willing to offer climate-related incentives to further entice people to move? A number of American communities already offer incentives. Imagine a “green moving package” that provides some assistance in finding affordable housing and work with limited climate impact.

We need solutions to continued low turnout – less than 20% – in Illinois elections

Posted on by

The primary elections earlier this week in Illinois excited few voters:

Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels.com

Though thousands of properly postmarked mail-in ballots are still being tallied through April 2, state election officials believe it will be hard to crack 20%.

Unofficial results from the 20 most populated voting jurisdictions in Illinois — which represent more than 81% of all voters in the state — show less than 17% voter turnout combined.

Turnout tallies in the suburbs remain below 20% as well, with Lake County currently showing only 11.7% of registered voters cast a ballot.

Why so few voters?

“Most of the races were completely uncontested, with just one contested county board race on the Democratic side,” said Lake County Clerk Anthony Vega. “That lack of motivation could have resulted in voters not coming out.”

With that lack of choice, combined with the fact that Democratic President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump had all but secured their nominations ahead of Tuesday’s vote, low turnout was inevitable, experts said.

These are plausible reasons. Yet, I have heard little about significant solutions. Such options could come from multiple angles: local officials, voters, advocacy groups, the state government, employers, civic organizations, etc. Illinois may face serious problems in numerous areas but this strikes me as one that affects numerous others and is foundational for the supposed American system of government.

The one feature of this I think about is the ways that the suburbs grew, in part, because Americans like being closer to local government. Compared to big cities, states, and the federal government, a suburban resident can more easily interact with local officials and local government activity. But, if people do not even want to vote for those local measures – and there is a suggestion in this article that local referendums might have pushed voter turnout up a few percentage points – then this interest in or connection to local government may be severed.

A Japanese experimental city to test self-driving vehicles and other new tech

Posted on by

A new community being built by Toyota offers opportunities to test self-driving cars:

Photo by Shane Aldendorff on Pexels.com

First announced in 2021, Toyota has been hard at work constructing their Woven City just miles away from Mount Fuji on the island of Honshū, with the first of 2,000 anticipated residents now expected to move in before the end of the year. 

News of the project’s imminent completion comes not long after photos were shared of progress being made on Saudi Arabia’s behemoth ‘mirror city’ project The Line, though they’re hardly the only megacities currently under construction around the world. 

Marketed as a ‘mass human experiment’, Woven City will provide a ‘living laboratory’ for Toyota to test prototypes of their renewable and energy-efficient self-driving vehicles, dubbed ‘E-palettes’.

The car manufacturer expects to gather data from the use of these driverless cars, guided by sensors in lights, buildings and roads across the city…

Woven City is also expected to feature ‘smart homes’ running almost entirely on hydrogen, reducing emissions so that the futuristic habitation, with its whopping price tag of £7.8 billion, will be as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible.

Imagine a future email that reads like this: “You are invited to live in a new brand-new community built and owned by [megacorporation name]. You have an exciting opportunity to be part of a new community featuring all sorts of innovative technologies. In exchange for a reduced rent, you will participate in testing numerous new technologies that have the potential to improve the world and our profits (wait they would not say this second part). All your experiences outside of your residence are subject to use by the company.”

How many people would take this opportunity? Given that people so freely give up their information for social media, wouldn’t an enticement of cheaper housing prove attractive? And you get to try out new technology? It may be a company town – but it is one with benefits (at least, according to the company).

It would also be interesting to see what would need to change in terms of local governments and zoning to make such a community possible.