On one hand, it is exciting to be watching a film, TV show, or commercial and recognize a place. It pops out at you out of the other anonymous scenery. On the other hand, this is not a real place. It is a backlot where all sorts of “places” can be made. With some work and added elements, these backlots can look like a lot of different places.
As I have found in studying suburbs on TV shows, places are presented on screens in particular ways. It is hard to communicate the feel and experience of a place on a two-dimensional screen when the emphasis is often on a few characters. Backlots can be changed up but if you know what you are looking for, you can spot them in all sorts of displays. Or, films, shows, and commercials tend to be shot in some places and not others. With these patterns, we do not necessarily see real places or the range of places within the United States.
Naperville is one of a growing list of suburban cities that have seen buses ferry migrants to their communities — unannounced — over the past few weeks. The spread of migrant-carrying buses to collar communities comes in the wake of more stringent rules for migrant drop-offs adopted by the city of Chicago earlier this year…
In an effort to hold bus owners accountable to the November policy, Chicago aldermen on Dec. 13 approved tougher penalties for rogue arrivals. Essentially, buses face seizure, impoundment and fines for unloading passengers without a permit or outside of approved hours and locations…
Instead of more coordination, Chicago officials have said that bus drivers, in direct correlation with tighter drop-off rules, have started to unload migrants in unauthorized places — including suburban train stations — to work around penalties…
Last week, five buses stopped at Aurora’s Transportation Center. In response, the Aurora City Council Friday passed an ordinance regulating buses coming to the city to drop off migrants who are en route to Chicago.
Chicago has long had a hub-and-spoke railroad system where lines radiating out from the city bring passengers downtown. This system has been around for over a century as lines coming out of Chicago connected surrounding counties to the growing city.
This same system that enable commuting to the Loop makes it possible for migrants to get to Chicago without having buses dropping them in the city proper. There are numerous trains stations spread throughout the suburbs that could serve as points where people can board trains for Chicago.
Aside from the quirkiness of this 90s film staple, another aspect of the movie that continues to captivate audiences is the question: just how rich were the McCallisters? The New York Times set out to find out by speaking with economists and professionals at the Federal Reserve. It turns out, according to the report, they were indeed rich — to the tune of being in the top 1%.
The article goes on to say that the McCallisters’ stunning home is proof of just how much money they have. The real house used for its exterior shots in the film is actually located on Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, a Chicago suburb that happens to be one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States, the NY Times reports, citing Realtor.com.
At the time that the film came out in 1990, this massive Georgian-Colonial style home was affordable to only the 1%. It turns out, 32 years later, the house is still only within reach of the 1%, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the NY Times reports. Three economists poured over data, including household incomes of the area for 1990 and 2022, the property value, mortgage rates at the time, taxes and insurance to come to this conclusion…
“In the middle of 2022, a similar house would cost about $2.4 million, based on the Zillow estimate for the ‘Home Alone’ house. A home of that value would be affordable to a household with an income of $730,000, which would be in the top 1 percent of Chicago-area households,” the economists said.
Can you have madcap Christmas capers that end well without a large expensive house? I would guess that an analysis of houses depicted in Christmas movies would show they tend to be larger than normal – this is common in movies and television.
Imagine Home Alone in a 1,000 square foot 1950s ranch home or a 1 bedroom apartment. Would it be better? Significantly different?
Barbie is one of the most famous toys and she resides near Los Angeles. Could she live anywhere else? I pondered this when seeing Barbie:
This scene, along with others in the movie, firmly place Barbie in and around Los Angeles. There are palm trees. Beach scenes along the ocean and boardwalk. The mountains looming in the background. A replacement for the “Hollywood” sign. Her dreamhouse is in Malibu.
Could Barbie live in other locations? How about Manhattan Barbie? Atlanta Barbie? Omaha Barbie? These are harder to imagine. Barbie has a lifestyle tied to a postwar vision of the American Dream exemplified by life in Los Angeles. She was not alone; TV shows endlessly showed life in southern California, Disneyland first opened there, and sprawling suburbia became a model.
A new city and/or region could become the marker of a new era and new toys. Perhaps Houston? A different city that will grow rapidly and look different or exhibit different patterns of life and development?
This is not an unknown story in New York City: a congregation sells part of its property or air rights to help fund its operations. This time it is St. Patrick’s Cathedral:
Citadel’s Ken Griffin and Steve Roth’s Vornado Realty Trust agreed to buy up to 525,000 square feet of air rights from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York to facilitate the development of 350 Park Avenue, PincusCo reported…
The per square foot basis of the deal is arguably more important than the total purchase price, because that hasn’t been determined. Under the agreement, the developers can buy up to 525,000 square feet of air rights, but could also buy as little as 315,000 square feet. That means the purchase price ranges from $98.4 million all the way up to $164 million…
Representatives of Griffin, Vornado and Rudin did not respond to a request for comment from The Real Deal. A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of New York said that it is the church’s “hope that the money will go to the continued upkeep of the Cathedral.”…
Griffin’s Citadel is working to develop a 51-story tower at 350 Park Avenue, designed by Norman Foster. Griffin’s firm is redeveloping properties master leased from Vornado and Rudin. Citadel would occupy roughly 54 percent of the 1.7-million-square-foot property, which would stand 1,350 feet tall.
I remember at least a few of these stories while examining zoning conflict in the New York City. For a congregation with an older building and perhaps an aging congregation, allowing others to make use of their property in different ways could help pay the bills. Here, one of the wealthiest people in the United States wants to build a skyscraper, the church has the air rights, and the money paid to the church can help the Cathedral into the future.
This reminds me of some of the reasons many churches left Chicago’s Loop by the early twentieth century. Land prices were high, people had moved out of the central business district, and they could relocate to quieter, more residential streets. That left very few congregations in the downtown.
And even though this point was passed long ago, the contrast of a 51-story skyscraper near a landmark church is interesting to consider. No longer is religious activity at the center of big cities. Is this a physical manifestation that shows America’s leading religion is business?
The Vintage 2023 population estimates show broader trends reflecting pre-pandemic norms, with fewer deaths and an increase in migration spurring growth. The net result was a gain of more than 1.6 million people in the past year, a 0.5% increase that brought the total U.S. population to 334,914,895…
Overall, 42 states saw population increases this year, topped by Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Arizona.
The South accounted for 87% of the nation’s population growth, adding more than 1.4 million residents. The Midwest reversed a two-year slide, adding more than 126,000 people for a modest 0.2% increase. The West region also saw a 0.2% increase, while the Northeast declined by 0.1%, according to census data.
The South is the only region that sustained its population growth throughout the pandemic, fueled by both domestic and international migration.
The ongoing population shift to the Sunbelt continues. It may not last forever but this is a consequential in-process change that affects numerous aspects of American life.
The council’s silence leading up to the decision highlights what some observers say is a striking trend toward secrecy among local governments across the U.S. From school districts to townships and county boards, public access to records and meetings in many states is worsening over time, open government advocates and experts say…
Few states compile data on public records requests, and laws governing open records differ by state, making a comprehensive analysis difficult. However, a review by Cuillier of data provided by MuckRock — a nonprofit news site that files and shares public records requests – found that between 2010 and 2021, local governments’ compliance with records requests dropped from 63% to 42%…
Incidents of governments suing journalists and residents for making records requests also have become more common, said Jonathan Peters, a media law professor at the University of Georgia.
Accessing local government meetings is getting more difficult, too. Elected officials are discussing significant public business in closed sessions, observers say. In some regions, they’re engaging in more combative behavior with constituents.
Many Americans like suburban, small town, and city local governments because they are more responsive to local needs, directly use local monies for visible benefits, and are more accessible to residents.
But, if local governments end up looking like what many perceive the federal government to be – faceless, cold, distant, and untrustworthy – what happens? Local government often works on the idea that any resident can show up or see what has been discussed. It is easy to contact local officials. Things need to get done and long arguments about abstract ideals or petty issues detracts from the local quality of life. Getting elected to a local position does not necessarily require independent wealth or political partisanship.
If Americans get to a point where they do not like local government, they might withdraw even further from civic life. Already, local voting turnout is very low. We can already find people online to interact with and drive where we want to rather than engage with neighbors and community members. I hope there is room for local government officials and residents to find ways to work together to serve their communities.
An investment firm know for buying up newspaper publishers then gutting them is behind the recent shuttering of dozens of Greyhound bus stations across the country, a new report has revealed.
Twenty Lake Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, purchased 33 Greyhound stations across the U.S. from transport company FirstGroup in 2021, reported Axios…
Since the change of ownership two years ago, Greyhound has closed scores of its central bus stations around the country, either by cutting services completely, or moving to far out sites as a cost-saving measure to sell off the depots to real estate developers…
But as demand fell – with passengers numbers dropping by a third from 1960 to 1990 and then halving again between 1980 and 2006 – and running costs increased, they became less economically viable to run.
Given the American emphasis on driving, buses offer opportunities to move a lot of people along existing road networks. This limits the needs for fixed railroad tracks and buses can make more stops.
Like most transit hubs, buses and bus stations are shared spaces where members of different neighborhoods or social classes mix—which has made them important symbolic battlegrounds in civil rights history.
Black Americans, escaping the Jim Crow South for better opportunities in the north and west, used Greyhound buses during the Great Migration. The Freedom Riders used Greyhound buses to protest segregation and to test new protections on interstate passenger travel. In 1961, a mob beat and firebombed the Riders’ bus in Anniston, Alabama, attempting to trap the passengers, who escaped through the windows and door; the Riders had to be evacuated from Anniston through a convoy…
The accessibility of bus services and the mutability of their routes have historically made it an effective method for cities to move systemic problems elsewhere. Prior to the 1996 Olympics, for example, Atlanta leaders aimed to make the city more hospitable to the world by reducing its hospitality to people experiencing homelessness. The city bought thousands of one-way bus tickets to other locales to remove homeless populations from sight.
With more emphasis in the United States on driving individual vehicles – and this is a marker of self-sufficiency and freedom – buses can get short shrift. For those who cannot afford cars and other travel options, buses can offer opportunities – if they are available.
Rosemont could cite and fine bus companies from Texas, impound their vehicles, and arrest drivers for dropping off migrants in town, under an ordinance approved Monday.
The new rules — which are similar to ones in Cicero and tighter penalties being considered by the Chicago City Council this week — come after about a half dozen buses started bringing asylum-seekers to Rosemont last Wednesday.
Each bus had about 40 to 50 people, who were being let off in front of the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, the Metra Rosemont station on Balmoral Avenue, and the Metra O’Hare transfer station on Zemke Boulevard on airport property next to Rosemont.
“We’re not going to let them just drop people off and drive away,” Mayor Brad Stephens said Monday. “It’s inhumane dropping them off on a concrete sidewalk on a day like today.”
Migrants are no longer being dropped off at the city’s landing zone on buses from the southern border, causing people to wander with no direction looking for shelter, according to an aide to Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Cristina Pacione-Zayas, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, said the lack of communication is directly correlated with the city’s harsher penalties for bus owners whose vehicles violate rules to rein in chaotic bus arrivals from the southern border. She suspects bus companies are finding other ways to get migrants into the city. As of Saturday, more than 25,900 migrants had arrived in Chicago since August 2022, according to city records.
Under revised rules Wednesday, buses face “seizure and impoundment” for unloading passengers without a permit or outside of approved hours and locations. Violators will also be subject to $3,000 fines, plus towing and storage fees.
If this “works,” how many suburbs and cities will adopt similar approaches?
The problem is structural: Washington just isn’t set up to address the housing crisis. The federal government plays a large, but largely indirect, role in the housing market. It operates through incentives, credits, guarantees, and subsidies. Rather than building housing, it makes mortgages cheaper and covers part of market rents. Rather than setting up retirement communities, it provides tax breaks for developers. You could say the country’s real department of housing and urban development is the Treasury Department, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Senate committee responsible for housing is the Banking Committee…
It wasn’t always that way. Indeed, Washington played an aggressive role in expanding the country’s housing stock from the 1930s to the 1970s. As part of the New Deal, the government financed the construction of homes for tens of thousands of families. HUD was founded during Lyndon Johnson’s administration and, as part of his Great Society, set out to build or rehabilitate millions of housing units…
Something else is stopping Washington from addressing the housing crisis: the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Land-use policy is not the purview of the federal government. It’s the purview of the states. Congress cannot rewrite Los Angeles’s building code. The White House can’t decide to upzone West Hartford, Connecticut. “I used to spend time with my counterparts in other countries and they’d say, Well, we just updated our national building code and national zoning code. We just wrote a national housing strategy,” Donovan told me. “I’d say, Wait, you have a national building code?”
As my colleague Jerusalem Demsas has written, we have delegated our housing policy not just to state and local governments but to every neighborhood’s homeowners association. Residents of a given place have ample opportunities—zoning-board meetings, candidate forums, historical architectural reviews, city-council open mics—to stop development. So they do. And thus mostly wealthy, mostly older people shape policy to their preferences: keeping new families out, maintaining single-family zoning, stopping development, and prioritizing the aesthetics of buyers over the needs of renters.
I understand the difficulties of creating federal laws or policies that then run into local government and zoning issues. I have written about this.
But, I am a little confused about the argument overall. It might be more accurate to say that the HUD and federal agencies have been reluctant to be directly involved in providing housing. The United States tried to provide some public housing in the mid-twentieth century and this did not go well. The federal government ended up retreating and, as the article notes, largely provides help now through housing vouchers.
At the same time, the federal government has an impact on financial markets, housing policy, and housing aspirations. Look at all of the interest in addressing interest rates. Or, the interest in mortgage regulations. Or, how politicians discuss homeownership. In other words, one journalist provided this quote of how housing works in the United States: “The former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, told me this: “Most countries have socialized health care and a free market for mortgages. You in the United States do exactly the opposite.”
Could the federal government do more to provide actual housing units? Yes, it could. This would require a concerted effort and resources as this has not been the approach for a while. Does the federal government promote housing, specifically supporting single-family homes? Yes, it does.
Legally Sociable 