Category Archives: Sociology

Regulating teardown McMansions in the Boston suburbs

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The town of Sharon, Massachusetts is having a classic discussion regarding teardown McMansions:

Although any architectural style can be part of the large-house phenomenon, the typical structure that draws concern has a high roof line and sits closer to the property line than the one it replaced. Whether the problem is purely aesthetic or a more practical one of blocked views and bright outdoor lighting, some people dislike a house that dwarfs the rest of the neighborhood. Call it McMansion backlash.

A few Boston-area communities, including Cohasset and Wellesley, have imposed special regulations on new houses over a certain size, and now the town of Sharon is considering doing the same…

Typical discussion. Some people want the right to sell their home to whomever wants to buy it and people should be able to do what they want with their property. Others argue that the character of neighborhoods are changing, older residents may be priced out of the neighborhood by rising property taxes, and the bigger homes are ugly or too large.

Since this is a common story, I wonder how many communities prepare for this situation beforehand. On one hand, perhaps this seems like a waste of time – if it is not a problem, why bother spending time addressing the issue? Certain communities may never really have to deal with teardowns because the property is not that valuable and the community is far away from urban areas. On the other hand, many suburbs could be in this position, particularly with calls for redevelopment and a growing interest in being closer to work or amenities. Why not have some regulations on the books before it turns into a contentious public discussion? Once things start changing and the land is so valuable that there are people willing to offer big money for older homes, it is harder to slow the process.

An added bonus of having this discussion early on would be that it could a rare moment for community members to discuss what they really want the community and its neighborhoods to look like in the future. Without these clear plans, communities tend not to discuss these things until something drastic or large pops up and then people become passionate. Planning ahead could both save some trouble and also allow residents and leaders to be proactive in setting guidelines and ideals.

Using a list of “sleep-deprived professions to illustrate statistical and substantive significance”

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I ran into a list of “sleep-deprived jobs” yesterday and I think it is a useful tool for illustrating what significance means. The top five sleep deprived jobs (starting with the least rested): home health aide (6 hours, 57 minutes), lawyer, police officers, physicians/paramedics, and economists. The top five jobs with the most sleep (starting with the most rested): forest/logging workers (7 hours, 22 minutes), hairstylists, sales representatives, bartenders, and construction workers. Here is where the data from the list came from:

The lists are based on interviews with 27,157 adults as part of the annual National Health Interview Survey, conducted by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleepy’s says its rankings were based on two variables: 1) average hours of sleep that respondents said they got in a 24-hour period, and 2) respondents’ occupations, as they would be classified by the Department of Labor.

Let’s talk about significance. First, statistical significance. The lower value is 6 hours and 57 minutes and the highest value is 7 hours, 22 minutes. We would need to know how the data is clustered, meaning does it look like a normal distribution (meaning most jobs are clumped in the middle) or it is a broader distribution? With a standard deviation, we could figure out how far these highest and lowest values are from the mean and whether they are outside 95% of all the cases.

Perhaps more interesting in this case is the second aspect of significance: even if a case is significantly different from the other cases, is this a meaningful difference in the real world? Just looking at the ten occupations at the top and bottom of this list, the top and bottom are separated by 35 minutes. Would roughly a half hour of sleep really change the quality of life or health between home health aides and forest/logging workers? Of course, sleep might not be the only factor that matters here but is this a meaningful difference? The Mayo Clinic recommends 7-9 hours a night for adults, the National Sleep Foundation also says 7-9 hours a night, and both agree that there are a lot of other factors involved. On the whole then, it appears that the average American (who is in an occupation) is on the low end of recommended sleep (a recurring theme in news stories over the years).

It appears that this list isn’t that helpful if everyone is relatively clustered together. But if we had a little more information, we could know more and determine whether there are (statistically and substantively) significant occupations.

Toll Brothers still moving forward

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While some may claim that the McMansion era is over, one of the prominent builders of some of these homes is still moving forward. Here is an update on Toll Brothers:

Luxury-home builder Toll Brothers has rebounded impressively since the start of October, along with its industry. The stock has risen by two-thirds and now trades at 71 times forward earnings estimates.

This is the case even with a reported quarterly loss announced Monday:

Toll Brothers Inc. swung to a fiscal-first-quarter loss as fewer deliveries and increased cancellations weakened revenue for the luxury-home builder.

But the company, known for its sprawling suburban homes and high-end urban condos, said it was optimistic because contracts were the highest for any first quarter in five years. It also sees recovery along Florida’s east coast and in Phoenix, markets hard hit by the housing crash…

Revenue dipped 3.6% to $322 million. Analysts expected a per-share profit of two cents on $361 million in revenue, according to a survey conducted by Thomson Reuters.

It sounds like some are optimistic that the housing market is turning a corner or has already reached its bottom. On the other hand, it sounds like there is still a lot of potential volatility. Here is a mixed report:

Homebuilders have struggled to compete as foreclosed properties sell at a discount and the U.S. unemployment rate remains above 8 percent. Toll Brothers depends on people selling their homes and buying its more expensive residences.

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose in January to an annual pace of 4.57 million, the highest level since May 2010, the National Association of Realtors reported today from Washington. The results were below the median forecast of 4.66 million by 74 economists surveyed by Bloomberg…

Toll Brothers’ earnings miss wasn’t “significant,” because it was caused by the longer period needed to complete high-rise condos in New York, which accounted for its most profitable sales, Chief Executive Officer Douglas Yearley Jr. said on Bloomberg Television today.

“This is the best we’ve felt in about five years,” he said on “Street Smart” with Trish Regan. “For the first three weeks of February, our orders are up significantly. We’re seeing deposits up. We’re seeing traffic up.”

My translation: we are still far from clearly positive results in the housing market.

I don’t know how many houses the biggest builders build but the figures from Toll Brothers are intriguing. Toll Brothers attracts a lot of attention but they “delivered 564 homes in the latest quarter, down slightly from 570 homes a year earlier.” This is not a lot of homes. I assume Toll Brothers gets more attention then because they tend to build high-end homes?

Funny sociology typo of the day: incarnation versus incarceration

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It appears there are at least two funny mistakes in this article about the increase in incarceration in the United States. Here is the first:

“Incarnation has not only grown dramatically, but it’s disproportionally concentrated among certain subgroups of the population,” said sociologist Becky Pettitof the University of Washington in Seattle. “Criminal justice contact has become normative among some sociodemographic groups, particularly among low-educated African-American men. Incarnation has become a repository for the most disadvantaged segments of the population.”

And here is a second instance:

“Incarceration is a very inefficient and blunt tool to restrict crime,” Uggen said. “We’re incarnating many people who are no longer dangerous. It’s much more about retribution and punishment than rational policy.”

There is a big difference here between a theological term and discussing the growing prison population in the United States.

Affirmative action and equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome

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Since the Supreme Court recently decided to take on a case that involves using race in college admissions, I was intrigued to run across a new sociological study that suggests people with more education are not more likely to support affirmative action.

“I think this study is important because there’s a common view that education is uniformly liberalizing, and this study shows—in a number of cases—that it’s not,” said study author Geoffrey T. Wodtke, a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan…

Wodtke’s study finds that while being better educated does not increase the likelihood that whites and minorities approve of affirmative action in the workplace, it does increase the probability that they support race-targeted job training. “The distinction between those two policies is that one is opportunity enhancing and the other is outcome equalizing,” Wodtke said. “I think that some of the values that are promoted through education, such as individualism and meritocracy, are just much more consistent with opportunity enhancing policies like job training than they are with redistributive or outcome equalizing policies like affirmative action.”…

According to Wodtke, there could be a couple of reasons why more educated blacks and Hispanics are no more likely to support affirmative action in the workplace than are their less educated peers. “One possibility is that affirmative action programs may have the unintended effect of stigmatizing people who have benefited from them,” Wodtke said. “As a result of this stigmatization, people who have seemingly benefitted from affirmative action may just lose faith in the efficacy of these programs to overcome racial discrimination in the labor market.”

Another possibility is that people with more advanced educations, regardless of race, become socialized in such a way that their own support for more radical social policies is somewhat diluted, Wodtke said. “The data suggest that one ideological function of the formal educational system is to marginalize ideas and values that are particularly challenging to existing power structures, perhaps even among those that occupy disadvantaged social positions,” Wodtke said.

I assume Wodtke addresses this in his article: who then does support affirmative action and do supporters primarily see it as a way to improve their standing in society?

I like the way this is framed in terms of equality and this is a way that I talk about inequality in my introduction to sociology class: as a country (or within other institutions) we could aim for different kinds of equality. Equality of opportunity is a more common American response and suggests that it is the role of government and other institutions to try to offer a level playing field, particularly in education, but then individuals have choices about how they respond to that. If people don’t succeed or don’t take opportunities provided for them, it is their fault. Of course, this view is limited in that it is extremely individualistic and fails to account for structural issues (race, class, gender to start) that affect the ability of individuals to respond to these choices.

On the other hand, we could set up a system that is aiming more for equality of outcome where different individuals end up at similar places. In this view, people or groups may need extra resources or help to get to these more equal outcomes. To steal an idea from my wife, this could be the difference between being equal and fair: acting equally in the classroom could mean devoting the same amount of time to each student while being fair would mean devoting more time to the students who need a little more help. (Another way to put it: if you were the student who needed the extra help, would you rather it be an equal or fair classroom?) This reminds me of a discussion from last year about the education system in Finland where the goal was not to have the highest achieving students but rather to bring up the bottom group of students and have more proficient students overall. This may also take the form of a more comprehensive safety net or baseline standard of living where citizens are guaranteed a certain level of income, health care, and housing.

Having this larger discussion about equality of opportunity versus equality of outcomes, how far we would want to lean toward one or the other as a country, and what policy routes would help us achieve our stated goal might be more productive in the long run instead of having skirmishes in court about particular policies every few years.

Trying to hold a county fair in suburban DuPage County

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DuPage County now has over 915,000 people and has little open land left for development. Amidst rapid suburbanization after World War II, there has always been a DuPage County Fair. Now, there is public debate about whether it makes sense to continue having this event:

The DuPage County Board should examine the long-term viability of its county fair and how distribution of state funding for the event is handled, a consultant has recommended.

And if the fair continues, the county should consider a new location, even if it means sharing a site with another county, the consultant recommends…

The fair, held each July on county-owned land in Wheaton east of DuPage’s government center, is run by a nonprofit association that relies heavily on funding that is funneled from the state Department of Agriculture through the Fair and Exposition Authority. Transferring that responsibility to the County Board would remove a layer of government by in effect eliminating the need for the seven-member fair authority, and that would “relieve the county of any associated risk,” the firm said.

Crowe Horwath pointed to decreased funding from the state and declining fair attendance as reasons why the county should consider whether the fair makes sense at all in the long run. The fair received an average of $300,000 a year in 2005-07. The figure in 2011 was about $198,000. The firm also noted that the fairgrounds are valuable property for which a better use might be found. The fair leases the land for $1,375 a year.

It is not surprising that this discussion has arisen in an era of fiscal issues at multiple levels of government.

The best argument I could imagine for the fair is that it is a reminder of what DuPage County once was. For the first 100 years of its history, DuPage County was primarily farmland and small towns that were within the orbit of Chicago. Produce from the farms could be shipped by rail or road to Chicago, destined for eastern markets through the Great Lakes, or to the southwest, eventually bound for the Mississippi River and points due south. One farm in the county even became the focus of a television show during the early 1950s:

In the spring of 1953, the Illinois Depart­ment of Agriculture began a search for a farm and a farm family who would become the stars of a new television show on the National Broadcasting Company. One of the thirty-five farms on the itinerary was the Harbecke Farm on Gary Avenue, rural Cloverdale in Bloom­ingdale Township, operated by Harbecke’s daughter and son-in-law, Bertha and Wilbert Landmeier. Tracing their roots to pioneer German farm families, the young couple had moved to the Harbecke Farm to operate a dairy farm. They had recently installed dairy equip­ment which carried the milk in refrigerated tubes from the milking machine to cooling tanks on the milk truck, which transported the commodity to an Addison dairy. The farm also had a hay drier which was another piece of modern machinery not found on every farm in  1953. These advantages, plus the fact that the location was considered one of the best be­tween Chicago and the Fox River for beaming the television waves, made the selection of the Harbecke-Landmeier Farm ideal for the show.

Thus, “Out on the Farm” began the first of a two-year run from the Harbecke-Landmeier Farm in the summer of 1953.  During the second season the first outdoor network colorcast originating from Chicago was the pickup from the Landmeier Farm. At the end of the 1954 season, the show was over, as Cloverdale and all of DuPage County were due for rapid change.

Here is a short description of the transformation from farmland to urban county:

The DuPage County Fair is the only county fair in Illinois located in a completely urban setting. Historical research showed that when the first DuPage County Fair was held in 1955, the county was 85% farmland. By 2000, the last farm vanished as DuPage County was absorbed into Chicago’s urban sprawl.

Today, the only farms DuPage County residents are likely to know about are Forest Preserve properties such as Kline Creek Farm in West Chicago or St. John’s Farm in Warrenville.

In the end, it sounds like it will be difficult to reserve valuable land for a week of nostalgia and history every year.

Remembering Pierre Bourdieu

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A little more than ten years after his death, The Guardian takes a look at the influence Pierre Bourdieu has had on sociology and other academic fields:

Ten years after the death of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, we seem a long way from the days when he severely criticised the world of politics and the media. Sociology students the world over are familiar with concepts such as social reproduction, symbolic violence and cultural capital.

Bourdieu is also the second most frequently quoted author in the world, after Michel Foucault, but ahead of Jacques Derrida, according to the ranking produced by Thomson Reuters (previously the Institute of Scientific Information), which counts citations. “Bourdieu has become the name of a collective research undertaking which disregards borders between disciplines and countries,” says Loïc Wacquant, a professor of sociology at University of California, Berkeley…

Could another Bourdieu appear now? Certainly not, says Noiriel: “No single thinker could exert so much influence. Sociological research has gone global, whereas it was only just taking shape in France when Bourdieu established his position.”…

“Bourdieu rarely spoke out on issues with which he was not familiar,” says the sociologist Franck Poupeau, who edited his Political Interventions. From social deprivation to industrial action, his commitment was linked to “a profound understanding of these issues”. So, he believes, “another Bourdieu would be possible now, but he would take a different form, that’s all.”

Despite Bourdieu’s standing in sociology and other academic disciplines, how many Americans have heard of him? Have any major US policies or programs been based on Bourdieu’s work? Of course, perhaps these are silly questions as sociologists tend not to exert the same influence in the United States nor do we have as much space for public intellectuals. Additionally, measuring sociologists in pragmatic terms (how did they tangibly improve society) might be an American sort of question.

A related point: I have a hard time imagining any major US newspaper writing a story like this about a sociologist who had passed away ten years earlier. One explanation for this could be that Bourdieu was heads above many or all other sociologists of his generation and there is no American who could match his theories or breadth. Another is that many journalists have little knowledge about sociology or sociologists. Hence, people who write about society can be labelled a sociologist.

An Arkansas McDonalds that looks like a McMansion

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The term McMansion is tied to the company McDonald’s: the homes are said to have a standardized look and are mass produced. Even though McDonald’s locations don’t usually look like McMansions, a new location in Little Rock, Arkansas combines the two:

The Promenade at Chenal announces the groundbreaking ceremony for the new McDonald’s to be held Tuesday, February 21 at 3:00 PM. This new addition to The Promenade at Chenal marks the first Pad Lot construction since the Shopping Center opened in 2008 as well as the first fast food restaurant for the Chenal Valley area of west Little Rock. Furthermore, this McDonald’s will be one of the first in the state to showcase the new, sleek modernized décor with wooden and graphic vinyl textured walls outlining seating zones designed to appease any customer from the casual visitor to the grab and go. “It promises to be the nicest designed McDonald’s in the State.” — Michael Todd, Vice President Salter Construction, Inc.

See the picture with the story to get a taste of what a McDonald’s McMansion could look like. Here is some commentary about the design:

The picture above is actually Ronald’s place in Independence, Ohio, but in the land of McMansions out in West Little Rock, what will a McDonald’s have to look like to impress? (then again, times are tough, maybe even for the purse-dog crowd) Most importantly: Will those chicken McNuggets taste better under a crystal chandelier than they do under a buzzing tube light? Stay tuned, foodies.

At first glance, this looks most like a bank to me with its columns, brick exterior, and plenty of windows in the front. How much more profitable would the “nicest designed McDonald’s in the State” be?

Despite the criticism of McMansions, I don’t feel like I have seen much criticism of the design of McDonald’s restaurants themselves. After upgrades at many locations in recent years, some McDonalds have upgraded from more tacky seating and a cheaper look to rivaling Starbucks and Panera. Compared to other fast food restaurants, are McDonalds exteriors and interiors better or worse than the competition? On the whole, I would say they are nicer than the average Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King.

Disney building luxury community of Golden Oak

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The Disney community of Celebration is well known (see earlier posts here and here) but the company is developing a more luxurious community called Golden Oak three miles from the theme parks.

At prices ranging from $1.5 million to upwards of $8 million, the developer promises a house and neighborhood with the hallmarks it has carefully cultivated for decades: meticulous attention to detail; extensive personal service; and, if you’re so inclined, a daily dose of Mickey, Minnie and the crew…

Although Florida abounds in upscale communities that promote a “lifestyle” of one kind or another, Golden Oak’s planners think the Disney brand is the not-so-secret weapon that sets it apart: Buy here, goes part of the sales pitch, and get years of virtually unlimited access to Disney properties in the surrounding area.

“We’ve never done this for anybody else,” explained Stacey Thomson, public relations manager for Golden Oak, who said that buyers in the current sales phase will get three years’ worth of unlimited VIP-access passes to the parks for the homeowner and four guests, in addition to such services as door-to-park van service, access to special events, and numerous other Disney-esque benefits that don’t accrue to the typical visitor…

Where Celebration was conceived as a full-fledged town with a large contingent of full-time residents and a share of units at a much lower price point, Golden Oak is a sprawling, 980-acre subdivision that will function more as a gilt-edged resort…

This is a great example of branding. If your company can be associated with ideas like quality, fun, vacation, and magic, consumers will go to great lengths to be a part of this. The reach of Disney is so broad that they can build communities and people are drawn to them because of the Disney name even though they could find comparable homes or amenities elsewhere.

While we know there are enough buyers to make this work, it would be helpful to hear more from Disney in what they are trying to do with Golden Oak. Here is “the story of Golden Oak“:

The story of Golden Oak begins in true once-upon-a time fashion. As a youth in Missouri, Walt Disney would lie beneath the spreading branches of his “dreaming tree” and let his imagination run free. It was here that Walt’s talents for storytelling and fantasy began to take shape into some of the world’s most beloved characters.

Years later, a scenic ranch in California’s Placerita Canyon proved an equally inspiring location for filming segments of The Mickey Mouse Club TV show. Walt Disney Productions purchased portions of the property in 1959 and, over the years, acquired more than 900 acres to reserve its quiet vistas for TV and movie productions and protect its harmony with nature. In fact, Walt and his family spent time relaxing and playing on the ranch.

The name of this ranch? Golden Oak, in honor of a storied tree there, under which some say gold nuggets had been found in 1842. From these illustrious origins, the legacy continues with Golden Oak at Walt Disney World® Resort.

The website for Golden Oak emphasizes a blend of neighborhood plus resort living. Will there really be a neighborhood here or is this more of a resort that can be called a “neighborhood” because it consists of single-family homes? Or does Disney think that without calling it a neighborhood, the development won’t be as attractive? If only you have the money necessary, you too can purchase this unique Disney blend.

I wonder if we can read anything into this development in terms of how it relates to Celebration. This wealthier development could be a marker of several things:

1. Disney has gone as far as it wants to go with Celebration type developments which are more geared toward “average” suburbanites. Disney now wants to take advantage of wealthier people who are willing to buy larger and more expensive homes these days.

1a. Does Disney consider Celebration a success or would they do a lot differently if they were starting a new community?

2. Disney finds these housing projects to be profitable and will pursue more of these in the future as conditions allow. It would be interesting to know how profitable the developments are.

 

Questioning the value of an outsider’s perspective in MoMA’s “Foreclosed”

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MoMA’s exhibit Foreclosed certainly seems to be provoking a lot of strong reactions (see Brian’s previous commentary here).  Diana Lind, editor in chief of Next American City, questions both the motives and the practicality underlying MoMA’s re-imagining of the American suburbs:

Foreclosed seethes with disdain for the suburbs, and the lack of an empathetic understanding of how the suburbs function and are changing, ultimately makes the exhibit look less visionary than ignorant. As an urban dweller who is deeply frustrated by the social, economic and environmental consequences of sprawl and car-centered communities, I too want to see clever ways of retrofitting these parts of the country. But saying that, I wish the exhibit had improved upon the suburbs rather than suggest transforming them beyond recognition.

It was critically apparent that none of the architects participating in the exhibit actually live in the suburbs (a fact confirmed by the exhibit’s curator). To Bergdoll, the last great American architect to live and work in the burbs was Frank Lloyd Wright, who was based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park at the turn of the 20th century. This outsider perspective on the suburbs is the exhibit’s crucial flaw and inevitably influenced the architects to propose interventions in suburbia that have all the grace of a superblock in the middle of the city grid. Despite their good intentions, their efforts at sustainability and their smart alternatives to homeownership, the architects’ wrath for the suburbs has caused them to create projects that annihilate the suburbs rather than improve them. [emphasis added]

For all their problems, suburbs clearly “work” on some levels.  (If they didn’t, suburbs would hold little attraction for to the millions happily residing in them.)  Lind’s specific examples of cultural clueless-ness on the part of the MoMA-commissioned architects are well worth pondering.  She suggests that failing to consider what aspects of suburbs work (and how) results the same sort of ham-fisted, bureaucratic approach that destroyed thriving urban neighborhoods in the mid-twentieth century:

[MoMA’s] radical visions that are so insensitive to the suburbs remind me of the Modernist public housing projects that were once foisted on inner cities. Created by well-intentioned but essentially ignorant architects and planners, those buildings made sense in theory but not in practice. They didn’t respond to the rhythms and needs of the people who would be housed there, because the architects didn’t really respect or understand the lives of poor people. MoMA should have found some architects who could love and live in the suburbs, showing us the way to make the most of suburban housing instead of wishing it didn’t exist.