Category Archives: Sociology

A 32,000 square foot McMansion?

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One aspect of McMasions is that they are large houses. But here is a description of 32,000 square foot home that is called a McMansion:

Coeur d’Alene is interested in all things Hagadone. Even dated things. So I browsed the 20-page, color-photo, online spread in the Robb Report that named Duane Hagadone’s Palm Desert hilltop hideaway as the “2009 Ultimate Home.” Huckleberries has visited Hagadone’s mega-manse before, during the construction phase, when lesser millionaires and townspeople were fighting city approval that allowed the Coeur d’Alene tycoon to construct his 32,000-square-foot McMansion in the viewplane on one of the area’s few buildable hilltops. Now, according to the Robb Report, Hagadone prides himself on having to point out the location of his spread to golfing buddies because the color schemes and the footprint make it hard to see from the plain below. Of all the items featuring Hagadone sizzle enumerated in the article, none impresses Huckleberries more than the three-sided, 4,000-gallon aquarium tunnel leading into the dining area, featuring a shark tank on the ceiling. Mebbe the shark tank is to remind well-heeled Big Fish at Hagadone’s brunches of their humble beginnings.

In my thinking, a 32,000 square foot home is simply a mansion.

So what might make this extra large home a McMansion? Based on this short description, a few possible reasons come to mind:

1. The McMansion idea refers to the recent growth in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. Could this be referring to sprawl and building on one of the areas “buildable hilltops”? (But at the same time, this hints that the home has to be pointed out because it is “hard to see” from below.

2. There is something about the quality or design of the home that is reminiscent of other homes. So it is a big home but more so looks like a copy of other homes, hence the “Mc” prefix.

3. Is this term used just because McMansion is a pejorative term?

 

Finland schools: raising the overall educational scores by helping the students with the most troubles

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There is much angst in the United States regarding the education system and how its students compare to those of other countries. Time presents a different kind of model in Finland (which they oppose to “tiger mothering“) where there is less concern for stardom and more interest in helping the lower kids succeed:

In the ’80s, Finland stopped “streaming” pupils to different math and language tracks based on ability. “People in Finland cannot be divided by how smart they are,” says Laukkanen. “It has been very beneficial.”…

“Finland is a society based on equity,” says Laukkanen. “Japan and Korea are highly competitive societies — if you’re not better than your neighbor, your parents pay to send you to night school. In Finland, outperforming your neighbor isn’t very important. Everybody is average, but you want that average to be very high.” (See 20 back-to-school gadgets.)

This principle has gone far toward making Finland an educational overachiever. In the 2006 PISA science results, Finland’s worst students did 80% better than the OECD average for the worst group; its brightest did only 50% better than the average for bright students. “Raising the average for the bottom rungs has had a profound effect on the overall result,” says MacIsaac.

This is an interesting statistical point as there are two ways a country could go about raising the mean. Instead of trying to raise the average score by putting resources into the gifted or smartest students, the strategy in Finland is to instead raise the bottom group to a higher point.

From reading this article, it sounds like this is possible because of a particular set of cultural values that prizes community or equity over competition. Of course, some might argue that this might not be great for society: where are the next innovators or geniuses going to come from if they aren’t pushed harder? But one could argue on the other side that more help and success for the lower students (who used to be shunted off into lower track classes) helps limit later societal problems and instead promotes a more well-rounded and less bifurcated work force and citizenry.

In defense of larger Australian homes

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In 2009, new Australian homes became the largest in the world, beating even new US homes. But while large homes in the United States are sometimes derided as greedy, unnecessary, wasteful, and simply status symbols, data from one Australian survey suggests homebuyers purchase such homes because they want or need the space:

Homeowners are also increasingly happy to trade the traditional back yard for a larger lounge room and home cinema, according to a survey of more than 2500 people by removalists Grace Removals.

Space trumps neighbours and location, with 19 per cent of people saying the best thing about their home is its size, ahead of the suburb they live in (12 per cent) or being close to family and friends (7 per cent). The toilet was named the most important item in the home by 62 per cent of respondents…

But it’s family considerations, rather than status or greed, that is behind the popularity of so-called McMansions, McCrindle Research personal demographer Mark McCrindle says.

“We have a lot more going on in these larger homes,” Mr McCrindle said. “We are trending towards multi-generational households, where you have children living well into adulthood in the family home. We are also seeing more people work or run a business from home.”

I wonder if such an explanation would fly in the United States. It might be hard to make this case as the average size of the American family has decreased even as the average new house size has risen since World War Two.

The importance of the railroad to Will County’s projected growth

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When Will County officials look at a map of Metra commuter rail lines in the Chicago region, they see limited services for a growing region. Indeed, communities like Joliet and Plainfield are quickly growing. Will County officials came together Monday to praise a new study that will look into improving train options for this area:

Several communities have pegged developments to improved service on the Heritage Corridor. But those suburbs have been frustrated in recent years by the slow pace of adding Metra trains.

Local officials said Monday they were pinning their hopes on the Heritage Corridor to help residents get downtown now and in the future.

“I truly believe the need is there more than ever, and the consensus is we are going to see Will County in the next 20 years jump to (more than) 1 million people to become the second-most populated behind Cook,” said Will County Executive Larry Walsh.

The study will help establish the line as part of the proposed high-speed rail corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, Hannig said.

Several pieces of information are interesting:

1. Many might think that the railroad ceased to be important for suburbs around the time that interstates were built (late 1950s in the Chicago area). But these railroad lines still play an important role: they are a commuting option but also give suburbs a flow of people in and out of the downtown as well as a center for which development can be anchored. Along other Metra lines, numerous communities have built condos and mixed-use developments.

2. Will County will have more than 1 million residents in 20 years? This would require growth rates like the county has experienced since the 1950s: in every decade except the 1980s, the county has experienced at least 30% growth. I wonder what DuPage County, the current 2nd most populous county in the region, thinks of this projection.

3. There is some Metra service to Chicago but the options are limited. The article suggests that this limited service leads to limited use: this line is “Metra’s least-used line, with an average weekday ridership of 2,600 passengers.” (A little comparison with these numbers: I believe both Naperville train stations easily exceed this each weekday.) So if the rail service is improved, will this necessarily lead to more riders as the political leaders suggest? Why can’t the officials look at some commuting data to figure out how many Will County residents work in Chicago versus in other suburbs?

Op-ed: the American Dream is now about attaining perfection

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The American Dream is a popular topic: politicians, businesses, citizens, and immigrants have all had a hand in defining this set of values and goals. A recent op-ed in the Boston Globe by Neal Gabler suggests that the end goal of the American Dream has changed in recent years from seizing opportunities to attaining perfection:

But over the past 50 years, the American Dream has been revised. It is no longer about seizing opportunity but about realizing perfection. Many Americans have come to feel that the lives they always imagined for themselves are not only attainable; those lives are now transcendable, as if our imaginations were inadequate to the possibilities. In short, many Americans have come to believe in their own perfectibility…

We agonize a lot over perfection, and we dedicate a lot of time, energy, and money to it — everything from plastic surgery to gated communities of McMansions to the professionalization of our children’s activities like soccer and baseball to pricey preschools that prepare 4-year-olds for Harvard. After all, we are all on the Ivy League track now.

Or else. And that’s another thing that a perfectionist society has engendered. It has removed failure as an option because we realize that there are no second chances, that mistakes are usually irrevocable, and that you have to assume there are other people out there — your competition! — whose wives will always be beautifully coiffed and dressed or whose husbands will be power brokers, whose children will score 2,400 on their SATs and who will be playing competitive-level tennis, whose careers will be skyrocketing, whose fortunes will be growing. In a world in which perfection is expected, you must be perfect. Otherwise you are second rate.

I wish Gabler had some more space to expand on this idea. When he says we are chasing “perfection,” what exactly does he mean? I’m guessing that this does not refer to perfect lives: no one has these as we all have troubles to face and obstacles to overcome. We all face failure at some time or another. I wonder if by perfection, Gabler really is getting at something else, something along the lines of, “perfect enough to be better than most others.” When do we or would we know that our lives are perfect or is it more about being perfect enough?

When I read this piece, I was reminded of sociologist Juliet Schor’s argument in The Overspent American: in recent decades, Americans have spent more money and time chasing richer and richer reference groups. Even if we enjoy our house, we see better houses that supposedly middle-class families have on TV or in movies. Even if our kid is smart, we read newspaper stories about the kid who got a perfect on their SAT and seems to have every opportunity available to them. If we are always chasing other people, we might indeed get to a similar point – until other people have even more or something different. But we often only assess where we are at by comparing ourselves to others.

In this sense, perfect is not perfection but rather good enough to be better than most. Or perfect enough to look better than most. As Schor suggests, this could become an endless cycle of keeping up with the Joneses. Or as Gabler puts it, we are seeking to “live within [our] illusions” and to “live not just the good life but the perfect one.”

Chicago named 3rd most segregated city in the country

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A piece in the Chicago Reader discusses the results of a new University of Michigan study that showed Chicago is the third most segregated city in the country, trailing only New York City and Milwaukee. A few notes about this study:

1. Like many other studies of its ilk, this is based on dissimiliarity index scores. Here is how this is calculated:

The dissimilarity index is a system used by sociologists to measure segregation, with the highest score – meaning total segregation – being 100. The lowest – complete integration – is 0. The numbers reflect the percentage of people from one race (black and white are measured here) that would have to move in order to create complete integration.

There are some other measures like this with different calculations but the dissimilarity index seems to be used most often. There are a number of easily-found sites online that provide instructions on how to calculate the dissimilarity index (here is eHow’s explanation).

2. The Chicago Reader article and another piece at Salon (with some nice maps and explanations for each city) focus on white-black segregation. The original study also calculated the dissimilarity index for other pairs of races, such as whites and Latinos. These figures are generally lower than those for whites and blacks as the Great Migration of blacks from the south prompted increasing levels of segregation in Midwest and Northeastern cities during the early decades of the 1900s.

In terms of the white-Hispanic findings from the original study, the top 5 segregated cities are Springfield, MA, Los Angeles, New York, Providence, and Boston. On this list, Chicago is tenth.

The original study also look at white-Asian segregation: the top 5 cities here were Buffalo, Pittsburgh, New York, Syracuse, and Baton Rouge.

3. A little more on interpreting the figures regarding Chicago:

-Along with the other 52 most white-black segregated cities, Chicago had a drop (4.8) in its dissimilarity index between 2000 and 2010.  The 53rd city, Greensboro, NC, was the first on the list to have an increase (0.9).

-In the Salon piece, there is a little bit of history about how this segregation came to be in Chicago and black migration, public housing, interstates, and Mayor Daley are mentioned. The conclusion is this:

Oak Park was one of a handful of places around the country where progressive whites made common cause with blacks. But in the Chicago area, it’s the exception, not the rule. Today, middle-income blacks are increasingly moving into Chicago’s suburbs. And though Quillian says that there isn’t white flight like there was in the past, many communities appear to be resegregating. The problem now is white avoidance.

It would be interesting to hear more about this idea of “white avoidance.”

-The Chicago Reader piece also suggests that Pekin, Illinois (a town whose high school has had some issues regarding race and its mascot – link from Wikipedia) is the most segregated city (white-black) in Illinois. However, the story doesn’t add the caution regarding Pekin: there are 857 blacks in the community. The CensusScope page of Illinois cities by dissimilarity index adds this disclaimer:

When a group’s population is small, its dissimilarity index may be high even if the group’s members are evenly distributed throughout the area. Thus, when a group’s population is less than 1,000, exercise caution in interpreting its dissimilarity indices.

It would be helpful if this were added to the story regarding Pekin.

The best state to live in is North Dakota; will this change anything?

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A new set of rankings suggests that North Dakota is the #1 state in which to live. Here are some of the reasons:

• Lowest unemployment rate among the 50 states. North Dakota’s 3.8 percent unemployment rate is less than half the national rate.

• Statewide GDP growth of 3.9 percent ranked third in the nation in 2009 behind Oklahoma and Wyoming (2010’s figures are not yet available.)

• Best job growth last year. A Gallup survey reported that North Dakota businesses had the best ratio of hiring to firing among the 50 states.

• Stable housing market. Across the nation, nearly 1 in 4 homeowners with a mortgage are underwater. In North Dakota, just 1 in 14 have negative equity, the fourth lowest negative-equity ratio among all the states. The state also has the third-lowest home foreclosure rate. Affordable homes are a big part of the story here; let’s just say you don’t need to overstretch to own. According to Zillow, the median home price in North Dakota is below $150,000. That’s less than three times the state’s median household income. By comparison, even after sharp post-bubble price declines, the median priced home in California is still about five times median household income.

• Low violent crime rate. The incidence of violent crime per 100,000 residents in North Dakota in 2008 (latest available data) was the fourth lowest in the country and nearly 60 percent lower than the national average.

• Lowest credit card default rate. According to TransUnion, North Dakotans seem to have a handle on spending within their means.

The article goes on to say that Gallup recently found North Dakota to be the 3rd happiest state in the county.

One way of thinking about this ranking is to address the typical questions about such rankings: how dependent is the ranking on what factors were considered and how they were weighted? This plagues rankings of everything from states to colleges to communities to country’s well-being.

But another way to look at this is to ask whether the ranking will have any impact in the real world. This seems akin to the issue of substantive significance: statistics or data might suggest several variables are related but this doesn’t mean that this relationship or finding makes a big difference in everyday life. If North Dakota really is #1 based on a variety of useful measures, does this mean more people will move to the state? People move for a variety of reasons: jobs, to be by family, for certain climates (warmer weather) or atmospheres (the excitement of creative class cities or more sophisticated places), for education, to escape certain issues (crime, poverty) and benefit from the advantages of certain places (schools, parks, family-friendly, kid-friendly). But would anyone ever move to North Dakota based on this ranking? Will it lead to more businesses taking a second look at locating in North Dakota rather than big cities (or their suburbs) like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or elsewhere?

Another possible area of impact are perceptions about the state. Will the state’s status or prestige increase due to this ranking? If the state is seen as successful by other states, they might emulate North Dakota’s policies.

Overall, if North Dakota was #1 for decades, would anything really change?

(A related issue: if people did start moving to North Dakota in large numbers, would the state be able to maintain its top rank on this list?)

Sociologist suggests Twitter offers more immediacy than broadcast news on war

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A sociologist challenges the idea that Twitter is a space for “slacktivists” by arguing that it offers space for emotions and humanity in a way that traditional broadcast news does not.

NIMBY reactions to small solar panels on utility poles

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Green projects seem to have a good amount of general support. But when plans are made or carried out in particular locations, residents can become upset at how this changes the neighborhood. A recent example involves a plan to install small solar panels on a large number of utility poles in New Jersey:

Residents and politicians in Ridgewood, Wyckoff, and several other posh suburban towns just outside New York City are attacking local utility company PSE&G for putting up solar panels. Specifically, in an attempt to double the Garden State’s solar capacity, the company has been installing 3-foot-by-5-foot solar modules on utility poles. And the reactions are less than positive: “It’s just horrible,” said Ridgewood’s Deputy Mayor Tom Riche, according to an article in The Record, of Bergen County, N.J. on Sunday.

PSE&G wants to add 40 megawatts of solar capacity to the energy mix by 2013 as part of its Solar4All program, and the company is putting 180,000 solar panels on utility poles, schools, and other structures at a cost of more than half a billion dollars.  Among the objections (followed by the utility’s responses):

  • Crews install the panels without any warning. (PSE&G owns the poles.)
  • Residents gripe that the panels are “crammed” onto some blocks while some blocks have none at all. (Poles must have southern exposure and meet other criteria.)
  • Town officials are worried about liability caused by falling ice and snow. (Liability is actually PSE&G’s problem.)

Jerseyans aren’t the only ones raining on solar’s parade with an “ugliness” charge.

Three things strike me about these complaints:

1. Suburbanites tend not to like any changes in a neighborhood if they were not given prior warning. Or, we might even make a stronger argument: perhaps suburbanites just simply don’t like any changes to their neighborhood unless they have direct control over the changes being made.

2. As the end of this post points out, the utility pole is not exactly a paragon of beauty to start with. I currently live in a neighborhood with underground wires and fairly regularly I’m grateful that I don’t have to look at utility poles. Perhaps there are people out there who like their utility poles just the way they are – but this seems to go back to the first thought above.

3. This actually sounds like a clever idea on the part of the utility company. Since they already have the poles in place, why not put them to use and generate a decent amount of electricity through a distributed system? I wonder if the utility company predicted any outcry from citizens – and if so, perhaps they should have announced giant wind farms or something like that first so people would later be willing to settle for utility pole solar panels.

The case of the insistent American Community Survey employee

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The decennial US Census has its employees try to contact a household six times (see a quick summary of their procedures here). But the Problem Solver in the Chicago Tribune presents a case where a Census employee working on the American Community Survey (ACS) irritated a Chicago couple:

The first few requests were tolerable. A Census Bureau worker would knock on John and Beverly Scott’s door and ask them to fill out an American Community Survey. The McKinley Park couple would politely decline.

But as the days passed, the visits became more frequent and the requests more urgent.

Some evenings, the doorbell would ring at dinnertime, then again at 10 p.m…

Scott said the requests had become so repetitive and annoying, the couple began pulling the old “out-of-candy-on-Halloween trick.”

“I work afternoons, and I’m not home,” Scott said. “My wife has to sit with the lights off because she doesn’t want to be bothered.”

Often, even that doesn’t work.

“They knock and knock and knock and ring and ring and ring,” Beverly Scott said. “Knocking longer is not going to make me answer the door, and it’s not going to help if we’re not here.”

The final straw, John Scott said, was when a Census Bureau employee told him he would be fined $2,000 if he did not fill out the 48-question survey.

When contacted by the Problem Solver, the regional ACS office said the couple would not be fined (though the government could do this) and they would stop trying to contact the couple (and they did stop).

Surveys that pick out samples that are representative often will work hard to contact the initial respondents. If they can’t make contact or get a response, then they move on to other people who might fit what they are looking for, adding time and resources that need to be spend for the project.

Interestingly, the couple in question also notes that although they filled out their decennial survey, they are not interested in filling out the American Community Survey because they see it as too intrusive:

But they’re not too keen on the American Community Survey, a more in-depth, ongoing questionnaire the Census Bureau conducts to compile information on area demographics, consumer patterns and economic issues.

In particular, the Scotts did not want to answer questions they found too personal, such as inquiries about their income, when they left for work and their health.

“The new questionnaire has gone way over the line,” Scott said. “We have told the representative that we are not going to answer private questions, but they continue to come to our door at all hours of the day and night.”

There were occasional reports of people who felt the same about the 2010 decennial census with some suggesting that a Census should only gather a head count and no other information. But in the future, the US Census has suggested that the ACS will play an increasingly important role as the government looks to collect more frequent data. As the story suggests, the ACS data is important for determining “the Consumer Price Index and how federal funding is allocated.” Rather than waiting every 10 years for a more comprehensive counting, the ACS provides more up-to-data that governments (from the federal to local level), researchers, and the public can utilize.