Category Archives: Sociology

The Brady Bunch house as “the second most photographed home in America”

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The house featured on the Brady Bunch is up for sale again. Apparently, many people have photographed the home:

Zillow house listing

The Brady Bunch only lasted five seasons, but its cultural footprint has endured. The ABC comedy — which followed a blended family of eight, their live-in maid and, at certain points, a dog — ran from 1969 through 1974 before inspiring TV movies, a satirical feature remake (and sequel) and countless pilgrimages to 11222 Dilling Street. It has been called the second most-photographed home in America, trailing only the White House, though there is little evidence to back up such claims. 

I am sure someone could try to quantify this. Scan through all of the pictures on the Internet including photo upload sites? Perhaps measure the number of visitors each year to different houses and estimate how many pictures they might take?

A better question to ask might be this particular house is so popular for pictures. It is tied to a popular TV show, it is accessible to the public who can see the home from the street, it is located within the second largest metropolitan area in the United States, and there are a lot of tourists in the area. Still, it is a home built in 1959 that looks rather unremarkable from the outside. This might be a story about (1) the power of TV in American culture and (2) the importance of TV in this particular era of suburbia and Baby Boomers.

I wonder if any other TV shows would be in a top 10 of photographed homes in the United States.

(See earlier posts about the Brady Bunch house: a 2018 post about HGTV owning the home and a 2012 post about comparing the exterior and interior of the homes.)

Trying to put back together urban neighborhood split decades ago by highways

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New monies from the federal government are intended to help neighborhoods deeply affected by highway construction:

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Kansas City officials are now looking to repair some of the damage caused by the highway and reconnect the neighborhoods that surround it. To date, the city has received $5 million in funding from the Biden administration to help develop plans for potential changes, such as building overpasses that could improve pedestrian safety and better connect people to mass transit.

The funding is an example of the administration’s efforts to address racial disparities resulting from how the United States built physical infrastructure in past decades. The Transportation Department has awarded funding to dozens of projects under the goal of reconnecting communities, including $185 million in grants as part of a pilot program created by the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.

But the project in Kansas City also shows just how difficult and expensive it can be to reverse long-ago decisions to build highways that slashed through communities of color and split up neighborhoods. Many of the projects funded by the Biden administration would leave highways intact but seek to lessen the damage they have caused to surrounding areas. And even taking out a roadway is just a first step to reinvigorating a neighborhood.

“Once you wreck a community, putting it back together is much more work than just removing an interstate,” said Beth Osborne, who served as an acting assistant secretary at the Transportation Department during the Obama administration and is now the director of Transportation for America, an advocacy group.

In the name of fast travel between outlying areas and the city, such highways removed people and buildings, disrupted economic corridors, and created barriers between neighborhoods.

From the examples provided in this article, it sounds like this money will be used to try to reestablish streetscapes. Wide highways made it difficult for pedestrians to walk between places. Businesses had to rely on vehicle traffic. Decades after the highways were constructed, there may be relatively little activity on roadways near the highways.

Simply creating better paths over a major highway could be helpful. Removing a highway can also help, as evidenced by at least a few projects in American cities. But, there is a lot that goes into a streetscape. It takes time and resources to recreate thriving neighborhoods with multiple factors at play. Even then, vibrant sidewalks and streetscapes are relatively hard to find in American communities given the other priorities Americans emphasize.

What companies could embody the slogan “Delivering the American Dream”?

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I recently saw on the side of a truck the slogan for a company: “Delivering the American Dream.” Before I say which firm uses this, some thoughts on what kinds of companies this could fit:

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-Take the first part of the slogan: “delivering.” Could this fit a major delivery company? Imagine this as the slogan of UPS or FedEx; would it fit as they delivery so many different items to people?

-The second part of the slogan references “the American Dream.” This could refer to housing and the suburbs. (And I did spot this slogan in the suburbs.) Could a house be delivered or could it refer to some essential parts of homes (furniture, appliances, etc.)?

-The whole phrase suggests the American Dream can be delivered. This is a big promise. As noted above, the Dream can be symbolized by tangible objects but it is also an important ideology encompassing multiple factors.

Time for the reveal: this is the slogan of 84 Lumber. Here is part of the company’s history on their website:

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, 84 Lumber Company is the nation’s largest privately held supplier of building materials, manufactured components, and industry-leading services for single- and multi-family residences and commercial buildings.

The company operates 310 facilities which includes stores, component manufacturing plants, custom door shops and engineered wood product centers in 35 states. 84 Lumber also offers turnkey installation services for a variety of products, including framing, insulation, siding, windows, roofing, decking and drywall.

In the early days, founder Joe Hardy, in conjunction with his two brothers, Norman and Bob Hardy, and family friends Ed Ryan and Jack Kunkle, pooled together $84,000 in funds to purchase land and buildings for a new “cash and carry” lumberyard. The idea was that customers would pay by cash or check and if merchandise was unable to be “carried” out, an additional charge was implemented to have the item personally delivered…

Since then, 84 Lumber experienced exceptional growth, powered by Maggie’s vision to expand, and evolve the business. With tenacious leadership, and the 84 Lumber team’s true passion for their company, a new 84 Lumber emerged from tough economic times to become the powerhouse it is today. Now, 84 Lumber is a certified national women’s business enterprise and has held a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growing companies for several years in a row. The company hit $7.9B in sales in 2021, and increased to $8.78B in 2022.

The slogan does indeed refer to the single-family home and other buildings. They deliver some of the essential components of structures that many Americans use without any knowledge of where the materials came from.

If any company could live up to this slogan, this seems to be a good fit. While other companies could make a good claim with other goods and services, a close connection to single-family home construction connects closely to the American Dream.

Evangelicals and when the “postmodern” and “urban” came to the American suburbs

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A reflection on pastor and author Tim Keller’s life includes this line involving distinctions between American places:

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His insights hit a nerve at a time when evangelicals were realizing that “postmodern” and “urban” challenges—religious diversity, isolation, transience—were becoming common in rural and suburban contexts as well.

In the American context, suburbs often served as a refuge from perceived problems of the city. Religious diversity in cities involved all sorts of religious traditions as people flocked to cities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Even with the number of people in cities, Americans often celebrated an ideal of families living in suburban single-family homes rather than feeling atomized in large cities. Whereas people moved in and out of cities and urban neighborhoods, Americans often perceived suburbs as built around family and children, neighbors, and community groups.

How might we evaluate these features separating places? It is hard to discuss religious diversity without addressing race and ethnicity. As suburbs often excluded people who were not white, religious diversity was limited. Suburbs are increasingly diverse in terms of race and ethnicity and social class. Regarding isolation, plenty of narratives have been shared and told where individuals found the suburbs to be isolating. Compared to suburbs, cities offer opportunities for exploration and finding a place among other similar people. The suburbs may have celebrated certain social relationships but they were also quite transient for decades in the postwar era as people took advantage of opportunities.

If the lines between cities, suburbs, and rural areas are now more blurred, are evangelicals better equipped to address a changing world? How might they address complex suburbia?

What could go wrong if a suburb buys up a vacant shopping mall to redevelop it?

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The suburb of Bloomingdale, Illinois got fed up with the lack of redevelopment a formerly thriving shopping mall so they are buying up the property:

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Frustrated by years of inaction by the owners of Stratford Square Mall, Bloomingdale has spent more than $5.6 million to buy former department store buildings and open space near the mostly deserted shopping center.

Now the village is trying to use its powers of eminent domain to take over the core of the mall itself. Bloomingdale has filed a condemnation lawsuit aimed at acquiring the property. Village President Franco Coladipietro called it an “act of last resort.”…

Bloomingdale has been buying mall real estate to facilitate a full-scale redevelopment of Stratford Square. The village paid $2.4 million for the vacant Carson’s department store, $2.15 million for the former Burlington building and $1.1 million for a vacant parcel east of the mall, between townhouses to the north and medical offices to the south…

“You have the potential of a brighter future. I understand that there’s risk. We look at it as a calculated risk,” he said. “And we’ve done the due diligence prior to engaging in the purchase of the properties.”…

To that end, the village opened a line of credit, or short-term loan, to pay for the purchase of the Carson’s, Burlington and undeveloped properties. The village also filed condemnation lawsuits targeting Kohl’s and the vacant Sears store to “keep everything on the same track,” Coladipietro said.

If all turns out well, the suburb will be able to say in ten or twenty years that the former shopping mall property is an asset for the community with new, vibrant uses.

But, this could also turn out poorly. The suburb has borrowed money to buy property. They are in court. The developer has not successfully pursued redevelopment; will the village be able to do better? What happens when the bills come due and/or the community cannot agree about what the mall property should become and/or potential developers are still not interested in the property?

The Village President says this is a “calculated risk.” Indeed. Suburbs do not like dealing with significant vacant retail space and this mall is not the only one in the area facing these issues. I hope they have a manageable floor for the mall property if all does not go as planned.

Google Maps can show you the locations of some Chicago area ghost towns

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A journalist details some of the ghost towns in the south suburbs of Chicago that pop up on Google Maps:

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Perhaps kept alive by the unrealized optimism of their founders, places such as East Orland, Rexford, Alpine Heights and Goeselville are long gone, but still show up as potential destinations on internet atlases such as Google Maps…

But Google “Alpine, Illinois” and the algorithm will pinpoint the long-forgotten downtown area of Alpine Heights at 167th Street and 108th Avenue…

“It amuses me that Goeselville still shows up on maps,” Bettenhausen said. “I can’t explain why this happens, because it really was not much more than a post office.”

I assumed Google Maps and other online mapping options are drawing on modern cartographic information. Does this mean this information includes older communities that have not officially existed for decades or that Google Maps draws on historical information as well?

I could imagine an improved Google Maps that is able to show places as they existed in the past. There is a small version of this available right now with Google Street View. If you walk along a street, you can often pull up a previous version of the same view. This only goes back less than two decades but you can still observe changes.

Imagine Google Maps with pictures of former buildings, how roadways used to appear, and older names. You might be able to peel back the layers and look at a place in the 1990s or the 1950s or the 1910s. It would take a lot of work to find and put together all of these images but the ability to see how places are transformed would be fascinating.

Take these suburban ghost towns. Imagine being able to see an old post office or train station. You might then compare what is there today. To do this today, this might require searching for older images online or going to a local historical society to find images.

How much all the buildings in New York City weigh

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New York City has a lot of buildings in its 300+ square miles. All those structures weigh a lot:

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New geological research warns that the weight of New York City’s skyscrapers is actually causing the Big Apple — whose more than 1 million buildings weigh nearly 1.7 trillion pounds — to sink lower into its surrounding bodies of water.

Given the innovations that helped give rise to all of these buildings, can we expect innovative solutions to the consequences of all that weight? One approach would be to create barriers between the surrounding waters and the habitable areas. However, that does not fully address the weight and the ground under the buildings. Are there ways to prop up large structures?

If dismissing research based on the research methodology, discuss what methods would have been better

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An easy way to dismiss a study is to criticize the research methodology. The burden is often on the researcher(s) to explain how their methodology effectively addresses their research question or their hypotheses.

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Is there any burden on the person delivering the critique of methods to discuss what methodology might be better? Adopting this practice could serve multiple purposes. It could highlight what methods the critic prefers and for what reasons. It could help move research agendas forward as researchers consider different approaches. It also raises the bar for critique; it is easy to say a methodology does not work but it requires more effort to suggest what methodology is more effective.

Here are at least a few factors to consider when proposing other research methods in response to completed research:

-Researchers differ on what research methods they like to use and what research methods they feel should be used. Approaches can differ across individuals, subfields, and disciplines.

-Approaching a research question using multiple methods can be helpful for answering the question. Often, a single methodological approach cannot address all the complexity we wish to uncover.

-Researchers are constrained by time and money. There are ideal plans researchers want to pursue and then there is what is possible.

Pitching an alternative methodological approach in addition to questioning the methods employed could lead to more helpful outcomes.

Addressing sorting and inequalities with lotteries and luck

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Sociologist Dalton Conley suggests using lotteries to counter the inequalities in the United States due to Americans sorting people into different locations:

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As our society has become less random, it has become more unequal. Many people know that inequality has been rising steadily over time, but a less-remarked-on development is that there’s been a parallel geographic shift, with high- and low-income people moving into separate, ever more distinct communities. In 2019, the median household income in Washington, D.C., was $92,266. The corresponding figure for Mississippi was $45,792. Even locally, spatial differences are stark. New York City’s Fifteenth Congressional District, which covers the South Bronx, is the poorest in the nation, with a median income of thirty-one thousand dollars. The nation’s richest district, New York’s Twelfth, is just a mile or so to the south; it includes the Upper East Side and has a median income just shy of a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Sorting occurs even in areas where people of multiple social classes overlap: people of different incomes often frequent different establishments on the same city block…

ut there’s another route to consider. What if, instead of paying taxes where we reside, and then reaping their benefits locally, we sprinkled taxation and revenues randomly—and therefore evenly—across the United States? What if, instead of paying a third of my taxes to New York City and State, I instead paid them to Pod No. 2,264—a group to which I was randomly assigned by a lottery the year I turned eighteen? What if, instead of camping out on the sidewalk the night before the school-enrollment date in hopes of getting my kids into a well-funded public school, I received a monthly check from Pod 2,264 that was meant to pay for my children’s schooling wherever I wanted to send them? In such a system, the retreat of affluent people from the places where they live doesn’t matter. In fact, it doesn’t matter where anybody lives. Nobody can escape contributing to the public sphere, no matter how far they move…

Some of us would lose in a more lottery-based society. But many of us would win. And we might end up being more compassionate toward one another; we’d be forced to acknowledge that much of our lot is the luck of the draw. We argue endlessly about the meaning of luck, even if we don’t always realize it. How much are we responsible for what happens in our lives? What’s the difference between luck and choice? How much should society try to help the unfortunate? Much psychological research shows that Americans who believe that luck plays a large role in our lives tend to be more liberal, supporting redistributive policies. Yet almost all of us seem to wish for a society in which luck plays no role, and in which everyone gets what they deserve, whether through their own actions or through mutual aid…

Despite this common goal, we tend to reach for lotteries only as a last resort, as President Nixon did when waging an unpopular war. We tell ourselves that we are successfully squeezing randomness out of life, by means of ever more refined algorithms and targeted social policies. But one lesson of our pod-based thought experiment is that we already live under the reign of lotteries—lotteries of birth, of location, of economic and social fate. We’ll never truly randomize America, but even entertaining the possibility can help us see that it can be useful to acknowledge randomness, and even to incorporate rolls of the dice into our collective life. What if, instead of trying to erase luck, we embraced it?

Since we do not control into which families, locations, and conditions we are born, there is some dimension of randomness from early ages. Some people have certain conditions, others have different conditions.

This also reminds me of the documentary Waiting for Superman. There, a lottery provides spots in a charter school for students and families who want opportunities. If I remember correctly, the message there is less about using a lottery to allocate scarce resources and more about suggesting that all children should be able to go to good schools.

How much would it take to get Americans to support such systems? Persistent in American ideology is the idea that people contribute greatly to their own outcomes. If people do not like the idea of random selections, would considering the possibilities of lotteries help people think about other ways of allocating resources or distributing opportunities?

The different lists of the Best Places to Live vs. the Best Affordable Places to Live

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U.S. News & World Report just named Green Bay as the best city in the United States to live. One of the factors they account for is housing affordability. But, compare these lists:

There is not a lot of overlap in these top ten lists. Indeed, Green Bay is the only one on both. These lists tend to factor in affordability, but it is not the only factor that matters. Americans do not just move to places that are the most affordable.

US News uses these four categories in their methodology to find the Best Places to Live. This includes value/affordability but also reflects that people desire a certain set of economic and community opportunities:

Quality of Life Index – 36%

The Quality of Life Index measures how satisfied residents are with their daily lives in each ranked metro area, along with how affected the specific metro area is to life-impacting factors. To calculate Quality of Life scores, we evaluated multiple aspects of life in each metro area using a weighted average. To determine the weightings, we surveyed people across the U.S. to see the importance they place on each aspect evaluated in the index. The Quality of Life Index takes into account:…

Value Index – 23%

The Value Index measures how comfortably the average resident of each metro area can afford to live within their means. To accomplish this, we compared the median annual household income with the housing cost in each metro area (the Housing Affordability Index), along with a regional Price Parity Index created through data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The Value Index is determined by:…

Desirability Index – 22%

The Desirability Index measures whether people want to live in a given metro area. To determine this, we asked people from all over the U.S. where they’d prefer to live…

Job Market Index – 19%

The Job Market Index measures the strength of each metro area’s job market. To do this, we assessed the following two factors to determine how likely residents are to find employment in each metro area and their earning potential there:

Americans and/or those that regularly put together these lists like some level of affordability but their most desirable places have a particular status and quality of life.