The suburbs as a “Great Wrong Place”

Posted on by

In a review of mysteries written by women, one critic explains why suburbs are a common setting:

In the books I’ve been reading, the Great Wrong Place is sometimes suburbia, sometimes social media, sometimes high school, sometimes the marriage bed—everywhere something feels missing in contemporary life.

There is not much explanation here. However, this taps into a familiar suburban critique: the suburbs are a darker place than they appear. Even though they might be the image of the American Dream, many disturbing situations are underneath the surface. The key is the contrast between the displayed success of the single-family home and happy family and the tension that threatens to bubble to the surface.

What then exactly is missing from suburbs? Authentic displays of human difficulty and anguish (residents don’t talk about this stuff, perhaps because being vulnerable in the suburbs leads to social problems)? A lack of diversity in who lives there (the typical suburb is white and middle-class and shuts out other experiences)? Public spaces where residents can regularly mingle without having to have strong interpersonal relationships (everyone is cooped up inside their private spaces)? Whatever the reason, the suburbs provide rich spaces for today’s mystery (such as Gone Girl) and horror stories.

Having a McMansion with a carport

Posted on by

Living in a McMansion yet also having a carport seems incongruent. Yet, this recently was an issue in Austin, Texas:

Given a Planning Commission vote and a range of opposition willing to stay late to fight, it seems unlikely that McMansion rules on carports and garages will be changing any time soon.

At their most recent meeting, Planning Commissioners considered an amendment that would change part of Subchaper F, aka the McMansion Ordinance, that eliminates exemptions for carports when they are enclosed. (Enclosing carports, of course, turns them into garages.) Instead, staff is recommending that the exemption be based entirely on where the structure is located in relation to the house, not whether it is a carport or a garage.

Senior Planner Greg Dutton explained that, under the current code, carports get a 450-square-foot exemption when 10 feet or farther from the main house. If closer, the exemption is 250 square feet. However, if exempted carports are subsequently enclosed, that exemption is reduced, and can cause problems for unsuspecting homeowners.

The change was initiated after a perceived flurry of requests for waivers from that rule hit City Hall. Those requests came from homeowners who put doors on what they thought were unfinished garages, only to be told their homes were now out of compliance because those structures were previously considered carports under city code. Dutton said the influx of waivers seems to have died down.

I could see two reasons for having a carport rather than a garage:

  1. They are cheaper to construct because you don’t need to enclose the whole structure.
  2. With warmer weather, carports become more viable because all you want is a roof over the vehicle. (Hence, there are not as many carports in colder weather climates.)

Yet, the first reason would feed into a common critique of McMansions: so much money is spent on trying to impress people from the street – usually with the size of the home or the overblown architectural elements – that there is little leftover for other features like the back of the house or a carport. In other words, if you spend a lot of money to build a McMansion, couldn’t you go a little further and construct a garage as well?

To be honest, I’ve never seen a picture of a McMansion with a carport. Indeed, one of the nicknames for McMansions is “snout houses” because they tend to lead with a large garage. Perhaps carports occur more in teardown situations where the size of the lot makes it more difficult to have a large garage on the front and an existing carport in the back or on an alley is a viable alternative.

“It’s part of the American identity to have a grill”

Posted on by

This is the final line in a story on grilling. Here are some updates on the American grilling industry:

Grill sales in America are growing only by low single-digit percentages each year, and the market is nearly 20% smaller than it was a decade ago, according to the research firm IBISWorld.

U.S. grill manufacturers — led by Weber-Stephen Products, maker of the iconic Weber grills — also face stiff competition from imports, which now account for 56% of U.S. sales, up from 46% a decade ago, the IBISWorld data show.

Grill sales are closely tied to changes in the U.S. economy, especially the housing industry. So, not surprisingly, the grill business was hammered between 2008 and 2010 when the housing crisis and severe recession took hold…

The Fourth of July is the most popular day of the year for outdoor grilling, with 76% of grill owners planning to fire up their barbecues on the holiday, the HPBA says. Those summer bookends, Memorial Day and Labor Day, tied for second place at 62%…

And in the heated debate between gas and charcoal, gas has the edge. Gas grills outsold charcoal grills, 57.7% to 40.1%. The remaining 2.2% of grills sold were electric.

Based on this article, then grilling is tied to the single-family home, the lawn and backyard, eating meat, and American holidays. Perhaps it is a symbol of having the leisure time to cook slowly outside. We can add the grill – perhaps the distinctive Weber grill in particular – to other consumer goods that supposedly symbolize the American Dream (McMansions, SUVs, large sodas, fast food, big TVs, etc.).

Yet, other people in the world use grills or outdoor cooking spaces. Are Americans really that unique in this regard? Bon Appetit takes a look at grilling around the world after this introduction:

For Americans, firing up the Weber and grilling up some meat has a distinctly patriotic vibe–we barbecue on the 4th of July, after all, and no image of the American Dream would be complete without a cookout-friendly lawn behind that white picket fence–but we’re not the only ones who pride ourselves on our skill with charcoal and tongs. From satay in Singapore to asado in Argentina, there’s a whole world of grilling out there. You can always find regional variations from city to city, town to town, and family to family, but here are some of the world’s great grilling traditions.

So, perhaps Americans just do the grilling in distinct ways: often in private spaces (backyards of owned homes) at particular times (summer holidays).

First Medicare patient was in Naperville

Posted on by

Edward Hospital in Naperville will on July 20 celebrate the first Medicare patient in American history:

A Chicago Tribune reporter informed 68-year-old Avery she would be the first citizen to have her bills paid under the then-new program. Her amused reply, “Oh boy! Now I can go to New York and get on the television program ‘I’ve Got A Secret.'”

It was no secret when Avery signed her Medicare forms in her hospital bed on July 1, 1966, the day the program went into effect for nearly 20 million Americans age 65 or older. In addition to front-page coverage in the Tribune, an Associated Press photographer snapped Avery’s picture, which made its way across the country and into numerous other newspapers and publications…

“Edward Hospital, birthplace of Medicare” is how Carlson wryly refers to the event. Carlson is the one who chose Avery for her distinction.

“The reason I was given the right to choose was that I was a member of the communications staff at the national Blue Cross Association,” Carlson said. He and the head of communications at the U.S. Social Security Administration coordinated Avery’s form-signing and photo opportunity.

Although Naperville was still a small town at the time – under 10,000 residents – this illustrates how social networks can help push small communities into the spotlight. Even large bureaucratic programs have to start somewhere and a personal connection between the Blue Cross Association and the Social Security Administration made this possible.

The article says the hospital will dedicate a plaque and hold a small ceremony to make the anniversary. Is this the best way to mark social welfare programs? How many people will know that the plaque exists and view it? The United States regularly crafts memorials for particular people, whether notable leaders (like the proposed Eisenhower memorial in Washington D.C.) or collections of soldiers, but doesn’t mark government programs as well. A memorial to the New Deal? The Monroe Doctrine? The Interstate Act? All of these were incredibly consequential yet it is more difficult to envision where and how these should be marked.

“Sociology is alien to literature”

Posted on by

One reviewer of a new book suggests the retelling of personal experiences cannot be equated with sociology:

Ben Simon writes in the introduction, “I am not sure that my immigration experience is representative of the immigrants from Morocco.” But elsewhere he also writes: “To date, no attempt has been made to decipher the sociology of the Moroccan immigration. This book is a modest step in that direction.”

I object to Ben Simon’s sociological aspirations in this book. In his work as a journalist, he aimed his efforts in this direction, always doing so in an interesting and profound manner. But that is not the story here, because this is a different sort of literary undertaking. Someone who seeks to tell about himself has to first employ tools of emotion, sharing experiences and memories, allowing the reader to learn the process involved in consciousness-in-the-making: a private and personal consciousness, not a “sociology,” not the diagnosis of a society, not a creation of a portrait of something – but rather literature.

By its nature, an autobiography is first and foremost a literary text. And it is enough to think of Sartre’s “The Words” to understand this. Sociology, by virtue of the alienation that underlies its definition, in its critical sense of observation from the outside – is alien to literature. Being Moroccan is, in any event, much more complex, and so too are its immigrant experiences. It is enough for me to think about my “Moroccan” family, about its consciousness, about how it coped, about its relationship to religion and its immigration experiences.

Ben Simon sets out on a journey that traces the impressive path he has forged, the consolidation of his own perspective on reality, his emotions. But in “The Moroccans,” he feels a need to package this in “sociology.” Clearly there is a context, a “period,” a reflection of reality, but it is marginal; it is not the main thing.

Without reading the book, it is hard to know exactly what is going on here. It sounds like the author wants to extrapolate a bit from his own experiences to those of all Moroccan immigrants and the reviewer suggests he can’t speak for such a large group. This kerfuffle may also be about style; autobiographies and sociological works are often written differently with the emphasis of the first more on experiences and emotions and the second on larger generalizations, data, and theory.

This does hint at a larger issue in sociology and related disciplines where some research methods – particularly ethnography – allow for the mixing of researcher experience while still attempting to remain objective and connect the research to bigger issues in the field. This line can be quite blurry; see earlier issues raised about the work of Venkatesh or Goffman. Yet, it is an issue that is not going to go away as (1) insider information continues to be valuable and (2) some look to connect with different (i.e., non-academic) audiences with more literary styles.

Do teardown McMansions pit developers against residents?

Posted on by

An op-ed suggests there are two sides in debates over teardowns:

Can we please focus on what neighborhood residents want and not what developers want?

Two quick thoughts on this simplistic breakdown:

  1. It is very easy to make this claim because it suggests there are money-hungry outsiders – developers – and then average residents who don’t have the same resources. However, this is not always the case: what if the home or property was sold to the developer by a resident? Or, a new buyer wants to live in the neighborhood and wants to construct a larger home? There are plenty of cases where teardowns pit neighbors against neighbors and this gets a lot more complicated than just having an evil outsider at work.
  2. Should neighborhood residents always have complete control over what happens near them? Having input into a process is different than being able to control the process. A lot of residents might want to freeze their neighborhoods in time when they purchase their home. After all, the liked the neighborhood the way it was. However, few neighborhoods undergo no changes and urban neighborhoods can undergo significant changes over the decades.

While this op-ed is based on a particular case in Raleigh, all together, the developers-who-want-McMansions vs. residents may be true some of the time but many teardown McMansion situations are different.

Doing social science research in Madagascar

Posted on by

One researcher discusses undertaking research in Madagascar:

My colleagues and I, from the UK, the US and South Africa, feel frustrated. It is December 2014 and we have gathered at a jungle lodge in the highlands of Madagascar with 25 academics and postgraduate students from Antananarivo’s departments of sociology and communication to hash out the methodology for a large-scale research study. However, our research partners’ greater apparent interest in discussing theoretical issues is slowing us down. It is also tough for the interpreters, grappling with three-way simultaneous translation from Malagasy to English, French to English and English to French. The day reaches a low point when I hear through my headphones: “The real problem is situated somewhere between the problematic and the problematisation.”

We feel like prisoners in a jungle of theory. However, over the next few months, I come to realise that the lecture on Weber – and other diversions into Marxist, literary or linguistic theory – are not mere academic posturing. They are – to use development jargon – capacity-building. Unicef has asked our team to build the capacity of Antananarivo staff and students to conduct social research. We know how to design a quantitative and qualitative study, do the data analysis and write the report. But we know little about Madagascar: its culture and turbulent history, or how our Malagasy colleagues regard research. Their priority for the seminar is not to draft survey questionnaires but to build an equal, trusting research partnership…

According to the research design, a quantitative study (two questionnaires, with about 1,500 respondents for each) is to be conducted first, to highlight issues to be explored in the subsequent qualitative research. Unfortunately, the eastern floods and southern drought put the project several months behind schedule, and the Antananarivo qualitative research teams go into the field at about the same time as the quantitative research is being conducted, working in different communities. They emerge with hundreds of hours of focus group and interview transcripts and field notes, and it is a formidable task to merge them with the quantitative data.

Ultimately, common sense and pragmatism prevail. We use geographic and economic criteria to classify communities into four types: interior, sub-coastal, coastal and urban. Some interior communities are two days by zebu cart from the main dirt road; including them would lengthen the research and strain the budget. We reduce the long list of variables to be analysed. Our Antananarivo colleagues have a therapeutic 15-minute debate over whether coding – or, indeed, any attempt to organise human experience – is a colonial imposition. And then everyone goes back to work.

Doing quality research in first-world countries is difficult enough and yet working through the obstacles to doing good research in the developing world could lead to many positive consequences. It would be nice to see a follow-up article that shows what came of all these efforts.

Peak urban millennial reached?

Posted on by

A new study suggests millennials are now less interested in settling in big cities:

Millennials have been singled out as the stuff cities are made of, but Dowell Myers, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy, says the real estate industry should be bracing for a shift back to suburbs…

In a study published in late April in the journal Housing Policy Debate, Myers examined Realtor surveys and various sources of federal data…

Myers, however, found that circumstance was the likely driver of urban living: Three cycles — one demographic, one economic and one housing-based — converged in the 2000s to drive millennials into downtowns.

All three have reversed their effects, he said.

If this holds up, two possible consequences:

  1. Cities have worked hard in recent decades to appeal to young, educated adults – the Creative Class, in particular. If this group doesn’t move to cities in as large of number, who will cities try to attract? They may still go for wealthier empty nesters and retirees who can purchase housing and contribute to the tax base. But, they don’t quite have the same benefits as vibrant, motivated young people.
  2. If they aren’t going to the big cities, suburbs and suburban developers will increasingly look for ways to attract this demographic. Denser, more vibrant suburban areas could be appealing as they offer “city-lite” living. This could lead to more smaller yet having-all-the-features suburban housing.

Overcrowded sidewalks in Manhattan

Posted on by

Manhattan is crowded and this includes the sidewalks:

While crowding is hardly a new problem in the city, the sidewalks that cemented New York’s reputation as a world-class walking city have become obstacle courses as more people than ever live and work in the city and tourism surges. The problem is particularly acute in Manhattan. Around Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, two of the city’s main transit hubs, commuters clutching coffee cups and briefcases squeeze by one another during the morning and evening rushes. Throngs of shoppers and visitors sometimes bring swaths of Lower Manhattan to a standstill, prompting some local residents to cite clogged sidewalks as their biggest problem in a recent community survey.

Foot traffic has slowed to a shuffle along some of the city’s most famous corridors. On Fifth Avenue, between 54th and 55th Streets, 26,831 pedestrians — enough to fill Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall combined — passed through in three hours on a weekday in May 2015, up from 20,639 the year before, according to city data.

Transportation officials are taking measures to alleviate the congestion. To help accommodate foot traffic, they are adding more pedestrian plazas across the city, expanding the presence of a streetscape feature first embraced by the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. One is scheduled to open soon on 33rd Street near Penn Station. There are also plans to widen a half-dozen sidewalks in Flushing, Queens, in the next year (the city’s sidewalks vary in width, but must be at least five feet wide).

While a crowded sidewalk is simply a symptom of a crowded city, it resonates deeply because it affects almost everyone. Unlike overstuffed subways or tourist attractions like, say, Times Square, there is no going around the sidewalks. They are to New York what freeways are to Los Angeles: an essential part of the infrastructure. Sidewalks not only get people from Point A to Point B, but also serve as a shared public space for rich and poor, native and tourist alike.

As Jane Jacobs highlighted, crowded sidewalks are critical for thriving cities. And, don’t most urbanists today want more people walking? As the article notes, this is a problem in numerous cities where tourism is encouraged and there are a mix of important uses in proximity.

There seems to be an easy answer that is not discussed here: close more streets for stretches to allow for more pedestrian traffic. If there are so many people walking, this shouldn’t hurt businesses too much. Additionally, it could allow for pedestrian corridors that might also then reduce foot traffic on nearby streets. At least, perhaps some areas would benefit from road diets. If you have so many people in a small area and then prioritize vehicular traffic, problems like this will arise.

Even more radical than limiting vehicles in major urban stretches would be some version of the High Line in high-trafficked areas. Imagine raised platforms for walking above the sidewalk that could add both capacity and recreation options.

Taxing drivers by mile “unwaveringly unpopular”

Posted on by

Recent surveys suggest Americans do not like the idea of having to pay per mile driven:

The Mineta Transportation Institute, which has polled the public on a variety of tax questions for the past seven years, found that the mileage tax was “unwaveringly unpopular.” In the latest survey, which covered 1,500 people and was released this month, the institute found that support ranged between 23 percent and 48 percent, depending on how the question was framed. More people liked the idea if the mileage tax varied by how much a car pollutes…

According to the latest Mineta survey report, authored by Asha Weinstein Agrawal and Hilary Nixon, which was presented this month at the Commonwealth Club of California, between 31 percent and 75 percent of people supported increasing the gas tax — the higher figure if it was dedicated to maintenance.

While majorities may dislike a tax per mile driven, it sounds like more support could be garnered depending on how the tax is structured. Require each car to be tracked by the government via GPS? Dislike. No breaks for smaller vehicles or more fuel-efficient cars? Dislike. The money collected via the new method of taxation funneled away from road maintenance? Dislike.

In other words, this is likely to happen in the coming years but there will be a lot of negotiations as well as attempts to make this more palatable to voters.