“Turning Suburban Tysons [Corner] Into a Walkable City Will Take Time”

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Eric Jaffe discusses the slow transformation of Tysons Corner, Virgina from car-dominated edge city to walkable city:

Last week marked the Silver Line’s first birthday, and with so much riding on it, so to speak, attention naturally turned to the lower-than-expected ridership numbers. The Washington Post reported that the Silver Line is serving about 17,000 daily riders during the work week, well off the pace of 25,000 riders that planners had set by this time. The “bulk” of this ridership aren’t even new users, according to the Post, but rather people who used to take the Orange Line instead…

But while it’s far, far too soon to declare the great Tysons shift a failure, it’s not too early to point out some of the little failings that still need to be addressed.

Poor walkability is one. Citing an internal analysis, Martin Di Caro at WAMU reports that Metro officials believe a lack of “sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike lanes” is a key reason behind the low ridership numbers…

But the neuroscience of driving habits clearly shows that mode choice is most susceptible to change in the early stages of a major life event, such as moving homes or starting a new job. Insofar as Tysons developers have been slow out of the gate when it comes to encouraging transit, walking, and biking, they might be missing a critical opportunity to change commuter behavior…

A third setback might fall more on Metro itself. The Post’s Dr. Gridlock reports that the biggest problem facing Silver Line ridership isn’t the stations—it’s the service. A delay on new rail cars forced Metro to stretch the existing fleet thin. The proposed fix involves running fewer eight-car trains during rush-hour twice a week so the older cars can get maintenance; given the strong ties between transit service and transit ridership, that’s not an encouraging proposition.

Transforming an exemplar of suburban sprawl is not easy: the community has to respond with corresponding infrastructure (improving walkability), changed mindsets (getting people into new patterns and perhaps this requires newer residents), and adequate service to make it viable alternative.

However, we might ask how much time is needed before we could properly evaluate the impact of the Silver Line. Five years? Twenty years? A couple of generations? And it matters who is doing the evaluating and for what reasons. Is this about seeing a financial impact (paying for the construction of the new line plus measuring new development prompted by the new line)? Assessing the decisions of politicians? Trying to reach a magic number of daily users? It will be interesting to watch the ongoing analysis and who gets to take the credit or blame.

Why is football “the sport that most closely aligns itself with religion”?

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NFL player Arian Foster is out as a non-religious player:

Arian Foster, 28, has spent his entire public football career — in college at Tennessee, in the NFL with the Texans — in the Bible Belt. Playing in the sport that most closely aligns itself with religion, in which God and country are both industry and packaging, in which the pregame flyover blends with the postgame prayer, Foster does not believe in God.

“Everybody always says the same thing: You have to have faith,” he says. “That’s my whole thing: Faith isn’t enough for me. For people who are struggling with that, they’re nervous about telling their families or afraid of the backlash … man, don’t be afraid to be you. I was, for years.”

He has tossed out sly hints in the past, just enough to give himself wink-and-a-nod deniability, but he recently decided to become a public face of the nonreligious. Moved by the testimonials of celebrity atheists like comedian Bill Maher and magicians Penn and Teller, Foster has joined a national campaign by the nonprofit group Openly Secular, which plans to use his story to increase awareness and acceptance of nonbelievers, especially in sports. The organization initially approached ESPN about Foster’s willingness to share his story, but ESPN subsequently dealt directly with Foster, and Openly Secular had no involvement…

Religion may be football’s sole concession to humility, perhaps the only gesture that suggests the game itself is not its own denomination. Nowhere is the looming proximity of Christianity more pronounced than in the SEC, where, in the time of Tim Tebow, a man named Chad Gibbs was inspired to write a book — God and Football — telling of his travels to every SEC school to decipher how like-minded Christians navigate the cliff walk between rooting for Florida and maintaining their devotion to Christ. These religious currents aren’t confined to football, of course: Big league baseball teams routinely hold “faith and family” days; players appear at postgame celebrations to give their testimonials, and Christian rock bands perform well into the night. In football, though, public displays of faith can be viewed as a necessary accessory for such a dangerous and violent sport.

I’m more interested in why football might identify more with religion than other sports. (And I’m a bit skeptical of whether this is true.) Is it:

1. The physical nature of the game? Perhaps it reminds the athletes more of their own mortality. Plus, careers are short due to the physical demands. Perhaps playing football reinforces religiosity.

2. The connection between football and certain areas of the country? This article cites the Bible Belt and SEC schools. So this connection between football and religion could really be a relationship between football and the South? This could be an example of a spurious correlation.

3. The people who play football are more religious and/or come from more religious families? In this explanation, the religiosity comes before football rather than because of football (different causal order).

4. Football players have been more publicly vocal about their faith compared to athletes in other sports?

5. A historical connection between churches and/or religious schools and football?

Could be some interesting stuff to look into…

The odd McMansions of Mill Basin, Brooklyn

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Some recent McMansions in the Mill Basin neighborhood in Brooklyn caught the eye of a photographer:

Photographer Nate Dorr recently shot some of the more interesting edifices in the neighborhood, noting that some of the architecture seems to come from “a sculptural confusion of design elements that suggests the owners just opted to combine all possibilities in one facade rather than make any attempt to decide between them.” And that pretty much sums up the look of the area…

This is indeed a unique collection as well as a apt description. Perhaps the eclectic mishmash of styles actually creates its own unifying aesthetic? Hip neighborhoods can make this work – artists and creative types can’t be confined – but perhaps not wealthy ones.

A 1991 New York Times article suggests the waterfront property attracts the wealthy:

Waterfront houses eclipse these in cost — up to $4 million — and luxury. More than 200 have their own docks and a few have elevators. One, on National Drive, has a six-car garage and on Indiana Place stands a three-story house with an all-glass facade. Such high-profile houses have been built or bought by politicians, restaurateurs, physicians and, reportedly, leaders of organized crime.

An interesting outcome for a neighborhood with history dating back to the 1620s.

NYT crossword: “I merely bought myself a McMansion, and now I’m ___!”

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I don’t know how often McMansions appear in crossword puzzles but here is a recent example from the New York Times:

The crossword clue for today new york times crossword puzzle is I merely bought myself a McMansion, and now I’m ___! , and the right or the best answer for I merely bought myself a McMansion, and now I’m ___! is :

INTHEBIGHOUSE

Could also work with “I just walked into the University of Michigan football stadium, and now I’m ___!”

See the full solved puzzle here. And clue here is playing off the theme of staying in jail:

THEME: hoosegow —  fill in the blank clues that treat literally some figurative terms for being in prison. All clues begin “I merely…” and end “… and now I’m ___!,” the idea being that the speaker is talking as if he’s been put in prison for doing something, when the prison term is actually just a literal description of what the speaker was doing.

If intended this way, this would fit how many McMansion critics might feel about having to live in such a house…

“The rise and rise of Pierre Bourdieu in US sociology”

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A French sociologist looks at the popularity of Pierre Bourdieu:

Pierre Bourdieu would have turned 85 on 1 August 2015. Thirteen years after his death, the French sociologist remains one of the leading social scientists in the world. His work has been translated into dozens of languages (Sapiro & Bustamante 2009), and he is one of the most cited social theorists worldwide, ahead of major thinkers like Jurgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, or Irving Goffman (Santoro 2008). That Bourdieu is one of the most prominent social theorists will come as no surprise to those accustomed to the academic scene. A more surprising fact, however, is that he is probably the most cited scholar in the social sciences. In a forthcoming paper on the reception of French sociologists in the United States, Andrew Abbott and I show that, at the turn of this decade, he is referenced in more than 100 sociological articles a year. Important authors like Paul Di Maggio or James Coleman are only cited 60 times, while Mark Granovetter has nearly 50 mentions. Bourdieu is also referenced more often than Émile Durkheim, who for a long time epitomized (French) sociology…

This diversity of topics influenced the reception of Bourdieu’s work abroad. As has been pointed out (see Sallasz and Zavisca, 2008), it was initially read by different (unrelated) groups. Though it happened fairly early, the reception of his work remained confined to local areas for over two decades. In the United States, this situation changed in the late 1980s following a number of efforts to emphasize the systematic character of Bourdieu’s research. The key initiative among these was the 1992 interview book co-authored by Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, Invitation to a Reflexive Sociology. Written in English with a US audience in mind, it aims at presenting Bourdieu’s system to a foreign audience. Our data shows that after publication of this book, his work subsequently gained widespread exposure beyond the limited local fields in which it was already popular. Not only were his concepts now used outside of those fields, but references to his work also increasingly pertained to theoretical aspects rather to empirical ones. Starting in the mid-1990s, Bourdieu was regarded as a general social theorist and read across sub-disciplinary lines—as well as across disciplines.

What will happen next? Although prediction and social science don’t square well, several signs indicate that Bourdieu is currently entering the canon of worldwide sociology. In the United States, our study shows that while the number of references to his work continues to increase, scholars’ level of engagement with the text is decreasing. In fact, over the last few years, references to Bourdieu have become more allusive. To measure this change, we hand-coded several hundred references from different periods. The proportion of those extensively citing Bourdieu has decreased steadily since the 2000s. This trait is characteristic of a process of canonization, when an author becomes equated with an idea or a set of ideas (e.g. Foucault and power, Goffman and face-to-face interactions, etc.), and is therefore considered a mandatory reference on the topic. The citation becomes a ritual. In some cases, the author has obviously not read the text in question.

Has Bourdieu become a museum piece? It does not seem so, at least for now. Scholarly interest is still strong and his work is still very much discussed. A good indicator of this is the number of references to an author per article, and comparison with other authors is telling here. Whereas Durkheim is routinely cited but not much debated, and receives an average of one reference per article citing him (fig2a), Bourdieu’s work is still an object of active investment (fig2b). At least 25% of the articles citing Bourdieu make two references to his work, sometimes many more. Bourdieu may well be entering the canon, but his appropriation abroad still fosters debates.

This sort of analysis could be undertaken with any major figure in an academic field: how did their work spread, who was spreading it, when did it peak, and how did the citations coalesce around particular topics or ideas?

The case of Bourdieu is interesting for several reasons. It involves a sociologist from another country who wrote in another language and American sociology can sometimes be provincial. Bourdieu’s work began in the ethnographic realm but hit upon key areas in sociology after the 1960s including social class, culture, and education. His findings have been utilized in multiple disciplines and across countries.

At some point, will there be a Bourdieu backlash or major opposition? The article suggested the next stage is “museum piece” and this seems to imply that his work will remain important but fade into history. Who has the big ideas to replace Bourdieu or significantly tweak his work?

Luxury apartments with Cabrini-Green heritage

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A new luxury apartment building on the location of the Cabrini-Green public housing high rises appears ready to build on the site’s heritage:

A new luxury apartment tower at 625 W. Division Street is set to open this autumn, delivering 240 new rental units and 5,500 square feet of retail space to the former Cabrini-Green area. And instead of fighting the neighborhood’s name or trying to rebrand it as something else, developer Gerding Edlen is perfectly fine with describing the area as Cabrini-Green. In a press release, a Gerding Edlen rep states that they are very well aware of what is happening in the area and want to embrace the neighborhood’s past. “With Xavier, we had an opportunity to be part of the continued story of this neighborhood,” their Director of East Coast and Midwest Acquisitions Matt Edlen says, “We are particularly conscious of this neighborhood’s rich and long standing history, and feel the project will have positive long-term impacts on the area.” In embracing the area’s history, Gerding Edlen might help other developers come to terms with and accept the Cabrini-Green name and the neighborhood’s next chapter—which is looking to be dominated by high-end rental towers.

Designed by GREC Architecture, the 18-story tower dubbed Xavier is not unlike many other luxury towers being built throughout the greater downtown area. It’ll boast many upscale amenities such as a fitness center, both an indoor and outdoor dog run area, an outdoor terrace and pool deck and a rooftop lounge space. The LEED Gold-certified tower will also include some high tech offerings like electric car charging stations, and its units will feature finishes made some sustainable materials and Nest thermostats.

Presumably, the new building will be cast as part of the rebirth of the neighborhood. New residents can be part of something new. But, how exactly do the luxury apartments fit with the legacy of the public housing project (which could be remembered by different people for their crime, lack of maintenance, a land grab by the city) or even with the Little Sicily area that preceded the high rises? (Hence the name borrowing from Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants.) Who exactly gets to decide what the new neighborhood will be called – new developers, former residents, others? Location names aren’t just geographic; they have social connotations that often do not change quickly.

Those opposed to the teardown of the high rises might see this as another instance of whitewashing history by removing public housing residents from the public eye. In a few years, perhaps Cabrini-Green will simply mean another luxury apartment neighborhood outside of Chicago’s Loop.

McMansions redeemed by multigenerational households?

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At the end of an article on the rise of McMansion sized new homes, here is a suggestion that who purchases such homes might be changing:

The culture of the McMansion itself could be changing, too. As minorities and multigenerational households drive growth in the cities and suburbs where construction is most abundant, buyers may want larger homes not so much out of a lust for space but to have enough room for their families.

”We’re going to have much more diverse buyers coming into the market,” Hepp says. “Developers are adjusting to [multigenerational housing]. In some cultures it’s quite normal to have different generations living under the same roof.”

If this comes to pass, would it change the negative reputation McMansions have? Is it more acceptable to have large households in such homes compared to having “a lust for space”? The houses would still be the same: large, architecturally odd, part of suburban sprawl, perhaps much larger than other nearby properties. Yet, having more residents would cut down on their inefficiency and they might be more cost efficient.

Another complication is the mixing of race, ethnicity, and class in this possible trend. Would neighbors have more to object to if they dislike the McMansion as well as the new groups of people moving into the community?

My quick prediction: this trend wouldn’t redeem the McMansion for many of its critics but they do provide an interesting option for larger households.

Highway rest stops intended to fight driver fatigue, be free of commercial pressure

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Here is an explanation for the distances between highway rest stops as well as their purpose:

According to federal policy, about every half-hour of driving or so there should be a place to take a break. This includes state-run rest stops, commercial rest stops, and regular city exits—in other words, the placement of official rest stops is calculated against the existence of other, non-state-run opportunities to pull over.

The official purpose of a rest area is for safety and convenience, as stipulated in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which created the national interstate system. The act recognized that in some rural parts of the interstate opportunities to exit the highway would be few and far between. Since shoulders were meant only for emergencies and vehicle breakdowns, occasional rest areas were necessary. The half-hour rule of thumb was set out in a 1958 policy by the American Association of State Highway Officials that laid out detailed standards for the design and placement of rest areas in the national interstate system. The vast majority of rest sites were developed concurrently with the highway system itself in the two decades following the 1956 act.

Although the 1958 policy did not designate minimum or average distances between sites—that would be too complicated given the many variable factors on a highway like traffic volume, topography, and climate—it broadly stated that there should be enough rest areas to “reasonably accommodate the safety rest needs of Interstate highway travelers” and “encourage drivers to use them as a safety measure to break long periods of travel.”…

Before the federal intervention in 1956, drivers couldn’t count on a place to stop at all. The character of early rest areas (then called roadside parks) ranged widely and most had sprung up organically. The first unofficial rest stop is believed to have appeared in Michigan in 1929, where a road engineer noticed people who had pulled over to picnic on a tree stump, albeit with difficulty. The engineer was inspired to create some roadside picnic tables at the spot, and the idea spread. Early roadside parks were usually found by long stretches of road, particularly near scenic vistas or historic landmarks, and were often very rustic, with no running water or flushing toilets.

Additionally, some states combined rest areas with commercial properties (gas stations, restaurants) to have a stop that could meet all needs (exercise, rest, bathrooms, gas, food). Yet, the initial goal was to provide commercial free stops according to Federal Highway Administration:

Can I set up a business in safety rest areas or welcome centers selling food or other products to motorists?

No. Section 111 of Title 23 (“Highways”), United States Code, prohibits the States from commercializing the right-of-way along the Interstate System. The commercial prohibition in Section 111 dates to 1956 when Congress was considering the legislation that launched the Interstate Highway Program. The Members considered following the model of the toll turnpikes that provided commercial facilities in service areas for motorists who would otherwise have to leave the facility and pay a toll to continue their journey. Congress rejected this model by enacting the Section 111 prohibition on commercialization. The intent was to avoid State approved or supported monopolies for traveler services, such as those provided on toll roads. During the debate, Representative Charles A. Vanik (D-OH) explained what Congress had in mind: “Let the highway traveler turn off the Interstate system if he requires food, motor-vehicle service, lodging or Stuckey’s pecans.”

The Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 modified the commercial restriction by permitting vending machines in rest and recreation areas constructed or located on the Interstate right-of-way.

Safety rest areas are intended to serve motorists by allowing them to take a short break, use the rest rooms, shake off drowsiness, and then move on. The absence of commercial services (except for vending machines) means motorists can stop without any pressure to make purchases. For food, gasoline, lodging, and other commercial services, motorists can leave the highway and return to it without a toll charge.

Interesting to see an interest in protecting drivers from commercialism along the road. This was also aided by the Highway Beautification Act.

Since rest areas are intended to break up long travel, I wonder if the average highway driver goes too long without stopping. For example, here is the recommendation from one AAA club:

Stop every 100 miles or every two hours to get out of the car and walk around; exercise helps to combat fatigue. (p.5)

Perhaps rest areas should be even more crowded. But, stopping more often means interfering with the American obsession with time.

The perils of analyzing big real estate data

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Two leaders of Zillow recently wrote Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate which is a sort of Freakanomics look at all the real estate data they have. While it is an interesting book, it also illustrates the difficulties of analyzing big data:

1. The key to the book is all the data Zillow has harnessed to track real estate prices and make predictions on current and future prices. They don’t say much about their models. This could be for two good reasons: this is aimed at a mass market and the models are their trade secrets. Yet, I wanted to hear more about all the fascinating data – at least in an appendix?

2. Problems of aggregation: the data is analyzed usually at a metro area or national level. There are hints at smaller markets – a chapter on NYC for example and another looking at some unusual markets like Las Vegas – but there are not different chapters on cheaper/starter homes or luxury homes. An unanswered questino: is real estate within or across markets more similar? Put another way, are the features of the Chicago market so unique and patterned or are cheaper homes in the Chicago region more like similar homes in Atlanta or Los Angeles compared to more expensive homes across markets?

3. Most provocative argument: in Chapter 24, the authors suggest that pushing homeownership for lower-income Americans is a bad idea as it can often trap them in properties that don’t appreciate. This was a big problem in the 2000s: Presidents Clinton and Bush pushed homeownership but after housing values dropped in the late 2000s, poorer neighborhoods were hit hard, leaving many homeowners to default or seriously underwater. Unfortunately, unless demand picks up in these neighborhoods (and gentrification is pretty rare), these homes are not good investments.

4. The individual chapters often discuss small effects that may be significant but don’t have large substantive effects. For example, there is a section on male vs. female real estate agents. The effects for each gender are small: at most, a few percentage points difference in selling price as well as slight variations in speed of sale. (Women are better in both categories: higher prices, faster sales.)

5. The authors are pretty good at repeatedly pointing out that correlation does not mean causation. Yet, they don’t catch all of these moments and at other times present patterns in such a way that distort the axes. For example, here is a chart from page 202:

ZillowTalkp202

These two things may be correlated (as one goes up so does the other and vice versa) but why fix the axes so you are comparing half percentages to five percentage increments?

6. Continuing #4, I supposed a buyer and seller would want to use all the tricks they can but the tips here mean that those in the real estate market are supposed to string along all of these small effects to maximize what they get. On the final page, they write: “These are small actions that add up to a big difference.” Maybe. With margins of error on the effects, some buyers and sellers aren’t going to get the effects outlined here: some will benefit more but some will benefit less.

7. The moral of the whole story? Use data to your advantage even as it is not a guarantee:

In the new realm of real estate, everyone faces a rather stark choice. The operative question now is: Do you wield the power of data to your advantage? Or do you ignore the data, to your peril?

The same is true of the housing market writ large. Certainly, many macro-level dynamics are out of any one person’s control. And yet, we’re better equipped than ever before to choose wisely in the present – to make the kinds of measured judgments that can prevent another coast-to-coast bubble and calamitous burst. (p.252)

In the end, this book is aimed at the mass market where a buyer or seller could hope to string together a number of these small advantages. Yet, there are no guarantees and the effects are often small. Having more data may be good for markets and may make participants feel more knowledgeable (or perhaps more overwhelmed) but not everyone can take advantage of this information.

Another person walks all 6,000 miles of New York City

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The urban walking trend continues: a professional walker (seriously) meets the sociologist who walked all of New York City’s streets.

I was, therefore, amazed to learn that there was another person walking the five boroughs: a thirty-something man named Matt Green. Green isn’t a sociologist; he’s more like an inexhaustibly curious visitor. He, too, has walked more than six thousand miles within the city limits. Unlike Helmreich, who records what he sees in his capacious, near-eidetic memory, Green takes photographs with his phone. He posts the photos to a blog, ImJustWalkin.com. Before he decided to walk all of New York City, Green walked across the United States, from New York to Oregon. Helmreich commutes into the city from his house on Long Island. Green, by contrast, has no apartment or job. He walks full-time and stays with friends. His venture is funded by donations.

Obviously, we had to introduce Green and Helmreich. The film that resulted, directed by Riley Hooper, touches on many subjects: nature, race, identity, gentrification. In some ways, it captures the difficulty every New Yorker faces in comprehending a city which is always beyond us as individuals. It’s also a classic New York romance. These two big-city wanderers are kindred spirits. Now—with a little help—they’ve found each other.

A nice little story. The film touches on some of this but I would want the two to compare walking notes in an academic way. What had they each noticed? How much did their interpretations align or differ? How do their field notes compare? Putting their heads together, I’m guessing they could come up an interesting back and forth on both NYC’s famous and less famous areas. This could end up as a good example of group qualitative work – maintaining the rich detail of the methodology but limiting the subjective bias of an individual researcher – that came about serendipitously.

See these earlier posts on the sociologist who published a book on his efforts and gave tours based on his knowledge.