“Historically gold was a great instrument for storing of wealth,” the chairman of BlackRock Inc. said at a conference in Singapore on Tuesday. “Gold has lost its luster and there’s other mechanisms in which you can store wealth that are inflation-adjusted.”…

“The two greatest stores of wealth internationally today is contemporary art….. and I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean that as a serious asset class,” said Fink. “And two, the other store of wealth today is apartments in Manhattan, apartments in Vancouver, in London.”…

The median sale price for existing condos in Manhattan jumped to a six-year high of $1.3 million in the first quarter, driven up by buyers seeking alternatives to out-of-reach new developments, according to Corcoran Group, a brokerage. In the U.K., asking prices for property climbed to a record in April as values in London rose 2.5 percent, Rightmove Plc said on Monday.

Three quick thoughts on this:

1. Good thing New York City has a boom in luxury building. Those underground expansions in wealthy London neighborhoods don’t hurt either.

2. What is the point where these apartments turn into a luxury housing bubble? There are only so many uber-desirable locations and only so many people who can afford these luxury places. If this part of the housing market collapses, what happens?

3. I recently read 33 Artists in 3 Acts by sociologist Sarah Thornton and this trend among the wealthy certainly has had an effect on the art world. There are some interesting discussions amongst artists involving money, commodities, and related topics.

Trying to move Los Angeles toward a less auto-dependent, greener, more sustainable city

Posted on April 21, 2015 by legallysociable

To say the least, Los Angeles has a reputation as a car-friendly (and/or dominated) city. Some people are hoping to change that:

The most explicit attempt to capture the shift in the zeitgeist is the notion of the “Third Los Angeles,” a term coined by Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. In an ongoing series of public events, Hawthorne has proposed that L.A. is moving into a new phase of its civic life. In his formulation, the first Los Angeles, a semi-forgotten prewar city, boasted a streetcar, active street life, and cutting-edge architecture. The second Los Angeles is the familiar auto-dystopia that resulted from the nearly bacterial postwar growth of subdivisions and the construction of the freeway system. Now, Hawthorne argues, this third and latest phase harks in some ways back to the first, in its embrace of public transit and public space (notably the billion-dollar revitalization of the concrete-covered Los Angeles River). Hawthorne’s focus is not specifically environmental. But a more publicly oriented city also tends to be a greener one. This is partly because mass transit and walking mean lower carbon emissions. And more broadly, willingness to invest in the public realm tends to coincide with political decisions that prioritize the public good, including ecological sustainability…

On all of those fronts, there are signs of change. One of the most obvious counter-examples is CicLAvia, the kind of phenomenon that makes Jacobs acolytes swoon. Launched in 2010, it’s a festive event during which miles of streets are closed to cars and swarmed by bikes. Taking place every two to three months, and rotating among different neighborhoods (Echo Park, the Valley, South L.A., etc.), each occasion attracts a diverse crowd of tens of thousands of people. They are the type of feel-good events—some might even call them utopian moments—where strangers smile at each other and ordinary life feels suspended. Traffic lights blink, and even cops whiz by on two wheels, wearing endearingly dorky helmets. In every sense—the car-shunning, the enthusiastic proximity to strangers, the exploration of different parts of the city—CicLAvia is antithetical to the guarded, privatized, auto-carved Los Angeles of lore.

CicLAvia remains a special occasion, but everyday transit is slowly improving as well. Banham wrote that the freeway “is where the Angeleno is most himself, most integrally identified with his great city,” and he predicted that “no Angeleno will be in a hurry to sacrifice it for the higher efficiency but drastically lowered convenience and freedom of choice of any high-density public rapid-transit system.” In 2008—pushed in part by unbearable traffic—Angelenos proved him wrong. On that Election Day, citizens of Los Angeles County voted for Measure R, which imposed a half-cent sales tax to support funding for transportation projects, including the expansion or construction of 12 rail and bus rapid transit lines. It is expected to generate $40 billion in revenue over 30 years. This choice stands in stark contrast to the famous Proposition 13, the 1978 California anti-property-tax law which has wreaked havoc on the state’s budget for public investment ever since. Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of the L.A.–based organization Climate Resolve and a former commissioner at the Department of Water and Power, told me, “The day we voted for Measure R, we voted for a new Los Angeles.”…

Starting in the early ’80s, the city got more serious about conservation, as seen in its mass conversion to low-flow toilets. The city has been responding to the current drought on a number of fronts. It has significantly reduced its own water use, especially in the Parks Department. It has offered a rebate to homeowners who replace their lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping, as well as rebates for installing rain barrels, among a variety of other measures. (It remains to be seen how the city will implement the new mandatory state restrictions.) The Department of Water and Power is also preparing a new Stormwater Capture Master Plan, and L.A. has a target of reducing imported water use by 50 percent by 2025. According to Andy Lipkis, executive director of the influential nonprofit Tree People, even in a drought, the proper technology can capture significant amounts of water—3.8 billion gallons per inch of rainfall. Mayor Garcetti just launched a corny public awareness campaign urging conservation. Contra Mulholland, the new slogan is “Save the drop.”

Early Los Angeles was a streetcar leader and the metropolitan region today is the densest in the United States (meaning that it is spread out but it is pretty dense in its spread). Yet, truly transforming the region away from reliance on cars requires a lot of work including: building mass transit (buses might be best given the roads but building light rail and subways could be more powerful in the long run even if they are incredibly expensive at this stage), approving denser development (not an easy task in a region where property values are incredibly important), developing a vibrant downtown that also includes housing units, and perhaps finding ways to deincentivize development on the metropolitan fringes.

Perhaps the best thing that could happen to Los Angeles in this area of green sustainability is the continued improvement in vehicles. Radically transforming Los Angeles may be a hard sell but slowly increasing MPG, introducing new power sources (fuel cells, hydrogen, etc), getting older cars off the road, and eventually having autonomous cars could be very helpful. Of course, those changes are not ones really made at the city or metropolitan region level but the guidelines of the state of California and the federal government may just go a long way.

Identifying the pockets of carless Chicagoans

Posted on April 21, 2015 by legallysociable

With more Americans living alone and significant transportation costs for middle-class Americans, where do the carless Chicagoans tend to cluster?

So where do those carless Chicagoans live, and how many of them are there? A lot, it turns out. If you break down Chicago by cars and household size using 2012 census numbers, these are the only groups of more than 100,000:

One person, one vehicle 193,174

One person, no vehicle 168,004

Two people, one vehicle 135,143

Along the northern lakefront, around half the households don’t have a car; there are pockets in the Near North Side and Lake View over 60 percent. In one Edgewater tract, it’s over 70 percent. It’s not the highest percentage, though—there are two tracts in one of the poorest stretches of the South Side, between U.S. Cellular Field and 47th Street along the Dan Ryan, above 80 percent.

As you move north and west and the city gets less dense, the percentage of carless households drops off. There’s an exception, though: one tract in Logan Square, adjacent to the California Blue Line stop, where 41 percent of households don’t own a car. The “twin towers” transit-oriented development that’s going up at 2293 N. Milwaukee, and causing controversy as it goes, will live right next to that tract.

One person, one vehicle	193,174
One person, no vehicle	168,004
Two people, one vehicle	135,143

If I had to guess, this is related to income, age, more expensive parking options (for example, having to pay for a garage spot as opposed to plenty of street parking), and housing types (single-family homes which are more attractive to families versus apartments, condos, etc.). How well would these clusters line up with where the Creative Class lives?

The headline suggests that this is has led developers to respond with what they are proposing and building. Yet, the article doesn’t say much regarding these changes. For example, how about more shared streets like have been proposed for a few spots in Chicago? How about more bike lanes in these areas? How about more high-rise housing? If these population clusters hold and developers are indeed responding, these could be very unique places in a few decades.

New Naperville leaders say the suburb is in “maintenance mode”

Posted on April 20, 2015 by legallysociable

With little open land to develop, several new Naperville officials discussed what the city can do:

Chirico said that one of the highest priorities for the new council will be to find a way to ease the burden on property taxpayers.

He said that, with the city essentially built out, smart economic development is needed to maintain revenue to keep the city operating at its current level.

Chirico said that a good first step toward that smart development would not necessarily be new projects, but rather concentrating on existing structures that are either empty or not suited to modern commerce…

Chirico used the example of the former Kmart on Ogden Avenue, and the nearby intersection of Ogden and Naper Boulevard, as areas that could be ripe for redevelopment.

“We may have to rethink the entire area,” he said.

Hinterlong agreed, saying “We are at build out…we’re in maintenance mode.”…

Chirico acknowledged the [affordable housing] problem, saying that “it might take some political will” to address it.

On one hand, this is not too surprising. Naperville likes to think of itself as having small-town charm and this is enhanced by a high quality of life, lots of single-family homes, conservative fiscal policies that don’t take too many risks, and developments that don’t rock the boat too much.

On the other hand, I’m not sure it is possible to simply go into “maintenance mode.” Here are three reasons why this may be difficult:

1. Trying to maintain a certain quality of life plus rising costs (inflation, pensions, less funding from the state of Illinois) without significant new sources of revenue may be difficult.

2. While Naperville touts its small-town charm, the suburb is where it is today partly because of aggressive growth with annexations for subdivisions and businesses as well as working to build a vibrant downtown. Retreating into a protective shell doesn’t seem to suit Naperville’s desires to be a leader.

3. Other communities, from Chicago to other growing suburbs, will not hesitate to pursue different strategies for growth. If Naperville doesn’t want to do much, other places may. Just because Naperville has this current level of population, wealth, and jobs doesn’t mean this is guaranteed several decades from now.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Naperville suddenly has to approve high-rise condo and office buildings – I don’t think it would be too difficult to find developers for such projects. Yet, “maintenance mode” can mean stagnation, something that businesses and local politicians really don’t want.

American problem and solution: too much stuff? Just buy a bigger house

Posted on April 19, 2015 by legallysociable

Episode 11 of Season 88 of House Hunters opens with this claim from a Jacksonville, Florida couple:

We have a very American problem. We have too much stuff. And we’re going to do the very American solution. Instead of getting rid of some of our stuff, we’re going to just get a bigger house.

This is indeed a very American problem. I’m not sure whether this couple should be applauded for recognizing the issue at hand (how many Americans really recognize they have lots of stuff?) or we should sadly shake our heads at their decision of how to move on. We have a consumer driven economy where Americans own enough stuff to fill lots of self-storage facilities. And the size of new homes have risen over 50% in the last four decades, even as household sizes have decreased. Perhaps the interest in McMansions isn’t about having private space or impressing the neighbors or showing off the owner’s status; perhaps they are about having so many square feet of space that the owner can keep consuming.

As an aside, it might be fascinating to see how many McMansion owners rent self-storage units…

The size and price of new American homes have increased quite a bit in 40 years

Posted on April 18, 2015 by legallysociable

A short video shows how new American homes have changed in the last four decades. Here is a quick summary of the differences:

Americans may occasionally complain about sprawl and the growth of the suburbs, but part of the expansion of homes over the last few decades has actually been due to the expansion of the home. Animator Bård Edlund’s project for CNN Money, 40 Years of the American Home, visualizes changes in features and layout and the slow but steady increase in size and price for the average house, which starts at 1,525 square feet in 1973 and slowly balloons to 2,384 square feet by 2013, a 56% increase. Price, not surprisingly, follows a similar trajectory, rising from $64,600 in 1980 to $268,900 by 2013. In inflation-adjusted dollars, that’s a 32% increase.

I’m not quite sure why the history begins 40 years ago because you would find a similar trajectory going back into the early 1950s when the average new home was around 1,000 square feet.

The Curbed headline is interesting: “Today’s Average Home is a McMansion Compared to 40 Years Ago.” If we are just talking about square feet, this makes sense with a 56% increase. This is a pretty neutral – and therefore unusual – use of the term McMansion. But, if it is suggesting that homes are too big or luxurious today, that is another story.

“New McMansions and Disappearing Jobs: A Tale of Two Rural Americas”

Posted on April 17, 2015 by legallysociable

Here is a brief summary of two trends in rural America: growing exurbs (which can include McMansions) yet a decline in jobs.

On the positive side of rural, Teresa Wiltz writes for Stateline, the very useful news and analysis source of the Pew Charitable Trusts, that “new census data show that for the first time since 2010, the outermost suburban counties are growing faster than urban counties and close-in suburbs.” The demographic change that Wiltz describes is the increase of 146,000 in new exurban residents attributable to domestic migration. The “vibe” of these exurbs, she writes, “is decidedly rural Americana.”

Why are the exurbs growing? Wiltz cites multiple potential reasons for this turnaround, including people moving to the exurbs for jobs (she cites Joel Kotkin, the well-known author, who believes that suburbanization is the likely route to growth around the world, to point out that “the vast majority of jobs aren’t in the cities”) and for “bigger and more affordable homes in a more wide-open space.”…

Some of the exurban growth might be attributable to the economic revival, but Bill Bishop reports in the Daily Yonder that, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, job growth in rural America stopped pretty abruptly in 2014. Between January 2014 and January 2015, rural counties lost 331,000 jobs while metropolitan counties gained 3.1 million jobs. Job losses almost always correlate with workforce and population losses; the rural workforce dropped 557,000 during 2014, which almost assuredly means that rural counties lost population as well.

It may be that these contrasting stories describe an in-migration by people who can choose to live wherever they want and an outmigration of people who have to go where there are jobs. Those in-migrants pose tough challenges for rural areas. Wiltz, for example, mentions in her piece seeing McMansions, farmhouses, mobile homes, and designer outlet stores together in the exurban area 40 miles north of Atlanta. That kind of mix of land uses can constitute a planner’s nightmare and a challenging issue for citizens groups trying to determine how residential development and open space and farmland preservation should be balanced.

There are a few confounding issues at play here:

1. This article mixes the ideas of exurbs and rural areas. The exurbs are between suburbs and the rural areas but what exactly does this mean? It is hard to know. Is 40 miles from Atlanta the suburbs or a rural area or exurbs? Exurbs often means the suburban fringe.

2. Having a rural “vibe” is also a vague idea. I assume this means big lots and smaller communities. But, a good number of Americans say they would prefer to live in “small towns” and these exurban areas may offer just that.

3. If the last paragraph is correct, the people building and/or buying McMansions in the exurbs are the same people driving the higher ends of the housing market in suburbs and cities. As the bottom end of the housing market continues to struggle, those with money can afford to move further out from the city and into big homes.

Three reasons for opposition to a proposed Dallas-Houston private high-speed rail project

Posted on April 16, 2015 by legallysociable

Eric Jaffe categorizes opposition to a proposed high-speed rail project between Houston and Dallas. First, a brief description of the project:

A quick recap: Texas Central Railway, a private firm, is pushing a very promising proposal to link Dallas and Houston with a Japanese-style high-speed train capable of doing the trip at 200 mph. By relying on investors rather than taxpayers, the plan seemed poised to avoid a lot of the fiscal (slash ideological) squabbles that have plagued its federally-funded counterparts in California, Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

And a little bit about each ideological camp:

Metcalf isn’t alone in this sentiment. Another elected official, Ben Lehman of Grimes County, has questioned whether the train will attract enough riders. He’s also been quoted as saying that the 18 million people who drive between Houston and Dallas each year have “gone through this decision-making process” and concluded “it’s more feasible to drive.”…

Other local officials are pushing a bill that “would strip firms developing high-speed rail projects from eminent domain authority,” reports the Texas Tribune. Fears of misused eminent domain are both valid and welcomed in any democratic setting. But what’s strange here is that the bill targets high-speed rail despite the fact that lots of private firms in Texas can wield eminent domain for the greater public good…

Which leads to the final major criticism of the privately funded Texas Central plan: that it won’t actually be privately funded. Or, rather, that it will start out privately funded but fail to meet its ridership goals and call on the public for a subsidy.

Three separate issues: is there enough demand? How much can a project like this exercise eminent domain? Would taxpayers ever be on the hook for such a project? My thoughts on each one:

1. On ridership. This may be a valid question but perhaps it matters less if this is a private project. If a company wants to spend the money, isn’t this their responsibility? Perhaps the real concern here is what happens if the project fails – what would happen to the infrastructure or the land that was taken?

2. On eminent domain. This gets at a classic American question of property rights versus the common good. Not easy to solve, particularly in a place like Texas.

3. On taxpayers left on the hook. This fear would seem to have some basis with large corporations or development projects (think sports stadiums) often using or having to use public money to close the gaps.

I would also be interested to see how these arguments are made together; a cluster of arguments could be more convincing than a single concern. Throwing up lots of negativity about the project can go a long ways in today’s media (traditional and otherwise) driven world.

Legally Sociable

Pleasant Musings on Sociology, McMansions and Housing, Suburbs and Cities, and Miscellaneous Errata.

Storing wealth in New York apartments, contemporary art

Trying to move Los Angeles toward a less auto-dependent, greener, more sustainable city

Identifying the pockets of carless Chicagoans

New Naperville leaders say the suburb is in “maintenance mode”

American problem and solution: too much stuff? Just buy a bigger house

The size and price of new American homes have increased quite a bit in 40 years

“New McMansions and Disappearing Jobs: A Tale of Two Rural Americas”

Three reasons for opposition to a proposed Dallas-Houston private high-speed rail project

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: