Bad suburban architecture that can give you acne

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The BBC TV show Orphan Black features a character who makes occasional humorous observations about the suburbs. Here is one of Felix’s quotes about suburbia from Season One courtesy of a recap:

It’s nine o’clock and Sarah pulls up to Alison’s house as Fee moans in the seat beside her. “You know I would never have gotten in if you said we were going to Suburbia.” He freaks out as she stops the car. “Don’t stop! Someone might speak to us!” Heh. Sarah peers out the window at Alison’s house. Fee frantically checks his complexion in the visor mirror. “You know, my skin just breaks out every time I leave downtown.” He demands Sarah look at his newly developed acne. “Right there! Tiny little suburban stress zits emerging in direct proximity to bad architecture.”

Felix is the classic antithesis of a suburbanite: gay bohemian artist who lives in a loft in a seedy-looking building. He sees suburbia as a bland place of conformity, a place that stifles creativity. This is illustrated by Fee’s quote above: the architecture of single-family home squeezed next to single-family home leads to acne.

Humorous quote but this critique is nothing new in the annals of suburbia. Concerns about conformity and bad architecture truly blossomed after World War II and continue to this day. Canadian subdivisions may often just heighten these concerns: the homes are often even closer together due to an interest in containing sprawl. In fact, these concerns are often reinforced by television shows and other narratives that play up the stereotypes of uptight, stuck-in-the-rat-race suburbanites versus free and uninhibited urban dwellers. While the show Orphan Black may have an unusual storyline, it is perpetuating a common suburban trope.

Changing the measurement of poverty leads to 400 million more in poverty around the world

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Researchers took a new look at global poverty, developed more specific measures, and found a lot more people living in poverty:

So OPHI reconsidered poverty from a new angle: a measure of what the authors term generally as “deprivations.” They relied on three datasets that do more than capture income: the Demographic and Health Survey, the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey, and the World Health Survey, each of which measures quality of life indicators. Poverty wasn’t just a vague number anymore, but a snapshot of on-the-ground conditions people were facing.

OPHI then created the new index (the MPI) that collected ten needs beyond “the basics” in three broader categories: nutrition and child mortality under Health; years of schooling and school attendance under Education; and cooking fuel, sanitation, water, electricity, floor, and assets under Living Conditions. If a person is deprived of a third or more of the indicators, he or she would be considered poor under the MPI. And degrees of poverty were measures, too: Did your home lack a roof or did you have no home at all?

Perhaps the MPI’s greatest feature is that it can locate poverty. Where the HPI would just tell you where a country stood in comparison to others, the MPI maps poverty at a more granular level. With poverty mapped in greater detail, aid workers and policy makers have the opportunity to be more targeted in their work.

So what did we find out about poverty now that we can measure it better? Sadly, the world is more impoverished than we previously thought. The HPI has put this figure at 1.2 billion people. But under the MPI’s measurements, it’s 1.6 billion people. More than half of the impoverished population in developing countries lives in South Asia, and another 29 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Seventy-one percent of MPI’s poor live in what is considered middle income countries—countries where development and modernization in the face of globalization is in full swing, but some are left behind. Niger is home to the highest concentration of multidimensionally poor, with nearly 90 percent of its population lacking in MPI’s socioeconomic indicators. Most of the poor live in rural areas.

This reminds me of Bill Gates’ suggestion a few years ago that one of the best ways to help address global issues is to set goals and collect better data. Based on this, the world could use more people who can work at collecting and analyzing data. If poverty is at least somewhat relative (beyond the basic needs of absolute poverty) and multidimensional, then defining it is an important ongoing task.

Tremendous amount of concrete used in China between 2011 and 2013

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Here is another metric regarding the amazing pace of construction and growth in China: Bill Gates references a graphic showing China using 6.6 gigatons of concrete between 2011 and 2013, more than 2 gigatons over what was used in the United States between 1901 and 2001. I’m not sure why you would want to but all this concrete in China would build a giant concrete cube that would dominate the Chicago skyline.

While this is clearly a lot of concrete, it would be interesting to know where it has all gone. Is China using a lot of concrete as opposed to other building materials that might be more expensive or take more time to gather?

Hard to measure school shootings

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It is difficult to decide on how to measure school shootings and gun violence:

What constitutes a school shooting?

That five-word question has no simple answer, a fact underscored by the backlash to an advocacy group’s recent list of school shootings. The list, maintained by Everytown, a group that backs policies to limit gun violence, was updated last week to reflect what it identified as the 74 school shootings since the massacre in Newtown, Conn., a massacre that sparked a national debate over gun control.

Multiple news outlets, including this one, reported on Everytown’s data, prompting a backlash over the broad methodology used. As we wrote in our original post, the group considered any instance of a firearm discharging on school property as a shooting — thus casting a broad net that includes homicides, suicides, accidental discharges and, in a handful of cases, shootings that had no relation to the schools themselves and occurred with no students apparently present.

None of the incidents rise to the level of the massacre that left 27 victims, mostly children, dead in suburban Connecticut roughly 18 months ago, but multiple reviews of the list show how difficult quantifying gun violence can be. Researcher Charles C. Johnson posted a flurry of tweets taking issue with incidents on Everytown’s list. A Hartford Courant review found 52 incidents involving at least one student on a school campus. (We found the same, when considering students or staff.) CNN identified 15 shootings that were similar to the violence in Newtown — in which a minor or adult was actively shooting inside or near a school — while Politifact identified 10.

Clearly, there’s no clean-cut way to quantify gun violence in the nation’s schools, but in the interest of transparency, we’re throwing open our review of the list, based on multiple news reports per incident. For each, we’ve summarized the incident and included casualty data where available.

This is a good example of the problems of conceptualization and operationalization. The idea of a “school shooting” seems obvious until you start looking at a variety of incidents and have to decide whether they hang together as one definable phenomenon. It is interesting here that the Washington Post then goes on to provide more information about each case but doesn’t come down on any side.

So how might this problem be solved? In the academic or scientific world, scholars would debate this through publications, conferences, and public discussions until some consensus (or at least some agreement about the contours of the argument) emerges. This takes time, a lot of thinking, and data analysis. This runs counter to more media or political-driven approaches that want quick, sound bite answers to complex social problems.

“Which [Chicago] suburbs are income tax givers and takers?”

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The Daily Herald looks at income tax info to figure out which Chicago suburbs are giving or getting more money:

As a whole, the suburbs are more giving than Chicago and much of downstate when it comes to redistribution of income taxes, but individually the suburbs are a mixed bag, based on a Daily Herald analysis of Illinois Department of Revenue and U.S. Census Bureau data.

That’s because taxes are paid to the state based on wages earned, but the amount returned from the state is a fixed amount per resident…

This state’s income tax redistribution policy means some suburban areas like parts of Aurora got back more than 25 percent of what residents paid in income taxes, while other areas like Oak Brook and Barrington received less than 2 percent of the income taxes workers there paid…

Taxes on higher incomes cover not only the local share but also a bigger portion of the cost of operating the state. The distribution of the income taxes helps ensure all parts of the state have the resources to operate effectively, experts said.

The article makes it sound as if the experts generally agree that this is the way it should work: income taxes are paid and then the money redistributed to help provide services for others. Yet, isn’t this sort of analysis suggesting that this may not be “equitable”? The real question lurking here is what would be equitable and whether people should be getting back in services exactly or close to what they paid in. There is some disagreement here, illustrated by one Oak Brook official:

“Every municipality hopes to receive more than it currently does,” said Art Osten, Oak Brook’s interim village manager. “The reality is that the distribution of taxes collected by the state is a political question. We hope the determination of need and reallocation is done in a reasonable and equitable manner and that Oak Brook receives its fair share of what its residents contribute.”

On one hand, communities all want more tax money back and discussions in Illinois to lower the amount returned to municipalities would be met with resistance. On the other hand, Oak Brook wants its “fair share.”

Fighting over the fate of the Lathrop Homes, one of the remaining public housing projects in Chicago

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While Chicago’s public housing high-rises (like Cabrini-Green) have been torn down, there is a current debate about the fate of the Lathrop Homes:

Lathrop’s two-story row houses and three- and four-story walk-ups occupy 35 acres on the western edge of Lincoln Park, and are often noticed by passersby on Diversey owing to the thick, white plumes of steam that rise from ground vents like jets from primordial geysers—the result of aging heating pipes. When the 925-unit development opened in 1938, it was one of the first public housing developments in the country and only the second in Chicago, built by a dream team of architects for the Public Works Administration’s New Deal program. For 30 years it was one of four all-white public housing projects managed by the Chicago Housing Authority. When the first African-American families were finally allowed to move into Lathrop in the late 1960s, they were segregated in the buildings on the south side of Diversey. The project didn’t become the melting pot Suarez describes until the 1970s…

Though Lathrop was supposed to be rehabilitated—and to remain 100 percent public housing—the CHA’s position shifted over the years. In 2000 the CHA stopped accepting new residents (in anticipation of rehabbing the property), and each subsequent year families were encouraged to move out. The buildings were shuttered one by one as Lathrop shrank from 747 occupied units in 2000 to about 140 today.

In other words, at a time when affordable housing in Chicago was becoming more and more scarce, hundreds of low-rent apartments were sitting vacant in a prime neighborhood.

In 2006 the CHA announced that Lathrop would become a mixed-income community with 400 public housing units, 400 tax-credit-subsidized units, and 400 market-rate ones. Demolition was scheduled for 2009.

But the housing market collapse, the recession, and persistent leadership turnover at the CHA has stalled those plans. To this day, not a single one of Lathrop’s 30 buildings has been demolished.

Interesting read about a project that is on the National Register of Historic Places and doesn’t get much attention despite some unique features. The story of the slow-moving CTA is not unusual; that has been the story for decades and it is understandable why residents aren’t always optimistic about better outcomes.

Addressing suburban poverty in Naperville, Lehigh Valley

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Two recent stories show the increase in suburban poverty is being addressed in Naperville, Illinois and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania:

From modest beginnings, Naperville’s Loaves & Fishes food pantry has gone from serving eight families in 1984 to helping feed 18,564 last year and greatly expanding its range of services…

In addition to the 4,606 households served last year, Loaves & Fishes also provides job search assistance, public aid, and skill classes in computers, finances, nutrition and the English language…

“There’s poverty everywhere and people in peril,” said State Sen. Michael Connelly, a Naperville resident and volunteer. “Loaves & Fishes provides that safety net as people transition to another stage of their lives, thanks to that spirit of volunteerism here in Naperville.”

And in Pennsylvania:

But amid its McMansions, backyard pools and pristine parks lies a different Parkland, one that has long been hidden but is emerging, family by family, into view. It’s the Parkland of the poor…

Over the past five years, the district has seen a dramatic rise in the number of students living in poverty. A total of 1,605 students — about one in five — qualified this school year for free or reduced-price lunches, the benchmark for determining the level of low-income students in schools. That number could fill more than half the district’s eight elementary schools…

Parkland, East Penn, Salisbury Township and other districts have tackled the trend with new and enhanced programs designed to provide basic necessities — toothbrushes, bookbags, food — and supply the extra academic, emotional and social support that may be lacking at home…

In the Lehigh Valley, where the median household income is about $55,000, the biggest poverty spikes have been seen in traditionally wealthier suburban schools, where free and reduced-price lunch eligibility has jumped by 70 percent or more in a number of districts over the past six years.

Numerous suburban communities are facing such issues and trying to figure out how to address them. At the moment, many suburbs don’t have the kind of social structures or social services to serve larger populations. At the least, schools have to tackle the issue even if wealthier suburbs think poverty is an issue for other places to handle.

Hurricane Sandy made room for new McMansions in New Jersey communities?

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Hurricane Sandy left a lot of destruction – and opportunities to construct new McMansions to replace older homes.

Long and many of her neighbors claim ostentatious monstrosities are changing the landscape of their modest and historic community, McLogan reported.

They accuse some of taking advantage of what Sandy wrought by raising and rebuilding their homes without any regard for the families next door — casting their smaller homes in shadow and gloom.

About 3,000 of Freeport’s 7,800 homes were damaged or destroyed in Sandy. New York Rising and the Federal Emergency Management Agency say rebuilding requires elevating homes at least a half-story from the street.

Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy is fielding calls from residents frustrated by the number of McMansions being built, but he said neighborhoods must be protected from the next big storm.

Hurricane Sandy didn’t just destroy homes; it may just lead to long-term transformations of dozens of neighborhoods and communities. This is an unusual situation compared to the typical teardown where a new owner buys a single home in a neighborhood, tears it down, and constructs a new large home with some different architectural features. When so many homes are destroyed so quickly, neighborhoods could change quite quickly, regardless of whether the new homes are McMansions, a negative term applied to these new big homes, or not.

In a typical case, a critical mass of teardown McMansions tends to lead to a group of residents appealing to local government to adopt some sort of regulations that limit the size and/or designs of new large teardowns. Yet, these processes take time and I assume there is a quick timeline for some of these homes to be rebuilt. How this plays out remains to be seen…

Nearly 50% drop in first-time buyers leads to bigger American homes

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New American homes are now over 2,600 square feet and this is partly because there has been a big drop in first-time buyers:

The economist says first-time buyers accounted for only some 16% of last year’s new-home sales, or about half of their usual roughly 30% market share.

At the same time, he says, builders are finding bank loans, developable land and experienced construction workers in short supply. “You had a well-oiled construction industry [during the early 2000s housing boom], but when there was a downturn, many people left,” Melman says.

The expert says a shift to high-end homes has historically happened after every U.S. recession or housing bust and lasted for a few years.

So he expects newly built homes to keep getting larger, fancier and costlier for a while — albeit at a slower pace over time.

More evidence that the numbers about the increasing size of American homes is misleading. On one hand, it looks like the American appetite for more square feet continues unabated; household sizes shrink over time but homes keep getting bigger. Have to have room to spread out or to store all our stuff. Yet, the housing market has changed quite a bit since the early 2000s where the above story might have been more accurate. Today, home sizes are driven by a market with fewer first-time buyers, builders who are looking for higher-end profits, and lenders who have pulled back a bit and restricted lending to people with plenty of wealth.

Singapore, other countries, looking to tackle smartphone addiction

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Here is a quick overview of concerns about smartphone addiction in Singapore, East Asia, and the United States:

Psychiatrists in Singapore are pushing for medical authorities to formally recognise addiction to the Internet and digital devices as a disorder, joining other countries around the world in addressing a growing problem.

Singapore and Hong Kong top an Asia-Pacific region that boasts some of the world’s highest smartphone penetration rates, according to a 2013 report by media monitoring firm Nielsen.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-singapore-grapples-smartphone-addiction.html#jCp

Psychiatrists in Singapore are pushing for medical authorities to formally recognise addiction to the Internet and digital devices as a disorder, joining other countries around the world in addressing a growing problem.

Singapore and Hong Kong top an Asia-Pacific region that boasts some of the world’s highest smartphone penetration rates, according to a 2013 report by media monitoring firm Nielsen.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-singapore-grapples-smartphone-addiction.html#jCp

Psychiatrists in Singapore are pushing for medical authorities to formally recognise addiction to the Internet and digital devices as a disorder, joining other countries around the world in addressing a growing problem…

In the United States, where there are similar concerns about the impact of smartphones on society, a 65 percent penetration rate would not even make the top five in Asia Pacific…

In terms of physical symptoms, more people are reporting “text neck” or “iNeck” pain, according to Tan Kian Hian, a consultant at the anaesthesiology department of Singapore General Hospital…

In South Korea, a government survey in 2013 estimated that nearly 20 percent of teenagers were addicted to smartphones…

A group of undergraduates from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University launched a campaign late last year encouraging the public to put their smartphones in a face-down position when they are with loved ones.

A fascinating topic to watch moving forward with two separate pieces:

1. All technological innovations invite praise and criticism but, of course, it takes some time to observe and think through the long-term effects. In today’s world, we tend to be on the acceptance side of new technology, viewing it as helpful progress that we would be silly to not use to our advantage.

2. This opens up new areas for conversations about addiction. What exactly constitutes smartphone addiction? What happens if large chunks of society are addicted to smartphones? How should it be treated?

My quick guess is that this won’t lead to many fruitful conversations about technology – we’re quite gung-ho at this point – but there will likely be a variety of approaches to smartphone addiction that could vary quite a bit by country and in effectiveness.