Why are so many car commercials set in the Los Angeles area?

Posted on by

I’ve noticed something about car commercials lately: many of them are shot in the Los Angeles area. Here are three common scenes:

1. Driving down a few blocks of downtown Los Angeles, possibly with the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the background or in the parking garage that provides a nice overlook over the city. Even if you don’t know the concert hall by name, you may have seen this behind numerous cars:

WaltDisneyConcertHallJul12

It takes some work to block off urban streets but these few blocks of downtown get a lot of air time.

2. Driving on Highway 101 along the Pacific Coast. Think of scenes with cliffs on one side, the Pacific Ocean on the other, a sunny day, and a beautiful car driving down a narrow road over curves and with sweeping vistas.

3. Driving along Mulholland Drive with the city in the background or along a similar road in the hills north of downtown Los Angeles. One of the commercials on the air right now ends with a shot of the new car winding its way toward the Griffiths Observatory. The observatory is a nice place to explore and there are good views:

LAfromGriffithsObservatory

Overall, I suspect there is some good reason for all of this. Perhaps it to simply take advantage of all of the power and tools of Hollywood. Perhaps LA is great because of its varied landscape. Perhaps there are some tax breaks involved. However, there are plenty of other cities where this filming could take place and LA is far away from Detroit, the traditional center of American cars. At the same time, this might provide more reasons why that Super Bowl commercial about being “Imported from Detroit” received so much attention.

The features Americans want in their homes for 2014

Posted on by

Businessweek takes a look at what Americans want in their homes in the new year. Here are a few of the trends:

-Builders says closet sizes have more than doubled in some high-end models from a decade ago. And Pulte Homes notes that walk-in closets are becoming de rigueur for even guest bedrooms.

-Three-bedroom homes accounted for 46 percent of new builds in 2012, down from 53 percent in 2009. Four-bedroom houses have grabbed 41 percent of the newly constructed home market – providing more room for aging relatives or kids who move back.

-The size of U.S. homes is growing again after declining during the recession. The latest government data show the average, newly built U.S. single-family dwelling is 2,505 square feet. That’s within a hair of the 2,521-sq.ft. peak in 2007 at the height of the housing boom.

-About half the added square footage on homes built by Pulte in the past 10 years has gone to storage space. A sign of the times: what Pulte’s director of architecture, Scott Thomas, calls “the Costco room,” a closet near the entrance from the garage that can hold all those jumbo-size packages bought at warehouse stores.

One commentator says this is the “new normal” McMansion. As household sizes have declined and more Americans are living alone, homes aren’t necessarily shrinking (though this is likely skewed by those who have money to buy new homes while the lower end of the market languishes) and people are looking for plenty of storage for all the stuff they own and are buying. So, even if these McMansions might not be as big as some past McMansions or they might be designed better and grenner, it appears consumption is still the name of the game.

Music has gotten louder not to drive sales but because artists want it that way

Posted on by

Recorded music today tends to be loud – and this is what many artists want:

The problem with Katz’s pronouncement, though, is that the market doesn’t incentivize loudness in the first place. Studies have shown that there is no correlation between volume and sales. Broadcast radio, where the competition for loudness might be most fierce, already clips the audio waveform at a certain level to avoid conflicts with advertisements and speech. Many cloud music services like Rdio and Spotify already have volume adjustment logic built in with no noticeable effect on recording trends. Low-fidelity loudness has succeeded and survived for some time without much outcry from the public, just from the small population of audiophiles and sound engineers.

The truth is that artists and engineers make their music loud because they want to. And the desire to do so usually correlates more with trends in technology than with commercial concerns. From gramophones to electric playback of records and digital technology, a series of short-lived fads have sprung up wherein musicians abuse new listening mediums to make their songs as loud as possible to the detriment of fidelity. In a paper for the journal Popular Music, Kyle Devine reviewed the long history of feuds over formats and electrical amplification for attention:

The history of sound reproduction can be understood as a history in which auditory ideals and practicalities are in constant negotiation, where the priorities of audiences and “audiophiles” drift in and out of synch…

And something similar is happening now in pop music as more songs that aren’t in the vein of screaming punk choruses make their way onto the charts. While not high fidelity, groups like Adele and Mumford & Sons are easing away from the volume ceiling with moments of quiet that are actually, technically, quiet.

We’ll see what happens in the latest installment of the loudness wars. There appears to be an interesting interplay between what is possible technologically, what artists want to try (and this varies quite a bit by genre), and what the public wants to listen to. From a production perspective in the sociology of culture, technology is the important part because that is what drives tastes. Flip the question around and we could ask whether punk rock would have emerged as it did without the technological ability to simply play loud.

I wonder if another reason is the uptick in headphone/earbud usage throughout the day which really began in force during the 1980s with the Walkman which was followed by the Discman which was followed by mp3 players/phones. While walking around and with lower quality headphones, particularly ones that don’t block out other noise or cover the whole ear, quiet songs are difficult to hear.

Just how many fake Twitter accounts are there? And why does it matter?

Posted on by

Twitter and experts disagree on how many fake Twitter accounts there are:

In securities filings, Twitter says it believes fake accounts represent fewer than 5% of its 230 million active users. Independent researchers believe the number is higher.

Italian security researchers Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli say they found 20 million fake accounts for sale on Twitter this summer. That would amount to nearly 9% of Twitter’s monthly active users. The Italian researchers also found software for sale that allows spammers to create unlimited fake accounts. The researchers decoded robot-programming software to reveal how easy it is for spammers to control the convincing fakes…

Jason Ding, a researcher at Barracuda Labs who has studied fake Twitter followers for more than a year, also thinks Twitter underestimates the prevalence of fake accounts on the network. Mr. Ding says users don’t understand how active and realistic the fakes can appear.

Read on for more details how the battle between the black market and Twitter’s use of algorithms to discover fake accounts is going. Even if the average user can’t quite figure out who is a real or fake user, the consequences are real:

The fake accounts remain a cloud over Twitter Inc. in the wake of its successful initial public offering. “Twitter is where many people get news,” says Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. “If what is trending on Twitter is being faked by robots, people need to know that. This will and should undermine trust.”

According to this article and others, it appears that fake accounts are most commonly used for promotional purposes, whether for Washington politicians or entertainment stars. How harmful are these fake accounts which might be used to boost the number of followers or retweet material?

On the other hand, Turkle suggests these fake accounts could easily mask what is really happening on Twitter. Perhaps they are pushing certain Twitter trends, which then influences other users. Or, perhaps these fake Twitter accounts could push false news reports, which could have some different consequences depending on the situation. It could be worse if a large number of users find out they were interacting with or trying to engage with fake accounts.

While I agree with Turkle that this does present an important trust issue, I wonder if it would take some high profile case before this becomes a real issue. Imagine someone is able to use a set of fake accounts to pull off a terrorist act or throw off the government.

As Chicago area home prices rise, housing affordability drops

Posted on by

Affordable housing is a persistent issue in the Chicago region – and the percent of affordable homes has dropped in the last four quarters:

Housing affordability in the Chicago area just took its biggest quarterly tumble since early 2005.

During the year’s third quarter, 63.7 percent of all new and existing homes sold in the area were affordable to families earning the area median income of $73,400, according to the most recent National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo home affordability index.

The index put the median home price in the Chicago area at $210,000.

That compares with the 70.6 percent of homes being considered affordable during the second quarter. It was the fourth consecutive quarterly slip in local affordability. This latest decline was the most dramatic since the change recorded from the first to second quarters of 2005.

While this is a shift as home prices rise, it is a reminder of the bigger issue: the Chicago area has a long-term problem with affordable housing. This is the case in the city of Chicago as well as suburban areas. This isn’t just an issue of people being able to find decent housing; it is related to businesses being able to find workers (who don’t have to travel ridiculous distances from housing they can afford), people being able to access good school districts (which are often related to higher housing values), and whether there is continued residential segregation where those of certain racial and ethnic groups can’t live in certain areas.

New York Times: “McMansions are making a comeback”

Posted on by

This is becoming a recurring headline: “McMansions are making a comeback“:

In 2010, homes starting growing again. By last year, the size of the median new single-family home hit a record high of 2,306 square feet, surpassing the peak of 2007. And new homes have been getting more expensive, too. The median price reached $279,300 in April this year, or about 6 percent higher than the pre-recession peak of $262,600, set in March 2007. The numbers are not adjusted for inflation.

Yet the economy remains weak. How can Americans keep buying bigger and more expensive homes? It turns out, of course, that not everyone can.

“It’s all about access to credit,” said Rose Quint, an economist at the National Association of Home Builders. “People who are less affluent and have less robust employment histories have been shut out of the new home market. As a result, the characteristics of new homes are being skewed to people who can obtain credit and put down large down payments, typically wealthier buyers.”

The data and conclusions are nothing new. But, the choice of story and the headline itself are interesting. What should the reader take away from such a narrative? I can’t help but think part of this is motivated by an interest in scaring people: “McMansions are back!” When the comeback stories are typically written, they are not from a positive point of view. Critics would argue McMansions are emblematic of a whole host of American problems from the 1980s through the mid-2000s: too much interest in consumption, too much debt, poorly designed goods that are more about impressing people than anything else, the continued spread of suburban sprawl, and the growing gap between the have and have-nots. There may be truth to all of this but there is a lot of negative baggage suggested by a return of McMansions.

New film “Tiny: A Story About Living Small” raises two questions

Posted on by

Hear from a couple who put together a film titled “Tiny: A Story About Living Film” that aired this past weekend:

Smith: The Tiny House is about 124 sq ft. It has a living space with an 11-foot ceiling. There is a small galley kitchen, a small bathroom with a composting toilet and camping-style gravity fed shower and a sleeping loft. The main living space has an 11-foot ceiling, which helps the space to feel bigger than it actually is, with a small closet and two built-in bookshelves. There is also a built in desk and dining table that Merete made from scraps left over from our reclaimed hardwood flooring…

The whole concept of living tiny seems to fly in the face of the traditional American Dream of a big house with a big yard — how do you guys define the American Dream?

Mueller: One thing that we’ve learned from making our film about the Tiny House movement is that the American Dream is changing. The recent housing crisis and recession have made it harder for many people to attain the financial stability required for a big house in the suburbs and a car in the driveway, that old model of the American Dream. On top of that, we’ve found that many people in our generation are beginning to question and re-evaluate that old American Dream and are opting instead for lifestyles that are more flexible and less tied-down to one particular place. As a society, we’re in a place of transition. I think that many people — whether by necessity or by choice — are learning that quality of life isn’t necessarily tied to how big our houses are or how much stuff we own, but about the experiences we have and the quality of our relationships.

I think there is some truth to the last paragraph above – but I think it still raises some interesting questions:

1. Just how many people are willing to live in tiny houses versus smaller houses? It is one thing to downsize from 3,000 square feet to 1,500 feet. It is another to go to a couple of hundred square feet. At the end of the interview, they admit only one of the couple now lives in the tiny house. Tiny houses are stark contrasts to McMansions but how many people would actually live in them long-term?

2. More people today might be more transient, which could be good for people rethinking of the size of homes they need how much stuff they can accumulate. (There still could be an uptick in digital consumption and ownership – but it all fits in your laptop or smartphone moving forward). But, this isn’t necessarily good for forming quality relationships. If everyone is moving around more frequently to take advantage of cultural opportunities and jobs plus people are connecting more online, strong ties are hard to form and civic life suffers.

The opposite of a McMansion is a cabin in the woods

Posted on by

Looking to live in the opposite of a McMansion? That might lead you to a cabin in the woods, according to an architect called a “cabinologist” who defines cabins this way:

It has to be simple. There’s no place in a real cabin for a master suite or a formal entry, a formal dining room, an attached garage. I have changed my mind a bit on size, though.

Originally, I wrote that a cabin ought to have a 1,200-square-foot size limit. I do a fair number of cabins that are two bedrooms, with two baths, and maybe a sleeping loft, with a modest kitchen.

I’ve come around a little bit on size. I think the maximum number might be closer to 1,800 square feet. After that, it becomes a lodge or a lake home. It’s not a cabin anymore.

At that scale, the homes start to get too big, they start to have a different kind of feeling. At 2,000 square feet, there’s more of a houselike feeling. In those houses, you’re less likely to smell the coffee brewing when you wake up.

There appear to be several key features to being the anti-McMansion:

1. While McMansions are seen as ostentatious, cabins should be simple.

2. Cabins should be smaller than McMansions – which probably start somewhere around 2,500 to 3,000 square feet – but the cabinologist cited above thinks cabins don’t have to be small.

3. It is not explicitly discussed in this interview but the cabin should be more immersed in nature. Whereas McMansions are often associated with suburbia and some limited exposure to nature (there may be a lawn but the house may cover much of the lot, the neighborhoods are dependent on cars), cabins are supposed to be in the woods or on a lake or in the mountains.

Even with this argument about what a “true” cabin should be, I suspect there are plenty of getaway homes that approximate McMansions today with lots of space and expensive features.

The best ROI in hipster neighborhoods

Posted on by

If you are looking to make some money in real estate, check out these hipster zip codes:

Real estate data provider RealtyTrac conjured some numbers to support what everyone already knows or suspects— that, as a developer or landlord, investing in rental housing in “hipster” nabes is a solid idea. Chicago gets three hits on RealtyTrac’s just-published top 25 list of hip zips for high return on rental properties, in descending rank: 60625 (Ravenswood, Albany Park); 60647 (Logan Square, Bucktown); and 60642 (Noble Square, River West, Goose Island). Yup, they got all the usual suspects. The above chart, interactive and expandable at the source, shows the equation for investment success in “nascent hipster markets”: a high proportion of 25-34 year-olds; a ready stock of renters; a low vacancy rate; and a climbing but still low median home price relative to average rents. Wouldn’t you know it— these are the basic conditions for any successful rental investment, almost anywhere. Why all the fuss over hipsters? Probably because the “culture” that follows this trendy group around usually matches up closely to rapid gentrification. In other words, it’s the hipster as beacon. For the frugal renter trying to stay away from big money, there’s a different use for this list. Stay tuned for follow-up RealtyTrac analysis on “top hipster zips for fix-and-flip profits.”

While hipster may appear to be a lifestyle choice, this article is a reminder of the economic conditions involving hipsters. They also have money and are interested in moving into less-than-perfect neighborhoods that have the appropriate grittiness and authenticity. Thus, a savvy investor might find properties in neighborhoods on the rise and with the influx of hipsters make some money.

It would be interesting to then look at how these investment work out over time. Getting in at the right point is important but how does that investment then work out over a long period of time? What happens when hipsters stop moving in or the neighborhood is no longer the hot one? We need to see not only this data but a ROI curve.

Architectural sociology approach to why Las Vegas residents don’t know their neighbors

Posted on by

Sociologists looking at why Las Vegas residents don’t know their neighbors explain that the design of their newer subdivisions are partly to blame:

“So that means squeezing a lot of houses into small lots, and it also means an architectural design in many cases that doesn’t facilitate the flow of people,” UNLV sociology professor Robert Futrell said.In 2010, UNLV professors conducted a survey of neighborhoods and people living throughout the Valley. They found that communities built after the construction boom of the 1990s include narrow streets, concrete walls, short driveways and few front porches. All of these things impede social interaction.

“While many developers have tried to create these master-planned communities to be high-functioning, high-interacting neighborhoods, many of them are not working that way,” Batson said.

Professors point to neighborhoods with short driveways as an example. People drive up to their homes, open the garage and drive in without talking to anyone.

The article goes on to say that residents in these communities truly do want to interact with their neighbors. But, design holds them back.

Is it completely the fault of design? The beginning of the article also notes that Las Vegas has many transient residents. If it is truly the design, we should be able to look at neighborhoods with different designs and measure higher levels of social interaction. Is this what we actually find? New Urbanists argue it is all about designing neighborhoods in a traditional way but they don’t as often bring up the data that would show the neighborhoods do what they say they should do. Other might counter that even with some better home design, people are still distracted from social interaction because of cars, air conditioning, television, the Internet, and more.

Another thought: would the residents of these new neighborhoods be willing to trade the size of their homes or the interior features of their homes for some more neighborly features?