Odd and interesting sightings at ASA

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1. I just caught the beginning of the Sunday night sociology jam session and I think it is a great idea. The president of the ASA started it out on the fiddle and it is nice to see some other creative outlets at the conference beyond papers and talks.

2. At a reception on Sunday night, I had a chance to sample some local cuisine: fried buffalo oysters. I believe they often go by another name: Rocky Mountain oyster. Not bad taste but a little squishy.

3. I really liked the meeting spaces and site overall. Both the Hyatt and Convention Center were spacious but not too large (as convention centers can sometimes be). And it was a plus to not have to compete with all of the slot machines and gambling like in Las Vegas last August.

4. Denver has some cool features. While there are some tall buildings, there is a lot of lower density space near these buildings including the Mall, a thriving pedestrian only (plus free public buses from one end of the street to the other) thoroughfare, and LoDo. This gave the area an intimate feel and there were plenty of people on the street both Saturday and Sunday nights. The weather is also great and consistently being able to see the mountains is a bonus.

5. One complaint: no rail service from the newer (and quite nice) airport to downtown. Riding the buses were not bad but a dedicated rail system, which one local publication said was to be completed in 2016, would be an upgrade. I wonder if ASA should only go to big cities that have such mass transit connecting the airport to the meeting location.

6. The airport is modern and spacious. It puts older airports, like Midway, to shame.

7. I noticed a board on the first floor of the Convention Center that added up the attendees by categories (faculty, grad students, etc.). If my quick math was correct, the total attendance was about 4,800. Is this down from previous years and if so, why? Is Denver not the same kind of attraction as New York (the site of next year’s meetings) or San Francisco? Are travel budgets tighter this year?

8. I like public art so I enjoyed seeing the bear looking into the Convention Center:

What’s wrong with including a little whimsy into public settings?

83 year old Hamptons resident sues for demolition of McMansions in her neighborhood

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The McMansion battles continue, this time in the Hamptons as an 83 year old resident takes on the newer big houses in her neighborhood:

Evelyn Konrad claims in a new federal lawsuit that her high-powered neighbors — many of them finance honchos — have turned her subdivision into an overcrowded “Queens by the sea” because of an improperly adopted zoning code.

The suit doesn’t seek money — it seeks demolition.

Undeterred by her wealthy opponents, the brassy Stanford law graduate once skewered the supersized digs as “multimillion-dollar penis enlargements,” in a letter to a local newspaper…

In addition to Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley, the suit names a host of cash-flush neighbors, including former Merrill Lynch honcho Donald Quintin and Manhattan attorney Denis Guerin.

Not your typical octogenarian, the yoga-practicing, bikini-wearing former NBC business reporter said that her modest, 2,200-square-foot colonial, purchased in 1984, has been slowly encircled by ballooning buildings ever since a new zoning code was adopted in 2005…

Konrad has demanded a jury trial and will argue the case herself, thank you very much.

I wonder what a jury would do…

It sounds like the zoning change from 2005 that is really at issue. I have no idea how often zoning regulations are overturned in court but I suspect they are infrequently challenged and even more rarely overturned.

Discussing height limits of skyscrapers

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Is there a limit to the height of buildings?

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a group interested in and focused on the phenomenon of skyscrapers, recently asked a group of leading skyscraper architects and designers about some of the limitations of tall buildings. They wondered, “What do you think is the single biggest limiting factor that would prevent humanity creating a mile-high tower or higher?” The responses are compiled in this video, and tend to focus on the pragmatic technicalities of dealing with funding and the real estate market or the lack of natural light in wide-based buildings.

“The predominant problem is in the elevator and transportation system,” says Adrian Smith, the architect behind the current tallest building in the world and the one that will soon outrank it, the kilometer-tall Kingdom Tower in Jeddah…

One idea for a new system would be buildings with hollowed bases. Think of the Eiffel Tower, says Tim Johnson. He’s chairman at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and a partner at the architecture firm NBBJ, and he says any really, really tall building would have to be like a supersized version of the Parisian icon, otherwise the lower floors required to support the gradually narrowing structure would be way too big to even fill up.

For a Middle East-based client he’s not allowed to identify, Johnson worked on a project back in the late 2000s designing a building that would have been a mile-and-a-half tall, with 500 stories. Somewhat of a theoretical practice, the design team identified between 8 and 10 inventions that would have had to take place to build a building that tall. Not innovations, Johnson says, but inventions, as in completely new technologies and materials. “One of the client’s requirements was to push human ingenuity,” he says. Consider them pushed.

So perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright wasn’t so crazy with his idea of a mile high building.

I would raise other questions:

1. Who has the funds/resources they want to devote to building such an edifice? Presumably someone might want to make a name for themselves.

2. Would anyone want to work or live at such a height? If not, what do you do with the building besides show off your accomplishment and perhaps hide television and other technological equipment?

3. Would it be “worth it” in the long run?

Stark demographic figures for Japan

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A post at New Geography lays out several population figures for Japan:

In 2007, Japan’s population reached a tipping point. It was the first year in its history (excluding 1945) where the number of deaths exceeded the number of births. In 2007 there were 2,000 more deaths than births. In 2011 that figure rose to approximately 204,000, and it’s a figure that is accelerating. Indeed, at 23.1%, Japan has the highest proportion of over-65s in the world, and at 13.2%, the world’s lowest proportion of under 14s. Japan’s population peaked at 127.7 million in 2007, and is forecast to shrink to a mere 47 million by 2100.

While the topic of declining fertility rates in many industrialized nations has been discussed for a while now, I’m still not sure we are prepared to deal with the idea of declining populations. Particularly in the United States, we associate population increases with progress. An example: cities that lose population are seen as doing something wrong while cities that are growing are successes. A similar mindset exists with religious congregations. Japan is clearly an advanced nation yet what happens if it loses more than half of its population in the period of a century? And what happens if this is done by choice? Throughout human history, population loss is typically tied to factors like disease, ecological conditions, and war, not by a populace who isn’t interested in having more children.

A thought: what if we end up in a Children of Men type world that is brought about because humans simply don’t want to have children anymore?

Saudi Arabia’s women-only city within a city

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Saudi Arabia is doing something unusual by creating women-only portions of big cities.

How will this all-female city work?
The inaugural one in Hofuf is essentially a female-only industrial zone that’s expected to employ about 5,000 Saudi women in the textile, pharmaceutical, and food-processing industries. Women will run the companies and factories. “I’m sure that women can demonstrate their efficiency in many aspects and clarify the industries that best suit their interests, nature, and ability,” says Saleh al-Rasheed, deputy director general of the Saudi Industrial Property Authority (Modon), which is in charge of the project. The women will live in adjacent neighborhoods.

Who came up with the idea?
A group of Saudi businesswomen, according to the business newspaper Al Eqtisadiah. But Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy embraced the concept as a way to lower female unemployment while staying “consistent with the privacy of women according to Islamic guidelines and regulations,” Modon said in a statement. The government had little choice, says Sarah Goodyear at The Atlantic. “Restrictions on women’s lives and productivity there are so extreme — Saudi women need a male guardian’s permission to travel, seek employment, or marry — that the country is in effect letting a potentially huge sector of the productive economy sit idle.” About 60 percent of college graduates in the country are women, and 78 percent of them are unemployed, according to recent surveys; only 15 percent of the Saudi workforce is female…

Will this city work as intended?
Some women who work in these new cities “will no doubt distinguish themselves, but they will still be laboring in segregation,” says The Atlantic‘s Goodyear. If the goal is unleashing the female workforce, “a segregated city will never be as productive or creative as one where the free exchange of ideas among diverse converging people is allowed.” Actually, I think “Hofuf will be exceedingly productive,” says Zoe Williams at Britain’s The Guardian. For one thing, “as an industrial town with no men in it, it will presumably contain none of those mini-impediments to productivity known as ‘children.'” In a few years, these Saudi women will be South Korea to their male counterparts’ North. These cities will either fail or they’ll succeed in further segregating women from the public sphere, says Homa Khaleeli at The Guardian. Maybe women should “flock to them, close the doors, and refuse to leave until the kingdom’s rulers understand just what it is like to live without women.”

Is this a step forward for women?
That’s a tough question, says The Guardian‘s Williams. It’s not really “a move forward in women’s liberation, not unless you think apartheid was a good system for black people because they got their own swimming pools,” but at the same time, we can’t know yet that “Ladytown won’t boost women in unintended ways.” As I suspect the Saudis will soon learn, “when you educate people, refuse to let them work, and then suddenly unleash them, en masse, into economic productivity,” that’s a recipe for change. Look, in this kingdom, this is the only opportunity for women “to have an income, be financially independent,” at least for now, Saudi radio host Samar Fatany tells ABC News. Putting women to work feels inevitable, even in Saudi Arabia, says Doug Barry at Jezebel. And “everyone should have the right to fall into the daily grind, because only then can all people truly appreciate how awesome it will be when robots do all our work for us.”

“Ladytown” sounds like it could be an odd title for a film…

It would be interesting to hear how these new developments will look and be experienced differently. In other words, does a city planned for women look and feel different than a city designed for men or both genders? For example, do women desire more parks?

The descriptions of operations in Hofuf make it sound like many of the jobs will be low-trust, relatively low-wage jobs in fields like textiles and food processing. Are there plans for more white collar positions or will these remain concentrated in the “male sections” of the city?

“What is it like to live in a rich McMansion suburban neighbourhood?”

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A post on the site Quora asks this question: “What is it like to live in a rich McMansion suburban neighbourhood?”

Here is what critics might suggest:

1. The homeowners care much more about how their home looks or what it signifies about them rather than the quality of the home.

2. People have little social interaction as their well-appointed McMansions provide plenty of space for their entertainment and private needs.

3. Because the neighborhood is auto-dependent (this is true of many suburban neighborhoods, not just ones with McMansions), people rarely walk or could even walk anywhere interesting.

4. Residents have little interest in residential diversity as the relatively higher prices of McMansions price out a lot of potential residents.

5. Homeowners don’t care about environment as these homes waste energy, are unnecessary large, and are tied to sprawl.

Indeed, I wonder if there is anyone extolling the virtues of McMansion neighborhoods in books, movies, music, television, and art as I have discussed a number of examples of negative portrayals throughout the cultural sphere. I do doubt all children and adults in McMansion suburban neighborhoods are maladjusted sociopaths…

Chicago to grant 900 more camping permits on Northerly Island per year

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Yesterday, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel discussed further plans the city has for Northerly Island which includes more opportunities for camping:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday endorsed predecessor Richard Daley’s infamous late night bulldozing of the runway at Meigs Field on the grounds the destruction of the airport opened Northerly Island to use by many more Chicagoans…

With Chicago Park District Superintendent Michael Kelly and a representative of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on hand Thursday, Emanuel talked at the Field Museum about the next steps in the evolution.

In the short term, camping permits will be increased by 900 per year starting next year, which the mayor said will give more children in some of Chicago’s hard-scrabble neighborhoods a chance to experience nature.

A pond and a savanna area will also be developed on the 91-acre peninsula.

Camping on this location sounds like a very interesting experience: Lake Michigan on one side, skyline of Chicago in the other direction.

I know some people may still be upset by Daley’s midnight destruction of Meigs Field but this is a reminder of how Chicago continues to develop its lakefront as a park while other cities lag far behind in developing land along their waterways.

Innovation: four McMansions built on top of a Chinese mall

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Here is one possible solution to running out of open land: build houses on top of other structures.

The Chinese city of Zhuzhou, the second largest in the province of Hunan, is being pressed under the tremendous pressure of growth. Home to many a manufactory and textile mill, residents are seeking new ways to live close to work while preserving the spaciousness of the countryside. Thus, these wonderful photos of McMansion-style housing atop a five-story shopping center in the central district of Zhuzhou.

The four houses are perched above the city, invisible to street-level action. They do not cast a shadow on the ground, and seem to exist solely in the rarefied world of smoggy skies, with scenic views into the apartments surrounding their airy enclave. Though the landscaping around the houses leaves something to be desired, the overall approach is one we’d like to see replicated on blank and bare urban roofscapes everywhere. Now that’s mixed-use development.

Think of the views!

Too bad we don’t have interviews with those who bought or live in these homes.

I know this looks unappealing and I’m sure there are some structural issues (like how do these homeowners get off the building) but on the other hand, why not? If space is at a premium, this is a solution…perhaps not the best but a solution for those who have to have such a home.

“First large scale [lost letter] study” results from London

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The results of a lost letter study in London provide some interesting results:

Neighbourhood income deprivation has a strong negative effect on altruistic behaviour when measured by a ‘lost letter’ experiment, according to new UCL research published August 15 in PLoS One. Researchers from UCL Anthropology used the lost letter technique to measure altruism across 20 London neighbourhoods by dropping 300 letters on the pavement and recording whether they arrived at their destination. The stamped letters were addressed by hand to a study author’s home address with a gender neutral name, and were dropped face-up and during rain free weekdays.

The results show a strong negative effect of neighbourhood income deprivation on altruistic behaviour, with an average of 87% of letters dropped in the wealthier neighbourhoods being returned compared to only an average 37% return rate in poorer neighbourhoods.

Co-author Jo Holland said: “This is the first large scale study investigating cooperation in an urban environment using the lost letter technique. This technique, first used in the 1960s by the American social psychologist Stanley Milgram, remains one of the best ways of measuring truly altruistic behaviour, as returning the letter doesn’t benefit that person and actually incurs the small hassle of taking the letter to a post box…

As well as measuring the number of letters returned, the researchers also looked at how other neighbourhood characteristics may help to explain the variation in altruistic behaviour — including ethnic composition and population density — but did not find them to be good predictors of lost letter return.

This is a good example of a natural experiment.

I wonder if there is any equivalent to this in the online realm. Perhaps an email that is mistakenly sent to the wrong address that would require a user to then take a small amount of time to forward the email to original recipient?

Sociological study: NYT obituaries have more celebrity deaths over the decades

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Here is a unique place to look for American’s obsession with celebrities: examine the “Notable Deaths” section of the New York Times since 1900.

Sociology researchers at the University of South Carolina analyzed obituaries in the New York Times from the same 20 randomly selected days in 1900, 1925, 1950, 1975 and 2000. From this sample, they ranked how much attention was given to the deaths of people in certain occupations in each year. They found that obituaries of entertainers and athletes marched steadily to the top in rank — from seventh in 1900, to fifth in 1925, to third in 1950 and first in 1975 and 2000; in 2000, celeb athletes and entertainers accounted for 28 percent of obituaries in the newspaper, the researchers said.

Meanwhile, the researchers said the number of obituaries for public figures in manufacturing and business halved over the century. Similarly, religious obituaries fell from fourth place in mid-century to last in rank, and the researchers said they did not find a single notable death article for a religious figure in their sample for the year 2000.

“Most striking are the simultaneous increases in celebrity obituaries and declines in religious obituaries,” lead researcher Patrick Nolan said in a statement from the University of South Carolina. “They document the increasing secularization and hedonism of American culture at a time when personal income was rising and public concern was shifting away from the basic issues of survival,” added Nolan, who details the research in the journal Sociation Today.

So have celebrities replaced some of religion?

It would also be interesting to see whether the New York Times did this consciously and if so, how exactly this conversation went. Did readers actually suggest they wanted to see more celebrity news in the deaths section?