Throwing the book at them

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What’s the advantage for libraries seeking to move to e-book formats?  Not much, according to this article from Library Journal:

HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires….Josh Marwell, President, Sales for HarperCollins, told LJ that the 26 circulation limit was arrived at after considering a number of factors, including the average lifespan of a print book, and wear and tear on circulating copies.

This is utterly ridiculous.  One of the major advantages of e-books is that they don’t wear out.  Whatever happened to products that become “new and improved” with innovation rather than “same because crippled”?

Oh, that’s right — copyrights create a legal monopoly that allow for monopolistic behavior of the sort we regularly see from utility companies and the DMV.  Now I remember.

Even so, HarperCollins’ move here seems incredibly short-sighted.  They may well be killing off a lucrative new market (e-books for libraries) before it has a chance to develop fully.  After all, most people still don’t have e-book readers and find it inconvenient to read books from a computer screen.  As for libraries,

further license restrictions seem to come at a particularly bad time, given strained budgets nationwide. It may also disproportionately affect libraries that set shorter loan periods for ebook circulation.

Between the growing number of contemporary authors who distribute their books with a Creative Commons license and the growing repository of easily accessible public domain works in electronic text (“book”) and spoken (“audiobook”) form, there may be a great swath of written culture from the 20th century that becomes effectively inaccessible.

Update 2/28/2011: TechDirt has now picked up this story.

St. Louis also lost population (8%) in the 2000s and mayor says it is “absolutely bad news”

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Last week, 2010 Census figures about Chicago were released and showed a population decline of 200,000. Population figures regarding St. Louis were just released and city leaders are surprised at the 8% population loss over the 2000s:

Figures from the 2010 census were a bitter disappointment, as the city’s population dipped to 319,294.

That’s down more than 29,000 – a staggering 8 percent – from 2000.

For St. Louis leaders, the news was doubly disappointing because they were expecting to see an increase.

“It is absolutely bad news,” Mayor Francis Slay said. “We thought after more than 50 years of population decline that the city had finally changed direction. Obviously, that’s not the case.”…

St. Louis was the nation’s eighth-largest city with a population of 856,795 in 1950. Now, for a couple of decades, it hasn’t even been Missouri’s largest city.

Kansas City’s population grew to 460,000 in the latest census, widening the gap over St. Louis, though the St. Louis metro area remains significantly larger.

Since the mid-20th century, the exodus of St. Louis residents to the suburbs has been startling. And people keep moving farther away from the urban core. St. Louis County lost population in 2010 for the first time, down 1.7 percent to 998,954 in 2010, as residents relocate to communities like St. Charles, O’Fallon, Wentzville and Troy.

Since 1950, St. Louis has steadily lost population. A few thoughts about these figures:

1. On one hand, it seems odd that the mayor would be caught so off-guard by these figures. Couldn’t the city have predicted or at least seen some hints of it through other measures (like vacancies)? But this is more complicated:

A census estimate on July 1, 2009, forecasted that the city’s population of 348,189 in 2000 had grown to 356,587.

Either the estimate was wrong or there has been a substantial recent exodus.

The 2010 census is based on the population in April 2010.

So what happened between this 2009 Census estimate and the 2010 figures?

2. There are two things at stake with these figures: the loss of state and federal dollars (often tied to population) and a blow to civic pride. As the mayor suggested, the city had thought they had turned a corner. Additionally, there appears to be some comparisons to Kansas City, the other major city in Missouri.

2a. But on the other hand, the trends happening in the St. Louis area are happening in many large cities: people are moving to the suburbs, further and further from the center of the metropolitan region. Even St. Louis County (suburban but three times larger than St. Louis) lost population, 1.7%, for the first time.

3. While it is notable that the population in St. Louis dropped by about 29,000 (8%), in the last sixty years, this is the smallest percentage drop since a population increase in 1950. From 1960 onward, here are the percentage decreases: -12.5% in 1960, -17% in 1970, -27.2% in 1980, -12.4% in 1990, -12.2% in 2000, and -8.3% in 2010. So perhaps the population in St. Louis is slowly stabilizing.

Richard Florida argues cities increase levels of inequality

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Richard Florida, dubber of the Creative Class, argues that data shows that cities exacerbate levels of inequality:

“Something fundamental has changed in our economy, and it’s happening at the metropolitan level,” explains Baum-Snow. “If we want to understand what’s causing the wage gap, we now know we need to look at the unique economies of our larger cities,” adds Pavan.

Both the U.S. and the world have grown increasingly spiky, with our socio-economic divide increasingly overlaid with a growing economic geography of class.  Big cities like New York and LA have attracted wealthy people not just from America but from around the world.  This trend reflects the growing advantages of geographic clustering or agglomeration.  The larger and more populous a city or region, the more likely it is to have the human capital and economic ecosystems required to support the most advanced — and hence the highest-paying — technologies and industries.  Bigger cities attract more innovators, more entrepreneurs, and more highly skilled and ambitious people in general, and provide a fluid environment where these individuals can combine and recombine their skills. Big cities also generate powerful economies of scale and scope, resulting in higher rates of innovation, new firm formation, and productivity.  They attract better-educated, better-trained, more-experienced workers, driving up wages.

At other side of the spectrum, manufacturing, which once clustered in and around large cities and metros, has shifted to less expensive suburban, exurban, and off-shore locations. And large cities have become home to a large and growing contingent of lower-skill, lower pay service jobs — from childcare and food preparation to retail sales and personal services.  Taken together these factors have in effect divided or bifurcated the labor market in big cities into highly paid “creators” and much lower-paid “servers.”

On the other side, Florida also shows a (very modest) correlation that city size is related to higher wages. But overall, Florida argues that cities draw both the uber-wealthy and those who “serve” the city.

Florida doesn’t present much data here so we would need more analysis in order to figure out what is going on. Does this argument present a  counterpoint to these two articles about the future of cities and suburbs in Foreign Policy last fall? It is hard to tell – Florida also says that cities are centers of innovation and entrepreneurship. And even if cities do have extreme levels of inequality, do they benefit larger society enough to offset the inequality within their borders?

(Interestingly, both Florida’s data and the study he cites use metropolitan areas to mean cities. This makes a lot of sense: central cities and suburbs should be viewed more often as single, interdependent units. Would the inequality be even more pronounced if the analysis was limited to central city borders?)

Nostalgia for the early 1990s: McMansions, SUVs, and more

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The early 1990s are not that long ago but this comparison of the 2011 Ford Explorer and the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee is wistful for this earlier era:

The early 1990s are starting to seem like a long time ago. McMansions were barely a twinkle in the Toll brothers’ eyes. Apple stock was less than fifteen dollars a share. The Iraq war was going great. A tea party was something for little girls. And Justin Bieber hadn’t even been born.

In the U.S. car market, perhaps the biggest difference between then and now is that the SUV, as an automotive force, was in its infancy. Sure, Wranglers, Blazers, Broncos, Scouts, and the like had been bouncing along on the fringe of the American automotive scene for a while, but their numbers were small.

I am interested in this mention of McMansions, which has several connotations in these opening paragraphs:

1. It is not unusual to lump the McMansion in with other consumer objects. Perhaps its most common pairing is with the SUV, often considered an oversized and ostentatious vehicle.

2. The Toll Brothers, a large American home builder, are often tied to McMansions. This builder preferred to call their larger homes “estate homes” but critics ended up dubbing them McMansions. Read a quick summary of Toll Brothers history here. The term McMansions really started being used in earnest in the late 1990s.

3. There seems to be a growing idea that the McMansion might have been a blip in American history. This review pegs the McMansion as beginning in the 1990s and other recent commentators (see here and here) have suggested McMansions are done and will not return. The jury is still out on this one: the size of the average American home grew steadily from the 1950s until just a few years ago.

(4. An unrelated issue: can we already have nostalgia for a time just 20 years ago? Think of this in terms of “oldies” on the radio: it’s hard to even find 60’s music on the radio and now the 80’s and 90’s are considered old. How far can we compress the past in order to develop a prepackaged nostalgia?)

Musical innovation

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As I noted in passing a few days ago when discussing the Brittney Spears’ dispute with the Bellamy Brothers, pop songs are pretty much all alike.

The same goes for music labels’ business models.  Commenting on a recent Financial Times article, paidContent suggests that “new” music services reportedly in development by Apple and Google — allowing individuals to store music on a “hard drive in the sky” — seem to be less “innovation” than “more of the same”:

The idea sticks closely to today’s à la carte, per-track model of buying individual tracks, which itself replicates yesteryear’s model in which music was packaged up in to individual plastic units of consumer product.Growth in this method of buying digital music has basically peaked in the U.S.. Will a hard drive in the sky give it a lift? Unlikely. Some now think that illegal music consumption is so tempting that the industry should effectively mimic this “music like water” approach legally.

Of course, Rhapsody has an all-you-can-eat model, has been available in the U.S. for years, and is a bit player.  Maybe it’s time to start coming up with some actually new ideas…

In review of Triumph of the City, summary of how city dwellers view the suburbs

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As he reviews the new book Triumph of the City, a reviewer summarizes how city dwellers view the suburbs:

But look past the rhetorical flourishes, and you see an ambivalent verdict on post-1960s urban policy: It is often the actors most philosophically “urbanist” in intent that are the most deleteriously anti-city in effect. Mr. Glaeser brings us, in striking detail, a gated subdivision in the Houston outskirts called “The Woodlands.” The city dweller’s inborn cultural revulsion to the place is the stuff of any number of Sundance dramas: the sterility of the McMansions, the moral vacuity of the micropolitics, the ecological nihilism of the SUVs. But the appeal of such prefab townlets—one million people have moved to the Houston area since 2000—has little to do with culture; the Sun Belt beckons because urban California and the Northeast have radically distorted the market for any city’s most crucial commodity: property.

These complaints about suburbia do seem to be commonly found in Sundance-type dramas, books, and music. This is practically its own genre: the “average person” (often middle to upper class whites) finds emptiness in sparkling (but shallow) suburbia yet comes alive when encountering something different than white, crass, depressing suburbia. But as the reviewer notes, there are reasons that people move to places like Houston.

(A condensed version of this book’s argument, particularly about how skyscrapers will help the city thrive,  can be found here.)

A call for copyright reform

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Kudos to David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner, who yesterday called for copyright reform:

[P]art of the problem is that current copyright law is ambiguous about what constitutes “fair use.” Congress could put an end to this gaming of the legal system by rectifying this. It’s something that House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Tex., should seriously consider.

In justifying his call to action, David cites activities by Righthaven, highlighting the chilling effect copyright trolls have even on established media players like the Examiner:

Throughout the Reid-Angle Senate race in Nevada, we were scared to death to quote or link to anything at the Las Vegas Review Journal (dare I even post something with their name in it?) because they have farmed out copyright infringement to a serial lawsuit abuser.

When a conservative-leaning newspaper with a subscription to the Associated Press is afraid “to quote or link” to another U.S. newspaper for fear of a copyright infringement lawsuit, you know that the current system isn’t working.

Update: Bloggers are pretty scared of Righthaven too.  That’s why the Media Bloggers Association (official website) has filed an amicus brief on behalf of a hapless Righthaven defendant.  (Thanks to TechDirt for the doc and further analysis.)

The ubiquity of the standing ovation

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My wife and I recently had the chance to see Les Misérables in Chicago. At the end of the show, the crowd gave a standing ovation. It seems that this is no longer unusual: whether it is a high school play, an orchestra concert, or a big-time musical, the crowd gives a standing ovation. Is this a new social norm?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, here is the definition of a standing ovation: “a rousing ovation conferred by an audience standing as a mark of enthusiastic approval, esp. after a speech.” But I have always thought that a standing ovation is not just given when the crowd enthusiastically approves; rather, it is reserved for special occasions, when the performance or speaker has done a tremendous job. This more restrictive definition is supported by Wikipedia: “A standing ovation is a form of applause where members of a seated audience stand up while applauding. This is done on special occasions by an audience to show their approval and is done after extraordinary performances of particularly high acclaim…Standing ovations are considered to be a special honor.” If this is the social norm, how can every performance be worthy of a standing ovation?

So why might crowds be more willing to give more frequent standing ovations? A few thoughts:

1. It has lost its status as something done for a special or noteworthy performance. It is now perfunctory. Crowds think they are supposed to give a standing ovation no matter what.

2. A more nuanced explanation: in the case of something like Les Misérables, the average attendee does not know whether the actors have given a good performance or not. This is a world-renowned musical, the attendees have paid a lot of money to attend, and so it must have been good and deserving of a standing ovation. The key here is that the average person can’t easily distinguish the quality of many performances and is left to judge the performance by other factors, such as its status. Since the theater or going to the orchestra is a rare event for many and it is accompanied by ideas about high culture and fancier dress, the standing ovation may just seem like the right thing to do.

(This is supported by an incident after the musical: a teenage couple was walking out and one said, “Epinone was just terrible.” The other said, “Yeah, her singing was bad.” A few of us who overheard this just smiled and looked at each other. How were we to know whether this was true or not? Presumably, one would have had to see this musical multiple times or listened to the music many times before a judgment could be made.)

If the standing ovation is now normal, what can a crowd do to show extreme enthusiasm or to mark an excellent performance? A few options: a prolonged applause or loud whistling or yelling along with the clapping.

Graphic comparing US to other developed nations on nine measures

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This particular graphic provides a look at how the United States stacks up against other developed nations on nine key measures, such as a Gini index, Gallup’s global wellbeing index, and life expectancy at birth.

As a graphic, this is both interesting and confusing. It is interesting in that one can take a quick glance at all of these measures at once and the color shading helps mark the higher and lower values. This is the goal of graphics or charts: condense a lot of information into an engaging format. However, there are a few problems: there is a lot of information to look at, it is unclear why the countries are listed in the order they are, and it takes some work to compare the countries marked with the different colors because they may be at the top or bottom of the list.

(By the way, the United States doesn’t compare well to some of the other countries on this list. Are there other overall measures in which the United States would compare more favorably?)

Suburban mayors look for Mayor Emanuel’s help

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There is often a tension between a big city and suburbs: these communities have different goals and access to resources. With a new mayor in Chicago, suburban leaders say they are looking to work with Rahm Emanuel:

But suburban leaders said Wednesday that they expect Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel to recognize that the city he will soon lead and the surrounding communities are better off working together instead of fighting each other.

“I think, with his extensive government experience, he understands that we’re all in this together,” said Elmwood Park Village President Peter Silvestri, whose town is in Illinois’ 5th Congressional District, a seat once held by Emanuel.

Silvestri was among several leaders who also said they were hopeful that Emanuel, who has a reputation as a bare-knuckled political operative, will follow Mayor Richard Daley’s collaborative lead…

Among them is Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson, who fought bitterly with Daley over the expansion of O’Hare. He said he hoped Emanuel “will respect the concerns of his neighbor and work regionally.”

Emanuel supports  a Chicago casino, an idea that hasn’t gone over well in Des Plaines, which will soon open a casino of its own…

Naperville Mayor George Pradel was another suburban leader who said he hoped Emanuel would maintain a strong relationship with his suburban counterparts.

The Chicago mayor has influence on several issues that concern Naperville, including ongoing plans to build a western bypass around O’Hare and rates for Lake Michigan water, Pradel said. Naperville is the largest suburban user of water from the lake.

As a congressman, Emanuel supported an airport in south suburban Peotone and he has voiced support for extending the CTA’s Red Line to 130th Street — two important issues in the south suburbs.

Perhaps these suburban leaders do want to work with Emanuel but to me, it sounds like they are more interested in getting Emanuel’s support for their interests and projects. Perhaps Emanuel could ask these suburban leaders: and if I help you, how does your suburb plan to help the City of Chicago or the larger Chicago region?

This may be a cynical interpretation but this is the long-running history of suburban communities: many are not interested in regional or metropolitan issues except when they might threaten the quality of life in their immediate community. Going back to the 1890s and 1900s, suburbs stopped wanting to be annexed into the big city as they could provide their own basic services (water, sewers, electricity, etc.) and didn’t want to associate with cities which were seen as dirty and crime-ridden. Today, suburbs thrive on this idea of local rule: local taxes should go into local services, such as public school districts and basic local services such as police and fire. Local or regional projects are often judged on how particular suburban communities will benefit, particularly as it pertains to their tax base and property values.

In the long run, how many of these suburban communities are willing to help Mayor Emanuel?