Tag Archives: American culture

Americans across social classes spend a lot on housing and transportation

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Derek Thompson points out some interesting household expenditure data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Americans spend quite a bit on housing and transportation.

Families with radically different incomes—from lawyers and doctors down to high-school dropouts—all spend about half of it on homes and getting around, which suggests an historically tight relationship between marginal income growth and marginal spending growth on real estate and transportation. You get a raise, you shack up with roommates. You get another raise, you get nicer studio. A bigger raise and you move out to the suburbs and buy a house—commensurably increasing your spending on transportation (bigger car + gas).

This monopoly of housing/transit dominance is sticky for many reasons—America is big and has space for houses but zoning often limits development, leaving us with high relative housing prices and rents; suburban sprawl invites car ownership; infrastructure supports a car culture; our gas taxes are low and mortgage interest deductions are high; the list goes on—but it doesn’t have to be this way. Not every country spends half its income on homes and cars. They have other priorities, like the UK, where the typical family spends a walloping 20 percent of its income on the super-category of “fun stuff”: culture, entertainment, sports, alcohol, and tobacco. Or look at Japan, which spends more than twice as much as us on food consumed at home.

And where might this money go if it was not spent on these two areas?

Imagine what would happen if we didn’t spend $1 in $2 on houses and cars. It would be rocky for the real estate and auto industries who have come to rely on a steady stream of spending. But it would leave a lot of money left over other stuff—like smartphones, and dinners out with friends, and shoes whose fanciness belies our income level. This isn’t a vision of the future. It’s a description of the way a lot of young people live today, particularly educated twentysomethings who’ve moved to urban light areas (e.g.: newer subrubs within commuting distance of the city proper, like Arlington, Va.) where they can save on real estate, take public transit, and preserve enough of their lowish salaries to cobble together a connected and fairly social life outside work, if they have it. Maybe these trends are recession-era fads that will fade with the recovery. If not, it’ll be a big deal.

Owning a car and a home simply seem to be foundational features of modern America and the American Dream. The first offers independence and mobility. The second offers a private retreat from the harsh outside world and one’s own land to do as they please (though owners might choose to be part of homeowner’s associations that limit their options to enhance their property values). Being middle-class, a desired goal of many Americans, is tied to these two items. They also point to a person’s identity, representing one’s status and personal tastes.

All that said, Thompson hints at the possibilities if these foundational values (dating to roughly the 1910s and 1920s and then cemented in the prosperous post-World War II era when they became more attainable) fade and are replaced by others. It isn’t just an economic question of what happens to the auto industry or builders but rather a larger question about American social life: could be truly imagine an America without widespread praise and chasing after houses and cars?

Exploring the meanings of Chicago’s underground Pedway

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A Chicago artist and teacher has spent years exploring and analyzing Chicago’s large underground Pedway:

You want to know the best thing about the Chicago Pedway? It’s not that, despite this Polar Vortex winter, you can cover almost 40 city blocks on the Pedway without ever stepping foot outside. It’s not that the Pedway began modestly in 1951 and now stretches through the North Loop, jogs beneath Millennium Park and ventures as far east as the mouth of the Chicago River. It’s not that the Pedway could be regarded as a kind of yardstick of municipal progress, always seeming as though it might extend just a little bit longer someday. It’s not even that the Pedway’s generally mundane, charm-free hallways offer little to see — look, another “For Rent” sign! — and therefore it works perfectly as a daily treadmill for ambulatory meditation…

Where you see putty-colored corridors leading to a job in a cubicle farm, she sees dreams of the American frontier. You pass convenience stores selling gum; Tsen, 38, a native of Cambridge, Mass., passes through a long, winding metaphor for a Chicago never realized — “the by-product of projected futures,” she writes in “The Pedway of Today,” her new, perversely compelling guidebook/consideration of the Pedway’s cultural meanings.

Indeed, Tsen, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and photography/video teacher at Wilbur Wright College on the Northwest Side, has come to see the longtime walkway as her canvas. About four years ago, the Chicago artist — and former Wendella Boat tour guide, who says travel and The Path Not Taken have become the preoccupations of her art — began offering tours of the Pedway (she has since stopped). But she never charged her audiences, she said, because the tours would also quietly double as performance art, as free-associative strolling lectures in which your guide (Tsen) would dole out not dates or landmarks but thoughts on Jules Verne, revolving doors and how the Pedway is like Florence…

Eventually she stumbled across an entrance to the Pedway in the back of the Renaissance lobby, the path itself so low-key that you can see it every day without quite recognizing it. “The Pedway struck me not as the frontier that I had been looking for but a reminder of the glamour of early cities and a promise of future frontiers.” At this point in her guide Tsen asks readers to imagine that it’s 1893 and — though the Renaissance was built a century later — they are relaxing in the lobby before returning home from the World’s Fair, where they “attended Frederick Jackson Turner’s fabled lecture ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ … still pondering his words: ‘The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American History.”

Sounds like a very interesting and interpretive tour. All sorts of large infrastructure and urban projects would benefit from people who know them well enough and are enthusiastic about what they offer to share it with others.

If Chicago tried to advertise the Pedway more, would regular users complain that too many tourists are clogging the passages a la New Yorkers and the subway?

Sociologist explains how the Beatles really did change the world

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In a new book, a female sociologist argues that the Beatles “actually did change everything…It’s not just hyperbole.”

In addition to the fan voice being missing from 50 years of Beatles scholarship, Leonard said, the female voice is absent. Most of the books about The Beatles are written by men.“As a lifelong female fan and sociologist, I knew I had a fresh perspective that would be an important contribution to the conversation.”

The intense six-year Beatles immersion created a fan-performer relationship that had never existed before, she said: “Demographics, technology, marketing, the political moment and of course quality of the music, all converged to make it a historically unique event.”

From the very beginning, fans had a sense that The Beatles were talking to them directly…

Young people, she said, had the sense all along that The Beatles “were on their side, encouraging and empowering them. Looking at it in this way, fans’ strong emotional attachment, 50 years later, makes perfect sense.”

Add these generational changes (could the Beatles emerged in the same way without the Baby Boomers?) to a band that came right at the peak of mass media (by the end of the 1960s, more narratives and media outlets were emerging), was able to do everything themselves as a cohesive group (write, sing, and play) compared to single performers (like Elvis) or made bands (like the Monkees), had a personality that was both somewhat traditional (see the clear contrast The Rolling Stones made with them) as well as cheeky and somewhat rebellious, pushed the boundaries of pop music as well as recording techniques, and sold a ridiculous number of albums. Is all of this on the scale of the Cold War or landing on the moon or the ongoing struggles in the Middle East? Probably not but it helped develop and ingrain the importance of popular culture for American society…

It is interesting that most of the major Beatles books have been written by men. Come to think of it, rock music still is dominated by men whether it comes to performers, behind the scenes operators (producers, record label executives, etc.), and journalists.

Examples of old infrastructure in America

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Popular Mechanics has some examples of “the oldest working infrastructure” in American cities:

Water System: Philadelphia Water Department. The City of Brotherly Love has one of the oldest water systems in the United States. While the pipe that broke two weeks ago was built in 1895, the average age of a Philly water line is 78 years, and the wastewater lines average 100 years old, according to the city’s water department. Eighty-seven percent of the more than 3000 miles of water mains are made of cast iron, which was the preferred building material until the 1960s. Drawing water from the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers, the system supplies 1.5 million Philadelphia residents. The mains are supposed to function properly for 100 to 120 years. The Philadelphia Water Department is still investigating what caused the most recent break…

Concrete Road: Court Avenue, Bellefontaine, Ohio. Using concrete as a road surface was unheard of in the late 1800s, until George Bartholomew pioneered its use by paving Court Ave. in Bellefontaine, Ohio. Bartholomew learned about cement production in Germany and San Antonio, then moved to Bellefontaine because of the neraby deposits of limestone and clay, the two main ingredients in cement. He had to fork over a $5000 bond to convince the city council to let him pave the square around the town’s courthouse, guaranteeing that the concrete would last at least five years. To preserve the historic avenue, Bellefontaine closed the street to traffic in the late 20th century but reopened it because of the traffic and parking problems the closure caused. Court Avenue is still open to light-vehicle traffic, but a statue of Bartholomew at the end of the street keeps trucks off the concrete…

Hydroelectric Power Plant: Mechanicville Hydroelectric Plant. The Mechanicville Power Station sits perched on the Hudson River about 20 miles east of Schenectady. It was built in 1897 to provide power to Schenectady’s burgeoning industry, and today is the oldest three-phase power plant still in operation in the United States. The system uses two three-phase, 40-cycle 32,000-volt circuits, and each of these operates at 6000 kw. These circuits are each capable of handling the station’s entire output, so that service is uninterrupted if one of them goes down. Each of the seven generators runs at 40 Hz and provides 750 kw.

Old infrastructure isn’t necessarily bad if it is well maintained and still meets modern needs. Why, those Romans built aqueducts that have lasted thousands of years – can’t some of our infrastructure do the same? Actually, this brings to mind the David Macaulay book Motel of the Mysteries where a future archeologist discovers a long-lost American hotel room and comes to some interesting interpretations. What exactly will survive from our society?

Japanese homes seek to optimize space – includes ninja approach

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Here is a look at how some Japanese homes maximize their limited space:

Take for example, Tatsumi Terado and his wife Hanae who lives in a house with no interior walls, hardly any barriers and some ladders to get around. The young couple call their house the Ninja — because they need to be as nimble as one to go from one room to another…

Radical design is featuring more and more in Japan’s residential landscape and is a hit among the country’s young generation. It is as if the compact spaces the Japanese have to live in are pushing the architects, and their clients, to think out of the box and let their whimsical ideas take off…

“Houses depreciate in value over 15 years after being built,” says Tokyo-based architect Alastair Townsend, “and on average they are demolished after 25 or 30 years, so the owner of a house doesn’t need to consider what a future buyer might want.

“It gives them a lot of creative license to design a home that’s an expression of their own eccentricities or lifestyle.”

In addition to the limited amount of space, another factor appears important: houses aren’t expected to last that long. While McMansions are often criticized for a lack of quality construction and design, few people would suggest most would be demolished 25-30 years later. Think of some of the small and relatively bland houses built after World War II in places like Levittown that are still standing and have been tweaked quite a bit. Put these two combinations together, less space and less need to last long, and home designs could be more unique and customized.

It is hard to imagine circumstances under which Americans would have such short-lived homes. We have expectations that homes should last, should be places where memories can be made and sustained over decades. Builders construct edifices and neighborhoods that are meant to at least look permanent – thus the aping of older architectural traditions. Plus, there might be environmental concerns: you would have to design a house differently from the beginning for it to be disposed of not much later.

Sociological musings about American culture in “It’s A Wonderful Life”

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This talk by a sociologist about It’s A Wonderful Life serves as a reminder that the film provides a nice window into modern American life. Although it is a holiday movie, here are a few sociological ideas that still resonate today:

1. Mr. Potter is the evil banker and the primary villain. While hero George Bailey just wants to help his family and others in the community, the banker only cares about money. Could be connected to discussions of inequality, the wealth of bankers, and the role of the finance industry in helping to build communities.

2. Hero George Bailey wants to build suburban-like homes in a new subdivision in his community. The movie came out at the beginning of the post-World War II suburban boom and anticipates that many Americans simply want a home of their own.

3. The movie is set in a relatively small town where George Bailey and his family can know lots of people. Even as Americans look to private single-family homes, there is still often a small-town ideal where everyone gets along and helps each other (and often the assumption that we have lost this over time).

4. George Bailey seeks meaning in his work and life. When he doesn’t find it, he considers suicide. Bailey wants to provide for his family and friends and struggles when he cannot do this.

5. George’s life is saved by an angel. Americans tend to like angels even as more Americans say they are not religious. Angels fit with a spirituality where God generally wants people to succeed.

6. The celebratory ending of the film comes as George is surrounded by his family and friends. The emphasis on family life is not unusual in American stories but this also highlights the small town coming together. Bailey has the American Dream at the end: a home, a loving family, helpful friends, and is optimistic about his future.

Of course, this film has been analyzed plenty as a classic sitting at #20 on the AFI’s top 100 movies. Yet, it is an important moment as America started seeing itself as the prosperous superpower.

Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s problems include living in a “American-style suburban McMansion”?

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The mayor of Toronto is getting all kinds of attention – and at least one person thinks one of his problems is “American-style suburban McMansion”:

Also from the Gawkerverse: this Ken Layne piece about Rob Ford’s essential un-Canadianness, which wrongly asserts that “when he sits around his American-style suburban McMansion, he literally sits around his American-style suburban McMansion.” Rob Ford’s house is suburban, but it’s actually a pretty modest place.

Americans are known for their big houses. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this is something Canadians pick up on since most Canadians live quite close to the U.S.-Canada border. Indeed, there are plenty of stories regarding McMansions in the Chicago metropolitan region and Chicago and Toronto are often compared to each other. But, which part of the insinuation is worse:

1. That a Canadian acts like an American?

2. That owning a McMansion is a bad thing anyway (whether one lives in Canada, the United States, Australia, and other places with McMansions)?

3. That sprawl/suburbs are bad?

This also reminds me of the documentary Radiant City that involves Canadian suburbanites outside of Calgary but utilizes a number of American opponents to McMansions and seems to be most interested in tackling American-style sprawl. A side note: it is a film that includes a mock musical about mowing lawns.

Argument: The Myth of ‘I’m Bad at Math’

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Two professors argue being good at math is about hard work, not about genetics:

We hear it all the time. And we’ve had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Worse, you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children—the myth of inborn genetic math ability…

Again and again, we have seen the following pattern repeat itself:

  1. Different kids with different levels of preparation come into a math class. Some of these kids have parents who have drilled them on math from a young age, while others never had that kind of parental input.
  2. On the first few tests, the well-prepared kids get perfect scores, while the unprepared kids get only what they could figure out by winging it—maybe 80 or 85%, a solid B.
  3. The unprepared kids, not realizing that the top scorers were well-prepared, assume that genetic ability was what determined the performance differences. Deciding that they “just aren’t math people,” they don’t try hard in future classes, and fall further behind.
  4. The well-prepared kids, not realizing that the B students were simply unprepared, assume that they are “math people,” and work hard in the future, cementing their advantage.

Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Interesting argument: if you believe you can’t do well at a subject, you probably won’t. The authors then go on to hint at broader social beliefs: Americans tend to believe in talent, other countries tend to emphasize the value of hard work.

This lines up with what I was recently reading about athletes in The Sports Gene. The author reviews a lot of research that suggests training and genetics both matter. But, genetics may not matter in the way people typically think they do – more often, it matters less that people are “naturally gifted” and more that some learn quick than others. So, the 10,000 hours to become an expert, an idea popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, is the average time it takes one to become an expert. However, some people can do it much more quickly, some much more slowly due to their different rates of learning.

American religious groups don’t pay $72 billion a year in taxes but religion saves America $2.6 trillion a year?

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A study last year claimed governments lose $71 billion a year because of the tax exemptions of religious institutions but a new book by sociologist Rodney Stark suggests religion saves America $2.6 trillion a year:

The biggest by far has to do with the criminal justice system. If all Americans committed crimes at the same level as those who do not attend religious services, the costs of the criminal justice system would about double to, perhaps, $2 trillion annually. Second is health costs. The more often people attend religious services, the healthier they are. However, the net savings involved is reduced somewhat by the fact that religious Americans live, on average, seven years longer than those who never attend religious services.

So then religion in America is worth the money? The math on this would be mighty interesting. But, hopefully this is more information on this in the book.

It does strike me that this is a strange way to talk about religion or any social good: does it really come down to money? This strikes me as a very American conversation where we care about the value of things and bang for our buck.