Tag Archives: American Dream

Why Asian immigrants moved to the American suburbs

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There has been a flurry of research in the last few decades on the movement of Asian immigrants to the American suburbs, notably looking at the suburbs of Los Angeles and working with the concepts of “ethnoburbs.” Here is a fresh take on the topic from a researcher looking at what has happened in some of these Los Angeles suburbs:

The homeowners I spoke to who settled in the now-Asian ethnoburbs of Diamond Bar, Hacienda Heights, Rowland Heights, or Walnut, said that they were drawn to the country lifestyle. As one white interviewee says, “our house was backed into the wilderness… Diamond Bar looked like a ranch… a nice place to live, to raise children, (and) a clean healthy environment.” Asian American interviewees – many of whom originate from dense metropolitan areas in East and Southeast Asia, and settled in the east Valley in the mid-1980s and beyond – also sought the east Valley’s country lifestyle since the term implied wholesomeness, the setting suggested order and harmony, and the image accompanied with a single-family home connoted the actualization of the American Dream.

While scholars and researchers rightfully problematize political economies, migration patterns, and social dynamics between different racial and class groups in the contemporary ethnoburb, oftentimes post-1965 Asian immigrants moved to these neighborhoods for tangible and banal reasons. Interviewees provided various mundane and frank motives as to why the east Valley sold them twenty or thirty years ago: inexpensive new housing, reputable school districts, easy access to work, distance from urban crime and racial “others,” and by the late 1980s and 1990s, conveniences to ethnic commodities. Though classism, neatly planned neighborhoods, and country living were pivotal aspects in residents’ decisions to settle, “everyday” matters and concerns also informed how a community grew, struggled, and changed. The Asianization of the greater San Gabriel Valley is not slowing down anytime soon as Merlin Chowkwanyun and Jordan Segall demonstrate.

The contemporary emergence of California’s majority-Asian suburb, then, is not solely about Pacific Rim capital, immigrant family reunification, or Asian Americans’ “Model Minority” status allowing them to enter these formerly elite white neighborhoods. It is deeply linked to how immigrants and non-immigrants imagine, absorb, construct, and reinforce popular discourse and imagery of the American Dream, rosy suburbia, and the U.S. West. The salience of these themes influences how individuals or groups envision and build community throughout the U.S. and across generations.

It sounds like the argument here is about adding the lure of suburban culture to the structural arguments. Like others who moved to the suburbs, the cultural values and ideals attached to the American suburbs proved attractive to Asian immigrants even as some of the larger structural forces, like class, made it more possible.

A comparative element might be helpful here: were Asian immigrants more drawn to the American suburbs than immigrants from other places? If so, why?

Argument: McMansions can’t truly be green

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I’ve blogged before about how some have argued green McMansions are possible. Here is a counterargument from Los Angeles:

After all, McMansions require huge amounts of energy to assemble their building materials and move them to job site.  Furthermore, the houses themselves are massive, which means enormous heating and air conditioning bills, even if their windows are double-paned, their walls padded with extra insulation, and their restaurant-sized refrigerators and stoves Energy Star rated.

Then we need to consider their multiple bathrooms and heated outdoor pools and spas, the most energy intensive features of modern houses.

Other McMansion features also have their detrimental environmental effects.  During demolition they release dust and asbestos into the air.  After construction, their large patios, pools, spas, and double driveways reduce natural open space.  Combined with their elimination of parkway trees and landscaping for driveway cuts, the cumulative result is a heat island with less penetration of rainwater.

Last, but certainly not least, we need to factor in their transportation system.  All McMansions are built on single-family residential lots located away from bus stops and transit stations.  This is why McMansion residents rely on their cars to get around; the only difference being that most of their vehicles are large, thirsty SUVs.

While I suspect while there are some who would never allow a large McMansion style house to be considered green, I look at this list of objections and think that they all could have solutions within the near future. The last one might be the hardest part; while there are McMansions located in denser neighborhoods, typically constructed in a teardown situation, the stereotype is that these homes are located on big lots in exurbs. Add this to the fact that suburban lots and houses are tied into the American Dream and it may be easier to retool a lot of energy consuming devices than push Americans to live in denser communities.

Argument: use of the term McMansion in Australia usually about snobbery

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An Australian commentator argues the use of the term McMansion in his country is generally out of snobbery:

IS THERE any more snobbish word in the Australian vocabulary than ”McMansion”? This nasty term describes the big, new houses out in suburbs with names like Caroline Springs and Kellyville. McMansions, their nickname suggests, are the McDonald’s of housing – they’re super-sized, American and mass produced.

Australians build the largest new houses in the world. The average size of a new freestanding home is 243 square metres. That’s 10 per cent larger than the average new American home. Naturally our big houses have critics. Sustainability advocates say McMansions are bad for the environment. Yet there’s more going on here. Because even the most high-brow academic critiques of McMansions seem to focus less on the houses and more on the people who live in them…

That sort of sneering contempt is not uncommon. The word ”McMansion” is usually deployed not to appraise a type of house, but an entire way of life. It is all about culture – the inner city world trying to understand their strange, alien suburban cousins…

Even if you don’t put much stock in income statistics, the size of our houses is – by itself – evidence that Australia is well off. Prosperity is about more than GDP data. Money isn’t everything. Anybody who has lived crammed into too few rooms knows living standards and adequate space are closely related. In rich Australia it’s understandable that many people desire extra living and storage space.

This seems to bleed through in some of the American use of the term as well.

However, I’m not sure we should go the route this commentator suggests and welcome McMansions because they are a sign of our wealth and some individuals want to purchase them. While some do look at McMansions and McMansion dwellers with disdain, McMansions are also not inherently good. They are somewhat indicative of our the resources available in the United States and Australia (though wealthy societies could choose to spend this wealth in other ways) but there are certainly trade-offs in building McMansions, just as there are in building other kinds of structures. McMansions reflect our cultural values: we emphasize private space (even as family size is shrinking), the need for homes that are more than just dwellings (whether they are meant to impress or are to fit out psychological needs), and a suburban lifestyle which is an adaptation between city and country, is based around driving, gives homeowners a little bit of land and space, and is linked to ideas about the American (or Australian?) Dream and “making it” in life. We can discuss whether policies should limit McMansions but it seems that both the United States and Australia have made the choice to allow builders and homeowners to pursue larger homes.

Latinos and the “religion” of the American Dream

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A new poll suggests Latinos are optimistic about the American Dream:

The poll, which surveyed 887 likely Latino voters, found that 73 percent believe that their families will achieve the American Dream, compared to only 7 percent who don’t think they’ll attain the American Dream.

“When they come to this country, they are like someone who has converted to another religion,” said Vincent Parrillo, a professor of sociology at William Paterson University, about the immigrant experience in the U.S. “They are a little more devout than those who are born here.”…

The Fox News Latino poll also found that Latinos believe the next generation of Latinos in the United States will be better off than they are today.

About 74 percent of those surveyed said that life will be better than today, while only 13 percent believe it will be worse and 3 percent said it will be the same, the poll states.

I’m intrigued by the link between the American Dream and religion. Does the American Dream really function like a religion in Durkheimian terms, as an ideology about ourselves that helps bring us together and helps provide social cohesion? There may even be rituals associated with it such as buying a home, going to college, and seeing your children get ahead. If we look at the words used at the recent Republican and Democratic National Conventions, both invoked the phrase “American Dream” with Republicans doing so at a slightly higher rate. Since we have freedom of religion and thus a variety of different beliefs and unbeliefs plus a fairly multicultural society with many subcultures and backgrounds, is the American Dream what truly unites Americans?

Advantage of a tiny house: you can drive it around and unload it when needed

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The tiny house has this advantage over traditional homes: you can put it on a truck and move it when needed.

Sitting on an unsaleable trailer, Kirsten Shaw and her husband decided to do something radical: following a growing trend in the U.S., they eschewed the Calgary-standard McMansion and instead started to build a portable tiny house. Mrs. Shaw, who works in a Calgary health food store, and her husband, a contractor, are constructing their new home paycheque by paycheque. When it’s complete sometime next year, the fort-like dwelling will take up about 200 square feet. Along with a converted van, that’s where the family of three (which swells to six when her husband’s children from a previous marriage join in) plan to live and travel. The Post’s Jen Gerson spoke with Mrs. Shaw in this edited transcript…

It seems like this tiny houses have become more popular, do you think that has anything to do with what you just described, that people aren’t really getting ahead?

It could be for us it’s that I guess I really have taken a good long look at the fact that you’re very much in a relationship with the government that you’re very vulnerable…If there was an oil crisis and the food stopped getting trained in and trucked in here well we can’t really grow things here in Calgary.

It’s more like giving us the security in that we have the power to do what we need to do to survive as a family and always make sure we’re provided for. If that means picking up and driving somewhere where food grows in the southern states or even out on the islands we can do that and not have to worry.

Here is the twist to this downsizing story: the family is worried that they will need to be more mobile in order to respond to changing economic conditions. Owning a home ties you down too much; not only does it require a much larger financial commitment, it takes more time to move since this involves selling the home, finding another place to live, and doing something with all the stuff one can accumulate in an average new home of over 2,000 square feet. This would seem to match up with some commentary that part of the problems with the recent recession is that possible employees can’t easily go to where the jobs are because they are tied down by underwater homes.

Perhaps we could envision a future where more workers have to be mobile, both to cut expenses but also in order to find temporary work…not exactly the typical image of the American (or Canadian) Dream.

How will American culture change since Millennials want to buy the newest smartphones rather than cars and houses?

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Here is part of a fascinating article about what Millennials want to purchase and how this differs from the consumption of previous generations:

Needless to say, the Great Recession is responsible for some of the decline. But it’s highly possible that a perfect storm of economic and demographic factors—from high gas prices, to re-­urbanization, to stagnating wages, to new technologies enabling a different kind of consumption—has fundamentally changed the game for Millennials. The largest generation in American history might never spend as lavishly as its parents did—nor on the same things. Since the end of World War II, new cars and suburban houses have powered the world’s largest economy and propelled our most impressive recoveries. Millennials may have lost interest in both…Subaru’s publicist Doug O’Reilly told us, “The Millennial wants to tell people not just ‘I’ve made it,’ but also ‘I’m a tech person.’?” Smartphones compete against cars for young people’s big-ticket dollars, since the cost of a good phone and data plan can exceed $1,000 a year. But they also provide some of the same psychic benefits—opening new vistas and carrying us far from the physical space in which we reside. “You no longer need to feel connected to your friends with a car when you have this technology that’s so ubiquitous, it transcends time and space,” Connelly said.

In other words, mobile technology has empowered more than just car-sharing. It has empowered friendships that can be maintained from a distance. The upshot could be a continuing shift from automobiles to mobile technology, and a big reduction in spending…

In some respects, Millennials’ residential aspirations appear to be changing just as significantly as their driving habits—indeed, the two may be related. The old cul-de-sacs of Revolutionary Road and Desperate Housewives have fallen out of favor with Generation Y. Rising instead are both city centers and what some developers call “urban light”—denser suburbs that revolve around a walkable town center. “People are very eager to create a life that blends the best features of the American suburb—schools still being the primary, although not the only, draw—and urbanity,” says Adam Ducker, a managing director at the real-estate consultancy RCLCO. These are places like Culver City, California, and Evanston, Illinois, where residents can stroll among shops and restaurants or hop on public transportation. Such small cities and town centers lend themselves to tighter, smaller housing developments, whether apartments in the middle of town, or small houses a five-minute drive away. An RCLCO survey from 2007 found that 43 percent of Gen?Yers would prefer to live in a close-in suburb, where both the houses and the need for a car are smaller.

This article is primarily about the economic impacts of these shifting patterns but I think there is another important side to this: how does this affect American culture? A few ideas…

1. What makes up the American Dream will likely shift. We have gone almost 100 years with this combination: a house of one’s own and a car (or multiple cars in recent decades). The content of this dream will change and the pace to which people pursue it. Newest additions to the Dream: can I get a smartphone with an unthrottled data plan? How about a living arrangement that is exciting in terms of having nearby cultural and social opportunities but doesn’t tie one down financially?

2. As fewer teenagers see getting a driver’s license as the same sort of initiation into adulthood and freedom as previous generations, perhaps we have a new marker of adulthood: getting the first smartphone (with at least texting capabilities and perhaps also data).

3. As I’ve discussed before, the possible new kinds of suburbia we might see in the coming decades would be a remarkable shift away from completely auto-dependent developments. This will lead to some interesting consequences for housing. New Urbanism may just explode in popularity (as long as such developments are reasonably priced).

4. The car is no longer an important status symbol but rather more like a tool that is used to get from Point A to Point B. Tools may have some fun features but the number one concern is that that they function consistently. In contrast, the phone (and what one can do with it) becomes a status symbol.

5. As we’ve seen in recent years, announcements of new technologies and smartphones will garner increasing levels of attention. Just look at what happens when we get close to an Apple announcement for the newer iPhone (or iPad). Cars and houses will have to fight even harder for your attention. How this changes the ratio and content of commercials will be interesting to watch.

6. When are we going to see television shows and movies that truly reflect plugged in and online worlds? We have plenty of examples where characters use these devices but precious few that show what it is like to consistently operate in the online and offline worlds. The movie Catfish comes to mind. While most online users won’t go to the lengths the characters do in this movie, at least it depicts people living out real relationships in the online sphere.

7. A growing push for cheaper, faster, perhaps even free Internet access everywhere. To be disconnected will be viewed as more and more undesirable.

8. Revamping existing housing stock will require some imagination and creativity in marketing, construction, and financing.

9. Building off Richard Florida’s ideas about the creative class, what happens when this group becomes too big and unwieldy and is no longer “select,” there are not enough places that meet their requirements (not everywhere can be Austin), and not enough jobs for people with their education and interests? Obviously, shifts can take place but these won’t necessarily be easy.

Time’s “The History of the American Dream” a limited overview

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Time’s latest cover story titled “The History of the American Dream” (here is the image and the story) seems to be the epitome of a piece that runs when there isn’t big news for the week (and they were just a day or two away from leading with the Jerry Sandusky verdict…). The article itself offers a limited history while repeatedly suggesting the idea of the American Dream is under attack because of economic and political realities. Here are a few quotes from the story:

The Dream is about liberty and prosperity and stability, but it is also about escape and reinvention. Mark Twain understood this. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn doesn’t flinch from the racism and greed of American life. If there is any redemption to be found, it comes from small moments of communion, of humanity. The novel concludes with the enslaved Jim’s being granted his freedom and Huck’s deciding “to light out for the Territory, ahead of the rest” — an enduring American impulse and an essential element of the American Dream.

The myth of the West was the myth of the nation: that all of us could light out for the Territory and build new, prosperous lives. The allure of the belief in the individual’s capacity to make his way — to cross oceans or mountains — only grew stronger as America grew older. Our center of political gravity has always been in motion from east to west (and, to a real extent, from north to south). Though the Census of 1890 declared that the frontier was no more, the idea of packing up and moving on to better things has never faded.

Yet there is a missing character in this popular version of the story of America’s rugged individualism: the government, which helped make the rise of the individual possible. Americans have never liked acknowledging that what we now call the public sector has always been integral to making the private sector successful. Given the American Revolution’s origins as a rebellion against taxation and distant authority, such skepticism is understandable, even if it’s not well founded. As we have with race, we have long proved ourselves quite capable of living with this contradiction, using Hamiltonian means (centralized decisionmaking) while speaking in Jeffersonian rhetorical terms (that government is best which governs least).

The best part of the article: it mentions the important role of government (though he could have included state and local governments as well). Jon Meacham discusses how the government supported the railroad as it granted charters, right-of-ways, and land to companies that wanted to make money and also happened to open up the interior. The contrast here is interesting and instructive: Americans claim to be individualists but the American Dream has been supported by government policies and monies for a long time.

A few things the article could have done better and both of these are tied to more recent understandings of what the American Dream means:

1. Meacham tries to take the big picture here going back to the founders and discussing the Civil Rights Movement. But he misses a key component of the American Dream as it is understood today: the connection to the American suburbs and homeownership. This movement has transformed the country from a land of frontiers to a suburban nation where since the early 1900s, those with opportunity tend to move out of the city to a place that offers some of the city and country.

2. Meacham also misses the role of consumption. Meacham is talking about big ideals in this story but for some Americans, the Dream means being able to live at a certain level. This is exemplified by an early quote in this story about the findings from a White House Task Force:

“middle-class families are defined by their aspirations more than their income. [We assume] that middle-class families aspire to homeownership, a car, college education for their children, health and retirement security and occasional family vacations.”

This is all about consumption, even if each of these objects could be argued to promote liberty, happiness, and human flourishing. The idea of the American Dream was sold heavily to the American public starting in the early 1900s by corporations who wanted to sell refrigerators, cars, radios, and other products. Indeed, the modern understanding of the American Dream is very much influenced by the rise of the mass-production economy as well as the economic prosperity America experienced.

Sociologist: economic crisis leads to mistrust of the system

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As the economic crisis drags on and Americans have lost a lot of wealth, one sociologist suggests the economic uncertainty leads to mistrust of the system:

“I don’t want to romanticize the past — it wasn’t perfect — but there was a sense of security, and that is gone,” said Thorne, a sociologist at Ohio University and an expert on bankruptcy and consumerism.

“We felt that if we played by the rules, that we would do all right. Now there is a feeling that you are never on solid ground, even if you do the right thing.”

Thus the biggest loss may go beyond the decline in the American family’s assets, she said: trust.

“Despite our most honest efforts, through all of our lifetimes, we worked our jobs, we played by the rules, and we still lost. That fosters fear and mistrust in the system.”

While the economic effects of a recession or slow recovery are well-known, I’ve been interested in commentators who have argued that there is much longer-lasting social and emotional impact. While Thorne is quick to not “romanticize the past,” there is some nostalgia here: American prosperity after the end of World War II was perhaps unprecedented in history. What happens if we never see this again, in the United States or elsewhere in the world? If this sort of prosperity and certainty doesn’t come back for a long time, how would people find a new level of trust in the American system?

Should the American Dream include a McMansion?

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Van Jones suggests the American Dream may have once included a McMansion but such hopes have been downgraded in these tough economic times:

We may not be able to save the American Dream from the point of view of, you know, everybody is going to have a McMansion and be rich, but we should be able to make a—have a country where you can work hard and get somewhere. The two big barriers right now are these. It used to be the case that the pathway from poverty into the middle class was go to college and buy a house. Today, those are the trapdoors from the middle class into poverty, because student debt is crushing a whole generation of young people who are trying to make a better life for themselves, and underwater mortgages—one-quarter of every mortgage in America underwater—is dragging people from the middle class into poverty. So the American Dream, so-called, has been turned upside down, inside out.

Isn’t Jones suggesting that the Dream once included a McMansion? If so, this fits with an idea I’ve shared before: McMansions may always have their critics but if the economy turned around and McMansions became more attainable again, they would receive less criticism and people would go back to buying them. At the peak of the housing market in the mid-2000s, you could find plenty of people who vocally shared their reasons for disliking McMansions. However, this criticism has been backed in recent years by a narrative that McMansions (along with SUVs and perhaps Starbucks lattes) either exemplify or brought down the crashed American economy and we should say away from these houses in the future.

 

The role of emotions in buying a McMansion

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“Financial journalist and author” Jean Chatzky discusses her rules about money and hints that buying a McMansion and working with money in general is complicated by emotions:

Have money rules changed with the recession?

I don’t know that the money rules have changed, but I think the recession has made people realize the importance of some of the money rules. For example, Money Rule #26 is “Just because someone will lend it to you, doesn’t mean you should borrow it.” I think it’s the lesson of the housing crisis. We over-borrowed. We took out bigger mortgages than we could truly afford because the banks were willing to give it to us. Every unfurnished McMansion proves that point. For everybody who’s ever felt house-poor or student-loan poor or credit-card poor, the recession has hammered that home.

Why do people tend to overcomplicate money?

It’s really emotional. If I had a bottle of champagne and I opened it with a group of friends, there would be this feeling that we should divvy it up fairly. But if I said, “I have some extra money,” people start making value judgments. There’s morality involved with how we divvy up the money.

Combined with that is the fact that we’re not taught about money as kids or in the schools. There’s not room for it in the curriculum. Getting financial literacy into every school in the country is a very important thing to do, but it’s an uphill battle. The combination of those two things makes many of us feel insecure when it comes to making the right decisions about our money, whether we’re spending it, saving it, or investing it.

Her rules seem meant to limit the emotional side of money. If you have rules to follow, you can sidestep the emotional aspects. While the rules may be helpful, this is a good reminder that economic activity is often emotional. We often talk as if humans make decisions purely for economic reasons when the real story is much more complicated. Stock trading and investing in stocks, purchasing consumer goods, and saving money are laden with emotions.

So what emotions lead to purchasing a McMansion? I haven’t seen an academic study that addresses this. However, critics of McMansions have made a number of arguments about why people buy McMansions: they want to impress other people, they have little sense of style or design, they have money to burn, they don’t realize they can get by with less space, they are unaware of how others might negatively view their home, and they are obsessed with getting a deal without thinking about quality. Critics generally argue that McMansions are attempts at displaying a particular status to others and this causes the buyer to overlook some concerns to which they should pay attention.

I’m guessing that McMansion purchasers wouldn’t give the reasons that critics suggest. At the same time, purchasing a home, usually the biggest purchase of someone’s life, is full of emotions. Buying a dwelling is one thing but when you add up a mortgage plus the idealization of a home in the American Dream and it becomes much more than that.