Tag Archives: cities

Urban Decay cosmetics

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As an urban sociologist, I am always interested to examine popular depictions of cities and suburbs. So I was intrigued when I found this advertisement for Urban Decay in the Sunday newspaper:

According to the ad, this line of cosmetics includes products like “Sin Eyeshadow Primer Potion” and “All Nighter Makeup Setting Spray.”

Here is the story of Urban Decay:

Our story opens 15 years ago, when pink, red, and beige enslaved the prestige beauty market. Heaven forbid you wanted purple or green nails, because you’d either have to whip out a marker, or risk life and limb with that back alley drugstore junk. Flying in the face of this monopoly, Sandy Lerner (cofounder of Cisco Systems) made a bold decision: if the cosmetic industry’s “big boys” couldn’t satisfy her alternative makeup tastes, she’d satisfy them herself.

Fatefully, Sandy’s business manager, David Soward, introduced her to fellow visionary Wende Zomnir. A creative businesswoman (and makeup addict almost since birth), Wende also recognized the color void and determined a shake-up was in order. Over high tea, the two forged a pact that led to renegade nail polish mixing sessions in Wende’s Laguna Beach bungalow. Sandy, David and Wende unleashed Urban Decay in January of 1996 with a line of 10 lipsticks and 12 nail enamels. Inspired by seedier facets of the urban landscape, they bore groundbreaking names like Roach, Smog, Rust, Oil Slick and Acid Rain. The first magazine ad queried “Does Pink Make You Puke?,” fueling the revolution as cosmetics industry executives scrambled to keep up…

Our ever-expanding global presence proves what Wende and Sandy always knew – makeup wearers everywhere crave alternatives, hence our longevity well past the death of 90s grunge. In the US, hundreds of UD products now fill purple shelves at Sephora, Ulta and Macy’s, as well as the virtual pages of Beauty.com. Growing numbers of retailers in Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Singapore and the Middle East stock our line, too. And although UD fans around the world might approach our products in wildly different ways, we’ve noticed they share an independent spirit that unites them…

We’ve now become the largest independently owned color cosmetic company in the United States. Our moms are proud. “Urban Decay” is no longer such a crazy name for a makeup company. And young women today have never known a world where they couldn’t get purple nail polish over the counter. Mission accomplished.

What is interesting to me is the commodification of a particular location and style. The name brings back images from the mid-twentieth century as many Americans fled large cities for the cleaner, greener, and safer suburbs. Governments responded by clearing urban blight and instituting programs of urban renewal. Today, urban decay is more fashionable. It seems gritty and authentic – see the passages above about the banality of pink and how darker colors subvert these ideas. It brings to mind ideas of adventure, being a renegade, standing out from the crowd. Perhaps it is tied to ideas of gentrification and finding the exciting yet improving parts of cities. Think of places like Times Square that just a few decades ago were seedy locations and even with the glitz and glamor of today still retain some of this urban excitement that simply can’t be replicated in the shopping mall or on Facebook. And, of course, you can have all of these ideas if you are simply willing to spend a little money on a line of cosmetics.

Is there a suburban alternative to this, something like Suburban Passion or Desperate Suburbs?

The Internet is not an information superhighway or global village; rather, a “drab cul-de-sac”

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In an interesting article titled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”, author Stephen Marche makes his point by comparing the Internet to suburbs:

In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information.

Marche is discussing the disillusion associated with the Internet: a good number of people thought it would provide unprecedented access to information, more global connections, and stronger democracies and civil societies. Instead, Marche argues that it is like the suburbs. They both provide the illusion of a “good life” but with little depth behind the happy facade of McMansions or Facebook. Marche should finish the metaphor: perhaps we need an online way of connecting that is more equivalent to an urban neighborhood, perhaps the kind idealized by Jane Jacobs.

I wonder if Marche would be willing to work with the idea that the Internet may not be the best or all it could be but it is a necessary adaptation for the modern world. This is similar to an argument I’ve made before about suburbs: I think many Americans know that they aren’t all they are said (or sold) to be (see a recent survey where a majority of Americans say they would move right now if they could). However, the suburbs beat the alternatives of small town life (too confining, not enough independence, not enough amenities or jobs) or city living (perceived as being too dangerous and anonymous). Similarly, it would be truly hard to live these days without using the Internet or even not be a member of Facebook as these are becoming (and have become for many) the basic ways of finding out information, buying goods, and yes, “connecting” with others.

“Intellectual slums” in China

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China’s economy may be growing but this doesn’t necessarily mean that young engineers have great living standards:

However, life as a Chinese engineer is not necessarily paradise or even a guarantee of decent living. Some of Beijing’s most recent graduates are labeled “ants” for their hardworking attitude but cramped living quarters. Until being relocated by recent redevelopment, many young Chinese engineers lived in small, 20 square-meter rooms in the poor Beijing suburb of Tangjialing. According to Chinese sociologist Lian Si, there are no fewer than 10 “intellectual slums” near Beijing.

Not exactly the choices that we assume the “creative class” has in the United States.

Here are some photographs of a Chinese “intellectual slum” that is slated for a transition from a poor village to new development. In a 2009 story, Lian Si describes his work summarized in the book Ant Tribe.

I became interested in this problem in 2007. I then spent two years researching; I visited seven ‘colonies’ on the outskirts of Beijing, living in them each for some time, and in total, interviewing 600 graduates.

I noted that the graduates earn an average of 1950 Yuan (€200) a month. Most of the time they work on stalls, as waitresses or doing other temporary jobs. The rent costs around 400 Yuan (€40) a month. They spend a lot of time travelling to and from the centre of the city on public transport.

The ‘ants’ have three characteristics in common. They’re graduates, they’re low earners, and they stick together. They’re labelled ants because they’re undersized and have limited living space, but at the same time they’re intelligent and they don’t grumble about their situation.

About 80% of them come from isolated villages cut from the world. They try to make a living in big cities like Beijing. It’s also because of this that they stay in a group, to have the feeling of community and security in their unfamiliar surroundings.

At what point will people in these communities start to grumble?

In new Global Cities Index, Chicago drops a spot to #7

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The 2012 Global Cities Index was released this week and Chicago dropped one spot to #7, swapping with Los Angeles:

In the rivalry between the world’s biggest cities, put another feather in the cap of New York. It bests London and Tokyo on a new Global Cities Index by A.T. Kearney and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The ranking is based on five* key factors: business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement. It covers the 66 largest cities around the world.

Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong round out the top five. Los Angeles is 6th, Chicago 7th, Washington, D.C. 10th, Boston 15th, Toronto 16th, and San Francisco 17th.

This new list is consistent with a ranking of the World’s Most Economically Powerful Cities, with Tokyo, New York, London, Chicago and Paris in the top five spots, published last fall here on Cities. While the leading global cities remain stable, globalization is increasing the turbulence and churning faced by other large world cities, as the study notes…

Read the article and also look at the top 66 cities in a chart (which includes the 2010 and 2008 rankings) – there is quite a gap between the top cities and everyone else. Also, Saskia Sassen offers some interesting analysis of “urban vectors” including this bit: “Washington, New York, and Chicago. These cities are becoming more important geopolitically than the United States is as a country.”

I don’t think Chicago should be worried about dropping a spot – there has been some small movement in the top 10 in recent rankings. At the same time, there is always a chance that Chicagoans might read a lot into this in their interest in remaining relevant.

See the full AT Kearney report here.

 

Slowdown in exurban growth

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New estimates from the US Census suggest that growth in the exurbs has slowed in recent years:

The annual rate of growth in American cities and surrounding urban areas has now surpassed that of exurbs for the first time in at least 20 years, spanning the most recent era of sprawling suburban development…

“The heyday of exurbs may well be behind us,” Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller said. Shiller, co-creator of a Standard & Poor’s housing index, is perhaps best known for identifying the risks of a U.S. housing bubble before it actually burst in 2006-2007. Examining the current market, he believes America is now at a turning point, shifting away from faraway suburbs to cities amid persistently high gasoline prices…

About 10.6 million Americans reside in the nation’s exurbs, just 5 percent of the number in large metropolitan areas. That number for exurbs represents annual growth of just 0.4 percent from 2010 to 2011, smaller than the 0.8 percent rate for cities and their surrounding urban areas. Still, it also represents the largest one-year growth drop for exurbs in at least 20 years…

In all, 99 of the 100 fastest-growing exurbs and outer suburbs saw slower or no growth in 2011 compared with the mid-decade housing peak – the exception being Spotsylvania County, Va., located south of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, which has boomed even in the downturn. Nearly three-fourths of the top 100 outer suburban areas also saw slower growth compared with 2010, hurt by $3-a-gallon gasoline last year that has since climbed higher.

Translation: growth on the metropolitan fringes slowed in 2010. This doesn’t mean that suburban growth overall slowed but growth on the edges has slowed. I don’t think we should be too surprised by this: the housing market is in bad shape, gas prices are up, and the number of both residential and commercial projects in the suburbs has dropped. If the economy was good, the exurbs would be where growth tends to happen as there is available land (cheaper to build here than to redevelop existing suburban properties or tackle some small infill projects) and people would have money for transportation to job centers (whether these are edge cities or big cities).

I think the real question is whether the exurban growth picks up when the economy improves or at least if gas becomes cheaper. Even if exurban growth essentially stops today, many metropolitan regions could tolerate some more dense land use in their suburbs.

“A region’s workforce is not defined by its immediate suburbs”

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The Chicago Tribune has a story about “super-commuters” who make the trip between Chicago and St. Louis. While the story seems more intent on putting a face on this growing phenomenon (although the numbers are still relatively low), there is a very interesting quote from a researcher about how we should view jobs and regional economies:

Regardless, said Mitchell Moss, the NYU professor who authored the study, the trend speaks to both the increased flexibility of modern-day workers — “the office” can be almost anyplace — and the challenges facing two-income families in a weak job market: Why uproot your family when your spouse can’t get a job in the new city?

The trend illustrates how the economies of places like St. Louis are increasingly hitched to their neighbors.

“It tells you that there is an inter-regional economic relationship, which is growing between places like St. Louis and Chicago,” Moss said. “A region’s workforce is not defined by its immediate suburbs.”

I’ve written several times about the need for more regional cooperation in the Chicago region between city and suburbs (see this post regarding Mayor Daley and this post about Mayor Emanuel). With limited cooperation, communities can end up fighting over corporations and jobs, whether tax money from a particular municipality should be spent elsewhere, and how best to address regional-level issues like transportation or affordable housing.

What exactly would it mean for Chicago and St. Louis to cooperate? One area could be transportation: I assume both Chicago and St. Louis were on-board for plans to construct a high-speed rail line between the cities. Environmental issues could be another area. For example, both cities rely on interconnected water sources and shipping so common issues could arise (but remember there is a regional fight about Asian carp). But what about business issues? Could they set aside their separate issues to encourage economic development that might benefit both cities? Are there really economic opportunities they could both benefit from in spite of the distance between them?

Artists imagine post-apocalyptic world in terms of empty cities

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Two artists from France have put together a collection of photographs that feature famous city settings – with no people:

In Silent World, artists Lucie and Simon have taken the world’s most familiar and populous cities and removed all but one or two people to create the illusion of a lonely world.

In the thought-provoking work, places like the normally bustling Times Square and Tiananmen Square appear absent of their crowds.

Lucie and Simon are a duo of artists based in Paris, France, who have been working together since 2005.

According to their website, the award-winning artists focus on blurring the line between reality and fantasy in their work.

The pictures are interesting and there is even a video with the photographs and some ominous music.
But I’ll be honest: I don’t find these photos to be too jarring. There are two other forms in which I think these scenes are much more powerful:
1. Post-apocalyptic movies do a decent job with this. However, I think too many of them go for the destruction angle rather than the emptiness angle. Additionally, they often try to drive home the point too much with things like eerie music and/or loud wind noises.
2. Real life. While these artists have removed people and vehicles, you can approximate some of this in places by walking or driving around very early in the morning. That way, there is still some light but there may be no one else around. This can be very strange: the buildings are around and it looks like there should be activity but there is no one there. Or another example: walking through the Loop in Chicago later at night. Without the business activity, it is a lonely place.
What would be most disconcerting in these scenes if you were there all day by yourself. I’m reminded looking at these pictures that many of these cityscapes are not built to a human scale. For example, a lone person in Times Square without people around is simply dwarfed by the buildings. It is not just about being alone; it is also about the massive buildings around you that make you feel insignificant. Similarly, large plazas or wide highways are also not often conducive to human activity but we forget some of this when they are full of people. It reminds me of Jane Jacob’s work in The Death and Life of Great American Cities: it is more human-scale neighborhoods that people flock to anyway, not downtowns and their skyscraper canyons. In a post-apocalyptic world, people will look for other people and the majority of New Yorkers don’t live in places like Times Square. What might be even more jarring would be walking around an empty Greenwich Square.

New Census figures: population 80.7% urban, most dense cities in the West

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The US Census Bureau released Monday some figures about cities in America. Here are the updated 2010 statistics about urbanization:

 The nation’s urban population increased by 12.1 percent from 2000 to 2010, outpacing the nation’s overall growth rate of 9.7 percent for the same period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau…
Urban areas — defined as densely developed residential, commercial and other nonresidential areas — now account for 80.7 percent of the U.S. population, up from 79.0 percent in 2000. Although the rural population — the population in any areas outside of those classified as “urban” — grew by a modest amount from 2000 to 2010, it continued to decline as a percentage of the national population.

Translation: the proportion of Americans living in urban areas didn’t change very much over the last 10 years. In comparison, the urban population jumped 6% from 1970 to 1980, 3% from 1980 to 1990, and 3% from 1990 to 2000 (see figures on pg. 33 of this Census document). Does this mean we are nearing a plateau in terms of the proportion of Americans living in urban areas?

And here are the new figures for the densest metropolitan areas:

The nation’s most densely populated urbanized area is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif., with nearly 7,000 people per square mile. The San Francisco-Oakland, Calif., area is the second most densely populated at 6,266 people per square mile, followed by San Jose, Calif. (5,820 people per square mile) and Delano, Calif. (5,483 people per square mile). The New York-Newark, N.J., area is fifth, with an overall density of 5,319 people per square mile…
Of the 10 most densely populated urbanized areas, nine are in the West, with seven of those in California. Urbanized areas in the U.S., taken together, had an overall population density of 2,534 people per square mile.

These new figures continue to support one of the trick questions about cities: which city is the most dense? A common answer is New York City because of Manhattan but the densest is actually Los Angeles. Of course, some of this has to do with Southern and Western cities having more space because of the drying up of annexation opportunities in Midwestern and Northeastern cities in the early 1900s.

While these are very interesting figures, where is the percentage of Americans who live in suburbs?

The “code of the street” on the real streets

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The Boston Globe explores how Elijah Anderson’s concept of the “code of the street” plays out on the streets today:

Both men spoke of the street code as though they thought it would be obvious to everyone in the courtroom what it meant. And to a certain extent, they were right to: Even people with no direct experience with street life?—?whose exposure to the criminal underworld comes mainly from gangster rap and television shows like “The Wire”?—?have a sense that it is governed by its own set of rules and ethics. For law-abiding citizens dazzled by Hollywood stories of loyalty or by tough lyrics about street justice, these rule seem to be part of a parallel moral universe built around its own set of coherent beliefs regarding honor, fairness, and integrity. And in neighborhoods where crime is rampant and gang activity widespread, belief in such rules can be a hugely powerful force in people’s lives.

But behind the seductively monolithic notion of a “code of the streets,” say people who have looked at street justice from up close, lies far less certain terrain. According to former gang members, social workers in frequent contact with inner-city youths, and criminologists, it is all but impossible to pin down a single “code,” or one vision of right and wrong, that everyone on the streets respects and adheres to. And insofar as there ever was such a code, they say, it has largely crumpled since the late 1980s, as gangs have grown smaller, younger, and more poorly organized, and increasingly harsh sentencing laws have made it more difficult for people to withstand the pressure to snitch on their associates to avoid prison time. The street rules that exist, experts say, vary from gang to gang and city to city, and most importantly, they are often ignored.

What remains is less a code of ethics than a set of procedures that dictate how to protect oneself from threats and maintain a reputation in hostile territory. Far from being the proud moral system that some of us imagine it to be, the code today seems to exist as a sort of hollowed-out ideal whose role in the street is not to govern behavior, but?—?as we saw in the Mattapan trial?—?to explain it away.

An interesting read. I am intrigued by the concept that there might have once a “golden age” for the code. Is this just another case of generational differences?

But if you are going to write an article like this, why not interview Elijah Anderson? Indeed, it would be interesting to hear what Anderson thinks or knows about the code since he has wrote an urban ethnography that has become a classic work.

Evangelicals and Catholics first joined forces in the suburbs

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In the middle of an article about how Rick Santorum has appealed to evangelicals, one of the factors mentioned is geographic: evangelicals and Catholics both moved to the suburbs after World War Two.

The plate tectonics of social mobility also figure into the Santorum surprise, note scholars like the political scientist John C. Green of the University of Akron. In the post-World War II years, many Catholics moved out of insular urban neighborhoods while many evangelicals left their rural and small-town homes for the suburbs and exurbs. In subdivisions, in office parks, in colleges, the young people of the two religions began to encounter one another as benign acquaintances rather than alien enemies.

It is no coincidence, then, that a Santorum voter like Carissa Wilson has grown up in the suburban sprawl between two cities with strong Catholic heritages, Dayton and Cincinnati. Like the Michigan autoworkers in 1980 who made a break with Democratic tradition to vote for Ronald Reagan, Miss Wilson just may be the embodiment of a new wave.

In other words, evangelicals and Catholics met and learned to like each other in the suburbs. United by suburban values and perhaps a dislike for both cities and rural areas, these two groups settled into the land of single-family homes and found that they could find common ground on some social and theological issues.

This brings several questions to mind:

1. Are Catholics and evangelicals more interested in preserving suburban values than finding common theological ground? Perhaps this is crassly put but the way the argument is written in the article, it suggests that the suburbs came first before the social and theological common ground.

2. How do race and class play into the process? In other words, while both groups came from different places to the suburbs, they were probably mostly white and the educational status of both groups was rising. Does this mean that the older city/rural divide was transcended by common status interests based on race and class?