Tag Archives: suburbs

Even Shakespeare doesn’t like McMansions

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As the debate over the value of certain college majors continues, William Shakespeare responds and defends the liberal arts and also knocks McMansions:

See, when I wrote all those plays back in the day, I had no intention of helping the bright-eyed brats of the future find their way to high-paying jobs and McMansions in the ’burbs. No, I was after something else altogether. (If you don’t understand this, please do not feel alone; this great stage of fools is plenty crowded.) To be sure, one should not attempt to mine A Midsummer Night’s Dream for literal fortune, unless, of course, you’re in the tights-and-tunics trade. But that’s another matter…

Students can do worse than to take literature courses, like ones devoted to my work, or to that of Toni Morrison, or even to depressing saps like Melville. To study literature is to practice critical thinking; to write about texts is to hone writing skills. The very things that the masters of industry demand in their employees, no?

Shakespeare seems to have heard the selling points for a liberal arts education.

The phrase that interests me: “the bright-eyed brats of the future find their way to high-paying jobs and McMansions in the ’burbs.” This seems to be a broad indictment of how students (and others?) view college: it is about making money and living comfortably as one pursues the American dream. In contrast, the liberal arts promotes thinking and wrestling with the big questions that humans have sought to answer throughout history. But do McMansions and critical thinking have to be mutually exclusive? McMansion seems to refer here more to the homeowners themselves who are only interested in making money, getting ahead, and enjoying life. Is the opposite implication that critical thinkers would never purchase or build a McMansion because they would see its faults? Do critical thinkers (and liberal arts majors) only live in homes with character and history in the city?

Problems at the DuPage Housing Authority

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As part of a story about corruption at the DuPage Housing Authority, the Chicago Tribune provides an update on the recent history of the organization:

But investigators have asked plenty of questions lately about how DuPage housing officials spend the $22 million in federal funds they get annually.

Since 2009, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has audited the DuPage Housing Authority three times, concluding the troubled agency violated numerous federal regulations and must pay back $10.75 million in misused tax money.

HUD has determined DuPage must repay that money to its Section 8 housing program because it didn’t allow competition for projects, failed to properly document whether many tenants were eligible to get subsidized rent, made inappropriate credit card purchases and, in some cases, overpaid benefits.

This is not a whole lot of federal money, particularly in a county with a population over 900,000 and a poverty rate of around 6% (this site has 2009 figures of a poverty rate of 6.5% and the 2008 Census had an estimate of 5.8%). But the DuPage Housing Authority has an interesting history. If I remember correctly from research I have done, the group was formed in the 1940s and had some federal money to work with. But by the early 1970s, the Housing Authority had not built any units within the county and HOPE, an organization now in Wheaton, sued the county for housing discrimination, primarily for exclusionary zoning practices. The court case, Hope v. County of DuPage (the 1983 version here), lasted for over a decade and here is a brief summary of the conclusion in a law textbook.  It is only within recent decades that the Housing Authority has developed units.

This is perhaps not too unusual considering the political conservatism of a county that has been solidly Republican since the the 1860s. But as the lawsuit from the early 1970s alleged, the county has continued to change: more immigrants and minorities have become residents, housing values went up, a number of communities limited construction of apartments, and there are a good number of lower-paying jobs in wealthier communities. Add this all up and there are affordable housing concerns within a wealthy county and this extends beyond the common suburban debate about “work-force” housing for essential government employees like teachers or policemen or providing cheaper housing for young graduates and/or older residents.

TED curator on moving away from McMansions to better-designed cities

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TED Curator Chris Anderson recently spoke at Harvard and envisioned a bright human future in cities rather than McMansions:

Designers have the answers to “the most important question we all face,” TED curator Chris Anderson told imminent Graduate School of Design graduates on Wednesday. “Can the coming world of 10 billion people survive and flourish without consuming itself in the process?” The key lies in finding “better ways to pattern our lives,” he added: “There is nothing written into our nature that says that the only path to a wonderful, rich, meaningful life is to own two cars and a McMansion in the suburbs.”…

Much of a successful future lies in “re-imaging what a city can be,” Anderson said. People will live closer together—“if only to give the rest of nature a chance,” and cities already offer “richer culture, a greater sense of community, a far lower carbon footprint per person—and the collision of ideas that nurtures innovation.” But architects have the means to incorporate “light, plant, trees, water, and beautiful forms into the city’s structures and landscapes” and imagine new ways for people to work and connect “without sacrificing your grandchildren.”

Technological trends in computer-assisted programs and construction techniques and materials, he said, make design more adaptable and effective than ever in terms of large-scale projects that affect millions of lives. “Suddenly the fractals and curves of Mother Nature are a legitimate part of the architectural lexicon.” Moreover, cultural and intellectual notions around common human values are changing. “The toxic belief that human nature and aesthetic values are infinitely malleable, and determined purely by cultural norms” is dying, Anderson asserted. In its place, there is growing agreement that “we should think of humans differently, that far from living in separate cultural bubbles, we actually share millions of years of evolutionary biology.”

Anderson is right about the powerful cultural narrative of the American dream of a single-family home in the suburbs: it is a narrative that could change in the future. McMansions and suburbs seem to operate here as the antithesis of Anderson’s vision: sprawling, mass produced places that separate people into different “cultural bubbles.” This story suggests that Anderson thinks designers can offer an alternative that would change how Americans think about the city. Besides participating in TED, how exactly would designers make this pitch to the broader culture?

I wonder what exactly Anderson’s cities might look like and what cities (or city neighborhoods/areas) might serve as models.

The recent fate of suburban “lifestyle centers”

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In sprawling suburbia, there can often be a lack of central spaces where people come together. One recent solution proposed by developers is to build “lifestyle centers,” basically walkable outdoor shopping areas where people can park and spend a day. Here is an update on how these facilities have fared in recent years:

All forms of real estate were punished by the financial crisis, but among the hardest hit was the category that includes the Arboretum. Known as lifestyle centers, they are upscale suburban and exurban developments fashioned as instant downtowns, replete with lush landscaping, communal gathering spaces and a faux Main Street vibe. Eschewing traditional anchors and recession-proof tenants such as grocery stores, the centers promote traffic-building events such as wine tasting, concerts and exhibitions.

Nationally, lifestyle vacancy rates grew faster than any other retail segment, and rents declined the most, an average of $7.38 per square foot, during the last three years, according to CoStar…

Across the Chicago market, shopping center vacancy rates have made slow progress, dropping to 8.6 percent in the first quarter from a high of 9 percent last year, according to the CoStar Retail Report. In 2007, prerecession vacancy rates were below 7 percent…

The lifestyle center blueprint is generally credited to Poag & McEwen, a Tennessee-based developer that pioneered the concept outside Memphis in 1987. The firm has since built more than a dozen centers nationwide, including the north suburban Deer Park Town Center, which opened in 2000 as the area’s first…

I’ve been to a few of these facilities in the Chicago area and the experience is fascinating . I haven’t seen any sociological research on these relatively new spaces but here are some interesting facets:

1. This article suggests these centers can be “instant downtowns.” It would be interesting to see whether these facilities are typically built in places that already have downtowns (so they are competition or supplementary if the community is quite large, like the center at the northwest corner of Route 59 and 95th Street in Naperville) versus being built in suburban communities that never had downtowns (so these facilities are more like replacements). I would also imagine that many suburbanites also have a different image of downtown, more similar to a “Main Street” commonly found in small towns (and enshrined at Disneyworld). But perhaps “a faux Main Street vibe” is good enough for suburbanites. What would it take for one of these facilities to really catch on in a suburban community and replicate some of the functions of a downtown?

2. Can these really be “public spaces”? Do people actually come here regularly to sit and interact with others or are they more like outdoor shopping malls? It seems like there needs to be a critical mass of people who would visit these facilities and would also commit to them before they would be more than shopping malls. These places are a long way from the neighborhood life suggested by people like Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (I also wonder how much of these facilities are actually private property versus public property.)

3. How many of these facilities are accessible by anything other than cars? It is one thing to push New Urbanist concepts (walkability, denser spaces, more traditional architecture) but another to plop New Urbanist designs in the middle of typical auto-centric communities.

4. What sort of lifestyles are promoted by such centers? It is likely the typical American consumerism of middle and upper-class suburbia that one can find elsewhere with perhaps a few events or activities might to provide a touch of color and attract people (wine tastings, exhibitions, etc.).

5. Is an investment in a facility like this better than an investment in strip malls or more conventional shopping centers? I imagine communities might find them more visually attractive but do they generate more sales tax revenue?

Suburban downtowns turn to art to cover up vacancies

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Suburban downtowns have struggled for decades: the advent of the strip mall and shopping malls after World War II lured away shoppers. Suburbs have pursued numerous strategies to sustain or revive their downtowns but vacant storefronts can still linger. In recent years, it has been popular to fill these empty spaces with art:

Hamilton and some suburban officials believe using vacant buildings to display art is a good way to help suburban downtown districts keep up appearances while exposing art to those who otherwise would not browse around art galleries.

“I think art in a community plays an important role in revitalization,” said Jeff Soule, director of outreach for the American Planning Association, whose organization encourages creative use of vacant spaces. “Art adds a sense of place to a neighborhood. It shows that people care about the community.”

This push toward art seems to make a lot of sense: it hides vacant spaces, it allows local artists, residents, and young adults to participate in creating art, and suburban shoppers and residents get to see some interesting pieces. But, I remain somewhat skeptical about the revitalizing power this kind of art can have. In a downtown that simply has some vacancies because of the economic downturn, perhaps art works as a filler and keeps up appearances. But in downtowns that struggle all the time (and there a lot of these in suburbs), can public art really make a difference by bringing in enough foot traffic to revive businesses? These always struggling downtowns have much bigger problems that need to be addressed.

Of course, public art has not been limited solely to suburban downtowns: big cities have pursued this option for years. I vividly remember the stir created by “Cows on Parade” in Chicago. But again, these pieces work because there is already a critical mass of people in the area even as they can then attract more people.

Suburban treehouse illustrates typical NIMBY debates

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A man in Arlington Heights, Illinois built a fairly large treehouse in his backyard: “It has a wraparound deck, two levels, small windows, siding and roofing that mimics the family home’s.” It drew the attention of several neighbors who then complained to the village who subsequently passed new regulations for treehouses. However, since this treehouse was built before the new regulations, it can stay put.

This could just be a local issue except that the pattern of events fits many NIMBY discussions in suburban communities. Here are some of the comments made by people involved in the story:

Village Manager Bill Dixon said treehouses have not been a major issue in town and urged the village board not to overreact to one particular case, no matter how bad.

“There are 18,000 single-family homes in town, but this is the only one we’re hearing about,” he said.

But Trustee Thomas Glasgow, who lives in the neighborhood, said the treehouse is overwhelming. He believes property values in the area have diminished as a result.

At Glasgow’s recommendation, the board agreed to limit the structures to the height of the home on the property.

Mayor Arlene Mulder expressed concern, however, that the code could effectively ban treehouses for some properties.

But Trustee Joseph Farwell said: “Sometimes, you can’t build exactly what you want where you want it because you live in a community.”…

But Piotrowski [one of the neighbors], who spoke at a recent village board meeting, said the new rules don’t go far enough. He wants to see the houses banned all together because he believes they are not safe.

For his part, Belmonte said the whole conflict could have been avoided if Piotrowski had raised his concerns right from the start.

In one story, you have many of the elements of a typical NIMBY issue: a person does something with their property that some neighbors do not like. These neighbors argue the action reduces property values and raises safety concerns. The community ends up creating new regulations to avoid such issues in the future while knowing that they may be limiting people from doing similar things. The property owner says that if the neighbors had simply come to him first, none of the rest of this had to happen.

The key quote to me comes from one of the village trustees: “Sometimes, you can’t build exactly what you want where you want it because you live in a community.” This is true – communities have all sorts of regulations and zoning in place to help limit some of these issues. And much of this has been codified even further in homeowners associations that really limit some of the possible actions by individual owners. Homeowners submit to these regulations because they don’t want to have to worry about what their neighbors might do and to protect their all important housing values. But the enduring question from this story and other similar cases is this: where does a community draw the line between the rights of individual property owners and the interests of neighbors and the rest of the community? At least in Arlington Heights, future treehouse builders will be more limited in what they construct in order to balance these two competing interests.

Quick Review: Waiting for Superman

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I recently watched the documentary Waiting for Superman, a film that received a lot of media attention after it was released late last year. It does try to take on an important on-going problem: how to improve American schools? This is an issue that one can hear average citizens, politicians, college professors and others discuss frequently. Here are my quick thoughts about this film’s take on the issue:

1. The framing of the issue in the opening and conclusion of the film is quite effective. Toward the beginning, we meet several students who want to go to the better schools (often a magnet or charter school) in their school districts. But since they are not alone and these schools are attractive to many families, the students have to go through a lottery. At the end, we see the results of the lottery. This is the question that is raised: should a child’s educational opportunities be left to chance in a lottery? Get into one of these elite schools and life will likely be good; not get in, and children can be doomed to terrible schools that are termed “drop-out factories.”

2. While the documentary hits on some possible reasons behind the problems of American schools (No Child Left Behind, bad neighborhoods, tracking), the main emphasis here is on two things:

2a. Teachers are a problem. The idea pushed by the documentary is that the bad teachers need to be replaced and unions resist this process. Michelle Rhee, the attention-getting superintendent of the Washington, D.C. schools is followed as she tries to make a deal with the union involving merit pay for the good teachers. Interestingly, we don’t really see evidence from districts where teachers are not as unionized – does this help improve student performance?

2b. Parents deserve choices in schools. This involves magnet or charter schools within districts plus other operations such as the Harlem Children’s Zone and KIPP schools.

2c. I wish they had put these two ideas together more: so how do teachers operate within these “better” school settings? How are teachers trained and encouraged within these settings? What exactly about these schools boosts student performance – is it just the teachers?

2d. I also wonder how all of this might be scalable. Later, the documentary talks about raising expectations for children and Bill Gates talks on-camera about having the right “culture” in the schools. How might this fit into the idea about American schools being more of a competition-based system versus a country like Finland that pursues more equal outcomes across the spectrum of students?

3. Even though most of the documentary is about inner-city schools, it also follows one “average” suburban girl and the suggestion is made that even suburban schools are not doing that well. This is backed up with data showing that American students are the most confident among a group of OECD nations but their scores are behind those of many nations. Additionally, it is suggested that these suburban schools are not preparing students well for college where a good number find that they need to take remedial courses. Since many Americans likely are influenced by school district performance as they look to move, what exactly is going on in these suburban schools that needs to be fixed? Outside of the exemplar schools held up in the movie (magnets or charters, KIPP, Harlem Children’s Zone), are there any good schools? Is the whole system so broken that no school can really succeed?

Overall, I was a little surprised by the message and who I have seen support it: improve the pool of teachers (and fight the unions!) and offer parents and communities more choices of schools that are more effective in providing educations. Considering what I often see blamed as the problems of schools, No Child Left Behind or funding disparities, this is a change of pace.

At the same time, I wonder about whether these two solutions are really the answer. Are they band-aids to the issue or would they really solve educational problems in America? I keep coming back to the idea of residential segregation, the concept describing how races and social classes live apart from each other. Life chances are better for people growing up in wealthier, more educated settings but of course, these people can buy their way into such settings and avoid others. Would school districts near me, say in Naperville, a suburb that takes great pride in its schools, really go for the idea of charter or magnet schools? Do they even really need them?

At the very least, this documentary raises some interesting issues and a different perspective on a problem for which many wish to find a solution.

(This film was well-received by critics: it is 89% fresh at RottenTomatoes, 99 fresh out of 112 total reviews.)

When you don’t like a teardown home, call it a McMansion

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A local official in the Philadelphia suburbs writes about a Lower Merion site where a notable older home was torn down and now a home home is being constructed. What is interesting here is how the official describes how preservationists are using the term “McMansion” as part of their criticism of the new house:

Those who criticize the Kestenbaum residence built in La Ronda’s place are trying to deflect blame for their own failure over many years. Their use of terms such as “McMansion,” “McMonstrosity,” and “cookie cutter” demonstrates ignorance of what Kestenbaum is actually building.

I have toured the construction site and can report that Kestenbaum is building a home befitting the historic traditions of craftsmanship and old-world elegance that are hallmarks of the Main Line estates of yesteryear. The home is made of hand-chiseled stone, with extensive masonry work and important architectural details throughout.

The home bears no resemblance to the cookie-cutter McMansions found in expensive tract housing elsewhere in the Philadelphia region. To so characterize the Kestenbaum residence is insulting, incendiary, and ignorant.

I have met the neighbors of the new Kestenbaum home. I have spoken to property owners with a real interest in what happens in their community and their neighborhood. Their reaction to the new construction is consistent with what I have reported. The responses of so-called neighbors described recently in The Inquirer are in fact those of a few preservationists who are continuing to pursue their one-sided agenda, regardless of whom they hurt in the process or what falsehoods they promote.

It seems that the use of the term “McMansion” is quite effective here, hence the response from this local official. The term suggests that the new home is a “cookie-cutter” home lacking in appropriate architecture. Compared to the older home that was on the site (and you can read a bit more about it here), preservationists see the new home as a travesty (see an example here). Overall, this new home is likely quite different than the suburban McMansions that one might expect to find not too far away. But by using this pejorative term in a teardown situation (an older home replaced with a newer home), preservationists have tied this new home, however nice it may be, to negative images of the exurbs.

This story also provides an example of questions that pop up in communities throughout the United States: what exactly should be done with older homes, particularly well-designed estates?

Study human flourishing rather than happiness

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A well-known psychologist suggests we should study human flourishing rather than just happiness:

In theory, life satisfaction might include the various elements of well-being. But in practice, Dr. Seligman says, people’s answers to that question are largely — more than 70 percent — determined by how they’re feeling at the moment of the survey, not how they judge their lives over all.

“Life satisfaction essentially measures cheerful moods, so it is not entitled to a central place in any theory that aims to be more than a happiology,” he writes in “Flourish.” By that standard, he notes, a government could improve its numbers just by handing out the kind of euphoriant drugs that Aldous Huxley described in “Brave New World.”

So what should be measured instead? The best gauge so far of flourishing, Dr. Seligman says, comes from a study of 23 European countries by Felicia Huppert and Timothy So of the University of Cambridge. Besides asking respondents about their moods, the researchers asked about their relationships with others and their sense that they were accomplishing something worthwhile.

Denmark and Switzerland ranked highest in Europe, with more than a quarter of their citizens meeting the definition of flourishing. Near the bottom, with fewer than 10 percent flourishing, were France, Hungary, Portugal and Russia.

Studiers of happiness tend to ask about two areas: immediate happiness and longer-term happiness, typically referred to as “life satisfaction.” But Seligman is suggesting that these questions about satisfaction don’t really move beyond the immediate mood of the respondent. Additionally, the questions need to be adjusted to account for relationships and whether the respondent feels a sense of accomplishment in life.

It is interesting to see some of the cross-country comparisons. How might national or smaller cultures influence how individuals feel about life satisfaction? In the long run, do people actually have to be accomplishing something satisfying or is it more about perceptions? Can living a decent life in the American suburbs be ultimately satisfying for Americans or do they just think that it should be?

I wonder how these findings line up with earlier findings that religion leads to higher levels of life satisfaction.

(I also wonder if people think that the language of “flourishing” seems archaic or overly humanistic.)

An architect places the McMansion in a box of mirrors

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An architect recently spoke at Dartmouth and discussed his thoughts about McMansions:

Cruz showed the audience his representation of “McMansions,” or luxury suburban residences, which have become a large part of the ideal American home. Cruz’s “McMansion,” exhibited at museums throughout the nation, is a small plastic model home placed in a box of mirrors. The image repeats into infinite space, epitomizing the monotony of traditional suburban landscapes.

Alternatively, citizens can come together to create new plans for their neighborhoods, Cruz said.

“The mythology of the American dream of ownership has become unsustainable,” Cruz said. “We need to rethink ownership, and rethink how a small house can become a small village.”

Cruz is well-known for his research on the Tijuana-San Diego border and most recently received the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, which recognizes leaders’ efforts to improve economic opportunities. He is currently a public culture and urbanism professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he co-founded the Center for Urban Ecologies.

It sounds like Cruz defines McMansion in these ways: they are luxury homes, meaning they are expensive and have a lot of features, and they are monotonous (“cookie-cutter”) when placed with a bunch of similar houses in a neighborhood.

Here is a little more about Cruz’s 2008 work titled “McMansion Retrofitted” at the San Francisco Art Institute that emphasizes the spaces created in the suburbs by recent Mexican immigrants:

McMansion Retrofitted, 2008
Plastic model, pedestal with mirrors, and two videos
Courtesy of Estudio Teddy Cruz…

The areas of San Diego that have been most impacted by this nonconforming urbanism are concentrated in its first ring of suburbanization. At a moment when developers and city officials are still focusing on two main areas of development—on one end, the redevelopment and gentrification of the downtown area and, on the other, the increasingly expansive suburban sprawl resulting from an equally high-priced real estate project supported by an oil hungry infrastructure—it is the older neighborhoods of San Diego’s midcity that remain depressed and ignored. It is here in the first ring of suburbanization that immigrants have been settling in recent years, unable to afford the high rents of the downtown area’s luxury condos or the expensive “McMansions” of the new suburbs, though providing cheap labor for both.

Interesting – Cruz’s preferred neighborhoods sound quite vibrant and diverse. You can read more here about Cruz’s thoughts on how immigrants are changing neighborhoods in San Diego. Also, Cruz has in the past been involved with converting McMansions to multi-family housing (though this home is 70,000 square feet – more of a mansion or a castle).