Mike, Ph.D.

On Thursday, I successfully defended my dissertation and have the approval of my committee (with revisions) to submit it to the graduate school "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." My committee was tremendous, offered some really great suggestions to smooth some of the rougher edges of my work, and was really supportive. I honestly believe that my greatest professional accomplishment in the past six years was having the foresight to pick an amazing group of people to support me in this quest.

The celebration was tempered slightly by this nagging head cold that I got on my trip out to defend and the fact that it really hasn't set in that this phase in my life is really coming to a close. I knew that it was ending, but even after completing my defense, it hadn't truly set in. I don't think that I really had time to step back and really realize the amount that I had learned until one of my committee members, who read the first draft of my first research paper in grad school, pointed out how much I had learned and developed in grad school that it really started to set in. I think that it is easy for me (and I imagine others in grad school) to get lost in how much we feel like we don't know and fail to realize how much knowledge and skill we do acquire. Although it seems arrogant to publicly acknowledge that, I think that it is something that we often do too little of in grad school.

I will be working the next couple of weeks to finish out my revisions and working on a project this summer that I am really excited about. Then, it will be off to Philadelphia for the next phase in this adventure!

I Have a Date

No, not that kind of date...I think that E. might (deservedly) shoot me if I had that kind of date. Nope, I have a date for my dissertation defense: May 28th. This means that I need to have my dissertation completed in the next three weeks. Seeing as how dissertation is not close to being done right now, this means further that the next three weeks are likely to be both stressful and busy. In conclusion, blog posts will be on even shorter supply from yours truly.

Good News

Some of you who read this blog might remember that I made two resolutions for the new year. I have made significant progress on one — I'll let you guess which one. Anyway, I have failed to post here for the past month because I have been traveling (as I mentioned) to several cities across the country. What I didn't mention is that several of those trips were for post-doc interviews bacause I didn't want to jinx anything before I started the interview process.

I found out last week that I received an offer! I am super excited and will be starting the position in the Fall. Now, all I have to do is finish this pesky dissertation.

Lonely

I, too, am feeling like I'm really down to nothing lately. I have spent the better part of the last two weeks writing personal statements for a post-doc that is due at the end of the month. This has left me little time and energy to write anything except said personal statements. Not to mention the internal guilt that shows up every time I try to do or write something besides these personal statements. Today, however, I am making an exception because I am running into a wall and I just need to do something besides continue to bang my head into it.

I don't know what my problem is. Perhaps it's the fact that my dissertation remains in a constant state of flux^[1] and I have very few empirical results to describe in the personal statements. Or, it might be because I really want this post-doc and I am psyching myself out over the application because I am nervous about it. Either way, it is preventing me from doing much else right now and has made me feel very one-dimensional and lonely. I'm sure that it will get better and I've started to put together the sound-bite/cocktail party version of my research which will help for the remaining applications. But, damn, if it is this bad this year, I am really not looking forward to the full-on job search process!

^[1]Part of this flux was caused by the fact that, upon meeting with my advisor three weeks ago, he suggested that a chapter and a half of my dissertation might not be viable with the data that we have and I should wait until we have more data. The good news is that I have research ideas for two to three years down the line. Of course, the bad news is this left me without a substantial part of my dissertation and required simultaneously re-formulating my dissertation concept and trying to re-work this application. But, my dissertation is certainly better for it and is actually becoming more coherent as a result, so I am grateful for that.

"Back" to School!

This week marked the return of undergraduates to the university at which I work. Not all of the undergraduates—this week is just reserved for the newbies. The mixture of excitement and fear was etched into their faces. The orientation mentors, on the other hand, seemed relieved to be back at school away from their summer jobs, parents, and back with their friends. It was also interesting to watch all of the parents drop their kids off...now that is where you see panic. Honey, are you sure that she is going to be alright. I mean, this is New York City... That, combined with their attempts (mostly failed) at a) driving around campus and b) finding parking was hilarious.

It's funny, back at the university at which I am a student the end of summer was always marked by the dread of finding parking spaces anywhere within the vicinity of campus. Here in New York, the end of summer is marked by the l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g wait for the elevator because so many people are getting on and off. It's funny how the same event, with many of the same feelings is marked differently existing in different surroundings. At least it struck me that way. Perhaps it was just the physical manifestation of the various transitions that have occurred and brought me to New York and my "second-home" university.

Although school being "back" in session has very little effect on me since I am neither taking nor teaching any classes, it does mark a countdown that is fraught with excitement and nerves. I guess it's not unlike those freshman starting their first class next week. After a year of transitions, this year is going to be pretty intense given the goals that I have laid out for myself. At this time next year—if all goes well—I will hopefully be Dr. Mike and be marking another pretty big transition to the the next phase of my career, hopefully with a job/post-doc in hand. I guess it's t-minus two days and counting...^[1]

^[1] That reminds me that I need: a) an advisor voodoo doll, b) committee member voodoo dolls, c) application reviewer voodoo dolls, and d) graduate college voodoo dolls. I'll put them on my birthday wishlist.

Dissertation Advice from the Best

This PowerPoint presentation was forwarded onto our graduate student e-mail list. I thought that others who are in the process of thinking or writing about their dissertations might find it useful.

It looks like these slides were adapted from a presentation that Charles Tilly gave. There are five slides with content, and I pulled the one that I found the most helpful. It shows the relationship between the risks and rewards of choosing dissertation topics. Basically, he recommends picking a topic that is somewhere in the middle, though closer to the bottom-left than the top-right (he suggests saving that for your post-doc).

Also, for those who might have missed other really helpful dissertation advice check out Fabio's Grad Skool Rulz number 10 that also describes picking a topic and numbers 12 & 13 on actually writing your $^#@@ dissertation (his words, not mine). And, for what it's worth, I really wish that I had listened to perchesk's sage advice a while back to "try to write a lot of the dissertation this summer before ASA, since it is hard to make research and writing progress once the job market is in full swing."

Now, back to my prospectus...

Racial Residential Segregation Readings

A friend of mine who started a few years after me in my program is taking her prelim this summer and asked if I would write up a list of readings that I think represent the literature investigating racial residential segregation. Of course, I did not want to recommend an extremely long list to her - she does have a significant chunk of other readings to get through. I think I failed on the brevity for which I was striving, but I thought that it was a great exercise to really think through the "canons" in an area in which I study. I know that there are at least a few other sociologists who read this blog, so I thought that I'd pass along my list for others. I am sure that there are readings that I overlooked and others which might not be considered "canons" that I did include. If you want to comment, please feel free to let me know what your list would be.

Bruch, Elizabeth E., and Robert D. Mare. 2006. “Neighborhood Choice and Neighborhood Change.” American Journal of Sociology 112:667-709. link. I think that this study is the best to try and engage thoughtfully with Schelling's original study of neighborhood dynamics and looks at the effect that both data collection methods and our understanding of the nature of racialized preferences has on understanding the dynamic nature of housing patterns. But, more than that, it really tries to seriously engage with the implications of racial residential preferences in a way that is unparalleled in the current literature.

Charles, Camille Zubrinsky. 2003. “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation.” Annual Review of Sociology 29:167-207. This is the best review piece on racial segregation out there. It is very clear, lays out dominant theories and implications.

Emerson, Michael O., Karen J. Chai, and George Yancey. 2001. “Does Race Matter in Residential Segregation? Exploring the Preferences of White Americans.” American Sociological Review 66:922-935. link. This is one of the only studies that looks at the role that specifically racial preferences play, net of other characteristics of neighborhoods. It relies on hypothetical neighborhoods, but finds that race is one of the over-riding factors in neighborhood preferences.

Crowder, Kyle. 2000. “The Racial Context of White Mobility: An Individual-Level Assessment of the White Flight Hypothesis.” Social Science Research 29:223-257. link. This paper looks at the individual-level moves of whites and what types of neighborhood factors influence the moves of whites out of and into neighborhoods. It is one of the first papers that looked at the theoretical importance of separating moves out of neighborhoods from the moves into a neighborhoods with an empirical study.

Farley, Reynolds, Charlotte Steeh, Tara Jackson, Maria Krysan, and Keith Reeves. 1993. “Continued Racial Residential Segregation in Detroit: "Chocolate City, Vanilla Suburbs" Revisited.” Journal of Housing Research 4:1-38. link. This paper is a follow-up to the original “Chocolate City, Vanilla Suburbs” paper that Farley wrote with colleagues based on the 1976 DAS. They find some evidence of changing attitudes, but preferences that are still very averse to integration. This is a staple of any segregation reading list.

Frey, William H., and Reynolds Farley. 1996. “Latino, Asian, and Black Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Are Multi-ethnic Metros Different?.” Demography 33:35-50. link. This paper looks at the trends in segregation for Latinos, Asian-Americans and blacks in a comparative light and finds that multiethnic metropolitan areas have different dynamics of racial segregation than two-race (i.e. black/white) metropolitan areas. This is a key reading for understanding comparative relationships across racial groups and the importance of other racial groups on the dynamics of black/white segregation.

Harris, David R. 2001. “Why Are Whites and Blacks Averse to Black Neighbors?,.” Social Science Research 30:100-116. link.Harris counters the idea that racially biased preferences expressed by both whites and blacks are biased against living in communities with a significant proportion of black residents. Instead, Harris argues that this is due to the fact that residents are really reacting to the fact that black neighborhoods have higher levels of crime and poverty. Therefore, resistance to living with black neighbors is really the result of race being a “proxy” for these other issues.

Lee, Barrett A., R. S. Oropesa, and James W. Kanan. 1994. “Neighborhood Context and Residential Mobility.” Demography 31:249-270. link.

Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American apartheid : segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, Mass. ; London, Eng. :: Harvard University Press. Need I explain?

Quillian, Lincoln. 2002. “Why is black-white residential segregation so persistent?: Evidence on three theories from migration data.” Social science research 31:197-229. link.This is a fascinating paper that uses the probabilities that individuals make particular types of transitions from one neighborhood type to another (i.e. different levels of segregation). This paper examines the possibility that a person’s neighborhood context can change both because of a move by that family, but also of a neighborhood changing around them. It concludes that preferences among whites drive a good portion of the racial residential segregation in the country.

Sampson, Robert J., and Patrick Sharkey. 2008. “Neighborhood Selection and the Social Reproduction of Concentrated Racial Inequality.” Demography 45:1-29. link. In many ways, this paper builds off of Quillian’s 2002 paper, but it examines a much wider set of neighborhood characteristics and uses different methodological techniques and focuses more explicitly on the ways in which African Americans are trapped in high-poverty neighborhoods. Their ultimate conclusion is that race, above and beyond other SES and neighborhood factors, tends to dominate why blacks end up in poorer neighborhoods than whites.

Schelling, Thomas C. 1971. “Dynamic models of segregation.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1:143-186. link. This is a famous paper that establishes the importance of understanding the dynamic nature of residential patterns and that rational moves based on integrative (or at least minimally segregationist) preferences can lead to segregated cities. It has fueled a great deal of research into complex systems and dynamic modeling outside of segregation research (cf. Granovetter), but has made a profound contribution on the field of segregation research.

Writing, Just not Here

It has been well over two weeks since I last posted here, after expressing a hope that I would be able to write more frequently after my last post. Ah well, I recall hearing something about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

Most of the radio silence was caused by the fact that I was busting my behind to finish my second prelim—essentially our version of a master's thesis, I suppose. Anyway, it is a journal-length article that I am hoping to send out this month, meaning I'm not sure how much I will be able to commit to the blog in the near term. I did finish and defended last week, which was a huge relief. Although my committee gave me several great, albeit time-consuming, suggestions to make before I send the paper out for review, I am feeling really good about it. Now I hope that I can figure out how to incorporate all of the suggestions.

Passing this prelim made me step back and evaluate grad school. In part because I am looking to finish in the relatively near term, in part because this was the last bureaucratic hurdle (as in paper to get signed) to jump before moving onto my dissertation, and in part because it did feel like an accomplishment. Although completing my second prelim was considerably later in the timeline than it should have been, this was largely due to the fact that I have had several other opportunities along the way that have delayed this particular event but, I hope, have helped my career progress.

Thinking about this also made me realize that there is great advice out there about getting through grad school and different parts of the grad school experience. I realized one particularly salient suggestion from lmw's class on "Launching your Academic Career" which suggested: "Think about each step along the way and what issues you faced, how you handled them, and what you learned." Although I didn't write one out step-by-step, I was thinking that it might not be a bad idea to write it up now so that I can remember the pitfalls and get through the next several papers much more quickly.

It also made me realize how little instruction I have received on the "brass tacks" of writing. This is probably somewhat due to the fact that we all have our own styles of working and, to each of us, they all seem a little dysfunctional (see Impostor Syndrome). Part of it, I'm sure, is that there are, from what I can tell, deep divisions between the kind of writing for qualitative projects and quantitative projects^[1]. I am lucky to have had the good fortune and opportunity to collaborate on projects with two different professors, so that I could see how it's done. This is obviously the best, but there are some basic things that seem to be fairly consistent and it just seems weird to me that this part of academia is kind of left hanging. For instance, we don't really have an academic writing course or a proposal writing course as part of the curriculum. Although lots of professors will incorporate this into their classes, there isn't anything going over the basics of how that is done in a systematic way.

Part of me also wonders if it is because writing has become so basic to many professors (and, even, advanced grad students) that it is easy to forget what it was like to learn to do these things. Like riding a bike - I can remember learning, but I'm not sure that I could teach someone now how to do it... Or learning to drive, things that are so basic I do them mindlessly now took a great deal of effort to learn (which, caused endless consternation for both of my parents as they were teaching me...like, not SLAMMING on the breaks when I tried to stop). That's part of what I love about having both a grad student and larger community in the blogosphere—we get great advice on both levels. Now, I just need to be sure to do my part to contribute my fair share...

^[1] In fact, one of the interesting criticisms given to me in my defense was that I was trying to combine a sociology focused on cultural analysis and one based on quantitative writings and my writing ended up falling, unsuccessfully, somewhere in between those two.

Productive no more

Necessary work productivity has trumped blog productivity this week and it was going great until today. I was moving on a project that I have been really excited about, but has been on the back-burner for the past several months. Instead of just admitting that this project has taken the position next to the tea kettle that is never used in the summer months and writing my more senior collaborators on the project to this effect, I continued to delude myself into thinking that I was going to get it done. Of course, this meant long periods with little work and great disappointment or other periods where I would get such minimal work done on the project that it was laughable that I would even send it to the other collaborators.

Anyway, this week, I made huge strides forward towards accomplishing the basic analysis of this project. I either obtained or created all of the variables necessary to replicate a previous analysis, completed all of the data management tasks to line up the proper hierarchical structure and even conquered Stata's best attempts to get me to give up on using Sean Reardon's Stata interface for HLM^[1]. Anyway, I got all of the analysis complete and then I tried to figure out how to run spatial analysis in Stata. Needless to say, it doesn't come with a built-in package and my old process has been to use a separate program, GeoDa, to do all of it.

I am, however, quickly getting tired of having to use three or four separate software packages to work on a single problem. Therefore, I again invested the time in attempting to figure out how to use a spatial analysis package built for Stata. That is where the "things were productive until today" part enters. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why I could not get this to work. First of all, the package requires four separate utilities just to get the data formatted properly for analysis and each step compounds any problems created in the previous steps. Anyway, I finally figured out that I had a single missing value in a single observation which was holding the whole thing up. Then, when I finally got the proper data form to get the program to run, it didn't agree with the values that I got in the other program, making me wonder why they come up with different results which means more time trying to figure out the shady underbelly of programming even though any programming knowledge I do have is self-taught meaning that it is both laborious and probably wrong meaning more potential delays in this project.

Therefore, following ash's excellent example to productively (hopefully) blowing off steam, I dedicate this entire day to hating a) Stata programs that are difficult to figure out; b) Stata programs that don't work and c) loss of productivity to said problems.

And now, I am sure that you are hating me now for writing such a boring post. G'day.

^[1]For anyone who uses both Stata and HLM, it is worth the time investment to get this program set up and learn how to use it. No more switching back and forth between data management in Stata and analysis in HLM. Of course, I guess you could also just use SAS, but learning a whole new programming language is not an investment I want to make right now...

Good News

It turns out that when I tried to transfer my university account e-mail to my GMail account last time, I did not anticipate that all of the 3000+ e-mails sitting in my inbox would come with it. Not realizing this until after my GMail account was flooded with hundreds of e-mails, I set up a filter to send all of the e-mails from my university e-mail account to the trash. Well, I had forgotten about this particular filter when I sent my e-mails over this time. The good news is that I found all of them in the trash and recovered all of my e-mails. The internet gods must be appeased.

In other good news, I found out this week that the paper I mentioned earlier this week got accepted! I am so excited, and my nightmares that I made some mistake in the analysis or used the wrong file for the output can finally come to an end (I've checked, double checked and triple checked and, absent one scare where I pulled up the wrong file but didn't realize it for a while, everything seems to be in order). Now I can actually put a line in my CV that says "Publications". Good news all around, particularly before the really good news of getting married to E. and having a week and a half to relax in Italy!

To Blog or Not to Blog?

Part of my ongoing fascination with the implication of the internet is how a revolutionary new technology can have an impact on the non-virtual social world. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the impact of Wikipedia on the way in which existing social institutions, particularly the news media or academia, adapt to the proliferation of web-based reference material. squires pointed out that Wiktionary "is basically a recapitulation of whatever is already published about the topic"^[1] and is not, therefore, really a new social form as much as a new medium through which traditional social forms exist. But another interesting question is what happens when those institutions are confronted with new technology and, potentially, forced to adapt.

This has been brought to light in a thread at Orgtheory.net where the appropriateness of blogging the content of academic talks given at university seminars. The discussion has also continued to Jeremy Freese's Weblog. Jeremy has taken the position that "anything that is cv'able is blogable"—a position, which, in my opinion is very sensible. Jeremy has certainly taken some heat in the Orgtheory thread and feels that he is "staking out a lonely position" there. The main objection (and, indeed, the main thrust of the thread) is expressed by Ezra Zuckerman's position that early adapters to the blogosphere have a huge advantage if they can institutionalize blogging as an academic norm whereby late adapters and people who have higher costs (i.e. those that do not derive enjoyment from blogging) are forced to adapt. This, Ezra argues, cedes an incredible advantage to early adapters that, I perceive, he thinks is unwarrented^[2].

This brings up several interesting sociological questions that I find really interesting, in no small part because sociologists are the subjects of a sociological inquiry (very postmodern). The first question to me is the role of institutional norms in the development of new technology -- a topic which I discussed in my Wikipedia post mentioned above. Ezra brings up one of my main points from that post when he says "the main reason I don’t do this is that I have no time." While, overall, I agree with Jeremy that public discussion is a positive for the discipline, I also recognize the externalities considered by Ezra. If academics are required to respond to online discussions about their work that they did not initiate, it represents a significant investment in time that is required for which one might not receive any formalized institutional recognition. Where does this work fit in the academic triumvirate of teaching, service and research — especially when we know that the last of those is prioritized the highest? If, as Ezra suspects, bloggers are able to transform the academic norms to require that professors respond to online comments, then some recognition of this responsibility needs to be recognized by departments and institutions. This is particularly true for non-tenured faculty members who give up valuable research time responding to blogs and is probably part of the reason why Jeremy keeps emphasizing that his ideas are most applicable to senior faculty.

The second interesting question presented by this discussion is the role of social norms and scripts. The general consensus over the course of the Orgtheory.net thread is that permission should be requested to blog about an academic presentation. Jeremy brings up the fact that there are two forms of permission: 1) a request for permission where the receiver of the request has a legitimate claim to deny that permission (i.e. a child asking his parents for an extra scoop of ice cream for desert), or 2) a request for permission that is a linguistic hedge to show deference where the receiver of the request is expected to oblige (i.e. asking someone to turn the volume down if one has a headache). There are legitimate reasons to ask for permission. The most important, in my view, is allowing the author to respond if s/he so desires. I think that Jeremy would agree that the goal of discourse is not furthered if the original author is not given a chance to respond. In fact, a lack of response would be antithetical to Jeremy's goal. It reminds me of a similar thread at Crooked Timber where academics place the request "Please do not cite or quote without permission" at the tops of papers. This is essentially a form of moderation to ensure that researchers citing the work have the latest version or that the authors know where their work is being used to contribute to an academic discourse. To me, this is the second sense of permission.

The other reason that I find it to be appropriate to ask for permission is because, as an author, I might have stronger or weaker confidence about particular conclusions. If I were a faculty member and Jeremy came to me and asked "Would you mind if I wrote about your presentation on my blog?" my response would be "Yes, please feel free. Let me make sure that you have a copy of the paper. I should tell you that I believe conclusion A to be very robust, but I am more hesitant about conclusion B. Therefore, I plan to do more work on that part of the paper - so you might want to keep that in mind when you are writing." (In my head, I would also be thinking, "Whoo hoo! Now the hundreds of people who read Jeremy's blog will read about my research!"). In this way, I am not restricting what Jeremy writes or limiting the benefits to the field, but am, in a sense, providing a guide to replicate the kind of fruitful discussion that can happen at academic seminars where constructive criticism is created to a wider audience than those who attend a single academic seminar at a single (or a couple) of institutions^[3].

All of these questions bring to mind other important questions of sociological importance. The first, who is the academic "public"? Is is the "invisible college" linked instantly through the internet or the older, established community linked through the slower academic journals? This, then, is related to a second question. As sociologists look for a greater position for public sociology, then the role of the internet needs to be part of that discussion. On the one hand, academics are not journalists. Our discipline is marked by careful consideration of all available evidence and this mission might be undermined if we are pushed to discuss work much more quickly or frequently. Trying to do both the "journalistic" side of research (responding to blogs, posting about research) and the "academic" side of research (publishing in journals, writing grant proposals) means that there either need to be benefits for doing both (in tenure reviews, for instance) or that both cannot be done as successfully without requiring more time devoted to this work.

^[1] I tend to find the same thing is also true in Wikipedia; however, what I notice more of in Wikipedia than in traditional academic published research is citations to mainstream media sources such as the Washington Post or New York Times. While this is still a very circumscribed list of potential citations, it does expand the understanding of some topics beyond their strictly academic research to at least include sources that have a much larger circulation.
^[2] Of course any summary does injustice, but in the interest of providing background, I don't want to reiterate the whole thread here.
^[3] By restricting the conversation only to people at particular institutions is also a way in which privilege is created and maintained. While early-adapters might have an advantage creating externalities to benefit bloggers, restricting conversations to academics in the ivory tower also creates externalities for those who would need to academics in those settings. The difference, I think, is that that kind of privilege is accepted while blogging changes the "winners" and "losers" of privilege and, thus, causes this much discussion. I think that this is the point that Dave made to my Wikipedia post.

Coming Up for Air

It feels nice to (finally) have a productive week! Paper submissions for the Population Association of America were due yesterday. I am sure that none of you can think of a more interesting conference than one full of demographers talking about fertility, moralitymortality and migration but I actually really enjoy these conferences. The PAA conferences are smaller than ASA and the papers in sessions are more tightly topically linked. Of course, that came to bite me in the butt when my paper didn't get accepted for a session last year because it didn't fit in any of the sessions.

I resubmitted that particular paper, investigating who would consider a redeveloped neighborhood and why, for consideration again this year. There are a few more relevant sessions this year (last year, it really didn't fit into any of the sessions very well). I am also submitting a paper with a friend adapting a statistical technique from environmental science to estimate social environmental factors. The final paper is an extension of a paper that I co-authored with a senior faculty member. We didn't have room for it in the original paper, so she asked if I wanted to submit this paper to the conference this year. It was exciting to submit it because we put quite a bit of work into this analysis before we realized that it wouldn't fit.

It feels nice to be done -- the last week has been kind of a sprint but it is cool seeing it all come together. There is something about looking at a paper with nicely formatted tables, figures and a real reference list to feel like I accomplished something. Hopefully some of these get accepted now!

Consumer Cities

Part of the reason that I got interested in studying gentrification is its importance in shaping American (and, as I am finding out world) cities. It is a fascinating location of a whole bunch of fundamental theoretical debates. And I don't mean "theoretical" in the sense of academically removed ivory tower stuff, but real fundamental debates about the underlying social issues facing American society. Gentrification, and the debates surrounding gentrification, narrow in on fundamental questions about the role of public financing for housing, jobs, education but also issues surrounding the environment, diversity and the role of public and private institutions in the development of new political ideas.

But, there are times when I find it uncanny how well timed things are. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I was discussing Lance Freeman's book in the context of the paper that I was am writing when the next day the AYR published a review of it. But, today I found something that is probably even more directly relevant. From the Creative Class Group (Richard Florida's consultancy business), there was a link to this article in the International Herald Tribune. It is discussing the role of demand-driven location decisions in the economic development of cities and how cities can cater to those demands. There was one particular part that caught my attention, however:

The number of these "consumer immigrants" - those moving back to the city seeking a better quality of life - is relatively small compared with the hundreds of thousands of poorer economic migrants who traditionally head to the inner city.

But the "consumer immigrants" have a special significance because they are rich. They are the wealthy, educated, creative types that Bloomberg wants to engage with in his PlaNYC, his initiative to ensure that the extra million souls he predicts will arrive by 2030 do not produce an unlivable crush in Manhattan.

He is pushing for a congestion charge to cut traffic and pollution, plans an all-hybrid taxi fleet, wants to plant one million new trees, and would like to make sure that every New Yorker lives within a 10-minute walk of a park. These are all innovations that the upper-middle classes increasingly take for granted.

In his reinvention of New York as a greener city, Bloomberg may have drawn comfort from the cover story of New York magazine this week. It showed that, despite the city's grime and noise, New Yorkers are among the healthiest in the country.

Interestingly, this is precisely the conversation that I am responding to in the paper that I am currently writing (vainly, it seems — though seeing this gives me hope that the issue is important). There are several critiques that I have of this and I outline them below.

First, it is true that the number of "consumer immigrants" is vastly outnumbered by the number of "economic migrants" nation-wide. But, the thrust of this argument assumes that assumes that the "poorer economic migrants" are not simultaneously consumers or may desire nice places to live^[1]. And, wouldn't the economic payoff of those vastly numerically more numerous migrants be, overall, a greater economic boom to the city if it captured that demand?

Second, the initiatives that Bloomberg is proposing are seen, in many ways, as very progressive causes. And, I would argue that they are in fact very progressive causes. The problem is that the solutions are not. They reflect, in a certain way, the return of a New York tradition: the Rockefeller Republican. The effect of congestion pricing is also going to mean that places like Home Depot, Costco, etc. are going to be able to write off the extra overhead costs, but the smaller business person who relies on delivery to Manhattan is going to face a signficant reduction of profits. I in principle I agree with the fact that we need to reduce the use of cars; however, the recent subway problems after the flood indicate that money might be better invested in the mass transit system. Same with the "greening" of the taxis: Bloomberg ain't payin' for it - he's making the taxi drivers do that.

Finally, and I think that this made me the most irate, it might be true that New Yorkers as a whole may be becoming more healthy. But, let me offer an alternative explanation beginning from the premise of this article that more rich people are moving to the city. More rich people are moving in. Rich people tend to have better health than poor people and rich neighborhoods have better health than poor communities (net of individual differences in income)^[2], therefore, it may simply be that the sick people are dying or being pushed out. The implied assumption in that statement is that all New Yorkers are healthier but, in fact, it may just be that New York residents are richer - which is the very point of this article.

There are reasonable debates to be had about whether the "consumer city" is good or bad public policy and I would be interested to hear what people think about these proposals. While the environmental effects and social mixing of diverse cities are important, we also have to think about policies that are fair to the service-workers and current residents that provide the cheap labor that makes the "consumer city" possible. Furthermore, we also have to see that the demands and needs of all city residents are met and not necessarily pander to the few rich "consumer immigrants" that might move to the city.

Ah, so much here -- so I am going to go finish this paper now and let you know what I find out about these issues...

Related:

• The "Tolerant" Creative Class
• The New Class Struggle
• Race & Redevelopment I: Gentrification

^[1] On another note of language, it is interesting how this argument might be able to recast the immigration debate — or if it will be used to recast the immigration debate.
^[2] A. Diez Roux, 2001. (For propriety's sake I should mention that I work on a project on which Ana is a co-PI)

Half Full or Half Empty?

I have spent the last two and half weeks trying to write the introduction to this paper. The eight pages that describe what I am doing, which, at least theoretically, should be the easiest to do.

But, to frustrate me further, I came across an article tonight that is a major review of the literature that describes some of the fault lines and problems in the field. I have been doing the research for this paper fo six months and I found this paper tonight! One can look at this discovery as a good thing—most of the introduction to my paper actually outlines the fault lines described in this review. And, finding this paper (it was based on an editorial comment co-authored by the same person a couple years earlier) has definitely pointed out some interesting readings to go to when I write the next one of these infernal things. On the negative side, though, what the hell is so wrong with my research skills that I didn't find this paper until tonight!!! Six months!!! Ah, now I feel better.

But, then again, there is glass all the way full news.

ASA, etc.

This past week has been super crazy. I was attending the American Sociological Association annual meetings (which have received extensive coverage at Inside Higher Ed this week). This largely meant catching up with friends and going out to LOTS of meals and coffees, etc. Having felt very out of place at other conferences I have gone to in the past, the combination of moving away from Ann Arbor and having friends who have jobs and are no longer at Michigan made me realize that the real value of these meetings is being able to catch up with old friends. The combination of catching up with old friends and having the ability to commute to the meetings made this one especially enjoyable, but I can see how they will be great in the future as well.

Not all of this was non-academic thrills. I got to see several presentations that were excellent. Probably the most helpful was one where several journal editors provided tips to help get manuscripts published. For those who are interested, an excellent low-down is provided by anomie. It was really helpful thinking about how the actual nuts-and-bolts of this profession work. I also went to a really interesting session on urban sociology that included a paper about bars and nightlife in the Lower East Side. I decided after that talk that I really screwed up trying to develop my "project" (a.k.a. the dissertation - but somehow I heard a lot of people call it that this weekend) and should have come up with something that would allow me to go out to bars and qualify it as research. The paper was actually really interesting and relates to a more quantitative project that we were looking at possibly doing, so that was pretty cool. The other papers in the session were also interesting.

Since I have been so absent, I need to get my nose to the proverbial grindstone. But, since Dave and I were discussing the Columbia expansion project, I thought that I would pass this article about the project. Following the links provides a really good picture of what is happening regarding the "Manhattanville" or "West Harlem" project (depending on whether you would like to side with the University or with the Community). It was an interesting read regarding the role of universities in their communities, especially when those communities tend to be more poor, less white and have less political power than the university administrations.

I Don't Think He's Going to Win the Family Values Vote...

Via Jeremy Freese, it doesn't look like Guiliani can even count on the support of his daughter. According to this Slate article, it looks like she is supporting Obama. Can't see that going down well with the "family-values" conservatives; that is, unless they are as flexible on that as they are on crime and punishment.

Speaking of Jeremy Freese, I am looking forward to seeing him talk about Blogs as a Forum for Public Sociology along with Crooked Timber contributor Kieran Healy at the American Sociological Association meetings next week.

Race & Redevelopment I: Gentrification

In light of my recent epiphany that I need to figure out a way to make my research relevant and interesting, I am posting my first entry concerning one of the topics that I am researching: who would consider moving to redeveloped neighborhoods in Chicago and why would they consider those neighborhoods. This is the first section that describes the central role that "gentrification" has played in framing the debate.

The term “gentrification” was coined by Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe the process of working class Londoners being displaced by the wealthier “gentry” and changing the face of London as people knew it. The term, over the next four decades has been used widely in academic research as well as finding its way into the popular press and everyday vernacular. The popularity of the term as well as the subject probably has a great deal to do with the fact that the process is one that is incredibly visible. Cities, particularly those in the North American industrial “steel-belt” across the Great Lakes and Northeastern regions, were declared to be doomed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Although the reasons why cities were following this trajectory has been a cause of great debate, and included some combination of economic transformations from a manufacturing to service-based economy, the racial segregation of metropolitan areas and the concentration of poverty, there was a fairly universal agreement on the fact that cities were in a state of despair. Throughout the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, however, many of those cities formally thought to be doomed have seen a resurgence with residents coming “back” to cities.

Perhaps it is because people’s homes and neighborhoods have such an intrinsic value to them as to make them “a special sort of commodity” ^[1] that so much attention has been garnered by the transition of neighborhoods from poor to rich. Or, perhaps it is because the polar change in this transition was so unexpected from what was predicted in the 1970s and 1980s for American urban centers. Yet, the fact is that gentrification has taken one of the leading roles in understanding urban theory both academically and in every-day life.

And, while most evidence points to the fact that migration to suburbs has outpaced that to cities, it seems appropriate that gentrification should be a major component of urban theory given the fact that it is such a visible and recognizable feature of contemporary urban contexts. But, in absolute numbers, gentrification is not a trivial occurrence, either. Two researchers, Elvin Wyly and Daniel Hammel, have found that the size of the "urban underclass" which guided much academic and political debate in the 1980s and 1990s (think: welfare reform), is about the same size as the number of people involved in gentrification.

But, I think that another key element to understanding gentrification in the U.S. context is the fact that there is a strong racial component to gentrification in the United States. As the national economy of the U.S. shifted from a manufacturing to a service base, U.S. central cities were not only divided economically, but also racially. Because of explicit racial policies of And, while many people claim that this is largely due to white flight following the urban riots in the late 1960s, the process actually began much earlier and simply increased the rate at which white flight was occurring (for a great analysis of the 1967 riot in Detroit, read Thomas Sugrue's Origins of Urban Crisis). Whether this racial division was the direct consequence of urban economic restructuring or was primarily the result of high levels of racial segregation in most northern and eastern industrial cities is a matter of debate. What is true, either way, is that the poor urban residents in most northern and eastern cities that are likely to get displaced in the process of gentrification are African Americans. In fact, the perception that white people displace people of color as a process of gentrification is so pronounced that two researchers studying predominantly African American neighborhoods where gentrification is occurring noted that their informants mark the existence of gentrification to the time that they saw white people buying houses in their neighborhoods^[2].

While gentrification is certainly an important component of the urban environment that needs to be understood to fully comprehend the contemporary development of urban environments, I argue that it is important that gentrification not become the only lens through which urban development is considered. The paper that I am working on currently describes why I think that this is the case and how, in some ways, thinking about gentrification—particularly the context in which gentrification is viewed in the U.S.—can be problematic both for understanding what is shaping residential choices among metropolitan residents and it limits the possibilities of potential urban reform. I am working on writing that part up now, and so will let you know why I think that this is the case in a following post.

[1] Logan, John R. and Harvey L. Molotch. 1987. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press. [return]
[2] One of the studies is an article written by Mary Pattillo (for those interested, I have included the entire citation) who studies the North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood in Chicago. She has very recently published a book, Black on the Block, expanding on that study and which I have not yet had a chance to read. The citation for her article is: Pattillo, Mary. 2003. "Negotiating Blackness, for Richer or for Poorer." Ethnography 4(1): 61-93.
The other study was conducted by Lance Freeman who studied communities in Harlem and the majority-black neighborhood of Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. If anyone is interested in urban issues and wants to read an incredibly written book, I would recommend it to anyone: Freeman, Lance. 2006. There goes the 'hood : views of gentrification from the ground up. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.[return]

Letter to Readers

What I am studying is interesting. I can tell people about it at parties or at the bar and people are immediately interested. I tell people the “cocktail party” version of my research topic, specifically, “I study why people move to where they move.” And, it’s funny, almost every time I bring it up, people ask something to the effect of: “So, you mean, like, gentrification and stuff.” I find it really interesting that is the first thing that people think of when I tell them that I am studying where people move. Maybe it is being in New York in my mid-twenties or maybe it is something that is so pervasive in people’s minds that people think about it as something truly transformative of urban space that is what is immediately called to mind.

But, somehow, no matter how interesting this is, I am having one hell of a time trying to transfer it to an academic paper that is also interesting. I don’t know if it is because I am trying to hard to fit within current research or if it is because I am trying too hard to fit within rigid notions of what an academic paper sounds like. If it is the former, that would seem kind of silly – the entire purpose of writing an academic paper is to expand current knowledge and trying to fit it inside of certain pre-defined boxes is probably not the best idea. If it is the latter, maybe I need to stop trying too hard to write an “academic” paper and just write what I find interesting. I can always go back and reshape it to an academic paper later. I had an English professor in college who told me, “Just write as if you were speaking to someone, that is the best kind of writing there is.” It was good advice (though I am not sure that I took it at the time; I took the class pass/fail, which, it turned out, was a wise decision). But, I have also realized that I have a difficult time even talking about it to people beyond my one-line cocktail party answer. I can get to three or four sentences without losing entire interest but by the time I finish my first paragraph I can see people's eyes glaze over and I feel like that guy at the party that no one wants to get stuck talking to.

But, I also realize that writing only for academic journals means that my work is relegated to dusty library shelves (or unexplored, dark pixelated corners of JSTOR—not that any of my work has actually been published) where the two or three dozen other people interested in my specific research area read it. I study what I study because I believe that the things that I study are important topics to consider and debate. I want my research to be relevant and therefore I want to be able to explain what I do to people who might not have an advanced knowledge of statistics or urban development or racial segregation. Therefore, I am going to try something new on this here blog: I am going to to try and focus my writing here more on my research and research topics.

I am hoping that this will accomplish two things. First, in a very selfish way I am hoping that it will help motivate me to stay on track since I don't have much of an academic community here. But, second, I want to know what people think of my work and what I write. Is it interesting, boring, incomprehensible, incorrect, actionable? So, for those of you who read my blog fairly regularly, please post (as you always do), your thoughts and comments. Also, if you can, tell friends or colleagues who might be interested in some of the same topics that I write about. Finally, if you don't hear about what I am doing in my research for a while, remind me that I need to share more.

Cheers,

Mike

Dispatch from Nerdistan

I spent the good portion of my day trying to figure out how to get the free text editor Notepad++ to be compatible with Stata. Why, might you ask, am I doing this? Because among the things that are terribly wrong with Stata (and, I have to admit, for commercial ready-to-use software, there is very little...ehem), is that it's command-file editor is awful. If you make more than two mistakes in a row, and this would include what I perceive to be of deleting two separate lines at almost the same time, you lose that information. It is like writing on Microsoft Word back in the days of 286 processors.

The other really bad part of Stata's .do-file editor is that it does not highlight syntax. This may seem like a trivial thing, but since most of the work that I have gotten paid to do over the past two years is very intense scripting in order to make a very complex dataset usable - I have files that are approaching several thousand lines long. Not being able to find commands has become a huge pain (and making sure that I close all of my loops so that I don't have to run files over and over and over again). But, thanks to the help of some very very smart people (who are also, coincidentally great teachers if I was able to figure out how to do this) I managed to get the whole thing integrated so that I don't have to worry about making one two mistakes in a row anymore.

So why I am I telling you this, dear reader(s)? Because a) I am damn proud of myself for being able to figure it out, even when I thought that hope was lost; and b) because I know that some people occasionally read this blog who mess around in scripting languages and, therefore, I also wanted to sing the praises of Notepad++ and AutoIt for making it possible. Yup, I know, I'm a nerd; but a nerd who may manage to keep his sanity and eyesight for just a little bit longer!

I'm Back

Just to let everyone know, my apprehensions about my presentation were well-founded. My paper is in a state of entire disarray in which I don't seem to have enough theory to tie it together, the theory that I do have in the paper is not as the theory that I happened to come up with during the meeting (meaning that I should re-write the paper to fit that theory), and I am not positive that there is even a way to do what I want to do statistically. It would be nice to actually have some clue about this at some point.

On the other hand, I got to see some friends and hang out with cool people. And, Cleo the wonderdog got to see her boyfriend (yeah, that's right, I chaperoned my dog on a 600 mile booty-call). Seeing as how I have a great deal of work to do on this paper, blogging may be light in the next couple of days/weeks/months/years, but I will try to find time to pop on in...