CityLab: ‘Build More Housing’ Is No Match for Inequality

A new paper by two leading economic geographers suggests this argument is simply too good to be true. Titled “Housing, Urban Growth and Inequalities” and forthcoming in the journal Urban Studies, it’s written by Andrés Rodríguez-Pose of the London School of Economics (LSE) and Michael Storper, who divides his time among the LSE, UCLA, and Sciences Po in Paris. According to Storper and Rodríguez-Pose, the notion that an insufficient supply of housing is a main cause of urban economic problems is based on a number of faulty premises. They say the effect of supply has been blown far out of proportion.

They agree that housing is part of the problem: “Housing market failures can imperil local economic growth and generate problems such as segregation, long commute times, deteriorating quality of life, homelessness, and barriers to social mobility for certain populations,” they write. But housing policy, and zoning restrictions in particular, are certainly not the be-all and end-all of urban problems. Upzoning expensive cities is no match for the deep divides within—and especially between—cities, and is wholly insufficient to remedy them. [...]

A key factor here is the growing divide between highly-paid techies and knowledge workers and much lower-paid people who work in routine service jobs. These service workers end up getting the short end of the stick, spending much more of their income on housing in expensive cities. “Under these circumstances moving to big cities provides no immediate benefits for workers without college education,” Rodríguez-Pose and Storper write. [...]

Solving the economic and geographic divisions of America and other advanced countries is a task that goes far beyond local housing policy. “Planning deregulation and housing costs are neither going to solve the problem of areas lagging behind, nor are they likely to have an impact on the economic development of dynamic cities,” Rodríguez-Pose and Storper write. Worse, they caution, “an excessive focus on these issues at the expense of serious and sustainable development strategies, can fuel economic, social and political distress and anger in declining and lagging areas that can threaten the very foundations on which economic activity, both in less developed and more prosperous areas, has been erected in recent decades.”

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CityLab: The Frankfurt Kitchen Changed How We Cook—and Live

Viewed through a 21st-century lens, kitchen politics usually fall along the fault line of gender and domestic labor: We debate who does their share of the housework and cooking in a family, and what that means for women’s professional development and personal well-being. The fault line prior to the mid-20th century wasn’t gender, but class. We’re used to thinking of kitchens as a universal kind of room that almost everyone has—as essential as a place to sleep, or a bathroom. Our great-great-grandparents were not. [...]

This approach makes sense when you consider that the only fully-outfitted kitchens were, prior to the 20th century, true workspaces where household staff labored in the service of a well-to-do (or even middle-class) family. For the poor and working class, dwellings generally had no discrete kitchen. In a one- or two-room home, be it an apartment or a farmhouse, a large cast-iron stove was likely to be the only major appliance, and might also be a family’s primary heat source. A table or set of shelves might serve to house utensils and tools, but there were no standardized cabinets or kitchen “furniture” as we know them today. [...]

A major critique of the Frankfurt Kitchen in feminist literature of the 1970s onward was that its smallness isolated women there, and though it was theoretically emancipating due to its efficiency, it essentially guaranteed that wives and mothers would continue to bear the brunt of domestic work alone. Nearly a century later, though considerably improved upon since the 1920s, the gender imbalance in domestic labor remains stubbornly in place.

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The Conversation: The dark reason new mothers share photos of their kids on Facebook

Our study looked at new parents’ use of Facebook. It followed 182 dual-earner couples who were expecting their first child across the year surrounding their transition to parenthood.

When their babies were nine months old, we surveyed these mothers and fathers about their use of Facebook and other social networking sites in the early months of parenthood.

We asked our questions of fathers as well as of mothers, but we quickly discovered that mothers were the ones spending more time on social networking sites and taking primary responsibility for posting baby photos. Thus, we focused our research on new mothers.

One of the first things we discovered was that certain mothers—specifically, those who were more concerned with others validating their identities as mothers and those who believed that others expect them to be perfect parents—were more active on Facebook. They reported stronger emotional reactions when posted photos of their child received more or fewer likes and comments than anticipated. [...]

A related study may provide an answer. Based on survey data from 721 mothers, Sarah Coyne from Brigham Young University and her colleagues reported that mothers who more frequently compared themselves to others on social networking sites felt more depressed, more overloaded in the parental role, and less competent as parents.

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The Daily Beast: The Secret Sex Lives of Nuns

In February, the Vatican magazine Women Church World published an exposé that uncovered hundreds of stories of nuns being forced to have abortions and, in some cases, secretly raising their children in nunneries and pretending they were orphans. The entire editorial staff of the magazine quit a few weeks after the issue came out because of what they described as ambivalence about the problem among the men of the church. [...]

Even outside the clergy and religious orders, men are not supposed to masturbate because the church believes that such an act amounts to spilled seed that should be used for procreation. And women are prohibited from masturbating under Catechism rules because the church believes that self-pleasure “robs the potential of sex” from the partner and it often gives way to the potential for “adultery of the heart” if a woman is fantasizing while touching herself. [...]

According to a study conducted by Margaret Halstead and Lauro Halstead entitled “A Sexual Intimacy Survey of Former Nuns and Priests,” which was first carried out in 1978 and which has consistently confirmed results, including an update in 2018, more than half of all nuns say they knew of sexual activity going on in their convents. Some 44 percent of the most recently surveyed say they knew of sex between sisters, while 54 percent say they knew of sexual relationships between nuns and male members of the clergy. Just over a third say the nuns they knew were fooling around were doing so with lay people, including married men in the congregation.

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Salon: Donald Trump’s electoral map has shifted dramatically. How does it bode for his 2020 chances?

“Even small movement among these voters — who represented 9 percent of voters in 2016 — may prove significant heading into the 2020 presidential election,” wrote Robert Griffin of the Voter Study Group. “Obama-Trump voters are also disproportionately white, non-college educated and, as a result, are likely to be well distributed geographically for the purpose of electoral impact.” [...]

Of course, these numbers will continue to vary, as they have throughout his presidency. And heading into 2020, Trump will have the advantage of incumbency, which confers a sense of legitimacy and stability to even someone as erratic as the current president. But even with a strong economy, Trump has been unable to lift his numbers in these key states back to the level they were at in early 2017. And on a broad scale, Trump has never broken 50 percent approval nationally. [...]

Trump still has about another year and a half before November 2020, so his fate is certainly not sealed. Democrats should not be overconfident, and there is still a significant possibility they could lose. Trump’s approval going forward is dependent on a range of factors. And his ultimate re-election fate may hinge on who his opponent in the Democratic Party turns out to be (though, it may not — it could be that nearly any of the potential Democratic contenders would end up doing about equally as well as one another). But the Republican Party should not be assured of its chances for victory. And if Trump loses in 2020, many people looking backward will say it was inevitable.

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Politico: Emmanuel Macron’s plan to fix Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

France's proposed approach, which is laid out in a 32-page report authored by Benoit Loutrel, a former Google employee and telecoms regulator official, emphasizes flexibility and does not call for penalties over individual failures to police content by the platforms. Instead it urges much more regular oversight by regulators, focusing mainly on the processes and resources used to identify and remove hate speech.

In that sense, the French idea embraces some measures of self-regulation by large platforms — even if the report maintains that a social media company could face fines of up to 4 percent of its global annual revenue in the event of serious and repeated breaches of a yet-to-be-voted on hate speech law.[...]

In addition to legislation on fake news, France has championed a digital tax on the European stage and set it in motion nationally following the move's failure at the EU level. A member of Macron's party is also pushing a law against online hate speech that would force platforms to bring down flagged posts within 24 hours — one that is likely to be informed by Friday's report.

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The Huffington Post: Trump To Be Denied Honour Of Addressing UK Parliament During State Visit In June

Although Barack Obama made a landmark address in Westminster Hall in 2011, Trump will not be allowed the same privilege after the visit’s organisers decided to avoid a diplomatic row over his “racism and sexism”. [...]

MPs will be sent away from Westminster from May 23 until June 4, which means the building will be effectively closed during a key part of the President’s trip to London. [...]

Whitehall insiders revealed that the UK government had not made a formal request to the Commons speaker and Lords speaker, which is the usual protocol, to allow Trump to speak. [...]

Some government supporters of Trump’s visit, including foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, had been pushing hard for a change of heart to allow him to make the address to parliament. [...]

Corbyn, who has refused an invitation to a state banquet with Trump and the Queen at Buckingham Palace, has warned that Britain should not be “rolling out the red carpet” for Trump.

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