Thinkcorps

Two of my current interests include homes design and green trends. So, when I see this Treehugger story, “Home Design Trends: Smaller, Closer, More Urban“, I click. Turns out, it’s based on a WaPo article on a published summary of an AIA survey of member architects. I love Treehugger, but regurgitations of excerpts of summaries just doesn’t do anyone any good.

First off, there’s no raw data to be had anywhere here, just abstraction on top of abstraction. So, I don’t really see how anyone (even the AIA, who sponsored the survey) can expect to draw any real conclusions. You should always expect surveys to be biased and try to get behind the numbers and compare your conclusions to the survey-makers’.

I love dataviz, but numbers are easily skewed and fudged, and people with no statistical background are churning out Excel charts like there’s no tomorrow. And yet, we buy into it every day. Someone makes a pretty chart and we’re all like, “Wow, that’s awesome!” All down the media chain, it’s assumed that someone else has done the homework.

Well, today I’m calling bullshit! It happens again and again, and no one calls anyone on it. So, no offense to any of the parties involved, but I’ve got a ask a few questions:

(images copied from the AIA summary article)

1. What’s with the weird data format? Percent reporting sector “improving” minus percent reporting “weakening”? What does that even mean? I’d guess it’s an easy way to exaggerate the numbers. Example: 100 people, 50 answer improving and 25 answer weakening, (25 answer something else we’ll never know). So, is the answer 50% minus 25% = 25% positive. Or 33% positive as (50%-25%)/(50%+25% total respondents)? I guess we’ll never know.
   
2. Given that this is Q3 data only,  I have to take this as “housing market is awful; people are spending what money they have on remodeling vs. buying.” No exactly earth-shattering news.
   
3. 
   As far as this expressing an interest in “new urbanism,” well, maybe. Mixed-use projects are not built by architects for families. They’re built for developers. And in almost any market, building in a denser (read: urban) environment and adding retail reduces risk in your investment. It’s not a trend because of ideals, it’s a trend because the current market  bears it out. I don’t see how this says anything about people not wanting to commute.
   
4. When I go through the list of “neighborhood features,” it has me wondering where these trends are coming from. Someone had to tell the architects they wanted these things, right? And we know it wasn’t families. Here’s a few of my personal guesses (no guarantees implied).
   
   • Does “traditional neighborhood design” = Adapting to lowest-common denominator buyers in the market to eliminate developer risk?
   • Does “dedicated open space” = Conforming to city ordinances?
   • Does higher-density development = Maximize our return on investment?
   • What’s “access to commercial”? (See previous guess)
   • Does “affordable housing” at 0% = Times are tough, screw the working class?
5. 
   I’m also very confused about the home style trends. Is new urbanism all about bringing the suburbs back into the city? Because that’s what this survey seems to say. Architects are seeing demand for features that echo the suburban single-family home. And how do you reconcile the trend of “single-story homes”? I mean, is there anything less urban, less green than that?
   

So, at the end of it all, AIA, WaPo and Treehugger have some new content, while I have far more questions than answers as well as having wasted an hour on this post.

Tags: aia, housingtrends, surveys, statistics, dataviz