Author archives: Christine McLaren
Christine McLaren is a freelance journalist who investigates solutions to urban problems. Her writing and research explores how the shape of our cities impacts the lives and behavior of those living in them and how shifting social, environmental, and economic climates are changing our relationship with the urban fabric.
Based in Vancouver, Canada, she has written for publications such as Spacing, Zoomer, BC Business, Unlimited, and Momentum Magazines and reported for numerous print, online, and television news outlets. She was also the lead researcher for award-winning Canadian journalist and New York Lab Team member Charles Montgomery’s upcoming book Happy City, and conducted research for National Geographic Emerging Explorer Alexandra Cousteau‘s upcoming book, This Blue Planet.
Posted to General on May 17th, 2012 by Christine McLaren
In my last post I sat down with economic historian Dr. Nikolaus Wolf for a crash course in how Berlin’s economy has remained so much weaker than that of comparable Western and European capital/large cities until now. And until now, of course, that economic anomaly has been mirrored by abnormally low housing prices.
With that in mind, it would be easy to imagine that the sudden leaps in rent that Berlin is currently experiencing are simply the direct result of a finally recovering economy.
To a certain extent, this is true. But it’s not quite the whole story. Continue reading…
Posted to General on May 16th, 2012 by Christine McLaren
As soon as one begins trying to understand why rents are currently rising so sharply in Berlin, there’s one question that immediately and unavoidably comes to mind right off the bat: why have the rents historically been so low in the first place?
Consider, for instance, that the average rent in London recently broke £1,000 (over €1,200) per month, or that a studio apartment without a doorman in Manhattan fetches an average $2,200 per month (€1,697) and a one-bedroom just short of $3,000 (€2,315). Meanwhile, an average-sized apartment, measuring 70 m² (about 750 square feet), at the average Berlin price of €7.38/m² (compared to upwards of €20/m² in Paris) would ring up at €516.60. The difference is obviously staggering.
And it’s a touchy topic here. Bring up the fact that Berlin’s rent prices have, until now, been scores cheaper than in almost any major comparable Western/European city on average, and Berliners will batter you with a fuming slew of reasons why it’s an unfair card to pull out. Continue reading…
Posted to Comfort Crash Course on May 2nd, 2012 by Christine McLaren
Since arriving back on shore following the Comfort Crash Course, I’ve received several requests from readers for a bibliography of all the texts I read while at sea, and I have promised continually that I would follow through. I’m in the throes of trying to learn as much as I can about one of the biggest issues here in Berlin, which has a lot to do with confronting comfort—affordability—but since there’s always something new coming down the pipes, if I don’t do this bibliography now I’m sure I won’t ever be able to get to it. So here goes!
I started off the Comfort Crash Course with a really fascinating book by Charles Duhigg called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (New York: Random House, 2012), which taught me about the neurological function that fuels both our cravings and our habits in a feedback loop. If you’re not willing to commit to the whole book, David Brooks wrote an interesting review and analysis in his New York Times column, titled “The Machiavellian Temptation”—though I highly recommend making the effort for the full read. Other good reading on this that I used as background includes Jonah Lehrer’s “The Willpower Trick” in Wired, as well as his great article “Blame It on the Brain” in the Wall Street Journal.
I then moved on to looking at the historical shift in the definition of the word comfort, and how it ultimately legitimized the phenomenon of popular consumption patterns. The main texts I cited here were John E. Crowley’s fascinating 1999 essay “The Sensibility of Comfort” (The American Historical Review 104, no. 3 [June 1999], pp. 749–82) and Marc Levinson’s book on the—surprisingly fascinating—history of the shipping container, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). The latter is not for the faint of heart, but a serious indulgence for the geeks among us who are into learning about the massive effects that simple or singular inventions can have on society as we know it. Continue reading…
