
Deferred in the ‘Burbs - lkrubner
http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2015/12/31/deferred-in-the-burbs/
======
bpodgursky
Suburbs are vastly better than cities at producing a vital resource which is
often overlooked -- people.

There are more unicorns than middle-class families in urban areas with more
than 2 children. Whereas in suburbs larger families are both plausible and not
uncommon.

This won't show up in your tax revenues when children are in school or
college, but the 25-year-old yuppie GDP powerhouses who then move downtown
will indeed make up their tax revenue.

Hint -- think about the really good (US-born) software engineers in SF you
know. How many grew up in dense urban areas? Barely any, I'm willing to bet.
Most are from the middle-class 'burbs, and didn't go to decrepit urban
schools.

Maybe someday US cities will be effective at raising families, but it's not
today. And ignoring this contribution to future tax revenue is an existential
mistake.

~~~
viscanti
> Hint -- think about the really good (US-born) software engineers in SF you
> know. How many grew up in dense urban areas? Barely any, I'm willing to bet.
> Most are from the middle-class 'burbs, and didn't go to decrepit urban
> schools.

This might miss the larger trend. Most 20-30 somethings in the US grew up in
the suburbs because there was a larger movement to the suburbs at that time.
The fact that things worked out well then, doesn't mean that's always the
optimal strategy. It only tells us what a potentially successful path was in
the 80s and 90s.

As cities become more desirable, and as housing prices there increase, the
reasons for moving to the burbs shrink. Ignoring the demographic shift back to
cities is a mistake. Correlation from what seemed to work in the 80s and 90s
isn't necessarily causation or correlation in a world that has changed.

~~~
Spooky23
One word: schools.

Cities are awesome until you have kids.

My son is 4, we're faced with sending our kids to an ok public elementary
school, followed by a middle school where stabbings in the hallway are not
unknown. Or pay for a private school. Or buy a house 6 miles away in the burbs
and go to a nationally recognized school district.

~~~
doyoulikeworms
As we've grown older (and nearer to having children), my partner and I have
moved further away from the city for precisely this reason.

Cities are great fun, and have a whole lot to offer a childless person/couple.

But they are also (typically) more expensive, dirty, dangerous, crowded, and
loud than the typical suburb. A home large enough to comfortably raise 2 kids
in a safe neighborhood and with good schools is financially impossible for us
in the city, but not in the suburbs.

While the parent poster is wise to note that demographic correlation does not
imply causation, I do think that suburbs are much better for raising a family.
They seem designed for it, compared to cities.

Of course, if someone reading this is raising a family in a city, then more
power to you. I'm only speaking from my own experience.

------
jerf
So, we'll move everyone into the cities, where infrastructure is also going to
hell because of vast unfunded pension obligations then?

Unconvinced this is a special "suburb problem". Urbanists would be ill-advised
to get to triumphalist about how _they_ don't have an unfunded obligation
problem until they're sure they don't.

~~~
matthewmcg
What's special about the suburbs is the lower density. A dense city, at least,
has more people (and more potential tax revenue) per unit of infrastructure to
offset the cost of maintenance and replacement.

As you point out, there might be other governance-related problems that offset
the advantages density confers.

~~~
mcbrown
Dense cities also have higher cost per unit of infrastructure. Just think
about the cost of digging up a gas line in Manhattan vs. in the suburbs.

Which effect dominates - revenue vs. cost? I don't know. But that article
certainly doesn't do anything to illuminate the issue.

------
Aloha
I see a whole lot of unsubstantiated opinion, without much sourcing to back it
up.

Infrastructure is a huge issue, suburbs are not alone in this issue, but I'm
not convinced the problem there is worse or more pressing than in the inner
city (or anywhere else) I'd also point out in places like California, the
infrastructure in the suburbs is upward of 20-30 years older then the 70's
without substantial problems (save for the City of Los Angeles, and unprepared
sidewalk backlog).

~~~
jchewitt
If you read the short book / media project
([http://www.strongtowns.org/](http://www.strongtowns.org/)) referred to in
the post, you'd see that the author (not the blogger) covers this issue amply.

It's not a ra-ra-cities-good-burbs-bad book. It explains why the
infrastructure in suburbs is not financially sustainable without reference to
speculations of higher energy prices (like a Kunstler would) and how political
leadership often goes awry in how it pursues development.

The tl;dr which I'll do in three paragraphs is that suburbs tend to
overestimate how much tax revenue they're going to get from the development
pattern that involves a lot of corporate brand name stores popping up off of
main roads. The taxes don't pay for the roads so the towns have to lean on the
Federal government for funding.

The suggestion is that towns and businesses need to redevelop downtown areas
which have more efficient infrastructure costs because they will no longer be
able to externalize those infrastructure costs onto large state governments or
the federal government.

Also, across the board, politicians and developers tend to emphasize the
benefits of new developments while minimizing the presentations of the costs
of maintenance. The book also kills some new-urbanist sacred cows like bike
lanes because they are usually both insane from a financial perspective and
extremely dangerous for both cyclists and drivers.

So the thrust of it is that if you thought the cities were bad, the suburbs
are often worse. It will also make you rethink a lot of the media hoopla over
urban development in countries like China which make supersized versions of
these kinds of errors. A $100 million infrastructure project sounds awesome
until you realize that it will cost $500 million without generating that much
in taxes to prevent it from collapsing into a blighted ruin in less than a
decade.

