
Quantifying the Cost of Sprawl (2013) - jseliger
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/05/quantifying-cost-sprawl/5664/
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rootusrootus
Left out of this equation is perhaps the most important number to buyers:
price. All of these numbers show us how much more efficient it is to serve
households in urban environments, and how much more tax revenue it yields for
governments -- but that is not passed along to buyers.

For example, the suburban house that I paid $350K for 15 miles away from
downtown would cost a $1M if I wanted a similarly appointed condo in the city.
And that excludes the additional taxes, building fees (which can be
substantial), and parking costs.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
I think the article starts with the assumption that all other things are
equal, ie comparing a $350K home in the city to a $350K home in the suburbs.
Both homes will pay the same in property tax, but the home in the suburb
requires vastly more infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, gas, electricity,
telecommunications, etc) to support it for the simple reason that it suburbs
are more spread out. Those costs are hidden from the homeowner, the city must
absorb them. In the scenario where the home in the suburb is much less
expensive than the one in the city, this problem is only exasperated because
now the suburban house pays even less in property tax.

~~~
rootusrootus
I guess I don't fully understand the problem here. Acknowledging that this
likely varies by location; the 'city' I live in (Oregon City, OR) is a small
town and completely tax-separate from the big city I work in (Portland). Not
even in the same county. The folks in Portland aren't subsidizing my suburban
lifestyle, and Oregon City is filled mostly with other homeowners just like
me. So aren't we paying our own taxes towards our water, sewer, gas,
electricity, and so on?

My property taxes are lower than Portland at the same time that my
infrastructure should cost more based on the analysis given in this article.
But instead, I'd pay more in all regards to live downtown.

~~~
hyperpape
If you work there, then there's an infrastructure cost to your travel, office,
etc. There are also some tax revenues when you do stuff in town. But you're by
no means separate.

~~~
ant6n
Exactly. That's how suburban bedroom communities in effect suck away tax money
from the big cities they rely on.

~~~
madengr
Not exactly. I pay 1% earnings tax to Kansas City, MO even though I live in a
KS suburb.

~~~
hyperpape
I don't think that arrangement is the norm, though I believe it existed in
Pittsburgh where I used to live.

In any case, even where those taxes exist, you still have to look at the range
of services consumed vs taxes paid. You might be underpaying or overpaying.

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emodendroket
I think if you think about it it is obvious that tax revenues per square foot
are going to be much higher for a many-story apartment complex than for a
single-family home. Less than clear is who would be compelled by that
information to move to a city center.

I am a bit surprised to see tax revenues for a Walmart are lower than even the
home; it seems to me like that would be a more interesting angle to explore.

~~~
ocschwar
Well, that was written more to say that municipal governments should allow
more apartment complexes, than to say you should move in to them.

That said, if you prefer your 2 acres far out of town, be aware that the bill
for sprawl can come due in the worst possible ways. It's pretty nasty to find
out that since your city hall couldn't afford to keep up with repairs on your
sewer main, they didn't. It's especially bad to find out by a raw seweage
backup in your cellar. Perhaps that would compel you?

~~~
emodendroket
If you really live in the hinterlands you probably have a septic tank and a
well, and besides that similar issues can crop up in cities too.

~~~
ocschwar
Then you're liable to live where fire department coverage is nominal (as in,
it exists, but the drive to your house is so far there's no point.)

~~~
emodendroket
That's not necessarily true. Have you spent much time in the suburbs? Plenty
of places you could live where you don't have city water or sewers but the
town fire department isn't very far away.

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shawnee_
_And compact development produces on average about 10 times more tax revenue
per acre._

So the author of this article is trying to sell this approach based on the
"benefit" of tax revenue per acre? Is that (should that be) the primary goal
of a city's design... to squeeze out as many tax dollars as possible from
every square inch of space?

The main problem with compact development (my observation) is the HOA fees
that tend to be baked into owning in one of these "compact" developments.
These fees are very often ostentatious and do not map out to actual costs of
building or maintaining shared infrastructure "compactly". And let's not even
get into the pitfalls of CCRs that disallow pet ownership, fine members for
paint colors, etc.

~~~
davidw
A city should be financially solvent, and a lot of them are not, long term.

[http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-
scheme/](http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/)

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sAuronas
Except it doesn't... developers skip the urban infill for the burbs because
the gross costs (entitlement fees) are way higher. Sure, it cost less per lot
for urban infill when you only consider lot costs for sewer, water, etc (in-
tract) but older municipalities are so fucked with decaying tax bases and
overhead that they try to extract it all in taxes and fees (mellow-roos and
in-lieus) that they make single family development cost-prohibitive anywhere
but the outermost rural areas. To compare condo to single-family cost is just
stupid: the cost of building multiple units is - only - justifiable when the
prices are sufficiently high: in urban areas that are already built up. First
world problems.

~~~
trome
Eh, utilities aren't the main showstopper, zoning is. So much land in cities
is zoned for 2 to 3 story single family detached homes, and upzoning it after
homes are built on that land is hard to do, and its even harder to find a
block that is all willing to sell to one developer. Hence why the edges of
gullies and ravines become where high density buildings are built, since low
density housing is very hard to uproot.

What this causes is more low density urban infill, which is much more
destructive. Where one older home was before, 2 cheap as chips 3000sqft
concreteboard boxes will be built as cheaply and quickly as possible. Builder
errors like forgetting to put eaves on the house will be fixed by nailing an
overhang on afterwards, only to leak 4 or 5 years down the line.

If high density development was easier in urban cores, there would be much
less incentive to build shoddy detached housing. As it stands there is a ton
of pent up demand, and tons of zoning to block development.

~~~
sAuronas
Zoning is not a show-stopper everywhere. You'd be surprised to know that many
places you can develop much higher densities "by right." Phoenix, for example,
has the density potential of Brooklyn near its downtown (just south) but it's
solely ramshackle, chicken-wired single family at the moment. Downtown Oakland
could be 100 times as dense as it is currently. Zoning, per se, isn't the
issue there but the people who will fight it at all costs (the developer's).
You could rezone all of West LA to Manhattan density tomorrow and you'd get
nowhere... People will fight it.

You're right, I oversimplified because I was being facetious. I used to be a
developer of both sprawl (Toll Bros and KB Home) and infill. I am bitter about
how we live in the US. No one should be paying $500/SF to live in Oakland when
there are empty lots and single-story strip malls occupying space for high
rises. High-density development is no more difficult than suburban development
from a technical matter. It is a market problem. The costs get driven up
arbitrarily at times by bad actors.

