
We need to do the math, even on “small” projects - oftenwrong
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/6/16/do-the-math-small-projects
======
frisco
There is another degree of freedom here: project cost. Why on earth does 0.32
miles of residential road cost $1.5M? Having just managed a construction
project much larger than this stretch of road myself, I am certain that a lot
of the blame here lies with the contracting process as well as outrageous fees
(and just sheer inefficiency) from the engineers and contractors. There is no
valid reason this should be so expensive. In the rest of the world, I
guarantee you they are not paying over a million dollars for something like
this and their standards are just as high if not higher.

I’m not sure there is an opportunity to fix this - I’ve spent a lot of time
thinking about this now and modeling it out - by building a better
construction company: most of the problem is, instead, essentially political.

~~~
BurningFrog
I read somewhere that China builds things at 1000x the efficiency of the US.

If that's speed or cost or if it's really only 100x doesn't matter.

This is a fundamental superiority Chinese society has, and I don't see the US
switching to a pro construction stance anytime soon!

~~~
mikestew
I've seen Youtube videos of collapsing buildings in China that were built not
terribly long ago (someone on HN posted a link in a related discussion a while
ago, but man, I would have to dig). So I would need some additional data to
conclude that China is doing it better than anyone else.

~~~
bmitc
In response to claims of progress and efficiency, constantly claiming it is
done via smoke and mirrors, with what appear to be extreme examples, seems
like a good way to be left behind, because it implies there's nothing to learn
from others, which is always false.

~~~
dragonwriter
Uncritically accepting propaganda of an authoritarian regime about the
superiority of it's system seems to be a good way to get oneself crushed under
the boot heel of authoritarians, either of the same regime or another taking
advantage of the attraction driven to that system.

~~~
Barrin92
I've been to China repeatedly over the last 15 years and you can see the pace
of change with your own eyes. Large cities built so fast that you can
literally walk through neighbourhoods and not recognise where you are after
two to three years, that's not propaganda.

The real danger today doesn't lie in authoritarianism but in a lack of state
capacity. Decades of fearmongering have led the US and significants chunks of
Europe to a point where governments can't provide cotton swabs during a
pandemic and can't build housing in their cities.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The real danger today doesn't lie in authoritarianism but in a lack of state
> capacity.

Yes, it does lie in authoritarianism, and that (“lack of state capacity”) is
literally _always_ the defense of authoritarianism, especially from those who
like to pretend to be merely reluctant supporters rather than ideological
devotees.

> . Decades of fearmongering have led the US and significants chunks of Europe
> to a point where governments can't provide cotton swabs during a pandemic

I'm not going to talk about Europe, but there is absolutely not a “state
capacity” problem produced by “decades of fearmongering” I the US of that
kind. Both the material capacity and the administrative capacity for the
federal executive to direct that material capacity with no effective veto
points exists. The present federal executive deliberately choose to apply that
power in the worst possible way, withholding it from practical and useful
supplies, preventing subordinate authorities from acquiring supplies they had
located despite the lack of federal cooperation, and applying federal
production mandates to prevent major disease spreading centers (meat packing
plants with major outbreaks) from being closed to constrain the spread of the
disease.

~~~
Barrin92
>Yes, it does lie in authoritarianism, and that is literally always the
defense of authoritarianism.

One can turn this around trivially. Vague allusions to tyranny are always made
to justify present-day dysfunction, without any clear expanation of how
concrete steps actually lead to said tyranny. It usually just resembles a sort
of vague, primal fear of authority.

And on the second point, the US doesn't just have implementation problems. It
also altogether lacks power. One reason why construction is so expensive is
simply the extreme difficulty to overrule local interests when it comes to
acquiring land, and related the threat of litigation.

That's a structural issue, not just a sort of temporary failure. The reason
Europe can build rail at one fourth the cost per mile is (among other
reasons), that local homeowners don't rule supreme. Just look at California to
see what a mess it is.

------
alex_young
Expenditures for McKinney TX [0] show streets as the third lowest cost
department, accounting for under 5% of the city budget. The largest expense,
like most other cities, is the police department, at nearly 25%.

While smart spending is important, it's hard to see street paving as something
which threatens to bankrupt this municipality.

[0]
[https://mckinneytexas.opengov.com/transparency#/1687/account...](https://mckinneytexas.opengov.com/transparency#/1687/accountType=expenses&embed=n&breakdown=ac4a3220-88f1-4bc2-a02c-6871819fe8e7&currentYearAmount=cumulative&currentYearPeriod=years&graph=percentage&legendSort=desc&month=5&proration=true&saved_view=5683&selection=34D386D3BDD5D267554C6CB2146EE3BF&projections=null&projectionType=null&highlighting=null&highlightingVariance=null&year=2020&selectedDataSetIndex=null&fiscal_start=2015&fiscal_end=latest)

~~~
jdhn
If there's one thing this "defund the police" movement has shown me, it's how
much money is spent on police departments. I would have never guessed that the
police department in McKinney would be upwards of 25% of the city budget.

~~~
spaetzleesser
I have read that in a lot of municipalities in a few decades police and
firefighters will use up 100% (and more) of the budget once they have to pay
out pensions. A lot of them go into retirement at around 50 and will probably
live for another 30-40 years more.

------
maerF0x0
This is an idea about society I've been musing a while. As a society hits
prosperity it invests in infrastructure with a limited lifespan (even if
decades) and therefore there is a certain depreciation rate of infra happening
each year. Eventually the infrastructure will rise such that the depreciation
rate will have equilibrium with income. At that point the society cannot take
on any new projects without deciding it will abandon something else.

A similar thing often happens in software -- Product Managers are given scope
to build projects of a certain size, but rarely does the business commit to
keeping a certain percentage of engineers on to maintain the project forever.
So the project decays and the customers eventually walk away. But the Product
person has already moved on to other things so they're no longer accountable
for the long term picture....

Just some musings, not really sure how widespread/factual it is or
solutions...

~~~
nradov
Sure that happens to some products but it's not inevitable. The current
Microsoft Word code base has been actively maintained and enhanced for over 25
years. Customers aren't walking away yet.

~~~
kthejoker2
Software is more like a Ship of Theseus in a way that roads are not.

That is, the cost to "switch out" one version of software for another is
effectively zero, so if makes sense to "maintain" the product in perpetuity.

For a road and other capital expenditures with heavy dependencies, your
"lifecycle" is

As few changes as possible; and then, all of it changes.

------
asdff
A lot of roads are pure waste and should probably be reverted into simpler
gravel roads, or left unmaintained. Take a look at this one in Columbus (1).
You have full storm drains, nearly a mile of sidewalk, and generous street
lighting, for a road that connects between the highway and the city inpound
lot which closes before dark. I'm willing to bet not a single person has laid
foot on that sidewalk ever, given that the neighborhood around this road is
simply the impound lot and a concrete factory, connected to the outside world
by a single highway connection; you couldn't walk there if you tried without
hopping a fence and tresspassing somewhere.

1\.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9093916,-82.9996459,3a,75y,1...](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9093916,-82.9996459,3a,75y,188.68h,85.67t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1so4RiX7yjurMh9gDPKrwobQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Do4RiX7yjurMh9gDPKrwobQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D153.82936%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192)

~~~
xxpor
Meanwhile most streets in Seattle north of N 85th St still don't have
sidewalks at all. The estimated cost to add them is in the billions of
dollars.

~~~
mikestew
Different agency, but meanwhile King County is spending money to pave a
"rails-to-trails" path near Redmond (along Willows Rd. for you locals) that I
run on regularly. Until the virus thing, I have never seen another human being
use the quite usable gravel trail that's there now. Probably because it's out-
of-the-way, no place to park, and it parallels a major paved trail that is
less than a mile away. But I'm sure someone's brother-in-law needs a paving
contract.

------
sroussey
Author discusses their nice daily walks on that street, and questions the need
for improvements like sidewalks and ADA compliance.

Author should be thankful to not need the ADA compliance.

~~~
jedimastert
I was just thinking about that. If I were in a wheel chair there's no way I'd
just roll down the middle of the street like OP does. If a car comes down the
street, what am I supposed to do? It doesn't matter if only "people who live
on that street use it." That just means people in wheelchairs can't really
live on the street

~~~
kgermino
Even where there's good sidewalks people in wheelchairs often just "roll down
the middle of the street." It's smoother, easier to be seen (.˙. safer) and
you're less likely to get blocked by an unexpected obstacle.

~~~
jaggederest
Off topic, but unicode actually has a "therefore" symbol ( ∴ ). Not sure how
universal it is, but it exists

------
toomanybeersies
As an Australian, every time I see roads like this in the USA, they look
positively third world.

Potholes all over, lacking (or practically lacking) a footpath, drainage, or
space for on-street parking.

Pine St looks like something I'd expect to find in a developing nation in
South America or Asia, not a developed industrial nation like the USA.

~~~
speby
Climate is a massive factor in the deterioration and accelerated wear of
roads. Australia doesn't have harsh, freezing winters with lots of freeze/thaw
cycles creating potholes and expanding crack lines in your roads.

It's a lot more expensive to maintain "good" roads in climates that have wide
temperature cycles throughout their seasons.

~~~
zaarn
I live in germany where we do have freeze/thaw cycles. Our roads look better
both from my experience when I went to the US and looking at pictures from the
US. Don't think climate is a good excuse here. Nordic countries also manage a
much better infrastructure in roads from what I hear.

------
supernova87a
There is a good article in the Atlantic (I will try to dig it up) about how
the relatively unexplainable reasons (or maybe, lazily not explained reasons)
why construction and public infrastructure projects in our country are costing
so much (billions of $ more than you would expect), is really hindering our
development and collective wealth as a country (wealth in terms of
infrastructure, modernity of our facilities).

The example was the rail development of the 2nd Ave subway line in Manhattan,
but take almost any example of a large project.

Think about how, if the cost of our projects is 2-3x what it "should be", we
are doing without 2/3-1/2 of the improvements to our physical world that we
could otherwise achieve.

For some reason, it's a confluence of aging infrastructure, cost of displacing
entrenched residents / businesses to make improvements, labor cost, insurance,
etc.

What it also produces is a country that does not have a lot of practice in
doing big, important infrastructure projects. Maybe once every 10 years.
Compared to growing younger countries where they have major projects, say,
every other month. And as a result, fewer experts are around to bid for such
work, and also as a result, the cost of such projects goes up.

It's a big problem as a country ages and gets more expensive.

Some articles:

\- [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html)

\- [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2)

\- [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/05/07/why-is-
second-...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/05/07/why-is-second-
avenue-subway-phase-2-so-expensive/)

And this article is not specifically on the problem of cost, but how replacing
signals in the NYC subway has lessons like managing a massive software
project:

\-
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-
dont-we-know-where-all-the-trains-are/415152/)

~~~
jimmaswell
> confluence of aging infrastructure, cost of displacing entrenched residents
> / businesses to make improvements, labor cost, insurance, etc.

What about corruption e.g. ghost employees, inflated billing rates,
intentional delays, knowingly letting things be done wrong according to a
mistaken spec to bill more hours later, all done by a company owned by the
mayor's cousin? Construction is famous for those kinds of things.

~~~
supernova87a
That definitely may come into play. But I think the bulk of the 2-3x (or more
cost inflation) for the average project is larger factors that no particular
entity is trying to "cheat". Just a gradual creeping up of expectations and
willingness to tolerate higher and higher costs.

------
treis
These guys suck at actually doing the math. Property taxes won't remain
constant. They will rise with inflation while the bond repayment stays the
same.

~~~
scott00
I was also annoyed by that. However he didn't include interest in his
repayment numbers either, and the two errors roughly offset.

~~~
treis
I'm not an expert, but usually bonds are bought at a discount. The city would
sell 1.5 million worth of bonds for 1.3 million, for example. The effective
interest rate comes from that discount.

That said, they don't seem to provide a lot of details and I've seen some
wildly misleading numbers from Strongtowns. They're not to be trusted to
provide objective numbers.

------
alex_young
Somehow we afford paving streets in cities. I wonder how that happens when the
math is always so bad?

Perhaps it's because we socialize the cost since the paved road benefits more
than the immediate houses on that block.

~~~
burlesona
There are a number of factors, but the simplest gist:

1\. The models for road funding and development were developed in the 1920s
and 30s, were based on much denser areas (old towns) that paid a lot higher
taxes per acre, and much simpler roads (which cost a lot less).

2\. The models haven't been significantly updated or reconsidered since, even
though the development patterns have been mandated by law to become much less
dense, while street standards have also greatly increased, meaning much less
tax base to support much more infrastructure.

3\. This often pencils out in places that are growing because there are heavy
state and federal subsides for "growth" projects where the up front capital
cost is 80-100% paid for by non-local funds. That infrastructure works without
maintenance for a while, and likely won't need heavy maintenance for 20-30
years, but at that point it'll need to be rebuilt at about the same cost
adjusted for inflation as it cost to build.

In theory what should be happening is cities should be piling up money from
taxes on these projects that were subsidized, so that when the maintenance
bill comes due they have the funds to do the maintenance.

But in practice, the taxes that come in from "today's" new growth are used to
pay for the maintenance on "yesterdays" old infrastructure that needs to be
replaced.

Thus, things appear to "work" as long as steady growth continues and new tax
income continues to be generated locally while the costs associated are funded
from outside. But when growth slows down or stops, things quickly break down.

You can see this pattern of "rolling blight" all over the country, where so
many of the older suburbs are falling apart with decaying infrastructure, and
people who can are moving farther out to the "shiny and new" suburbs where
everything is in good shape.

The problem is especially pernicious in the rust belt, where we have seen
metro areas dramatically expand in surface area every decade even as their
population has barely increased (or shrunk) since the 1950s.

~~~
ssivark
> _The models haven 't been significantly updated or reconsidered since, even
> though the development patterns have been mandated by law to become much
> less dense, while street standards have also greatly increased, meaning much
> less tax base to support much more infrastructure._

This sounds like the utter lack of critical thinking which might result in a
failing grade for a college term paper, so what gives? As in, what is the
thinking with which sane people could justify using such models and/or
approving estimates?

~~~
burlesona
A lot of it is time and culture gaps. These problems take 20-30 years to
unfold so the people who create the problem are gone before the problem
appears, and then the people who face the problem look at the budget and go "I
dunno, in the past we made money when we took state subsidies and grew, we
should do more of that." Suburbanization is a cultural phenomenon, and the
result of a lot of social engineering and propoganda from as early as the FDR
administration and continuing into the 80s and 90s. That makes it harder to
question.

There's also the old adage of it being hard to get a person to see a problem
when their job depends on them not seeing it.
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-
blog-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-blog-asce-
and-the-infrastructure-cult.html)

------
brudgers
_I walk both of these streets every single day with my dog and have not had
any issues on either._

This is the urban planning version of "works on my machine." Per the article,
the project includes ADA compliant sidewalks.

 _However, if I take off my property owner hat and put on my taxpayer hat
things start to look a lot different._

There's also a citizen hat. It doesn't focus on "what's in it for me."
Citizens are what makes towns strong, not property owners. Not taxpayers.

~~~
neilparikh
When you have finite resources, you need to make tradeoffs. We probably don't
have money to make every single sidewalk in the US ADA compliant, and there
are also other things the city needs to fund. Given that, it's better to focus
on streets where ADA compliance would be the most useful, and that's probably
not in a street like this. Here, pedestrians, cars and wheelchair users can
probably just share the road given that it's not a through street. The 1.5M
can then go towards funding other initiatives that would help more people.

------
karlmcguire
> So, if we can't stop the project from happening, what can we do?

> 1\. Do nothing. Assume that you will be able to grow and borrow forever.

The Fed is buying individual corporate bonds now. The only thing keeping this
American experiment afloat is borrowing forever.

~~~
gavindean90
I mean, not really, this is just better than the alternatives. Also we own the
currency it's not the same.

------
jpm_sd
Off-topic:

I have developed a habit of hitting Esc when modal dialogs pop up on web pages
as I'm scrolling down reading. I never want to sign up for the mailing list.
The webinar. The sales pitch. Never.

But on sites hosted by Squarespace, Esc gets you into a login prompt,
presumably for the site owners? Try it! Weird choice, Squarespace!

~~~
newswasboring
I too was very weirded out by this. The worst part is I couldn't even figure
out that esc was doing this till I read your comment. Esc is usually used to
stop or close something, not open something new.

------
jmpman
The author seems to suggest that the maintenance of the road 30 years from now
will cost as much as the current major reconstruction. I expect the
maintenance of a 30 year old road is significantly less. I’d determine the
bond required to provide the equivalent maintenance over 30 years, levy a one
time charge against the individual properties (as a lien against the property
value of needed), equal to the total costs minus the expected post 30 year
maintenance costs. Then issue a bond for the expected 30 year maintenance
costs. Eventually the properties will pay off the lien, and have a predictable
yearly bond. Propose that to all the impacted property owners, let them vote
on it, and go with a majority rule. If the property owners expect their
property values to increase more than the lien, they should vote for it, if
not, it’s an inefficient use of resources and they should vote against it.

~~~
hadlock
The road in front of my childhoom home was originally built to the blog post
author's "new" standard, and then replaced after 30 years. Rebuilding the road
involved breaking up the concrete, laying new rebar, and pouring the concrete.
This happened over a period of about three days. I think the road was drivable
on day five once the concrete had set. Since the concrete comes out in great
big chunks, the mould is already ready for the concrete to be poured. It was
pretty fast, I think they really had to work to even stretch it out into a
three day project.

That said, this project in the blog post is a total upgrade of the street,
what exists currently is two ditches, which are probably a mosquito spawning
ground several months a year, and in the middle is asphalt on top of dirt
which is a small step up from a dirt road. The end result of curbs, concrete
road and ADA-compliant sidewalk is huge. People will want to move to this
neighborhood after the upgrade goes in. With the bare strip of asphalt, the
curb-appeal of the houses in this neighborhood is quite low.

Also also, concrete residential roads typically have a 40 year lifespan, not
30. My town could have easily ground down the top 1/2" of concrete road
surface for a fraction of the price and gone another 10 years without any
further maintenance.

~~~
asdff
Concrete roads aren't as good where it winters. They shift as the ground
changes temperature and expands or contracts, and trucks and plows destroy
them at the seams.

------
DominikD
I can easily walk my dog there so there's no need for the sidewalk. If you
break your leg, if you're old or disabled - tough luck. I stopped reading
after this ableist argument. Those overreaching regulations trying to make
life easy for disabled - how are we going to pay for those?

Locally we had a similar response to the idea of replacing pedestrian overpass
bridges with regular crossings. Cost of maintaining the bridge and its
accessibility are less important than those poor cars which may now have to
stop on a red light.

------
JoeAltmaier
Lots of city infrastructure changes are under the assumption that the city may
keep growing. So revenues keep growing, and the money borrowed today may seem
small tomorrow.

Its a ponzi scheme. But with population growth pretty much constant for a
century, this has worked in lots of towns. Now with the new norm being
replacement (families have 2 or fewer children), the assumption is going to be
challenged. The infrastructure-debt bubble may burst.

~~~
asdff
All but the eastern U.S. is growing in population.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah but the growth rate is half or a third what it once was, and declining.

~~~
asdff
Even out east, we are seeing rural areas depopulate and nearby metros
absorbing that local population. For instance, Columbus is often cited as a
fast growing city. However, almost all of that growth is from people already
living elsewhere in Ohio and moving into the city for greater economic
opportunities. As a net it looks like there isn't growth or even decline, as
the population of Ohio has been relatively stagnant since 1960, but it's a
shift of where the population is located that is also playing out everywhere.
Part of it is also due to a lower need for labor in rural areas as farming and
manufacturing become more automated, and cities are increasingly centers of
knowledge workers and research, rather than industrial centers.

In the context of climate change, it is also better to favor investment in
cities which are already well scarred by human activity, and have a lot of
infrastructure and capital already in place, than to expand into or increase
the existing environmental impacts on our natural and rural areas. In
California, we've built to the edge of what is sensible given the fringes of
civilization perennially burn to the ground.

------
m0zg
That's why giving the government even more money never works: it's not theirs,
so a third of a mile of a road nobody uses costs $1.5M, and it will get built
anyway. Because why the fuck not. An illustrative example was when after the
recession the federal government allocated a shitload of federal funds for
infrastructure. A busy local road which _did not need repair_ ended up getting
torn down and re-paved several times to use the funds over the course of a
couple of years. Why? Nobody asked the question why or did the math. There
were roads immediately adjacent which did need repair, those still have
potholes. Where I live it costs about $1M to install traffic lights on a
simple intersection. A local hospital (which I don't even use because it's out
of network with my insurance) is raising hundreds of millions of dollars for
"renovations" through levies (which are, thankfully, voted down repeatedly).
If I were to vote in favor, they'd still charge me hundreds of thousands of
dollars if I get cancer and end up getting treated there. Same with "cancer
awareness" campaigns. Dude, you're charging an arm, a leg, and a first-born
already, why do you need even more money for "awareness"?

------
xchaotic
Looking at the rest of the economy, public infrastructure projects like this
are the only hope to keep the economy running. Yeah there will be some paper
debt on municipal books but the net benefit of the money unlocked from this is
much higher. At least from an economic sense. In a perverse way the more these
projects costs, the more money is redistributed.

~~~
jkingsbery
The Strong Towns book goes into this in more detail. What you say might be the
case sometimes, and when it is the case, the money unlocked is reflected in
higher property taxes, so the municipal balance sheet stays even. If the town
can't somehow get higher property taxes for its improvements, then it spent
more money than it will make on the project. If you do that enough time,
municipalities start going bankrupt. If people aren't willing to pay higher
property taxes for the improvement, then it isn't really helping them.

------
lxe
> Yearly Property Tax Paid to City in Project Area: $44,030

Why is this being calculated based on the project area tax contribution only?

~~~
burlesona
Because if the numbers don't work on overhauling a single block based on the
tax revenue generated by that block, they also don't scale up to work if you
draw the tax revenue in from "elsewhere." Everywhere else ALSO has its own
road, sewer, etc. to maintain, not to mention fire and EMS services.

------
_bxg1
Municipal law, spending, etc. seems to me like a ripe avenue for software
being used to improve society. Here's why: most people don't even know what
things are happening in their area, much less do the math to see the full
picture. There's an enormous gap between what information is technically
available to the public and how that information is put on people's radar so
it can influence voting and activism. I feel like I've also read that, for
this exact reason, municipal governments are some of the most corrupt parts of
our system.

------
Nasrudith
I wonder how well road projects scale in terms of length - if it would be
better or worse per mile to have to do 50 or 500 miles of contiguous road vs
0.32 miles. The absolute cost would be far higher of course but if it it
scales slower than linear it suggests a consolidation process as more
efficient or whatever the "peak efficency segment" may be.

------
centimeter
Has anyone done a high-quality analysis on the actual cost of implementing ADA
compliance, both in public and private contexts? There are going to be a lot
of social and opportunity costs that are hard to capture (e.g. the social
losses associated with fewer swimming pools due to high ADA-related costs),
but even the raw construction costs would be interesting.

------
CapriciousCptl
So much doom and gloom in that article. The town in question is McKinney TX,
and I grabbed their annual budget[1]. Property taxes make up 50% of their ex-
services (water, sewer, trash, parks/rec, airport, etc) revenues.

And, the bonds in question will yield ~1.5% at today's rates. In other words,
less than inflation. Meanwhile, McKinney has lowered property tax rates in
response to higher appraisals (inflation is a major driver of increased
appraisals on balance).

So, I take 2 issues with the article. First is the payback period, since
property tax revenue only makes up 1/2 of the ex-services income and will
increase with inflation. And second, with the idea that every area must cover
its own expenses. In general commercial, high-dense and/or rich areas
subsidize projects in other neighborhoods. You're going to be able to cherry-
pick a project that can't be paid by its beneficiaries in every single city.

[1]
[https://www.mckinneytexas.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/22...](https://www.mckinneytexas.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/2210)

------
loco5niner
> Better with some vehicles parked on the street. Most everyone would drive at
> a safe speed here.

[author shows picture of a street so crowded with parked cars, even a single
car cannot safely drive through without swerving]

The author has bad taste

------
lifeisstillgood
I get the StrongTowns argument in the US, and on my travels there it's fairly
easy to see the blight rolling over.

but in the UK i find it harder to spot and wondered if anyone has pointers?

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coding123
One simple reason these budgets get approved: Kick backs.

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_curious_
StrongTowns is an org to keep an eye on

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sAbakumoff
4 feet sidewalk is a joke. It is not enough to keep the social distance.

