I can't say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it's city planning very much right. Even a small town is built as a relatively tight formation of high-rises, yet leaving plenty of public space and greenery in the middle. The quality of life in the town that I grew up in is super high, because everything one might need: school, hospital, store, swimming pool, park, woods is an easy _walk_ away. The traffic through the town was even disallowed, which opened up a giant traffic-free area for us to play around as kids and elderly to use for socializing and to run their errands. For ease of visualizing here's an aerial photo of said town in early 00s: http://i.imgur.com/sj9t3Jy.jpg
I live in Russia at the moment and probably the most startling thing is how well planned many of the cities and towns are and how very clearly these cities were not made for cars. While it's a hassle for vehicle traffic because the roads were never designed to handle everyone owning a car, the benefit is that no matter where you live there is a shop nearby for essentials (groceries, clothing stores, repairs, cafe's, etc), transit is readily availble even in the smallest of towns and fairly affordable. I spent time in Pereslavl-Zalessky about 140 km north of moscow and was surprised that even a relatively small town had faster and more regular public transit than most of the cities I've lived in in the US.
Granted it all comes with a slight adjustment to get used to some of the holdovers of life in the USSR, but when I lived in Seattle, it used to be if I missed the bus I had to wait ~30+ minutes for the next one home, and I needed to plan whether I'd take a side trip to get groceries or not, adding an additional mile or two to my walk home. Here it's nice to just be able to walk a few hundred meters at most to the nearest store for groceries.
Any city planned and developed before cars is generally considered very friendly, walkable, and desirable. Europe is full of such cities and they're loved for it.
If only planners, politicians and citizens would realise what they have given up just to make it convenient to drive.
You see it in the U.S. as well, as you go from east to the west you can see the influence of the automobile on city layout and infrastructure, with possibly the epitome being Los Angeles. Ask most any 60+ year old in any of the larger American cities so designed (Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle and so on) defends the idea of road widening to the tooth. Rip out the boulevards. Rip out these silly bike lanes. Rip out sidewalks. Make room for more cars! I've not seen much in the way of a road widening project that a baby boomer didn't love.
As a 45 year old, it's one my examples of how my elders aren't infallible, don't always have good advice, and have made very poor choices that cannot be unwound except through great expense of time and money. Mistakes have consequences and they can (and will) last generations.
Don't worry, for the last 50-60 years most European countries have been working hard to destroy this model and turn both cities and countrysides into a car nightmare more or less following the US model.
Just came back from Tokyo and realized how much I miss riding my bicycle in Singapore. The city is just not made for bicycles. It would increase the quality of living by a wide margin since Singapore is so small.
It has been a long time since I was in Singapore, but looking back it isn't obvious why it would be bad for cycling. Obviously one wouldn't use the elevated expressways, but there are lots of other streets of varying sizes with varying amounts of traffic (like Tokyo). Is there a law against taking the lane? Perhaps there just isn't a culture of cycling, so one would be the only one on the road? Just curious...
It's road behaviour. Due to the high COE car owners feel an entitlement for the road. In addition people are driving selfish and are in general bad educated (comparing to Europe and Japan). See roads.sg for examples.
> Europe is full of such cities and they're loved for it.
Sure, Florence is beautiful and lovable, but I personally like the possibility to also drive to a commercial center, buy what I need for a few days, drive back home and park my car in a closed garage conveniently connected to my apartment via a lift, or my house via a door.
> Sure, Florence is beautiful and lovable, but I personally like the possibility to also drive to a commercial center, buy what I need for a few days, drive back home and park my car in a closed garage conveniently connected to my apartment via a lift, or my house via a door.
Why? That sounds like hell. If I had to drive everywhere for everything I'd go mad.
How do you get from "also have the option to" to "had to drive everywhere"?
I don't own a car, but I can completely understand why having the option to take one for occasional larger shopping trips is nice. Friends and family with cars do that, but they still make 97% of their trips without the car.
Because there's no such thing as just giving you the option to use your car. Once that option exists people will use cars, more car use requires bigger roads, more spaced out shops due to parking, and eventually gigantic junctions and highways.
Soon enough what used to be a 500 meter walk turns into walking 2 kilometers because of all the car-related infrastructure in the way, which then becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop as more people own cars, so they're willing to travel longer distances, reducing the business & zoning incentive to make things walkable.
More cars don't require bigger roads. That's exactly the point where pushback has to happen, and does in cities where a compromise works. If increase in traffic does not mean a scramble to accommodate it using your car becomes less attractive, which stabilizes the traffic level. That of course requires a culture which values public transport/bikes/walkability over cars.
E.g. in my hometown every building in the city core is accessible by car, but you have to take narrow, often single-lane side alleys to get there, the major paths all are pedestrian only. All that means taking a car there stays the exception for when it really is useful to do so. Tons of inner-city routes that are faster to walk than to drive. The further out you get, the more car-friendly things get, but public transport bridges most of it. Density is key to maintain that, it makes public transport and local businesses viable and puts pressure on cars.
Making large areas completely pedestrian-only isn't really politically viable, even here in Germany, but the compromises IMHO can work out fine, and people move to areas that have the characteristics they like.
I live where it's cold and I disagree. Winter is the time I really wish I could ditch my car for good. You car is just starting to get warm at the end of 5km unless you've warmed it up ahead of time. And you have to clean it off and shovel it out which sucks.
As long as you are dressed appropriately then a 200m walk in the cold is nothing.
Just buy adequate winter clothes, it's certainly much cheaper than a car. If scientists can stroll around Antarctica in winter gear for hours on end so can you in whatever city you live in.
Agreed with adequate winter clothes having a quality coat, gloves, and possibly boots are all you need.
If it's snowing I almost never drive (if I don't have to) but I have absolutely no problem walking to the store, or to pick up food, or even just to get out of the house in the snow.
One of the factors driving insane real estate prices is low density, partly to accommodate cars. Another factor is bad zoning laws, tolerated on the assumption that cars will be used. And if the bus service in your neighborhood is bad, that's likely because the rich and powerful drive cars, so they have no incentive to improve the buses.
Remember, the proposed new state of the world is not just like the current one except that you personally don't have a car. It's one where nobody owns a car, and everyone shares the benefits of that.
>the rich and powerful drive cars, so they have no incentive to improve the buses.
The urban rich and powerful can afford to live within short walks of their offices, or right next to stations on the best parts of (small) existing transit corridors. They are most assuredly not sitting in rush-hour traffic.
>low density, partly to accommodate cars
Figure 1000 people work downtown, half of them park in 200sqft spaces, the other half live in 400sqft apartments.
Convert all the parking to apartments. Now downtown can support only 750 workers. Great for me if I'm one of the 250 who no longer has to drive, but what if I'm one of the 250 who can now neither drive nor live there?
Statistically, it was worth ~$9,000/year to me not to ride a bicycle or use public transit. Unless that was purely ignorant, starting to do so will be a bad time.
>bad zoning laws,
I'm with you there. We need to massively increase the height of buildings in the small walkable cores and along transit corridors so that more people can live in them. Over time, employers could also spread out, so that there is not a single downtown that everyone's trying to get to. And of course it is ridiculous that any one lives far from a grocery store by fiat, rather than by economics.
>It's one where nobody owns a car, and everyone shares the benefits of that.
But if we do that and, the contention for housing along the transit corridors will be so intense that only the wealthiest can remain, even with free-for-all zoning and a huge construction boom. I've no doubt that the proposed new state of the world will be awesome for the few people who can afford it, I merely doubt that I will be one of them, and I'm not looking forward to 3+ hour/day commutes, no matter how safe the streets.
Sprawl, the automobile, and the highway are fundamentally housing affordability devices. Land value isn't so important if you can traverse 10 miles in 10 minutes. When 10 minutes its half a mile, it suddenly matters a great deal.
I am not convinced by your example about converting parking to living spaces because it assumes it's not possible to achieve a one to one replacement. Building vertically like you suggest seems like the clear answer to this problem.
In the cities I'I familiar with, the vast majority of urban parking is in tall structures (and often underground). Although there is a decent argument that multilevel parking structures are less financially sustainable than multilevel apartments.
I'm much more interested in blanketing the suburbs in fast, cheap transportation with low wait times and minimal to zero parking requirements on the urban side. Probably a combination of e-bikes, electric motorcycles and scooters, and UberPool. Then personal car ownership (and demand for urban parking) can fade because it is actually less compelling than the alternative, instead of by fiat.
One helpful factor for bicycling in Holland is the flatness. It's relatively easy to get to work or shopping without having to climb a big hill. Other parts of the world aren't so blessed, and people who do ride to work feel like they have to shower before the work day, which reduces some people's desire to do so.
The weather also surely helps. I live in a moderately warm city (Buenos Aires), and temperatures go up to 30º or even almost 40º in the summer, and biking is a trip to hell and back.
I can't even imagine people closer to tropical climates trying to ride bikes anytime except winter.
First, we have a law called Wet Maatschappelijke Ondersteuning[0] (and a 2015 update to it), which means "law for societal support", specifically aimed at helping everyone partake in society. Part of that is monetary support to buy, for example, a mobility scooter[1] if you have a disability that limits you in your freedom of movement otherwise. Many elderly use this.
Also gaining in popularity recently is the so-called "Duofiets", which is a two-person side-by-side tricycle[2], which lets people without a disability help out. Here's a video of a project that combines student housing with elderly care[3] (also an interesting project in itself) that shows off the bike halfway. My grandma was taken on daytrips with such a bike in the last years of her life, and it really brightened her day.
Hase Bikes in Germany build a wonderful range of adapted bicycles and tricycles that can accommodate almost any disability. If you're capable of moving your arms or legs, there's a cycle that will work for you.
If you meant to ask "What about people that physically can't ever bike (but can drive)?"
What percentage of the population, honestly, do you think that is? Out of shape people can lose weight and eventually learn to bike. Very few people can-drive-but-not-bike, and surely exceptions can be made for them.
Funny coincidence: just yesterday I helped out a (to all appearances) rather old man who had dropped his keys and had trouble leaning down to pick them up. His hands were shaking as I handed him the keys, and he gave off a very frail impression. He was cycling when he dropped his keys.
I remember being impressed by the fact that while this guy had so much trouble bending down, he was riding a (regular) bike.
I've also seen 'seriously' pregnant women bike around, men/women with a kid strapped to the front and back of the bike, with sometimes a third kid in a kart behind the bike. I also regularly see groups of elderly people on sports bikes (often with some electrical help though), as well as really young children.
There are plenty of people who really can't ride bikes, but probably far fewer than people from non-biking places assume.
No doubt. I wouldn't take away anyone's bike (unless I was their child or spouse, maybe), but I'd worry about old "frail" people on bikes. Their strength and flexibility declines (in general with individual exceptions), and a fall can debilitate or kill old people. Glad to see that three-wheelers are an option.
Mind you, whether or not Groningen is the most bike-friendly city in the Netherlands is largely irrelevant, all of our cities are so even if it was it's not exceptional. It's kind of comparable to how we dominate in speed-skating[0] - from the outsider's point of view it's irrelevant who is the best.
Do you mean Seoul and Tokyo are meant for pedestrians? Or that they have have the same type (please note: type, not quantity) of charm of Florence or Prague?
i think the auto is a red herring. i think what it is is that these cities have a level of lifestyle that happened to be commiserate with the revenue that they can generate, because the more expensive infrastructure- fibre, 4g, or undergrounds, tram lines, auto traffic control, or even a large network of roads, have not or cannot be built in.
when i travel to the cities in the developing countries in asia, and speak to the locals, there's always a sense that they look forward to building their city into something like sydney or singapore. the people elect mayors and governors that promise development towards that goal. most of time, it doesn't go anywhere. what i thought, but did not say, is that these smaller cities don't generate the same kind of revenue that pays for the kind of infrastructure, modern buildings, and diversity in imports that you see in the major cities. To try and pursue that without finding a way to increase the value and productivity of their economy is going to get you in the kind of trouble that you see a lot of these bankrupt towns in the US in.
> their economy is going to get you in the kind of trouble that you see a lot of these bankrupt towns in the US in.
I think you're discounting the affect that big box retailers have had on rural and small towns in the US. They're often given tax brakes and other incentives to build and then they park themselves right outside city/town limits to avoid any sales or property taxes. They then proceed to drive every small business in the town out of business. As shops close down, fewer people go into town which the impacts other shops and gradually the entire town shuts down. To add to it, the big box retailers will often have leased space in the front of their stores where small businesses that they don't directly compete with can take up space. These businesses were probably the remnants of what remained in town but moved to where the people are.
You can see this in many towns if you drive across the Midwest. You'll see a "Welcome to <town>" sign, then drive through an abandoned town, then you'll see a "Thanks for visiting <town>" and then a massive super store with a filled parking lot.
Big box retailers sell things in big boxes. Without the giant parking lot, it isn't viable to sell most of the products. Delivery from a separate warehouse would be required. Buyers aren't going to toss a refrigerator in a backpack and then hop on a bicycle! Putting a refrigerator in a minivan is reasonable. The same goes for large TVs, washing machines, clothes dryers, mattresses, sofas, desks, chairs, whiteboards, canoes, etc.
The old-style downtown shop simply can't handle large products in a reasonable way. Since it can't, people get used to shopping at places that can handle everything.
And so people end up with a car three sizes too large just because so they can go to a big box retailer twice a year. How many refrigerators does a family really need?
Renting a van or getting the big box item delivered is so much more convenient. Commuting to work and running errands in a minivan is just so wasteful.
A minivan becomes a necessity when your family hits around 5 people. You can get by with a midsize sedan but it's difficult and you're unable to offer rides to anyone. Unfortunately in the US they can't or won't sell 6+ seater variants of smaller vehicles like the Prius or Accord.
Larger vehicles like conversion vans and full size SUVs that don't seat anymore people than a minivan but get half the fuel efficiency and take up twice the space are on the other hand completely impractical.
Yes, but why is the building like that? The building is a big box largely so that it can sell large items. You can't fit very many large items in a small store; small stores typically limit themselves to small things.
You could sell refrigerators in a small building. The selection would be very limited, and there would be a high risk of stock running out. The refrigerators out on the floor at a Home Depot or Lowe's take up more space than an old-style downtown store has. That's just refrigerators, and just the ones put out on the floor for display. Many more refrigerators are stored in the back, away from customers, and refrigerators are just one of many products.
It's not about size, it's about quantity. Big box stores are warehouses and that allow for pallets of product to easily be moved around and put on the floor for consumption.
It has nothing to do with the size of the product being sold.
The auto is at the center of what's unique about American towns. The chart in the article essentially says that the urban core generates surplus revenue that is used to subsidize low-productivity outlying areas. The car is at the heart of why the outlying areas are so large and thus need so many direct and indirect subsidies, and a direct source of the subsidies and costs. See something like "The High Cost of Free Parking"
The exurban paradigm that is now standard even in very small towns is just incredibly costly, miles of pavement, huge parking lots that cause stormwater problems, for a very low density of tax base.
It may not be surprising, but many find it disagreeable. Residents of those overcrowded centres are rarely enthusiastic about subsidising the suburbs. Businesses often find it difficult to exist in the centre, both due to taxation (again, to subsidise the suburbs) and the difficulty in convincing car-centric suburbanites to drive downtown.
Those subsidies can be quite significant, ranging from roads and poorly utilized transit routes to developing land and services that will be under utilized (e.g. parks and recreation centres).
No one said it was surprising, but the article's argument is that the subsidies to the outlying suburbs are so large that they are overwhelming the tax revenue generated by the core.
People find different things pleasing, and some people enjoy commuting so they can live quite far from their job, friends, and basic services. Others prefer to live closer to these things, close enough to walk, cycle, or take transit. Based on prices, it's clear that in many metro areas, there's a great demand for urban-style living that is going unfulfilled, mostly do to zoning restrictions.
Part of the problem in the US is too much planning, alongside too many subsidies for cars. Look at a zoning map of any city: there's an incredible level of detail about what's permitted where. The local zoning code here in Bend, until recently, had a section on how many parking spots per customer for barber shops. As if, in a competitive market, those businesses couldn't figure out for themselves the optimal amount of parking to pay for to keep their customers happy.
Most of Europe is pretty walkable and it doesn't have that 'planned' look either.
> As if, in a competitive market, those businesses couldn't figure out for themselves the optimal amount of parking to pay for to keep their customers happy.
I don't know anything about Bend, but speaking generally ...
There are many ways that markets are inefficient and flawed; I wouldn't assume they would yield a good result. For example, the barbershops may be incentivized to push the parking costs onto others. It may be that every business has that incentive, nobody wants to pay for other people's parking, and thus nobody makes the first move. In situations like that, people succeed by coordinating their activities through democratic government and laws.
People living in cities, elbow-to-elbow and sharing large numbers of resources (such as parking), may need to coordinate more than people in rural areas.
Also, as they say, don't tear down a fence until you know the reason for which it was built. It's like that odd, useless-looking bit of code in that old application - maybe do some research before you delete it.
"Externalities" is how economists describe those costs.
Realistically speaking, the barber shop could only really push people to park:
* On the street. And you know what? That's fine. If the street was built to have parking, and people are parking there, it's not a problem. It might be more of a PITA for the clients. If it's too much of a PITA, the business may suffer. But that's how markets work.
* In some other business' parking spots: that can easily be solved by other means, rather than having city-wide laws covering all barbers in the city, some of which may cater to hipsters riding fixies who do not need car parking, and others who have elderly patrons who will not tolerate being forced to walk more than they absolutely have to.
I'm not a "markets solve all the problems kind of guy" because externalities are real things. But I feel that our cities are way too regulated. Zoning didn't even exist in Bend until 1947. Some of the first zoning regulations didn't come about until the early 20th century in the rest of the US.
How would we react if there were a "planning commission" that dictated how much of each kind of restaurant (Vietnamese, Mexican, Burgers, etc..) at what kind of price point could exist in a city? Zoning should be to keep truly noxious things away from where people live, not to keep duplexes away from single family homes, or barber shops outside of residential areas.
Yes, there are externalities and also other ways markets fail; that's why I didn't use the term.
Maybe there aren't enough street parking spots for all the businesses, and then the market fails: No business wants to spend on on-site parking in order to free up parking for everyone else. The way to move forward is to come together and pass a law.
> Zoning didn't even exist in Bend until 1947. Some of the first zoning regulations didn't come about until the early 20th century in the rest of the US.
I'm not sure that means anything either way. Baseball didn't become desegregated until 1947 either. Is there something suspect about advances or changes in society that are recent? Did humans live better before 1947?
> I feel that our cities are way too regulated.
With due respect, this is too easy to say without evidence, is too general to have much application, and it has become cliche to say it about everything. In what ways are they too regulated, and in what ways not regulated enough? Do you have anything to back it up? How much regulation is just right?
> How would we react if there were a "planning commission" that dictated how much of each kind of restaurant (Vietnamese, Mexican, Burgers, etc..) at what kind of price point could exist in a city?
Vote them out of office? Appear at the planning commission meeting? Organize restaurant owners and talk to elected representatives? Democracy is a proven, effective tool. Case in point: I haven't heard of your hypothetical extreme scenario happening.
By enacting laws, you create a very rigid situation that's much more difficult to change than "there's not enough parking", which is something the neighborhood could adapt to without too much trouble.
When I was born, Bend was still a wood products industry town based around logging and the local mills. These days, it's trying to develop a high tech industry, and doing reasonably well at it for a small-ish town. Places need to adapt, and rigid zoning is probably detrimental to that adaptation. Markets take in everyone who lives, or wants to live in a place. Planning commissions, or even city councils, have just a few people with their own ideas of "how things should be".
I do think the market is a very useful tool and that some things are over-regulated and some are under-regulated. But I don't understand your point: All regulations are bad? Everything is too regulated? I know these ideas are trendy, but they don't really mean anything or inform us. As I asked before:
In what ways are they too regulated, and in what ways not regulated enough? ... How much regulation is just right?
Without answers to those questions, we have nothing serious to act on.
> By enacting laws, you create a very rigid situation
A general statement, but laws can change. Laws often are written to create flexibility, delegating authority to regulatory commissions. Markets can be very rigid; look that the market power of Windows, whose dominance has lasted longer than most politicians' careers. When is the last time the market allowed in a new car manufacturer (Tesla hasn't yet survived infancy, and if it does it will be the only exception in (80?) years). How long does it take to change a web standard in the 'free' market? If they were government regulations, they could be changed like analog to digital TV or the reallocation of spectrum. I thought Europe's regulated, universal GSM was better than the U.S.'s 'market' solution of competing technologies.
Also, laws allocate power democratically to all citizens. The 'market' allocates it to those with the most money.
> Planning commissions, or even city councils, have just a few people with their own ideas of "how things should be".
I disagree; they are creations of and responsive to the democratic process. The market, on the other hand, is responsive to a few people with the most money; most citizens have no say. I don't want my community run by the wealthy, with 99% of citizens living like subjects under an aristocracy.
> In terms of how they're too regulated, sure: ...
I don't see a few op-eds as evidence; I have no doubt there are enough people who believe it that op-eds could be supplied daily. If you are correct about SF Bay Area (I don't know), it is an example of something that is over-regulated in some way, not evidence that the everything is over-regulated (again, could you really be saying that?).
I'm not a 'markets solve all problems' guy. There are plenty of good regulations and plenty of places where markets don't seem to work. I'd be happy to tell you about how single payer health care works in Italy - better than the mess we have here in the US.
That said, I think housing and cities are overregulated in the US.
Those op-eds point out a lot of issues that you can study further and find that mostly, the cause is zoning and regulation of housing/land use. They also cite other sources.
The word "fix" is important here. When you fix something it starts broken and ends up working how it should. Since space in cities is fiercely constrained any change is always a trade-off with repurcussions.
Cities plan transport infrastructure years or decades in advance, and spend vast sums of money, with very different incentives to the market. Leaving parts of that plan (like parking) up to the whims of the market might seem a bit irresponsible.
For example; if a city makes design trade-offs favouring heavy long-term road use, but the market decides in the shorter term that office blocks are more profitable, then you end up with mismatched capacity (headaches for drivers and ineffective public spending) and inadequate investment in infrastructure for cycling, walking, and public transport. Now you could argue that the market will step in and fix the parking problem, but that could easily take longer than an election cycle, and cost the local economy vast sums in wasted investment and lost opportunity.
They are concerned about being elected, that's it. Hence why we have huge infrastructure bills coming to haunt us, pensions that are out of control (though dwarfed by infrastructure costs), and other passing the buck behavior.
That's not to say they're bad, do no good, etc. Just that their incentives are such that they can't enact good policy oftentimes or possibly even tell the truth to voters. Otherwise they lose power.
>Leaving parts of that plan (like parking) up to the whims of the market might seem a bit irresponsible.
In NYC, large portions of the subway system, Metro North, the PATH, Long Island Railroad, and New Jersey Transit and the Amtrak Northeast Corridor were built by private companies (or even multiple competing companies) to make a buck.
In the case of the subway, the city wanted control and fixed the price such that it wouldn't rise with inflation. A few decades of that and heavy car subsidies and suddenly the two companies go bankrupt and the city takes over.
Then the city demolished a whole bunch of useful elevated lines which even now are not fully replaced.
Then it continued to fix prices (even had an elected board to set prices, guess what voters wanted?) and now we have a huge backlog of deferred maintenance and outdated technology when we once were world leaders.
Most American cities have similar stories, it just is streetcars instead of subways. LA even used to have a bigger rail system than NYC, believe it or not.
Tokyo by the way continues to have multiple semi private companies run its rail and subway systems. Seems to work well. Same in Hong Kong IIRC and a few other Asian cities. Outside of Asia, many cities at least outsource running the systems to companies like Keolis (which is French), even if they fund expansion.
>For example; if a city makes design trade-offs favouring heavy long-term road use, but the market decides in the shorter term that office blocks are more profitable, then you end up with mismatched capacity
The best transportation policy is to not move at all or otherwise minimize trip distance and increase the density of connections.
Pre-zoning US cities were all mixed use, compact, and generally either gridded or (as in downtown Manhattan) grew organically with many connections (lots of narrow windy streets down there) as you see in many Old World cities.
Transportation costs were low; foot, bike, and transit were sufficient, even after the advent of the automobile.
If the city is ignoring this to promote cars it's a failure of city planning, not the market, when valuable land is used for valuable purposes. It's doubly a failure since it can use zoning to prevent these buildings from being built and / or eminent domain afterwards.
What that has to do with the market I don't understand.
>inadequate investment in infrastructure for cycling, walking, and public transport.
Businesses generally love walkers, hence why Fifth Avenue rents are so high. They'll pay for sidewalks for sure if they're not provided in front of their buildings if it's a place walking can be expected.
In Okinawa Japan where I lived it was a car centric place but they provided (possibly paid) parking with no legal mandates.
Historically most transit was built by private companies in the US, including the NYC subway (which was two companies originally, with the city owned IND later).
>Now you could argue that the market will step in and fix the parking problem, but that could easily take longer than an election cycle, and cost the local economy vast sums in wasted investment and lost opportunity.
The first subway line, using mostly pickaxes and other hand tools to excavate, took 4 years to build. We had a whole bunch of elevated rail lines and streetcars in NYC built by private funds. I'm sure with modern technology we could build faster than that.
So long as competition isn't heavily subsidized the market can work.
With transit cars were subsidized (even by transit itself; oftentimes they'd have to pay for some of all road maintenance on their routes) and most cities fixed transit prices driving them out of business.
> They are concerned about being elected, that's it.
Politicians are clearly incentivised by election, but saying its their only concern is generalising and reductionist.
The rest of your comment makes a lot of points, but broadly seems to assume that I'm claiming that private companies have no place in transport infrastructure, which is not the case. My point was that "the market" meaning an unmanaged build-it-and-they-will-come approach would not be optimal, in response to my parent commenter's "an easy thing for a market to fix".
Of course, public things like streets and roads and so on needs some planning. I'm no Ayn Rand "privatize all the things" guy.
But make that infrastructure flexible and less rigid and allow a city to adapt. The city where I live had 20K people 40 years ago, and was a logging/mill town. Now it's a tourist town with a budding high tech industry and closing in on 100K. Too much land use planning gets in the way of a city adapting.
Totally valid. It happens. On the other hand it's clearly a statistical outlier. I'd be wary of trying to create one ruleset that covered both wherever you live, cities like Detroit, rural towns, industrial towns, etc. that will all have different environmental needs, density, rates of change, access to private investment capital, etc.
Similarly... it's hard to impossible to predict the future, which is why economists predictions are so often wrong, as you point out. Gold rushes often ended in ghost towns. Who's to say in another 20 years your town won't be back doing logging and milling, and would be better off not bending to support an industry that may turn out to be ephemeral?
>My point was that "the market" meaning an unmanaged build-it-and-they-will-come approach would not be optimal, in response to my parent commenter's "an easy thing for a market to fix".
The item that worries me, and based on decades of observation, that the private companies will snap up all the profitable routes and leave the non-profitable routes to the city, thus deepening the budget gap.
The "market" will do that w/o some sort of regulation specifying that the private companies have to support the other routes.
Kind of points to the cable industry and local agreements w/ towns.
> They are concerned about being elected, that's it. ... / That's not to say they're bad, do no good, etc. Just that their incentives are such that they can't enact good policy oftentimes or possibly even tell the truth to voters.
I must say, I'm happy with my local elected officials. The main problem I see on the national level are politicians with an ideology - government can't do anything, thus they obstruct everything. They are the problem, not government.
(I'm not saying government is at all perfect, but democracy is a great tool.)
It does seem like an easy, and popular, refrain to claim over-regulation. It's a great way to sound contrarian and wise without actually having to do any analysis, after all, the market do the work so no planning is needed. In that noisy environment, asking for specifics of precisely what is over-regulated and why seems both fair and necessary.
> I thought Europe's regulated, universal GSM was better than the U.S.'s 'market' solution of competing technologies.
A similar example, the market has decided on competing standards for charging points for electric vehicles (in the UK at least, I expect most other places too). If a family of standards had been created to cover the various voltage/current requirements, rather than leaving it solely up to manufacturers then the time overhead for drivers of EVs could be dramatically improved, removing a significant obstacle to adoption.
>Maybe there aren't enough street parking spots for all the businesses, and then the market fails: No business wants to spend on on-site parking in order to free up parking for everyone else.
Or it could be parking is a low value land use and little parking is truly optimum. Oftentimes when streets are closed to car traffic permanently there's a boost to business in dense cities.
Many cities don't have parking minimums and they have minimal parking but yet function well. Manhattan for instance is like that.
I lived in Japan and I don't think auto centric Okinawa where I lived had Parking minimums. It had less parking, but from what I recall more private paid lots and higher utilization (no seas of unused parking because a random bureaucrat decided malls needed exactly 2.5 spaces per 1000 square feet).
>Did humans live better before 1947?
In some ways, yes. There were obviously planning failures, but mostly zoning was put in place to exclude the poor and minorities without passing an explicit ban. Just build a place they can never afford and it'll be all great, or so they thought.
IIRC a majority of wealth inequality is due to housing costs. These zoning laws prop up the cost of housing and make it more and more difficult for the young to buy.
Used to be you'd have like a 5 or 10 year loan to buy a house, which might cost 3x the average salary. Not anymore.
>Do you have anything to back it up?
You can compare US zoning with that of other nations and compare cost of housing, transportation, and other metrics.
I think you'll find that on many metrics we do quite poorly.
Also: mobility is decreasing as the cost of housing has increased, which in turn has GDP growth ramifications as workers cannot seek out the highest paying jobs.
This is why some countries like Japan handle zoning at the national level.
>Vote them out of office
Good thing in many cities these planning guys are unelected. Voting out, say, the mayor or city councilman is also ineffective as a majority would be needed.
Incentive wise it's in each district's best interest to ban new housing as that gives land owners more and more money as the population rises and chases the same housing stock.
Add in rent control and rent stabilization and a slim majority are incentivized to keep things as they are.
>Democracy is a proven, effective tool.
Democracy is effective at not rounding up dissidents in secret police raids, but in cases like this it breaks down. Zoning acts as a ban on people, and those people can never become voters, thus perpetuating the system.
Choosing the voters is almost as good as not having a vote at all.
Humans in the U.S. are far better off now in almost every way. Of course there are exceptions.
> Democracy is effective at not rounding up dissidents in secret police raids, but in cases like this it breaks down.
I disagree strongly; democracies perform exceptionally well economically. All the wealthiest economies are democracies, and they are far wealthier than any other economies in the history of the world. Saying democracies do well for political rights but not economics is like saying Microsoft did well with operating systems but not office suites.
And one could argue that human welfare is better in democracies with more planned economies, such as the Nordic countries.
Are democracies still very flawed? Absolutely, but I haven't seen a better option. As someone said, democracy is the worst possible choice, except for all the others.
This desire of urban planners to regulate virtually every aspect of city life is precisely why I live in the suburbs.
I like to remind budding conservatives and libertarians that the free market is an ideal, not a mandate. The situation you describe is one that it perfect to be handled by the market. It's a cliche but it's also true that what matters is "Location, Location, Location". If you locate a business in an area where the people who would normally patronize it do not often travel or where they can't obtain adequate parking, that business will suffer.
Ah, I see what you are saying: you think that suburbs are not planned down to the most minute of details?
I don't know where you live, but I bet if you read a copy of your local zoning code, and have a look at the zoning map, you will probably find that yes, your suburb is very, very heavily regulated, including parking minimums, minimum floor/area ratios, setbacks, uses, and so on and so forth.
Probably less than some HOA's demand, but still a lot of details. I too am not the kind of person who relishes that level of control, but I suppose some people like it.
You raise a valid point. I just looked at my local code book of ordinances and they do cover a lot, including the number of parking spaces by square footage.
In my experience, in a smaller town, these things are primarily used as a weapon to punish otherwise bad businesses.
For example, we had a bar whose patrons became a neighborhood nuisance. They began to enforce the letter of the law for every violation until the bar closed.
There's an alternate universe where these kinds of problems are entirely dealt with through nuisance and noise laws and that kind of thing: the bar is permitted wherever people want to build it, however, the local authorities come down hard on people being a PITA. So if it's a wine bar where middle aged people sip quietly and chat about business, it's not going to bother anyone. The rowdy biker bar probably won't last long in a residential area.
> Just have metered parking everywhere and have the cost per unit time reflect the local demand for parking. Now you've eliminated an externality.
But that doesn't resolve the question of the supply of parking spaces - i.e., how many there should be. That only allocates the existing ones.
Also, it allocates them to those who can pay more; that's not always desirable. For example, should citizens' access to the grocery store be limited by their ability to pay for parking? To city hall?
Yes? It's a finite resource that has to be allocated somehow. Having to have space for parking is a negative externality of owning a car. Make owning a car more expensive and you'll see fewer people driving, taking up parking spaces.
I don't own a car because it doesn't make financial sense for me to do so. That's the kind of longer term market impact you'd want to see.
Edit: The choices are not between allowing people to go to the grocery store and courthouse or not, it's between taking the bus and driving. I do just fine on public transport without a car.
Presumably some governmental authority. Some realtime bidding system would be nice, but that may or may not realistic. I think a realistic goal is that the prices should be set such that there's always 1-2 spots available in any given small area (say, one city block). If you have zero spots available, then the prices are too low and should be raised. If half the street is empty, the prices are too high and should be lowered. The prices will have to adjust based on time of day and day of week, etc.. It doesn't have to be be perfect to be much better than the system we have now.
> the barbershops may be incentivized to push the parking costs onto others
You mean others who post "Parking for McDonald's only" on their spots and have a towing service visible?
There are problems that are not pragmatic for markets to solve without a bit of legal rigidity, but the whole "who will build the roads?" seems to stem from a lack of creativity and just overall contrarianism. "Who will build the interstate highway system" is a much more fair question, but I think cities would enjoy a nice efficiency boost from the decentralized, organic growth of a less bureaucratically-planned city (plus fewer budget problems).
Suddenly I understand why a lot of cities with those cutesey redone downtowns have central parking in mutual places, like the median in the middle of the street. The city fronts it, to keep businesses from doing annoying crap like that.
Surely you mean the taxpayer? Isn't that what the whole article is about? They're going bankrupt by preventing businesses from doing "annoying crap" like buying/constructing parking places and reserving them for their OWN customers. But perhaps bankruptcy is not such a terrible price to pay for aesthetics and bureaucratically instituted uniformity.
> I think cities would enjoy a nice efficiency boost from the decentralized, organic growth of a less bureaucratically-planned city (plus fewer budget problems).
Consider the infrastructure costs in the article: Less centralized, less planned cities would, I expect, create higher infrastructure costs as efficiencies of scale, standardization, reduced redundancy, and planning would be lost. Also, different parts of the city would try to dump costs on each other.
As I asked in another comment:
In what ways are they too regulated, and in what ways not regulated enough? ... How much regulation is just right? And: To which cities are you referring? What kinds of cities?
It's too easy to say, 'there's too much regulation'; it's cliche and doesn't really mean anything.
> Less centralized, less planned cities would, I expect, create higher infrastructure costs as efficiencies of scale, standardization, reduced redundancy, and planning would be lost.
Sounds like pure speculation. Economies of scale is a real phenomenon, but you should be aware that diseconomies of scale is also a real phenomenon that tends to manifest most clearly in government bureaucracies (and in fact, does, per the example in the article).
There is no logical reason to be a naysayer without introducing solutions of your own when the current system is clearly not working (either in terms of results OR financial sustainability). Many companies adopt informal policies like "if you complain, you need to provide a solution of your own." I'm complaining, and I propose decentralizing road building and providing incentives to make it practical for companies to develop them freely (no property taxes on roads open to the public, for example), and a reduction in zoning by city governments in the first place. Prove me wrong and provide a better solution, and I'll be thrilled. I am certainly not an expert on this subject. But I hope you don't think what we have is working -- almost every city in the US is on a practically irreversible path to bankruptcy.
In that case, you set up a corporation that buys an entire subdivision of the city, has 'zoning laws' in its corporate bylaws, and makes 'landowners' shareholders.
Isn't this just local city government with another name? Well, no. There are significant differences between a city government and an organization of private citizens. For one, it's illegal for Walmart to bribe voters; but a corporation would love to have Walmart 'bribe' its shareholders.
Since I assume the land value of neatly organized sections is higher than that of poorly organized sections, there would be an entire section of the economy that buys up individual plots of land, forms corporations out of them, and redevelops and resells the area.
Should citizens have a vote in what happens in their city, or should they be ruled by corporate executives?
Also, a common and essential part of the free market is failure and bankruptcy. What happens when parts of the city go bankrupt? What happens to the citizens there? What happens to the debt?
Ask a local HOA for a copy of their bylaws. My idea isn't novel or weird. Wikipedia says 62 million people in the US live in a HOA. Those questions are all well-settled legally.
I'm not suggesting to remove the city; just a way of re-implementing land-use and building codes if a city doesn't handle it. Probably you'd want fire codes and limited zoning for polluting heavy manufacturing to be handled by the city no matter what; though lawsuits and insurance could cover in a pinch.
Paradoxically, during my brief time living in San Diego, the nicest (and most expensive) neighborhoods were generally the ones built before parking minimums, because they were actually pleasant to live in. Newer areas had plenty of parking but nothing to do that didn't involve driving.
Actually in the eastern part of the Europe (former soviet influence zone) smaller cities are planned, and they are planned really well. As the parent posters have said, it is very similar to the former USSR - you have a lot of green, shops, schools, kindegardens, parks within a walking distance from where you live.
After we ditched the planning and switched to market economy, suddenly developers (the ones that make buildings, not code) started building a lot of buildings without leaving a space for either green or parking spots. As a result in the newer parts of the cities we have a very crowded leaving space, cars are parking everywhere, there are few shops, schools are far away etc.
That's because market-economy developers expropriate planning properties that lead to higher quality of life, externalizing the resultant downstream costs upon their customers, who in this instance of a market with highly asymmetrical information between parties (out of many in market economies) are not aware of the longer-term, cross-functional factors decided against their interests when they make their housing purchasing decisions. This is only somewhat mitigated by customers gradually over time (a few generations) building up a kind of institutional knowledge of preferences that painfully slowly express themselves into the market, and quickly vanish if not assiduously and consciously protected; see many much older walkable neighborhoods in less well off sections of towns and cities get gentrified over with less walkable developments.
The number of parking spots isn't for the barber, it's so that the customers don't park their cars in the spots of the residents or other users of the area! We in 'Europe' have exactly those rules (and then some). And we need them, because these old, not-planned looking cities lack space for everything that didn't exist 500 years ago, obvious things like cars but also 100's of people per building (few residential building were higher than 3 stories 300 years ago) and even bicycles (which already increase the travel range and thus centralization viability for core infrastructure like shops).
No, you don't. Your city would look very, very different if you had parking minimums like in the US.
A parking spot is about 30 square meters. 300 square feet. My house is on a footprint of 900 square feet. When you add driveway length, you can see that my driveway takes up almost as much land as my house, and for homes with more than one parking spot in my area, it can take up more than the house.
For businesses, it's even worse. Look at a satellite image of any American suburban area, and start coloring in the parking spots, and you'll be appalled at how much space is taken up by these things.
I'm not saying we require the same amount of parking, just that we have the same type of rules. Just like your areas that already have higher density don't require the same number of parking spots as those in suburban and mall-style developments.
Look, I know about the problems with car-centric development (I've been a researcher on (urban) land use for over 15 years now). What I'm saying is that the argument the GP tried to make, how Europe is an example of better solutions with less regulations, is wrong. (A) because we don't have better solutions (just different outcomes, the jury's out on whether it's 'better') and (B) because we have just as much regulation.
Those are generally driveways in the US, and are private property: you park your car there, it'll get towed in short order.
Parking minimums are not a thing in large areas of Italy, where I lived. I once lived in an apartment downtown and there was no parking spot included: we walked 20 minutes to a place where we could park. If we had wanted to pay something, we probably could have found a spot that was closer. This is the market at work: we were not forced to pay for parking we didn't really need (we used the car rarely at that point in our lives).
So how many people came by car to the shops at ground level from where you lived? You're not making a case for less regulation, your making a case for more private ownership of space. Which is fine (although it does reduce overall efficiency, so there are limits to the circumstances in which it can work), but it doesn't say anything about how much or little regulation is 'required' or 'reasonable' (nor about the relative amount between the US and 'Europe', which is what this (sub)argument is about).
I mean, you'll have to agree with me that if you're holding up Italy of all places as an example where few regulations (and/or lax enforcement) lead to good outcomes, you're really stretching the criteria of what can be considered 'good outcomes'...
> Most of Europe is pretty walkable and it doesn't have that 'planned' look either.
The pattern that I've observed in my area (East Germany) is that towns have grown by merging with the hamlets and villages around them. So you can have a rapid succession of relatively loose areas with small houses and businesses (the former village centers) interspersed with large prefab apartment blocks (like those that were built in large numbers in GDR times) in the gaps between the villages.
The only major pattern change after the reunification was the emergence of a lot of small shopping malls that bundle a portion of the shops in each district into one place (usually at an intersection of large streets and tram lines).
In contrast, American cities look more like one big blob that grew out into the vast, empty space surrounding it. Since there wasn't any structure to hold onto, everything turned out much more uniform.
But that city also has massive sprawl, so it's kind of tough to point at as an example for more coastal folks. Certain areas may showcase how things could be, but it's still a very car-centric city.
While it lacks many types of zoning, Houston still has minimum parking requirements, which push people towards driving. It also exists in a conservative state that favors highway expansion over transit expansion.
Yes - that's pointed out in the article where they talk about how parking minimums and covenants enforced by the city, rather than privately, create a sort of 'zoning lite'.
The great thing about Houston from a market urbanist perspective isn't that it's particularly dense or walkable, but that it's dirt cheap for the amenities it does offer.
> those businesses couldn't figure out for themselves the optimal amount of parking to pay for to keep their customers happy.
Those businesses don't pay for the parking themselves. The tax payer pays for those parking spots. That's the entire point of street parking, city run parking lots, and the like. Public parking isn't market controlled it's state subsidized. That's why it's called 'public' parking.
The parking spots on a business' property, right out front as is often the case in the US are not public. A business could choose to locate somewhere with more or less of this, or forego it altogether. However, currently, businesses are almost always required to have some spots of their own, that are not public.
Public spots (street parking) might get used by customers of a barber, or by local residents, or by another business. This might prove frustrating to customers of the barber who demand easy parking, and they'll go to another barber who does provide more reserved, non-public parking. Or maybe not! Maybe different barbers have different clientele.
This is something the barber shop ought to be able to decide.
> However, currently, businesses are almost always required to have some spots of their own, that are not public.
I don't think that's actually true; certain types of developments are required to include parking as part of the development (e.g., strip malls), but the individual businesses, either in those developments or not, are rarely required to have their own parking.
Look it up in your local zoning code. Here it's true. Perhaps it's true that they get to combine their spots with other businesses in a development like a strip mall.
Oh, it was definitely "planned" in the modern era. You can see similar problems to the states in many European suburbs (though not as bad because a lot more planning).
Sure, there's planning there, but not quite as much as the US. I own a flat in a suburb of Padova, Italy. It's in a building with 5 other flats. Next to it are two single family homes, as well as another apartment building with 8 flats. Some of the flats are owned, some are rented.
In the US, things get separated out into giant apartment complexes where everyone rents, and single family home districts, where people lose their shit at the mere whiff of a duplex being built.
Eh, Swiss laws on zoning would make an American's head spin. There is a huge emphasis on mixed use, but that is planned as well!
There are plenty of condo buildings that are owner owned and also rented out! It's just that the USA has plenty of buildings designed for rentals, which is more about the American market than zoning (residential is residential).
> It's just that the USA has plenty of buildings designed for rentals, which is more about the American market than zoning (residential is residential).
How things are done in the US tends to favor larger developers who can come along and make a bunch of apartments in an area where that has been approved (which tends to be a fairly small portion of the city), rather than a more incremental development style where things slowly transition building by building. This is in large part because of zoning laws that make it difficult to get apartments in many places, so having the means to face the legal challenges is only something those with deeper pockets can handle, rather than a smaller developer who may only wish to develop a few buildings.
Zoning controls single and multi unit housing, but the "apartment building" that consists of just rentals is an American thing unrelated to that. In fact, one can convert apartments to condos if one wants (assuming rent control is not an issue). The developers alternate between doing condo and apartment projects, I guess the distinction is important when projects are approved individually, but you can't set that bias in zoning!
The US is not alone in large developers doing large projects. There is nothing else in china, though almost all (if not all) projects are unit for sale (that can and are rented out by the buyer).
Individual units aren't really that common in Europe either, especially in cities (I lived in Lausanne for 2 years also). At best you might have (what the USA calls) duplexes in all but the ritziest of areas. Most of the buildings were fairly large multi unit housing that must have been done by a largish developer at some point; then it is only a matter to deal with the gerrance to do the rental.....
The US is weird in its fixation on detached housing, for sure.
The US is weird in its fixation on detached housing, for sure.
Is it really so weird not to want to hear your neighbors' every amorous evening? Or worry that your kids are bothering them when they run around, or that your work schedule will interfere with the sleep schedule of your neighbors (or vice versa)?
It's weird that you tolerate houses built to such a low standard that hearing through walls is a major problem solved only by doubling them and adding an air gap of a few feet...
It's also not weird to want to live in a huge house on several acres of land. Many people would like that.
Economics is about the infinite wants of people colliding with limited resources. Given the option, some people would live in a cruddy apartment to be 'close to the action' in a place like San Francisco or New York.
It's kind of weird when choosing to live in a large city, where being in close proximity to people is the whole point. It's not so weird when choosing to live in a low population area, but also not so much of a problem.
I think the issue here is what is meant by "more planning"
The US is "more planned" in the sense that zoning laws are more strict. More lenient policies in many countries in Europe have more thought put into them, but end up being less strict because that's the way to build nicer cities the way people want them.
There are zoning and planning because, well, people actually live in those places, and it's natural for people to want some control over their environment. Is that really such a bad thing?
It's like drugs, and prostitution, and all of the many things that seem so trendy to want to 'free' from government these days. On paper, the ideas look fantastic and efficient. That is, until a 24-hour strip club / pot dispensary opens across from your kid's elementary school.
Government sucks because it is by nature design by committee. It's inefficient and ugly. Yet, what's the alternative? Maybe AI at some point, but until then we have either collaborative government or authoritative.
But back to the article. One thing overlooked is the pressure on city officials from developers to get rezoning rules waived. And, there's often a lot of corruption in that process, also. For instance, most cities know that residential units cost more in services than other units. And, usually the taxes are structured (too low) such that the residential tax is insufficient to pay for the supplied services. The city planners know this and they account for it in their zoning plans. But, the developers later pressure cities to allow rapid expansion of residential. And, ultimately the plans become broken by too many new units.
In Canada towns have strip clubs in the main commercial area across from banks and grocery stores. It's not an issue. The windows are blacked out and the mere aura of a strip club doesn't somehow damn children. Heck in the D.C., liquor stores are precriously close to playgrounds yet it causes no trouble. People who buy liquor have children too, and if not are still part of the community and thus tend not to do whatever it is you think those who buy legal pot will do.
There's an SM club and a store for adult toys right across from the kindergarten and the school in my area. It's mostly windows with blinds, only the signs are a bit of a giveaway. Sometimes late in the evening you see folks dressed up according to their planned activities, but I have yet to observe any ill effect on me, any of the children or anybody else. I bet a lot of people still haven't noticed what kind of action happens there.
Sorry - was just using that as an example to illustrate that most people have some preferences about what they want and need in their environment. The purpose wasn't to demonize strip clubs or pot houses. Some people may prefer a strip club next door. To others, it may be a church or a parking lot or a factory that they don't want.
Some people don't want free markets to be a force in their lives - pushing up against their personal preferences. And, those people have as valid of a position as those that do, particularly when in a community of like minded people. It's ironic that libertarian minded people try to wash away this fact - some communities want central planning and zoning, and others don't.
It ultimately comes down to how much you think that 'majority rule' should be able to force things on other people. Some communities, in the past, wanted all the non-white people to stay away from certain neighborhoods. These days, we view that as abhorrent.
I'm not a libertarian by the way - I'll happily argue for regulations and government solutions to other problems where I feel they make sense. But in this case, I think we have gone way too far in regulating and dictating things in the US.
Without knowing the actual parking regulations, it's difficult to say whether the regulations are useful or unnecessary. Maybe they are saying that you need a certain number of handicapped parking spaces? Maybe they are saying you can't build a lot with 50 spots if you expect 10 customers?
All real estate related problems in American cities are about nonsensical level of regulation. It is really cool to find so much free parking in Sunnyvale but then we cant really complain about high rents can we ?
People fail to see the basic premise that you cant really have both, plenty of parking and lower rents. They go hand in hand.
You can easily have plenty of parking and lower rents. You might also be seeking big-city stuff like subways and major-league sports, and that just isn't going to happen.
Proof: Palm Bay, FL (got parking and low rent, and even has tech jobs -- but no subway or major-league sports)
Well, they got walkability mostly right, but living in those panel boxes was still not great. I'd never want to go back to that...
Personally, I find the 5-8 story setups of cities like Paris, Barcelona or Rome much more appealing - enough density to make all the good things like walkability and local cafes happen, but no blocked out sun (Like in NYC) or need to climb to 20th floor when the elevator gives out for the nth time.
Having lived in Berlin, which is mostly 5-6 story buildings, I think there's a real sweet spot at this height, perhaps a bit higher if people want larger apartments. This puts enough people in a small area that having good transit, including subways, makes economic sense, and all of the daily essentials are within a block or two. Going higher means you need bigger spacing between buildings in order for the lower floors to get any sunlight, especially in the winter. Bigger spacing between buildings creates a sense of disconnectednes between buildings. At 5-6 stories, you do need fairly wide streets. If you do them like Berlin, you allocate a lot of that width to sidewalks, which are then wide enough for the retail to spill out onto the streets with outdoor displays and sidewalk seating for cafes and bars. It also gives you plenty of room on the sidewalk for other infrastructure like subway stops with adequate width stairwells, bus stops, bike sharing stations, etc. It's also fairly easy to work on underground infrastructure without huge disruption because it runs near the street but under the sidewalk, so normally working on it just means closing off part of the sidewalk. The streets aren't so wide though that they create this cut-off feeling, everything feels continuous.
How was the soundproofing in these 5-6 story buildings? I've lived in flats in the UK and had endless problems, from people vacuuming at 6am on wooden floors above my bedroom to sleepless nights from parties, to hearing TV and conversations.
I like the idea of 5-6 story buildings and know we need higher density housing, but past experiences make we want to live in a 2-story (semi-)detached house with enough garden to keep the neighbours at a distance.
Well, Germans have a lot of rules about when you're allowed to make noise, and they have a reputation for involving the authorities more than in other places. Having lived in several apartments in different parts of the city, noise from neighbors was rarely a problem, but street noise sometimes was in the summer when the windows were open.
Where I've lived, the flats made in 60s to 90s had rather varying soundproofing. Worst case you could hear neighbors chatting and their babies crying, best only bigger noise.
But apartments made since 2000 have had excellent sound-proofing. Absolutely silent from neighbors. Only reason not to live in a new flat with walking distance from services is if you really like gardening.
I live in a GDR-era 5-story apartment block (a model WBS-70/5, to be exact). The soundproofing is quite good; I don't feel disturbed by the neighbors in the surrounding apartments at all. My only gripe is that the door to the entry door is a bit thin. On weekends, when I like to stay in bed a bit longer, I frequently hear people passing by on the stairs.
If you put enough mineral wood in the walls, floors, and ceilings, install triple-pane casement windows (seriously, sash windows are shit), and mount all the plasterboard on stand-offs instead of directly on surfaces, sound shouldn't ever be a problem.
Unfortunately, nothing new is built that way, that art seems to have been lost at some point during world war one. We can't even blame the car for that, as true mass motorization happened much later.
Early modern housing schemes (of which Berlin has quite a few really interesting examples, e.g. the Siemensstadt developments to the north of Siemensdamm subway stop) were a great response to how those traditional patterns sufferered from overcrowding back when they supported much higher density than today. Unfortunately, that style developed into something very ugly when it was ruthlessly scaled vertically a few decades later.
You don't need such density to have walkability to shops and cafés. Any 2-3 story small town from 2000-4000 to 30000-40000 inhabitants can provide it.
That's not at all in the league of the 1-3 millions inhabitants cities you quoted. Paris is a nightmare to live in and people want to flea from it. There used to be close to 3 millions inhabitants and it is now down to slightly over 2 millions.
Ick. In Vancouver we have some areas which are basically paved with 5-10 floor buildings -- there's no space between adjacent buildings, and only a narrow sidewalk separating buildings from vehicular traffic. We also have areas with 30-40 floor towers separated by parks and playgrounds, with plenty of trees and wide sidewalks.
The population density is basically identical between these areas, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to live in a low-rise area.
(Incidentally, the reason we have low-rise areas is because the city has an absurdly long list of "sight cones" to protect views of the local mountains.)
Seems like a problem with street design. As someone noted above, you do need wider streets with wide side walks for this type of construction to be livible. If you cluster too tightly, window to window, it definitely degrades the setup.
It's not just a matter of the streets; it's also the space within each block. Having towers makes it possible to have open spaces as well without decreasing the density.
Town's have totally different economics. My town is fiscally solvent, takes are of it's infrastructure, and doesn't much raise taxes. And we are very spread out, with an average lot size of 2 acres. Small roads are the responsibility of the town. Bigger roads (there aren't many) are the responsibility of the county. I'll claim that the layout of the town doesn't matter nearly as much as the fiscal discipline of the town government.
As you scale from town to city, it is too easy for this discipline to break down. Whereas in my town, the town manager has to put up a pretty strong argument to justify hiring another employee or buying a piece of expensive equipment, in a medium to large city I, as a taxpayer, don't have any visibility let alone say, in any such expenditure.
Fiscal discipline comes mainly from individuals not wanting to spend their hard-earned money - unless going so is necessary to keep things in their current working order. Once these spending decisions are made by nameless bureaucrats, that personal discipline is lost.
That's not quite correct... fiscal discipline isn't going to make most suburb-heavy cities in America solvent. You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term, you can only stave off bankruptcy in the short term.
The article is saying that mostly-suburb cities are not sustainable. They cost more to build and maintain over the long term than the majority of cities can recoup in taxes. That has little to do with employees, they are mostly talking about straight-line capital costs to dig up the streets and install new sewer lines. Even worse is that many cities grew in a relatively small post-war boom so a lot of that infrastructure will need replacing at the same time.
Towns don't typically provide all of water, sewer, storm sewer, and other such services... they might provide water. They can also just dig up everyone's yard to replace what infrastructure they do have because things are more spread out (lost of "wasted" land between the house and road) and far fewer people are disrupted (that also means projects can be done at a slower pace). They also have a much sparser police and fire department, far fewer parks, etc.
You are indeed supporting my assertion that towns have different economics. Mine is an old suburb (1920s) of a medium-sized city (Pittsburgh). And as I stated, our town is sustainable. We have "more" parks not "fewer parks". Parks require much less maintenance cost than does residential spaces(plus much is done by volunteers). I'll also assert again that how "spread out" things are doesn't matter. If anything, denser clusters will have lower maintenance costs (less digging).
So how can we make cities have the same fiscal discipline of towns? We'd have to reverse the land-grab of the cities. Have them split into fiscal units the same size as my town (20K people). Have the managers have to come ask those residence to approve their budget.
Same issue with schools. Why does the Pittsburgh city school district spend the same per pupil as the suburbs, but the such worse results? Lack of fiscal discipline.
For your last point, if your student demographic is more impoverished, you will get worse results compared to a more well off demographic even with the same per pupil spending; the resources the kid has at home is important! (Charter schools get their results through selection bias, American suburbs with large lots that aren't suitable for low income housing likewise).
The white flight to the suburbs in the 60s is largely responsible for that, creating a negative feedback loop that we haven't been able to break even now. Anyways, it isn't always about fiscal discipline, often the answer is much more obvious than that. Suburbs basically outsourced poverty to the cities.
Not sure why the downvotes. There way more activity in the urban core here now, and both young adults and empty-nesters are choosing to move into the city. What used to be boarded-up storefronts are now cafes, bookstores, art galleries, restaurants, etc. Please don't continue giving progressivism a bad rap by sticking with this "impoverished city" bs.
Neither young adults nor empty-nesters are the demographic that impoverished school-age children are associated with, so those populations moving into the urban core doesn't have a very direct positive impact on the educational outcomes of schools that impoverished children attend.
They might, but it hasn't happened yet. Pittsburgh is a good example of a city that hasn't thrived as much as others, but even Seattle city schools suffer compared to the suburbs. "Live in Seattle until you have kids, then move to Bothell or Bellevue."
I don't think the schools example is parallel. There's a lot of factors that go into the success of a student, both in and outside of school. Equal funding doesn't translate to equal opportunity.
But I'm not talking about individual students. In my example, we'd be averaging the students individual situation over the 20-30K in their new fiscal neighborhood. Any "success factors" that did exist across such averages would be more than canceled out by the empowerment given to parent and child.
I grew up in the same town and strongly share your sentiments! I noticed Americans tend to be incredulous when I speak positively about it. Perhaps this is due to the obvious similarity to public housing layouts here and their negative associations, but also from a lack of appreciation (due to lack of first-hand experience of) the benefits that you mentioned above.
Not it didn't, speaking as someone who lives in such a planned part of a city. There are several problems:
- the areas for living, for offices, and for industry are disjointed and far from each other, necessitating a lot of travel each day. This was partly understandable for workers in polluting industries, but now it's just a pain.
- the 'green' spaces are too big (yes, really), which further increases distances and makes it too expensive for the city to take care of them properly. Furthermore the absence of enclosed communal space (what is sometimes inside the 'city blocks') means that the inhabitants don't feel the green space 'belongs to them'. So they don't feel incentives to care for that space, and they don't. (as an aside, the absence of city blocks is sometimes explained as it should make easier for tank armies to control the area in the event of an uprising or war)
- the supporting infrastructure was to be built later than the flats, sometimes much later, sometimes never. That's a problem of the execution, though.
I'm not saying it's all bad, but it could be much better.
>Furthermore the absence of enclosed communal space (what is sometimes inside the 'city blocks') means that the inhabitants don't feel the green space 'belongs to them'.
Yeah this. I never liked the "one huge park for everyone in the city" approach. I think the Chicago-style "many parks" approach is superior. In my neighborhood I have four parks within walking distance, seven or eight if you include school playlots.
>So they don't feel incentives to care for that space, and they don't.
Trash gets picked up quickly in the parks. I do feel a sense of ownership with the closest parks and get pissed when I see trash and promptly pick it up. I think smaller localized spaces do a good job of fighting the 'tragedy of the commons' we see with larger spaces. When something belongs to 'everyone' it really belongs to no one. Sorry but that's just human nature and one of the many reasons communism failed.
Not to mention, a lot of those Soviet towns are little more than endless ugly apartment blocks. The idea of a home with a unique design or a single family home with its own yard didn't fit in with the engineer led design of 'everyone lives in efficient boxes.' I find towns like that to be depressing and ugly. I'd rather trade some efficiency for beauty and livability. Top-down approaches get praised by geeks, but ultimately are simply worse than bottom-up approaches many American cities developed from. I'd much rather live in chaotic NYC, LA, or Chicago than 'ultraplanned' cities in Russia or China. Considering how many people we have dying to immigrate here, I suspect wanting those types of lifestyles reflects something in human nature.
OTOH, Brasilia [1], the Federal Capital of Brazil, was 100% planned and included just spaces for cars. Not parking, just roads. Everything is very far apart, and the living part of it (houses, buildings) should consist in mega-blocks that would provide those basic needs: markets, pharmacies, groceries...
Didn't work. You need a car for everything. The roads are flooded with cars. The city expanded and a great part of the habitants live very far from the place they work, so it takes a long time to go home.
The reason for the US public housing projects' failure is wealth inequality. When your population has a mix of well-off people and very poor people, and you provide super-cheap housing, the very poor people gravitate to it, among them those who are desperate, have nothing to lose, involved in drugs and crime, etc.
Once this happens the crime rate goes up, the area feels unsafe to 'normal' people, and anyone who can do so gets the hell out of there. The area turns into a slum and is basically impossible to 'fix' without redeveloping it.
I'd guess that in Russia, one of two things happens. Either Russia's wealth distribution is even enough under communism that the rot never sets in, or in practice they're just as much of a slum as the American ones and we're just seeing a romanticized view.
in Russia most people with low-income just can't afford new housing and live with parents or in inherited apartments after their grandparents/parents die
those apartments we not bought, but privatized after Soviet Union collapse, where people get apartments for "free" after approx. 10 years working on a factory or so...
so in new projects, which are sold for money with mortgage rates at 12% annually there's no people that have "nothing to lose", people that have "nothing to lose" are widespread, living in apartments their parents got in Soviet Union
I was born in one of those cities where most housing is in the form of the old communist panelaks. But there is a clear distinction between the nice neighborhoods (5-10 floor buildings, trees and parks filling the sizable spaces) and the shitty ones (20+ floors, densely packed, near interstates, spaced with dirt). The former are a nice place to raise a middle class family, and the latter are crime filled slums.
How would having fewer rich people prevent the poor from committing crimes against the middle class (or just publicly engaging in victimless crimes[1]) and engaging in other behaviors that make an area feel unsafe?
As a counterpoint, consider India and most of Asia. Poor areas are dirty and have little infrastructure, but they don't feel unsafe. I occasionally shop in Dharavi and don't feel unsafe at all.
[1] I believe that lots of strung out drug addicts make an area feel unsafe even if they don't harm anyone.
In Chicago at least, it was a vicious circle. The rich (who by extension are the powerful) moved poor (or maybe more inline to their thought process at the time, black) people to specific areas so that they would be away from the rich (or again, really more relevant at the time, white) people.
This concentration of people required more services both because of the sheer higher concentration of people and because of the lack of private money to backstop gaps. At the same time, those areas received less services/investment precisely because the people who lived there were not powerful. This gap of services lead to increased crime due to factors such as lack of opportunity, increased drug abuse due to hopelessness, worse education options, etc.
The gap widened and got worse until it became untenable to maintain (and in some cases the land became too valuable) and political power was used to disperse the public housing population.
According to you, the problem is that the rich moved away and stopped providing resources.
Suppose inequality were lower and those rich people simply didn't exist. They would still be unable to provide resources, and the low level of services you describe would still exist. Wouldn't the crime/drug use/etc still happen?
> According to you, the problem is that the rich moved away and stopped providing resources.
That is not what I said. What I said was that the powerful moved the poor, into higher density, more resource intensive areas and then neglected to provide adequate services.
If the inequality were lower and those rich people (and really I prefer powerful in this case, but they are largely the same group so I suppose it is fine) did not exist, the concentrated population would be diffused across more areas, making it less tenable to actively neglect them and making the problem less severe in the first place.
That said, I believe crime/drug use/etc are not avoidable, so its not a question of whether those things would occur but a question of the rate.
If this narrative is true, and concentrated poverty is the result of rich people somehow moving the poor, then countries with lower inequality will not have concentrated poverty.
At least here in India, with significantly less inequality than the US, we still have lots of concentrated poverty. It's almost as if residential separation is the result of market forces and individual choices (c.f. the Schelling model).
Dharavi used to have terrible violent crime in the 70s-80s, but despite the apparent squalor, it has since developed into a functioning "township" with long term established businesses and organized political and cultural institutions[1].
Your comparison of Dharavi to the situation in American public housing projects is fallacious because it draws the equivalency based on Dharavi's dirtiness while ignoring how incredibly dissimilar the places are.
When the middle class is only barely more wealthy than the destitute, there is no point for the poor to try to rob them. And then only the political elite is much richer (in practise even if not in theory), and they are protected well by the police and the military.
This can be the situation in places with centrally managed economies like North Korea today. Obviously, they are also very safe (from the regular criminal behaviour point of view).
If that were true then areas with concentrated poverty should have negligible crime - why bother robbing anyone if everyone is poor? Yet that is the exact opposite of what is seen in reality.
A single concentrated poverty spot naturally doesn't work like that. It is immersed in a culture that shows it the income and wealth inequalities, as well as uses them to justify violence.
But when a country is universally poor but has a working and stable government, you may have surprisingly low crime rates. But then, such a country often doesn't stay poor. (Look at China...)
So the poor commit crimes against each other solely because rich people exist somewhere else and don't interact with them?
Malaysia is oddly anti-semitic for a country with about 0 Jews. I'd expect that if the Jews were causing all the problems, then Jews would actually need to exist in-country. But now you are making me re-think; is it plausible that simply by existing somewhere else, the Jews cause Muslims to engage in bad actions that harm themselves?
I don't understand your general principle. When is it reasonable for one group to blame their actions on the existence of some far away out-group?
The difference is that there wouldn't be such intense concentrations of poor people when people moving to the area are less driven by wealth inequality.
Also strung out drug addicts are likely to be driven to theft.
Public housing in the US was poorly implemented. It was strictly low-income, rather than mixed-income, and the housing was largely soulless large complexes far from amenities. Other countries, like Austria, have public housing that works perfectly fine.
I found "Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing" very educational about why the US had such poorly implemented public housing (at least in Chicago).
Early efforts were mixed income, small and in desirable locations. They were also by many measures very successful. That model was moved away from because it eroded the power base of the political leaders of the day and for straight up racist reasons.
Its also largely a myth that the large block, low income model was ever seen as likely to succeed. Public housing experts and advocates at the time anticipated the disastrous results that came about.
Well, the theory, as I've heard an urban planner explain in a video, is that the problem with projects is that they are populated by people of exactly the same class. A mixed income/background area is less likely to turn into what projects did. I'm just quoting somebody else here, won't claim that it's a fact.
You should check out Stuyvesant Town in NYC. I really like its layout and the lack of cars. It's a good community. I've envisioned building an entire city as a chain of these self contained Stuyvesant Towns.
I don't know a better solution in terms of space efficiency, but living in a high rise is so depressing. I prefer to live way out in the woods, but the benefits of what you describe sound great
It's the same in most of the eastern bloc, I've always been super surprised at how good the public transit is in Czech cities, and that's because of the high-rises.
Said town site is on a communication mainline - railroad.
Guess what, US lacks those for what would mostly be called political lobbying reasons. Including light rail and underground rail.
Rail is comparatively cheap to maintain compared to roads due to much higher passenger density and construction details. Even a tunnel is cheaper to maintain (not build) than a properly drained, pothole free and soft road.
It has grown, and more sprawly type of development has been accumulating around it, sadly. This is Moscow region and the population has been growing very fast. Parking space has become an issue as well.
Here in Vilnius parking is an issue two. As I understand (I'm originally from the UK), in an apartment building of maybe 30 units there would be maybe 2 cars during Soviet times, where as now its more like 30 :D
The buildings here aren't that big (I went to Kiev a couple of years ago and was surprised how much taller they are) so there is usually just about enough space between the buildings to fit all the cars in. New buildings almost exclusively have underground parking, which is nice to recover the green space.
If your quality of life is determined solely by walkability, then sure, you'd consider it "high". In the USSR things were walkable out of necessity: not everyone had cars. And besides, if you're building a block of high rises (stuffed with tiny 650sqft apartments, for the proletariat) and estimate there will be 1K kids, you might as well build a school, a drug store and a grocery store in the middle. Swimming pool within a walking distance was a rather extravagant luxury, not everyone had that. Shit, I hadn't even seen a real swimming pool until I started college. Woods, sure, that's kinda nice.
My point being, you make it sound like every town in the USSR was like that whereas in reality what you're describing sounds like a "unicorn" situation that was rarely encountered in reality. Walkability was about the only thing Soviet urban planning had going for it. Ironically, these days I live in US suburbia within walking distance of a pool, elementary/middle/high school, and a convenience store. And woods too: we pretty regularly see deer in our back yard.
Soviet union planned cities are mostly awful. They mandate helluva lot of open space between high-rises which doesn't get any care. It also creates corridors for fierce cold winds to blow. Most of buildings don't have space for commerce making area either as dead as suburbia or blistered with shackles selling stuff. Transit stops are far between and you have to get there thru ice and hail. Roads are few and congested while still getting in your way.
A lot of open space is great because the wind can blow. When you block the wind you get poor air quality.
In Cracow, Poland we have that trouble, there are buildings that block natural wind and the polluted air sits and makes people sick (PM2.5 and PM10 are > 300% their safe levels, see https://map.airly.eu/)
Most of Russian cities are built on a plain (or even better - major river) and they don't have any problems with venting out polluted air. Regular pre-Brezhnev street gaps are more than enough for that.
However, most of Russian cities have half of year of virtually winter, with temperature near or below zero celsius.
This pretty much makes such apartment blocks torturous/unlivable due to chilling winds if you don't have a car. And if you do, keep in mind that they're not built for that, so lack of parking and congestion are your new friends.
I've seen the infrastructure thing come up for awhile now, and it's definitely true. In my area, as in others I've read of, they're smashing paved roads into gravel roads as the paved are too expensive.
The thing that fascinates me is that it feels like a forgone conclusion that infrastructure costs cannot be made cheaper. Have we really hit the most cost effective, cheapest, most sustainable method of laying/replacing sewer/gas/water lines and roads?
There's no innovation left at all when it comes to making pipes that are more easily replaceable without digging the entire road up? There's no brilliant ideas left at all on how to 'pave' roads so they're smooth enough in a way that costs less money, or lasts way longer? Heck, while we're talking improvements maybe we should have a way to pave a road such that we don't have such massive runoff and its more resilient to minor settling underneath without opening large potholes.
I do wonder whether the shit really hitting the fan, and massive chunks of the population having their roads smashed back to gravel might shake a few new ideas out.
We have an infrastructure system that maximizes spending to political donor companies. Naturally under those conditions its laugh out loud obvious that its going to cost more to build roads than to build an entire city of houses. If the houses were built under the same level of government corruption as the roads, they'd cost 10x as much minimum and only last 5 years before needing teardown replacement, and then the ratio of replacement cost of structure to infrastructure would look more natural or believable.
The puzzle they have is trying to fix a corrupt system. Merely replacing "evil car streets" with "progressive bicycle paths" will not fix anything, they'll just be a followup article about how horrible it is that the replacement cost of the bicycle path infrastructure curiously remains the same $32B because that's what the politically active re-election campaign donor contractors require.
Another article by this author (http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/8/a-utah-republica...) describes a rejected federal proposal to hand over most federal infrastructure dollars to states, the implication being local governments would know how to allocate dollars more effectively than the federal government. The author suggests going a step further and letting majors direct the funding.
As the article says, there are plenty of solutions for these problems, individually.
The predicament, as a whole, is that we cannot afford them.
Infrastructure quality is, like so many things, directly proportionate to investment. You can trade off future maintenance by spending more initially, or vice versa, but you can't magically reduce both at the same time while providing the same level of service.
The problem is that the level of economic productivity supported by (for example) a strip mall is so low that it cannot support the ongoing maintenance of the infrastructure that is required to allow it to exist. This is also true for many suburban homes and office buildings.
You must either extract more productive value from the same land area and population, reduce service quality, or invest massive quantities of capital in maintenance cost reduction, which has virtually the same effect as either of the previous.
I think schools is as big (or bigger) of a problem than the infrastructure. So many towns are bedroom communities that have people commuting to other more dense areas. All the businesses that make money (and pay lots of taxes) are in those other dense areas, not local. Now the local community is on the hook forever to support the school base. Very few communities have rules saying that new developments must pay a substantial fee that could be saved against future school, infrastructure costs. But like most things in this country, people want it just don't want to pay for it (and if it is bad, don't want it here).
So the land could be used better. That's my takeaway from the article, too. If the zone can't afford the infrastructure then it should be repurposed/zoned. Bonus points if it makes cities more walkable/less designed by car.
>You can trade off future maintenance by spending more initially, or vice versa
Umm is that really true ? Maybe it is I just don't see why this would be - if anything I would guess spending more would lead to more expensive maintenance as well
> but you can't magically reduce both at the same time while providing the same level of service.
The classic example here is using concrete or asphalt for roads. Building a four-lane highway in concrete costs something like a million dollars per mile, all told. Building a four-lane highway with asphalt costs something like half as much. But the problem is that the asphalt highway will wear out much more quickly and will require you to go in every year and patch potholes, whereas the concrete highway will be much less susceptible to potholes and won't need to be torn up and repaved every 5-7 years. So by spending the extra money to build in concrete today, you're saving yourself extra expenses later on.
Of course, asphalt is cheaper and easier to put down, so there is always the temptation to go ahead and build the asphalt road now and take credit for it in front of voters while leaving the problem of maintaining those roads for the next person in office.
I get the concept in theory I'm just not sure it's a given in practice - the way I've seen people spend extra money on projects isn't really for long term cost reduction but features that make it look flashy (increasing the scope and making it more expensive to maintain).
Take, for example, road surfacing. You can use gravel, which requires multiple maintenance visits per year to remain functional and definitely has knock-on costs in terms of car damage and such.
Or you can upgrade to asphalt - lasts much longer, much lower maintenance in terms of required manpower and visits to remain functional, etc.
Or, if you want to go the whole way, you can use reinforced concrete or a slab paver setup, they will last ~30-50 years depending largely on traffic (asphalt tends to degrade even with little traffic).
That's what I mean. It's about a 3x initial cost difference between each of the tiers, but your long term maintenance costs go down the more you spend. It's not a strict one-to-one, but still.
>>You can trade off future maintenance by spending more initially, or vice versa
> Umm is that really true ?
Maybe not universally, but often, yes. E.g., you can build using more expensive materials that will last longer/are more resistant to environmental decay.
And when concrete roads fall into disrepair, they get to be really nasty to drive on. I feel like I'm going to shake my car apart driving on some roads in Iowa.
I can't say that asphalt roads in disrepair are much better, but potholes tend to be more quickly fixed than slightly mis-aligned sections of concrete roads.
Lowering maintenance costs is one of the things you can spend money on when building infrastructure, but not the only thing, so it depends on how you spend the money.
> Not magic - innovation.
Innovation is great, but in most cases requires new upfront expenses that have already been covered for existing solutions. We already have a fairly good amount of infrastructure for producing infrastructure, so usually innovation is one of the ways you can spend more upfront to reduce long term maintenance.
> I've seen the infrastructure thing come up for awhile now, and it's definitely true.
Sort of. I'm not convinced their infrastructure pricing is accurate at all. I fully believe infrastructure has a higher cost in the suburbs, and that we aren't fully saving for/planning for those costs. But the numbers this article uses are insanely too high, to the point that it feels like an outright lie.
Strongtowns claims it costs more money to maintain the infrastructure for a single-family home (on average), than the average house would cost to build from scratch using retail pricing today (including land + construction of the house, and all of the related road/water/power/sewer infrastructure).
The StrongTown estimate seems to claim it's replacing infrastructure "once a generation" (30 years?), but is charging enough money to rip-and-replace every piece of all infrastructure 6 times per generation. Which is really high -- no one does that, there wouldn't usually be any need to do so.
Or to put it another way, StrongTowns is claiming that infrastructure maintenance alone costs the same as leveling the entire neighborhood and rebuilding it all from scratch at retail pricing every 30 years. Which is just outlandish -- if infrastructure actually was that expensive, 90% of these suburban houses never could have been built in the first place, even if financed using subsidy or debt.
> StrongTowns is claiming that infrastructure maintenance alone costs the same as leveling the entire neighborhood and rebuilding it all from scratch at retail pricing every 30 years.
This doesn't seem that surprising to me. Replacing existing utilities in place is far more expensive than laying them in the first place because you have to do it without cutting off everyone's access to water/electricity/whatever while you do it. Plus you have to work around other infrastructure and houses and dig up roads etc. And it's difficult to coordinate utility replacements so you do this stuff once for gas and later for water and again for the sewer.
On top of all that, infrastructure is just terribly expensive. Price out laying a driveway. Now imagine scaling it up by maybe 10x just for the section of road in front of your house.
> Replacing existing utilities in place is far more expensive than laying them in the first place.
Sure, but it's not 6X more expensive in the suburbs. Water / Gas lines, for instance, are often under sidewalks or yards now so you don't have to dig up the road to replace them.
> because you have to do it without cutting off everyone's access to water/electricity/whatever while you do it
You don't have to. When utility work gets done in the suburbs, people often just lose water / electricity / gas / whatever for the 24-48 hours while they do it, and just have to deal with it.
(We're talking about sprawl -- stuff done cheap, by definition. This is not the complex operation that replacing water lines in Manhattan would be).
> On top of all that, infrastructure is just terribly expensive. Price out laying a driveway.
Even after adjusting for inflation, it's only about 2X the cost of a driveway, not 10x.
And that's my problem with the article. It seems they took the actual cost of infrastructure, "imagined scaling it up maybe 10x", and then claimed a crisis using their imaginary costs. Real infrastructure costs, while high, are simply not anywhere near as high as they are claiming.
> Sure, but it's not 6X more expensive in the suburbs. Water / Gas lines, for instance, are often under sidewalks or yards now so you don't have to dig up the road to replace them.
Sometimes. Digging up sidewalks and yards is also expensive, regardless.
> You don't have to. When utility work gets done in the suburbs, people often just lose water / electricity / gas / whatever for the 24-48 hours while they do it, and just have to deal with it.
I've never been anywhere that 48 hours without electricity or water was considered acceptable for maintenance. In my experience, most maintenance is done during business hours with the expectation that people have utilities when they get ready in the morning and when they get home.
24 hours without a major utility is generally considered an emergency and crews are driving in from other states to help.
> Even after adjusting for inflation, it's only about 2X the cost of a driveway, not 10x.
You're probably right that the 10x number isn't accurate, since I completely made it up. It's still a lot of money and the cost to replace is always higher than the cost to build in the first place (with perhaps the exception of cost for grading).
> And that's my problem with the article. It seems they took the actual cost of infrastructure, "imagined scaling it up maybe 10x", and then claimed a crisis using their imaginary costs. Real infrastructure costs, while high, are simply not anywhere near as high as they are claiming.
I feel like you're nitpicking their claims without providing any alternative data or a compelling reason why their numbers don't make sense. You're asserting that they arbitrarily scaled up costs but you've not shown that they did so. The author is a civil engineer and a PE and a city planner so there's some weight behind his claims. You're asserting that his numbers are lies because you don't like them.
I'm not sure where your "6 times per generation" replacement claim is coming from, either.
Who is going to do that innovation? A startup? Good luck getting a municipal government to take risks by handing maintenance contracts to a startup. Their incentives are to do nothing and wait to be bailed out through inflation.
+1 If you're having a hard time finding innovators in some area that has obvious utility and isn't already mathematically proven to be near-optimal, the next logical question is, "what's preventing this type of work from being monetized/incentivized?"
It seems to be a uniquely American practice to expect infrastructure maintenance and renewal to be funded by cities exclusively using property taxes.
Cities generally act not only as trading hubs providing services to the region surrounding them, they also act as tax revenue sweeteners due to higher concentration of high income residents. Ie. they have positive externalities for the region, province or nation.
While I'm certain there would be a level of corruption in city administration, it seems to be incredibly short sighted to force cities to fund infrastructure through only property taxes and such without funding from income tax the province/nation collects as what happens in other parts of the world.
> it seems to be incredibly short sighted to force cities to fund infrastructure through only property taxes and such without funding from income tax the province/nation collects as what happens in other parts of the world.
In America, many cities get some revenues like that as well.
Many cities levy their own income or sales taxes, in addition to the state income/sales taxes. (NYC has a 2.9-3.6% income tax itself, Seattle has a 2.7% sales tax itself, many small cities in the Midwest have their own income taxes, etc)
Cities typically also get some amount of revenue back from state taxes -- although it has unfortunately become common for some state governments to take city/road/school funding to cover spending in other places.
Cities have access to money from property taxes and sales taxes. States have access to sales tax and income tax. The state should be assisting with local budgets to level the playing field but that isn't really detailed in this article for some reason.
States and the federal government certainly do help fund city infrastructure. Often it comes in the form of grants (used for capitol costs) and matching funds.
There's a blog I enjoy that covers this sort of issue very frequently. It's interesting to see a hard data approach to explaining some of the municipal funding problems that are brewing nationwide.
Sorry if that hurts some American self-respect, but what's the difference between this and the Chinese housing bubble that American media always complain about? Sure some details are different, but the basic layout is the same from what I can see: Politicians had about 20 years long time of incentives to grow without really building self sustaining cities. Now the current generation is at a point were it nearly doesn't know any more what to do. Seems quite similar, doesn't it?
The everything. In the US, those cities were built in the past for uses that are now outdated or outsourced. In China, the government appears to want "the city" to fulfill some sort of ego trip. They perceive cities as more valuable than rural towns despite their culture not really being at that point. Overtime US cities have become outdated while Chinese cities are a solution in search of a problem.
No, public employee pensions are supposed to be paid with today's dollars into a separate entity which manages the money in the same way private pensions do. This is why CalPERS has $300bn assets. Those are yesterday's dollars saved for today.
There are some cities that get around this by requiring HOAs in new subdivisions, and requiring those HOAs to pay for maintenance of much of the infrastructure. The homeowners pay the same property tax they would pay anywhere else in the same city. There are a number of cities in the Sacramento area that have been doing this kind of thing for over a decade now.
That approach brings in another set of problems, but it's worth mentioning.
I'd love to see a more local approach where say a couple hundred of my neighbors from the few blocks around me could vote to raise taxes for something specific, like repaving a street, or rehabbing a park. It's local money that you know stays local.
These already exist where I live (CA), there are line items for things like city-wide storm sewer, improvements to local parks, levies for specific work.
It's managed by the city, so I'm not sure if it hits the general fund, but it is a tax specifically for those things.
I'm not sure why my original response, "Curing cancer with AIDS? No thanks" was flagged. HOAs are awful and mandating them is despicable. Curing one problem with another is not a solution.
Homeowners associations are abominations. They put "property value" above everything else to the point that you're not allowed to have the wrong brand of car or put your garbage out before midnight the night before it's collected. They should honestly be illegal.
"They" aren't som abstract entity, they're you and your neighbors. If you don't like the direction your homeowners association is going, why not join it and propose changes?
Making changes to an HOA, once it's established, is functionally impossible in many places due to the way they are set up. They require a certain percentage of homeowners to approve a change, which ends up being far more of them than you can get to respond to mailers or doorbells. The meetings of the HOAs themselves tend too often to devolve into wasting everyone's time on minor, petty differences about how to spend the dues.
This is at least partly intentional, I suspect, because it allows the city to make certain assumptions about newer neighborhoods which have these boilerplate HOAs that are essentially the same across a whole region. This type of thing may or may not be better in some situations than no HOA at all, but it undermines what I would consider true property ownership while also preventing any kind of effective adaptation to new information or circumstances over time. For example, I know of a neighborhood where they are required to put a certain color of asphalt shingles on their roofs when they need a new one (about every 10-15 years). Roof mounted solar panels or tiles will never be allowed in this neighborhood, which I find utterly insane.
If I was in a position to buy property, I would strongly favor a location unburdened by this kind of albatross.
Zoning is almost entirely a local affair, and it's city wide. HOA's are something I would personally stay far, far away from, but the amount of terrain they can effectively control is a small part of a city. I'd rather live in a more dynamic place with a few HOA's for people who want to live in a Rigidly Controlled Environment than what we have now, which is entire cities that are rigidly planned down to how many feet of front yard houses must have.
> When we added up the replacement cost of all of the city's infrastructure -- an expense we would anticipate them cumulatively experiencing roughly once a generation -- it came to $32 billion.
A generation is what, 25 years? If you expect to replace all roads/electricity poles/sewers etc every 25 years you seriously need to look a quality. For this I feel this whole article is off.
> Humans are predisposed to highly value pleasure today and to deeply discount future pain
This is not true. One of the best test for predicting a child success is seeing if they will defer a treat now for more treats later. Many people have the sacrifice now for a better future instinct.
This article seems to make some vastly incorrect assumptions. Personally I think where cities are overspending 3 things could really help.
1) Making asset sales/tenders/expenditure very public and show comparable cost ratios. E.g. cost per km of sewer
2) Bringing more work back in-house. I feel this 'privatise everything is better' mentality is simply not true and does things that leads to infrastructure that needs replacement every 25 years and cost blowouts.
3) If you are going to privatise services price them on points of quality that you can enforce. E.g. Rather than jails getting a straight fee, they should get a small per convict allowance but a generous bonus for each released convict that spends 5 years crime free after release.
> A generation is what, 25 years? If you expect to replace all roads/electricity poles/sewers etc every 25 years you seriously need to look a quality. For this I feel this whole article is off.
Isn't that the typical depreciation schedule for infrastructural assets? I've seen some useful life tables used by accountants and 25 years seems to be a typical mark. Maybe 30 years, but rarely 50.
Depreciating it over 30 years is probably reasonable, but automatically counting replacement as an unfunded liability is way too conservative.
Heavily traffic roads will need replacing at least every 30 years. But in my college down, they had side streets made of brick that has lasted over 80 years.
Things like water mains and sewerage pipes have a lifetime of 100 years or more. A lot of the systems are now due up for replacement for the first time and it will cost a lot. But it won't have to be done again again in our lifetimes.
The problem is, since nobody budgeted for this rare but predictable replacement, there is no money for it. This is why even long replacements have to be budgeted annually. They may be cheaper, but they silk exists. It is always somebody else's problem, but then it sucks to be that person.
> Making asset sales/tenders/expenditure very public and show comparable cost ratios. E.g. cost per km of sewer
I think this is one of the main drivers in favoring cheap and punishing quality. I agree with 2 and 3, though I'd argue that private jails are one of the things that should be bought back in house.
> I think this is one of the main drivers in favoring cheap and punishing quality.
The problem comes with evaluating quality. There are issues with over-valuing cheapness, but there are equally issues with using high-cost as an indicator of quality too.
Could cities not do something where they pay 50% of the construction bill over the expected lifetime of the project, with a big chunk of it at the end? The cost of unexpected repairs would simply get deducted from this money.
It would mean that only big companies could take on these projects (because they'd only be making 50% of their money right away), but they could still subcontract out to smaller companies and pay them 100%.
Fair point about this can push cheap. I guess this is said with the expectation people that know what they are doing have relevant quality requirements in said tender.
> This is not true. One of the best test for predicting a child success is seeing if they will defer a treat now for more treats later. Many people have the sacrifice now for a better future instinct.
Surely, any intelligent child would factor in the rate of interest (additional treats earned per unit of time) and bond price (how many treats are sacrificed right now) before making their decision. Automatically saying yes to more treats later is analogous to not caring whether you earn 0.1% interest or 10%, and that's certainly not intelligent.
Promising more treats later in exchange for treats now is exactly what a bond is, and any wise investor would factor in rate of interest/coupon rate.
> One of the best test for predicting a child success is seeing if they will defer a treat now for more treats later.
Although a different take on it is provided by [1], which suggests that the marshmallow test is not always testing for the ability to defer reward, but for the ability/will to obey instructions/please authority figures. I consider the post well worth reading.
Also, a substantial number of children know the truth about marshmallows: they're disgusting. The study might get very different results with bittersweet chocolates with buttercream filling.
Like many of us, my mind was instantly drawn to how the incentives would be gamed, but you know what? The current incentives are already gamed. We all read about the judge who got kickbacks for sending kids to a juvenile detention facility, etc.
Let's build our incentives in the opposite direction. A certain percentage of dishonest people will game the system. But many, and probably most, will actually work towards the idea. And nothing is accomplished perfectly in one pass, there will be reform and accountability.
If you "over engineer" the road it can last much longer. The 580 interstate in Oakland was built in the 1960's to standard US interstate specs but bans large trucks 99.9% of the time. It is in almost original condition. The parallel interstate (the 880) in Oakland has all the trucks and is in very bad condition with constant repair.
City governments are parasitised by three groups. One is the body professional politicians that manage to get elected.The second is the construction companies they use to build/repair their infrastructure The other is the work force they employ.
All three arrange matters so they get twice as much money on average as the voters that pay their wages/
The politicians do it by simple theft by vote. They vote themselves large salaries/
The civil serpents form unions and strike and strike and get 3-5 year contracts with cost of living allowances (COLAS) AND 1 to 3% wage increase, for that 3-5 years.
The politicians pay it - to buy peace at the expense of the taxpayers. The construction companies are similarly unionised and do somewhat the same.
Compare the wages of the average city employee with the average non union tax payer.
Now you see why this insoluble problem has emerged over the past 30 years or so.
One year contracts. No signing bonus AT ALL (why reward strikers), so a one month strike costs ~~8% of your annual wage, 2 months ~~17% etc.
Why should these people get more than the tax payers? They are not more skilled.
They are in power or in the union.
Look at how much teachers wages have made books and equipment a vanishingly small % of their budget and how much they force the taxpayers to pay them.
These factors wrecked Detroit. They will wreck Chicago and all other cities as union wage and pension demands take so much money that people move away.
Newark died this way years ago.
It’s completely irrelevant to the topic at hand: Cities are not having problems maintaining their infrastructure because of politicians & building firms lining each others pockets - they are having problems maintaining their infrastructure because it is economically impossible for them to do so.
Self-serving hand-wringing about corruption in politics does nothing to solve this problem. It’s just an excuse to justify not doing anything.
While I'm not taking a side, what I believe OP was referring to were 'Prevailing Wage Laws' that prevent the city from using contractors that are paid below the set union wage. If the cites are unable to reduce one of the two main drivers (labor costs) then it makes infrastructure projects more expensive for repair and maintenance.
The author, Chuck Marohn, has previously made this video that explains how a Land Value Tax would affect the fiscal situation of a city (for the better):
He says at the end that nobody switches from Property Tax to Land Tax, because people who own underdeveloped land would vote against it due to an immediate increase in their taxes.
Are there no ways to make it happen? Maybe propose to switch it gradually over a long period of time? Or would that end just as poorly?
It's a classic story of special interests-- they're inherently more motivated than those championing the common good.
There are incremental solutions towards this, such as "split level" property tax in which the rates for land can be shaded upward. Pennsylvania has had this for decades.
But when you implement them, plan to see the special interests make their case. For instance, a recent proposal to implement LVT in Hartford, CT:[0]
> "We do have an important parcel," said Cheryl Chase, general counsel at Hartford-based Chase Enterprises. "We are developers. If we think there is a project to be built, we would build it."
> Chase, which developed downtown's Gold Building and two other downtown skyscrapers in the 1970s and 1980s, owns the parking lot where the Parkview Hilton stood until it was demolished in 1990.
One would think 26 years would be quite enough time to find a suitable use for a valuable downtown parcel, but this parking lot owner disagrees...
It can be done. Where I live, the 'state-level' government survived going to an election with an explicit policy of replacing 'stamp duty' (a tax on the value of property sales) with a land value tax increase. Actually, they've survived two so far. They approached it exactly as you supposed: the tax will be phased in over something like 10 years.
FWIW, the two 'political' lessons I got out of it were:
(a) Surprisingly, builders' associations (and the like) should theoretically be very supportive of a switch to LVT, particularly if it's replacing property value taxes (which tax the total value of land and improvements, rather than just the unimproved value of land). They were supportive in our case at any rate. Because a LVT results in high-value land being put to its most productive use (e.g. 'land-banking' becomes profit negative, it incentivises inner-city redevelopment etc.), it means more business for builders (and this would be sustained in the long-run).
(b) Special measures have to be taken to protect people on fixed incomes who occupy high-value land (i.e. pensioners/retirees still living in the family home). This is partially for political reasons: the most effective way to 'negatively campaign' on the issue is to talk about how the LVT will force granny out of the family home. But there are also legitimate fairness concerns too: people who happen to own high-value land during a switch-over will suffer a 'windfall loss'. Although there's a perfectly reasonable counter-argument to this (IMHO), it's way too complex to be politically useful (and far too long to go into here).
I think one approach could be a sort of 'reverse mortgage until death' transitional arrangment: anyone on a retirement pension (or whatever reasonable criteria) prior to the LVT becoming 'official policy' would only have to pay some manageable proportion of the total land-tax due each year. The rest would accrue as a liability against the person's property, to be collected either at time of sale (which would now be voluntary), or from their estate (i.e. when they die). Obviously it would have to be carefully worded, but I think it's a fair compromise that the public could understand.
The downside to this (or any other 'transitional arrangment') is that it would delay some of the economic efficiency gains from a LVT: namely, the efficient reallocation of land (i.e. a retired couple would otherwise have an incentive to 'downsize' from their mostly empty 5 bedroom house to a townhouse or apartment, allowing a family currently crammed into a 2 bedroom flat to move somewhere more appropriately sized).
On the purely 'heartless economic side', it's such a great tax because:
- It's one of the few taxes that results in a more efficient allocation of resources (most other 'large' taxes usually generate some amount of dead-weight loss e.g. income tax, company tax etc.)
- It's a very stable tax base, as the base is completely immobile (you can't live in the US from a property located in India) and the tax is very difficult to avoid (it's pretty difficult to hide a large block of land or sneak it off to a tax haven somewhere). Also, if the rate is set so that it only taxes 'land rents' (unearned profits that accrue to landholders, in the form of higher land prices, due to improved amenities in the surrounding area), then it can actually increase economically activity due to the improved allocative efficiency discussed above. Again, most other taxes do the opposite (excluding Pigovian taxes, most commonly known as 'sin' taxes).
- LVTs are also a 'cycle-neutral' tax. Property taxes and stamp duties, on the other-hand, are pro-cyclical (i.e. when the economy is booming, tax receipts rise considerably, and when the economy is in recession, tax receipts fall). In practice, I think this results in boom-bust cycles that have much higher peaks and much lower troughs, simply because politicians will spend the money if it's there, but seem to be highly averse to taking on debt (so pro-cyclical taxes mean the economy is more overheated during boom-times, and more depressed during busts because of the contraction in government spending).
- [This is my own crazy opinion that other LVT proponents may very well disagree with] I think LVTs would improve macroeconomic-stability and increase economic productivity in the long-run. So much private capital investment gets poured into totally unproductive property speculation; capital that could otherwise be put towards some productive use (e.g. business investment via loans of equities etc.). And if you look at the past-century of economic history, you'll notice that an alarming number of recessions and depressions occurred because speculative bubbles in property markets popped (the 1890s depression, for example). Although speculative bubbles can form for other reasons, my view is that rising land prices are one of the primary triggers of property market speculation (or, at the very least, these rising land prices cause speculation to be more intense and prolonged).
I was for a land value tax (because people with more wealth in the form of land would pay more taxes in theory) but after watching the video I am now against it. It hinges on the definition of improving land, and from an environmental standpoint human improvement of land is an externality that as often as not creates negative value through exhaustion of resources, waste and unsustainability. Also IMHO there is far too much investment in construction, when buildings are already sitting idle. As we keep moving forward with tech and automation, this spending will become more superfluous.
It's becoming more clear to me that we should be thinking about proportions, not arithmetic. Money is a construct, so hard numbers like the size of the money supply and debt are meaningless. It makes more sense to imagine the median global income as being a unit of 1 (per day, per year, it doesn't matter) and then measure individual assets and debts against that. Americans get a score of 5 ($50k median household income), 5 billion people in the world get a score of 1 or less as they earn under $10,000 per year. Millionaires ($100k per year or more) get a score of 10, billionaires get a score of 10,000, etc.
Yes yes there are taxes and expenses but the orders of magnitude remain the same. Dealing at the abstraction level allows seeing patterns that aren't normally visible. The biggest anomaly is the level of work people are willing to maintain while getting paid substantially less than a small minority. The other one is why is so much work nonproductive, for example why do people pay half a billion dollars for a TODO website when 3% of the population can grow all the world's food? It's like there is so much wealth in a few hands that it doesn't know where to go except to try to expand itself. Wouldn't it make more sense to invest that money to automate the other industries to get to a 3% level and let the other 97% of the population work in research or health or space travel, anything really? Solving problems once and for all so that we can have both money and time (actual wealth) rather than having to choose one (phantom wealth). For real solutions to these seemingly intractable problems I highly recommend looking into modern monetary theory (MMT):
Improvement isn't always worse for the the environment. Is converting a forest to a parking lot a net negative from an environmental point of view? Yes. Is converting a parking lot to a 5 story residential building a net negative? No, because the parking lot wasn't environmentally friendly to begin with, the residential building doesn't damage the environment any more than the parking lot, and provides much more value to the public than the parking lot for the same environmental cost.
> Also IMHO there is far too much investment in construction, when buildings are already sitting idle.
Unfortunately all the idle buildings are in the wrong places. LVT, plus tax credits for reclaimed materials would at least move them to where they can do the most good.
To help the environment, it's important to avoid sprawl. And to avoid sprawl, you need building on the intensive margin (infill) to be more attractive than building on the extensive margin (sprawl). Land-use policy without LVT precludes infill, so there's every reason to say that LVT is an environmentally-friendly policy.
That said, you don't want all land being elevated to its highest use, including sub-marginal land. That's why enacting a floor to how low a land tax could be makes sense-- it would serve to protect wilderness.
In the intro, it is stated that "literally five or less" cities do not have these monetary problems. I'm curious what those cities are, and why are they special. If the answer isn't "they've always used accrual accounting", I don't buy that most cities are doomed due to accounting problems.
The article author Charles Marohn addresses this question in the comments section. His entire comment response:
"They are the ones with a very dominant urban core, where the urban fabric overwhelms the horizontal, auto-oriented stuff. I'm not saying these places won't struggle for the same reasons Lafayette will, but I suspect their decline/contraction will be less pronounced, less a defining characteristic.
NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver, maybe Chicago.... I'm not an expert on this scale of a place by any means so I could be very wrong but they don't seem to have the same underlying forces as a Lafayette (or even a Detroit or Memphis) where 80%+ of their infrastructure serves unproductive land use patterns. Might be 20-40% in these places."
He is inserting his own bias without considering the obvious: Infrastructure doesn't vote.
It doesn't really matter where you are, politics state that money is going mostly to people and not into the ground.
San Francisco, where I live, has loads of revenue and a citizenry which approves every single bond measure on the ballot. And we certainly shouldn't be on his list. Infrastructure issues here are never addressed until they hit a crisis level.
Just the other day there was news about how our seawall which contains our entire financial district is in horrible condition[1], and there's "no funding" and the usual blarble about the Feds bailing us out. Is any other city program going to be cut a dime to fix the seawall? No. From a political standpoint it makes more sense to let the city flood than it does to cut off any short-term political gain.
The Author should spend time in Chicago. We've got ridiculous taxes on everything, general sales tax itself is almost 11% now, and nothing in this city works. The trains barely function close to on time, the streets are riddled with potholes, and the police are afraid of PR problems so much crime is escalating.
Really? I mean, if you have money and can make sure you're in specific areas of the city enjoying specific things, I can see it being great.
But a blanket statement like that about Chicago is very surprising given all of the negative things about its situation (unbelievable gun violence, for one).
Also I can never get over the hilariously bad 75-year lease of its parking meters where they got $1B up front in exchange for eschewing massive amounts of ongoing revenue (the lessees have made $650M+ in revenue in 6 years while sapping the populace dry). Now Chicago actually has to lose money and pay Abu Dhabi any time they want to shut down a street for maintenance or public festivals. Fantastic!
Gun violence does NOT happen in the "good" parts of the city to "good" people. I mean yes I am sure it happens. But the good parts of Chicago have being shot by a gun odds as lower or lower as any other major American city. (Look at say the Violent crime rate in Lincoln Park or Oldtown).
Deal with drugs or live in a bad area? Yes, not that safe. But I am lucky to avoid both of those.
Parking meter was total robbery. But Chicago has good income. The small town I moved to is like the city in this story. Too many roads that cannot be paid to maintain. My city literally has 0 debt. Not low debt, but like literally 0 debt. But he average salary is 35k, and each year the city crumbles a little bit more. Chicago with the average salary double that, even with debt, is a more attractive place to live.
That parking meter thing is terrible but it probably wouldn't have been politically feasible to raise parking fees to sane rates otherwise.
Also, I really like Chicago. It's a great place to live downtown (and unlike other NYC, Boston or SF, living downtown is not out of reach for people making under $100k).
Yeah as a transplant Chicagoan I'd have to disagree, on balance our infrastructure is pretty good. CTA works well enough for me to commute daily for the last 8 years without owning a car, and they've been systematically replacing water and gas lines around my neighborhood for the past few years. Not to mention new green / public space investments like the 606, Maggie Daley Park, etc.
Road resurfacing is pretty good where I am, but oddly is largely a function of how effective the alderman for your ward is, since a lot of the cost typically comes out of their budget.
The real problems with the city IMHO are massive unfunded pension liabilities and a huge segregation problem between the north/south sides.
I think you may have misread the article; it seemed to me that blame was placed much more on political incentives to encourage outward, sparse suburban growth. The kind of growth which incurs enormously more infrastructure cost per capita. Not on accounting practices.
Spitballing here, but I assume once cities with large enough density, e.g. skyscrapers, reach past a certain threshold, the amount of revenue as a result of high density overtakes the cost of horizontal expansion. Highly concentrated cities, such as NYC/LA/Chicago, are examples of these.
A local municipality here, Mississauga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississauga) grew as a typical suburb does, relying on aggressive expansion of low-density housing, with a large portion of that growth being in the 1960-1990 era.
The city pursued an agenda of low taxes by leaning heavily on subsidies paid by large-scale developers directly to the city. This was something very much embodied by the city's long-time mayor McCallion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_McCallion) who was something of a titan in her time and governed over the city from 1978 to 2014 with little political opposition.
The idea was that they'd build infrastructure to last 30-40 years and then figure out what to do later. Not surprisingly "later" came around all too soon and they were left scrambling.
The mayor pivoted from producing more sprawl, which just doubles down on the problem, to inviting developers to densify portions of the city, building codos and office towers. Through development fees they'd try and work their way out of a jam without having to massively increase taxes for everyone.
It looks like this strategy has so far worked, but it's not without risk. It's dependent on passing the buck to the typically younger crowd that's buying condos. They're paying for sewer replacements in those older neighborhoods that apparently never paid their fair share in taxes. Who will bail them out when their time comes? Hopefully the increased density makes it more cost-effective to do that.
There's a number of things working in favor of the city, like they're close to Toronto, so the're an ideal commuter hub, plus the regional airport is there, so there's a large buisness hub built out around it. Without that tax base and proximity to another city they'd likely be doomed. Nobody would ever want condos there.
If you're looking for those cities, look for suburbs built near major US cities that can leverage their location. Any that are on their own are ultimately doomed unless they dramatically re-work how they plan their urban layout. Low-density housing will strangle a lot of small cities to death.
Honestly it should be illegal for municipalities to collect less in taxes than they need to maintain their infrastructure in the long haul. They should be factoring in 60-year replacement costs and collecting money towards that in the decades leading up to a major overhaul. A change in the accounting rules to include this sort of depreciation as an expense that must be balanced out with revneue could go one step towards that, factoring in replacement costs and so on.
The includes pensions, which are separate issues — the Strong Towns piece is basically looking at property tax annually / cost of maintaining infrastructure annually (and ignores deferments and the like)
This problem can be projected out to Federal Spending as well. We can see this in the taxes paid versus tax revenue spent on urban states compared to rural [1]. Alaska gets $1.84 back in federal spending for every dollar they pay in taxes compared to the $0.79 New York gets back on its federal taxes.
One quibble I have with the article though is that suburban communities did not start out as luxuries or inventions of convenience. Suburban growth was actually promoted by the federal government with tax incentives in response to the threat of nuclear war. The idea was to spread populations out away from the cities, where a single bomb could kill millions. Shawn Otto's book The War on Science covers this development in great detail, which I've clipped here:
Summary: infrastructure costs to maintain spread out exurb style development end up being more than the incremental tax revenue, especially when you consider replacement costs and the potential for future higher borrowing costs.
Property developers (along with car dealerships) are by far the strongest advocacy groups in many areas. It's not totally surprising that they've managed to capture the local government and push them towards counterproductive development that ends up being a massive subsidy from the taxpayers.
Developers will build whatever they're allowed to. They'll do dense if that's where the money is, or single family homes if that's all that zoning allows.
There's probably some bias to what they know, and all we've allowed (zoning) is single family homes, strip malls and that kind of thing, so there is that, but if more were allowed, it'd probably end up being built, sooner or later.
Not sure "exurb" is a real thing--most people living that far out have wells and leech fields and the density is pretty low.
Practically every person who sits on our city council is involved with real estate--either sales or development. It is rotten to the core because of their conflicts of interest.
In most parts of the country, zoning regulations force developers to build low density. Just look at the fights in the SF bay area where developers want to build tall and local NIMBYs fight them tooth and nail.
As elsewhere: I'm a member of Strong Towns, and think they're doing good things. Another one I like is the 'Market Urbanism' group - although some of the people there are very, very libertarian, there's still a mix of us so that it's not really a partisan thing. Then there are the various YIMBY groups, led by the one in the SF bay area.
This is one area where I think that people can move the needle some. The issues are not partisan in the way that so many others are, and I think there's a growing movement interested in doing things differently, that's more financially and environmentally sustainable.
This article seems to focus overmuch on infrastructure maintenance costs. While those are certainly an important factor, most of the actual municipal bankruptcies in recent years were caused primarily by expensive union contracts and pension obligations. Declining populations and financial malfeasance were also factors in some cases.
Perhaps an explosion in infrastructure maintenance costs will cause a new wave of municipal bankruptcies within the next few years but so far it's just not happening.
Both are intertwined. When there is not enough money, pension funds tend to take a hit. Population will move to greener pastures.
The bankruptcies are not happening, because a lot of the infrastructure can withstand 50 or a bunch more years. It has been built in say 50s - 70s so never had to be completely overhauled.
In EU, the problems with replacing infrastructure built in 1940s have already hit a few times, but it was better planned after the war.
That calculation is for fully replacing all existing infrastructure on the basis that over the course of a single generation most infrastructure will need to be replaced at least once due to maintenance/upkeep. So basically it will cost something like $32b per generation just for the upkeep of the existing infrastructure.
Does that really make any difference? The original calculation was just an average amount per person. It already accounts for the fact that multiple people are paying into the public coffers.
A exception to that is if the location has a meaningful number of businesses held by non-residents. But even then, the businesses are not operating as a charity, and the tax they pay locally is going to come from the local customers.
If you dig deep enough in specific cases, I'm sure you can find exceptions to all of this, where neither the owners or the customers are within the local population. But, the original claim was just an estimated average anyway, including people like children who are unlikely to be paying tax at all in the window of their childhood.
There's a followup article pointing out that the track of green on their revenue graph is actyually the poor part of town and going over some reason why that may be:
This suggests that China has an amazing infrastructure time-bomb waiting perhaps a generation to mow it from the pinnacle of the world to the ground. As a nation that is "in it for the long game" I am going to watch and see what they do there.
Before saying no to higher taxes think about the value of your own property. If the infrastructure (streets, water, electricity, internet, schools, ...) becomes broken in the area around your house and garden, the value of your property will go down, too. In that sense paying higher taxes for infrastructure is also good for preserving the value of your property.
Illinois pays some of the highest taxes in the country. The property taxes are extremely high with some counties having the highest rates in the entire country (second only to some New Jersey counties). Yet property values have been the worse to recover since the great recession.
If the value of my land goes down, the amount I pay in taxes goes down too :)
That being said, I always look to get the best value for my dollars, and the way folks run government around here, it is rarely worth it to feed the beast anymore than I have to.
Wait, what? He's saying that horizontal expansion is bad? Is he really advocating vertical expansion (concentrated tall buildings)?
Just compare London (horizontal) to any vertical city. London feels like so much better place to live. Low traffic (in comparison to vertical cities), parks everywhere etc. - you feel like you can breathe, not cramped in concrete walls.
London is on the extreme side of "vertical" compared to the "bad" parts under discussion here. London is at least 5x more "vertical" (meaning dense) than the hugely expensive horizontal under discussion in the post.
He's advocating greater density than the typical American suburb but far less than a Manhattan. More like old fashioned main streets, with mixed commercial and residential and less driveways and parking lots. Stores and apartments generate tax revenue. Pavement for cars doesn't.
Like schools, local public safety and other core government functions in incorporated cities are provided by municipal government.
Broken streets and infrastructure are expensive, but engineers always overstate the costs of maintenance and replacement when they are waving the tin cup around. The acute problem is that opex is driven by police and fire salaries, pensions and workers compensation. Take those numbers and divide by 3 or 4 to get a realistic number, especially for things like water pipes that have very long service lives.
The more fundamental problem is that post-war America focused investment and tax bad growth on towns and other places outside of cities, and left the costs in the cities. If the average suburban/exurban community requires 1 police/fire visit per 100 household, and urban environment requires 15-20 per 100 households.
This sums up the main reason I'm not all that excited about electric/self-driving cars. The only scenario I see remedying our sprawling city is for gasoline prices to increase, making current levels of car travel financially painful. If we can continue driving cars cost effectively (with electric cars), I don't know if there will be enough political motivation to address our need to stop expanding cities.
Lafayette is my hometown. The article says this isn't a cultural issue, but when a majority of cities shares the problem, that speaks to a national culture of scarcity. The desire for growth stemming from feeling there isn't enough to do, land to build on, people living there, etc. was definitely prominent in Lafayette. It's that shared mindset driving this phenomenon.
I've always been opposed to folks who grumble about suburbs and urban sprawl. I thought that new developments and neighbourhoods meant a growing population and a bigger tax base. I've always lived in the suburbs and love it. I still think there's lots of great things about living in the suburbs, and there will always be demand for it.
I like how the author says that sprawl isn't the problem, the problem is that new developments are large scale, single-purpose, and with no room for improvement or addition.
The graph/map showing how downtown and poorer areas bring in more tax is what did it though. Even just thinking about ploughing in the winter makes it pretty clear that winding suburbian roadscapes are costing the city a lot more than we pay them. That's without mentioning schools, fire halls, garbage collection, etc.
I guess one of the more difficult issues is convincing North Americans that they don't need a private single-family house, large yard, 2+ cars, etc.
OK so the reason why US cities have no money is that they have grown horizontally instead of growing vertically and horizontal growth means high infrastructure cost. That's all very well, but I still dont understand why it happened. Does anyone know why US cities expanded horizontally instead of following growth patterns similar to Europe?
The federal government gave cities money under the condition that they spend it on infrastructure. They did this to grab the money in the short term and their backwards accounting practices allowed them to ignore the long term costs, which are catching up to them now.
I'm not sure they're drawing the right conclusions from that winning/losing graph. That area downtown is green because that's where all the toniest businesses are located, and you can't have a city that consists of only upscale businesses.
There are significant economies of scale for infrastructure that happen with density.
The amount of road surface a tall, mixed-use building requires per occupant is dramatically less than what a detached single family home does, but the latter road needs more maintenance than what the taxes on that single-family home provide for.
That's very self-evident. What matters is that density means costs rise at a slower rate than income and because density tends to raise prices (the area is more desirable all else equal).
Most of the cost of installing water pipes is in digging up the street and paying people to lay the pipes. By comparison putting in a small pipe costs the same as a huge one. Suburbs need small pipes spread over a larger distance to reach X people. High-rises need large pipes over a much smaller distance to reach the same number of people. Even if you assume property values per person were identical and taxes identical the dense area has a massive cost advantage.
"There's a reason everything is more expensive in dense areas."
Often, that reason is "there's a strong market preference for density, but supply is artificially restricted by parking minimums and zoning regulations put in place by property owners who wish to maximize the value of their asset"
If that were actually true there would be housing shortages in cities that aren't trendy, and that's not the case. There's not a lot of "preference for density" in places like Kansas City and Cleveland.
From an expenses stand point it seems intuitively obvious that the per capita cost of individuals is lower in high density areas.
And from a tax revenue standpoint city's get ~4.5x of their revenue from property taxes than from sales tax. And most suburbanites, like urbanites probably spend most of their tax near where they live.
>From an expenses stand point it seems intuitively obvious that the per capita cost of individuals is lower in high density areas.
A lot of things that seem obvious aren't actually true.
>And from a tax revenue standpoint city's get ~4.5x of their revenue from property taxes than from sales tax. And most suburbanites, like urbanites probably spend most of their tax near where they live.
The city has some control over the mix of revenue sources. NYC has an income tax, and San Francico gets more than twice as much money from "service charges" as it gets from property taxes.
In terms of where people spend money, suburbanites spend a lot of discretionary income in the local city, particularly in places like restaurants and bars.
Let me ask you this: If it's so much more efficient to live in a city, why is everything more expensive in cities?
Now you're starting to mix things up. Yes, there is a small subset of goods that constitute Veblen goods. Yes, the price of anything is what people are willing to pay. But people don't pay more because they can afford it.
Actually, dense stuff is mostly cheaper until you start building way up. Tons of Italy is pretty dense and is not all that expensive in the grand scheme of things. It's also very livable and walkable. Same goes for many other places in Europe.
Sure, but the point is that your green had better outweigh your red overall or else you have a problem.
No one is arguing that there should only be green blocks - clearly some of the profits that make those blocks profitable come from the spending of people who live in areas that are red. So long as the net outcome is green then everything works out.
When you build endless sprawling suburbs that cost more to maintain than the tax base can raise from the businesses that serve them then you have a recipe for long term decline.
How do you move around in these neighborhoods? Take a daily stroll on foot for a few hours? It does not work when you want to do anything big, say a few thousand people in approximately the same place. Those people have to get to this place, which would require efficient mass transit. The large area makes both road and fuel costs go up.
Outside of huge cities, it isn't normal to put a few thousand people in approximately the same place. It just doesn't happen.
A moderate-sized city of 50000 people might put 1500 people at the main high school on graduation day. Aside from high school events like that, and the normal daily high school operation (also 1500 people), it's super-rare to get a real crowd. If you also exclude middle schools and elementary schools, crowd sizes probably top out around 100. That would be the crowd at a significant employer. In case you were thinking of night life and entertainment, that might get up to a few dozen people.
It says: "maximum vehicle weight including passengers and cargo is 300 pounds"
Dear my. Americans will often need vehicles with negative weight. Does buoyancy count, or would a helium balloon just be more weight? (can you deduct the weight of displaced air?)
Good piece, but there is another major factor that is missing entirely - the impact of debt financing and continuously rolling bonds. In addition to what the article mentions, this is the other factor contributing to the slow death of our cities. What nearly every municipality in the US has done (all municipalities BTW, not just the "cities") is to take on a debt load to finance their desired expenditure, whether it be for infrastructure or otherwise - very similar to what our Federal government has done. And at first glance, it makes sense. It's a huge expenditure so let's finance it and pay it off over time in accordance with tax revenues. The problem is that they almost never pay it off. I know that statement sounds crazy at first, but it's not. Sure, they pay off bonds as they come due. But they pay them off and roll them into new bonds - that's the problem. This has been fueled by steadily decreasing bond rates over the past 30-33 years. This allows the municipalities to roll over their debt at a lower rate when it comes due, which reduces their interest payment and also allows them to borrow more at the same time.
Here's an example - It's 1/1/1985 and the rate on the 10 year treasury note is 11.65% (yes, that was the real rate), so our city was able to get a rate of, say, 12%. They issue a 10 year bond for $5 million to build a school and some road maintenance. They make the required coupon payments (usually semi-annually) using tax revenues - and that amounts to $600,000 each year. They keep doing that until just before the principal comes due in full on 1/1/1995. The idiots running the city haven't saved the 5 million required to pay off the principal so what do they do? Well they take a look at the market and see that the 10 year treasury note is now 7.19% so they can get around 7.5%. So they issue a new bond for $5 million for another 10 years and now only have to pay $375,000 in interest coupons every year. But they are still collecting 600k at the given tax rates which leaves them 225k in the green. So they can either spend that every year or they can use that as the coupon payment on an addition $3 million bond and they get it right now! Even if some scrupulous treasurer or township board member were to say that they should just spend the 225k and not take on any additional debt, someone will point out to them that over 10 years that's $2.25 million and here they get to instead use that money to spend a total of $3 million - these guys feel like they are making money taking on debt. And as long as interest rates keep going down and they don't need to repay principal, it all works so they agree. Now 1/1/2005 rolls around - they owe $8 million but rates are 4.5% so they can get 4.75%. So they rollover the $8 million for a yearly coupon of 380k. They also use the remaining 220k to open up a new bond for ~$4.6 million (4,631,578.95 to be precise) - and now they can still pay the same 600k in interest that they have been for decades but they have an outstanding debt issuance of $12.6 million.
Now, if you are still reading this far and fully grasp the horror of the above, you can begin to understand one of the many reasons rates can't go too far up anytime soon. We have been Japan'ed, and this is just part of the reason of how it happened. Also, I want to point out that in the above example no increase in the tax rate is needed to help pay for this, even without population growth at all. Tack on population growth, productivity and technological progress, as well as the increase of the money supply by the federal reserve over that time period and in real terms it becomes even less. Now think about how much your taxes have increased on a percentage basis over the same period on the state and municipal levels and it should become clear just how horribly mismanaged everything has been for quite some time. Rates can't really go much further south so even if they hold constant and never increase...all of our broke ass cities and towns will only be able to refinance at the same rate (best case scenario). This means they can't increase expenditure at all for anything unless they make taxes sky high to support the spending. The free money game is over.
This article embodies a lot of magic thinking and completely avoids asking the questions about _why_ things cost so much vs. when the infrastructure was first built.
What a crock. This is an extremely biased presentation meant to prime the reader for the awful right wing plan he's going to unveil in his next blog post. No doubt privatizing the infrastructure to "relieve" the taxpayer of the burden. Never mind that somehow it is still going to have to be paid for and if it's privatized we will have to pay more so the new owner can make a profit.
The reality is cities are insolvent because of decades of tax breaks for businesses and the stagnant wages of the middle class.
I don't read Strong Towns much, but I don't think you've read much of the stuff they put out. The blog definitely isn't in favor of mass privatization — that wouldn't help much, since the infrastructure is still crazy expensive and not worth paying for.
The model of development that gets us out of this mess probably is one of much greater density + changes in accounting practices.
Pretty good article; the metric that more fully captures the idea is the ratio of land used for cars instead of people. Narrow streets takes care of the on street parking idiocy, which is the worst of it, but the number of parking structure where there could be residential buildings is also helpful to track. And the six lane highways cutting through the middle of town takes a huge amount of space...
I feel like urbanists should talk about Mexico more. They have really narrow streets, as-of-right construction, and they are much closer than Vienna or Hong Kong.
As someone with a city planning hobbyist interest, I've visited Mexico City and greatly disliked it. It's a miserable city to get around in, though I can see its potential if it ever decides to move away from heavy car infrastructure (some core neighborhoods are pretty nice so long as you don't want to leave them). Were you thinking of somewhere else in Mexico, or specific parts of Mexico City?
that wouldn't help much, since the infrastructure is still crazy expensive and not worth paying for.
Surely it would help, then? The entire point of the article is that local governments built infrastructure that isn't worth paying for, and paid too much for it, because of bad planning/misaligned incentives.
If towns were fully privatised then there'd be no assumption of government bailouts, and towns that overbuilt would go bankrupt and be abandoned/eventually bulldozed. In practice governments are rarely willing to let that happen. Even in the case of Detroit it was bailed out.
I'm a member of Strong Towns, and it's an interesting mix of people from both left and right.
If I had to sum it up, it might be something like 'traditional development patterns', akin to what you saw in pre-WWII cities in the US, and much of Europe. More walking, and biking. There's a lot to like for a lefty like me.
I agree that it is extremely biased, but it doesn't seem to be "right wing" when it is the left wing that usually expounds about its utter hatred for suburban living. It's just too bourgeoisie.
Yes, wages are stagnant. Why is that? Taxes too high perhaps?
Real estate developers and real estate agents run most cities. They are always looking out for their own interests and damn the future consequences. The biggest problem with real estate people is their average IQ is so low.
NIBYism trumps politics on all sides of the spectrum. "Lefties" are all for densification, just not here, because here is special and needs protecting. Densification over there on the other hand is a great idea.
It's not the Federal Reserve. That's one of the few institutions left that are run by humans! The lizard people are spreading conspiracy theories about it because that's the last unimpeachable bulwark of human resistance. And you fell for it!
There is no complex situation that can't simply be explained by humanoid, human-skin-wearing alien creatures. For example:
* Bad economy: Lizard people siphoning off a secret "lizard tax" at the highest levels of government which they then spend on their giant underground lizard carnivals. Fun for them, but disasterous for our jobs.
* Crime: Lizard people sneak into toddler's bedrooms at night and tell them story after story of heroic muggers. They brainwash children to believe that people who take others money at gunpoint are in fact the ones who will end up saving civilization. From what? The very same problems that the lizard people create!
* Global warming: Doesn't exist! The lizards have been stealing mercury from thermometers for centuries.
See, it's obvious if you just think for yourself and do some searches on the internet for "simple theories that explain everything".
Christ, tell me about it. The presence of one fiat/debt conspiracy theorist in the comments is far less troubling than the collection of commenters seemingly amazed at his insight. Let's not even get into the the smug myopia of Murray "legal obligations to feed and clothe children are state oppression" Rothbard that is also getting trotted out.
Fiat currency is, of course, an improvement over previous precious metal-backed currencies. When you can't control the price of gold (or worse, leave the value of your currency as subject to private or foreign manipulation) prices become much more volatile, making it difficult to operate in the economy with much certainty. Fiat currencies also allow for the impact of recessions to be lessened by (for example) lowering the interest rates for the inter-bank loans it provides thus encouraging savings to be redistributed as consumption.
The fact that the bank is privately owned is both due to a need for independence from the political process (see Zimbabwe for exhibit A why this is a bad idea), and a relic due to the fact that banknotes were issued by a number of different institutions until it was decided that these competing standards should be replaced by one with authority vested in and financially backed by the state.
The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson is an easy book to get acquainted with the story and evidence supporting fiat currencies today.
I had never heard of Murray Rothbard before and looked him up thinking your description of him must be hyperbole.
I am appalled at almost everything I'm reading. Selling children, women's suffrage being a bad thing because it let "lesbian spinsters" vote, the Union being morally wrong to fight the south over slavery because it was the souths property rights?
If someone had told me these views were held by a major influence in the libertarian party I would have assumed they were some partisan with an agenda telling me lies about libertarians.
Simple: It creates misguided incentives in all kinds of directions. The simple idea that money is limitless has led to municipalities over-promising on pension benefits for just one example.
Who got these developments approved? The developers who made millions and extracted the wealth in partnership with the taxpayers. Same as it ever was.
> The simple idea that money is limitless has led to municipalities over-promising on pension benefits for just one example.
Would I be right in restating your argument like this? "A fiat currency allows the state to inflate away loans. That incentivizes taking very large loans, which in turn means the state builds infrastructure it cannot actually afford."
Assuming it is, I'd like to note at least a few things.
On fiat currency
This is implicitly, in my reading of it, arguing fiat currency is distinct from commodity currency vis-a-vis inflation: If we had the gold standard, the state would not be able to inflate loans away, and the issue would go away.
As I'm sure you're aware, this is not the case - every major state in existence have inflated their commodity currencies away to pay state debt. If you had tried to buy a pound (lb) sterling silver using a Pound (£) Sterling in 1913, you'd be sorely disappointed.
If you're not aware of this, Adam Smiths extensive exposition on policy and inflation through dilution of metal currency in Roman, French and British history is a fascinating part of Wealth of Nations, albeit dreadfully boring due to Adams use of prose instead of tables to present his data.
On inflation
Independent of this - the argument is nonsensical to me. Yes, the state can pay off loans through inflating currency. There is a crucial aspect missing to the argument: This would only be a problem if the state acted as if this were true, but it in fact was not.
The fact is that the state can pay off debt by inflating the currency. Hence, the argument must be restated as "1) The state can pay loans through inflation, 2) the state takes on loans, because it knows it can pay them off through (1), and 3) the state is then unable to pay these loans". This is obviously a logical error.
On loans
And finally - this is not about loans. The article is a simple calculation saying "here's how much this infrastructure costs to maintain, and here is now much the tax base around it can pay for". It's not about the cities inability to pay off the initial leverage it used to first build the infrastructure, it's about building and paying off infrastructure that is incorrectly dimensioned for it's tax base.
The fact that the initial construction can be discounted through inflation does not remove the cities incentive to build infrastructure it can then pay for in perpetuity.
My point was they don't have to pay off all those loans at one time, which is what accrual accounting assumes. It is a false argument, in other words.
As far as inflation goes--you're making the original commenter's point about why the Fed is bad. They inflate away debt, in other words, it was all a confidence game. We get paid in deflated dollars and wonder aloud why the change in our pockets is worthless.
These are local governments we're talking about. To them, the money supply might as well be fixed. Everyone could be using gold and it wouldn't change the problem of building a street without budgeting for upkeep.
They treat money as limitless because they get tax income every year and they are thinking short-term. Not because of anything the federal government does. Not because of debt.
It's the same reason Greece was going bankrupt ... they couldn't print their own currency and run their own fiscal policy after they joined the Eurozone.
The author chooses to describe the phenomenon like,
Psychologists call this temporal discounting. Humans are
predisposed to highly value pleasure today and to deeply
discount future pain, especially the more distant it is.
I'm not sure that's the best way to describe it. And there are other ways to describe the basic phenomenon. But in any event the private sector is not at all immune. But because the tasks we delegate to private companies are different from those we delegate to public institutions, manifestations of the phenomenon tend to cluster into seemingly distinct categories.
In the private sphere a similar phenomenon (if not conceptually identical at some level of abstraction) more often encountered is pollution. Or in Silicon Valley think of "technical debt". Both of these are costs that private actors accrue and that, because they do not need to internalize them immediately, are discounted inaccurately because of the temporal bias of the agents. In both cases, when the private actor eventually goes belly-up, other actors (public and private) are often left holding the bag to clean up the mess. And thus the original private actor has effectively imposed a hidden cost on others, intentionally or unintentionally, producing globally suboptimal results.
It's easy to see how an enormous network of pavement and pipes could be created and then left to rot and blight the environment by both private and public entities. Detroit is a prime example of both.
It's worth pointing out that like phenomena described by prospect theory, this temporal bias likely evolved as a heuristic device. Nothing in the future is certain--not even in probabilistic terms--and so it's not possible to foresee and accurately price all future costs today. There's no obvious alternative to the bias as a general matter, only in specific circumstances.
At the end of the day, to aliens arriving on planet earth and watching the machinations of our civilization, distinctions between private and public would really be quite artificial and perhaps not even the most informative axis on which to bifurcate our economy. Both private and public actors are subject to market forces, just like both boats and airplanes are subject to gravity. The normative mechanisms we choose in our attempts to optimize how actors respond to preferences and to internalize costs are different, but rarely singular--it's always some mix of policy and currency, among other things. The so-called "free market" approach is hardly, if ever, the best answer alone.
Why are high rises so much more profitable to the city? Is it just that a larger part of the infrastructure (stairwells, elevators, power distribution, water supply, sewage, and related) are privatized and managed by someone with an eye on the bottom line?
Cities seem extremely poor paying for infrastructure based on performance. Water supplies should be paid for uptime, percent of the population they deliver water to, and quality of the water. Road companies should be paid by lanes * miles * years they last (according to some quality metric for common road failure methods). Bridges similar. If someone builds a building for the city they should be paid by the usable square foot and an incentive for delivery time.
The median house in Lafayette costs roughly > $150,000. A family living in this house would currently pay about $1,500 per year in taxes to the local government of which 10%, approximately $150, goes to maintenance of infrastructure (more is paid to the schools and regional government).
I'm sorry but this kind of calculation is, I believe, the real reason infrastructure in America is suffering. If only 10% of my property tax is going to infrastructure then I don't need to pay 6 times as much, I just need my local government to cut the crap and spend 60% of my property tax on infrastructure. I understand that means less government jobs but we are already kidding ourselves if we think it's a good idea to grow government to reduce unemployment.
Proper building codes would mostly eliminate the need for firefighters. We'd still need them at airports, and the occasional burning car or trash heap, but not for buildings.
FYI, the vast majority of Florida houses are concrete block, and metal roofs seem to be gaining popularity. There is no reason a home should be vulnerable to fire, mold, or termites. Sadly there has been a decline in popularity for metal kitchen cabinets. We wouldn't need to be so obsessed with sprinklers and smoke alarms if we built things right.
I live in a city I would consider fairly low-crime. The police hand out a lot of traffic tickets. My fellow citizens recently voted in a measure to hugely increase the police budget (in part for some of that shiny military equipment) while denying one to expand our small library. This seems like a pretty big waste of money to me, since the police don't add much to quality of life past a certain point while a library definitely does. Too many voters seem to act against their own interests too often these days.
That's why I left 40%. Maybe 60% isn't the magic number but 10% is BS. We need to eliminate corruption and abuse of power. Contractors of all types regularly get away with over charging local governments. This has to stop.
Have you looked at where your town money actually goes? You think 30-40% is going to corruption?
These numbers are public. Dive in.
Sprawl is hard to sustain. We should let some paved roads turn to dirt, and encourage fewer dense places to live. (Or you can live far out, but no paved roads, and no fire trucks)
