Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#131

Post by jellicle » Fri, May 06, 2016, 4:00 AM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #8

First and foremost, we need to abolish the laws that caused this all to happen. Yes, that’s right – all of this was required to happen, by law. Many people think that sprawl is a free market phenomenon, and they are exactly wrong. Sprawl is caused by the following policies – I call these Sprawl Laws; you can find them for yourself in your local city code (for the most succinct explanation, see this paper[1]): * Zonin…

Most "sprawl" is new developments built in places where there are none of these zoning laws - no zoning, no setbacks, no parking requirements, nothing of that sort. After the sprawl is built, sometimes those rules are added, to keep it sprawly.

But no, zoning does not cause sprawl. Sprawl is farmland or forest land that has to be rezoned to be residential at all. Since you're far out from "the city", the property must be attractive to buyers to induce them to live there. Since land is cheap there, this inducement takes the form of large houses and expansive stretches of land.

If you built tiny, expensive, inner-city studio apartments that were ALSO 60 minutes away from "the city", who would buy them?

> Many people think that sprawl is a free market phenomenon, and they are exactly wrong.

You misspelled "exactly right".

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#132

Post by ghaff » Fri, May 06, 2016, 4:13 AM UTC

drumdance wrote: post #105

asmithmd1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have walked around assembly row and it isn't terrible but it certainly doesn't feel like downtown Boston. Check out what standing at the intersection of Grand Union Blvd and Artisan Way feels like: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3948862,-71.081131,3a,75y,11...

That feels like it could be anywhere. I was in Boston last weekend in the Copley Square area, which I liked very much but my impression is it's very expensive.

Most of Boston is very expensive--and certainly the Back Bay. (Which is actually urban planning on landfill from the late 1800s--hence the streets that don't look like cow paths.) The new development (including highrises) is mostly clustered around the Seaport but that's actually apparently even more expensive these days.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#133

Post by ghaff » Fri, May 06, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

throwawaybookst wrote: post #117

jws wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

St. Louis City also has a problem with its beloved "earnings tax". At one point as our office space lease renewal was approaching I plotted all of our 100+ employees at the time on a map, almost all software engineers, about 2/3 of them lived west of the city and 1/3 lived east, and only a single one lived in the city, and he was in a temporary apartment immediately post divorce, didn't get the house. To me that says…

The fact that burbs are the most desirable places to live in STL is pretty much the reason I'll never move back. It's an incredibly depressing metro area.

There's a lot of city-living worship here. But (as would certainly be the case with myself) it's mostly for a very tiny number of mostly coastal cities.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#134

Post by dollar » Fri, May 06, 2016, 4:36 AM UTC

What's really illuminating about this article is that it reveals the myopic thinking of a statist. The only solutions proposed are a) increase taxes or b) change spending or c) reduce liabilities. Where is option d) reduce the cost of roads?

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#135

Post by ghaff » Fri, May 06, 2016, 5:07 AM UTC

drivers99 wrote: post #98

asmithmd1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have walked around assembly row and it isn't terrible but it certainly doesn't feel like downtown Boston. Check out what standing at the intersection of Grand Union Blvd and Artisan Way feels like: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3948862,-71.081131,3a,75y,11...

So one side of the street is big box stored with giant parking lots, and the other side is parking garages with 1st floor businesses. Looks 1000% for cars and not transit.

I wouldn't conclude much from that development which is largely a retail and restaurant development in a long rundown industrial area (former Ford plant). [1] It was basically cut off from most of Sommerville by highways. There was long a plan to put an Ikea there but there was a lot of pushback from various groups and Ikea eventually walked.

Much of Sommerville away from the highways is essentially a gentrifying, historically somewhat downmarket, version of Cambridge. Generally low-rise houses and some condo complexes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_Square

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#136

Post by eru » Fri, May 06, 2016, 5:14 AM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #118

rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that some of the most charming neighborhoods in the country (e.g. Chelsea in New York, DuPont in D.C.) were built before all that crap. You'd never build a "modern city" like Philadelphia, with its narrow one-way streets, lack of parking, and commercial and retail mish-mashed together. But most of the rest of the country feels dead in comparison.

Of course, the issue is not zoning laws, but bad zoning laws. European zoning laws are mostly concerned with actual urban planning. US zoning laws are focused on maintaining property values. Read e.g. "Zoned in the USA"[1] for a nice introduction to the topic. [1] http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010017822...

Maintaining property values by eg keeping out poor people.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#137

Post by morgante » Fri, May 06, 2016, 5:14 AM UTC

HighPlainsDrftr wrote: post #37

I've always wondered why we pave our streets to begin with. Yes, I know that dirt and gravel kick up alot of dust, but the expense of the street itself seems a bit extreme as well. I can't think of how many times I've seen a new street go in, and just a few weeks later they cut it up and dig up a water line to replace it. There has to be a better material besides concrete or asphalt that would provide similar benefit…

I grew up in a rural area with its fair share of dirt/gravel roads.

Vehicles definitely see a lot more wear from driving on dirt roads (beyond the superficial constant dust covering). I expect that the cost of pavement is less than the cost of additional maintenance for all the road's users. (This also explains why it makes sense to leave some dirt roads in very rural areas.)

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#138

Post by eru » Fri, May 06, 2016, 5:16 AM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #123

khuey wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you can't. Your choices in the US are almost always suburban to rural, especially if a) you don't have a lot of money to afford the desirable urban areas and b) you don't want to deal with the crime in the undesirable ones.

This is the largest factor. I love cities. But I'm having a hard time with so-called "urbanist" people/policies. A lot of the philosophy boils down to intentionally make life harder for anyone who isn't living in Downtown urban cores -- areas so expensive, no one who works for a living can ever afford them. Effectively, they want to punish poor and middle class people simply for being poor and middle class, through t…

Just the opposite. The right policies would make city living cheaper.

See eg https://www.jstor.org/stable/3159005?seq=1 (Sorry, can't find an open source right now. Basically, regulation caused the elimination of cheaper housing.)

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#139

Post by andys627 » Fri, May 06, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #99

I can only speak for my own city, but the cost of building out new roads and infrastructure for new development is paid for not by property taxes, but by the building permits for the development. They actually just had a city council meeting outlining the expected growth over the next 5 years, its expected cost, and the resulting fees for building various types of residential and commercial development. So the articl…

Who pays in 30 years when it needs to be repaved?

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#140

Post by eru » Fri, May 06, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

bufordsharkley wrote: post #84

massysett wrote: post #31

The author never made the case that a property owner is SUPPOSED to pay for the cost of the street, so I'm not even motivated to figure out whether the analysis is correct or not. The government is not a bank. You're not supposed to "get out what you put in" or "pay for what you use." The government provides things for the public good: roads, education, police, military, etc. Of course some government is a Ponzi sche…

> The author never made the case that a property owner is SUPPOSED to pay for the cost of the street, so I'm not even motivated to figure out whether the analysis is correct or not. It's worth reading up on Joseph Stiglitz's work in the 1970s that demonstrated how government spending in public goods is transformed exactly into land rents under many conditions.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem

Thanks for the link! That's awesome.