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Why Many Cities Have No Money

strongtowns.org

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Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#141

Post by dangjc »

mirekrusin wrote: post #121

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.

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#142

Post by bufordsharkley »

fragsworth wrote: post #126
bufordsharkley wrote: post #39

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): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok2uR3btMrE

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...

[0] http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-hartford-downto...

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#143

Post by badsock »

aurizon wrote: post #23

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 l…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#144

Post by csydas »

vvpan wrote: post #18

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,…

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#145

Post by gozur88 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #72
gozur88 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Density brings costs of its own, though. There's a reason everything is more expensive in dense areas.

And this article brings up that one reason it is more expensive is that dense areas subsidize less dense areas of a city.

This is based on the fact that the downtown area provides more tax revenue. All he's managed to prove is people do their shopping in the city core.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#146

Post by gozur88 »

davidw wrote: post #80
gozur88 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Density brings costs of its own, though. There's a reason everything is more expensive in dense areas.

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.

My little suburb is far from dense and we're not having any trouble paying the bills.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#147

Post by guard-of-terra »

vvpan wrote: post #18

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,…

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.

http://pora-valit.livejournal.com/4740340.html it mostly looks like this

It was fine up until the 50-s and then worse and worse with each year (even now)

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#148

Post by seanmcdirmid »

davidw wrote: post #107
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Europe is pretty diverse, I guess :-) > 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 i…

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#149

Post by jaggederest »

windlep wrote: post #137

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/replaci…

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.

This is precisely the same problem as Terry Pratchett talked about in the boots theory of economics: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#150

Post by caseysoftware »

erikb wrote: post #111

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…

Yes, and it's the same with public employee pensions.

It's great to be able to spend (or at least commit) tomorrow's dollars today and then be long gone by the time the bill comes due.

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