Why Many Cities Have No Money • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#261

Post by davidw » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

richmarr wrote: post #225

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>very different incentives to the market. 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…

> 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-t…

Trying to plan very complex, dynamic systems leads to:

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

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#262

Post by cptskippy » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:51 PM UTC

princeb wrote: post #229

csydas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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…

> 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 " sign, then drive through an abandoned town, then you'll see a "Thanks for visiting " and then a massive super store with a filled parking lot.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#263

Post by the_gastropod » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:51 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#264

Post by pdovy » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:51 PM UTC

bbarn wrote: post #70

otoburb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Bo…

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. Also, the weather sucks.

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#265

Post by davidw » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:52 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #257

davidw wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anoth…

> 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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#266

Post by caseysoftware » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #214

caseysoftware wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

That's a great sentiment but that is not what happened. Or (at minimum), it was massively underfunded.

With regards to CalPERS specifically, it was covered here two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13287078 and from that article:

"For every $100 the city paid a police officer in 2016, it had to pay an additional $71 to CalPERS to fund payments to current and future retirees."

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#267

Post by falcolas » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #209

setrofim_ wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

asphalt vs concrete roads are a good example. of course, if you want maintain stuff under the roads, concrete is a real bear.

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#268

Post by amai » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:56 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#269

Post by VLM » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:57 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#270

Post by wott » Wed, Jan 11, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

yason wrote: post #216

csydas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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.

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.