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Why Many Cities Have No Money

strongtowns.org

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Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#281

Post by quanticle »

rubber_duck wrote: post #182
jaggederest wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 preci…

>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. Not magic - innovation.

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#282

Post by davidw »

LordKano wrote: post #271
davidw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

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…

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#283

Post by zackmorris »

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

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):

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/what-is-modern-mo...

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

http://heteconomist.com/modern-monetary-theory-is-relevant-t...

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#284

Post by [deleted] »

LordKano wrote: post #255
davidw wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> regulate virtually every aspect of city life is precisely why I live in the suburbs. You could easily get the same thing out of a HOA in a city with fewer city-wide rules and regulations.

You are absolutely right about that, I also would never buy a home in a community with a HOA.

[deleted]

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#285

Post by wott »

sologoub wrote: post #132
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,…

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…

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#286

Post by driverdan »

twblalock wrote: post #14

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'…

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#287

Post by usrusr »

cameldrv wrote: post #159
sologoub wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 floo…

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#288

Post by cozzyd »

arcticfox wrote: post #118
brianwawok wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago is fantastic. You should try a few other cities and report back. Source: Moved out and now want to go back.

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…

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).

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#289

Post by dionidium »

sologoub wrote: post #132
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,…

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…

New York City -- even in Manhattan -- still has neighborhoods like you describe:

https://goo.gl/maps/zQTS15XWCh92

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#290

Post by ensignavenger »

amai wrote: post #268

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.

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.

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