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Why Many Cities Have No Money

strongtowns.org

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Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#311

Post by jartelt »

davidw wrote: post #75
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,…

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 o…

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?

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#312

Post by jimktrains2 »

pif wrote: post #308
yason wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#313

Post by danans »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #155
taneq wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

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 belie…

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.

[1] http://in.reuters.com/article/india-landrights-slum-idINKCN1...

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#314

Post by steamer25 »

zigzigzag wrote: post #280
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…

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?"

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#315

Post by detaro »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #312
pif wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#316

Post by hx87 »

pif wrote: post #303
yason wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Any city planned and developed before cars... Before cars and before skyscrapers! The model of town you're talking about doesn't scale well.

Seoul and Tokyo scale pretty well.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#317

Post by maxsilver »

dpark wrote: post #304
maxsilver wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 co…

> 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…

> 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.

Here are some actual average costs for street construction from the State of Michigan - https://www.michigan.gov/documents/Vol2-40UIP16SubDevCosts-Y...

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.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#319

Post by hx87 »

nitrogen wrote: post #207
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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)?

Insulation solves all of those problems. Mineral wood between the studs and (especially) the floor and ceiling joists goes a long way.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#320

Post by pif »

hx87 wrote: post #316
pif wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any city planned and developed before cars... Before cars and before skyscrapers! The model of town you're talking about doesn't scale well.

Seoul and Tokyo scale pretty well.

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?
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