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Why Many Cities Have No Money

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Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#321

Post by hx87 »

davidw wrote: post #96
aaron-lebo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houston actually has relatively lax zoning laws. This makes for some interesting stuff: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Weir...

Yeah, Houston gets trotted out a lot by the Market Urbanism folks: http://marketurbanism.com/2016/06/02/houston-beautiful-yet-p... But that city also has massive sprawl, so it's kind of tough to point at as an example for more coastal folks. Certain areas may showcase how things could be, but it's still a very car-centric city.

The great thing about Houston from a market urbanist perspective isn't that it's particularly dense or walkable, but that it's dirt cheap for the amenities it does offer.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#322

Post by ocschwar »

LordKano wrote: post #250
davidw wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Externalities" is how economists describe those costs. Realistically speaking, the barber shop could only really push people to park: * On the street. And you know what? That's fine. If the street was built to have parking, and people are parking there, it's not a problem. It might be more of a PITA for the clients. If it's too much of a PITA, the business may suffer. But that's how markets work. * In some other bus…

This desire of urban planners to regulate virtually every aspect of city life is precisely why I live in the suburbs. I like to remind budding conservatives and libertarians that the free market is an ideal, not a mandate. The situation you describe is one that it perfect to be handled by the market. It's a cliche but it's also true that what matters is "Location, Location, Location". If you locate a business in an a…

> This desire of urban planners to regulate virtually every aspect of city life is precisely why I live in the suburbs.

That's a bizarre thing to say.

Construction in the suburbs is far more tightly regulated in the suburbs than in the city.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#323

Post by tcbawo »

VLM wrote: post #269
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 r…

Another article by this author (http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/8/a-utah-republica...) describes a rejected federal proposal to hand over most federal infrastructure dollars to states, the implication being local governments would know how to allocate dollars more effectively than the federal government. The author suggests going a step further and letting majors direct the funding.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#324

Post by hx87 »

porker wrote: post #176
cameldrv wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How was the soundproofing in these 5-6 story buildings? I've lived in flats in the UK and had endless problems, from people vacuuming at 6am on wooden floors above my bedroom to sleepless nights from parties, to hearing TV and conversations. I like the idea of 5-6 story buildings and know we need higher density housing, but past experiences make we want to live in a 2-story (semi-)detached house with enough garden to…

If you put enough mineral wood in the walls, floors, and ceilings, install triple-pane casement windows (seriously, sash windows are shit), and mount all the plasterboard on stand-offs instead of directly on surfaces, sound shouldn't ever be a problem.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#325

Post by II2II »

pif wrote: post #307
panglott wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The auto is at the center of what's unique about American towns. The chart in the article essentially says that the urban core generates surplus revenue that is used to subsidize low-productivity outlying areas. The car is at the heart of why the outlying areas are so large and thus need so many direct and indirect subsidies, and a direct source of the subsidies and costs. See something like "The High Cost of Free Pa…

> the urban core generates surplus revenue that is used to subsidize low-productivity outlying areas What's so surprising about it? You work (and produce) in the overcrowded center and then go back to a nice suburb for the evening.

It may not be surprising, but many find it disagreeable. Residents of those overcrowded centres are rarely enthusiastic about subsidising the suburbs. Businesses often find it difficult to exist in the centre, both due to taxation (again, to subsidise the suburbs) and the difficulty in convincing car-centric suburbanites to drive downtown.

Those subsidies can be quite significant, ranging from roads and poorly utilized transit routes to developing land and services that will be under utilized (e.g. parks and recreation centres).

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#326

Post by yourapostasy »

krzyk wrote: post #188
davidw wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually in the eastern part of the Europe (former soviet influence zone) smaller cities are planned, and they are planned really well. As the parent posters have said, it is very similar to the former USSR - you have a lot of green, shops, schools, kindegardens, parks within a walking distance from where you live. After we ditched the planning and switched to market economy, suddenly developers (the ones that make b…

That's because market-economy developers expropriate planning properties that lead to higher quality of life, externalizing the resultant downstream costs upon their customers, who in this instance of a market with highly asymmetrical information between parties (out of many in market economies) are not aware of the longer-term, cross-functional factors decided against their interests when they make their housing purchasing decisions. This is only somewhat mitigated by customers gradually over time (a few generations) building up a kind of institutional knowledge of preferences that painfully slowly express themselves into the market, and quickly vanish if not assiduously and consciously protected; see many much older walkable neighborhoods in less well off sections of towns and cities get gentrified over with less walkable developments.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#327

Post by hx87 »

rubber_duck wrote: post #293
michaelt wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if anything I would guess spending more would lead to more expensive maintenance as well The idea is to buy a $100 thing that lasts 10 years, instead of a $20 thing that lasts one year, thus halving your long-term spending. Of course, not all more expensive products last longer, so careful attention to value for money is a must.

I get the concept in theory I'm just not sure it's a given in practice - the way I've seen people spend extra money on projects isn't really for long term cost reduction but features that make it look flashy (increasing the scope and making it more expensive to maintain).

Just because it isn't done in practice doesn't mean it can't be done--it's a cultural/institutional/incentive matter.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#328

Post by lend000 »

hackuser wrote: post #167
lend000 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the barbershops may be incentivized to push the parking costs onto others You mean others who post "Parking for McDonald's only" on their spots and have a towing service visible? There are problems that are not pragmatic for markets to solve without a bit of legal rigidity, but the whole "who will build the roads?" seems to stem from a lack of creativity and just overall contrarianism. "Who will build the interstat…

> I think cities would enjoy a nice efficiency boost from the decentralized, organic growth of a less bureaucratically-planned city (plus fewer budget problems). Consider the infrastructure costs in the article: Less centralized, less planned cities would, I expect, create higher infrastructure costs as efficiencies of scale, standardization, reduced redundancy, and planning would be lost. Also, different parts of th…

> Less centralized, less planned cities would, I expect, create higher infrastructure costs as efficiencies of scale, standardization, reduced redundancy, and planning would be lost.

Sounds like pure speculation. Economies of scale is a real phenomenon, but you should be aware that diseconomies of scale is also a real phenomenon that tends to manifest most clearly in government bureaucracies (and in fact, does, per the example in the article).

There is no logical reason to be a naysayer without introducing solutions of your own when the current system is clearly not working (either in terms of results OR financial sustainability). Many companies adopt informal policies like "if you complain, you need to provide a solution of your own." I'm complaining, and I propose decentralizing road building and providing incentives to make it practical for companies to develop them freely (no property taxes on roads open to the public, for example), and a reduction in zoning by city governments in the first place. Prove me wrong and provide a better solution, and I'll be thrilled. I am certainly not an expert on this subject. But I hope you don't think what we have is working -- almost every city in the US is on a practically irreversible path to bankruptcy.

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#329

Post by throwaway12393 »

yourapostasy wrote: post #326
krzyk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually in the eastern part of the Europe (former soviet influence zone) smaller cities are planned, and they are planned really well. As the parent posters have said, it is very similar to the former USSR - you have a lot of green, shops, schools, kindegardens, parks within a walking distance from where you live. After we ditched the planning and switched to market economy, suddenly developers (the ones that make b…

That's because market-economy developers expropriate planning properties that lead to higher quality of life, externalizing the resultant downstream costs upon their customers, who in this instance of a market with highly asymmetrical information between parties (out of many in market economies) are not aware of the longer-term, cross-functional factors decided against their interests when they make their housing pur…

Emailed you recently. Can you check if I understood your address correctly? :)

Re: Why Many Cities Have No Money

#330

Post by sbierwagen »

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.

Lafayette has a population density of 934.5/km^2. London is 5,518/km^2.
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