61–70 of 70 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strong Towns is much more focused on NOT building new roads than on building new transit. Overall, the message is that new infrastructure of all kinds can be unsustainable financially.
Unless your town is so small that you can get away with purely walking, you're gonna need either roads or transit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Labor is more expensive. Materials are more expensive. Property is more expensive. Lawsuits from poor civil engineering are more expensive. And all are getting more expensive all the time. Your "let's make things cheaper by sacrificing quality" seems to smell of a very deep ignorance of how this stuff works.
Yes, these inputs are more expensive now. The article I linked goes into some detail. I'd like us to find ways of reducing the costs of these inputs. Do you have any ideas for doing that? Suggesting that my post "seems to smell of... ignorance" is both hostile and unproductive. Thanks.
>Collin County has traffic problems. Collin County's traffic problems are a function of its land-use pattern—which spreads development extremely thin on the landscape, and segregates uses, ensuring that people have to make lengthy motor vehicle trips to accomplish pretty much every one of their day to day needs. The offered solution: >For automobile flooding (congestion), the only way to deal with it and still have a…
Out of curiosity, why do Texans dislike state income tax, but subject themselves to 2% property tax? This was one of my family's reasons to choose against moving there.
[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/are-you-getting-all-...
[1] https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/bud-...
[2] https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/property-tax/exemptions/...
What is the counterpoint to this argument? I feel like I'm only getting half an explanation here. It's apparent from looking up Charles Marohn that he's contributing to a lot of pieces on the web to push this idea, but I don't buy that infrastructure expansion is a straight up ponzi scheme.
Found this article to be the other half of the explanation: https://granolashotgun.com/2017/07/12/an-open-letter-to-chuc... Tldr: Zoning isn't going away, that will take educating multiple generations.
>Collin County has traffic problems. Collin County's traffic problems are a function of its land-use pattern—which spreads development extremely thin on the landscape, and segregates uses, ensuring that people have to make lengthy motor vehicle trips to accomplish pretty much every one of their day to day needs. The offered solution: >For automobile flooding (congestion), the only way to deal with it and still have a…
The corner store solution is so bogus. Plano has tons of under utilized commercial space. Practically every intersection has 4 corners of partially vacant huge strip centers. People here choose to frequent the newer nicer always hip and usually chain oriented strip centers near the freeways (shops at legacy, legacy west) at the expense of supporting the interior commercial districts. So, I would say until traffic get…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, why do Texans dislike state income tax, but subject themselves to 2% property tax? This was one of my family's reasons to choose against moving there.
This tax structure simultaneously keeps housing cheap while putting more money in the hands of workers.
Texas is big, red, suburban, and growing. Texas is a success despite basically doing the opposite of what New Urbanists say at every turn. This must really burn up writers at StrongTowns. The big problem for New Urbanists is the fact that dense cities seem to end up with more and more expensive problems than the burbs. Looking forward to a wave of Medium posts and Atlantic articles in 2021 professing a newfound love…
Texas is growing in general. People, especially younger people, are moving to Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin proper, not just the ‘burbs. There have been problems with this though. Apartments are going up like crazy in these cities, but they are mostly single and two bed room (roommate style), at least slightly upscale, apartments. A lot of us millionaire are finding we have to move to the suburbs, not because we wa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strong Towns is much more focused on NOT building new roads than on building new transit. Overall, the message is that new infrastructure of all kinds can be unsustainable financially.
Unless your town is so small that you can get away with purely walking, you're gonna need either roads or transit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll try: Strong Towns' predictions of future maintenance-debt doom are already true today of the urbanist, transit-centric alternative. If any group of Americans had sufficient motivation and resources to maintain a good public transit system, it would be New Yorkers, and they empirically don't. The MTA is deteriorating rapidly despite the best efforts of one of the richest cities in the world. That's textbook "unsu…
New York's MTA, and the general budgetary situation, is mostly mismanaged, not impossible to keep up. And New York certainly doesn't get its fair share of the tax money raised within its city limits; not from the state and not from the federal government. Consider that Nassau County, home of the first suburbs and one of the wealthiest counties in America by median income, has been under state fiscal control since 200…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
New York's MTA, and the general budgetary situation, is mostly mismanaged, not impossible to keep up. And New York certainly doesn't get its fair share of the tax money raised within its city limits; not from the state and not from the federal government. Consider that Nassau County, home of the first suburbs and one of the wealthiest counties in America by median income, has been under state fiscal control since 200…
Obviously it’s possible to maintain public transit under some set of political sensibilities and structures; it works in Europe and Asia. But if any place in America would be willing to address mismanagement (meaning terminate the careers of the politicians who allow it), it would be New York. De Blasio just got re-elected by a wide margin.
There was a gubernatorial challenger who was much more pro-subway, but she lost a campaign by basically treating it as a run for the mayor of New York and ignoring the rest of the state. (Her lack of managerial experience also didn't help.)