Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why American cities are weirdly shaped

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 173 posts

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#11

Post by macleginn »

robteix wrote: post #3

> The county is home to 88 incorporated cities, ranging in population from 76 (Vernon) to 3.9m (Los Angeles itself). Beverly Hills (population 34,506) is its own city, with its own police force, fire department and school district. So is Santa Monica (92,495). Even Vernon has a police department, with some 50-odd staff. Am I misreading this? How/why does a city of 76 have a police dept with 50 people?

The reason, it seems, is that a lot of people come there to work, but live elsewhere: ‘Founded in 1905 as the first exclusively industrial city in the Southwestern United States, Vernon currently houses more than 1,800 businesses that employ approximately 50,000 people, serving as a vital economic engine in the region.’ (http://www.cityofvernon.org/about-vernon)

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#12

Post by huffmsa »

Can't read the article because the economist Saya I've read my free monthly limit.

If the article is about governmental districts, it's because Americans are predisposed to having lots of small localized governments.

Don't like what the guys 5 miles over are doing? Incorporate a township and run your own government.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#13

Post by huffmsa »

cfv wrote: post #8

That paywall just led to me blacklisting the entire economist.com domain at extension level. Too bad. Don't do paywalls like that please.

It's the only site on the I internet that tells me I've read all of my free monthly articles every time I link to it.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#14

Post by mattmanser »

chrisseaton wrote: post #2

My understanding is that a city boundary in the US is a big deal. The police force on either side can be completely different, things that can get you in a lot of trouble like gun laws can be different on either side, prices and taxes can be very different. In the UK a city boundary doesn't really mean anything. There might be a nice 'Welcome to X' sign but nothing really changes as it would in the US. I'm not even s…

It does make more of a difference than you think, though as you say it's nowhere near as marked as America.

My city, Nottingham, likes volunteering to trial things. So we were the first or one of the first cities to have average speed cameras years ago, we also introduced a workspace parking levy. The former has gone nationwide, but the latter hasn't been adopted anywhere else.

The planners in Nottingham also love traffic lights and are utterly shit at roundabouts. It's a frustrating city to drive in, but has great, regular, buses and now trams.

That's very different to other areas, like Colchester where I lived before had loads of roundabouts and tended to phase out traffic light junctions for roundabouts. But it used to have fairly rubbish buses to the nearby towns.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#15

Post by chrisseaton »

mattmanser wrote: post #14
chrisseaton wrote: post #2

My understanding is that a city boundary in the US is a big deal. The police force on either side can be completely different, things that can get you in a lot of trouble like gun laws can be different on either side, prices and taxes can be very different. In the UK a city boundary doesn't really mean anything. There might be a nice 'Welcome to X' sign but nothing really changes as it would in the US. I'm not even s…

It does make more of a difference than you think, though as you say it's nowhere near as marked as America. My city, Nottingham, likes volunteering to trial things. So we were the first or one of the first cities to have average speed cameras years ago, we also introduced a workspace parking levy. The former has gone nationwide, but the latter hasn't been adopted anywhere else. The planners in Nottingham also love tr…

Right but that's comparing a city in the north to a city miles away in the south. We're talking about the immediate boundary between outside a city and inside a city, aren't we?

My local city is Chester, and I couldn't even tell you where the limit of Chester is now - I presume it's no longer the old Roman walls. When you cross that boundary wherever it is, nothing changes. It's still the same local government authority, still the same police force.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#17

Post by mprev »

chrisseaton wrote: post #15
mattmanser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does make more of a difference than you think, though as you say it's nowhere near as marked as America. My city, Nottingham, likes volunteering to trial things. So we were the first or one of the first cities to have average speed cameras years ago, we also introduced a workspace parking levy. The former has gone nationwide, but the latter hasn't been adopted anywhere else. The planners in Nottingham also love tr…

Right but that's comparing a city in the north to a city miles away in the south. We're talking about the immediate boundary between outside a city and inside a city, aren't we? My local city is Chester, and I couldn't even tell you where the limit of Chester is now - I presume it's no longer the old Roman walls. When you cross that boundary wherever it is, nothing changes. It's still the same local government author…

Isn’t there a welcome to Wales sign on one side of the city? I always find it fun driving over the border and suddenly you can araf at the gwasanethau for a paned o de.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#18

Post by em-bee »

huffmsa wrote: post #12

Can't read the article because the economist Saya I've read my free monthly limit. If the article is about governmental districts, it's because Americans are predisposed to having lots of small localized governments. Don't like what the guys 5 miles over are doing? Incorporate a township and run your own government.

load the page. hit esc before it's fully loaded. works for me, although, it maybe because i have a slow internet so it takes a while for the page to fully load...

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#19

Post by chrisseaton »

mprev wrote: post #17
chrisseaton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but that's comparing a city in the north to a city miles away in the south. We're talking about the immediate boundary between outside a city and inside a city, aren't we? My local city is Chester, and I couldn't even tell you where the limit of Chester is now - I presume it's no longer the old Roman walls. When you cross that boundary wherever it is, nothing changes. It's still the same local government author…

Isn’t there a welcome to Wales sign on one side of the city? I always find it fun driving over the border and suddenly you can araf at the gwasanethau for a paned o de.

But that's because you're leaving the country, not because you're leaving the city. The city boundary isn't relevant there - the country boundary is.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#20

Post by wongarsu »

cfv wrote: post #8

That paywall just led to me blacklisting the entire economist.com domain at extension level. Too bad. Don't do paywalls like that please.

What would you prefer them to do?

- There are plenty of good reasons against using the typical ad platforms, and the increasing adoption of ad blockers shows that users don't like them

- Hosting your own ads is hard in the internet and doesn't seem very profitable

- Running the website as a marketing expense to increase sales of the paper version used to work, but now people just stay on the website

- Microdonation platforms like flattr fail to gain any traction

Unless you somehow find good journalists that work for free a model of allowing X article reads per month before requiring payment seems like the best model available.

Post reply on HN