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Why American cities are weirdly shaped

economist.com

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Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#31

Post by pjc50 »

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…

The UK is an extremely centralised state by comparison with the US or even most European countries - almost all decisions are made at Westminster, and the central government can override the devolved assemblies if it really wants to. The taxations powers devolved to councils are fairly minimal and also overridden by central government at whim.

And there's no history of segregation.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#32

Post by ChrisSD »

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…

There is some rigidity in the UK. The "green belt"[0] is meant to constrain urban sprawl. Admittedly these constraints aren't set in stone and can be changed.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_belt_(United_Kingdom)

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#33

Post by macleginn »

For totally different reasons, Moscow, the capital of Russia, has recently acquired a magnificently weird shape after annexing a huge tract of land shooting out roughly in the southern direction (nos. 11 and 12 on this map [1]). In Russia, city and region boundaries are important, but Moscow city limits are insanely important in terms of pensions, taxes, schools, and healthcare (it's much better to be inside than outside). The main motivation for this land grab, however, was to give housing developers more space to build new houses, and newly minted burgesses are torn between being happy because of imminent social spending hikes and being terrified of the total redevelopment of what they used to call their home area.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_Mo...

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#34

Post by robertAngst »

mc32 wrote: post #9

The article implies that if cities could unilaterally annex twrritory they would and that presumanly would result in nicer city shapes (boundaries) as well as more importantly better and cheaper services due to elimination of redundancies. Interestingly the article claims both rich and poor people are reluctant to give up their enclaves/ independence due to power, momey, and other aspects such as education.

My city is one of the best in our area.

Best schools, safe, and has a high property tax.

10 miles south of us is Detroit. Where the Detroit voters re-elected Kawammi kilpatrick despite having constant public corruption.

Do I want those voters to impact my schools? Do those voters want to spend 9,000$/yr on property taxes?

Its far too simplistic to think that there is only redundancies at play.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#35

Post by robertAngst »

wongarsu wrote: post #20
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 p…

>Microdonation platforms like flattr fail to gain any traction

What about Wikipedia?

I run my website in this fashion.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#36

Post by robertAngst »

chrisseaton wrote: post #16
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.

HN guidelines ask that you don't complain about paywalls. It's explicitly off-topic.

Maybe its worth banning websites with paywalls?

This is like a front page advertisement.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#37

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Correct. In some states cities are like counties and have more legislative power from the state.

In the past cities had much more political power than towns, and were able to annex and do other things. My city looks sort of like a pork chop, as they annexed railyards at the city edge in the late 19th century for tax revenue.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#38

Post by Spooky23 »

mc32 wrote: post #9

The article implies that if cities could unilaterally annex twrritory they would and that presumanly would result in nicer city shapes (boundaries) as well as more importantly better and cheaper services due to elimination of redundancies. Interestingly the article claims both rich and poor people are reluctant to give up their enclaves/ independence due to power, momey, and other aspects such as education.

Suburban towns are more likely to be more lean and get by without things like large professional police and fire forces because they lack the social problems of the cities.

The structure of city government is usually better defined and resistant to change, and would “win” over the annexed towns. Usually there’s a ward structure that benefits a certain type of political machinery. The backbone of suburban politics are usually powered by things like volunteer fire departments, schools or other orgs. Those types of organizations will fight hard because unionized city organizations have more people and seniority, etc.

No sane person would vote for annexation who isn’t part of a city.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#39

Post by ChrisSD »

nivertech wrote: post #29
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?

"Leonis Malburg, the mayor for fifty years, was convicted of voter fraud, conspiracy, and perjury in December 2009." [1] Wow! Trying to spread democracy in the world, when you have little dictators in your own backyard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon,_California#Elections_o...

To be fair, America has no problem with dictators so long as they are supportive dictators.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#40

Post by cobbzilla »

dullgiulio wrote: post #22
captainbland wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a lot I think. London's an interesting case, because depending on what part of London you're in you're dealing with a totally different police force - in the City of London, there's the City of London police but this only covers the square mile. Most of London is policed by the Metropolitan Police. Administratively, the City of London and everything else in London it's totally separate. The City has The Lo…

The City of London is the exception, not the norm. The history of how it came to this situation is also pretty interesting (the City is what should be called London, not the rest of the city.) It's a less extreme version of what happens in Rome with the Vatican, which is a completely different country. But in either case, it's just one inclave. The article talks about jigsaws happening in almost every city.

Indeed. CGPgrey did a nice video about these peculiarities of London: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
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