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Why American cities are weirdly shaped

economist.com

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Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#51

Post by wongarsu »

robertAngst wrote: post #35
wongarsu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Patreon also works great for some sites (and not at all for some others).

To be honest, I don't particularly like Wikipedia's huge banners with pleas to get the last few millions in donations. If every site did that users were as annoyed as they are by regular ads.

A donation model might be the best thing to do, we just have to find the best way to implement it.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#52

Post by ghaff »

dayofthedaleks wrote: post #48
robertAngst wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Glad that the Voice of White Flight Suburbs could chime in. Edit: Also, it looks like Kwame Kilpatrick hasn't stood for office in more than a decade. Exactly what axe are you grinding, here?

Detroit has some of the highest public school spending per student in the country with some of the worst outcomes even for an urban area. It's a pretty common pattern that cities spend more per student than suburbs and the schools are "worse" (by just about any quantitative metric). And, yes, it's historically been a big reason for families who could afford to do so to leave cities; the alternative in their minds was to put their children in private schools.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#53

Post by AlexB138 »

dayofthedaleks wrote: post #48
robertAngst wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Glad that the Voice of White Flight Suburbs could chime in. Edit: Also, it looks like Kwame Kilpatrick hasn't stood for office in more than a decade. Exactly what axe are you grinding, here?

What do you think this kind of comment is adding to the conversation?

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#54

Post by amha »

cjf4 wrote: post #49
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…

>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. The biggest thing that changes is the school district. City schools tend to be worse than suburban counterparts, and that completely drives a cities ability to r…

It depends on the state. At least here in New York (the state, not the city), school district boundaries have nothing to do with municipal boundaries (which, yeah, adds another layer of confusion!)

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#55

Post by CPLX »

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 story of Vernon in LA County is actually fascinating. It was created as sort of a corporate owned state. The neat trick is that nearly all the housing was owned by the people who run the town, so while nominally it’s a democracy if you don’t like how things are going you can just evict all your voters and replace them.

The second season of True Detective is based in a fictionalized version of Vernon, with lots of footage shot in and around the area.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#56

Post by lozenge »

xte wrote: post #47

A different question: can we build a manageable city for modern era? I think not. More in details we have already accepted that our constructions (roads, bridges etc included) do not last forever even with proper maintenance but I still have to see plans about how to rebuild buildings and infrastructure when they'll reach their EOL... Even without counting that we already seen that we can't predict the future enough…

Japan's a nightmare to live in and spacing things out is the only way to plan for the future? Sounds like you are judging by your own very blinkered standards of what makes a city liveable.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#57

Post by em-bee »

fbonetti wrote: post #24
em-bee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Or open the page in incognito.

true, that works too, and is even easier

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#58

Post by DFHippie »

nivertech wrote: post #50
DFHippie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.... you're opposed to democracy if neighbors of its advocates are impure? Or was the mayor one of the advocates spreading it abroad? Maybe they shouldn't have convicted him in order to keep their record clean? I'm having trouble getting at the meat of your criticism.

The accent was on "the mayor for fifty years". Local government is still a government. Things like this and the Electoral College make US an archaic democracy. Maybe it's better to fix your own system, before trying to teach others? The fact that you had a banana republic with a life-long dictator just 5 miles from downtown LA - speaks something. No criticism, more like a surprise. I don't care about politics and eve…

It's notable that when the U.S. tries to help install democracy in other countries they don't attempt to install their own presidential system. Among its flaws is that it is exceedingly difficult to amend.

It's fun but not helpful to pretend other countries are ignorant of their own problems and have monolithic opinions (in which case, why vote?).

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#59

Post by robertAngst »

wongarsu wrote: post #51
robertAngst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Microdonation platforms like flattr fail to gain any traction What about Wikipedia? I run my website in this fashion.

Patreon also works great for some sites (and not at all for some others). To be honest, I don't particularly like Wikipedia's huge banners with pleas to get the last few millions in donations. If every site did that users were as annoyed as they are by regular ads. A donation model might be the best thing to do, we just have to find the best way to implement it.

Is that annoyance worse than being blocked from the page?

EDIT: serious question, because if it is, I can restrict content on my website.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#60

Post by mikestew »

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…

My understanding is that a city boundary in the US is a big deal.

I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time it made a lick of difference to me, having lived in the U. S. my entire life. “Don’t carry a handgun to Chicago”, okay, file that one away. “If you’re black”, and I’m not, “don’t stop for gas in Martinsville, IN”. Though that one might not still be true, I’d still stay away from Elwood, my Afro-American friend.

Other than that, with the caveat of being a white male, I can’t say I’ve ever had need to pay attention.

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