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Why American cities are weirdly shaped

economist.com

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Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#91

Post by hbosch »

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…

Related note: the latest season of the podcast Serial touches on a case where a kid was arrested and beaten over a joint. He thought he was in Cleveland, where you won’t be arrested for such a small amount of weed... but he was actually in a neighboring suburb called Euclid, and he wasn’t aware of the prosecutorial difference.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#92

Post by bane »

tboyd47 wrote: post #90
bane wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can depend on the particular U.S. State. It's sometimes useful for non-Americans to think of the U.S. like a federation of weak semi-autonomous countries. Each state more or less runs their own affairs unless there's some federal interest in which case the national interest overrides the state one. What this means for this topic is that states organize their territories in sometimes different ways that can seem so…

> It's sometimes useful for non-Americans to think of the U.S. like a federation of weak semi-autonomous countries. That may have been true in the 18th and 19th century, but since the early 1900s, I don't think it's accurate to say that anymore. Nearly every state power has been checked by the federal court system at some point during the 20th century [0]. I didn't know about the Police-Jury system, but it's surely t…

> Wouldn't you agree that state and local governments mostly act within the bounds defined by the federal government?

I agree that the Federal government trumps the State government, but I'm not sure that I envision it as "bounds defined by" and more as whenever the random walk of the Federal government intersects with a more local one, the Fed wins. There are plenty of areas that the Federal government can't be bothered to get involved and the more local governments fill in those niches. For example, the Federal government really doesn't care much about local zoning laws or building offsets from city streets and such.

But I can also definitely see how it could be viewed as you describe in many cases as well.

One thing that I do think is interesting is how poorly EU citizens understand the history (and mistakes!) made in systems like the U.S. to learn and model the future of the EU from.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#93

Post by xte »

crooked-v wrote: post #87
xte wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to live, really, not for short touristic period, in Japan with their education, way of work and live. It's a developed country so you have all food you want, all services you want, but you also have a neurotic, stressogen, society in witch people live to work, not the contrary.

I don't understand how Japanese work culture is supposed to be a result of their city designs.

It's a result of Japan environment (not only natural), they are too much and too concentrated as a result they can't live relaxed, they can only stress themselves. Few that born or arrive to a "comfort position" tend to exceed in any behavior, others whip themselves to the extreme.

That's why we read about people who die working too much, who close themselves in their room for months or years, they use big load of antidepressants, even more than the USA/UK (that are the top consumers of the western world) etc.

We develop any kind of things in response to our environment and we develop our society accordingly; that's why in cold countries we tend to have good welfare, reproduce less, are less violent than hot climate countries because cooperation is needed to survive, low density is needed because of low foods etc that's why in hot climate countries we tend to being far less cooperative, more violent and reproduce far more. That's also why in cold countries people tend to value space more than in hot one, that's why in some countries people dream an attic on top of a giant skyscraper in the city center and in others people dream a personal home immerse in the nature. And generally those countries evolve themselves accordingly.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#94

Post by brudgers »

The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 established precedents for geometric subdivision in the Americas independent of geographic facts and prior to survey. It is highly expedient. Geometric subdivision enabled Portugal and Castille to reach agreement quickly solely on the basis of Columbus's first voyage while his second voyage was underway.

In the US, geometric subdivision is overlaid with Lockeian concepts of private property. There's no general substrate of alloidal, ecclesiastic and manorial subdivisions. Birmingham Alabama's shape was established in the industrial age. Birmingham England's in the feudal. Birmingham Alabama's shape reflects a history of land sales in the age of rail not royal charters from the Norman era.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#95

Post by jellicle »

The reasons are pretty simple: taxes and racism.

They use Birmingham as an example. Many of the pieces of land that seem like they "should" be part of Birmingham were racist enclaves founded specifically to avoid desegregation. The land was restricted with whites-only restrictive covenants, and if they incorporated as a separate city, why, no one would force one city to bus their kids to an entirely separate school system run by an entirely separate city. Which meant that your schools, theoretically integrated, stayed fully whites-only (still are today). The Economist's bafflement at how this came to be is easily explained if you look at the history.

I also see a bunch of carve outs where specific land owners have removed themselves from the city to avoid taxes.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#96

Post by ghaff »

monocasa wrote: post #82
ghaff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So I have several family members who work in under privileged schools, and what they pretty unequivocally say to this argument is that it's one of those "it's expensive to be poor" kind of things. These kid's parents work two or three jobs, so we give them subsidized after school programs. Their housholds are food insecure, so we give them breakfast and lunch so they can focus on schooling and not their empty stomach…

To be clear, there are all manner of reasons why the schools for a poorer population often need to spend more money per student than an upper middle class suburb. At the same time, as you suggest, the best money can probably do is to bring students and the school as a whole closer to parity. It's not surprising that many people who can afford to do so opt out of urban public school systems one way or another.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#97

Post by dang »

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.

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#99

Post by DoubleCribble »

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…

You're absolutely right. City police are often a completely different organization from the county sheriff's office which is undoubtedly different from the state police.

Serial predators like the Golden State Killer[0] have leveraged this to their advantage and avoided capture for decades using this ONE CRAZY HACK. (exploit the jurisdictional morass by just moving around a bit)

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Killer

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#100

Post by nisse72 »

ChrisSD wrote: post #39
nivertech wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Like Pinochet? Supported by the US while he tortured the chileans who opposed him?
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