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Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

economist.com

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Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#331

Post by supernovae »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #192
Spooky23 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, no. Just because you have a hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. Complete zoning and policy failure is a uniquely California problem. Nobody has a structural, and likely unconstitutional inequity in taxation that California does. Some rando Bay Area suburb being more expensive than Manhattan is not the same problem.

Zoning failures are widespread throughout the country. If more people want to live somewhere, those regions should make it as easy as possible to develop housing and incentivize it

And then what happens when the reason to live there is now gone?

You seem to frame it as an exclusivity problem - they're trying to exclude people from affordable housing...

while the people who live there look at it as preserving what makes it livable

neither are right or wrong on their own, but surely build at all cost isn't a solution to mountain town charm

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#332

Post by dredmorbius »

nerdkid93 wrote: post #294
mark_l_watson wrote: post #281

My wife and I traded living near a beach and lagoon in San Diego country for a small but nice house in a mountain tourist town (Sedona Arizona). That was back in 1998. Except for some time working as a contractor at Google in Mountain View and managing a deep learning team for Capital One in Urbana/Champaign IL, we have lived a quiet life in the mountains since 1998. One reason for my success in being happy here is t…

> deep learning team for Capital One What!? Capital One has a deep learning team? As a long-time customer of theirs, I can't even begin to guess what that team might do for their set of products, except maybe to optimize their credit card offerings.

Fraud, bankruptcy risk prediction, product marketing, possibly phone tree / voice response / customer service, would be my general suspicions based on some previous industry contacts, though no current insights.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#333

Post by ecshafer »

AlanSE wrote: post #174
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #79

Are we still ignoring the ecological collapse that is caused by urban sprawl? We *must* increase the density of our cities. If you believe that the climate crisis is a problem and a big one, then you could be for a rude awakening as most experts now consider the collapse in biodiversity to have far bigger impacts on human lives and living conditions than climate change[0]. The only reason why there are fewer headline…

I'm extremely sympathetic to this view. Habitat destruction is the #1 or #2 way we're screwing over the planet. However, this looks like an area where environmentalists risk getting themselves into trouble. Global warming is a defined and solvable task, but the messaging keeps changing to something more like an open-ended commitment. That has huge risks for the public to tune it out, and perhaps further procrastinate…

Housing prices are almost purely supply and demand. Cities like New York City have 90% of their existing housing stock ( the cheapest and densest buildings) labelled as illegal under their current zoning laws.Los Angeles have extremely restrictive laws that make only the most luxurious high end towers being financially viable, and most of the city zoned for only suburban sprawl. San Francisco is largely illegal to build anything at all there. Cities everywhere have zoning that requires deep pockets (and bribes to city officials) to get anything built and can still be stuck in random lawsuits for decades.

We need to build our cities like we did pre-wwII. We need cities like look like Tokyo, Vienna, Paris, Manhattan, etc. We need cities that are dense and walke-able. Whether that is through removing zoning and height limits and putting parking maximums, or through government building public housing. Something needs to be done, it is a threat to our existence.

We need to densify cities and towns, and replace highways full of SUVs with train lines. We need to replace coal and natural gas burning with solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#334

Post by driverdan »

vailprogrammer wrote: post #172
throwaway6734 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locals wouldn't get screwed if they advocated for better zoning policy and allowed more housing to be built. This doesn't happen because those same locals that are homeowners love the value of their house exploding upwards

I agree with this sentiment in cities, however, I believe that this approach in the mountains would result in skyscrapers being built in areas of natural beauty, and be harmful to all of the wildlife that live there. The Eagle (Vail) Valley is relatively small to begin with.

How are skyscrapers harmful to wildlife? Density is much better for wildlife than sprawl.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#335

Post by dublinben »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #256
_2d30 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah clearly? Your own source for what is nearly the worst case in the world is ongoing investment of “US$200 per capita and year”. Look at how much the home values have increased! Do you really think that’s not trivially extractable from property taxes?? That’s IF it’s as bad as building megacities in the middle of literal deserts which obviously a place like Bozeman is NOT. You’re throwing your hands up exa…

Over the course of 10 or 20 years, you can build out the infrastructure to support the previous boom (well, it’s harder in Montana since they are more anti-tax). But in the course of 1 or 2 years? And if that boom turns into a bust before you can get the infrastructure projects going? Urban planning is useful for a reason. Building housing is far from effective on its own, and not all areas can support the same densi…

>the result is a more livable city that attracts even more people

That doesn't sound so bad. What's the alternative?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#336

Post by dahfizz »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #121
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement ar…

Locals wouldn't get screwed if they advocated for better zoning policy and allowed more housing to be built. This doesn't happen because those same locals that are homeowners love the value of their house exploding upwards

I think the whole point is that the locals don't want their town to turn into another urban hellhole.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#337

Post by dcow »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #212
bobthechef wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From [0]: "Aquinas believed that it was specifically immoral to raise prices because a particular buyer had an urgent need for what was being sold [...] Aquinas would therefore condemn practices such as raising the price of building supplies in the wake of a natural disaster. Increased demand caused by the destruction of existing buildings does not add to a seller's costs, so to take advantage of buyers' increased wi…

The purpose of increased prices is to incentivize more supply to come into the market. If prices do not rise with demand (and static supply), then you’re left with a market where certain buyers are lucky (or connected) and some don’t get anything.

Which sounds arguably (although I’ not sure I agree) more “equitable” in the sense that access to goods is a big social lottery rather than a true market.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#338

Post by panzagl »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #241

More urban sprawl and Starbucks for those who lack culture.

Colorado is also getting In n Out and Whataburger. Most of my favorite local restaurants have slowly closed over the last 10 years. Which I guess is ok, since all my favorite businesses are gone too because of the rising rents caused by legalization. Instead I can sit in my house and Doordash Chipotle while I order stuff on Amazon, just like those culturally sophisticated urbanites who are doing us such a favor by bringing their civilization to us.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#339

Post by Itsdijital »

calvano915 wrote: post #199
bumby wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the sentiment is about how it can create perverse incentives that may be good for a small subset but bad for the population in the aggregate. I think it’s about a host of different systemic issues beyond just where one person decides to live. I.e., income inequality, housing policy, class disparities etc. It just manifests itself in the problems raised in the article. Edit: The Indicator recently had an inter…

And destroys many aspects that made moving appealing in the first place.

Largely what made moving appealing in the first place was romanticizing the hell out of it while browsing lifestyle instagram feeds all day.

You never thought about your addiction to 2nd day shipping and international cuisine rotation via uber eats.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#340

Post by technofiend »

consensusform wrote: post #275
bedhead wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year I moved from a top 3 city to a small mountain town in Colorado. In my experience, your hostility is extremely common in small towns that have big seasonal influxes. I continue to be amazed by the overt disdain long-time locals have for second home owners and relatively newer full-time residents. The one constant is: "Everything was great until shortly after I relocated here and you people moved in." A week…

That sentiment isn't unique to small towns either. Residents of Austin, TX have been complaining that the city changed or got too crowded shortly after they moved in, whether that was a year ago or decades ago. People who moved to SF in 2010 complained about the people moving there in 2015. Same thing happens at a neighborhood or district level too. Everybody feels like they were the last person to move in while it w…

>Residents of Austin, TX have been complaining that the city changed or got too crowded shortly after they moved in

I've been told Austin's city council mulishly refused to see the growth trend and didn't annex the hills around the city when they had the chance. Austin waterways like Bull Creek went from summertime swimming holes to unsafe to enter due to septic tank runoff and high levels of coliform bacteria because city services - sewerage in particular - weren't extended to those areas.

People who lived there really hoped the usual waxing and waning of population in cadence with student university attendance would go on forever. But according to an aunt who lived there from the 1960s until property taxes priced her out a few years ago, too many people loved it and moved back after school or just never left and it sort of snowballed from there. Her anecdotal evidence was the cashiers at her Half Price Books stores she managed often had Masters degrees but chose to work there rather than move and find a better job elsewhere.

These days people running a cash register while holding an advanced degree is more of a cliche than remarkable evidence that some place is so special you'd rather be underpaid there than be paid better somewhere else.

But yeah to hear her tell it, in her forty years there every decade that passed brought some unwelcome change to Austin.

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