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The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

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Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#171

Post by imtringued »

legitster wrote: post #34
csnover wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are probably thinking of The Growth Ponzi Scheme[0], which was adapted into a video series by Not Just Bikes[1]. [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...

I would take this with a huge grain of salt - Other countries do have expansive suburbs. They don't look like ours, but they are fundamentally the same. Get outside of any major metropolitan and you will see spaced out houses in subdivisions with lawns. - The ASCE number is a bit of a joke - this is a marketing number for the purposes of pushing investment in engineering firms. In reality, your city doesn't need to p…

There are suburbs in, not outside my city and they look nothing like American suburbs. The mixed zoning alone makes up a huge difference. The plot sizes are much smaller and the density is higher.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#172

Post by imtringued »

xyzzyz wrote: post #42
legitster wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take this with a huge grain of salt - Other countries do have expansive suburbs. They don't look like ours, but they are fundamentally the same. Get outside of any major metropolitan and you will see spaced out houses in subdivisions with lawns. - The ASCE number is a bit of a joke - this is a marketing number for the purposes of pushing investment in engineering firms. In reality, your city doesn't need to p…

All of this is true, but you’ve missed the biggest issue with the above argument, which is implying that we cannot afford to replace what our much poorer ancestors afforded to build.

Those poorer ancestors built denser housing and commercial real estate. What they built back in the day is often illegal today and has been grandfathered in while outperforming modern real estate in property taxes. Old "blighted" buildings can pay more taxes than fancy new commercial real estate that is designed for car dependency and suburbia.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#173

Post by RC_ITR »

wizofaus wrote: post #157
RC_ITR wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two unrelated comments: 1) The conspiracy theory is that intentionally pointless HOAs were pushed by small government folks as a way to make people skeptical of tax-for-service organizations. 2) The HOAs point isn’t to regulate the 99% of people who would otherwise maintain their house. It’s for the 1% of people that wouldn’t and in order to avoid housing discrimination charges, you have to regulate everyone equally.

Do HOAs even exist outside the US? I don't know of anything similar in Australia other than body corporate organizations for blocks of units but their scope (and cost) is far more limited. All the other services seemingly provided by HOAs in the US would all be local government provided here. I assumed it was much the same elsewhere in the (developed) world...

HOA's generally exist in places that followed the US's 20th century 'white/wealthy flight' model. Prominent examples include Argentina, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia.

This is representative of the core conflict of American politics that makes it so confusing to outsiders - ideologically, the people in power (often delusionally) identify with Europe, but in practice, they desire power dynamics similar to oligopolies seen in the developing world.

Not to go too far with the metaphor, but if America never established race-based slavery (and instead, racial minorities were primarily the small number of remaining Native Americans), I bet we'd have a similar political system to Australia (where overtly exclusionary practices are more frowned upon).

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#174

Post by imtringued »

metalliqaz wrote: post #9
citizenpaul wrote: post #8

I can't find it anymore but I read a long form article like this probably 10 years ago on the problem of suburbs public infrastructure. Basically they ran the numbers and figured out that more than 50% of cities simply cannot afford to maintain the suburb infrastructure no matter what they do with the budget. Even if they did something crazy like tripled taxes tomorrow they still could not afford it. The called them…

I have read something similar somewhere in the sphere of StrongTowns, I believe. Basically the story goes that infrastructure was paid for by expansion, which required more infrastructure; and so the pyramid scheme was made. The people got these godawful strip malls, "stroads", and suburban sprawl. The towns kicked the problem down the road but once the expansion has to stop, the whole thing comes apart.

It is similar to avoiding the problem of pensions by keeping the population young through population growth. As more people are being born, the population may even get younger if the growth rate is fast enough. It looks like the pension problem has been solved but once population growth stops there is nothing you can do.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#175

Post by imtringued »

caramelcustard wrote: post #32
crooked-v wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this particular situation, that's a lot of money to spend just to serve already-well-off people willingly choosing to live in the desert in a drought.

Almost any significant technological innovation was expensive to provide to the public in its infancy but as the time went on, it became more accessible to the public. Right off the bat, i could name airplane transportation as a fine example.

The problem isn't a lack of technology. Even if there was a magic technology it is unlikely to be adopted.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#176

Post by tharkun__ »

imtringued wrote: post #167
sbf501 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us do realize it and are just sitting here staring at the screen at work realizing what a horrible mistake it all was, and hoping the fall won't as bad as the movies lead us to believe.

I am sitting here, thinking that it would be an easily solvable problem if people actually cared about the sustainability of their communities.

So much this. Our town is trying. They're trying to educate people about it. They are showing people how much water we're collectively consuming per day, how much lower the water table is than in previous years etc. And it seems that nobody cares. Water consumption numbers are actually going up and I see people running sprinklers. I'm hoping the town will actually soon switch from only allowing sprinklers during the night to disallowing sprinklers altogether and actually enforcing that.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#177

Post by sbf501 »

tharkun__ wrote: post #176
imtringued wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sitting here, thinking that it would be an easily solvable problem if people actually cared about the sustainability of their communities.

So much this. Our town is trying. They're trying to educate people about it. They are showing people how much water we're collectively consuming per day, how much lower the water table is than in previous years etc. And it seems that nobody cares. Water consumption numbers are actually going up and I see people running sprinklers. I'm hoping the town will actually soon switch from only allowing sprinklers during the…

I didn't realize how much water I was using until my bill went way up. Then I started running outside to read my water meter after various activities. Showering is the #1 usage of water: 80-100 gallons per shower!!! I had no idea. Literally, it never crossed my mind because water has always been so cheap.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#178

Post by dllthomas »

s0rce wrote: post #95
throw8383833jj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the real estate agent's duty to inform house buyers that they property they're buying may not have water in the future and what a huge pain point that would be. The only logical conclusion i can come to is that the buyers real estate agents have not been honest in this regard.

Are they really duty bound to disclose this? What about fire, flood, earthquake and any other risk. My experience is they don't, other than legally mandated things like asbestos or lead.

I bought a house in California, and the docs include a bunch of details on potential disasters, natural and otherwise. Dam inundation maps are engrossing - there's a dam over San Leandro that could put water on the OAK runways.

That said, I see wiggle room on "if nothing changes there eventually won't be enough water", even if we all know that in practice nothing will change in time, so I don't know how that actually plays out.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#179

Post by paulcole »

occz wrote: post #108
paulcole wrote: post #54

> “Like, a scrambling-for-your-toilet-water-every-month kind of thing.” A few years ago I saw this coming and invented the Waterless Toilet. It's like a kitty litter box but for people who live in areas like those discussed in the article. Why scramble for toilet water when you can just use the Waterless Toilet? I've been trying to get funding for this so please reach out if interested.

Interesting. How is this different from a composting toilet? Those are already an available option for people with limited access to water and sewage infrastructure.

This is just a plastic box filled with kitty litter.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#180

Post by wizofaus »

RC_ITR wrote: post #173
wizofaus wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do HOAs even exist outside the US? I don't know of anything similar in Australia other than body corporate organizations for blocks of units but their scope (and cost) is far more limited. All the other services seemingly provided by HOAs in the US would all be local government provided here. I assumed it was much the same elsewhere in the (developed) world...

HOA's generally exist in places that followed the US's 20th century 'white/wealthy flight' model. Prominent examples include Argentina, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia. This is representative of the core conflict of American politics that makes it so confusing to outsiders - ideologically, the people in power (often delusionally) identify with Europe, but in practice, they desire power dynamics similar to oligopolies…

We had something pretty close on the sugar plantations in the 19th century. But interestingly it was very much an exclusionary government policy to relocate most of them back to the south sea islands. Australia has plenty to be ashamed of in our treatment of anyone non-white historically.
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