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Can someone name an example of a city that has gone bankrupt due to infrastructure costs that didn't also lose a large amount of its population or lose key local industries?
I can't, because every American city I can think of experienced redlining and white flight, which led to the loss of population, business, and investment.
Found the text version more compelling myself: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
Thanks; the "Why", or the interesting part of "Why", seems only alluded to, rather than explicitly discussed. Is it that the low density of suburban development means that tax collected per area unit, is less than infrastructure maintenance per area unit? And is the even more implied solution to increase urban density at least to the point where revenue per area matches expenses per area?
- Long term liabilities are not tracked (e.g., muni worker pensions, pension guaranteed CoL adjustments) as hard liabilities. That makes it easy to budget things now and borrow invisibly from the future
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose mentality given that federal government or others could possibly bail you out.
- Leadership worries about elections NOW and approval rating NOW, not about issues 20yrs into the future
- Some muni worker groups have a stranglehold over towns and can demand far more than economically feasible, or else
- Insufficient critical mass of citizenry to look at long term issues
I am biased because I quite like living in the suburbs, and get quite suspicious when some manifesto comes up that dictates I should feel bad for it. Why is the solution to live in better designed cities instead of better designed suburbs? Are cities still necessary given the modern conditions?
Methinks author is conflating two separate issues.
Can someone name an example of a city that has gone bankrupt due to infrastructure costs that didn't also lose a large amount of its population or lose key local industries?
I think that’s a rather unfair question as cities should be resilient to significant population shifts. The world isn’t constant so the inability to handle change means you already have issues. Population shifts don’t just happen in an afternoon if a city can’t deal with a 10% population decline over a decade it was already in dire straits. Pensions for example are’t inherently an issue, it’s just a debt that should…
So some cities did weather the cycles. Others like Detroit not so much--at least outside of certain core areas.
I am biased because I quite like living in the suburbs, and get quite suspicious when some manifesto comes up that dictates I should feel bad for it. Why is the solution to live in better designed cities instead of better designed suburbs? Are cities still necessary given the modern conditions?
The argument is that suburbs are incapable of affording the infrastructure required for their own existence. These costs are either subsidized or require persistent (perhaps unrealistic) growth to cover without dramatically increasing suburban taxes. "Are cities necessary given the modern conditions?" How many suburbs would exist without the corresponding city center? And, don't we just call suburbs without a city ce…
Towns still typically need to manage their own utilities while suburbs don't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Detroit? The industry is still there but they've lost 50% of their population. But the whole point of the video is when you build these big suburbs and suburban development patterns you're on the hook for their cost no matter if anyone is living there or not.
This is an odd example. Detroit literally lost hundreds of thousands of auto manufacturing jobs. The companies only remain there in a token fashion.
strongtowns actually names Detroit as a very early adopter of suburban city planning and sprawl. The argument is they are in part reeling from the impact of these policies faster than other cities.
Does the tone put anyone else off? I feel like I should be his perfect target audience (I cycle everywhere and prefer living in cities with good bike infrastructure) but I find the way he makes his arguments leaves me wanting to disagree with him.
I am biased because I quite like living in the suburbs, and get quite suspicious when some manifesto comes up that dictates I should feel bad for it. Why is the solution to live in better designed cities instead of better designed suburbs? Are cities still necessary given the modern conditions?
The argument is that suburbs are incapable of affording the infrastructure required for their own existence. These costs are either subsidized or require persistent (perhaps unrealistic) growth to cover without dramatically increasing suburban taxes. "Are cities necessary given the modern conditions?" How many suburbs would exist without the corresponding city center? And, don't we just call suburbs without a city ce…
How could cities survive without farm land?
How could cities survive without outsourced materials?
We live in an interdependent interconnected global society where everything and everyone subsidizes everyone else.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/wasted-tax-dollars/
$365K In Taxpayer Dollars To Teach People How To Fish?
You can look at every one of these cities and see them making bad government policies that placed them in this situation.