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Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

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Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#71

Post by technovader »

baby wrote: post #56
refurb wrote: post #34

This seems like an odd complaint considering SF appears to have out of control spending and poor infrastructure. Methinks author is conflating two separate issues.

Does SF really have poor infrastructure btw? Compared to any city in Europe sure, but compared to cities in the US?

That's exactly the point though. Americans have no idea how terrible their cities are because they only compare to themselves.

It's ALL terrible. Please DO compare to Europe. Let's strive for better cities period, not just OK in the context of North America.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#72

Post by thegginthesky »

ghaff wrote: post #46
TrispusAttucks wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an infinite regress? 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.

There seems to be a naive belief that if everyone just lived in dense urban cores there would be no need to pay for infrastructure beyond the city limits.

Infrastructure outside the city is normally paid by a combination of County Taxes and State Taxes, and roads are also financed by the Federal Gas Tax, tolls and other forms of government income.

Of course we should pay for infrastructure outside the city, but if you expect to live outside city centers and have costly infrastructure such as a sewage system, high speed fiber internet and so on, you should pay accordingly.

What happens now is that this infrastructure is either financed by those living in city centers or by debt.

So I don't buy your Straw Man argument that people believe that dense urban cores are better. What was explicitly discussed is that people who live in the suburbs don't pay what they should.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#73

Post by sfifs »

azemetre wrote: post #43
foobarian wrote: post #17

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?

You shouldn't feel bad but it's more of a matter that your lifestyle is likely heavily subsidized because your town doesn't have the tax base (nor will they raise your taxes) to support the infrastructure that's required to make suburbs function. If you were paying the true costs of living in the suburbs this wouldn't be an issue, but there's a high likelihood you don't. Cities will always be necessary because they a…

Why should every small sub-section of geographies "pay-out" for themselves. The whole point of higher level organizing constructs (company, conglomerate, state, country) is we take systemically better decisions - which at a nation level will involve keeping people with different preferences united under the nation's big idea by supporting the diversity of preferences.

If to take an example Google insisted every development be independently paying out immediately, there wouldn't be any Maps, Docs, Drive...

If there was a similar insistance by Xerox, probably no personal computing.

Amd even at a state level, even in the US, there are states that pay more to the nation and there are states that get more. In the rest of the world - particularly in Asia, we just consider this support costs for maintaining nationhood.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#74

Post by pwthornton »

foobarian wrote: post #17

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?

We need both to be better designed.

I live in what I suppose you could call a better-designed suburb (or small city; it's all semantics). My suburb of DC has a dense downtown with metro rail and bus access. It has plenty of walkability and apartments/condos for people who want that. It also has townhouses and single-family homes within walking distance of downtown. As you get further from the downtown, it becomes more and more traditionally suburban.

The core issue with this is cost. There are so few places like this in the U.S. that it's expensive to live here. Retrofitting a lot of suburbs with more of a core would help a lot.

The other big issue is what is called missing middle housing. There is a lot of apartments/condos and single-family housing. There aren't many townhouses or duplexes. This creates a situation where many people are either buying more house than they need or living in a space smaller than their needs/desires. This also causes single-family housing prices to be higher than they should be.

Ultimately, retrofitting the suburbs is the great challenge of the 21st century. We need more walkability and density in their cores. Basically, we need to bring back streetcar suburbs (which is what my town is, and after going through decades of losing density, it has been transformed).

And then cities need to become better designed for more people, especially people with families and retirees.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#75

Post by [deleted] »

technovader wrote: post #61
evolve2k wrote: post #3

NotJustBikes are doing some incredible work. It’s really time to reframe how we plan our cities and make the spaces we occupy designed for human scale engagement. I encourage anyone interested in this video to definitely check out more of their videos, so much valuable insight as to practically how our urban spaces could be incredible to live in.

Is it just me or do Americans just hate hearing that their city design is terrible?

[deleted]

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#76

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bombcar wrote: post #54
danaris wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But towns that manage their own utilities do exist . That suggests that suburbs are not fundamentally unsustainable, they just need to adjust their calculations and expectations.

Exactly. I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas. I suspect there are bad suburbs somewhere, but here ain't it.

> I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas

Are you in a net contributor state as well? I live in a similar town, but it's in Wyoming, a state which benefits from federal transfers from urban centers.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#77

Post by giraffe_lady »

honkdaddy wrote: post #57
azemetre wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't feel bad but it's more of a matter that your lifestyle is likely heavily subsidized because your town doesn't have the tax base (nor will they raise your taxes) to support the infrastructure that's required to make suburbs function. If you were paying the true costs of living in the suburbs this wouldn't be an issue, but there's a high likelihood you don't. Cities will always be necessary because they a…

I think it's difficult for someone to have much perspective on how much their own lifestyle is subsidized when the same can be said for the vast majority of people who enjoy benefits from the government, regardless of where they choose to live. Most people take more than they contribute, I don't think someone making $120,000 and paying $40,000 in taxes should feel any guilt for living in the suburbs when so many othe…

No one who pays "almost nothing in taxes" enjoys huge amounts of anything. Except maybe the actual rich with their tax avoidance games, but actual poverty fucking sucks and whatever meager benefits you manage to access don't change that.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#78

Post by ghaff »

dionidium wrote: post #67
ghaff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburbs are towns (or small cities) in many parts of the US. I'm not sure it's even especially common in the US for cities to expand to engulf the whole surrounding area with a single central government. Although there are certainly examples such as Houston, I believe.

Annexation happened a lot in the U.S. but it didn't happen everywhere. Some places, like my hometown of St. Louis, are practically defined by the lack of annexation (although, even in that most famous case, St. Louis did annex several suburbs in the 19th Century, before its Great Divorce). Other places, like Chicago or NYC, pretty famously annexed practically everything around them. (Brooklyn was even once its own ci…

It's probably more common out West. In New England, while Boston did annex some neighboring communities, Cambridge and Somerville are still separate cities. And get just a little bit further out and you have a bunch of clumps of a few thousand people that are independent towns. I used to work with someone from Australia who could never get over all the 5,000 person towns with their own school system, various boards, etc.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#79

Post by thatfrenchguy »

foobarian wrote: post #17

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?

Yes, detached house suburbs are terrible for the environment: you take too much space, cars emit way too much CO2 per mile and you use them to go everywhere, even for small errands.

You can have well designed attached houses-or-appartment suburbs, and they exist, but in the US they’re $$$ for obvious reasons.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#80

Post by TigeriusKirk »

germinalphrase wrote: post #66
TrispusAttucks wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an infinite regress? 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.

The residents of city centers need farms, so it is logical that they would subsidize some amount of rural infrastructure. Residents of cities require materials from elsewhere, so it is logical they would pay the cost of acquiring those resources. What is the benefit to the city resident in subsiding the infrastructure of a suburb? Why shouldn't suburban residents pay the cost of their own infrastructure?

The city resident needs the labor of the residents of the suburbs in order for the city to function.
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