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Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

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

#171

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?

IMVHO (and personal experience) a certain level of density is needed, just because even if traveling is cheap it's not as cheap as such and we are social animals needing each others BUT more than a certain level of density issues surpass much the proximity needs.

Honestly my take is that we need Rivieras witch means a bit dense BUT not more than a bit suburbs that are NOT only residential but mixed. As a result we can have "near enough" services/people without failing in the density trap.

The big issue is that human settlements never worked well when centrally planned and when they are not if they work more people want to be there, so the initial low density became right and than too much dense. After that density issue start to bite, people to flee and the cycle restart. No recipe to fix it, it's more a social issue than a mere architectural one.

Some, like McKinsey think we can solve some complexity issue with flying vehicles and I agree, but I do not think we are as near as they state https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... and we still have an enormous isse: making VTOLs/STOLs it's relatively easy (behind the BEV part) but they can just move people and little volume/weigh goods so we can't build a home moving raw materials without roads and if we need them we need to build and maintain them...

Keep following the "in medio stat virtus" principle about the density and diversity described above I think we also need to came back to a moderately distributed economy: some activities need big factories, so far we can't do anything different, BUT only some. Many others can be done in smaller settlements witch for instance that instead of build mega-factories for anything we should try to achieve economy of scale with standards and standard tools in many smaller factories. Easy to say, hard to built but... In the end internet was a free scale network of networks and prove to scale well enough. I think the same principle can be generally valid. The VERY COMPLEX and very expensive game is try it in the real word because social experiments can't be done and destroy as software projects. They demand very long time just to build them. Enormous resources etc and simulations can't really help more than a bit. Since in the past we have build many-centuries longs projects I think we can achieve such result anyway, but not in the modern mind settlement of something quick and done. Convincing people to embrace such revolution and remain engaged for few decades is however... Well... In the past we used religion to push people to such efforts...

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 50% of people pay $0 in income taxes. Yes, they pay sales taxes and generally property taxes indirectly as part of their rent - but they provide 0 in revenues as far as state, local, and Federal taxes are concerned. The top 10% of income earners pay 80% of the taxes.

This is only true if you ignore payroll tax, social security, gas tax, tolls, and other highly regressive taxes. Where is your 10/80 stat coming from? https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/ paints a very different picture: the top 20% of earners pay 75% of income tax while making around 75% of the income.

The majority of people do not pay any income tax and also receive numerous credits. This means they are net gainers of the tax system by not only not paying anything but actually receiving bonus money for things that they aren't taxed on.

When you add up all those other things, it amounts to essentially nothing. At the end of the day while we have certain pols demanding high earners "pay their fair share", the truth is most people pay nothing and the highest earners pay for almost everything. These are just the facts. I suspect the "fair share" nonsense is just trying to leverage jealous tendencies in certain people that can't be bothered to address the root cause of their shortcomings: themselves.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the city needs transport networks and power grids that reach far beyond the city limits. The only logical difference is a matter of scale and limits. The same rules apply to any region that has dependencies outside of its own borders. The only way to not be subsidized in some fashion is to live directly off of the land in the form of some nomadic tribe.

We’re talking suburbs. My city block contains literally thousands of homes and commercial properties in a zone that would contain, at most a few hundred McMansions. The cost to deliver services needed are within an order of magnitude of a suburb but the tax base is significantly higher.

It cost more to maintain infrastructure that experiences an order of magnitude more usage than an infrequently used set of infrastructure.

The hinges of a door used once a day will last longer than the hinges of a door used one thousand.

A road that sees one delivery truck a month will last longer than one that sees thousands.

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

#174
post #54
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.

That's not really how funding works though. Say a company bids to build or refurbish a new street, the money paid to the company comes from a variety of pools, local, state, federal and utilities, to get funding from the different organizations the contract usually have multiple requirements like 'must build pipes for sewage, power, internet, ect' and the funding percentages of the project will depend on whats being built and where. That said, the people living in those houses will likely also pay state/federal taxes and utilities so its more complex. You also can't expect local towns or cities to foot the complete for big projects like highway overpasses and bridges and stuff, so how much a city contributes to infrastructure and gets back is harder to say.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an European Suburbs feel just wrong to me. I've lived in small towns and big cities in Europe. Every time there has been a grocery store within walking or biking distance (5-10 minutes). Suburbs don't have that. If you need more milk, it's a good 30 minute car ride away. Walking or going by bike are completely impossible.

To me most important is independent children. In Europe every kid I know walked to school, walked to go and buy groceries or other errands, walked to friends etc. But apparently that isn't really a thing in American suburbs, must be horrible for those kids to be so dependent on their parents until they can get a car themselves.

Yep, my kid walked to school from the first day of the first grade. Now as a fourth grader they just call me when school's out and tell me which friend's house they're going after school and walk there (or notify me if they're coming to our place). Sometimes they stop by the store on the way to get some snacks.

And when dinner is ready, we call them home and they walk back.

During the summer holidays they scoot or bike to the park close by to play with their friends.

An American Suburbia kid could never do any of this without someone calling the police or CPS for child endangerment even if there was a school, shop or a playground within walking distance.

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suburbs provides housing. […] regardless of the density. At what cost, especially relative to other options. Lower density may end up costing more over the long term: * https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment... Urban living ≠ Manhattan: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E

Cost is a separate topic, though an important one. But ultimately in these threads, the elephant in the room is that the suburbs are subsidized† by the cities they don't pay taxes into. So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs, instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the…

> So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs […]

Why would anyone want to absorb something that costs more to run to provide the same services?

* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...

> […] instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)?

Perhaps they want to kill them because they are wasteful of area (often paving over perfectly good agricultural land), and cause climate change due to their reliance on cars.

Further, how much "choice" did suburban dwellers actually have? Post-WW2 most zoning has forced the creation of car-centric, low-density sprawl. Perhaps there are folks in the suburbs that want higher density neighbourhoods but because of the limited supply (due to lack of new build) the prices have gone up and they're priced out. Whose to say that walkable neighbourhoods wouldn't be popular if purchased in the "suburbs:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

> † Side note: I have not found to be true, personally.

I think this depends on the municipal boundaries involved. Depending on where the border is, on one side it could be that things built in the "old" / pre-WW2 way and on the other the "new" / post-WW2 way, and the taxes go to each municipality appropriately. In other places there could be the pre-WW2 Old Downtown and is walkable, but everything new is non-walkable. In those latter situations the more walkable parts are probably subsidizing the less walkable ones:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if you ignore payroll tax, social security, gas tax, tolls, and other highly regressive taxes. Where is your 10/80 stat coming from? https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/ paints a very different picture: the top 20% of earners pay 75% of income tax while making around 75% of the income.

The majority of people do not pay any income tax and also receive numerous credits. This means they are net gainers of the tax system by not only not paying anything but actually receiving bonus money for things that they aren't taxed on. When you add up all those other things, it amounts to essentially nothing. At the end of the day while we have certain pols demanding high earners "pay their fair share", the truth…

First government services go disproportionately to support the wealthy. Just look at the density of cops : population in rich vs poor areas etc.

As to tax burden it only looks like that i you ignore the US has several different income taxes and many non income taxes. A homeless drunk who spends most of their money on cheap alcohol pays a higher percentage of tho income in taxes than any of the US billionaires.

Naming one specific income tax as “the income tax” was a brilliant idea that has been doping people for decades.

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

#178
post #87

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 don't think his conclusions are great if you're working based off his examples. Like he brings up an example of a small neighborhood that, if it paid for its own road maintenance, would have to raise property taxes by 46% like that would be more than a mild inconvenience for the privilege of not living in a human hive.

If it paid for its own road maintenance, and no other services such as water or sewer, they would need a 46% property tax increase just to cover that one thing.

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

#179

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?

There's a reason suburbs are located directly adjacent to density and not islands of development in the middle of nowhere. Suburbs survive by proximity to density and, in most cases, pay no taxes to support that density. Further, they use the state (via zoning laws) to prevent the natural development of more housing within their borders, guaranteeing a perpetual state of dependence, and ensuring that prices stay high…

> What suburbanites want is to be close enough to the city to enjoy all the benefits of being in a major metro area

Sure some suburbs exist in the outskirts of major city centers, but across the country the vast majority do not.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re talking suburbs. My city block contains literally thousands of homes and commercial properties in a zone that would contain, at most a few hundred McMansions. The cost to deliver services needed are within an order of magnitude of a suburb but the tax base is significantly higher.

It cost more to maintain infrastructure that experiences an order of magnitude more usage than an infrequently used set of infrastructure. The hinges of a door used once a day will last longer than the hinges of a door used one thousand. A road that sees one delivery truck a month will last longer than one that sees thousands.

I'm trying to figure out if you are agreeing with me or arguing with me.

Rural: Low usage, low maintenance low services (road,power,internet), low tax base

Urban: High usage, high maintenance, high services (water, sewer, road, power, internet, transit), high tax base

Suburban: High usage, high maintenance, high services (water, sewer, road, power, internet, transit), low tax base

Only one of these, by necessity needs subsidizing ...

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