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The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

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Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#131

Post by lttlrck »

potatolicious wrote: post #90
modoc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your vision of a suburb has very little to do with the reality of my suburban existence. It's like someone from the country talking about the horribly dangerous ugly city with its filthy air, roving gangs shooting strangers, and huge rats running in the streets. I'm not saying suburbs are perfect, but you've basically thrown up a stack of strawmen here.

I dunno, I grew up in the suburbs and ufmace summed it up pretty well. My neighborhood wasn't explicitly gated, but the meandering streets with a million dead-ends may as well have been a wrought iron gate. It's pretty obvious to everyone that the nonsensical street layout was designed to keep everyone but residents out. Every house had huge lawns, and because the houses were all built as part of the same subdivision…

In a neighborhoods with similarly aged houses the roofs are going to need replacing pretty much in unison aren't they?

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#132

Post by TheyCalledHimBo »

modoc wrote: post #67
pessimizer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be specific? You're being more specific about pointing out exaggerations in your simile than about your subject.

Sure. Yes, I need a car. I love cars/motorcycles. I love driving. I always owned at least one vehicle even when I lived in the city and didn't have to. So this isn't a bad thing for me at all. Having a garage to safely park and work on my vehicles is a huge bonus. I am far less isolated from my neighbors and community than I was when I lived in the city. Living in apartments I had essentially zero contact/communicati…

Wow, I'm almost diametrically opposed to your views. That's actually fairly cool.

I abhor personal motor vehicles, refused to even get my license at 16 and have managed exceptionally well over the last 7 years. I've put several thousand miles on my bike(s) over the years as my main mode of transportation, though I do also use public transit quite often. Living near SLC, Utah our transit is fair, but stupidly expensive.

I grew up in the suburbs, and felt approximately 0 connection to those around me. Living in an apartment building I have conversations with people sitting on their porch/balcony quite often. I don't even particularly enjoy people either.

I have no opinion on the lawn to be honest, at the moment there is more than enough land for those who want it to enjoy.

I actually enjoy the close proximity of various buildings, which very very rarely can be called loud, ugly, or smelly. I don't live next to a manufacturing plant, so yeah..

Pedestrian infrastructure is necessarily improved due to the greater density of people, but this isn't really an issue that I've found in the suburbs either.

If I have a party there is more than enough parking surrounding my apartment building that it really doesn't matter. Granted I can't have a bonfire or blast music, but I've been there/done that and don't miss it.

I miss basically nothing about the suburbs. Always felt too hostile, too "fuck you, got mine." Maybe it was the people, maybe just the neighborhood, but I'd kneecap myself before I went back.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#133

Post by VLM »

zavulon wrote: post #7

I read the entire article, and I guess I missed it - what's the proposed solution?

Massive authoritarianism via social engineering and taxpayer funded government coercion to force people to live the right way, at least as defined by certain people, rather than being permitted by big brother (oh the irony) to live freely, the way they want to live.

I don't know if the ends are all that bad. The means being proposed is just horrific.

To some extent its inevitable, if decades of persuasion and experimentation have had little effect and prove very few people want to live that way, you're going to have to send in cops and lawyers, bankrupt some people, destroy some healthy and stable communities. Otherwise you'll never get the rush of "fixing" them.

I believe a lot of it is jealousy and/or corrupt real estate churn proposals. A couple blocks from company HQ there's a nice slum where I could buy an entire city block of crack houses for the cost of my one suburban house. There's people who aren't happy about that and want to make money off some real estate churn. Have .gov force the sales price of my house down to 10K and they can buy it, while I forcing me to move into the slum and pay $250K to them to buy their $10K house from them. I'm not interested in participating in that business model.

If real estate transaction volume is low and declining, and the purpose of .gov is to enforce the continuation of all dead/dying business models, and people are pretty much living where they want to right now, it makes sense to have .gov start forcing them to move, get some commissions, bust some blocks and redevelop some others (all with .gov funds funneled to the right people of course), etc.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#134

Post by bane »

pnathan wrote: post #75
aaron-lebo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a child of the suburbs and have since moved to the city so take this with a grain of salt. I enjoy the malls, the big box stores, and the clones. Why? I know that pretty much anywhere I go I can get a consistent experience. I can go the local mall and almost anything I can want or imagine is available, which at some level is fascinating. What's more, as cliche as all these places ares, there is a bit of a shared…

> I enjoy the malls, the big box stores, and the clones. Why? I know that pretty much anywhere I go I can get a consistent experience. I can go the local mall and almost anything I can want or imagine is available, which is some level is fascinating. What's more, as cliche as all these places ares, there is a bit of a shared experience for almost everyone. I don't understand this. That is not because you're not lucid…

Most areas don't really have very interesting or unique character worth preserving. Suburbs aren't built in interesting areas for the most part. Unless some local industrial corn farm or poverty stricken country town who's claim to fame was being near a rail junction (no longer used) is unique or interesting or worth preservation.

One of the reasons for the economic dominance of big box stores over quaint mom and pop shops is simple economics. Small store usually don't offer the best prices or selection. It's only at the weird long end of the tail can they exist, selling stuff that's not of a big enough general interest for the big stores.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#135

Post by mturmon »

secabeen wrote: post #86
Apofis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NYC, and recently I spent two weeks in Simi Valley, a city north of Los Angeles, and was shocked that it's basically impossible to get around without a car. Even in LA, it seems as if the public transport system is nearly non-existent.

Actually, LA has a very good public transportation system. It's just bus-based, can be slow compared to driving, and is widely considered as only for poor people. Higher-income people have a strong aversion to taking the bus, even while happily taking subways.

I don't use them, but I have been impressed by the bus rapid transit lines through the Valley:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro)

They run on dedicated right-of-way. Not just their own lane, but their own road. Not as nice as a subway, but approaching it.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#136

Post by zheshishei »

saosebastiao wrote: post #119
zheshishei wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article isn't pointing out that all suburbs are unsustainable. It's talking about how treating the suburbs as something they are not (a higher population density area, like a city) leads to infrastructure that is inappropriate for the community, which then leads to the tax revenue to infrastructure cost disparity. In the jargon of HN, it's a premature optimization. Charles Marohn is still championing suburbs. Wha…

"in Marohn’s estimation, property taxes at suburban densities bring in anywhere from 4 cents to 65 cents for every dollar of liability. Most suburban municipalities, he says, are therefore unable to pay the maintenance costs of their infrastructure, let alone replace things when they inevitably wear out after twenty to twenty-five years."

You're taking the sentence out of context. Here's the entire paragraph you quoted:

"Here’s what he means. The way suburban development usually works is that a town lays the pipes, plumbing, and infrastructure for housing development—often getting big loans from the government to do so—and soon after a developer appears and offers to build homes on it. Developers usually fund most of the cost of the infrastructure because they make their money back from the sale of the homes. The short-term cost to the city or town, therefore, is very low: it gets a cash infusion from whichever entity fronted the costs, and the city gets to keep all the revenue from property taxes. The thinking is that either taxes will cover the maintenance costs, or the city will keep growing and generate enough future cash flow to cover the obligations. But the tax revenue at low suburban densities isn’t nearly enough to pay the bills; in Marohn’s estimation, property taxes at suburban densities bring in anywhere from 4 cents to 65 cents for every dollar of liability. Most suburban municipalities, he says, are therefore unable to pay the maintenance costs of their infrastructure, let alone replace things when they inevitably wear out after twenty to twenty-five years. The only way to survive is to keep growing or take on more debt, or both. “It is a ridiculously unproductive system,” he says."

Taken in context, the quoted sentence is specifically talking about the development/expansion of a town beyond its current financial means. In other words, the town builds out its infrastructure and is banking on an influx of new homeowners (taxpayers) to help with the maintenance of the infrastructure. When that doesn't happen, that's when the tax revenue/liabilities ratio dips below 1.

Also, if you go to the Strong Towns[1] website that Charles Marohn helped start and read the Mission Statement and their Quantification of a Strong Town, nowhere does it talk about population density or converting suburbs/towns into cities.

[1] http://www.strongtowns.org/

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#137

Post by Theodores »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #64
pnathan wrote: post #24

I don't like suburbs. Why? - I don't like the constant driving to get anywhere. - I don't like the malls, the big box stores, the "clone" button that seems applied across the landscape. - I don't like the giant roads carving their way around, splitting communities. - I don't like the squandering of resources on lawns! individual houses! low-density housing! I can say, with confidence, I'd like to live in a place wher…

I'm a child of the suburbs and have since moved to the city so take this with a grain of salt. I enjoy the malls, the big box stores, and the clones. Why? I know that pretty much anywhere I go I can get a consistent experience. I can go the local mall and almost anything I can want or imagine is available, which at some level is fascinating. What's more, as cliche as all these places ares, there is a bit of a shared…

"I like walking among glaciers, however, no matter how much I do enjoy that, glaciers are going extinct in certain parts of the world and there is nothing I can do about that. I may wish to believe otherwise and there may not be much of a visible change on a day-to-day basis, however, those glaciers are going extinct, even if there are some years they get bigger."

The point of the article is that suburbs are fundamentally flawed in that the tax base cannot keep up with the costs of the infrastructure once that patch of suburbia has gone past the growth phase. There simply isn't the density of tax payers to pay the bills. Raising taxes is not an option as people are mobile and will move to a more sensible city arrangement if the dream of suburbia is out of their price bracket. The developers will move to the city too.

Not mentioned in the article is the eventual problem of serious resource depletion, i.e. when every bit of America has been fracked, every Arctic wildlife refuge plundered for oil and the Red Sea pumped into the Saudi desert to get the last gasp of light, sweet crude. We no longer talk about 'Peak Oil' any more (wasn't that just grey propaganda put out by the oil companies to make their product worthy of a high price or am I being over cynical there?), however, there is no denying that suburbia can only exist so long as there is cheap and affordable motoring. When motoring starts to get much more expensive that is going to dent those wallets that pay the taxes to maintain suburbia so a lot of America is going to face the same problems of diminishing tax base that Detroit is famous for. I would not be one to bet that everyone will be driving a Tesla in between their teleconferences on the i-glasses by the time we get to that stage of the game.

Anyway, enjoy the suburbs by all means, along with millions of others including myself, but do appreciate that they are not entirely economically viable as the situation stands and, if there is a serious problem with ye-olde-petroleum-reserves, then suburbs will be very different to how they are now.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#138

Post by saosebastiao »

zheshishei wrote: post #136
saosebastiao wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"in Marohn’s estimation, property taxes at suburban densities bring in anywhere from 4 cents to 65 cents for every dollar of liability. Most suburban municipalities, he says, are therefore unable to pay the maintenance costs of their infrastructure, let alone replace things when they inevitably wear out after twenty to twenty-five years."

You're taking the sentence out of context. Here's the entire paragraph you quoted: "Here’s what he means. The way suburban development usually works is that a town lays the pipes, plumbing, and infrastructure for housing development—often getting big loans from the government to do so—and soon after a developer appears and offers to build homes on it. Developers usually fund most of the cost of the infrastructure bec…

Also, if you go to the Strong Towns[1] website that Charles Marohn helped start and read the Mission Statement and their Quantification of a Strong Town, nowhere does it talk about population density or converting suburbs/towns into cities.

You mean like these?

http://www.strongtowns.org/the-cost-of-auto-orientation/

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/4/the-lost-opportu...

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/11/adding-insult-t...

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/18/residential-mat...

He absolutely is talking about density. The tax bases of low density suburbs, compared to the maintenance costs that they require, are inherently disparate.

The costs of building greenfield infrastructure is low...low enough that developers willingly pay the infrastructure development fees in exchange for the right to build. But the taxes used to maintain the infrastructure do not cover the costs, and by that time the developer is off the hook. So they bring in new developers, which bring with them new taxes and more deferred maintenance, which brings solvency in the short term and bigger problems in the long term. Suburban-density development is a ponzi scheme, inherently unsustainable, and it is a theme that he refers to extensively in his writing.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#139

Post by superuser2 »

pnathan wrote: post #24

I don't like suburbs. Why? - I don't like the constant driving to get anywhere. - I don't like the malls, the big box stores, the "clone" button that seems applied across the landscape. - I don't like the giant roads carving their way around, splitting communities. - I don't like the squandering of resources on lawns! individual houses! low-density housing! I can say, with confidence, I'd like to live in a place wher…

I hate suburbs too.

- Complete dependence on car ownership to get anywhere interesting or useful.

- So much time wasted in cars. I'd happily commute for twice as long on a train if I got to read. (Yes, self-driving cars could change this in a few decades, but living in the city could change it now.)

- The more you drive, the more you are contributing to distasteful regimes in the Middle East and the distasteful US foreign policy intended to secure our oil interests. If you drive an electric vehicle (and aren't covered by nuclear power), you've simply replaced oil with coal.

- Children can't get anywhere other than maybe some friends' houses without you driving them. This is maybe a feature for a 5-year-old, but a soul-crushing bug when a 15-year-old still can't go anywhere without you. The "chauffeur" aspect of parenthood is something that you choose by living in sprawl.

- Teenagers can't realistically hold jobs without having their own cars, either, and at minimum wage, owning a car that starts and might not kill you in a collision will wipe out a good portion of your earnings. (Exception would be if one parent doesn't work or telecommutes but still has a car. I was fortunate enough to be in this situation, but it could have evaporated any day.)

- There is just very little to do as a kid/teenager other than consume media and/or drugs (although I guess that doesn't matter for the hacker types, since all you need is a laptop anyway). If going downtown wasn't a special event, you could have access to a wealth of libraries, bookstores, restaurants, museums, theater, symphony, opera, etc. which often give extremely sweet discounts to K12 students as well as college kids. You're going to experience these things less often if getting to them is onerous (and requires parking at $10+/hour). Instead, social life revolves around the mall and finished basements.

- DUI seems to be more of an issue, not less, since everyone is by default driving everywhere.

- I just get this visceral feeling of isolation. It's like living in a snowglobe. I've seen everything there is to see. I've met everyone (in my age group) there is to meet. I've been through every inch of every building I have access to. There is nothing left to explore. It's horrifying, and not what I want my kids to be experiencing at 15-16-17. In a decent-sized city, there's always more. There's always something you haven't seen or been to or been to in a while. There's something incredibly comforting about knowing you can never exhaust all your options. High school was fine, my parents were fine, but I just couldn't wait to get out of suburbia and never come back. (It seems lots of kids feel this way... the word for it is "ungrateful.")

The big-box stores, cookie-cutter houses, etc. are a matter of aesthetics, and people have different tastes. I personally can't sleep in silence. But the environmental impact and the suffocation of non-drivers is real.

I like cars. I'd love to own a 3-series or a Tesla or something and go drive it fast out in the country, but owning and driving a car shouldn't be a prerequisite for being a functioning member of society.

There might come a time when I want to own rather than rent, but it will be within walking distance of an electric train.

Re: The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream

#140

Post by bane »

3pt14159 wrote: post #128
bane wrote: post #58

I will absolutely trade my ridiculously sized house in the burbs (within walking distance of a bank, grocery, bike store, gym, Tae Kwon Do school, movie theater, two salons, 3 doctors and 3 dentists and a psychiatrist, a mix of about a dozen local and chain eating options, an optometrist, high-end toy store, dry cleaners, wine store, 2 ice cream parlors, and a 5 minute drive to more local ethnic food than you can sha…

Define walking distance. If you're talking about more than 15 or 20 minutes I think we have different definitions. Most people cannot get more than a grocery store from a walk away if they live in a suburb.

5-10 minutes. It's an easy walk. Maybe...2 or 3 long blocks in NYC.

I realize of course that I got "lucky" and live in a really especially great suburb. However, I've noticed most of the developments in my area tend to be similar. A central "town center/shopping mall" surrounded by condos and apartments, surrounded by townhouses, surrounded by single family homes.

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