Why American cities are weirdly shaped • Hacker News Board

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#141

Post by SllX » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 2:00 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #105

prostoalex wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a contributing factor, but unlikely the decisive one. Some city schools are excellent, and business case for a private or a charter school is stronger in a city. There's also wider availability of various after-school programs. There's the space concern for those who wouldn't mind a backyard and a pet or two, safety concern associated with letting the kids just play outside, transportation concern as far as ef…

Suburbs used to be regularly annexed into cities; in some places they still are. This stops being the norm when desegregation occurs. Now that all races must be allowed to mix in schools, businesses and housing, whites flee to the suburbs, put up giant financial barriers in the form of zoning, and refuse to be annexed. These days overt racial politics is now dogwhistled as concerns about crime or undesirables or cult…

Some States allow cities to spread across county lines, Texas does this. Some don’t allow this a City has to be entirely within its original County and contiguous. That is how California does it, which has one city that merged with its county: San Francisco. In at least one case, there is a city that is composed of 5 entire counties: NYC.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#142

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 2:25 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #117

stale2002 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument only works if you are a person who believes that every inch should be effectively owned by governments. So it is not competition. When you purchase land, it doesn't really belong to you. It belongs to the government, as you still have to pay their fee, which can increase at any time without you having a choice. It would be wonderful if it were possible to buy land, and that land actually belonged to you…

Not exactly. Land is owned by organizations, governments are just who is running the organizations — a chess club is not the same as its president and secretary. When Walt Disney World purchased land, it could actually administer an entire city there. What you are talking about is called Sovereign Ownership (alloidal title). Like the Royal Family in England has a bunch of grounds where there is no higher landlord. Th…

If at any point in time a different group can force you to pay them money for the privilege of living on a plot of land, then you don't own that land.

Instead, the group that is charging you rent is the one who owns the land. And this true even if they call that "rent" by a different name, such as "property taxes".

Using the examples you give, Walt Disney does not own that land, as a different entity could raise rent in them at any point in time.

> The history of states is just people and organizations joining forces into larger legal organizations.

It doesn't matter. If this super organization has the ability to charge rents on all of the group under it, then the super organization is the one who owns the land. The smaller organizations do not.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#143

Post by joe_the_user » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 2:48 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #68

chrisseaton wrote: post #2

My understanding is that a city boundary in the US is a big deal. The police force on either side can be completely different, things that can get you in a lot of trouble like gun laws can be different on either side, prices and taxes can be very different. In the UK a city boundary doesn't really mean anything. There might be a nice 'Welcome to X' sign but nothing really changes as it would in the US. I'm not even s…

It can depend on the particular U.S. State. It's sometimes useful for non-Americans to think of the U.S. like a federation of weak semi-autonomous countries. Each state more or less runs their own affairs unless there's some federal interest in which case the national interest overrides the state one. What this means for this topic is that states organize their territories in sometimes different ways that can seem so…

I would note that when you say "locals", you don't just mean the residents of whatever county, town, perish or whatch-doogle. You mean people who've had some incentive to research the mess. Because a lot of average residents of these areas either don't know their crazy ins-and-outs or don't know these by-laws are unique to their area.

I mean, from the air, from a car passing through, etc, the US appears very uniform, more uniform than most of Europe or other parts of the world and a lot of people here take that uniformity as a uniform administration. Moreover, there is a bit more uniformity than the ridiculous administrative rules indicates - zones, policing, codes and so-forth are unified by private entities and generally enacted to achieve the appearance of a uniform country.

Note: Also, the multitude of administrative apparatuses here aren't equivalent of, say, two or twenty fused nations threatening to break apart. The US unified this way and the over mess is much of a way for local to hoard their power, rip-off outsiders, etc.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#144

Post by radames30 » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

AlexB138 wrote: post #53

dayofthedaleks wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad that the Voice of White Flight Suburbs could chime in. Edit: Also, it looks like Kwame Kilpatrick hasn't stood for office in more than a decade. Exactly what axe are you grinding, here?

What do you think this kind of comment is adding to the conversation?

You think the parent comment adds something more worthwhile?

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#145

Post by radames30 » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

dayofthedaleks wrote: post #48

robertAngst wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My city is one of the best in our area. Best schools, safe, and has a high property tax. 10 miles south of us is Detroit. Where the Detroit voters re-elected Kawammi kilpatrick despite having constant public corruption. Do I want those voters to impact my schools? Do those voters want to spend 9,000$/yr on property taxes? Its far too simplistic to think that there is only redundancies at play.

Glad that the Voice of White Flight Suburbs could chime in. Edit: Also, it looks like Kwame Kilpatrick hasn't stood for office in more than a decade. Exactly what axe are you grinding, here?

Not sure why your comment has been flagged while the equally loaded parent comment has not

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#146

Post by EGreg » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 4:47 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #142

EGreg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Land is owned by organizations, governments are just who is running the organizations — a chess club is not the same as its president and secretary. When Walt Disney World purchased land, it could actually administer an entire city there. What you are talking about is called Sovereign Ownership (alloidal title). Like the Royal Family in England has a bunch of grounds where there is no higher landlord. Th…

If at any point in time a different group can force you to pay them money for the privilege of living on a plot of land, then you don't own that land. Instead, the group that is charging you rent is the one who owns the land. And this true even if they call that "rent" by a different name, such as "property taxes". Using the examples you give, Walt Disney does not own that land, as a different entity could raise rent…

If that’s how you choose to define ownership, fine. So what?

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#147

Post by jacobr1 » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 7:15 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #86

mikestew wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my point: why do I care where the strip is legally located? Casinos have reason to care, I don’t. And if you’re discharging a firearm, yeah, you better make for damned sure you’re allowed (what was my one example that wasn’t related to race?). Your linked example calls out towns I’ve lived near (lived in Gastonia), and the reason there’s a need for such lawyers is due to morons that think ownership of a firear…

> it’s a safe bet that if you’re within city limits That’s my point - you need to know where the city limits are. In the UK I have no idea where the city limits are, and I suspect there possibly may not be any formal city limits at all.

Not really. The point is if you are with _a_ city. The particular one doesn't matter. While the UK is general more dense the US, surely you know if you are surrounded by neighbors in a suburb or a bunch of fields and sheep?

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#148

Post by pishpash » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 7:31 AM UTC

alistproducer2 wrote: post #136

pishpash wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concerns about crime, undesirables, or culture are real, and taxes. They are neither inherently racial nor dog whistles, but are only so because of how American history shook out along racial lines. You are inverting cause and effect here.

>how American history shook out along racial lines. Your comment is contradictory. On the one hand you say that crime, who is undesirable, and culture ate incidental and have nothing to do with race and then in this sentence you acknowledge that American history was largely determined by race, although you use very passive language as though that "shaking out" was some benign, incidental process instead of the cruel…

It's not contradictory at all. I'm saying historically past racist policies created a racially correlated class system, and I'll even say that in a great deal of regressive areas the past was very recent, say up to the 70's, but within the most recent generation, many of the issues people are concerned about are genuinely class issues, and they only appear to be race issues to the extent that race is still correlated with class.

But there is a difference between saying people are primarily motivated by race vs. primarily motivated by class but using race as a proxy vs. primarily motivated by class only. Given that these are distinct things, it's not helpful to insist on identifying everything as being secretly racist, not because it conveniently absolves anyone of responsibility but because it muddies the discussion and denies possible solutions.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#149

Post by quanticle » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 8:27 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #140

quanticle wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the Federal government trumps the State government, but I'm not sure that I envision it as "bounds defined by" and more as whenever the random walk of the Federal government intersects with a more local one, the Fed wins. Even that isn't always true. In many notable cases (marijuana, gay marriage, segregation) states openly defied the federal government and the federal government let things stand because…

Depends on what you mean by defy . What often gets lost in political debate is that there is Federal law enforcement and then there is State law enforcement. For the purposes of the US Constitution, local law enforcement is State law enforcement, even if a given State might draw a distinction themselves. It is helpful to remember that the US Constitution is architected to recognize three types of entities: US Governm…

The enforcement part is what I was getting at. It's all well and good for the federal government to make a law that says that marijuana is illegal, or that whites and African Americans must go to the same schools. But nothing about those laws alters facts on the ground without resources and manpower devoted to enforcement. The allocation of those resources and manpower requires political will, and when that political will is lacking, laws can be passed, court decisions can be made, and no facts on the ground will change.

Like you pointed out, what enables the "defiance" of state governments in the face of the federal government is the fact that, in some cases, the federal government has decided that it's not worth causing further political unrest to quash this defiance. This is why we don't see raids on marijuana retailers in Washington and Colorado. In other cases, that political will does exist, as we saw when Lyndon Johnson called out the National Guard to force the integration of schools in the Jim Crow South.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#150

Post by quanticle » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 8:30 AM UTC

lsc wrote: post #133

pm90 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not the same though. Even though Americans consider their state identities to be strong and unique, if you look at how states are generally organized in the old world, its generally by ethnicity, language or some other very strong form of strong shared identity. So while a person from California and Texas might be very different, the difference is likely much smaller than b/w a French person and a German pers…

>if you look at how states are generally organized in the old world, its generally by ethnicity, language or some other very strong form of strong shared identity. While true, it is important to remember that this is a 19th/20th century type thing. Germany became unified around cultural/ethnic lines in 1871 (in France! so much of world war one was about the fallout from the wars of german unification, just like so mu…

I would also point out that, in the US, the idea that American identity trumps state identity is something that really only came into its own after the Civil War. When the Civil War broke out, a large number of the United States' senior officers chose to put state identity ahead of national identity and fight with the Confederate States of America, knowing full well that doing so would cause them to break their vow to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.