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Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

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

#201

Post by dionidium »

jjav wrote: post #194
dionidium wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you'd propose forcefully building your preferred style of housing everywhere, even if the local residents don't want it? Forcefully? When someone builds an apartment building on their own private property and voluntarily rents the units to other free actors, then obviously nobody was forced to do anything. The neighbors, on the other hand, would like to force the property owner to do something else with their la…

> It's an enormous country and those people should feel free to hit the bricks (they can move, in other words). Or, hey, this is America. If you want to control what happens on a piece of private property, then buy it. Those two sentences are contradictory. If someone owns a plot of land with a single family home, they do get to control it by staying put living in the house they like. They don't have to "hit the bric…

> They don't have to "hit the bricks" just because you'd prefer to tear it down to build a highrise.

Do you think I'm talking about eminent domain, or something? I am not. I can't build a highrise on their property unless they let me. They're going to have to voluntarily sell me the land before I can do anything with it. I'm not proposing anything except that they be allowed to do that, if they wish to. They don't have to do anything.

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

#202

Post by adamsmith143 »

jjav wrote: post #182
adamsmith143 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because a lot of the problem has to do with how Car centric the US is and Suburbs in particular are extremely car dependent. It's not super clear you can change that without massively rebuilding them. So take an example: let's say you want to go grocery shopping from your home in a walk-able urban center, it could be a 10 minute walk to get that done. In my suburban neighborhood a 6 minute drive to the nearest g…

> So take an example: let's say you want to go grocery shopping from your home in a walk-able urban center, it could be a 10 minute walk to get that done. But it's not like that is the distinguishing factor between a suburb and a city center. From my suburb house I can walk to one supermarket in 5 minutes and to another one in maybe 6-7 minutes. Yet it's definitely a suburb.

Obviously some people in my vicinity live right next to the store but the average distance is substantially larger for the majority of people in the area.

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

#203

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

danaris wrote: post #187
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I would agree with that. It's not that towns shouldn't exist, they should, it's that the weird no-man's land suburbs probably shouldn't.

But my point is: Why not? I have yet to see anything that points to them being fundamentally worse than towns: if you just treat them as Towns Next To Cities, it seems like you solve the vast majority of the problems.

Because right now most don't and instead become cancerous growths on a city rather than their own financially independent communities. Where I live the suburbs aren't their own towns and that's where the problem is.

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

#204

Post by PakG1 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #146
PakG1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, now this makes me feel weird. I just realized that I must have no idea what a suburb is. I've only lived in Canadian cities, and I've spent extensive time living in Shenzhen and was stuck in Busan for almost a year due to COVID. I am now realizing that I must have never seen a suburb before because everything I imagined as a suburb must actually qualify as a city. What am I missing here, or is the US really just…

"Suburb" is usually the bit of America where every house is made from the same McMansion catalog, all roads are paved and there's not a shop, store or office in sight. Everyone leaves at the same time like clockwork to go to work with their immense SUV, alone of course, driving through a congested interstate to the nearest city to their office. Then the spouse leaves on their SUV to take the kids to school, queueing…

I can't tell if this is satire or not, but it sounds absolutely horrific and I have no idea why anyone would want to live like that. I guess different people just have different tastes.

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

#205

Post by honkdaddy »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #77
honkdaddy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The people we call rich pay the majority of taxes.

>In 2019, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid $612 billion in income taxes while the bottom 90 percent paid $461 billion in income taxes. [1]

You're right though, poverty does absolutely suck and realistically nobody's 'enjoying' EBT or assisted housing or whatever benefit they receive. The point I was trying to make is that poor people shouldn't feel badly for contributing less to the pie any more than 1%ers should feel righteous for contributing more.

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income...

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

#206

Post by digdugdirk »

t-3 wrote: post #186
digdugdirk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if Xerox allocated its budget to 90% PARC, and 10% everything else - without adjusting any staffing. There'd be some really cool, really fun stuff going on, and the people at PARC would love it. But without people making and selling copiers, the whole company would be out of business before long. The difference with suburbs/cities is the awareness, the expectation, and societal cost. People living in the subu…

If state and federal governments didn't subsidize suburban infrastructure, cities would directly. The broader infrastructure network is vitally important for urban areas, and the suburbs especially are essential to retain the workers needed for productivity. Framing this as cities being exploited by greedy suburbanites is just wrong.

Cities would certainly naturally expand in a suburb-ish type of way. The issue with the current American style of suburbia is how expensive it is, and the extreme subsidies (both monetary and political pressure/force) what were implemented to set up the system in the first place.

Without that, America would have much denser "European style" urban hubs, and likely more active small cities than currently exist.

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

#207

Post by foobarian »

dionidium wrote: post #201
jjav wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an enormous country and those people should feel free to hit the bricks (they can move, in other words). Or, hey, this is America. If you want to control what happens on a piece of private property, then buy it. Those two sentences are contradictory. If someone owns a plot of land with a single family home, they do get to control it by staying put living in the house they like. They don't have to "hit the bric…

> They don't have to "hit the bricks" just because you'd prefer to tear it down to build a highrise. Do you think I'm talking about eminent domain, or something? I am not. I can't build a highrise on their property unless they let me . They're going to have to voluntarily sell me the land before I can do anything with it. I'm not proposing anything except that they be allowed to do that, if they wish to. They don't h…

There is a loophole there. I can buy up a lot of land, and sublet parcels to tenants under strict covenants. This is me doing what I want with my private property. Fast forward a century and you have a bunch of large communes owned by trusts dictating zoning. I.e. towns and cities.

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

#208

Post by Mirioron »

foobarian wrote: post #144
Mirioron wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the ditch digger requires the engineer to tell him where to dig. Digging a hole for no reason isn't very beneficial. Even if you take away this public infrastructure you would get private infrastructure in its stead.

There is no more ditch digger of old. They now use $1M excavators that are probably leased from a mega-corp that purchased it from another mega-corp.

Of course there are ditch diggers. You can't dig everything with a machine.
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