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Why American cities are weirdly shaped

economist.com

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Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#71

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

amha wrote: post #54
cjf4 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. The biggest thing that changes is the school district. City schools tend to be worse than suburban counterparts, and that completely drives a cities ability to r…

It depends on the state. At least here in New York (the state, not the city), school district boundaries have nothing to do with municipal boundaries (which, yeah, adds another layer of confusion!)

The larger cities and suburbs of New York definitely do have distinct district boundaries that follow the municipal boundary. It's only the smaller communities that expand their draw to township boundaries.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#72

Post by mprev »

zazen wrote: post #43
mprev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, I’m not saying otherwise. It was just a comment unworthy of a parry.

I sympathise with @chrisseaton's frustration. When you make a comment highlighting something that looks superficially similar but is actually irrelevant, that's going to tend to derail the conversation. If your comment was unworthy of a parry, maybe that's a hint that it was unworthy of being made in the first place. Please make an effort to be part of the signal not part of the noise, even if your brand of noise is…

The point is that chrisseaton said they didn’t know where the city of Chester ends and I mentioned that there’s a pretty big change of admin at the edge of the city (or, in this case, the borough of Chester and West Cheshire, as we are talking about administrative borders rather than cities). Basically, if you live in Chester and don’t know where the boundary is then it’s because you’re not looking at the signs. The city border is also a national border in this case.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#73

Post by ReptileMan »

anonymouzz wrote: post #67
cfv wrote: post #8

That paywall just led to me blacklisting the entire economist.com domain at extension level. Too bad. Don't do paywalls like that please.

Off-topic, but you should want to pay for news. You should want to pay a lot . Which kind of meal would you prefer? 1) Expensive, tasty and healthy. 2) Cheap and loaded with sugar (so you come back to get more) while ads flash all around your plate and on the tip of your fork. Same goes with cars, cosmetics, education. For some reason paying more for those goods is universally accepted. Why wouldn't people want to pa…

Okay. But give me way to pay 5 cents for this article, not 12$ all you can eat. There are 200 articles per month I am willing to pay, spread along 80 magazines. How?

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#74

Post by daveFNbuck »

mikestew wrote: post #60
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…

My understanding is that a city boundary in the US is a big deal. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time it made a lick of difference to me, having lived in the U. S. my entire life. “Don’t carry a handgun to Chicago”, okay, file that one away. “If you’re black”, and I’m not, “don’t stop for gas in Martinsville, IN”. Though that one might not still be true, I’d still stay away from Elwood, my Afro-American friend. Ot…

Where I live in California, the sales tax is different between cities.

Leading up to July 4, fireworks are not legal to sell in every city, so you can tell city boundaries by where the booths selling them are set up. Which city you're in is also important if you want to set them off legally.

Local laws and regulations also have much subtler effects that help shape which cities are desirable to live in, but those aren't going to be as obvious if you're just passing through.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#75

Post by 8bitsrule »

DFHippie wrote: post #58
nivertech wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The accent was on "the mayor for fifty years". Local government is still a government. Things like this and the Electoral College make US an archaic democracy. Maybe it's better to fix your own system, before trying to teach others? The fact that you had a banana republic with a life-long dictator just 5 miles from downtown LA - speaks something. No criticism, more like a surprise. I don't care about politics and eve…

It's notable that when the U.S. tries to help install democracy in other countries they don't attempt to install their own presidential system. Among its flaws is that it is exceedingly difficult to amend. It's fun but not helpful to pretend other countries are ignorant of their own problems and have monolithic opinions (in which case, why vote?).

I think it's clear that the US political system isn't exactly serving the people. Personally, I'd wish for recall elections or 'votes of confidence' for the presidency ... say, to replace the 'State of the Union' mirror.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#76

Post by triviatise »

mikestew wrote: post #60
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…

My understanding is that a city boundary in the US is a big deal. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time it made a lick of difference to me, having lived in the U. S. my entire life. “Don’t carry a handgun to Chicago”, okay, file that one away. “If you’re black”, and I’m not, “don’t stop for gas in Martinsville, IN”. Though that one might not still be true, I’d still stay away from Elwood, my Afro-American friend. Ot…

Of course none of these might apply to you, but they are a big deal for the people they impact.

1) marijuana enforcement can be a huge deal, getting let go vs going to prison

2) fireworks enforcement

3) zoning and permitting, is absolutely huge

4) taxes (sales, property, and even income)

5) "sanctuary cities" can have huge implications for illegal aliens

6) homeless policies

etc etc

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#77

Post by daveFNbuck »

mikestew wrote: post #66
chrisseaton wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good example is that the Las Vegas Strip is actually very carefully just outside Las Vegas, in order to avoid the control of the city. If you search you can easily find examples of people being arrested for doing something inside a city, which (presumably) have been legal if they'd done it just outside of the city. https://www.jcolaw.com/discharging-a-weapon-within-city-limi...

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 anywhere in the U. S. you best assume discharging a firearm is illegal (it probably is) until proven otherwise.

That's an example of you having to care about which city you're in. You can't just rely on your knowledge of federal or state law there.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#78

Post by anonymouzz »

ReptileMan wrote: post #73
anonymouzz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic, but you should want to pay for news. You should want to pay a lot . Which kind of meal would you prefer? 1) Expensive, tasty and healthy. 2) Cheap and loaded with sugar (so you come back to get more) while ads flash all around your plate and on the tip of your fork. Same goes with cars, cosmetics, education. For some reason paying more for those goods is universally accepted. Why wouldn't people want to pa…

Okay. But give me way to pay 5 cents for this article, not 12$ all you can eat. There are 200 articles per month I am willing to pay, spread along 80 magazines. How?

This is a good point, and I agree with you completely. Perhaps the Brave org will come up with a working solution. It's likely the largest problem with the Internet economy today.

Personally, for now, I'm paying monthly to those news sources that respect my attention and provide an honest representation of reality.

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#79

Post by pja »

chrisseaton wrote: post #15
mattmanser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does make more of a difference than you think, though as you say it's nowhere near as marked as America. My city, Nottingham, likes volunteering to trial things. So we were the first or one of the first cities to have average speed cameras years ago, we also introduced a workspace parking levy. The former has gone nationwide, but the latter hasn't been adopted anywhere else. The planners in Nottingham also love tr…

Right but that's comparing a city in the north to a city miles away in the south. We're talking about the immediate boundary between outside a city and inside a city, aren't we? My local city is Chester, and I couldn't even tell you where the limit of Chester is now - I presume it's no longer the old Roman walls. When you cross that boundary wherever it is, nothing changes. It's still the same local government author…

That’s partially because Chester isn’t run by a separate local authority - the local council is “Cheshire West & Chester”.

Places where the City is a unitary local authority will sometimes have a noticeable boundary. For the city I live in, the on-pavement (sidewalk for US people) cyclepaths swap sides at the city boundary - inside the city the cyclepath part is furthest from the road, outside it’s closest to the road!

Re: Why American cities are weirdly shaped

#80

Post by xte »

lozenge wrote: post #56
xte wrote: post #47

A different question: can we build a manageable city for modern era? I think not. More in details we have already accepted that our constructions (roads, bridges etc included) do not last forever even with proper maintenance but I still have to see plans about how to rebuild buildings and infrastructure when they'll reach their EOL... Even without counting that we already seen that we can't predict the future enough…

Japan's a nightmare to live in and spacing things out is the only way to plan for the future? Sounds like you are judging by your own very blinkered standards of what makes a city liveable.

Try to live, really, not for short touristic period, in Japan with their education, way of work and live. It's a developed country so you have all food you want, all services you want, but you also have a neurotic, stressogen, society in witch people live to work, not the contrary.
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