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The Conservative Case Against the Suburbs

Why is "per acre" the relevant measure? Actually seems quite irrelevant.

Because taxing authorities have a finite amount of land ?

As Tony Soprano said, "God ain't making any more of it."
 
Why is "per acre" the relevant measure? Actually seems quite irrelevant.

Glad you asked. It's because the land inside a city's limits is, essentially, it's inventory, or perhaps its capital resource base. When a city is making decisions on how to allocate taxpayer dollars, it should try to maximize return on those dollars by (a) knowing which acres are the most productive, and making sure they stay that way, and (b) knowing what kinds of uses of those acres are likely to produce high returns vs. low returns. If a city is choosing whether to spend $1,000,000 upgrading an intersection for a Wal-Mart or improving downtown infrastructure, they should know how long it will take to get a return on their investment.
 
Glad you asked. It's because the land inside a city's limits is, essentially, it's inventory, or perhaps its capital resource base. When a city is making decisions on how to allocate taxpayer dollars, it should try to maximize return on those dollars by (a) knowing which acres are the most productive, and making sure they stay that way, and (b) knowing what kinds of uses of those acres are likely to produce high returns vs. low returns. If a city is choosing whether to spend $1,000,000 upgrading an intersection for a Wal-Mart or improving downtown infrastructure, they should know how long it will take to get a return on their investment.

And what potential threat a certain use can cause to the surrounding community in the near term (traffic, undesirable development plan) and long term (what if Walmart packs up and leaves in 20 years, then what ?).
 
I love this stuff. When you look at it like this it becomes so obvious.

Minicozzi-slide1_0.jpg

Throw in new infrastructure costs, tax incentives, environmental costs, and future potential land use and the gap grows even wider.
 
Glad you asked. It's because the land inside a city's limits is, essentially, it's inventory, or perhaps its capital resource base. When a city is making decisions on how to allocate taxpayer dollars, it should try to maximize return on those dollars by (a) knowing which acres are the most productive, and making sure they stay that way, and (b) knowing what kinds of uses of those acres are likely to produce high returns vs. low returns. If a city is choosing whether to spend $1,000,000 upgrading an intersection for a Wal-Mart or improving downtown infrastructure, they should know how long it will take to get a return on their investment.

In my neck of the woods, the cities just annex more of the burbs and get more tax revenue so that there piece of that pie grows as people spread out.
 
In my neck of the woods, the cities just annex more of the burbs and get more tax revenue so that there piece of that pie grows as people spread out.

Yeah. What those cities are doing is taking on a long-term liability for maintaining suburban infrastructure and providing municipal services to suburbs, in perpetuity. That liability is much greater than the stream of tax revenue they are getting in return. They tell themselves they're acquiring an asset, but never bother to account for the long-term liability. What is actually happening is the denser parts of the cities, with their incredibly high per-acre tax yield, are subsidizing the sprawly parts with their pitiful per-acre tax yield. Pretty much the whole subject of this thread.
 
I can't believe someone doesn't understand why it's important for cities to get a higher return on their investment.
 
Here's another great graphic.

1474260806154


1474260969247



As cities sprawl out with low-density development, they greatly multiply the amount of infrastructure that must be maintained in perpetuity. The growth in personal income per capita in this community (Lafayette, LA) has not come remotely close to the per capital growth of infrastructure that has to be maintained. Note that this is pipes and hydrants - the technology and utility is the same now as it was in 1949, so it's not like there has been some huge increase in the efficiency, effectiveness, or expected useful life of these things. There's just a ton more of it, per person.
 
923, you're so good at this thread, it makes me guilty to live in my suburban home. But not guilty enough to move.
 
923, you're so good at this thread, it makes me guilty to live in my suburban home. But not guilty enough to move.

I think everyone should live wherever they want to, in whatever environment is best for their family. But I think everyone should have to bear the true costs of their choices. So if I were king of your town, I'd probably raise your taxes, and it probably would have cost a lot more for your developer to build your house.
 
This is a great little article: http://www.streetsblog.net/2016/10/11/there-will-never-be-enough-parking/?utm_content=buffer790bc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The Mayo Clinic in downtown Rochester is expanding. In order to accommodate all the projected visitors to the expanded clinic, they would have to pave over downtown Rochester.


parking-ramps-500x335.jpg


So what's a better use of taxpayer dollars, building a pile of parking garages that sit empty 8-12 hours a day, pay no property taxes, and have to be maintained in perpetuity, or building out a reasonable public transit network that will make every property along its route more valuable (and therefore increase tax revenue)?
 
Two truly remarkable articles from Chuck Marohn that illustrate the fix we're in, infrastructure-wise, with the real-world example of Lafayette, Louisiana (pop. 125,000).

The Real Reason Your City Has No Money

There are some remarkable things to note right off the top. When we added up the replacement cost of all of the city's infrastructure -- an expense we would anticipate them cumulatively experiencing roughly once a generation -- it came to $32 billion. When we added up the entire tax base of the city, all of the private wealth sustained by that infrastructure, it came to just $16 billion. This is fatal.

It's obvious to me why this is fatal, but for those of you for whom it is less clear, let me elaborate.

The median house in Lafayette costs roughly $150,000. A family living in this house would currently pay about $1,500 per year in taxes to the local government of which 10%, approximately $150, goes to maintenance of infrastructure (more is paid to the schools and regional government). A fraction of that $150 – it varies by year – is spent on actual pavement.

To maintain just the roads and drainage systems that have already been built, the family in that median house would need to have their taxes increase by $3,300 per year. That assumes no new roads are built and existing roadways are not widened or substantively improved. That is $3,300 in additional local taxes just to tread water....

The median household income in Lafayette is $41,000. With the wealth that has been created by all this infrastructure investment, a median family living in the median house would need to have their city taxes go from $1,500 per year to $9,200 per year. To just take care of what they now have, one out of every five dollars this family makes would need to go to fixing roads, ditches and pipes. That will never happen.

Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments

What is obvious here is that the poor neighborhoods are profitable while the affluent neighborhoods are not. Throughout the poor neighborhoods, the city is -- TODAY -- bringing in more revenue than they will spend to maintain the neighborhood, and that's assuming they actually invest the money to maintain the neighborhood (which they have not been). If they fail to maintain the neighborhood, the profit margins will be even higher.

This might strike some of you as surprising, yet it is important to understand that it is a consistent feature we see revealed in city after city after city all over North America. Poor neighborhoods subsidize the affluent; it is a ubiquitous condition of the American development pattern.


1484103976197
 
One interesting economic factor to consider is that a huge infrastructural overhaul would create a lot of jobs and boost the tax base substantially. Not enough to cover the $7,000+ gap mentioned in Lafayette, but it would certainly alter the employment-income landscape.
 
Strong Towns recently did a deep dive into a highway project that is proposed to cut a path through (surprise) a low-income, minority neighborhood in Shreveport. In a three part series, Marohn closely examines, and completely disassembles, the "expert economic" report supporting this highway. It is well worth reading, because it exposes to the light of day the outright fictions and absurdities that fill these reports. It's also worth remembering the next time your city proposes a massive road project (like the bypasses currently encircling Greensboro and Winston Salem).

This is part three of the series, in the first paragraph there are links to parts 1 and 2.

Before I get too far into this, let me give a disclaimer of sorts. While I'm going to show you, in a three part series, how the conclusions of this report are nothing but propaganda -- outright fiction that should outrage everyone -- I'm going to point out that this isn't the fault of the report's authors. They are merely following standard industry practice which, in this case, is largely determined by the federal government.
You can look at federally funded projects from around the country and they are going to contain the same fictions spun into a seemingly-rigorous narrative for project proponents to use. It's an industry problem, so direct your outrage accordingly.
The next time you hear someone say that we need hundreds of billions, even trillions, more federal dollars for infrastructure just know that we're all Shreveport. As you read this, a document just like the Economic Impacts of I-49 Completion is being circulated in your community to justify some crazy project that should never see the light of day. This needs to end.
 
This is an interesting piece about the benefits of good urban design and how forcing suburban/highway metrics onto urban environments is literally killing people. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/3/28/how-fire-chiefs-and-traffic-engineers-make-places-less-safe

It is insane that most traffic engineers don’t understand this! And their prejudice against safer design is cooked right into their standards: The AASHTO Geometric Design of Highways and Streets (the "Green Book,” which is the bible of traffic engineering), uses the Level of Service (LOS) system where streets are rated from A to F with A being best and F being worst, like grades in school.

Here’s the problem: LOS A is the free flow of traffic at the highest speeds (most deadly), while LOS F is a slow-moving traffic jam (safest). Speed kills… especially if you’re walking or biking. Higher speed is OK if you’re driving on an expressway through the countryside, but it’s decidedly not OK if you’re driving in a city or town.

To be blunt, the Green Book standards have probably killed hundreds of thousands of people in towns and cities. It’s deadly. Put a less dramatic way, the Green Book is great for highways in the country, but not for in-town streets. For that, you need Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares, a design manual jointly created by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). Sadly, many traffic engineers have apparently never heard of it, even though it reduces deaths and injuries in town, while the Green Book increases deaths and injuries in town by speeding up traffic. Higher speed = more deaths and injuries.
 
this stuff has been discussed before on this thread, but here's a good article summarizing the three major ways that the tax code subsidizes suburbia.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/21/exempting-suburbia-how-suburban-development-gets-special-treatment-in-our-taxcode?utm_content=buffer743df&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Suburban development gets preferential tax treatment in the US. As a result, it is cheaper to spend a dollar on housing than on something else, so it encourages people to spend more money on housing. The tax code also favors new construction over renovation and infill development.

These protections are pervasive throughout federal and state tax codes, but a few rules stand out:

homeowners can deduct their property and mortgage interest,
profits on home sales are not taxed,
and new construction is a tax shelter.
 
Been a long time since this thread was resurrected. thought this article was worthy. Maybe give the Tunnels something to do other than the daily Trump freak show. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/car-crashes-arent-always-unavoidable/592447/

In America, the freedom of movement comes with an asterisk: the obligation to drive. This truism has been echoed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has pronounced car ownership a “virtual necessity.” The court’s pronouncement is telling: Yes, in a sense, America is car-dependent by choice—but it is also car-dependent by law.

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As I detail in a forthcoming journal article, over the course of several generations lawmakers rewrote the rules of American life to conform to the interests of Big Oil, the auto barons, and the car-loving one-percenters of the Roaring Twenties. They gave legal force to a mindset—let’s call it automobile supremacy—that kills 40,000 Americans a year and seriously injures more than 4 million more. Include all those harmed by emissions and climate change, and the damage is even greater. As a teenager growing up in the shadow of Detroit, I had no reason to feel this was unjust, much less encouraged by law. It is both.

Just as telling as what activities the law regulates is whose interests it seeks to protect. Dozens of our peer nations require carmakers to mitigate harm from their products to pedestrians. U.S. design regulations, however, only require measures that enhance the safety of car occupants. Just as SUVs are becoming taller, heavier, and more prevalent—and pedestrian fatalities are surging—U.S. regulators have not required carmakers to embrace those more comprehensive design standards. Instead, they’ve launched campaigns baselessly blaming pedestrians for their own deaths.
 
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