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The Conservative Case Against the Suburbs

If you are comparing tax revenues on a per acre basis, then you must also compare the water, electrical, street and other usages not for one condo but for all the condos in the per acre structure.

If you build 300 condos on the same acreage as one McMansion, those 300 dwellings will use many, many times more services.

If taxes are on a per acre basis, to make it apples to apples, then the above must be considered.


Let's consider them, then.

Water: paid for on a per-gallon basis by the user. Condos built as infill development or reuse of a historic structure re-use existing downtown water mains. New sprawl development uses miles and miles of brand new pipe plus pump station to get it out there. Water use at a Wal Mart per acre (and thus, revenue from per gallon payments) may well be significantly less per acre than a condo development. Also, the city has to maintain those new water mains in perpetuity, so it has added a new liability to its books - not the case in reusing the downtown mains. Greater expense, less revenue - how do you think the pay-back periods compare for those two use cases if both are paying for water on the same per-gallon basis?

Electrical: essentially the same analysis as water, except that here it's a utility building it so it has really nothing to do with property tax productivity at all. Nice try though.

Road usage: here again, in our example, the condos are built alongside already-existing streets in a downtown infill environment. The city is already maintaining those streets. Little new construction needed by the municipality, no new maintenance obligation, many multiples of tax revenue per acre. To build the Wal-Mart, the city often has to build a big new road and a big new intersection. Even if the city makes the developer pay for it, the city still takes on the obligation to maintain this big new road in perpetuity. So again, much more liability per acre, much less tax revenue per acre. Plus, the actual usage of road associated with residential development is far less intense than a commercial development.

Other uses: Let's talk fire and police protection. It takes a long time to get anywhere in sprawl compared to dense development. To maintain the same response time in less dense suburbia, you have to employ many more police and firefighters, and build more stations, on a per-taxpayer basis. The number of police and firemen it takes to protect our condo example, on a per acre basis, is therefore less than it takes to protect the Wal-mart in the sprawl.

Are there other items we should consider that might make a Wal-mart a more productive use of land than a downtown condominium structure? I suppose you could argue that it produces jobs. Well, let's make our downtown condominium a mixed-use development with retail and commercial on the street level (the historic manner of development). As the linked article suggests, this will generally produce a higher number of jobs per acre. Most likely, those jobs will be higher paying than Wal-mart, and those business owners will spend their money locally instead of sending it back to remote shareholders.

ETA: I just noticed you responded to my post highlighting a Walmart use by pulling in McMansions. Most of the items addressed above apply exactly the same if you substitute McMansion for Walmart. Except McMansions don't produce any jobs, so they are definitely a less productive use than a mixed-use infill development.
 
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I didn't talk about a Wal-Mart. I never brought that up. It was the usage of one family versus the usage of hundreds of families.

Retail properties in high rises often go to chain stores/restaurants. Thus the profits often go to "remote shareholders".

Look, we aren't very far apart. Many times on this thread I've said sprawl has gone out too far. Like most issues, one answer isn't necessarily the only one.
 
yeah, but how awesome is it to be able to take a piss in your backyard?

Not as much fun as it is to piss out the window and have it drip on seventeen balconies and watch everyone blame each other.
 
McMansions suck whether they are in an urban setting or way out in the burbs. When I was living in Beverly Hills, people used to buy the cool 20s bungalows. The next day they would bulldoze them and start building these 8000 sq ft monstrosities on tiny lots.
 
Some interesting thoughts in this article. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/2/ The particular reason I posted it on this thread is this quote from the second page:

What’s more, the shift away from traditional suburbs toward denser, urban-light living could have major economic-growth implications on its own. Economic research shows that doubling a community’s population density tends to increase productivity by anywhere between 6 percent and 28 percent. Economists have found that more than half of the variation in output per worker across U.S. states can be explained by density. Our wealth, after all, is determined not only by our own skills and talents, but by our ability to access the ideas of those around us; there’s a lot to be gained by increasing the odds that smart people might bump against each other. Ultimately, if the Millennial generation pushes our society toward more sharing and closer living, it may do more than simply change America’s consumption culture; it may put America on firmer economic footing for decades to come.
 
Didn't we all learn that higher-density tiles produce more Gold & Production Points in, like, Civilizations I?

#twoCivJokesOneCup
 
Interesting pieces and discussion. I recently moved to Memphis, which has been dealing with these issues (and many more) for a number of years. We continue to have businesses leaving downtown as their leases expire and moving east about 8 miles to where I-40 splits into I-240 and makes a ring around the city. Our CBD is really miles from downtown. At the same time, we have over 2,000 residential units under construction downtown, a surge in downtown population and adaptive reuse of historically blighted buildings. Its really odd that businesses continue to flock further east while at the same time the downtown population is increasing at a faster rate than any other section of town. Further, thanks to the increased population, the Grizzlies and Beale St/tourism, the downtown is more of a 6pm to 3am area rather than an 8am - 5pm area. I suspect (and hope) that at some point one of the larger businesses will recognize the available talent downtown and relocate there.
 
On this point - Marohn tends toward the dramatic. It makes him more enjoyable to read than others who write on this topic. He has a great blog post called "The Growth Ponzi Scheme" that lays out his theories pretty well. But I think Marohn would agree with you that nobody set out with some grand master plan to reshape the American landscape. It has taken 60+ years of gradual accumulation of one small decision after another, each making us more and more reliant on cars and government to build and fund the infrastructure for cars.

Another piece of this is that Marohn is a card-carrying Republican and real fiscal conservative who understand the conservative mindset. Part of his rhetoric is to help conservatives understand that the suburbs were not created, and are not maintained, by the sacred invisible hand of the market. The American suburb would not exist in the absence of massive government lending and spending policy. American conservatives have a reflexive instinct toward density = bad and some of them buy into the whole Agenda 21 paranoia thing where they think big gummint is going to make them ride bicycles. Marohn is trying to break through that shell and help conservatives understand that single use zoning and suburban subsidies ARE big gummint. In urban areas, the market actually wants denser, more efficient uses of land, and government and its enablers in the NIMBY class are what is holding back the market.
I agree with most of that. I think the original suburban movement started with the real problems and issues coming out of the industrial revolution where urban environments weren't that great....and partly the result of an American ideal of expansionism/farming from the 19th century. When combined under the New Deal dogma, you get suburbia and a government willing to subsidize/promote it. Environmentalists used to favor spread out park-like development too, the kind of thinking that led to RTP. That sort of thinking is changing over time as urban environments shed their industrial slum-like reputations and the world gets smaller. We've sort of reached a point of diminishing returns with suburban housing too...ie the McMansions which are too much house for practical living.

I'm not sure things are being held back though. Urbanization is exploding all over in most places. How is it being held back?

If you look at some of the data he threw out in that article it's a bit biased. For example, his net worth data says we're 19th in the world, but that is just the middle class. The total net worth is 4th. I'm not sure how legit it is to exclude the people whose net worth increased above middle class (a completely relative definition too)..when talking about how net worth overall isn't better.
 
Interesting pieces and discussion. I recently moved to Memphis, which has been dealing with these issues (and many more) for a number of years. We continue to have businesses leaving downtown as their leases expire and moving east about 8 miles to where I-40 splits into I-240 and makes a ring around the city. Our CBD is really miles from downtown. At the same time, we have over 2,000 residential units under construction downtown, a surge in downtown population and adaptive reuse of historically blighted buildings. Its really odd that businesses continue to flock further east while at the same time the downtown population is increasing at a faster rate than any other section of town. Further, thanks to the increased population, the Grizzlies and Beale St/tourism, the downtown is more of a 6pm to 3am area rather than an 8am - 5pm area. I suspect (and hope) that at some point one of the larger businesses will recognize the available talent downtown and relocate there.

I stayed in a little boutique hotel in downtown Memphis that was built in a renovated historic office building 10 or so years ago for a wedding. I think it was brand new at the time. It seemed to be the same then. Businesses were closing down, but people were moving in and buildings were being renovated. Seemed to be an "old vs. new" sort of thing going on with a side of race issues thrown in. Business follows population...there will inevitably be infill to cover the void if people continue moving downtown.

What sort of businesses are moving out of down town? Are they actually businesses that support residential population? It could just be the changing landscape of office/non-residential services being replaced with businesses that cater to and support residential growth.
 
I stayed in a little boutique hotel in downtown Memphis that was built in a renovated historic office building 10 or so years ago for a wedding. I think it was brand new at the time. It seemed to be the same then. Businesses were closing down, but people were moving in and buildings were being renovated. Seemed to be an "old vs. new" sort of thing going on with a side of race issues thrown in. Business follows population...there will inevitably be infill to cover the void if people continue moving downtown.

What sort of businesses are moving out of down town? Are they actually businesses that support residential population? It could just be the changing landscape of office/non-residential services being replaced with businesses that cater to and support residential growth.

In Greensboro we have definitely seen the renewed interest in downtown living/eating/nightlife start to draw more businesses downtown. Not just restaurants and website designers and such, but some actual corporate HQ type offices. http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/blog/2014/10/first-look-see-how-the-new-charles-aris.html
 
In Greensboro we have definitely seen the renewed interest in downtown living/eating/nightlife start to draw more businesses downtown. Not just restaurants and website designers and such, but some actual corporate HQ type offices. http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/blog/2014/10/first-look-see-how-the-new-charles-aris.html
IMO DUI laws had a lot to do with the recent urban movement. The first people I know that moved into downtown Raleigh did so because they wanted to hang out at night without getting into trouble. That seeded the night scene about 15 years ago and then it just took off from there. Now I think it's a transition, as Racer points out. Raleigh has Citrix and Red Hat moving downtown in response to all the people moving there. But costs have to be moving higher compared to 15 years ago (relatively) so a lot of commercial businesses that were enjoying cheaper rent downtown in say a warehouse district suddenly find themselves with higher rent and have to move.
 
In Greensboro we have definitely seen the renewed interest in downtown living/eating/nightlife start to draw more businesses downtown. Not just restaurants and website designers and such, but some actual corporate HQ type offices. http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/blog/2014/10/first-look-see-how-the-new-charles-aris.html

Yeah, that's generally the order whether it's suburban growth or urban revitalization...1) residential 2) residential support businesses like restaurants/convenience/shopping 3) other businesses start to locate offices near the workforce.
 
I stayed in a little boutique hotel in downtown Memphis that was built in a renovated historic office building 10 or so years ago for a wedding. I think it was brand new at the time. It seemed to be the same then. Businesses were closing down, but people were moving in and buildings were being renovated. Seemed to be an "old vs. new" sort of thing going on with a side of race issues thrown in. Business follows population...there will inevitably be infill to cover the void if people continue moving downtown.

What sort of businesses are moving out of down town? Are they actually businesses that support residential population? It could just be the changing landscape of office/non-residential services being replaced with businesses that cater to and support residential growth.

Mostly corporate services (accountants, lawyers) as the white collar business jobs have moved east, where all the top employees live. Unfortunately, our city runs pretty much west - east as the River is a natural endpoint for development. So, you have downtown up against the river and then all housing is east in the midtown area and then further east to I-240 and then Germantown/Collierville (the burbs). Commuting downtown takes 20+ minutes even "in town" along only a couple of major thoroughfares, even though mileage-wise it isn't far. A light rail like Charlotte would be huge here to promote downtown business commuting, but will never happen. Autozone is still downtown and will stay there, and thankfully Raymond James just re-upped for 10 years. I think we will end up seeing a lot of the creative class businesses either move or spring up downtown since most of the people living downtown are young.

Pretty much all of our issues here come down to a terrible public education system, which means a terribly uneducated workforce. Things are changing though and I think in another couple of years, Memphis is going to get a lot of positive attention.
 
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