HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

> Likewise, most places are completely car-dependent. This too is intentionally exclusionary.

Which also results in unsustainable neighbourhoods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

> and building and maintaining a huge highway is the best use of your limited tax funds.

And once again, the growth ponzi scheme strikes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

Funny you say this because the car dependent American suburb is also showing signs of stress:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

Somehow we can imagine a world with low-pressure hyperloops and self-driving electric car swarms, but our creativity with bikes ends with 2 wheels and a rod ? Bikes are about space and ease first. At its very core, a bike is a small & slow people mover on wheels. That's it.

Disabled -> Electric wheelchairs are basically bike already [1]

Have things -> Delivery bikes [2]

Old people -> Yep, the ones that absolutely should not be driving? Old people use electrified bikes just fine in walmarts around the country. Same applies for obese people. [3]

Electric bikes of different shapes and sizes are completely redefining the usability of a bike. Most importantly, bikes are the last piece of a public transportation puzzle. They solve many of the last mile problems and force urban planning to be dense and walkable. This provides many additional benefits for accessibility. Walkable/ transit-based areas allow vision impaired people to independent. Bikes lead to many more smooth ramps that naturally accommodate movement impaired folks on wheels.

___________

> Society is not a blank slate, and we don't get to start over from scratch

Given that America literally destroyed cities and moved mountains to make the car-centric cities that we have today, your statement is demonstrably untrue. Le Corbusier's Paris almost happened and

America's biggest problems today are aging & crumbling infrastructure (owing to unsustainable building [4]) and low supply of housing. The nation is overdue for new economically-sustainable infrastructure and needs more space for housing. Guess what the most natural solution is ? -> Densification. (infrastructure costs shared over more people, allows for more housing when space is at a premium) Biking comes out as a natural side-effect of dense spaces.

It is also a little ironic that you name lack of accessibility, safety & obesity as big problems, without realizing how cars have been at the center of facilitating that very problem.

> aren't going to rebuild our cities around bikes

No one is asking for this straw man. The goal is to integrate into the existing fabric of cities. Building bike infrastructure has shown to reduce traffic and make it easier for those who NEED cars to continue using them. Bike infrastructure is the cheapest of all major forms of transportation infrastructure.

The fact that cities as dense as NYC have pathetic biking infrastructure is a testament to just how far behind America is on accommodating humans within its cities. We aren't talking about rebuilding Phoenix. This is about making biking a viable option for the densest of American cities. ___________

[1] https://image.made-in-china.com/155f0j00JvfYuGpRmTbU/New-Mod...

[2] https://ferlabikes.com/delivery-cargo-bikes

[3] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0026/0030/4684/products/im...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

It's not just Jackson, or the state of Mississippi. The US has overbuilt infrastructure since WW2. All of it was built on the assumption that infrastructure investment always leads to a massive expansion of the tax base and easily pays for itself, when in reality more and more of our investments have had a negative ROI. This is going to be the new normal for the US as many cities have continues to expand outward for decades, incurring ever greater maintenance liability, without accompanying economic growth to support the maintenance burden.

You've seen a lot of Strong Towns posts on HN, this is the issue that ST was founded on and the focus of it's advocacy.

The best short explainer is here: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

You can read a lot more about maintenance here if you're interested: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/Maintenance

⬐ stainforth

Sometime in the 70s there was a reduction of federal funding and thus an expectation that the state could shoulder the costs of infrastructure. Combined with white flight that took potential tax base elsewhere, it became very difficult to support maintenance at this level. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/11498/under-the-surface...

⬐ smileysteve

The most important part about white flight is that each of these suburbs went to create even less sustainable infrastructure (via increased points of service and decreased population that is the single family home).

> Do you have a citation for this?

I don't have a citation for construction costs, and I will concede that there are many factors that may make some low density developments cheaper per unit then some higher density development.

However, construction is only part of the picture. Low density development imposes terrible financial costs for cities that contain them. That's because the taxable value per square mile is much lower, but infrastructure (sewer, roads, etc) has the same per-mile maintenance and replacement costs. The infrastructure maintenance costs in many low density developments is often greater then the amount of tax revenue the development generates.

For more information on the hidden costs of low density development, I can't recommend this video [1] by Not Just Bikes enough.

[1] https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ riversflow

> has the same per-mile maintenance and replacement costs.

No it doesn't, the cost to tear up a street in a high density area is much higher than it is in a low density area, especially if we are looking at hidden economic costs.

⬐ m0llusk

Found the text version more compelling myself: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

⬐ boole1854

It seems to me that the article would benefit from more data supporting the author's arguments. It's not clear what percentage of cities are affected by the problem or the average scale of the problem in those cities.

⬐ treis

This pops up every couple of months or so. The numbers don't make sense and don't reflect reality. Infrastructure is ~10% of local government budget. Nobody is going bankrupt over that.

And AFAIK there's no city in existence where taxes & government expenditures are lower in the city compared to the suburbs. The expensive parts about government are mostly Schools & Criminal Justice. Both are significantly more expensive in cities on a per capita basis.

⬐ koheripbal

They make the argument that growth, in an of itself, is a "ponzi scheme". Whereas boom-bust economic cycles are nothing new, and are clearly not the same as a literal ponzi scheme.

I don't think there's any novel thinking here. They're just rebranding cyclic economics for dramatic effect.

⬐ adgjlsfhk1

The problem isn't growth the problem is that growth is required to pay for maintenance of the currently existing infrastructure. This is ponzi-scheme adjacent because if growth ever stops (and it has to), then everything collapses.

⬐ koheripbal

What you are describing is not a Ponzi scheme at all. It's just regular unsustainable growth.

⬐ NikolaNovak

Thanks; the "Why", or the interesting part of "Why", seems only alluded to, rather than explicitly discussed. Is it that the low density of suburban development means that tax collected per area unit, is less than infrastructure maintenance per area unit? And is the even more implied solution to increase urban density at least to the point where revenue per area matches expenses per area?

⬐ TuringNYC

Here are some reasons I think "why":

- Long term liabilities are not tracked (e.g., muni worker pensions, pension guaranteed CoL adjustments) as hard liabilities. That makes it easy to budget things now and borrow invisibly from the future

- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose mentality given that federal government or others could possibly bail you out.

- Leadership worries about elections NOW and approval rating NOW, not about issues 20yrs into the future

- Some muni worker groups have a stranglehold over towns and can demand far more than economically feasible, or else

- Insufficient critical mass of citizenry to look at long term issues

⬐ dionidium

It also means (and by "means" I mean "necessitates" or "requires") decay. Suburban development in metros that aren't otherwise growing guarantees decline elsewhere in the region. Sometimes people look at a place like North St. Louis in disbelief -- "how could all these houses have been abandoned?" -- without ever considering the fundamentals. The region has expanded to cover hundreds of square miles of new development since 1970 all with like 1% population growth. They doubled the number of houses, but they didn't double the number of households.

Decline is an illustration of the pigeonhole principle.

So it's not just that the new suburbs are too low-density to support themselves; they also create the conditions whereby the old parts of the city also de-densify to unsustainable levels.

⬐ alistairSH

Basically, yes. The typical American suburb, even "dense" inner suburbs, often don't generate enough tax revenue to maintain infrastructure. The areas get built out with various subsidies from different levels of government; it's only 30 years down the road, when major infrastructure needs updated that the costs become apparent.

⬐ Ajedi32

Why then do towns (which have similar population density to suburbs) not suffer from the same problem?

⬐ alistairSH

I'm not convinced your assertion is true in general. Picking some local towns, cities, and counties...

Shepherdstown WV, population of ~2000, population density 4,700/sq mi (bedroom community on outskirts of DC metro)

Fairfax County, VA, population of 1.1 million, density 2,800/sq mi (big, mixed suburban county)

Arlington County, VA, population 238,000, density 9,200/sq mi (much of it is very urban)

Charlottesville, VA (city) population 46,000, density 4,500/sq mi (small college city)

Anyways, the problem is sprawl, which can happen regardless of municipal label. Houston and LA sprawl and run into similar problems of upkeep as large counties like Fairfax Co VA.

⬐ evolve2k

NotJustBikes are doing some incredible work. It’s really time to reframe how we plan our cities and make the spaces we occupy designed for human scale engagement.

I encourage anyone interested in this video to definitely check out more of their videos, so much valuable insight as to practically how our urban spaces could be incredible to live in.

⬐ koheripbal

Lots of buzzwords - little useful ideas.

⬐ technovader

Hard disagree. You and must have watched different videos.

He provides concrete examples and solutions.

⬐ koheripbal

I think we have different definitions of the term "concrete solution".

His solutions are vague, wildly over-simplified, and unrealistic.

⬐ technovader

Is it just me or do Americans just hate hearing that their city design is terrible?

⬐ nishs

on the other hand, i think they love it. some people i've seen love thinking that they are "victims" of poor city design.

⬐ dsr_

Everybody hates hearing criticism of the things that they accept as normal.

The portions of US cities that were built before mass automobiles -- say, 1930 - are comparable to European cities built between 1650 and 1930.

Europe got hit by WWII and the necessity of rebuilding in basically the same footprint. The US got hit by automobiles and the lack of necessity.

⬐ fezfight

Does the tone put anyone else off? I feel like I should be his perfect target audience (I cycle everywhere and prefer living in cities with good bike infrastructure) but I find the way he makes his arguments leaves me wanting to disagree with him.

⬐ ucosty

You're not alone, though personally I quite like his tone and delivery. It's entirely probable that you're not in his target audience and that's okay.

⬐ Youden

Yes. I overall have similar views to him but I often find that his videos sound like they're preaching to the choir.

Aside from tone, he uses terms like "stroad" without explanation. Such terms will be known to people who watch a lot of similar content and likely already agree with him but not so much to people who don't, which are the people he that he needs to convince.

I also find things a bit one-sided. He might bring up problems with the way things are today and propose a solution to them but the solution always sounds like a silver bullet that magically solves all the problems. In reality there are always obstacles and downsides.

⬐ Moldoteck

you can leave a comment on his video on points you disagree with him

⬐ throw0101a

> Does the tone put anyone else off?

Jason Slaughter, the author/creator, has said in numerous interviews that it is on purpose. He's tired of the BS from the pro-car, low-density folks, and leans into the snark.

⬐ fezfight

I never hear from those people but I am already tired of his 'BS'.

⬐ cwoolfe

I grew up in the suburbs. By the time I was a teenager I couldn't help but ask: "Why is everything here new? And why are all the people white?" I took a look at "White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism" for some answers.

⬐ quantumwannabe

Can someone name an example of a city that has gone bankrupt due to infrastructure costs that didn't also lose a large amount of its population or lose key local industries?

⬐ Retric

I think that’s a rather unfair question as cities should be resilient to significant population shifts. The world isn’t constant so the inability to handle change means you already have issues.

Population shifts don’t just happen in an afternoon if a city can’t deal with a 10% population decline over a decade it was already in dire straits. Pensions for example are’t inherently an issue, it’s just a debt that should have been prepaid over the ~30 years these employees where working for the city.

⬐ syzar

In the U.S. population shifts in major cities happened rapidly after the desegregation. As an example of this the population of Pittsburgh was around 600,000 in 1960 and is around 300,000 today. The people that left tended to have higher paying jobs due to the wage gap between whites and blacks at the time. Local taxes declined significantly and since the U.S. largely funds k-12 education from local taxes the schools were badly affected. Once the spiral starts it’s hard to reverse.

Before desegregation ambulance, trash, and other city services used to be paid for using taxes. My unpopular view of all this is that whites largely decided that they didn’t want to pay for things that benefitted blacks and this very much adversely affected large cities. I don’t know to what extent this plays into what the Strong Towns article talked about but it seems reasonable to think it plays a part.

⬐ SoftTalker

It seems clear to me that a city that loses say half its population is not going to be able to just absorb that and move on. Like a large ant colony, a large number of ants are needed to support and maintain it.

⬐ Retric

Ant colonies are resiliant to large population drops. Colony size depends not just on species but also time of year and available food. As to cities, there isn’t a minimum viable size we just call tiny cities towns.

⬐ treeman79

Trouble is poor don’t pay taxes but consume a lot of services. If the middle class and rich who do pay the bills leave them a city can have a huge decline in coke from a small population decline.

⬐ Retric

Then offer fewer services, plenty of poor cities exist around the world.

⬐ adgjlsfhk1

This is straight up false. In local and state taxes, poor people pay a far higher percent of their income.

⬐ nemo44x

Over 50% of people pay $0 in income taxes. Yes, they pay sales taxes and generally property taxes indirectly as part of their rent - but they provide 0 in revenues as far as state, local, and Federal taxes are concerned.

The top 10% of income earners pay 80% of the taxes.

⬐ adgjlsfhk1

This is only true if you ignore payroll tax, social security, gas tax, tolls, and other highly regressive taxes. Where is your 10/80 stat coming from? https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/ paints a very different picture: the top 20% of earners pay 75% of income tax while making around 75% of the income.

⬐ nemo44x

The majority of people do not pay any income tax and also receive numerous credits. This means they are net gainers of the tax system by not only not paying anything but actually receiving bonus money for things that they aren't taxed on.

When you add up all those other things, it amounts to essentially nothing. At the end of the day while we have certain pols demanding high earners "pay their fair share", the truth is most people pay nothing and the highest earners pay for almost everything. These are just the facts. I suspect the "fair share" nonsense is just trying to leverage jealous tendencies in certain people that can't be bothered to address the root cause of their shortcomings: themselves.

⬐ Retric

First government services go disproportionately to support the wealthy. Just look at the density of cops : population in rich vs poor areas etc.

As to tax burden it only looks like that i you ignore the US has several different income taxes and many non income taxes. A homeless drunk who spends most of their money on cheap alcohol pays a higher percentage of tho income in taxes than any of the US billionaires.

Naming one specific income tax as “the income tax” was a brilliant idea that has been doping people for decades.

⬐ ghaff

A great many US cities were losing population in the post-WWII era including some that are now regarded as "elite" coastal cities. Boston, for example, was losing population well into the nineties and, lots of universities notwithstanding, had no real major tech industry left by the time Teradyne moved out. (All the local computer companies and defense contractors were out in the suburbs/exurbs.)

So some cities did weather the cycles. Others like Detroit not so much--at least outside of certain core areas.

⬐ agent281

Wouldn't these be good examples? Boston is a pre-car city that weathered population decline well. Detroit was a city that rebuilt itself around the car and experienced decline.

⬐ throwaway0a5e

Detroit never rebuilt because intellectuals in places like Boston cooked up economic policies that pulled the rug out from under American manufacturing and heavy industry with predictable consequences for any city depending upon them.

⬐ ghaff

Cambridge and Boston had a significant manufacturing base at one point. https://historycambridge.org/industry/

⬐ ghaff

The levels of decline were different however. As were a lot of other particulars.

Boston/Cambridge long had a major research university base as well as a fair bit of industry especially in East Cambridge and what's now the Seaport area. Also a significant financial/legal/etc. district. A lot of the industry did have significant declines maybe a couple of times in the 20th century. East Cambridge was really only revitalized in a major way when Pharma/biotech came in during the 80s/90s--and the Seaport redevelopment is ongoing.

There certainly have been efforts in Detroit and apparently the riverfront gentrification has progressed considerably but the city as a whole still is in generally poor shape and for a variety of reasons is probably less attractive overall than coastal cities are.

ADDED: And Boston may be a "pre-car city" and does have a decent public transit system but most adults still own cars because a lot of their friends and activities will be outside the city.

⬐ dwater

I can't, because every American city I can think of experienced redlining and white flight, which led to the loss of population, business, and investment.

⬐ mcdonje

Also, a lot of states don't allow municipalities to file for bankruptcy.

⬐ shiftpgdn

Detroit? The industry is still there but they've lost 50% of their population. But the whole point of the video is when you build these big suburbs and suburban development patterns you're on the hook for their cost no matter if anyone is living there or not.

⬐ koheripbal

This is an odd example.

Detroit literally lost hundreds of thousands of auto manufacturing jobs.

The companies only remain there in a token fashion.

⬐ slothtrop

Detroit's population has been declining for 60 years, and the population of the Metro area is still in the millions. The city itself is at 624,177 in '20. The downfall is years and the making and has to do with more than auto manufacturing. It's not like the nearby cities stuck with a single point of failure for a century, manufacturing is big but varied and the economy diversified over time. Across the U.S. manufacturing has been sensitive to the rise of competing economies.

strongtowns actually names Detroit as a very early adopter of suburban city planning and sprawl. The argument is they are in part reeling from the impact of these policies faster than other cities.

⬐ tunap

Not a city, per se, but counties, yes.

Orange County, CA circa 1994. Bonds & securities shenanigans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Citron#County_bankruptc...

⬐ gnulinux

New York City came 1-day close to declaring bankruptcy on 16 October 1975.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-night-new-york-...

⬐ adgjlsfhk1

This is made complicated because before cities go bankrupt they try to stay alive in ways that cause people and industry to leave (such as reducing school funding, reducing road maintenance, raising taxes, etc). As such, by the time the city goes bankrupt there will be other things to point to, but the underlying failure was that the city ran out of money and was trying to work around that.

⬐ Ekaros

And really what does bankruptcy mean for a city? It doesn't meet it's liabilities. It probably has some assets so those will be seized. That really doesn't extend to any property owned by others.

⬐ adgjlsfhk1

it means that school budgets get slashed, public transit is greatly reduced, road maintenance stops etc.

⬐ throw0101a

From 2008, "What Happens When City Hall Goes Bankrupt?":

* https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=607402...

⬐ danielrpa

I live in a Suburban county that has seen pretty slow growth for decades and then exploded around 30 years ago. This county is very financially responsible and has done a fantastic job at keeping up with its expenses - before and after the explosion. There is no big city in the county (most of it is not even incorporated in a city), so the bills are paid by the county property taxes and some by the state government.

However, this county makes disproportionally high per capita state income tax contributions, to the tune of 2x/3x per capita compared to the nearby big city. As a matter of fact, myself and my county fellows heavily subsidize big city programs in the state: not only the big city's high traffic/maintenance crumbling roads, but schools, money losing public transportation, rent assistance, health programs, elderly assistance etc. What we spend in our arguably inefficient road network is a pittance compared to these.

⬐ 57FkMytWjyFu

Tearing out cement and putting down differently arranged cement is just wasteful. The Channel likes to dwell on how the Netherlands do all these things, but the creator fails to ever mention what pays for them there.

Hint - It's oil and gas revenue.

⬐ winternett

The truth of it all is that almost everything now is designed to subsidize something else, and it's a convoluted mess that enables people to steal and hide money, and to divert it to serve their interests.

If we properly addressed infrastructure spending on bike lanes and all of the things done to ensure bike safety through creating a bike registration tax and an insurance system, then a lot more could likely be done... Currently all of the new bike infrastructure going in to cities is subsidized by car taxes and things like speed cameras.

If extremely wealthy individuals paid their fair share in taxes, and if cities stopped subsidizing their huge sports stadiums and warehouses, then it possibly would be a lot easier to maintain and update infrastructure. We tolerate a revolving door of corruption and mis-use of funds in local and federal government, yet the middle class and poor are taxed at around half of their annual income every year once all the various taxes that can be levied are paid.

It's not about subsidizing poor low tax neighborhoods to me... The biggest offense is in the deceptive welfare system that is constantly subsidizing private companies and greedy individuals that really don't build growth and opportunity in communities for anyone but themselves...

Also we do have to admit that road and infrastructure work regularly is excessively overbilled to local governments...

The employees that do it are underpaid perhaps, but there is a long history in this country of infrastructure repair contracts being well overpriced in cost and time...

⬐ 57FkMytWjyFu

You're not wrong, and that's a lot of ifs.

No better example than blowing up a perfectly good stadium to then overcharge for personal seat licenses while getting that tax base to pay for more of the new stadium than the total cost of the one blown up.

Search for Jerryworld.

⬐ asciimov

It is easy to complain about the issues surrounding suburbia. What I don't see much of is how to fix it. How do we fix the issues of suburbia without tearing it all down and starting over?

⬐ pneumatic1

https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligations

⬐ LatteLazy

The US system means you can live outside cities (and so avoid paying city taxes) and travel in to enjoy the amenities they provide. The result is a classic "failure of the commons" where contributors move out and people in need move in.

The growth fallacy relies on cities already being short of cash, it is a symptom, not a disease.

⬐ kiba

Driving feels dangerous. It feels like whenever I commute into the city, there's a motor accident of some kind.

It's not surprising since you're basically forcing million of people to control 2 tons vehicles. Inevitably, for one reason or another, someone's going to make a mistake.

⬐ slothtrop

Suburbs pay city taxes but are basically subsidized owing to the infrastructure cost relative to tax rate. You can hardly chalk the problem to too few people living within the city boundaries, but ultimately for super-long commuters what it would mean is the bulk of shouldering the cost of those people falls on the communities outside the city. People go in to work, that means the amenities used are a) the roads which have to be maintained anyway, and b) power in the city center which the corporate office pays for (and they pay property tax).

The infrastructure cost for inefficient sprawled out areas is enormous. A money pit.

⬐ jeffbee

Suburbs are not the only place that can’t fund their street maintenance. My city of Berkeley, California, only spends a fraction of what would be required and we have the worst pavement quality in the state. What’s needed is a frontage tax: $10/foot/year on each parcel ($400/year for typical parcel size and shape). That would fix the streets in perpetuity. It’s politically impossible though since people who live in single-family detached homes, who are massively subsidized by apartment dwellers, don’t want to lose that subsidy.

⬐ theshrike79

As an European Suburbs feel just wrong to me.

I've lived in small towns and big cities in Europe. Every time there has been a grocery store within walking or biking distance (5-10 minutes).

Suburbs don't have that. If you need more milk, it's a good 30 minute car ride away. Walking or going by bike are completely impossible.

⬐ jjav

> Suburbs don't have that. If you need more milk, it's a good 30 minute car ride away.

Can you name a handful of suburbs where you need to drive 30 minutes to the closest shop that sells milk?

From my suburban house I can walk to a supermarket in 5 minutes. Although if all I need is milk, I can walk to a 7-11 in about 3 minutes.

⬐ Jensson

To me most important is independent children. In Europe every kid I know walked to school, walked to go and buy groceries or other errands, walked to friends etc. But apparently that isn't really a thing in American suburbs, must be horrible for those kids to be so dependent on their parents until they can get a car themselves.

⬐ theshrike79

Yep, my kid walked to school from the first day of the first grade. Now as a fourth grader they just call me when school's out and tell me which friend's house they're going after school and walk there (or notify me if they're coming to our place). Sometimes they stop by the store on the way to get some snacks.

And when dinner is ready, we call them home and they walk back.

During the summer holidays they scoot or bike to the park close by to play with their friends.

An American Suburbia kid could never do any of this without someone calling the police or CPS for child endangerment even if there was a school, shop or a playground within walking distance.

⬐ jjav

> An American Suburbia kid could never do any of this without someone calling the police or CPS for child endangerment even if there was a school, shop or a playground within walking distance.

There's a lot of generalizations about suburbs in these discussions.

From my office window here in suburbia, about a block away from a middle school, every day I see hundreds of kids leave on foot. I imagine most go home in the nearby suburbs, although there are plenty of shops within easy walking distance so perhaps some of them stop at those. There's also a large park/playground not far from the school they might go to.

This idea of a suburb being a place that has nothing and you can't walk anywhere is weird to me. I'm sure such suburbs exist somehwere, but I've never seen one.

(I'm in California.)

⬐ Jensson

So school busses aren't a thing in USA? Where I live it is hard to find a home that is more than 5-10 minute walking distance to a school, nobody with kids would want to live further than that from schools. Even stand alone single family houses are within that distance of schools, since they are built close around denser suburban centers. If you live in an apartment you are almost always within 5 minutes walk of a school.

Of course there might be places where you live close to these amenities in USA, but you have to pay premium for them since it isn't the norm. In Europe that is the norm and you expect to get it basically no matter where you live, even in the dirt cheap areas. Only exception is if you choose to live in the woods or something far away from other people, I know some who does that but it is a choice. If you live in a small town with a few thousand people you will still be able to walk to buy groceries and to early school. Later school uses the same buss/train system as adults so kids gets to use that.

⬐ jjav

> So school busses aren't a thing in USA?

Not sure how this relates to my comment? In my suburb area most kids seem walk or bike to school based on the middle school I see from my office window. Hundreds leave walking, some dozens on bikes and only a few dozen cars lined up to pick up kids.

As to school buses, I don't know how it works. It's probably a school-by-school thing. I see some occasionally but not very often.

⬐ deweller

Ponzi Scheme: a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

⬐ kiba

We need a word that is not intentionally a fraud but is pretty much an example of an unsustainable pyramid.

⬐ peteradio

House of cards.

⬐ outsidetheparty

"Capitalism"

(in its modern, dependent-on-continuous-growth interpretation)

⬐ orangepurple

Fractional reserve banking

⬐ adgjlsfhk1

Not a ponzi scheme. It doesn't rely on growth to survive.

⬐ orangepurple

You are right. However, over time systemic risks grow with it. Your point still stands.

⬐ Ekaros

It kinda does. Fractional reserve system means there is more debt that there is money. And if interest rates are not below zero. There will be always more debt until someone defaults. Actually even full reserve with debts would mean there is more debt than there is money...

⬐ viscountchocula

Here, the Ponzi idea is that early investors in suburban and exurban housing receive generous subsidies to expensive infrastructure beyond what their value can realistically support tax-wise over the long term. Their early, illusory success (appreciation in price, perception of living The American Dream) convinces others to buy in before realizing that replacing sewers, roads, etc is really, really expensive at low density and so the infrastructure crumbles or requires a bail out.

⬐ refurb

This seems like an odd complaint considering SF appears to have out of control spending and poor infrastructure.

Methinks author is conflating two separate issues.

⬐ baby

Does SF really have poor infrastructure btw? Compared to any city in Europe sure, but compared to cities in the US?

⬐ technovader

That's exactly the point though. Americans have no idea how terrible their cities are because they only compare to themselves.

It's ALL terrible. Please DO compare to Europe. Let's strive for better cities period, not just OK in the context of North America.

⬐ baby

I was thinking, for a city of 800k inhabitants, it's not that bad. But then I lived in Bordeaux which has 250k inhabitants and public transport was so amazing. I basically don't take public transport in SF anymore because I find it too dangerous, whereas I never once took a taxi or drove in Bordeaux (in 2 years there).

⬐ incomingpain

Why are Chicago, San Fran, NYC, Philly, etc so in debt? Bad government policies. Not because of some ponzi scheme.

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/wasted-tax-dollars/

$365K In Taxpayer Dollars To Teach People How To Fish?

You can look at every one of these cities and see them making bad government policies that placed them in this situation.

⬐ nemo44x

It's because the cities are unbelievably corrupt. Bloomberg was the only non-corrupt mayor because he could buy his way to victory and didn't have to rely on the established political machinery to get there. But he was just 1 person and with the kinds of revenues NYC was bringing in, there was just so many opportunities to scratch backs. Other pols are so indebted to so many people/organizations/etc that corruption is going to happen. They can't rise to power without getting all these favors which are to be repaid once they acquire power.

How do you get power? You get the support of the political machine in your area. How do you get that support? You get the organizations that fund that machine on your side. How do you get those organizations on your side? You promise to make their investment in you pay dividends when you come into power.

⬐ technovader

Sure, but his points apply to almost every suburb in US and Canada. This isn't a one off problem

⬐ AlexandrB

This sounds like a free activity or daycamp for kids[1]. I don't see what the big deal is. Gives kids a hobby and keeps them from getting into trouble. Probably a net savings long term when you consider the cost of dealing with youth crime.

By this name logic, public libraries and museums are also a waste of money.

[1] https://kids-fishing.com/fishing-chicago/

Edit: It's also worth considering the scale of the problem vs the cost of a program like this. The article says that the state is billions in debt, meanwhile this costs .35 million - probably less than the average house in Illinois. A debt of billions seems more structural in nature than small, possibly unwise spends like this. This is the political equivalent of boomers telling young people that they could afford a house if only they cut back on avocado toast.

⬐ foobarian

I am biased because I quite like living in the suburbs, and get quite suspicious when some manifesto comes up that dictates I should feel bad for it. Why is the solution to live in better designed cities instead of better designed suburbs? Are cities still necessary given the modern conditions?

⬐ germinalphrase

The argument is that suburbs are incapable of affording the infrastructure required for their own existence. These costs are either subsidized or require persistent (perhaps unrealistic) growth to cover without dramatically increasing suburban taxes.

"Are cities necessary given the modern conditions?"

How many suburbs would exist without the corresponding city center? And, don't we just call suburbs without a city center, you know, towns?

⬐ SketchySeaBeast

> And, don't we just call suburbs without a city center, you know, towns?

Towns still typically need to manage their own utilities while suburbs don't.

⬐ danaris

But towns that manage their own utilities do exist. That suggests that suburbs are not fundamentally unsustainable, they just need to adjust their calculations and expectations.

⬐ SketchySeaBeast

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.

⬐ danaris

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.

⬐ SketchySeaBeast

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.

⬐ bombcar

Exactly. I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas.

I suspect there are bad suburbs somewhere, but here ain't it.

⬐ heyda

That's not really how funding works though. Say a company bids to build or refurbish a new street, the money paid to the company comes from a variety of pools, local, state, federal and utilities, to get funding from the different organizations the contract usually have multiple requirements like 'must build pipes for sewage, power, internet, ect' and the funding percentages of the project will depend on whats being built and where. That said, the people living in those houses will likely also pay state/federal taxes and utilities so its more complex. You also can't expect local towns or cities to foot the complete for big projects like highway overpasses and bridges and stuff, so how much a city contributes to infrastructure and gets back is harder to say.

⬐ JumpCrisscross

> I'm in a smallish town that owns its own power and water utility and maintains its own roads, and isn't "wealthy" or "exceptionally taxed" compared to other areas

Are you in a net contributor state as well? I live in a similar town, but it's in Wyoming, a state which benefits from federal transfers from urban centers.

⬐ bombcar

Not sure, is there a list of "net contributor" states? And I suspect those look at federal budgets only, and ignore the other methods of "contributing".

⬐ HelpfulLinkp

https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/11/andrew-cuo...

⬐ JumpCrisscross

> is there a list of "net contributor" states?

Yup [1].

> ignore the other methods of "contributing"

Nobody is arguing we write off New Mexico, Mississippi or West Virginia. But their lifestyles are subsidized by Delaware (special case), Minnesota, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut and New York. (Scaling the net contribution to GDP removes much of the partisan slant introduced by urban centers having more people, and thus bigger numbers, as well as leaning blue.)

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2011/08/01/the-red-...

⬐ throwaway0a5e

>Are you in a net contributor state as well?

Screw off with red herring the partisan talking points. It's not even a good talking point. It's only ever trotted out by the ivory tower crowd that doesn't understand that the variations in federal tax money back pale in comparison to variations local wealth in the first place and simply can't fathom how municipalities that are less well off run themselves.

Getting a few more cents back on the dollar isn't gonna fix SF's homeless problems and getting a few cents less back isn't turn Miami into Detroit either.

⬐ ghaff

Suburbs are towns (or small cities) in many parts of the US. I'm not sure it's even especially common in the US for cities to expand to engulf the whole surrounding area with a single central government. Although there are certainly examples such as Houston, I believe.

⬐ dionidium

Annexation happened a lot in the U.S. but it didn't happen everywhere. Some places, like my hometown of St. Louis, are practically defined by the lack of annexation (although, even in that most famous case, St. Louis did annex several suburbs in the 19th Century, before its Great Divorce). Other places, like Chicago or NYC, pretty famously annexed practically everything around them. (Brooklyn was even once its own city.)

⬐ ghaff

It's probably more common out West. In New England, while Boston did annex some neighboring communities, Cambridge and Somerville are still separate cities. And get just a little bit further out and you have a bunch of clumps of a few thousand people that are independent towns. I used to work with someone from Australia who could never get over all the 5,000 person towns with their own school system, various boards, etc.

⬐ TrispusAttucks

Isn't this an infinite regress?

How could cities survive without farm land?

How could cities survive without outsourced materials?

We live in an interdependent interconnected global society where everything and everyone subsidizes everyone else.

⬐ germinalphrase

The residents of city centers need farms, so it is logical that they would subsidize some amount of rural infrastructure. Residents of cities require materials from elsewhere, so it is logical they would pay the cost of acquiring those resources.

What is the benefit to the city resident in subsiding the infrastructure of a suburb? Why shouldn't suburban residents pay the cost of their own infrastructure?

⬐ TigeriusKirk

The city resident needs the labor of the residents of the suburbs in order for the city to function.

⬐ germinalphrase

Which doesn't necessitate the presence of the suburban environment. If suburban residents want a lifestyle distinct from living in the city, that is absolutely fine - but they should pay the costs of that lifestyle as it is a choice (just as living in a single family home versus an apartment is a choice urban residents make and should pay the corresponding costs to support).

⬐ TigeriusKirk

Why shouldn't the city pay the costs necessary to attract the labor they need?

⬐ throw0101a

> Why shouldn't the city pay the costs necessary to attract the labor they need?

Because they don't need the specifically-suburban labor? They can get the labor from their 'fellow' urban dwellers?

⬐ germinalphrase

Presumably, the suburban residents work at businesses in the city. The city has attracted the businesses. It is the business that directly demands and compensates labor not the city.

⬐ jrkatz

Asserting that the cost is necessary is a _big_ assumption. It's subsidized, sure, but that doesn't imply that it needs to be. If the subsidy ends, maybe wages will rise to close the gap, or maybe they won't, and suburban residents will move into denser accommodations nearer the city.

⬐ TigeriusKirk

Or the suburban residents will move to a city that pays for them to live they way they want to live.

Cities are in competition for talent and labor. Those that provide more of what the people who provide that labor want will do better than those that do not.

⬐ jrkatz

Right, I am suggesting that a city can play out this competition by paying higher wages, i.e. paying suburban workers directly, rather than indirectly via subsidy. The experiment here is in wondering what those same workers would do given a net zero change to their income through a larger paycheck and higher housing costs. The subsidy doesn't allow efficient price discovery.

⬐ lemonlime

No, it's not an infinite regress.

>How could cities survive without farm land?

Is someone proposing getting rid of farmland? Aren't suburbs net destroyers of farmland by removing wide areas of land close to cities that would be great for farming?

>How could cities survive without outsourced materials?

Are you referring to materials outsourced from huge cities in China? Or from non-suburban areas in America where mining occurs? Overall, suburbs are not providing a physical material benefit to cities in or out of the US.

>We live in an interdependent interconnected global society where everything and everyone subsidizes everyone else.

This is naive and not how subsidies work. The economy is interconnected but that does not mean that equal subsidies are happening in all directions. There are enormous net subsidies leaving cities and going to suburbs, leaving blue states and going to red states. For better or worse it's not some kind of fantasy where all people and modes of life are sharing in perfect harmony.

For example suburbs are way worse at pollution per capita. This is not surprising given how wasteful it is to drive everywhere, forcing every structure to have it's own independent heating, cooling, water, etc. That's a cost borne by city people living comparatively greener ways of life in terms of air pollution, global warming, etc. And to be clear, it's also a literal financial subsidy from cities to suburbs in a bunch of ways, including subsidizing automobile travel in a huge way with roads, etc. Lots has been written about this by smarter people than me.

How do you suppose that suburban people are subsidizing city people for the suburbs added pollution?

⬐ ghaff

There seems to be a naive belief that if everyone just lived in dense urban cores there would be no need to pay for infrastructure beyond the city limits.

⬐ Ekaros

Question really is the mechanism of pay. Maybe those costs on outside should be included in price of products and materials they buy. So for food the cost that goes to farmers and via them to local taxes should increase. As that would reflect what it really costs to produce for example food.

⬐ Ensorceled

The average farm needs a single, nearby access road and power; water and septic is local (that's changing).

A suburb needs that nearby road, lots of streets, water lines, sewage, significant power, often street lights, etc. etc.

⬐ TrispusAttucks

And the city needs transport networks and power grids that reach far beyond the city limits.

The only logical difference is a matter of scale and limits.

The same rules apply to any region that has dependencies outside of its own borders.

The only way to not be subsidized in some fashion is to live directly off of the land in the form of some nomadic tribe.

⬐ Ensorceled

We’re talking suburbs. My city block contains literally thousands of homes and commercial properties in a zone that would contain, at most a few hundred McMansions. The cost to deliver services needed are within an order of magnitude of a suburb but the tax base is significantly higher.

⬐ TrispusAttucks

It cost more to maintain infrastructure that experiences an order of magnitude more usage than an infrequently used set of infrastructure.

The hinges of a door used once a day will last longer than the hinges of a door used one thousand.

A road that sees one delivery truck a month will last longer than one that sees thousands.

⬐ Ensorceled

I'm trying to figure out if you are agreeing with me or arguing with me.

Rural: Low usage, low maintenance low services (road,power,internet), low tax base

Urban: High usage, high maintenance, high services (water, sewer, road, power, internet, transit), high tax base

Suburban: High usage, high maintenance, high services (water, sewer, road, power, internet, transit), low tax base

Only one of these, by necessity needs subsidizing ...

⬐ TrispusAttucks

I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that property tax on suburban property is quite high.

⬐ Ensorceled

Yes, but it's still not close to the total aggregated costs of delivery of services. Suburbs are REALLY inefficient and expensive.

⬐ thegginthesky

Infrastructure outside the city is normally paid by a combination of County Taxes and State Taxes, and roads are also financed by the Federal Gas Tax, tolls and other forms of government income.

Of course we should pay for infrastructure outside the city, but if you expect to live outside city centers and have costly infrastructure such as a sewage system, high speed fiber internet and so on, you should pay accordingly.

What happens now is that this infrastructure is either financed by those living in city centers or by debt.

So I don't buy your Straw Man argument that people believe that dense urban cores are better. What was explicitly discussed is that people who live in the suburbs don't pay what they should.

⬐ ghaff

My town pays for sewer (which I don't have) and water (which I do) out of property taxes, assessments, and a quarterly water bill. I pay Comcast for my own Internet and I pay for private trash. Property taxes also pay for education (a big chunk), snow plowing, police/fire/library, etc. There's some money to roads but, yes, that's mostly from the state and gas taxes which residents also pay of course. So it's not like cities are picking up the whole bill; while they have more people paying taxes, a lot of costs are much higher as well.

⬐ germinalphrase

The argument is that suburban residents should carry the true cost of their infrastructure, not that they shouldn't exist.

⬐ dionidium

There's a reason suburbs are located directly adjacent to density and not islands of development in the middle of nowhere. Suburbs survive by proximity to density and, in most cases, pay no taxes to support that density. Further, they use the state (via zoning laws) to prevent the natural development of more housing within their borders, guaranteeing a perpetual state of dependence, and ensuring that prices stay high enough to keep out the riffraff.

It's a fundamentally parasitic arrangement.

What suburbanites want is to be close enough to the city to enjoy all the benefits of being in a major metro area, without the hassle of supporting the project of urbanity. They want all the upsides without participating in addressing the (very real) downsides.

A suburb is in physical reality little more than just another neighborhood that has declared itself to be something else entirely in order to shirk its responsibility to the whole (sort of like if I declared my bedroom to be a separate apartment, so that I didn't have to acknowledge my roommate's chore list). Declaring yourself independent of your metro's core city doesn't magically make it so. It's just sticking your head in the sand.

⬐ Enginerrrd

>Further, they use the state (via zoning laws) to prevent the natural development of more housing within their borders, guaranteeing a perpetual state of dependence, and ensuring that prices stay high enough to keep out the riffraff.

>It's a fundamentally parasitic arrangement.

Except that those "riff raff" aren't footing much if any of the tax bill for the high density city. That bill is paid by the wealthier people, many of whom are living in those suberbs, subsidizing the city costs. Who is parasitizing whom here?

⬐ dionidium

This is like trying to define a garden to include only the tomatoes and none of the weeds. My commonsense opinion is that both the tomatoes and the weeds are part of the garden and if you setup a system where you say, "look, I only take care of the tomatoes, I'm not responsible for those awful weeds" then you're going to end up with a shitty garden.

Rich people and poor people alike live in cities. It is basically insane to separate them physically and declare them independent. You can't define away the problems of urbanization through economic segregation.

I mean, it would be one thing to enforce physical separation while still acknowledging that both halves are part of the same city (and the same tax base), but to go so far as to say, "no, we're actually not even part of the city, despite all commonsense physical reality; we're actually just a whole separate thing over here" is really an awe-inspiring level of audacity and chutzpah.

⬐ foobarian

> but to go so far as to say, "no, we're actually not even part of the city, despite all commonsense physical reality; we're actually just a whole separate thing over here"

This was done pretty much the entire history of civilization. Communist revolutions tried to ignore the human nature that leads to it and we all know how that turned out.

⬐ dionidium

My argument is for stronger private property rights, the elimination of state-enforced zoning, fewer regulations, and the right to build whatever kind of housing you want on property you own, which can be characterized as "communist" to the extent that words have no meaning.

Your position is that the state should use central planning to determine which kinds of economic activity are allowed on which parcels and then restrict property rights accordingly. The call is coming from inside the house.

⬐ foobarian

There are plenty of suburbs* formed thanks to strong property rights where individuals came together and set up zoning rules of their own. Take this far enough and you end up way on the other side, with the state forbidding any zoning rules at all.

* Note that the way we are using this word is pretty vague and may be contributing extra crosstalk

⬐ dionidium

> Note that the way we are using this word is pretty vague and may be contributing extra crosstalk

Yeah, it's an awful term, because it refers to hundred-year-old densely-populated urbanized areas that directly abut core cities whose borders were artificially locked into place in the 19th Century, and to greenfield interstate-offramp developments, and just about everything in between.

But, just to address your "way on the other side" scenario: forbidding zoning is exactly what the state should do. You don't get to have democracy for core rights. It doesn't matter if everybody in the neighborhood votes to restrict property rights. They're not up to a vote, just like you can't vote to restrict freedom of speech. It's not subject to a vote.

The right to build housing on my own private property is very clearly, in my view, protected by the U.S. Constitution and restricting that right is plainly a taking. I don't care what Euclid says. It was wrongly decided.

⬐ bbarn

This point of view ignores the fact that suburbs are also necessary for employers to be able to have an ample worker pool without paying salaries that are high enough to afford city-only residents (a cost that would go even higher as more people moved into a city for work). Many people in suburbs who work in cities would not be able to afford living in that city, or, flat out refuse to because cities aren't always the best places for families.

Suburbs are a compromise.

⬐ throw0101a

> Many people in suburbs who work in cities would not be able to afford living in that city, or, flat out refuse to because cities aren't always the best places for families.

City/property is expensive because it is desirable. The US stopped building that kind of thing post-WW2, so the supply is finite and generally not growing anymore. Zoning is such that only car-centric, low-density developments are generally allowed.

There is nothing to prevent a policy change to allow "city" building like used to happen pre-WW2:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

> Suburbs are a compromise.

No, they are bad design that devours land like a locust which causes unnecessarily high energy use and has made climate change worse:

* https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment...

There is no good reason for car-centric suburbs, especially when the residents do not pay the externalities of their life style.

⬐ BeFlatXIII

As I said elsewhere in the thread, larger apartments plus adequate soundproofing would go a long way to making urban living realistic for families.

⬐ dionidium

Urbanization is a compromise (primarily of access vs. space/privacy). Suburbs, on the other hand, are a stubborn refusal to compromise. Everybody has to make tradeoffs about cost, space, time, etc, but suburbanites say, "no, no, no -- no tradeoffs for me. In this narrow zone we're just going to make it illegal to build the kind of housing that acknowledges the tradeoffs of urban life. In this zone it is illegal to make urban housing. In this zone tradeoffs are forbidden and you just have to be rich enough to ignore them to live here."

⬐ jjav

> no tradeoffs for me

Of course there are tradeoffs, usually in the form of a longer commute.

> In this zone it is illegal to make urban housing.

So you'd propose forcefully building your preferred style of housing everywhere, even if the local residents don't want it?

Short of declaring a dictatorship, it won't succeed to force everyone to live in the same style of building. A very large part of the population has no interest in living in a high-rise apartment.

⬐ dionidium

> 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 land.

It's very important that we get this part clear in our minds. Zoning is coercion, not the other way around.

You'll sometimes see headlines about a "single-family home ban" whenever a city does zoning reform. No such thing exists. When we allow more uses on a city lot, we obviously have banned nothing.

And, I care about as much what the neighbors want me to do with my private property as I care what they think about my right to free expression. It's not subject to a vote. These rights are codified in our Constitution. They are not subject to a popularity contest. Some things are fundamental. We wrote those things down in a special document and put it in a folder titled, "things you don't get to vote on."

> Short of declaring a dictatorship, it won't succeed to force everyone to live in the same style of building. A very large part of the population has no interest in living in a high-rise apartment.

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.

⬐ jjav

> 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 bricks" just because you'd prefer to tear it down to build a highrise.

⬐ dionidium

> 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.

⬐ foobarian

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.

⬐ jjav

> What suburbanites want is to be close enough to the city to enjoy all the benefits of being in a major metro area

Sure some suburbs exist in the outskirts of major city centers, but across the country the vast majority do not.

⬐ jdhn

>Suburbs survive by proximity to density and, in most cases, pay no taxes to support that density

Why should they pay to support that density?

⬐ dionidium

Because they benefit so enormously from the agglomeration effects of being adjacent to it. That density is the only reason they exist in the first place.

If my wife declared the kitchen to be a separate part of our apartment that she's not responsible for but then came into the kitchen every single day -- worked there, ate there, met friends there -- without ever participating in the maintenance of the kitchen, then I would think she's shirking her responsibility to the whole (and I'd be right).

"What's the problem? I have defined the area where I sleep to be independent of the kitchen! What part of that don't you get?" is not a compelling argument.

⬐ throw0101a

> Suburbs survive by proximity to density and, in most cases, pay no taxes to support that density. […] What suburbanites want is to be close enough to the city to enjoy all the benefits of being in a major metro area, without the hassle of supporting the project of urbanity. They want all the upsides without participating in addressing the (very real) downsides.

You have this backwards: the higher density folks do not need support from the lower density folks. It is the opposite:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

⬐ dionidium

You're repeating my own argument, not contradicting it. Suburbanites freeload off nearby density.

⬐ technovader

This is addressed in another video by the same person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

But basically suburbs can be designed well too.

It needs to have strong public transit that connects to the city (or wherever most people work).

And you still need good walkable and bikable paths everywhere. Because driving cars just sucks for everyone.

⬐ pwthornton

We need both to be better designed.

I live in what I suppose you could call a better-designed suburb (or small city; it's all semantics). My suburb of DC has a dense downtown with metro rail and bus access. It has plenty of walkability and apartments/condos for people who want that. It also has townhouses and single-family homes within walking distance of downtown. As you get further from the downtown, it becomes more and more traditionally suburban.

The core issue with this is cost. There are so few places like this in the U.S. that it's expensive to live here. Retrofitting a lot of suburbs with more of a core would help a lot.

The other big issue is what is called missing middle housing. There is a lot of apartments/condos and single-family housing. There aren't many townhouses or duplexes. This creates a situation where many people are either buying more house than they need or living in a space smaller than their needs/desires. This also causes single-family housing prices to be higher than they should be.

Ultimately, retrofitting the suburbs is the great challenge of the 21st century. We need more walkability and density in their cores. Basically, we need to bring back streetcar suburbs (which is what my town is, and after going through decades of losing density, it has been transformed).

And then cities need to become better designed for more people, especially people with families and retirees.

⬐ bbarn

> Ultimately, retrofitting the suburbs is the great challenge of the 21st century. We need more walkability and density in their cores. Basically, we need to bring back streetcar suburbs (which is what my town is, and after going through decades of losing density, it has been transformed).

> And then cities need to become better designed for more people, especially people with families and retirees.

Ultimately, it all boils down to work. Walkability is great, being able to bike is great, but if you don't have industry in your walkable suburb, it's just there and nice and everyone still has to drive or take a train to work in the city. As long as work centralizes in cities, we will have problems like this.

⬐ adamsmith143

But that was always the intent of suburbs, live here and work elsewhere. Public Transportation is the issue, not jobs in suburbs.

⬐ thatfrenchguy

Yes, detached house suburbs are terrible for the environment: you take too much space, cars emit way too much CO2 per mile and you use them to go everywhere, even for small errands.

You can have well designed attached houses-or-appartment suburbs, and they exist, but in the US they’re $$$ for obvious reasons.

⬐ throw0101a

> Why is the solution to live in better designed cities instead of better designed suburbs? Are cities still necessary given the modern conditions?

North American stopped building "better designed suburbs" post-WW2 when everything went car centric. Before that we had:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

Anything car-centric is worse designed. That does not mean we have to ban cars 100%, but simply design things so the car is an option rather than a necessity.

⬐ Sharlin

Cities are more necessary than ever. Sustainable infrastructure is more necessary than ever. Unsustainable ways of living (ie. car-dependent suburbs) are one of the primary reasons it is so hard to effectively fight climate change.

⬐ stjohnswarts

Most far leftists would like us all to live in concrete towers, in small apartments, sharing a common bathroom area for maximum efficiency and density. Probably with mixed in sources of food and drink but not much in the way of consumerist "excess". It doesn't account for ideas of freedom or individuality or needing to see the sunlight. The problem with this is that it doesn't account for the rebellion that happens when you cause people to finally break from this unnatural condition and a million years of evolution.

⬐ danielrpa

The far leftists would, however, reserve for themselves a nice piece of suburbia as the rulers need good living conditions to properly plan people's lives.

⬐ adamsmith143

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 grocery store becomes a 50 minute walk along 3 lane highways.

⬐ jjav

> 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.

⬐ adamsmith143

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.

⬐ PakG1

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 that abnormal in the world?

⬐ ghaff

"Suburb" covers a lot of ground. There's the classical US cul-de-sac development of course. But people also use the term to encompass small cities and the periphery of larger cities that are mostly spread-out single family homes often generally lacking the ability to easily walk to stores, etc. Or largely exurban towns that may have a center but with homes often spread over a number of acres. (Which are still often considered urban by the US Census because they're basically within an hour or so of a larger city.)

⬐ detaro

wikipedia struggles a bit with the definition, but the pictures at the right show very clearly how large the range of what at least sometimes is called a "suburb" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburb

But for discussions like this you probably can assume that people mean the less-dense, residential-only types

⬐ ghaff

Yes, people think about characteristics like needing a car, mostly segregated (strip malls, industrial parks) commercial development, primarily single family homes, etc. but not truly rural (although that's a matter of degree). Whether or not it's actually a suburb of a city, an outlying town, or part of an outlying smaller city.

⬐ theshrike79

"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 to drop them off.

If someone sees anyone walking in the evening or at night, they call the cops and the walker is arrested first, then investigated later. The unlucky ones get shot.

⬐ PakG1

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.

⬐ BeFlatXIII

IMO, the solution to voluntarily increasing density are larger apartments and strictly-enforced soundproofing requirements in the building code.

⬐ Ekaros

Also 7-12 storey building isn't really that high. Even if I see building denser it seems still to be very low for what should be pretty dense area.

⬐ kkfx

IMVHO (and personal experience) a certain level of density is needed, just because even if traveling is cheap it's not as cheap as such and we are social animals needing each others BUT more than a certain level of density issues surpass much the proximity needs.

Honestly my take is that we need Rivieras witch means a bit dense BUT not more than a bit suburbs that are NOT only residential but mixed. As a result we can have "near enough" services/people without failing in the density trap.

The big issue is that human settlements never worked well when centrally planned and when they are not if they work more people want to be there, so the initial low density became right and than too much dense. After that density issue start to bite, people to flee and the cycle restart. No recipe to fix it, it's more a social issue than a mere architectural one.

Some, like McKinsey think we can solve some complexity issue with flying vehicles and I agree, but I do not think we are as near as they state https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... and we still have an enormous isse: making VTOLs/STOLs it's relatively easy (behind the BEV part) but they can just move people and little volume/weigh goods so we can't build a home moving raw materials without roads and if we need them we need to build and maintain them...

Keep following the "in medio stat virtus" principle about the density and diversity described above I think we also need to came back to a moderately distributed economy: some activities need big factories, so far we can't do anything different, BUT only some. Many others can be done in smaller settlements witch for instance that instead of build mega-factories for anything we should try to achieve economy of scale with standards and standard tools in many smaller factories. Easy to say, hard to built but... In the end internet was a free scale network of networks and prove to scale well enough. I think the same principle can be generally valid. The VERY COMPLEX and very expensive game is try it in the real word because social experiments can't be done and destroy as software projects. They demand very long time just to build them. Enormous resources etc and simulations can't really help more than a bit. Since in the past we have build many-centuries longs projects I think we can achieve such result anyway, but not in the modern mind settlement of something quick and done. Convincing people to embrace such revolution and remain engaged for few decades is however... Well... In the past we used religion to push people to such efforts...

⬐ mulmen

A ”better designed suburb” is a city. Suburbs are unsustainable because they waste so much space.

⬐ bobthechef

None

⬐ azemetre

You shouldn't feel bad but it's more of a matter that your lifestyle is likely heavily subsidized because your town doesn't have the tax base (nor will they raise your taxes) to support the infrastructure that's required to make suburbs function.

If you were paying the true costs of living in the suburbs this wouldn't be an issue, but there's a high likelihood you don't.

Cities will always be necessary because they are one of the most efficient ways (cheaper to build, maintain, and support) to account/house large amounts of people. If you want to live in other types of areas you should, ideally, be willing to pay the true costs.

I can't link the article since I'm on a subway but Strong Towns is a good resource explaining how suburbs bankrupt themselves in the future since they won't be able to pay for the costly maintenance of their infrastructure (water, electric, roads, etc):

https://www.strongtowns.org/

⬐ causi

I don't think his conclusions are great if you're working based off his examples. Like he brings up an example of a small neighborhood that, if it paid for its own road maintenance, would have to raise property taxes by 46% like that would be more than a mild inconvenience for the privilege of not living in a human hive.

⬐ laverya

If it paid for its own road maintenance, and no other services such as water or sewer, they would need a 46% property tax increase just to cover that one thing.

⬐ causi

I'd be willing and able to pay quintuple my current property tax to keep the number of times I hear a car horn on my commute at one or two a week instead of one every ten seconds. Lots of other people are the same. An increase in cost of living in suburbs would be annoying but far from the "suburbs are a grotesque impossibility" stance of Charles Marohn.

⬐ eschulz

I think an article you may be referring to is the in-depth Strong Towns series that analyzes Galesburg, Illinois. Galesburg is by no means a suburb, and in many ways it's more comparable to a big city since it dominates its county and has little suburbs of its own. I think the assessment was that Galesburg officials are making incredibly unfortunate and wasteful decisions, but the good news is that there are examples of better financial choices they can make going forward.

However, if another article on this subject comes to mind I'd appreciate to know what it is, once you're off the train of course.

⬐ honkdaddy

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 others can pay almost nothing in taxes and still enjoy huge amounts of government benefit.

⬐ giraffe_lady

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.

⬐ honkdaddy

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...

⬐ arrow7000

So you admit that living in the suburbs is like being on welfare?

⬐ honkdaddy

If you want to look at that way, sure. The point I'm making is that it's not a particularly interesting or descriptive way to look at society.

⬐ nishs

the american individualism is showing.

⬐ honkdaddy

I'm not American.

⬐ AlexandrB

The person making $120,000 is heavily benefiting from a public infrastructure that makes $120k/yr jobs possible. A ditch digger needs almost no infrastructure besides a shovel to do his job. An engineer needs schools and universities to educate his colleagues, roads and railways to deliver parts required for the product he's working on, and police services that deter theft of those products once they're built. Not to mention a consumer base with enough money to afford the product in question.

⬐ dionidium

This is right. The suburbanite wants the benefits of agglomeration, but they want to define their existence within it so that they aren't exposed to any of its downsides. It’s a neat trick.

⬐ kiba

There are downsides to living a suburban lifestyle as it is typically designed. They just don't care or unaware.

⬐ Mirioron

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.

⬐ foobarian

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.

⬐ Mirioron

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

⬐ sfifs

Why should every small sub-section of geographies "pay-out" for themselves. The whole point of higher level organizing constructs (company, conglomerate, state, country) is we take systemically better decisions - which at a nation level will involve keeping people with different preferences united under the nation's big idea by supporting the diversity of preferences.

If to take an example Google insisted every development be independently paying out immediately, there wouldn't be any Maps, Docs, Drive...

If there was a similar insistance by Xerox, probably no personal computing.

Amd even at a state level, even in the US, there are states that pay more to the nation and there are states that get more. In the rest of the world - particularly in Asia, we just consider this support costs for maintaining nationhood.

⬐ orthecreedence

Maybe they shouldn't pay out for themselves, but we should at least be aware of the costs so we can collectively plan and prioritize accordingly.

The same groups/organizations you named will often end activities or sub-groups that have a cost above a certain threshold.

I believe the overall intent here is to show the true cost of suburbs and evaluate if it's a pattern that cities can keep supporting. Ie, is the desire to live in the conditions suburbs create worth the cost of those arrangements?

⬐ davidn20

The problem with that analogy is, suburbs doesn't benefit anyone besides the people living in them. So, by that logic, they should sustain themselves. Maps, Docs, and etc provide value to people outside themselves.

⬐ falcolas

Suburbs provides housing. Housing on its own doesn't benefit anyone but those who live in them regardless of the density.

⬐ throw0101a

> Suburbs provides housing. […] regardless of the density.

At what cost, especially relative to other options. Lower density may end up costing more over the long term:

* https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment...

Urban living ≠ Manhattan:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E

⬐ falcolas

Cost is a separate topic, though an important one.

But ultimately in these threads, the elephant in the room is that the suburbs are subsidized† by the cities they don't pay taxes into.

So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs, instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)?

† Side note: I have not found to be true, personally. Suburbs are paid for by the people who live there and the county, into whom we pay our taxes. In truth, a lot of our money goes into businesses in the city (who will in turn pay taxes to the city), since that's where we all go for our goods.

⬐ throw0101a

> So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs […]

Why would anyone want to absorb something that costs more to run to provide the same services?

* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...

> […] instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)?

Perhaps they want to kill them because they are wasteful of area (often paving over perfectly good agricultural land), and cause climate change due to their reliance on cars.

Further, how much "choice" did suburban dwellers actually have? Post-WW2 most zoning has forced the creation of car-centric, low-density sprawl. Perhaps there are folks in the suburbs that want higher density neighbourhoods but because of the limited supply (due to lack of new build) the prices have gone up and they're priced out. Whose to say that walkable neighbourhoods wouldn't be popular if purchased in the "suburbs:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

> † Side note: I have not found to be true, personally.

I think this depends on the municipal boundaries involved. Depending on where the border is, on one side it could be that things built in the "old" / pre-WW2 way and on the other the "new" / post-WW2 way, and the taxes go to each municipality appropriately. In other places there could be the pre-WW2 Old Downtown and is walkable, but everything new is non-walkable. In those latter situations the more walkable parts are probably subsidizing the less walkable ones:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

⬐ jelling

This is incorrect on a political and economic level. Fwiw I live in lower Manhattan, so I’m not saying this because I benefit from suburban subsidies. But if the country as whole subsidizes roads and services for a suburb of net positive income tax payers with otherwise low usage of welfare services, there is an economic logic to that. And obviously it gets votes.

As much as I like living in a dense area and riding my bike, the rise of the YouTube educated urban planner has led to a lot conclusions that aren’t particularly sound. Doing a flaw P&L on a small town and deciding, in so many words, that it shouldn’t exist is peak smugness.

⬐ davidn20

I'm not an urban planner expert, but the logic makes sense to me. I look up my downtown condo vs a suburb home of comparable value, and I pay twice as much in property taxes. It's not hard to understand how density is inherently more efficient.

⬐ raxxorraxor

Wouldn't that mean that density in your case is less efficient since you pay more by a supposedly less valuable property?

⬐ davidn20

Depends on your perspective. Yes, it's less efficient for me (individually) because I'm subsidizing suburbs and paying more taxes.

But, I was talking about the city, society, or the greater good. Whatever you call it. Higher density is more efficient and uses less resources per capita. Period. Same reason private planes are so bad for the environment.

⬐ raxxorraxor

That might be true that higher density is more efficient, but efficiency isn't a sufficient metric for living overall. Putting everyone in camps would be more efficient too.

But do you really pay for suburbs? As I said, the cost intensive positions scale with the number of people. Schools, utilities, ...

⬐ None

None

⬐ digdugdirk

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 suburbs are generally unaware that they're being subsidized by the cities they live adjacent to, and have the expectation that their infrastructure and services be prioritized - generally to the detriment of the entire geographic region.

Going beyond that, the car-centric suburbia mindset has become the legal defacto design pattern, increasing costs and reducing livability for everyone.

So it's less that they should "pay-out" for themselves, and more that they should stop forcing their lifestyle choices on the rest of the population, and understand the costs associated with their lifestyle.

⬐ raxxorraxor

Subsidized in a way that they get a disproportionate amount of services perhaps. But I would argue that is almost irrelevant. Costly services like schooling and transport infrastructure scales mostly by the amount of people.

You could of course calculate business taxes proportionally to the work suburbs deliver, but that would be quite dishonest.

You can always say that only the most densely populated place carries its own... but that isn't convincing. I am not from the US, but we have similar discussions here. That people have to live in the city if they want to live efficient. Problem is that few want to and I think at that point the discussion should be almost ended.

⬐ t-3

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.

⬐ digdugdirk

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.

> […] why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for?

Suburbs are slowing falling into a state of disrepair, or at least more and more budget being taken away form other things:

* https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQUOHlAocY

⬐ rmason

why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for?

Have you ever been to Michigan? We have the 48th or 49th worst roads in America. They weren't like that when I was growing up or first got a drivers license in the sixties. Our auto insurance rates are higher and we have higher repairs than average.

We have the fifth or sixth highest gas taxes in the nation. Our Governor ran on a campaign slogan that she would "fix the damn roads". Her secret plan was to raise the gas taxes by forty cents which was rejected by the legislature. It's election year so a little bit of the COVID money is going to a small increase in road repair. How are Ohio and Indiana with lower state taxes able to keep their roads so good?

⬐ throw0101a

> why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for?

Who says they aren't?

> As small towns across the country confront rapidly deteriorating roads and shrinking maintenance budgets, more and more of them are opting for gravel roads over pavement.

* https://blog.midwestind.com/counties-municipalities-gravel-r...

Or it could be road maintenance is being paid for by money taken from other programs.

Suburbia is TERRIBLE from long-term efficiency and sustainability point of view. They create car-centric living style which is very hard to get rid off after it settles in.

Here is a really good video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

The Strong Town series by Not Just Bikes on YouTube is often linked on HN but the third video[0] in the series covers your question. Take a look if you are curious about where the "making ourselves poor" point of view is hatched.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

Large networks of large roads are not financially sustainable [1]. I can only assume this is more the case the more rural you get. Asking for more of the current American style of car infrastructure may not even work, depending on the specifics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ bombcar

Rural areas are actually cheaper because they do NOT have paved roads every 500 feet or so. The local county pays for all of the rural roads (maintenance, plowing, etc) and the little town pays for the roads in town; federal funds are only used for the interstate and some connecting ramps, etc.

What may not be sustainable is city-like road patterns with suburban densities.

I feel like this video on city growth is relevant, and was pretty interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

It suggests that a lot of the construction/repair needs of major cities could be reduced significantly, but it's a flaw inherent to their design that needs correcting first.

It will be interesting how the American suburbs will fare in the upcoming years. With interests rising and home buyers getting more careful, the Ponzi-esque scheme of buying a house in a suburb might collapse [1, 2].

American culture is partly unthinkable without cars because of planning and zoning failures made decades ago. Why don't have suburbs a lot of small super markets and other stores? Why does everybody need to drive miles and miles to get a gallon of milk?

1: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-pon...

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ decafninja

What is the alternative? Live in the city in dense, tight, expensive housing?

FWIW, many suburbs do have supermarkets and stores in their downtowns/mainstreets. I can walk...10 minutes or so to my local supermarket. But I choose not to do so because I can drive there and buy a week+'s worth of groceries and supplies in one go. I don't think most suburbanites hop in the car to get a single bottle of milk.

As much as there are people that prefer living in cities, there are people that prefer living in the suburbs.

A young twentysomething single me would have preferred living in downtown Manhattan and wouldn't have minded living in a 300 sqft studio, meeting friends, partying, partaking in cultural experiences that only a major city can offer.

Thirtysomething married me finds that scenario unappealing. Having a SFH in a quiet suburban street with a backyard to BBQ in, a garden to tend, lazy weekends with no cultural activities whatsoever, and a car(!) to drive around in is what I want... short of being extremely wealthy enough to have the best of both worlds.

⬐ foepys

Western Europe doesn't have the problems of America's suburbia. You just don't see the solutions because you are trapped in the mindset that cars are ubiquitous and alternatives must therefore be bad.

As I said, it will be interesting how well the American suburbs will be able to function. They function only because of heavily subsidized infrastructure and the poor parts of town are the ones paying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

⬐ seunosewa

Do you have any answer to the OP's preference for raising children in the space and privacy of a single family home?

⬐ imtringued

You don't need a massive backyard for that.

⬐ foepys

Yes, the Netherlands have a large amount of single family homes without the need for American-style suburbs. Over 56% of all Dutch citizens own at least one house, 69% of all residential buildings are owned by the people living in them. Those houses are mostly not oversized like American houses and have less land attached to them. For comparison, the home ownership rate for the US is about 65.3%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...

Everything points to the American way of doing housing and infrastructure is wrong and could be done cheaper and easier if American city planners were to look at other parts of the world.

> RE developers are on the hook for those in new developments.

I'd suggest educating yourself on how infrastructure maintenance is actually paid for.

Here's a video to start: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

They don't charge you the full cost of providing those services.

There is a whole playlist about this: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ cascom

I would call that mismanagement, no?

I think people don't realize just how bad car dependence is for their own communities. notjustbikes has many good videos on the topic, such as:

Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

Why American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

The Ugly, Dangerous, and Inefficient Stroads found all over the US & Canada:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

⬐ cassandratt

We understand. What are we supposed to do, sell our houses and move to a condo downtown? Whose going to buy them, and where the fuck are we going to get the resources to house that many people without a massive energy/resource exploitation. So "no cars" is childish and naive.

Awareness isn't the issue, but awareness of an issue we have no control over does nothing of value to anyone other than add anxiety.

I don't think you understand how much it costs to maintain the infrastructure to your house.

Not Just Bikes did an excellent series on this specific problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ tharne

> I don't think you understand how much it costs to maintain the infrastructure to your house.

I sure do understand it, but I also understand that when it comes to comparing the environmental impact of upper middle class urbanites and suburbanites, we're splitting hairs. Neither of these lifestyles as they exist now are sustainable, so what this really boils down to is a bunch of rich folks living in cities looking down their noses at us middle class plebs in the burbs, simply because they find suburbs aesthetically distasteful rather than out of any genuine concern for the environment.

⬐ kd913

>I sure do understand it, but I also understand that when it comes to comparing the environmental impact of upper middle class urbanites and suburbanites, we're splitting hairs

Yea that is not at all true. You can literally compare the CO2 per capita for an average American/Canadian and someone from Europe and in general they produce 1/3 of the CO2. It is not a negligible difference.

This is largely caused because of the urban designs which don't focus on gas dependent suburbia. Or the benefits from efficiency at scale which can only be achieved in high density living accommodations.

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

It is also a plain fact that downtown urban blocks are the profit generators for cities whilst suburbia is largely a financial hole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

You looking at a classist angle is I think an internal bias. There are poor/rich in both areas. It's just a straight fact though that suburban design is not sustainable both economically and ecologically.

⬐ tharne

> It's just a straight fact though that suburban design is not sustainable both economically and ecologically.

I've never disputed this fact. It's true, the American suburban model is not sustainable. However, the urban lifestyle common in North America or Europe is likewise not sustainable either. So it does become a class/political issue since neither lifestyle actually address the issue at hand. It's just a bunch of people judging each other for their unsustainable lifestyles.

⬐ kd913

>However, the urban lifestyle common in North America or Europe is likewise not sustainable either.

What do you mean by this? There is a large gulf of difference between the two, and I feel you are more commenting on the consumerist patterns of the above. That pattern is a lot more sustainable model in high density urban environments from a logistics, CO2 perspective.

From a modern quality of living perspective, it is vastly more sustainable both economically and ecologically to have people in high density housing. Hence why it was the traditional form of infrastructure for huge portions of history up until the failed US suburban experiment.

It's much easier to hook up good quality and efficient infrastructure to a high density block than to a suburban neighborhood. The above infrastructure would be better utilization rates, cheaper to install, and easier to offset than what you propose.

> It would significantly expand taxes

How exactly? Do you have any examples? Also, have you ever seen the price of car infrastructure? I would be willing to bet that denser walkable urban infrastructure projects are waaaaay cheaper than building and maintaining sprawling road, sewage, and power transmission networks. Sprawl is seriously draining the finances of many small cities and towns in the US. There's a whole book about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=strong+towns

You could also just watch this smug video https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ adamc

Yeah, but it's not terribly likely that you could stop maintaining the sprawl, because it's already there. Certainly not quickly.

⬐ thethethethe

Yeah they are going to raise taxes to pay for it because that's all they can do. Which is the opposite of what OP said

⬐ rootusrootus

The only way you could sell it as an overall less expensive option would be with really elaborate studies that could convincingly tie the transportation effects to the design of the school system.

But, when it comes to schools, fewer buildings means lower costs. We've been suffering this for years, there aren't anywhere near as many schools in my district as there were 30 or 40 years ago, even as the number of students go up. It's less expensive to consolidate the schools into a fewer number of locations and increase the capacity of the remaining locations.

Ergo, going the other direction and creating more, smaller schools (each with their own infrastructure, custodians, some level of administration, etc) is going to require taxpayers to foot the bill. And not like a levy that only lasts for X years, but on an ongoing basis. Where I live (Oregon) there is massive resistance to new taxes. I do not think we are unique in that regard.

Americans seems to abhor car/fuel/etc. taxes to the point that they vote out any politician who dares suggesting anything even approximating that, and as a result they have a huge infrastructure maintenance backlog waiting to pop. Not helped by the fact that suburban sprawl is incredibly expensive to maintain (per the tax revenue the municipality gets) compared to more densely built environments.

The "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel has a series of videos on the strongtowns, uh, thingy, that goes into more details. In particular this one describes the financing of suburban infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

Why American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ qwertox

Thank you. It does have a touch of "Practical Engineering" by Grady Hillhouse, but just focused on Cities and without the Engineering part. In terms of information quality and tone.

Suburbs are a Ponzi scheme. They do not cover their existing infrastructure maintenance costs...

https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

Or for a video version, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

If you prefer videos, Not Just Bikes on YouTube made a series of videos about Strong Towns: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...

Here is here video about The Growth Ponzi Scheme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

One comment on this is that less dense areas make it very hard to build infrastructure. For example, if there are 10 families living on a mile stretch of road, think of how much it costs to build a mile of road, along with (possibly) water and sewer there. And then the annual maintenance cost. And then the other road networks require to connect that one road, etc.

Those 10 families don’t pay nearly enough in taxes to cover the cost of infrastructure maintenance. It relies on grants from state and federal governments, paid for by taxes in dense cities, to cover the expense.

My point: sparse is not objectively better. I think the quality of life we have come to expect in suburbs and rural areas is not possible without the taxes gained from also having dense places.

More info, and a very interesting video series here: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ syshum

>>Those 10 families don’t pay nearly enough in taxes to cover the cost of infrastructure maintenance.

I dont think you can objectively say that is true given that road maintenance is one of the least costly things a government does, and the less densely p;populated the less maintenance is done to that road sometimes none at all

That further assumes that the road in those areas is maintained by the government this is also not universally true, there are plenty of housing additions that have HOA's where the HOA is responsible for the road maintenance

Also in almost 100% of cases the developer creating the subdivision is responsible for the infrastructure costs to build said subdivision and also often has to pay to improve infrastructure leading into the new subdivision

See also:

NotJustBikes https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

Strong Towns https://www.strongtowns.org/

This argument is commonly thrown around, but makes no sense in practice.

The denser the place, the more efficient the infrastructure use. 50 families in a single apartment building use massively fewer pipes & power lines than 50 families in single family homes. But the tax revenue for the city can still be the same. In a denser area, those families are less likely to own or need cars, and if they do, they drive less.

On the other hand, low-density suburban neighborhoods are often so inefficient that the maintenance cost of their infrastructure is more than the tax revenue the residents bring in. (Here's a good overview of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0)

It's more true to say that "we don't have the infrastructure for single family homes" than it is to say that we don't have the infrastructure for apartment buildings.

⬐ andrewmcwatters

India must have the most efficient real estate in the world then. Let's take a nice hard look at their infrastructure.

Do you own a home? Would you willingly let it be replaced alongside surrounding properties with an apartment complex? After all, it's more efficient.

You shouldn't own a washing machine either, that's silly. A laundromat helps reduce the need to own the appliances and create a more social environment.

And we haven't even begun talking about that car you own. Gross. Public transportation is so much more efficient.

Oh you actually wanted to travel somewhere and not have to spend 4 hours of your day to go there, take care of your business, then come home? Weird.

⬐ frosted-flakes

Key quote: "When you lose money on every development, you don't make it up in volume."

Recommended watching on the channel 'Not Just Bikes':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQUOHlAocY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54

⬐ itronitron

'donoteat' also has a good series (Cities: Skylines) on city building in the US >> https://www.youtube.com/user/donoteat01/videos

⬐ mapt

Yeah, I enjoyed this and the WTYP podcast. I disagree with Justin a bit on his favored idea of "De-commodification of housing", making it some type of individual right rather than a form of tradeable property, versus leaving the capitalist framework by which we allocate individual housing in place, and just aggressively intervening by changing infrastructure, zoning, taxation, and development to create market conditions amenable to the population's interests.

I respect his POV, but I see the latter as more achievable. I think he sees a pernicious influence from local developers, and believes any government-led change that leaves them intact will necessarily be corrupted by them.

Its not just anti-road. Its non-dense development. The more spread out services the more resources it takes to maintain them.

The fact of the matter is that we've been accumulating "debt" to build suburbs by ignoring the costs of C02 emmisions and letting the gov subsidise construction w/o plans for upkeep

You should watch (Growth Ponzi Scheme)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0] from not just bikes

⬐ chroem-

This is precisely why San Francisco is so expensive relative to the rest of the country. SF's infrastructure seems expressly designed to prevent people from commuting from cheaper, outlying areas. This effectively limits the housing supply by forcing everyone to live in the city proper. There is a tradeoff to be made here, which I feel is being ignored.

⬐ ajmadesc

Sorry for the late response. I think the solution is clearly to make more places like San Francisco. Not to make SF more like everywhere else.

Oh but you can! Paris, London, and I'm sure countless other cities in Europe have pedestrianized or reduced traffic in large areas. The Netherlands has done this in most cities.

99.99% of suburbanites couldn't afford their lifestyle if it weren't for obsurd gov subsidies of infrastructure / petrol industry.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ vladvasiliu

> 99.99% of suburbanites couldn't afford their lifestyle if it weren't for obsurd gov subsidies of infrastructure / petrol industry.

Don't know how it is in the US, but over here in France (and I presume most of Europe) I'm not sure how much the petrol industry is subsidized, given the high taxes levied on gas – around 60% of the price paid at the pump goes to taxes [0].

Of course, this being France, taxes are themselves taxed [0], but still...

---

[0] https://www.economie.gouv.fr/cedef/prix-carburants

In French, but the relevant quotes are:

In France, taxes account for approximately 60% of the gas price at the pump.

20% VAT, applied to the whole amount, TICPE (Internal Tax on the Consumption of Energy Products) included.

> hateful and bitter

Agreed. I am deliberate about what things I choose to be riled up by. American planning happens to make that small list.

My comment was a pure rant in a way that was unproductive.

I also agree that there is nothing objective here, which is why I tried to phrase it in the 'as objective as something subjective can be' form. But I guess it was a bit convoluted.

_____

Let me be specific: Post WW2 car-mandating endless suburbia built without any regard for financial or environmental sustainability is something I actively dislike.

> single, in a tiny apartment in a crappy, dirty apartment building

This gets to the core of the brainwashing I speak of. American cities were left to the dogs during white flight, and they haven't recovered since. There can only be one NYC in the nation. There a dozens of other ways to build sustainable & beautiful cities. NYC's subway system is pretty shabby for a city its size and the city feels haphazardly built. A lot of European capitals in comparison have wonderful examples of apartments that don't suck and subway systems that are a joy to use.

I am not anti-village or even anti-suburb. There is such as thing as well built suburbs. Plus,villages are bound to be low density by their very nature. But villages also tend to be quite sustainable. Strongtowns.org have written a ton of articles on this, and notjustbikes [1] does a great job of elaborating on this.

Urbanist communities have spent agonizingly long talking about the 'missing middle' [2] in housing. The options aren't NYC like shoulder to shoulder density or single family zoning. There are a plethora of options that lie in the middle.

> car-mandating

The car-mandating part is important too. It is one thing to want a huge house with a huge garden. It is another to protest building of non-single family homes in plots near you. Especially when asset prices continue to appreciate as wages stay flat. That's Nimbyism.

It forces a village level of density on any area that's a few miles outside the downtown mandating cars as the only possible form of transport.

> I love where I live and my neighbors do, too. We get along

Exactly, then why not let everyone have that choice?: The choice of living in an arrangement they desire in a manner that is reasonably priced. Imagine if it was illegal for you to build a house on your own land in a manner that you desired, even when it was safe and affected no one else. That's exactly what's happened to middle housing in the US.

> without any regard for financial or environmental sustainability

This is my last point. After all that, the cost of maintaining low density essential public infrastructure (electricity, water, roads, etc) is much much higher than that in denser neighborhoods. This video by not-just-bikes go into detail on this point. [3]

> brainwashed

brainwashing is rarely implied in the literal sense. In most cases, it implies a situation where a person refuses to acknowledge negatives of a system even when it's staring them in the face. America has doomed its cities and implemented laws that strongly favor suburbs. If I grew up here, I would also think that cities were terrible too. Here, people live in cities transiently and usually in rentals. They never develop a relationship with neighbors or drop roots, because they move out the second they have their first child.

> I want my kids to live in a nice neighborhood and, overall, have a good growing-up experience.

The negatives of cities are very much the negatives of American cities. The many positives of American suburbs would look less great if they had to pay the real cost of maintaining their infrastructure. NotJustBikes has an entire video [4] on how sustainable cities provide a significantly better growing-up experience for children than American suburbs. I highly recommend it.

People spend thousands on visiting Europeans cities for the summer. People fantasize about how dreamy such a place would be and retiring there. By all definitions, these ARE their cities. That's what cities in developed countries could've been like. Alas, the New World seems to lack the creativity to imagine such a place back home.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A

[2] https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98&t=1s

Or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0

⬐ stetrain

- We need more growth!

- What if we waive impact fees so new construction doesn't pay for its impact on transportation and other services? Wow look at all that construction!

- Oh no, we don't have enough money to pay for increases to transportation and police and fire and libraries and schools!

- Try to pass increased property taxes on existing residents, who vote "No" because they always vote no on any tax increases.

⬐ tnel77

This isn’t entirely true. In Colorado, we vote on all tax increases. In the short time I have been here Coloradoans have voted to increase taxes on themselves quite a few times for roads and schools. If you make a good argument, even conservatives will commonly vote to increase taxes since many see the value that comes from it.

The issue is that many people, like myself, want a say. I don’t mind paying more in taxes if the money is used well and I feel like I actually had a say in the process.

⬐ dfilppi

'If the money is used well' -- there's the problem. The money disappears and a new tax is on the ballot next year.

⬐ robohoe

Unlike in Illinois, where majority of tax increases get squandered.

⬐ lotsofpulp

The issue is the taxes voted on aren’t enough to pay for the item being voted on. The pensions aren’t getting properly funded, and the amortized cost of the road and accompanying infrastructure isn’t being saved for with taxes collected today.

Also, Colorado is expecting one of the biggest economic and population booms in America, so people’s incomes are going up and thinks are looking pretty good. Try the same in states with stagnant economies and job markets, and even schools won’t get the votes for tax increases.

And the nuance of the statement, of course, is people won’t vote for tax increases for things that won’t benefit them. Roads benefit all car owners, so car owners don’t mind voting for roads. But taxes for public transportation won’t be voted in. And people will vote to increase taxes for their own school district. But not to help subsidize other cities’ schools.

⬐ melenaboija

- And what if we cut taxes to the big players? At the end they are the ones giving jobs to people and someone needs to keep paying the taxes for the streets and schools they are using

⬐ lumost

Through my lifetime I've only heard about tax cuts, I find this mysterious as presumably the taxes must have once risen to now be cut. Why have we seemingly lost the ability to say that we need new taxes?

In Boston we constantly complain about the state of our public transit system which has been in debt for decades. Being proximate to a train station has a 20-50% positive benefit to home prices. The transit system can't raise fairs as those punish lower income workers who most need it, and they are even prohibited from raising fairs at more than 2%/yr by state law. Why can't we tax the property owners (I am one) benefiting from proximity to the train stations? Why are we building stations with 100 year growth horizons if it means we only build 1 new station?

⬐ leetcrew

> Being proximate to a train station has a 20-50% positive benefit to home prices.

> Why can't we tax the property owners (I am one) benefiting from proximity to the train stations?

don't you pay property tax based on the value of your home? if so, this is already happening.

⬐ lumost

Boston property taxes are low at a ~1% rate, and as others have noted the assessed price is not the price I would sell the home for. In Massachusetts you also get a ~1500 dollar tax credit for your primary residence.

⬐ kindatrue

In California property taxes are 1.x rate, and the assessed price is based essentially on when your ancestors bought it, with a 2% increase.

Which leads to comedy like this: https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1265719788875272192

⬐ eugenekolo

It's true that property taxes are based on the assessment of a home, but it's also not necessarily true that the assessment does a good enough approximation to consider that any house within 1mi of the train is worth 20% more than one 1.5mi away. From my hobby of looking at home appraisals in Boston towns it seems the biggest factor in most towns is square footage.

Another point to consider is that most towns in Massachusetts seem to use replacement cost as the main method of appraisal versus potential income/value. Meaning, 2 families appraise for nearly the same as a single family when they are in reality worth 1.5-2x more in potential income via rent or selling.

⬐ dantheman

Either it adds value or it doesn't, if square footage is the main thing then it doesn't add as much value you as think.

This is the beautiful thing about prices - we let individuals decide what something is worth. Perhaps we don't need new taxes but just better assessors and planning.

⬐ eugenekolo

It does add value in the real market. It doesn't add value according to the town property assessor. There's a disconnect between reality and property taxes.

⬐ bobthepanda

So the argument against dedicated infrastructure taxes like this, is that it takes tax money away from other things that also need it.

Generally speaking, increased development will also require not just roads and transit, but investments in water, electric, sewer, schools, police, fire, etc. If you dedicate funding for one thing it takes away from something else, and you really don’t want to turn a general funds tax bill into dozens of line-items that get nitpicked and fought over constantly.

⬐ umvi

In Maryland property tax rates can increase without a vote as long as the county deems it necessary. Usually the county doesn't need to deem it necessary because property value increases (which has the effect of increasing tax revenue)

So basically what I'm saying is... the POTUS doesn't need to do song and a dance in order for taxes to increase for people. For a lot of states, as long as the value of the property keeps increasing, the residents are paying more and more taxes every year. And if the income from your job doesn't increase at the same rate as your property taxes... it can put a lot of financial strain on you (my relatives in NY moved to a different state because the property taxes in Albany were eating them alive)

Example:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/business/real-estate/bs-bz-tax-...

⬐ slowhand09

My FIL moved to FL from MD because of taxes. He is well-to-do due to high responsibility positions and shrewd investments. He used to donate to local environment orgs, the arts, scholarship funds, etc. He told MD to find someone else as they bled him for the last time.

⬐ diablerouge

Where I live (one of the most liberal cities in the US), it seems that most taxes get passed - even the poorly structured or regressive ones. It's frankly frustrating to see our profoundly mismanaged school district get yet another 10 million dollar bond (generated from property tax) passed every 4 years.

⬐ zip1234

School districts spend an insane amount of money. The budget of our local school district is 10x that of the city and they mismanage the hell out of it. They just spent 100M building a new middle school when the old one was only ~40 years old, solid brick, and just needed roof repairs.

⬐ smegger001

the school district in my parents town is one of the smallest in the area and they built one of the largest football stadiums in the area they passed a levey to pay for it, but while this was going on they had a roof that needed replaced on the highschool, they knew this it was leaking already but they figured they wouldn't get the stadium built if they had to do it second, they waited until the next year to demand money to fix the roof.

⬐ MattGaiser

Because then you would get NIMBYism against train stations. While the asset value might go up, that could hurt cashflow for a lot of people. Anyone who wants to live there for a long time should oppose the higher tax or the train station as they don't benefit from the asset appreciation.

⬐ lumost

The majority of new stations get built in purpose designed "transit oriented development" e.g. where housing and amenities for 10k+ residents are built at one point in time.

Major Boston examples include the Seaport District and Assembly Square.

Seaport: http://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects/sea...

Assembly Square: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_Square#Marketplace_hi...

⬐ indymike

"Through my lifetime I've only heard about tax cuts, I find this mysterious as presumably the taxes must have once risen to now be cut. Why have we seemingly lost the ability to say that we need new taxes?"

At the local level, we see pretty regular tax increases here in the midwest. There's a lot of resistance to increases in federal and state-wide taxes largely because federal and state spending is really hard to directly connect to a benefit to the payer (i.e. home value increases, better commutes, a fun local park). On the other hand, a ballot initiative to fund an improvement in roads or sewers is pretty easy to get through.

⬐ paradox242

Same where I live in the midwest, it's better than even money that a tax or bond for schools or infrastructure will be approved.

⬐ dsr_

The MBTA needs local permission to build stations, even on existing rights of way.

The Red Line was going to extend out to Arlington and then 128... but Arlington blocked it. You'll see several rationales listed, but the big one was racism: Arlington (now a liberal bastion like Cambridge) was afraid that "those people" would come to their town.

What Massachusetts needs is a coherent state-wide plan that handles transit on a public-first rather than car-first strategy. What we've got is a set of non-cooperating agencies all trying to deal with local problems.

⬐ kevin_thibedeau

In New Jersey there is an abandoned commuter line that already has stations and the tracks are still in place. The residents shutdown efforts to revitalize it because it would raise property taxes.

⬐ aeternum

The great depression was really the trigger for massive tax increases. We've generally been cutting them since.

Personally, I think tax increases would be much more popular if the government showed the money would be spent efficiently. Cost+ contracting and endless cost overruns have eroded public support for government projects.

⬐ dfilppi

You must be very young to not have seen tax increases. Being near the train station only has benefit to those that use the train.

⬐ Larrikin

If you drive and don't take the train you directly benefit from less car traffic.

⬐ lumost

I wish I was that young ;)

There is nothing that stops the government from increasing property tax surrounding train stations.

⬐ com2kid

> You must be very young to not have seen tax increases. Being near the train station only has benefit to those that use the train.

Reduced congestion on the road benefits everyone.

As does the reduction in air pollution, and pm2.5 from break and tire dust.

If proper rezoning takes place around train stations, then everyone benefits from denser housing available for those who desire it, reducing upwards pressure on housing elsewhere in the city.

Businesses all along the entire train line benefit from an increase in customer volume that doesn't require a corresponding increase in parking requirements.

The decrease in parking means land is more efficiently used, actual buildings can be constructed which increase tax revenue for the city, and provide more jobs.

Mass transit is awesome.

⬐ danaris

> Why have we seemingly lost the ability to say that we need new taxes?

Decades of Republican propaganda have led the average right-of-center voter to believe that higher taxes, for any reason, are a) stealing their hard-earned money, and/or b) a socialist plot to turn America into either the USSR or Venezuela.

⬐ slowhand09

Decades of Democratic propaganda have led the average left-of-center voter to believe higher taxes, for any reason are a) taking money from greedy Republicans to redistribute wealth, and/or b) going to turn America into a socialist state. See how that works.

⬐ dbrueck

I believe that is definitely part of it, but it's also a lifetime of hearing about government waste, bills passed with tons of "pork" spending, witnessing government mismanagement of resources, and concern that the government is not necessarily the best way to solve every problem. And then once you decide that a particular issue is best addressed by the government, there's a valid debate over which level of government (e.g. in the U.S. stuff done at the federal level often has a reputation for being bloated, slow-moving, and less effective than it could be).

⬐ throwaway0a5e

>In Boston we constantly complain about the state of our public transit system

Have you seen the Big Dig? Look at the size of the check we wrote for that one. Now look at the kind of houses all the people who got to work on that project (whether in the office or in the field) in their mid and late careers (when you can make real money rather than be schlepping supplies around a job site for a "you haven't put in your time yet" size check) are living in.

Waste like that is why nobody wants to increase taxes. Pretty much anything more than the bare minimum seems to just slowly evaporate. The money goes poof before it trickles down into programs, infrastructure and services that actually provide benefit to the taxpayer. People would rather ride on a crappy T and pay marginally less tax than pay more tax to ride on a crappy T that has a handful more spots in the org chart for politicians to fill with people who won't show up.

Look at the semi-annual (well, let's be fair and give them credit, it's more like 3yr) state police "fraudulent overtime" scandal. It goes way, way back. Remember when the Probation Department got caught paying salaries to political appointees who didn't show up and didn't have any job duties? Remember when there was that enforcement/compliance arm of the Dept. of Elder Affairs that didn't actually exist like it was supposed to because the money was redirected to pay for more (politically appointed) middle managers who just forwarded emails all day? This is what "raising taxes" looks like in Massachusetts. For every $10 spent you'll be lucky to have a buck actually be used to run a bus, patch a pothole pay for healthcare, etc. etc. It's no surprise that people don't wanna pay for that.

People will pay for public services. Nobody really cares whether the garbage truck driver gets his pay stub on private letterhead or government letterhead. Nobody really cares whether they have public or private EMT services so long as they show up with equal promptness. What people won't pay for is public leeches and Massachusetts has done a very good job cultivating the perception that you can't buy one of the former without getting ten of the latter in the deal. No surprise that people don't wanna take that deal.

⬐ lumost

I sometimes wonder if the apparent endemic corruption of government in the US is due in part to a miss-perception of how much government employees should be paid. In Singapore and Japan government jobs were often viewed as jobs for the elite. In Massachusetts we pay many government employees less than they'd make doing literally anything else. A biology teacher's pay starts at ~600/week.

Is it that wrong that the people who ran one of the largest infrastructure programs in the US live in nice homes? The project was horrendously over budget and late, but it did do what proponents wanted it to do. Private firms taking over the commuter rail like Keolis don't seem to be achieving any quality or cost benefits.

We may be in a strange situation where fundamentally underpaid workers find ways to game the system to make about what they could in the private sector, would higher wages help eliminate the "wasteful" practices?

⬐ chillacy

This is a fact many take for granted: the association between government jobs and inefficiency is not an inherent part of government as much as a reflection of the fact that nobody with options is going to choose a job which pays far less.

⬐ Retric

The big dig is likely to be around for 200+ years. It’s exactly the kind of useful government spending everyone wants and nobody wants to pay for.

Could efficiency improve? Yes! But note that waste was private companies padding out the contract not government employees. People want to outsource government functions, blame government when that fails, and use it to justify increased outsourcing. Clearly there is a failure in that logical reasoning.

⬐ zip1234

Actually, urban freeways around the world are getting ripped out. They are even looking at doing it to one in Detroit. I would be surprised if the freeways for the big dig are still around in 50 years let alone 200.

⬐ lumost

The big dig was one such "rip out" project. An above ground , elevated, urban free way was buried beneath the city.

⬐ zip1234

It still goes through the city center with a lot above ground. Definitely better than before though

⬐ SaltyBackendGuy

> private companies padding out the contract not government employees

I have no references to back this theory up, but I feel like this is where most of the waste happens.

[Gov spend public money] -> [pay private company]

The government isn't incentivized to get the best deal for our money which results in overpaying or just flat out corruption. eg. I'll overpay my friend's company and they will kick me back some money for choosing their contract.

⬐ JDDunn9

Roughly 6% of local budgets are spend on roads. [1]

[1] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

⬐ admiralspoo

That seems to go against the core thesis of the video.

⬐ lotsofpulp

More roads means more sewage, power, water, gas, waste removal, snow removal, and fiber internet lines. Living spaced out also probably adds other costs like more administrative staff.

⬐ zip1234

It mentions in the video that most money for road initial construction comes from State/Federal. Thus the true ongoing costs are masked and so it continues.

⬐ ProofByAccident

Not really, I think roads are a convenient example but the same dynamic described (cities getting out over their skis through cheap-in-the-short term development and debt) can be seen playing out for other types of expenses. The next highest costs up that list, hospitals and education, are often also financed through debt, expensive to maintain over a long time horizon, and essential to growing the tax base. This seems totally cromulent with the basic "growth addiction" framework to me.

⬐ zip1234

Yes, a lot of road money comes from state/federal budgets, not local. It actually causes many problems. Residents don't want a freeway through their town but guess who makes those decision?

⬐ m1117

It was always hard to understand to me, the more buildings they build, the more expensive they get. Like in SF or NYC, they build more condos, but each new condo is more expensive. I think America[real estate] as a whole is an ongoing Ponzi scheme :shrug:

⬐ Redoubts

We’ve made cheap buildings illegal, and most community input meetings are held in bad faith with continually moving goalposts. It’s amazing things get built at all.

⬐ beisner

I can’t find the exact link right now that breaks this down, but basically the ONLY profitable new construction to build is luxury buildings, which by definition are at the top end of the market (and even with a premium, because they’re new!). There was a case study about this in LA.

Over time, older buildings become cheaper until they’re either renovated or razed and replaced with new construction. But it’s a cyclic process: new construction is expensive, and gets less expensive relative to other newer units over time until it is renewed.

Now, there’s still a ton of unmet demand from people moving into cities: this pushes all prices in the market up. And unfortunately, (covid era excluded) there’s just so, so, so much demand from people moving to SF/NYC/LA/Seattle/etc that even if we removed all zoning restrictions and started building at a furious pace, cities probably wouldn’t be able to meet demand across the economic spectrum for another few decades. Covid may affect this in some way in the short term, and other trends may affect this in the mid-long term (we did have suburban exodus once before in US history).

One way to address this problem is to massively fund public transit infrastructure projects inside the city and in surrounding metro areas. Tokyo has ~30 million residents is relatively expensive for Japan, but living even a 20-30min subway/train ride from the city center is actually surprisingly affordable compared to other international cities. Seoul is similar. Chinese cities have similar infrastructure systems, but I can’t speak to how that affects affordability because there are other economic/political factors at play. But that seems tragically unlikely to happen in the US.

⬐ downrightmike

Right, luxury is what makes money, and in 30 years, they will be qualified as section 8 or low income. This is just how that process works. The massive problem we really have is no one in the 70's or 80's built for the massive population growth we have experienced, so less housing is available than demand. We're near 8 billion people, 70's was only 3.6, 80's 4.4 then boom 8.

⬐ dukeofdoom

You can bring back cities by making apartments more affordable. Perhaps making more micro apartments. There's probably a large marker for people that would still keep their suburban home, but if they could afford it would get an apartment to stay in for fun over some weekends, or overnight during the workweek. Living in the Suburbs has many benefits. Larger homes, backyards and is safer for kids to run around. All valid reasons to chose them. Lets not try and change people, but work with their preferences.

⬐ lotsofpulp

> Living in the Suburbs has many benefits. Larger homes, backyards and is safer for kids to run around. All valid reasons to chose them. Lets not try and change people, but work with their preferences.

No one will need to try and change people, they will be forced to change once the budget deficits force their hand. The ones that can may move to a new jurisdiction and start the game over.

I also would not say kids are safer in suburbs. Lots of car traffic, lots of big roads to cross, lots of big cars since why not buy an SUV/pickup.

⬐ ohples

> safer for kids to run around.

https://youtu.be/ul_xzyCDT98

⬐ com2kid

It isn't just the size of apartments, it is everything about modern building codes.

How far the setback from the sidewalk is, how much green space is required, parking requirements, all contribute to a lack of density.

And certain types of housing, e.g. boarding houses, aren't even legal anymore (moral crusaders shut them down long ago!)

⬐ yokem55

The basic social problem is that the absence of economic growth turns economies into zero-sum operations. In order for anyone to get ahead, someone, somewhere else must lose. Historically, zero-sum economies make for some pretty shitty living standards for most folks.

Growth, at least in the short term (the 50-100 year timescale), makes it possible to have an economy where gains can be had without necessarily making other folks lose. The downside here is that growth can only go for so long before resource constraints of one form or another bite everyone in the butt.

⬐ imtringued

The problem is that you need a certain population density to pay for maintenance of infrastructure. It's like running a business. If you can break even, you can expand your business endlessly. If you are even just a single dollar short it just doesn't work out. Suburbia is not just a dollar short. It's making substantial losses while providing very little to show for it.

⬐ anm89

This is utter nonsense. It treats peoples lives as the sum of GDPesque production data.

GDP, or counting how many buildings and streets and strip malls were built is a totally seperate axis from quality of life.

A town could shrink while every single person's life in that town increases because it changes the structure and quality of their of lives.

⬐ zip1234

A country can still improve wealth and health of the citizens without an increasing GDP. If work is spent on impactful areas that make people's lives better. Motion is not necessarily progress. "Growth" where we spend loads of money building out unused infrastructure is empty growth.

⬐ vondur

It won't bankrupt a city, they simply won't do the required infrastructure maintenance. Check out the city of Los Angeles and its water piping system. Under the current pipe replacement schedule, it would take 100 years to replace pipes that are 100 years old. They instead just fix the pipes as they break. Usually the pipe breaks are small enough where no damage is done, but a few years back a large pipe ruptured and flooded an expensive part of UCLA.

⬐ ralusek

Pensions and opaque bureaucracies.

⬐ dfilppi

This is the fundamental purpose of government. Providing services is a mere concession to keep the gravy train rolling.

⬐ defertoreptar

This was confusing. The narrator leads by saying that cities are ponzi schemes and supports this by showing a cash flow graph, but that graph doesn't seem to be grounded with any examples. I find it surprising that long term maintenance costs more than the long term tax revenue growth. I would've liked to see more evidence that these cities really are unsustainable.

⬐ kiliantics

The source for the video provides examples and case studies:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-pon...

⬐ ffggvv

its not just cities. this is the issue with academia and many other aspects of life. everything has an embedded growth expectation, and when that growth stops, its no longer sustainable.

(IE each professor cant train 10 grad students in their field to be professors because academia is simply not growing that fast anymore)

And not every lawyer can become a partner anymore etc. (not every google engineer can become senior)

⬐ BallinBige

Wait till this guy figures out civilization is the ponzi scheme and there is no rationalization left for his ego to defend itself.

⬐ imtringued

How is it a ponzi scheme? Previous generations suffered for our (future) wellbeing.

With a ponzi scheme things get worse over time, not better.

⬐ finikytou

unfortunately its not only about growth. everything in our life is based on short term benefits. officials are elected for a few year and just want to push for new development to show growth. No one wants to be the one saying lets hold onto growth and fix what we have first. that is valid for cities, companies, governments.

⬐ patentatt

This video is unwatchably annoying, is there an article with the same arguments/information?

⬐ lotsofpulp

Simple version is today’s voters will always vote for low taxes and elect to have future generations pay for today’s services/labor.

This works as long as you have economic growth (usually as a result of population growth).

Doesn’t work so well when automation and cheaper labor from other places in the world are taking away the economic growth, and simultaneously people are having 0, 1, or at most 2 kids.

⬐ imtringued

>Doesn’t work so well when automation and cheaper labor from other places in the world are taking away the economic growth, and simultaneously people are having 0, 1, or at most 2 kids.

I think you are misunderstanding something. It works just fine. The problem is that there are these "waste" humans that nobody knows what to do with.

There is also a glaring flaw in your comment. Automation increases economic growth. If a single worker is 10 times more productive he can ask for 10 times the salary. A lot of low income jobs pay badly precisely because there is not enough automation to turn them into productive high income jobs.

Ok, back to the waste humans. The default answer to a surplus with no buyers is to just let the wealthy hand out a loan so that those with no possessions can buy the surplus and use it productively and earn money. For obvious reasons interest rates are down to 0% so this is not a viable strategy. However in principle it works the same with automation. Humans with zero net worth cannot work because robots are doing their job can instead borrow robots and use those robots productively. Debt is just a way to convince people to work today so that their productive output doesn't get lost.

The borrowing strategy works out if there is enough demand for the robot labor, but what if there is no demand at all? You can just create demand out of thin air. Let the government print money and use it to buy consumer goods and services or let the government invest into domestic jobs that would otherwise not be done. Again, it's just a trick to make people work today so that their productive output doesn't get lost. The benefit from working is higher than letting the money sit around.

Why? Because that's the policy. 2% inflation is a target. Your money gets increasingly less valuable so you cannot sit on it. You will have to do something with it. If you put your money in gold you are doing so with the expectation that society as a whole is doing productive work. If you put your money into stocks you are doing so with the expectation that this individual company is doing productive work. Yes, these assets are inflation proof, but only because someone is actually working. If everyone put their money into gold the assets would just become worthless eventually because society as a whole is not doing productive work.

If CPI inflation is driving asset inflation then you simply cannot sit around and do nothing. Unfortunately the Fed is driving asset inflation directly and completely skipping over CPI inflation. At that point the system is built on circular logic without any connection to productive work. Capitalism without the capitalism.

⬐ lotsofpulp

> If a single worker is 10 times more productive he can ask for 10 times the salary.

This is only true if very few workers are 10 times more productive. If many workers are 10 times more productive, then the supply of labor has increased 10x and unless there is a corresponding increase in the buyers of labor, the price of the labor will go down. Which is what has happened in real life.

Low income jobs pay low income because the buyers of that labor are not willing to pay much and the supply of labor is high for that type of work.

I believe the rest of your comment does not apply to state and city governments in the US, since only the federal government can print money. For state and city governments, their tax base and therefore potential economic growth/future tax income can move away.

⬐ wan23

There's a book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44142112-strong-towns

⬐ toomuchtodo

https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

⬐ mycall

Is it true the $5T that ASCE estimated is being held by the 1% (or whatever you want to call them)? This would imply the funds exist but are locked up for thousands of different reasons.

⬐ lotsofpulp

Not even close.

⬐ toomuchtodo

One might argue infrastructure funds are being held by the wealthiest in their investment assets that otherwise would've been taxed at a higher rate in other developed nations. This doesn't mean we should grow for growth's sake using that wealth, but based on on the nation's infrastructure report card [1], we are very much not investing in infrastructure upkeep. How do we pay for infrastructure? Taxes (or perhaps by printing fiat based on modern monetary theory). Do we need infrastructure to support a civilization? Of course.

[1] https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

⬐ sillyquiet

The tense is wrong in the title. The process is still going on, and many currently financially thriving cities are still buying into the false promise of unchecked growth without consideration for infrastructure, services, and overall quality of life.

I also take exception to the use of the gestalt 'America' as if there were some central force orchestrating this phenomena - there isn't, just the same incentives that push developer's voices in city governments louder and louder.

⬐ anm89

> I also take exception to the use of the gestalt 'America' as if there were some central force orchestrating this phenomena

Agreed. This reductionist mindset bugs me to no end

⬐ anonu

> I also take exception to the use of the gestalt 'America'

These things start at the top - based on what the US govt decides or does not decide to regulate. With a lack of regulation, we all know the "free markets" reign to a point where they are no longer free and instead enhance divisions in society and further monopolies.

Amazon, Facebook, Google are too big. They've provided great benefits to society to date - but govt needs to step in and control them now.

⬐ sillyquiet

No, it doesn't. Not in a country where constitutionally such power by default is devolved to the states to regulate or not. One could make the argument it starts at the state level, but most states have left such matters to the municipalities in turn.

So, these municipalities, acting independently and without coordination, and have arrived at the same state. Because they are all currently incentivized to.

⬐ zip1234

There are state and federal dollars that are used by these municipalities to widen their roads and such. It is not something that happened without coordination. A federal policy in which 10x more money is available for roads vs transit is an incentive for more of the same.

⬐ jkingsbery

Reading the actual book that this video is based on, those pushing the "Strong Towns" theme are pretty agnostic to free markets, so it's kind of besides the point. The point is - we spend $X/year on infrastructure, but people only seem to think that infrastructure is worth <$X/year, so there will forever be a deficit.

The Strong Town books also discusses what happened with a lack of regulation throughout almost all of human history: everyone lived in rural areas to work a farm, or else lived and worked in dense urban areas. American suburbia happened in large part not due to a lack of regulation at the top, but federal money being spent on roads, highways and infrastructure at the top.

⬐ throw0101a

> The tense is wrong in the title. The process is still going on […]

Channeling the late comedian Mitch Hedberg: I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Hedberg#Quotations