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Strong Towns - pbrower2a - 05-20-2021
A solution to many of our problems?
This is about a Ponzi scheme. No, it is not Social Security, which really is well funded... but it is far more pervasive and set for a fall. In some places (Greater Detroit may be the most blatant and infamous), public revenues and public costs have gone into a complete imbalance...and you know how that goes.
There's plenty of blame to spread around, some of it undue. Greater Detroit is an anathema to many in rural and semi-rural Michigan, much of it on race (which explains the infamous Michigan Militia). This said, many 'lesser' communities far from Detroit and in no way urban, have much the same problem of urban sprawl (in cities of only 10,000 people). Traffic congestion is hideous, and this is not for some special event. Note well: just as in giant cities, infrastructure costs start small and rise exponentially, and a city needs more growth to offset the rising costs of infrastructure -- whether the city has 5000 people or 5 million.
Ethnic tensions? Economic distress becomes inter-ethnic tensions. Misplaced priorities? Cities having to spend huge amounts of money replacing sewers and streets instead of on educating children. Political corruption? A poor financial condition creates stresses that invite demagogues who become crooks as soon as they take office. I've mocked former Detroit Mayor (and jailbird) Kwame Kilpatrick as "Kwame Crook-Patrick"... but cities not in trouble don't vote for people like him.
So how can one connect urban design, high collision and death rates involving motor vehicles, troubled public finances, soulless development, wasteful use of energy, and pathological government? Oddly, catastrophic decisions in urban planning. Developers get much of the blame here, but so do public officials who saw quick growth but not unwelcome consequences twenty years later. As many people do if given the chance, the ones who made the decisions got rich or improved their career prospects for about twenty years. They expect things to magically take care of themselves when things project to go badly.
Strong Towns looks like a solution. It does require us to rethink how we do many important things in life.
Quote: ... the local unit of government benefits from the enhanced revenues associated with new growth. But it also typically assumes the long-term liability for maintaining the new infrastructure. This exchange — a near-term cash advantage for a long-term financial obligation — is one element of a Ponzi scheme.
Quote:“Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability.”
The other is the realization that the revenue collected does not come near to covering the costs of maintaining the infrastructure. In America, we have a ticking time bomb of unfunded liability for infrastructure maintenance. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates the cost at $5 trillion — but that's just for major infrastructure, not the minor streets, curbs, walks, and pipes that serve our homes.
The reason we have this gap is because the public yield from the suburban development pattern — the amount of tax revenue obtained per increment of liability assumed — is ridiculously low. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability. The engineering profession will argue, as ASCE does, that we're simply not making the investments necessary to maintain this infrastructure. This is nonsense. We've simply built in a way that is not financially productive.
RE: Strong Towns - Anthony '58 - 12-13-2021
But urban sprawl is not the issue. Urban cost is.
Already, as the first Baby Busters are becoming eligible for Social Security, they do not feel "entitled" to remain in hyperexpensive cities like New York and San Francisco, where "aging '60s progressives" (the term that the local media in San Francisco actually uses to denote them) are largely staying put.
Instead, they are turning up in such places as Fargo and even Wahpeton, both in North Dakota, and Yankton, South Dakota (home of the now defunct Yankton College, where the late Lyle Alzado played football). Those with more conservative cultural tastes are gravitating toward such locales as Joplin, Missouri.
RE: Strong Towns - David Horn - 12-13-2021
(12-13-2021, 09:26 AM)Anthony Wrote: But urban sprawl is not the issue. Urban cost is.
Already, as the first Baby Busters are becoming eligible for Social Security, they do not feel "entitled" to remain in hyperexpensive cities like New York and San Francisco, where "aging '60s progressives" (the term that the local media in San Francisco actually uses to denote them) are largely staying put.
Instead, they are turning up in such places as Fargo and even Wahpeton, both in North Dakota, and Yankton, South Dakota (home of the now defunct Yankton College, where the late Lyle Alzado played football). Those with more conservative cultural tastes are gravitating toward such locales as Joplin, Missouri.
As a whole, retirees move to low cost of living and sunnier climes. I don't see that changing.
RE: Strong Towns - pbrower2a - 12-13-2021
(12-13-2021, 09:26 AM)Anthony Wrote: But urban sprawl is not the issue. Urban cost is.
Also tax revenues, costs of maintenance (roads and sewers), law enforcement (cops being sent to the box store to bust shoplifters), fuel consumption, and highway collisions with consequent deaths and lasting disability.
Much of our problem is a commitment to the automobile as the sole means of commuting to work or school and to getting such necessities in life as groceries. I could make the case that the "strongest town" is New York City, where one typically (except perhaps Staten Island) lives in a high-rise apartment above shops, stores, and restaurants. If one wants to go elsewhere not within walking distance, then the subway is a good way to get to another part of town.
So let's take a look at a city that wasn't much of a city before World War II, but metastasized into a bloated megalopolis that has the nastiness of Detroit of about fifty years ago (the depopulation has yet to take place, but people are already moving out). OK, Detroit has real winters, overcast as a norm, and no palm trees.
To put it lightly, Los Angeles was a far nicer place when the 1957 Buick convertible that Randy Newman is driving (the song is spoof) was new. That's when Orange County actually had orange groves instead of mile after mindless mile of decaying tract housing, box stores, and of course rotting freeways with long traffic jams. Many people drive forty-mile one-way commutes. The entertainment culture (Michigan has tried to attract movie production; an aside is that except for palm trees, Michigan's Lake Michigan shoreline is a dead ringer for the California Coast from May to September). The video is dated, but the rot in Ell Ay is already there. Los Angeles is clearly not a Strong City. Note well that Detroit and Ell Ay have something in common: both built their freeway networks at roughly the same time.
One of the offenders for Big-Box shopping (K-Mart, until recently present throughout America) with its bloated parking lots and locations in otherwise-unattractive places, was from Michigan. Its headquarters were in Troy, a Detroit suburb. (The last K-Mart closed in Michigan last month. I was at its "vulture sale", and one could see why K-Mart had died). It's not surprising that the Motor City developed a car culture for itself, but Ell Ay didn't need to. Forty-mile one-way commutes are expensive, and they commit people to burn out their cars faster than otherwise. Property-tax collections are inadequate to allow kids to get adequate schooling. Obvious the superficial "Hollywood" culture is something to avoid unless one makes money in it, but that is hard to avoid when one is near it.
Here's one city that some Ell Ay residents have sought as an alternative. Houston, and the car culture is even worse:
Houston is rife with violent crime. Its schools are awful. But it is one of the biggest centers for petroleum in the world, so it is sort of a company town. The petroleum industry would wither and die without the private automobile. It is designed so that one can get anywhere by car... and nowhere else by other means.
Quote:Already, as the first Baby Busters are becoming eligible for Social Security, they do not feel "entitled" to remain in hyperexpensive cities like New York and San Francisco, where "aging '60s progressives" (the term that the local media in San Francisco actually uses to denote them) are largely staying put.
The '60's progressives are now in their 70's. I would not count on them being around in San Francisco (some sort of afterlife is more likely, and for the Hard Right, that sort of afterlife for '60's liberals likely resembles Norilsk, Russia) in large numbers in thirty years. OK, Rockford, Illinois, from what I hear.
Quote:Instead, they are turning up in such places as Fargo and even Wahpeton, both in North Dakota, and Yankton, South Dakota (home of the now defunct Yankton College, where the late Lyle Alzado played football). Those with more conservative cultural tastes are gravitating toward such locales as Joplin, Missouri.
Do avoid Springfield, Missouri. Know well that running away from problems without solving them where one goes is one way in which to get no more than a short-term respite.
What about it? Those Dutch cities look far more livable, in part because the Dutch have subordinated the automobile to life instead of life to the automobile.
RE: Strong Towns - Anthony '58 - 12-16-2021
It's better to live in a home that you yourself own in Manchester Township, New Jersey, roughly halfway between NYC and Philadelphia, where public transportation is essentially non-existent, and believe it or not has the lowest per-capita income in the entire state - even Newark and Camden have higher per-capita incomes - than live in a dilapidated SRO in San Francisco (I've done that too).
RE: Strong Towns - David Horn - 12-16-2021
(12-16-2021, 09:22 AM)Anthony Wrote: It's better to live in a home that you yourself own in Manchester Township, New Jersey, roughly halfway between NYC and Philadelphia, where public transportation is essentially non-existent, and believe it or not has the lowest per-capita income in the entire state - even Newark and Camden have higher per-capita incomes - than live in a dilapidated SRO in San Francisco (I've done that too).
Retirees live in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. Out west, it's in and around Las Vegas. No one retires to San Francisco ... or LA for that matter.
RE: Strong Towns - pbrower2a - 12-16-2021
(12-16-2021, 12:43 PM)David Horn Wrote:(12-16-2021, 09:22 AM)Anthony Wrote: It's better to live in a home that you yourself own in Manchester Township, New Jersey, roughly halfway between NYC and Philadelphia, where public transportation is essentially non-existent, and believe it or not has the lowest per-capita income in the entire state - even Newark and Camden have higher per-capita incomes - than live in a dilapidated SRO in San Francisco (I've done that too).
Retirees live in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. Out west, it's in and around Las Vegas. No one retires to San Francisco ... or LA for that matter.
Tennessee has favorable taxes for retirees, as the state has huge sales taxes and practically no income tax (interest and dividends are taxable). This is the opposite of what one needs in a place full of young workers who have to buy big-ticket stuff (cars, clothes, furniture, appliances, and consumer electronics) with low incomes (as is typical for people starting out in life or starting families).
The dream for those who are super-rich is that people pay heavy taxes on consumption items (which can include food) while the people that those super-rich see as the most deserving of favorable treatment because they are the only people who matter as they are the only investors (or heirs of such) pay practically no taxes on income. Such is a heritage of a plantation-based economy in which the planters were the only people with cash, but their plantations were largely self-contained so that slaves produced the food for local consumption and the cash crop of tobacco or cotton, and little money needed circulate within the plantation. There was little finance, retailing, or other service industry. The urban bourgeoisie, slight as it was, had to pay consumption taxes or income taxes as they were the only ones with cash.
It is difficult to escape a political or economic heritage short of a proletarian revolution, and I am not saying that a Commie revolution is a good idea (the high body count and that the administrators act much like an aristocracy).
RE: Strong Towns - pbrower2a - 12-16-2021
(12-16-2021, 09:22 AM)Anthony Wrote: It's better to live in a home that you yourself own in Manchester Township, New Jersey, roughly halfway between NYC and Philadelphia, where public transportation is essentially non-existent, and believe it or not has the lowest per-capita income in the entire state - even Newark and Camden have higher per-capita incomes - than live in a dilapidated SRO in San Francisco (I've done that too).
The ratio of income to rent is one of the more reliable measures of the ease of life in America. Of course, really-cheap places might be cheap for unwelcome reasons -- such that the public services are cr@ppy (law enforcement is ineffective and the schools are the sorts that prepare kids mostly for farm labor, fast food or roadside services work, or prison -- which is possible in some high-cost places, too, in California), the economy has been nuked (Rochester, New York; Flint, Michigan), or there is nothing to do so that if a kid leaves town for college he is likely to never return upon graduating except for an occasional visit to show the in-laws why the low rent isn't such a good thing.
Part of the appeal of a demagogue like Trump is his allusions to an America in life was not so much better as easier. Paying seventy percent of your 'disposable' income to a landlord is a good reason to leave California because relatively little of California is really livable. Central Valley? You might as well be in the part of Texas between El Paso and the I-35 corridor, a part of America that I do not recommend. The US population has doubled over sixty years, and there is no cheap land on which to build tract houses for the middle class near places that are neither overpopulated nor economically-nuked. Housing is incredibly cheap in Youngstown, Ohio, but the city is becoming a town. (Besides, to find anything really fun or enlightening to do you would need to schlepp over to Cleveland or Pittsburgh). Demagogues never have viable solutions.
RE: Strong Towns - Anthony '58 - 12-16-2021
(12-16-2021, 01:17 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(12-16-2021, 12:43 PM)David Horn Wrote:(12-16-2021, 09:22 AM)Anthony Wrote: It's better to live in a home that you yourself own in Manchester Township, New Jersey, roughly halfway between NYC and Philadelphia, where public transportation is essentially non-existent, and believe it or not has the lowest per-capita income in the entire state - even Newark and Camden have higher per-capita incomes - than live in a dilapidated SRO in San Francisco (I've done that too).
Retirees live in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. Out west, it's in and around Las Vegas. No one retires to San Francisco ... or LA for that matter.
Tennessee has favorable taxes for retirees, as the state has huge sales taxes and practically no income tax (interest and dividends are taxable). This is the opposite of what one needs in a place full of young workers who have to buy big-ticket stuff (cars, clothes, furniture, appliances, and consumer electronics) with low incomes (as is typical for people starting out in life or starting families).
The dream for those who are super-rich is that people pay heavy taxes on consumption items (which can include food) while the people that those super-rich see as the most deserving of favorable treatment because they are the only people who matter as they are the only investors (or heirs of such) pay practically no taxes on income. Such is a heritage of a plantation-based economy in which the planters were the only people with cash, but their plantations were largely self-contained so that slaves produced the food for local consumption and the cash crop of tobacco or cotton, and little money needed circulate within the plantation. There was little finance, retailing, or other service industry. The urban bourgeoisie, slight as it was, had to pay consumption taxes or income taxes as they were the only ones with cash.
It is difficult to escape a political or economic heritage short of a proletarian revolution, and I am not saying that a Commie revolution is a good idea (the high body count and that the administrators act much like an aristocracy).
Southern states have favorable income taxes - but most have them have very high, and very regressive, sales taxes.
If you want to move to a fair tax state and you don't have a lot of money, then Oregon is for you: No sales tax, and a steeply graduated income tax.
Just stay out of the Portland area and housing costs are extremely reasonable.
RE: Strong Towns - beechnut79 - 02-28-2022
Here is a piece I found which indicates that the electric vehicle won't really be the earth's savior:
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/06/18/electric-vehicles-wont-save-us/
RE: Strong Towns - pbrower2a - 02-28-2022
(02-28-2022, 12:27 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Here is a piece I found which indicates that the electric vehicle won't really be the earth's savior:
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/06/18/electric-vehicles-wont-save-us/
Where I live (this is a rural area) a three-mile bicycle ride is unsafe. I am hemmed in by two two-lane blacktops with official speed limits of 55 mph. That's not to say that people drive 55 on either. One of them is straight, flat, and with nothing to stop for for twelve miles. It has practically no shoulder, so if someone drives boozily aside your bicycle you may be lucky to go into the ditch. Needless to say it has been a speeder's paradise. I reported that to the state troopers, and within a couple weeks I saw people pulled over. I frequently walked a dog around there and I didn't want my beloved pooch becoming just another instance of road-kill.
In the post-WWII era America had about half the population that it now does, so it could get away with urban sprawl as it cannot now. Know of course that much of that development is approaching the end of its expected life, along with the infrastructure (streets, sewers, schools, power grid) built for it. Low-density sprawl with a car-dependent populace is itself brutal to the environment, and it may not be sustainable.
Electric vehicles still require parking space.
RE: Strong Towns - pbrower2a - 03-13-2022
(12-13-2021, 09:26 AM)Anthony Wrote: But urban sprawl is not the issue. Urban cost is.
Already, as the first Baby Busters are becoming eligible for Social Security, they do not feel "entitled" to remain in hyperexpensive cities like New York and San Francisco, where "aging '60s progressives" (the term that the local media in San Francisco actually uses to denote them) are largely staying put.
Instead, they are turning up in such places as Fargo and even Wahpeton, both in North Dakota, and Yankton, South Dakota (home of the now defunct Yankton College, where the late Lyle Alzado played football). Those with more conservative cultural tastes are gravitating toward such locales as Joplin, Missouri.
Urban sprawl brings high costs of maintenance for the revenue earned from property taxes from owners of McMansions (the streets devour huge amounts of asphalt, wire, and pipes per person living therein. Even box stores such as Best Buy, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart devour public services. Cities need tax revenue to meet the cost of maintaining infrastructure. So do public utilities that force rate hikes on others.
This is not a question of climate or topography.