Why American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme [ST03]

> 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] ▶ this video

In large parts of the United States it should affect single-family homes. A lot of cities constructed their suburbs with one-term fees and subsidies, but are charging extremely low taxes on the houses once constructed. In fact, the taxes are so low that they don't pay for the upkeep of the infrastructure required to service those houses. They are losing money on every house and are trying to make up for it in volume! The sole reason they have been able to continue is because the dense urban core is subsidizing the suburbs. But it'll inevitably end up with decrepit and neglected infrastructure, and cities going bankrupt. The only way to solve this is to increase the revenue per land area, which means a higher land tax, which in turn means a bigger tax increase per-person for single-family homes than for multi-family dwellings. If you want to know more, the following NotJustBikes videos are a good introduction of the subject: ▶ this video link

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: link Why American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme: ▶ this video The Ugly, Dangerous, and Inefficient Stroads found all over the US & Canada: link

> 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: link You could also just watch this smug video ▶ this video

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: ▶ this video

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: ▶ this video

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: ▶ this video) 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.

They're not popping up anywhere. They're only ever installed in a brand-new development. (Okay, I'm sure somewhere at least one, probably very small, neighborhood has voluntarily formed one for some specific reason, but in general.) They are in all new developments in most states because the suburb model is financially unsustainable (see ▶ this video for the argument why), so, if you want to build a nice new development, the town/city is going to say "Who's gonna maintain that little park? Who's gonna cut the grass in the green spaces? Who's gonna sweep the streets?" etc. Not to mention, every amenity outside individual homes (clubhouse, pool, playground) etc. needs to be maintained. Cities can't afford to take them on as public parks, and the individual neighborhoods whose home prices paid for their construction don't really want them to be public either. And the developer needs to have an entity with which all these responsibilities will vest when they're done building, so, HOA needs to exist. The alternative is either no shared amenities of any kind, or trying to get the whole city to approve paying for the perpetual maintenance of a new public park when building a new housing tract. Good luck getting that passed, since most existing residents (besides the ones in the next tract over) would say "F that, I'd never go there, why should my taxes pay for it?"