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Summary: infrastructure costs to maintain spread out exurb style development end up being more than the incremental tax revenue, especially when you consider re
by h4nkoslo 10y ago
Summary: infrastructure costs to maintain spread out exurb style development end up being more than the incremental tax revenue, especially when you consider replacement costs and the potential for future higher borrowing costs.
Property developers (along with car dealerships) are by far the strongest advocacy groups in many areas. It's not totally surprising that they've managed to capture the local government and push them towards counterproductive development that ends up being a massive subsidy from the taxpayers.
- battlebot 10y agoNot sure "exurb" is a real thing--most people living that far out have wells and leech fields and the density is pretty low. Practically every person who sits on our city council is involved with real estate--either sales or development. It is rotten to the core because of their conflicts of interest.
- davidw 10y agoDevelopers will build whatever they're allowed to. They'll do dense if that's where the money is, or single family homes if that's all that zoning allows. There's probably some bias to what they know, and all we've allowed (zoning) is single family homes, strip malls and that kind of thing, so there is that, but if more were allowed, it'd probably end up being built, sooner or later.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoIn most parts of the country, zoning regulations force developers to build low density. Just look at the fights in the SF bay area where developers want to build tall and local NIMBYs fight them tooth and nail.