4 ms·

Isn't this one of those sites that advocate getting rid of "sprawl" and having everyone move to high density apartments near the train station? And they want t

by reddog 6y ago

Isn't this one of those sites that advocate getting rid of "sprawl" and having everyone move to high density apartments near the train station? And they want to replace cars with government run mass transit so everyone gets to work and back in trams, busses and subways filled shoulder-to-shoulder with 800 strangers? Thats really going to be a tough sell over the next few years. I got to say I live in exactly the kind of suburbs they hate with a house big enough for everyone to spread out and enough square footage to store a months worth of food. And when I do get out its alone in my car to curbside pickup or a drive through. I couldn't be more pleased.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
>I couldn't be more pleased. Of course, the costs won't be paid by you. Pushing mass all that extra distance consumes exponentially more energy. Fortunately, the effects of climate change won't be so bad until I'm in old age (I think).
projektfu 6y ago
They are not for everyone moving into a compact city. There have been a lot of articles recently about the pleasures of living in a walkable rural town as opposed to a sprawling four-lane highway with no discernable border between rural and town.
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
Of course you are pleased. The folks in the inner city are subsidizing your lifestyle. If you had to pay the full cost you might not be so pleased.
asokoloski 6y ago
I think they try to stay pretty explicitly neutral about advocating a particular density, it's just that they want people to be realistic about how much a particular kind of development costs. Suburbs are perfectly fine -- but if they were taxed to a degree that reflects their actual infrastructure cost, it would be much more expensive to live in them. There's currently a bizarre pattern where poorer, older, higher-density urban neighborhoods end up subsidizing richer suburbs. Likewise, it's fine if you want to live out on a farm well away from other people -- but the town shouldn't pay a million dollars to run a paved road and water supply out to your house, when a dirt road and a well is good enough. The problem is that we all want something for nothing. We all want to live in low-density suburbs like you love, but since charging enough in taxes to pay for them would not be very politically popular, instead we've run up massive infrastructure liabilities, depending on unsustainable exponential growth for funding to fix the old infrastructure. Would you still love the suburbs as much if your property taxes were 2x or 4x what they are now? If you would still want to live in a suburb, great, no problem. But many people would probably rather choose to move to a denser area and pay a more reasonable tax rate.

by reddog 6y ago

lotsofpulp 6y ago

>I couldn't be more pleased. Of course, the costs won't be paid by you. Pushing mass all that extra distance consumes exponentially more energy. Fortunately, the effects of climate change won't be so bad until I'm in old age (I think).

projektfu 6y ago

They are not for everyone moving into a compact city. There have been a lot of articles recently about the pleasures of living in a walkable rural town as opposed to a sprawling four-lane highway with no discernable border between rural and town.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago

Of course you are pleased. The folks in the inner city are subsidizing your lifestyle. If you had to pay the full cost you might not be so pleased.

asokoloski 6y ago

I think they try to stay pretty explicitly neutral about advocating a particular density, it's just that they want people to be realistic about how much a particular kind of development costs. Suburbs are perfectly fine -- but if they were taxed to a degree that reflects their actual infrastructure cost, it would be much more expensive to live in them. There's currently a bizarre pattern where poorer, older, higher-density urban neighborhoods end up subsidizing richer suburbs. Likewise, it's fine if you want to live out on a farm well away from other people -- but the town shouldn't pay a million dollars to run a paved road and water supply out to your house, when a dirt road and a well is good enough. The problem is that we all want something for nothing. We all want to live in low-density suburbs like you love, but since charging enough in taxes to pay for them would not be very politically popular, instead we've run up massive infrastructure liabilities, depending on unsustainable exponential growth for funding to fix the old infrastructure. Would you still love the suburbs as much if your property taxes were 2x or 4x what they are now? If you would still want to live in a suburb, great, no problem. But many people would probably rather choose to move to a denser area and pay a more reasonable tax rate.