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It's very hard to take the article seriously without actual numbers. Why not find an example town, go over its finances and quantify the expected deferred maint

It's very hard to take the article seriously without actual numbers. Why not find an example town, go over its finances and quantify the expected deferred maintenance compared with its income? If the town stopped growing and needed to make up revenue without counting on growth, where would it come from? Sales tax increases? Property tax? Government transfer payments? How much hardship would taxing the stakeholders the balance cause?

abetusk 6y ago
It's not exactly what you wanted but they do have a "strong town test" [1] that looks to have at least some semblance of a quantitative aspect to it. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/1/take-the-strong-towns-strength-test https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/1/take-the-stron...
TulliusCicero 6y ago
They do exactly this with their case studies. There are several linked in this post: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
- CapriciousCptl 6y ago
  Not even close (case studies linked below). Their examples only look at individual projects from several cities, instead of whole cities. They convincingly show a few houses paying $252/year in property taxes will only support X sq ft of road. But that's not really surprising-- more dense houses paying $1000/year property taxes in some other part of the city will subsidize the other parts and the city will avoid financial ruin. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-part-2.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-pon...
  - treis 6y ago
    > few houses paying $252/year That's 10-20% of a typical property tax bill. They're fudging the numbers somewhere.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    > But that's not really surprising-- more dense houses paying $1000/year property taxes in some other part of the city will subsidize the other parts and the city will avoid financial ruin. 1. That itself is not great. There's no compelling reason for the government to subsidize things that way. Why deliberately push a form of development that's horrible for the city finances? Modern zoning rules usually force that kind of thing to exist, for no good reason. This is one of the things strongtowns talks about. 2. Some cities don't have a dense core with enough activity to subsidize the sprawly areas.
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      There's a compelling reason: that encourages city growth into the subsidized areas.
      - TulliusCicero 6y ago
        ...but without the zoning rules, the city would still grow. It would just grow in a more financially sustainable way. You wouldn't even be blocking sprawly development if that's really what the market wanted. You would only be allowing more dense development. Which would only happen if the market preferred it.

abetusk 6y ago

It's not exactly what you wanted but they do have a "strong town test" [1] that looks to have at least some semblance of a quantitative aspect to it. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/1/take-the-strong-towns-strength-test https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/1/take-the-stron...

TulliusCicero 6y ago

They do exactly this with their case studies. There are several linked in this post: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

CapriciousCptl 6y ago
Not even close (case studies linked below). Their examples only look at individual projects from several cities, instead of whole cities. They convincingly show a few houses paying $252/year in property taxes will only support X sq ft of road. But that's not really surprising-- more dense houses paying $1000/year property taxes in some other part of the city will subsidize the other parts and the city will avoid financial ruin. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-part-2.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-pon...
- treis 6y ago
  > few houses paying $252/year That's 10-20% of a typical property tax bill. They're fudging the numbers somewhere.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  > But that's not really surprising-- more dense houses paying $1000/year property taxes in some other part of the city will subsidize the other parts and the city will avoid financial ruin. 1. That itself is not great. There's no compelling reason for the government to subsidize things that way. Why deliberately push a form of development that's horrible for the city finances? Modern zoning rules usually force that kind of thing to exist, for no good reason. This is one of the things strongtowns talks about. 2. Some cities don't have a dense core with enough activity to subsidize the sprawly areas.
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    There's a compelling reason: that encourages city growth into the subsidized areas.
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago
      ...but without the zoning rules, the city would still grow. It would just grow in a more financially sustainable way. You wouldn't even be blocking sprawly development if that's really what the market wanted. You would only be allowing more dense development. Which would only happen if the market preferred it.