27 ms·
Why American cities can’t keep up with infrastructure maintenance (2017)
- 082349872349872 6y agoOne difference between here and the States is that most of our tax money goes to the equivalent of city and state, and only a small percentage to the national government.
- mcny 6y agoHere means Germany? Or EU in general?
- tannhaeuser 6y agoGP can't possibly mean Germany with chronic communal underfinancing (yet being hit by federal law creating entitlements all the time such as for eg kindergardens, energy efficient housing, etc),
- 082349872349872 6y agoSwitzerland. (and for the cousin comment: PfP yes, NATO no.)
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoThe Department of Defense gets the lion's share of U.S. tax dollars, but we're not supposed to talk about that. At this point I can't tell if the politicians fund the DOD because they want to, or because they're afraid of the lengths it might go to protect its cashflow.
- mrep 6y agous defense spending is 3.2% of gdp, less than a third of social security, medicare and medicaid at 9.8%: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File%3A2019_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget...
- heliodor 6y agoA pie diagram where the quoted percentages don't match their respective slices of the pie. Talk about misleading!
- sampsonitify 6y agoThe pie slices represent the spend as a percentage of total spend, and the percentages are of GDP. I'd hope government spending is not 100% of spending!
- heliodor 6y agoThe diagram is misleading. The reason is irrelevant.
- dpierce9 6y agoGDP can’t be spent. The Pentagon budget is about 750 billion and federal tax revenues are about 3.5 trillion so the pentagon budget is about 20% of tax revenues. The ‘about’s here are fudging billions.
- thoughtstheseus 6y agoWe’re long past tax revenues defining government spending. Deficits are abound even in good times.
- mcny 6y ago> Deficits are abound even in good times. I can't wait to hear from "conservatives" who "care deeply" about deficits to come out of the wood works and teach us the virtue of "not spending money we don't have" now that we have given our tax breaks (again) to all the corporations from Amazon to Walmart. Nobody gets to whine about deficits until we raise our tax rates up and stable for at least a decade[0]. I don't see anyone campaigning for higher property taxes (my recommendation is an annual tax of 7 to 9 percent[1] of the property value with a housing allowance to all residents physically present in the US) similar to the carbon tax in Canada. [0] My off-hand recommendation for income above 50 x 2000 x minimum wage (for example, at a minimum wage of USD 15, it is USD 50 * 2000 * 15 = USD 1.5M), the progressive tax rate should be at least 90%. [1] The idea being not paying this tax for roughly ten years ought to be enough to get you evicted with minimum fuss so we can "sell" the property to someone who will pay the property tax. No exceptions. No homesteads. No charitable work exception. Applicable nationwide.
- refurb 6y ago2020 US federal budget $3.863T 2020 US defense spending $0.636B or 16%. That’s the lion’s share?
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoIt's actually 993 billion. And while it's not a full majority, it's definitely wayyyyyy too much. The overspending on military means other, productive parts of society are underfunded.
- koheripbal 6y agoBecause other nations secure your defense.
- pasabagi 6y agoI find this idea totally weird. Can you look at the last decade of US military actions and say this has increased European security? I think most people would say no, of course not. Sure, the US pays a lot for defense, but is that money well spent? Did the EU benefit from the US invasion of Korea? Probably not. Vietnam? Also no. Iraq? Afghanistan? In all these cases, certainly no.
- roenxi 6y ago> Can you look at the last decade of US military actions and say this has increased European security? Here is a video [0] of the borders of European countries over the last 1500 years. There is potentially a correlation behind their stability since 1945 (11:16 in the video) and the US having a number of troops stationed in Germany comparable to the German army. It is debatable whether it was all to do with the US; but the circumstantial evidence is substantial. The border redrawings may resume one day. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI
- adrianN 6y agoThere hasn't been a credible outside threat to European security since the fall of the Soviet Union. Intraeuropean wars between major powers have become a lot less likely because of increased economic integration thanks to the EU.
- inglor_cz 6y agoOh, just the small problems like Transnistria and Donetsk and Crimea. I do not mean to be sarcastic, but Baltic nations are really happy to be protected by NATO. They are in Russian sphere of interest and cannot defend themselves on their own.
- 6y ago
- yardie 6y agoI pay an equal amount in federal and local property tax. Property taxes also pay for public schools. Ironically, while people get in arms about how the federal budget is being spent almost no one knows what’s going on in their city or county budget. And that determines your quality of life just as much.
- kingkawn 6y agoAmerica isn’t lookin good
- jbullock35 6y ago> The median house in Lafayette costs roughly $150,000. A family living in this house would currently pay about $1,500 per year in taxes to the local government of which 10%, approximately $150, goes to maintenance of infrastructure [...] To maintain just the roads and drainage systems that have already been built, the family in that median house would need to have their taxes increase by $3,300 per year. As best I can tell, the author was saying that Lafayette is spending only $150 / ($3300 + $150) =~ 4% of what it needs to spend to maintain its roads and drainage systems. That seems implausible. I wonder whether he has made an odd assumption: "currently, 10% of taxes go to maintenance of infrastructure; thus, if we increase taxes by $3,300, only 10% of the increase will go to maintenance of infrastructure." That odd reasoning might account for his "need to have their taxes increase by $3,300 per year" claim.
- chii 6y agoif you assume tax revenue is spread amongst all the things that are needed, then this makes sense. Instead of X number of things getting fully funded, and then roads/sewer maintenance getting a pittance, everything is under funded to the same degree, but everything still gets a little bit of funding.
- silvestrov 6y agoIt can happend when towns grow quickly and the city sell the parcels for a significant amount of money. In Denmark parcels are often sold for $50-100.000 in popular areas. This gives the town a significant amount of one-shot money. If they use that one-shot money for running expenses rather than investments (in e.g. subways), then the town will go bankrupt when there are no new buyers of parcels. It's somewhat like a ponzi scheme.
- throw0101a 6y ago> If they use that one-shot money for running expenses rather than investments (in e.g. subways), then the town will go bankrupt when there are no new buyers of parcels. This is what happened to Mississauga, Canada (a suburb of Toronto): for the last fifty years builders had to pay developer charges which was used to build the initial infrastructure. However things were constructed in a typical North American, car-centric fashion. Now that most of the available land is covered in large-plot, low-density housing, they kind of realized the money train has reached its destination and they now have to maintain all of this infrastructure. The same mayor (Hazel McCallion) was re-elected over and over for forty years, and so the same kind of thinking was perpetuated over that time period because no fresh thinking was introduced and things basically ran on inertia. She is often labelled the "Queen of Sprawl". * https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/how-hazel-mccallion-learned-a-thing-or-two-about-sprawl/article21412631/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/how-hazel-mccal... * https://archive.is/DpKKp https://archive.is/DpKKp There are of course some plots left, and over the past few years they've been building medium-density townhomes, as well as more and more mid- and high-rise towers. * https://www.insauga.com/is-hazel-mccallion-wrong-on-this-huge-issue-in-mississauga https://www.insauga.com/is-hazel-mccallion-wrong-on-this-hug... * https://torontostoreys.com/issue-of-the-year-mississauga/ https://torontostoreys.com/issue-of-the-year-mississauga/
- daniellarusso 6y agoThis was a good explanation of why US cities will never be able to cover their infrastructure maintenance costs. The town I live in recently completed a $20mil sewer treatment plant and is in the process of beginning a $2mil+ project to replace the water lines. It has approx. 1,600 residents, although the neighboring town is a customer of our sewer plant and they supply our drinking water (even though we are on the river). I believe, as an investor of municipal bonds, the tax liability is eliminated, so this may be a reason this type of investment is ‘pushed’.
- Retric 6y agoMunicipal bonds are barely above the inflation rate. Split what 1,600 x2 = 3,200 ways a 6,250$ per person investment at those rates really isn’t that expensive. It’s roughly what everyone building a septic system would cost. Especially, if it’s sized with the expectation of any kind of growth.
- daniellarusso 6y agoIt is not built with expectations of growth and its useful life will end at approx the time the debt has been paid off (about 20 years) Typically when building a septic system, it is one per household, not one per family member, though. A family of four does not need 4 septic tanks.
- Retric 6y agoIf the sewer treatment plant is really only lasting 20 years before becoming worthless that’s an issue. Those things should be lasting 50 to 100 years with maintenance and equipment replacement not 20. My comparison was assuming roughly half the interest rate, twice the upfront cost, but twice the lifespan. In comparison to a septic system for a family of 4 running ~12k, but only lasting 15-40 years.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- user5994461 6y ago
- jimmygrapes 6y agoYet again an article about how it costs $X to do something with infrastructure but no explanation for why it costs $X. Until everyone starts asking "why?" and then addressing the resulting answers (commonly: kickbacks, overregulation, collusion in bidding, and simple "match the budget" bids) this issue will continue with every aspect of government-run service.
- haram_masala 6y agoThank you. This was my first thought too, and then for some reason I felt like a jerk for going there.
- koheripbal 6y agoWhy is the high cost of western labor not in your list. Labor is the main cost. We need construction robots.
- arijun 6y agoMan, it's too bad this author didn't read the other post on the front page about colorblindness; I can barely understand anything from his graph. (Yes this post is from a few years ago, but it does provide a good example of the principles from the colorblindness post.)
- guidedlight 6y agoCapital is so cheap these days, Lafayette should: (1) borrow to fund infrastructure spending; and focus that into new local jobs and economic activity (2) A boosted economy will allow higher taxes to be collected (3) Better infrastructure will attract investment But in this scenario, politicians will skip step 2 because it's unpopular; and the cycle will continue in a future generation.
- Xylakant 6y agoHow will that help? The fundamental problem is sprawl - the density is too low to support the infrastructure to maintain it. Effectively, the city is making a loss on every square meter of land it builds infrastructure on. Using a loan to build more infrastructure will make the problem worse - unless you can raise the tax base around (ballpark estimate from the numbers given in the article) factor 10 or higher just to maintain that infrastructure. So the answer is to build less - make quarters denser, smaller footprint per person, less garden space per house, higher houses. This all goes counter the dream many people have - a suburb house with a garden, driveway, lawn and porch.
- rightbyte 6y agoHigh density infrastructure like subways and trains is way more expensive than roads and pipes. It is a 100k town in the example not LA.
- ginko 6y agoYou don't need subways and trains in a dense 100k town.
- Xylakant 6y agoExactly - and that low density town is loosing money per mile road, sewage pipes, ... So it needs to build less miles, not more and increase the income per mile. If your startup is loosing money per sale, increasing sales is not a viable long term strategy.
- adrianN 6y ago
- reddog 6y agoI noticed the author is a civil engineer. Asking a civil engineer if you need more infrastructure spending is a lot like asking a barber if you need a haircut or asking an orthodontist if your kid needs braces.
- PeterisP 6y agoIf that's the case, then the author's conclusion (that we need much less infrastructure because we have so much that it's absolutely impossible to maintain it) is even more interesting.
- smarks 6y agoIndeed, Marohn (the author of TFA) has been attacked by other members of the civil engineering profession for his criticisms of it (going against established "dogma" as he puts it). https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/18/what-happens-when-you-challenge-your-own-professions-dogma https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/18/what-happens-w...
- newsbinator 6y agoWho is more qualified than an orthodontist to suggest whether a kid needs braces?
- spaceribs 6y agoIt's a classic straw-man, "Well of course a civil engineer says there are civil engineering problems! It's their job on the line!"
- lr4444lr 6y agoIt's the conflict of interest we're worried about. Not competence to make the assessment.
- willcipriano 6y agoYou know when a mechanic has a sign out front that says "free brake inspection", how often do you think he says "brakes look great, no work needed"? You should only take advantage of a offer like that if you already suspect something is wrong or in the case of a orthodontist when you think your kid needs braces to begin with.
- narag 6y agoIn the article there is a link to a follow-up article: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/10/poor-neighborhoods-make-the-best-investment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/10/poor-neighborh... And in this one, a link to another interesting explanation: https://www.strongtowns.org/curbside-chat-1/2015/12/14/americas-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/curbside-chat-1/2015/12/14/ameri...
- rXoX 6y agoI'm a fan of Google Maps and I'm not an American. For fun, I will often plunk myself down into an American city in street view and outside of the major metropolitan areas on the coast, there is one very very evident aspect of America - they love asphalt. It is the most virulently anti-walking society on earth. I could not survive in America because I don't drive. Huge developments often have no sidewalks at all and if that's not a sign of hating a walking human being I dont know what is. I realized a long long time ago that America is a giant shithole of planning.
- macawfish 6y agoAnd every month in Lafayette, how much money goes to the interest on mortgage debt? And how many human-hours a month do people in Lafayette twiddle away on corporate busywork so they can pay that interest?
- rtx 6y agoWe all need to move to cities, and leave more land for nature.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoNo, I don't think I'd ever want to do that. I've lived for a short time in a dense urban environment and I hated it. I've seen pictures of European cities and they seen way too cramped for my taste as well. Like it or not, you will have to deal with the fact that most people don't want to live cramped up. Also, do you think the people will just abandon their land if no one else buys it? "Nature" won't pay for it. They bought it from someone else and will therefore expect to be paid before relinquishing it.
- justanotherc 6y agoWhy don't we just stop building all this infrastructure, and move to a micro-community or individual model? My parents' farm is on a well and septic, and a dirt road. Water purification is done with a UV filter. The infrastructure costs are almost nil. We are in an age now where houses don't even need to be on the power grid -- a set of solar panels and a lithium battery makes traditional power distribution obsolete. If it costs a typical suburban house $10k a year to maintain infrastructure, that's outrageous. Move to individually or community based infrastructure.
- Jgrubb 6y agoI'm sorry, it's not obvious to me why this would be downvoted. Would anyone care to elaborate?
- necheffa 6y agoThe claim that any of this has zero infrastructure cost is laudable. Either OP is extremely naive or being very disingenuous in there bias. The farmer is notoriously running around the farm fixing shit in between tending to the crop because living off the grid is hard.
- cycomanic 6y agoBecause it's completely orthogonal to the original arguments. Infrastructure is more than sewer systems, roads for example. Moreover everyone moving to septic tanks is a non environmentally friendly solution, and where are you going to bring the waste when the tanks have to be emptied (they need to be pumped out regularly), who is going to pay for that infrastructure? Let's not even start on the argument that not everyone can and wants to live on a farm. Also rural living is probably the most inefficient when it comes to infrastructure.
- justanotherc 6y agoI'm not talking about everyone moving to the country, I'm talking about bringing localized infrastructure to suburban sprawl. I doubt that would work in high density urban areas, but why could it not work in suburbs where every house is sitting on a 60x120ft lot? Its those areas that the article describes as the expensive areas because everything is so spread out.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoCan anyone confirm if this is accurate or not? It sounds pretty dire if so.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- netcan 6y agoA lot of the initial taxation and allocation discussion seems likes somewhat of a red herring. The starting point is near the end, IMO: The cost of infrastructure maintenance is $8k-$10k per home. Is this true? How variable is this between cities? How determined is it? Could it be less, how, etc.? IDK if this number is normal or out of line, but I think this needs to be the starting point. My uneducated opinion is that it seems high.
- VLM 6y agoPer google, $10K/yr is one median income per 2.8 houses. The concept of having one person for every three houses doing nothing but infrastructure maintenance is laughable. The problem with wide spread innumeracy is random numbers can be printed for propaganda or other purposes and the vast majority of people will simply accept them. Combined with sophistry techniques such as anecdote proves the general rule, etc.
- netcan 6y agoAre you accusing this article of innumeracy and/or propaganda or is this just a general comment?
- 02020202 6y agodon't even need to read the article. the answer has been, is and will be always the same - welfare aka communism.
- aazaa 6y ago> The way this happened is pretty simple. At Strong Towns, we call it the Growth Ponzi Scheme. Through a combination of federal incentives, state programs and private capital, cities were able to rapidly grow by expanding horizontally. This provided the local government with the immediate revenues that come from new growth -- permit fees, utility fees, property tax increases, sales tax -- and, in exchange, the city takes on the long term responsibility of servicing and maintaining all the new infrastructure. The money comes in handy in the present while the future obligation is, well....a long time in the future. This is the lens through which Strong Towns views the country's cities. It's a useful model that explains a great deal. It's also falsifiable. The growth Ponzi scheme hypothesis says that the source of America's infrastructure problems is subsidies from higher levels of governments (e.g., federal) to lower levels (e.g., cities) for infrastructure. The outcome is always the same: infrastructure that can't be maintained because its costs were never accounted for. The Strong Towns website is chock full of examples, and Lafayette LA is just one. At this point if you live in any US city it seems pretty likely that you'll find a Growth Ponzi at work. Also, that 3D map should scare the liver out of local politicians.
- rayiner 6y agoThe federal new starts transit programs are an example of this.
- hmahncke 6y agoIsn’t the reason those few districts have big “profits” because they are the central business district where all the people from the outlying areas with big “losses” come in to work and shop? This feels like looking at a company by division and deciding that R&D and HR a make huge losses and all the profits are in sales.
- dzdt 6y agoDoes anyone know of data tools that could help (say) a city council understand the position of their own municipality? I think a lot of people are flying blind, not asking the right questions.
- NumberWangMan 6y agoHey, they have some info on this: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/10/19/value-per-acre-analysis-a-how-to-for-beginners https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/10/19/value-per-acr... Usually the tax values of properties are available to the public, as well as digital maps of plots. You can combine the two to do a coarse analysis of how much each property is worth per acre. Urban 3, the firm that did the analysis in the article, goes much further and includes things like where people take trips and which roads are the most valuable, that sort of thing. But even a basic analysis can be quite telling.
- anovikov 6y agoMaybe because middle class left to suburbs leaving mostly ghettos in the cities thus depriving them of them main source of income, the property tax? In this case, the problem will fix itself, because suburbs are the Cold War creation, they can be seen as a compulsory wartime measure. Provided that relationship with China will not reach Cold War standoff levels, they will cease to exist by themselves, because modern people really don't want to live in them.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago> because modern people really don't want to live in them. At least in the US, I doubt this is true, by and large. Given the sheer number of people in them, it seems to strain credulity that most don't want to.
- jtdev 6y agoBeg to differ... many people find city life to be completely antithetical to a life of happiness.
- zach_garwood 6y agoI dunno about that. Here in Chicago we've been seeing a massive migration out of the city to the suburbs for the past several years. In all of the reporting on the topic, no one has mentioned cold war fears as a motivation. It's always high taxes & failing infrastructure given as the reason.
- trident1000 6y agoThats such an absurd opinion. People live in suburbs because you can raise a family at an affordable price point and not have your children see people shitting on the sidewalk. People also dont want to live around millions of people in close proximity if they can afford it. I lived in NYC for 10 years and its a complete trap that you can't escape because you dont have the logistics or financial means to move out (and I had a white collar job in finance). I had to get very well off before I could move out. Thats the primary reason cities become over-crowded. Its a one way street especially if you're single. Not because they're so great.
- 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mwkaufma 6y agoA critique from Bay Area planner Asher Kohn, also from 2017: https://www.asherjkohn.com/blog/2017/10/30/the-weak-logic-in-strong-towns https://www.asherjkohn.com/blog/2017/10/30/the-weak-logic-in...
- Ericson2314 6y agoI'm not sure there's is actual disagreement here? Strong towns I'm pretty sure intentionally chooses it's rhetoric to try to be more Republican compatible. (Strength, budgets, irresponsibility, etc.) But ultimately they are asking for a big pile of federal dollars, to rebuild cities/towns to be more compact and efficient, just like most everyone left of center. I think it's good to point out we shouldn't just densify everything --- we already use too much land area. Some places need to densified, and others need to de-densified (remove housing and use for other purpose).
- 205guy 6y agoI’ve been reading strongtowns off and on for a few years. You’re correct that they try to have a left-leaning approach (densification) based on right-leaning principles (fiscal responsibility). But I haven’t seen them “asking for a big pile of federal dollars.” They seem so be saying that the pile of federal dollars that the towns and cities are already getting should be spent more responsibly, ie on projects that can be sustained by the tax value they create.
- ip26 6y agoBut ultimately they are asking for a big pile of federal dollars No, not really. They focus a lot on "try things out" at small scale, see what works, and improving a city's cash inflow vs outflow. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/9/19/the-strong-towns-approach-to-public-investment-satbook https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/9/19/the-strong-tow... https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2020/04/29/coronavirus-studer-strong-towns-chuck-marohn-says-experimentation-key-cities/3040385001/ https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2020/04/29/coronavirus-studer... A strong line of critique has been, "City A" knocks down a "blighted" business zone and replaces it with a single business w/ large parking lot & grass everywhere- but when you examine the financials, the new business brings less revenues to the city than the old "blighted" corner mall. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/2/the-cost-of-auto-orientation.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/2/the-cost-of-aut... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/22/the-more-we-grow-the-poorer-we-become https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/22/the-more-we-gr...
- nathcd 6y ago> Except for a small handful of North American cities -- literally five or less -- Lafayette provides an insight into why your city has no money. ... > It's a predicament that nearly every American city, with very few exceptions, finds itself in. Does anyone know some of the American cities that don't follow this pattern?
- xyzzyz 6y agoContrary to what he says, pretty much none of the cities follow this pattern. Infrastructure maintenance is not a significant cost in most cities budgets, and the only cities that really have any significant problems with it are the ones that are decaying altogether for non-infrastructure related reasons (eg. main employer left, and people are leaving too).
- sfblah 6y agoDo you have anything I can read which contradicts his point on the cost of infrastructure spending? I'd like to see the counterpoint to his thesis.
- xyzzyz 6y agoI made a comment a while ago to that effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22909240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22909240 His thesis falls apart already if you do a back of a napkin calculation. Here is another case study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22913531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22913531
- adrianN 6y agoIs maintenance not a significant cost because the infrastructure doesn't need maintenance, or is it not a significant cost because the infrastructure is left to decay?
- xyzzyz 6y agoPick a few towns at random, look at their budgets, look at their road quality in Google Streetview, and see for yourself. I would love to hear of any examples of infrastructure costs killing cities, but I simply couldn't find any.
- seattle_spring 6y agoIn my experience, it's because people in the middle of nowhere are allowed to vote on infrastructure projects. They claim they don't want "their tax dollars" to pay for "them city slickers." The important bit they conveniently leave out is that cities majorly subsidize rural living through taxes.
- dominotw 6y agoNot sure if that explains potholes all over chicago.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoFreezing temperatures, salt, snow plow usage, heavy vehicles and more road usage, and inability to fix properly due to heavy road usage would explain that.
- oneplane 6y agoDoes work in other countries with similar specs, so it's hardly a technical limitation. It's money, public money, and therefore politics.
- daniellarusso 6y agoI do wonder about US roads. Is it a reliance on the oil industry to build asphalt based roads? Are they intentionally not meant to last? Also, with regards to the US interstate system - why is it designed in such a way that any maintenance required a dramatic decrease in travel throughput? Could it be designed to be functional in ‘maintenance’ mode?
- novok 6y agoAmerica tends to like to do the cheaper thing and get the biggest number. Extra large pizzas made mostly with cheap vegetable oil and bread, lots of square feet with the cheapest drywall, materials and bad design, etc. Maintenance mode capable roads I would guess would cost as much as a road with one more lane, so they just build another lane instead of keeping one in reserve.
- textman 6y agoCities could procure significant funds by assessing developers for long term maintenance costs. For example, it should be possible to estimate how many new housing units would require an additional fire station and the cost to build it. Then prorate that cost to each house. Same applies to libraries, parks, court houses and so on. Developers would tack the additional assessment on to the price of the house and that in turn might slow demand and growth. Corruption is most definitely a factor, maybe not universal, but I have seen it. In my city a developer got approval for the first stage of new houses, about 130, and the county planning agency gave approval for the second stage conditional upon the developer building a bridge to allevate traffic. After the first stage was complete the county commissioners voted to pick up the cost of the bridge and the only explanation was the developer did not have the funds and the commissioners thought the second stage housing would be be an economic benefit to the community.
- kevindong 6y agoYou're describing property taxes in your first paragraph.
- textman 6y agoThen I was not clear. The prorated cost should be added to the fees charged to the developer. Developers would likely tack that onto the price of the house, so not a tax, but a develop fee.
- kevindong 6y agoIsn't that exactly the same root cause of why the article asserts American cities can't keep up with infrastructure upkeep? Cities accepting up front windfalls regardless of whatever long term costs that come with it?
- timthorn 6y agoThat's effectively how it works in the UK. Look up "Section 106 agreements" if you want details.
- mlang23 6y agoI still remember the title of this article before it was edited. It felt more honest before the edit.
- tomohawk 6y agoThis does not explain long established cities such as Baltimore. They have driven all the high earners out through a combination of high taxes and lack of services. The high earners pay most of the taxes, so now they're just stuck. From what I can tell, cities have very poor cost control, and regularly pay platinum prices for lead. And they end up not even getting lead.
- coliveira 6y agoForty years ago, countries like the USA decided that it was good to stop investing in the country and giving increasing tax breaks to corporations because that would be enough to create progress. Now even economists finally realize that these companies have done nothing to grow the economy and that all the money given to them was diverted to increased dividends and buy-backs, CEO compensation, and investments abroad. The problems with infrastructure are not isolated, it is just an aspect of the malaise that it the ideology that more money should be given to the already rich. Now the country doesn't have the fiscal basis to invest anymore and the people are getting the results of this irresponsible behavior.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoTFA has a more nuanced position than this. It's central point is that cities/towns/communities expanded by adding large amounts of infrastructure without any possible means to pay for its maintainance in the future. They did so because they gained short term revenue from the expansion, but failed to have any model whatsoever of how the infrastructure would be maintained.
- coliveira 6y agoThat is a myopic position because cities are not independent and don't live in a vacuum. Cities exist because it is in the interest of the country to develop areas with high industrial or services growth. The investments in infrastructure are a shared concern that benefits the whole country, not just the cities. This TFA theory is just another facet of neoliberal ideology that tries to compartmentalize profits and evade public investments in a large scale.
- vondur 6y agoI remember after the Northridge earthquake in 94 destroyed a section of Interstate 10 in Los Angeles. The state awarded the repair contract to a company with the stipulation of penalties of 200k/day after a certain amount of time, or a bonus a 200k/day if they finished before scheduled. https://www.planacademy.com/construction-project-acceleration-won-millions/ https://www.planacademy.com/construction-project-acceleratio...
- RivieraKid 6y agoCan someone please give a tl;dr of the main argument?
- gumby 6y agoThe article talked about a “big pot of money” at the federal level but it seems that even if it addressed the backlog the problem would remain. Why does infrastructure seem to work in Western Europe? Even little towns in Germany have good roads, water, electricity etc.
- justinzollars 6y agoCould be a myriad of issues. In 10 years the People's Republic of China was able to construct, at a fraction of the cost per km, 16,000 miles of fully connected high speed rail compared to the California High Speed rail project that completed 100 miles in the same period of time. I think its a total institutional failure - and neither Republican or Democrat have a solution. From my personal perspective, China seems to be much more capitalist than the United States. And we have embraced extreme regulation preventing us from doing anything at all.
- RhodoYolo 6y agoJust read the article and the follow on article. His answer to the problem? Paint crosswalks, and put in street trees in poor neighborhoods.
- dang 6y agoDiscussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13370310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13370310
- cwhiz 6y agoHow does this strong towns crap keep finding its way to the top of HN? This site is just nonsense unsourced propaganda.
- flurben 6y agoThe idea that cities must rebuild their infrastructure every generation is completely absurd.
- timwaagh 6y agoSo basically these cities need to reduce their infrastructure to the point it's maintainable again. That could work for roads. It's not much fun, but in Russia often houses don't have an asphalted roads next to them. but perhaps it wouldn't work for pipes, because of hygiene reasons. Perhaps owners can be made to pay for at least some of those pipes through fees for the homeowners association rather than taxes. That way the excess is off the city balance sheet. Houses that are too far away from central infrastructure would just be vacated eventually. Maybe in time more efficient cost sharing appartments would replace these.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoGeorgism might be an answer to the problem of sprawling cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism The concept of gaining public revenues mainly from land and natural resource privileges was widely popularized by Henry George through his first book, Progress and Poverty (1879)... Economists since Adam Smith and David Ricardo have observed that a public levy on land value does not cause economic inefficiency, unlike other taxes. A land value tax also has progressive tax effects. Advocates of land value taxes argue that they would reduce economic inequality, increase economic efficiency, *remove incentives to underutilize urban land* and reduce property speculation. Unfortunately most Americans have not heard of it, and it would probably be labeled socialism by elites if it was brought up seriously.
- x87678r 6y agoI suspect they can keep up and they just will have to in the future. Right now you can see it in taxes for old established cities in the NE have higher taxes than growing states in the South. I saw that NY pays more for retired cops than it does for those working today - that isn't true for Miami/Phoenix/Dallas or other fast growing cities, but will be.
- Consultant32452 6y agoAll of our major systems: from infrastructure to employment to graduate work, is built on the assumption of eternal exponential growth. All of these past infrastructure decisions would've been fine if we continued to have exponential economic and population growth. More taxes/funding would come in and there'd be new money to continue to grow forever. Except it can't grow forever. Eric Weinstein coined the phrase "Embedded Growth Obligation" (EGO) to describe this phenomenon. >"An embedded growth obligation is how fast a structure has to grow in order to maintain its honest positions," Weinstein says. "If you have a situation in which you have trial lawyers and they're supported by various associates, and the associates all want to become partners and trial lawyers themselves, then what you have is a situation where the law firm has to grow at a very fast clip if all those people are going to be satisfied with their job decisions. Well, very quickly that ability to grow runs out, and then people want to know, "Why am I stuck in a position going nowhere?" https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/eric-weinstein-intellectual-dark-web?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2 https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/eric-weinstein-intelle...
- mywittyname 6y agoI really don't think this is the case here. Cities like Lafayette are just plain inefficient, and the inefficiency scales with growth: the more growth you have, the more sprawl you have, which means the more expensive things are, which leads to more inefficiency. This is probably one of the forces constraining the growth of cities like this. The problem with most of suburban America is that it's completely unsustainable. Almost all suburban cities in the US require a constant injection of Federal funds to maintain infrastructure. Most people don't realize this because it's really something politicians score brownie points for, hence the accounting subterfuge they engage in (as mentioned in the article), as do most small cities in the USA. We have no idea how long this Federal subsidy will be maintain, making it difficult to plan for. So many Americans want this idyllic, unsustainable suburban life-style that no politician will keep their job if they try to "take it away" (read: address the issue). But the longer we wait to build more sustainable cities, the worse things will be during the inevitable implosion. America needs to be building medium-density, car-adverse cities now. The country can't afford to continue subsidizing driving to the degree that it has post-WWII. If this doesn't happen, most of the country is going to enter a serious depression.
- ohples 6y agoHot take: Its mostly just car infrastructure thats the cause of the problem. We spent way too much money for a large car-centric transport network that doesn't scale. Stop subsidizing and prioritizing cars as a primary form of transit and you fix most of the issues.
- cashewchoo 6y agoI worry that, culturally, we're too far gone. I, personally, hate driving in any place that's "downtown" by any measure. It's stressful, slow, the streets are never laid out in a sane way, etc. Kansas City, MO has a streetcar that runs north-south through a lot of the downtown area so that I can park in what city-dwellers assure me is "not downtown" right next to the northmost stop, then ride the streetcar to all of the attractions that are in the main night life district. It definitely takes ~10-15 mins longer than if I just drove, but goodness it's just so much more enjoyable. I get to sit and look around at the city I'm in instead of focusing on driving. I've dragged quite a few friends and family along and most people don't like it because: 1. it takes longer (have to wait for transport to arrive, it makes stops you don't need) 2. "iffy people" are on the streetcar I laugh a bit at #2 because compared to almost any other non-car transport in the US I've ever seen, the occupants of the streetcar are just comically gentrified. Yeah there's one guy who's probably homeless, but everyone else is clearly out for a business dinner or a bunch of yuppies all dressed up to take the family out to dinner, and so on. Thanks for bearing through me with this anecdote. But I hope it demonstrates two issues: 1. americans will put up with a lot if it makes their trip any amount shorter 2. americans vastly prefer to be annoyed and in control, versus less annoyed but not in control. e.g. they prefer car traffic where they're "in control" (can honk/drive aggressively?) vs waiting for public transport to arrive or waiting at stops they don't need 3. americans associate public transport with lower classes, the poor and homeless. It'll take a lot of work to flip these around.
- colpabar 6y agoIn my (US) city, they put in a bike lane along a street downtown with a lot of restaurants. It used to be a two-way street, now it's a one-way with a two-way bike lane taking up the rest. People I work with argued that it was a bad idea because the restaurants would lose business because now there is less parking, and it just blows my mind that not being able to park directly in front of a restaurant is a deal breaker. Isn't the whole appeal of a city's downtown area to walk around a bit and look up at all the skyscrapers?
- Bubbadoo 6y agoThis hits the proverbial nail right on the head. In many towns and cities (of various sizes) across the US, pro-growth agendas are enriching a handful at the expense of residents. Take Metro NY for example, where the latest development craze is market-rate, high-density housing. Gone are the projects building McMansions on an acre or more, as you can pack in hordes of people in thise apartment and condos. Of course, the politicians promise 'affordable' housing as a way to get public approval, but what always happens is a minor number of affordable units are given away in a lottery and the bulk of the project is market rate. Market in Metro NY suburbs is around $3200/mo for a two bedroom. Add to this many developers in this region are experts at getting local and state IDA funding, tax abatements and utility credits, it becomes clear the taxpayers are funding this development. To this post's credit, these projects all require some degree of infrastructure expansion and yes, much of the maintenance of this infrastructure occurs at the detriment of existing infrastructure. Roads, rails, airports,and the electric grid in this region has suffered to the point of being 3rd world or less. Yet, taxes are sky high. Consider a 1500 sq ft, 50 year old home in suburban NJ or NY already has property taxes of $10k-15k in any commutable town/city. And adding insult to injury is the labor costs, which in Metro-NY are among the highest in the world (yes, higher than Singapore). Metro NY may be an easy target, but like the author of this post, I believe this is happening in many towns and cities across the US. We need to get smart about our growth and take politicians who promise grand infrastructure programs to task. Just look at Trump's Infrastructure Week boon dogle or Biden's now non-existent promise of national high-speed rail. Now these hollow promises would have been growth for the public good, not just the local pols and developers.
- alanlovestea 6y agothe author did not take zoning in consideration. Public housing usually get built near transit centers where there are lots of business. The mix use zoning contribute to the higher revenue number.