5 ms·

>What would make it fiscally solvent? I guess there are two options: raise the taxes or increase the density. There are a few other options. Replace the roads

>What would make it fiscally solvent? I guess there are two options: raise the taxes or increase the density. There are a few other options. Replace the roads less often, make them less expensive in the first place. Gravel roads like in the country.

kube-system 6y ago
> Replace the roads less often, This is exactly what happens neighborhood I've ever lived in with cul-de-sacs. These roads have low traffic, slow speeds, are salted less or not at all, and have low speed traffic which can tolerate a few bumps.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
or. we could stop breeding so many humans. the earth isn't expanding.
- kube-system 6y ago
  The earth has plenty of space, and isn't at risk of running out any time soon.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    we dont have enough natural and renewable resources. unless we are going to find ourself a house in a high density 'sustainble' neighbourhood that rations water, pay astronomical rates for power, still have two cars in a walkable neighbourhood and get caught in freeways to work 30 miles from home with a 2 hour daily commute. towns full of children and not enough schools. old people and not enough open spaces. increasing public sector pension liabilities and sinking into debt every year. this is happening in every part of the world. except countries with a low population. i think 5-7 million is the magic number for resource management purposes. take NZ for example. 5 million. sparsely populated. high density in north island/auckland. i doubt if it would be called 'sustainable' or 'smart'.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    + when we start building homes, we are building over what used to be water sheds, farmland, habitat, grazing land. All land is not suitable for building. So we take the best soils that had taken centuries to build its top soil and we pave them over. It’s a tragedy and a travesty. More numbers = more water. We don’t live near water and that has to be bought to where people live. Do you know what we have to do get water to people’s taps so it’s water on demand. Potable water. We have to dig for rare and precious metals. Build more factories to make our cars and steel roofs and pipes and plastic thingies. For every person born, their foot print is not just the home they live in..but water, land for food, everything from their daily porn to their smart phone to cute teapots and our recreational activities and schools. I mean... let’s make a list. From cradle to grave, what it realLy cost to assure basic living foot print for every individual. So.. no. We are way past our carrying capacity. We need to be 2-3 billion to achieve. Carrying capacity. In 1975, population of the world was 3.5 ish billion. Roughly half of what it is now. That’s a good goal. We should incentivise people to live quality lives and not focus on quantity. Only church and state needs more and more lives and people for souls to save and taxes to collect. If we remove the blinders, it is human nature to want to procreate and give the best lives possible to our children who are nothing but extensions of ourselves. But we are leaving a compromised and crumbling world. And robbing them of a future and defeating the chances we have of our species perpetual survival by depleating our resources, habitats and environment. What we are doing is not unlike sitting on the top most branch of the tree of life as an apex predator and saw off the trunk underneath us because we have been made to believe by church and state that ‘it’s all fine’. No. We are not fine. That’s all.
    - souprock 6y ago
      Despite being your nightmare, with my 13th kid due this summer, I'm going to agree with you on the farmland. Paving over San Jose was a terrible thing to do. San Jose was the best place to grow apricots. In general, all of the Silicon Valley area would make wonderful farmland. It'd be better to live on the foothills on either side of the Central Valley, or even on the Nevada side of the Sierra Mountains.
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
burlesona 6y ago
Using less expensive infrastructure is a great idea that Strong Towns highly encourages. Most municipalities consider that heresy, though, as they want all roads built to the best current construction standards, which are applied to everything from major arterials to tiny cul-de-sacs.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
or cap town populations at 10k. create planned smart cities. we need unifom density all over the state/country. high density will only work if it there is a high density pocket of habitation amidst a larger ecosystem connected to other similar eco systems. having multiple high density townships clustered next to each other has no benefit. it's just crowded cities. not high density sustainable cities. now it's just a red queen situation chasing limited and non renewable resources. and boom! suddenly its all traffic jams within a sardine can. and its sardine cans stacked up and then all the way down.
elihu 6y ago
No sidewalks, or sidewalks only on one side. Or a paved road with a gravel shoulder. Or make the property owner responsible for maintaining a walkable path. Different property configurations with narrower, deeper lots. Or houses with no street frontage / shared driveways. (Note: there's a safety tradeoff here with respect to fire truck access.) I'd be in favor of eliminating light poles entirely in residential areas, even if they were free to install and operate. I currently live in kind of a weird house; it's in unincorporated land within an urban area. There is no street frontage; we share our driveway with a neighbor. No sidewalks on our side of the street, but most streets have them. We're one of the few houses in the area still on a septic system because connecting to the city sewer would be expensive and difficult. Few street lights. A sidewalk on our side would be nice, but I can live without it. (We have a 94-year-old neighbor with an electric scooter that he built a wood/and/plastic enclosure for that he drives to the grocery store, so apparently lack of sidewalk isn't a mobility issue for him at least.)

kube-system 6y ago

> Replace the roads less often, This is exactly what happens neighborhood I've ever lived in with cul-de-sacs. These roads have low traffic, slow speeds, are salted less or not at all, and have low speed traffic which can tolerate a few bumps.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

or. we could stop breeding so many humans. the earth isn't expanding.

kube-system 6y ago
The earth has plenty of space, and isn't at risk of running out any time soon.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  we dont have enough natural and renewable resources. unless we are going to find ourself a house in a high density 'sustainble' neighbourhood that rations water, pay astronomical rates for power, still have two cars in a walkable neighbourhood and get caught in freeways to work 30 miles from home with a 2 hour daily commute. towns full of children and not enough schools. old people and not enough open spaces. increasing public sector pension liabilities and sinking into debt every year. this is happening in every part of the world. except countries with a low population. i think 5-7 million is the magic number for resource management purposes. take NZ for example. 5 million. sparsely populated. high density in north island/auckland. i doubt if it would be called 'sustainable' or 'smart'.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  + when we start building homes, we are building over what used to be water sheds, farmland, habitat, grazing land. All land is not suitable for building. So we take the best soils that had taken centuries to build its top soil and we pave them over. It’s a tragedy and a travesty. More numbers = more water. We don’t live near water and that has to be bought to where people live. Do you know what we have to do get water to people’s taps so it’s water on demand. Potable water. We have to dig for rare and precious metals. Build more factories to make our cars and steel roofs and pipes and plastic thingies. For every person born, their foot print is not just the home they live in..but water, land for food, everything from their daily porn to their smart phone to cute teapots and our recreational activities and schools. I mean... let’s make a list. From cradle to grave, what it realLy cost to assure basic living foot print for every individual. So.. no. We are way past our carrying capacity. We need to be 2-3 billion to achieve. Carrying capacity. In 1975, population of the world was 3.5 ish billion. Roughly half of what it is now. That’s a good goal. We should incentivise people to live quality lives and not focus on quantity. Only church and state needs more and more lives and people for souls to save and taxes to collect. If we remove the blinders, it is human nature to want to procreate and give the best lives possible to our children who are nothing but extensions of ourselves. But we are leaving a compromised and crumbling world. And robbing them of a future and defeating the chances we have of our species perpetual survival by depleating our resources, habitats and environment. What we are doing is not unlike sitting on the top most branch of the tree of life as an apex predator and saw off the trunk underneath us because we have been made to believe by church and state that ‘it’s all fine’. No. We are not fine. That’s all.
  - souprock 6y ago
    Despite being your nightmare, with my 13th kid due this summer, I'm going to agree with you on the farmland. Paving over San Jose was a terrible thing to do. San Jose was the best place to grow apricots. In general, all of the Silicon Valley area would make wonderful farmland. It'd be better to live on the foothills on either side of the Central Valley, or even on the Nevada side of the Sierra Mountains.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago

burlesona 6y ago

Using less expensive infrastructure is a great idea that Strong Towns highly encourages. Most municipalities consider that heresy, though, as they want all roads built to the best current construction standards, which are applied to everything from major arterials to tiny cul-de-sacs.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

or cap town populations at 10k. create planned smart cities. we need unifom density all over the state/country. high density will only work if it there is a high density pocket of habitation amidst a larger ecosystem connected to other similar eco systems. having multiple high density townships clustered next to each other has no benefit. it's just crowded cities. not high density sustainable cities. now it's just a red queen situation chasing limited and non renewable resources. and boom! suddenly its all traffic jams within a sardine can. and its sardine cans stacked up and then all the way down.

elihu 6y ago

No sidewalks, or sidewalks only on one side. Or a paved road with a gravel shoulder. Or make the property owner responsible for maintaining a walkable path. Different property configurations with narrower, deeper lots. Or houses with no street frontage / shared driveways. (Note: there's a safety tradeoff here with respect to fire truck access.) I'd be in favor of eliminating light poles entirely in residential areas, even if they were free to install and operate. I currently live in kind of a weird house; it's in unincorporated land within an urban area. There is no street frontage; we share our driveway with a neighbor. No sidewalks on our side of the street, but most streets have them. We're one of the few houses in the area still on a septic system because connecting to the city sewer would be expensive and difficult. Few street lights. A sidewalk on our side would be nice, but I can live without it. (We have a 94-year-old neighbor with an electric scooter that he built a wood/and/plastic enclosure for that he drives to the grocery store, so apparently lack of sidewalk isn't a mobility issue for him at least.)