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My guess is that you live in a newer suburb where the infrastructure isn’t 100-150 years old. When your sewers, water lines, roads, municipal buildings, etc. ar
by wayoutthere 5y ago
My guess is that you live in a newer suburb where the infrastructure isn’t 100-150 years old. When your sewers, water lines, roads, municipal buildings, etc. are over a century old, you can no longer delay maintenance without cutting service levels. This is why older rural areas of the country like Appalachia are dotted with so many ghost towns; it stopped making sense to invest in those places decades ago because the infrastructure was so far gone it was just cheaper to build a new town somewhere else.
Many rust belt towns are going through this right now; my mom grew up in a rural factory town in southern NY that once had a population of nearly 10,000 — 50 years later, that population is closer to 500. And still dropping because most of the lots in town are unoccupied, rotting homes left behind when previous owners died that would be torn down if there was the money to do so, but there isn’t and it drags down property values of everything in the area.
Pittsburgh — a city big enough to have 3 professional sports teams — has entire neighborhoods that have been abandoned and fenced off after the population dropped by over 50% since the 1970s. Mostly so that the city doesn’t have to maintain power, sewer, water and roads in those areas because there just isn’t the money to rebuild them. There is an entire subway system under the city that has simply been abandoned due to lack of upkeep. The city is on an upward trajectory again, but property values in the city are still astonishingly low (10 years ago you could buy a livable-if-dated house in a good location for $50,000) and taxes are high.
- dougdonohoe 5y agoPittsburgher here. What are you talking about? There is no abandoned subway system under Pittsburgh. What we call the 'T' is alive and well. There are also not "entire neighborhoods that have been abandoned and fenced off".
- jeffbarr 5y agoPerhaps they were thinking of Rochester, New York: https://rocwiki.org/abandoned_subway https://rocwiki.org/abandoned_subway
- selimthegrim 5y agoNew Orleans could only afford to start fixing its streets and sewers with the FEMA money after Katrina.
- dfadsadsf 5y ago>Many rust belt towns are going through this right now; my mom grew up in a rural factory town in southern NY that once had a population of nearly 10,000 — 50 years later, that population is closer to 500. And still dropping because most of the lots in town are unoccupied, rotting homes left behind when previous owners died that would be torn down if there was the money to do so, but there isn’t and it drags down property values of everything in the area. I do not think any city whether dense or not can survive 20X drop of population and remain livable. If anything surburban locations are easier to clean up - it takes only a few days to a couple of weeks to clean up single store house and lot. Imagine the mess if New York population dropped to 400k people? There is no way to maintain subway, road network and all other infrastructure with such small population. Skyscrapers and high risers require constant maintenance and will be danger to others if left unmaintained. Decaying rural home is danger only if you are in it or on purpose right next to it. Blast radius of falling high rise is quite a bit bigger.