6 ms·

What Strong Towns hasn't figured out, but which is obvious to everyone else, is that cities have really bad failure modes. Unfixable failure modes. The people

What Strong Towns hasn't figured out, but which is obvious to everyone else, is that cities have really bad failure modes. Unfixable failure modes. The people running the cities run them into the ground by applying more and more gold plating to the services they provide, making sure to lard the contracts for their friends who keep them elected, and pursuing their luxury beliefs through unworkable policies. Eventually it all collapses and is irretrievable. Then they whine about being underfunded. If only they had more money, they could make their luxury beliefs work. People move out of cities because they do not feel safe, and the services suck. It's really the only option they have, since the people running the cities are completely unaccountable.

eldavido 5y ago
I think this is an insightful comment and I'm sorry to see it get downvoted. I live in a large condo building. It has its pros and cons. It's great, in theory--750-1000 people pooling their expertise and funds to tackle infrastructure issues. Great recent example: we fixed a sewer lateral (the pipe that connects to the sewer under the building). Three of them, total cost 200k. Sounds a lot until you realize we spread it across ~350 units (600/unit), which is roughly 1/10th what a typical suburban homeowner would pay for the same thing. The other side of the coin is that, in larger political structures, governance REALLY matters. You can end up with a relatively well-run condo like mine, or a large, wasteful organization that squanders obscene sums on pet projects and outright corruption. Many people don't even know this, but SF has been under federal investigation for high-level corruption in the public works department for over a year [1]. The thrust of your comment is correct. Large cities attract large amounts of money, much of which gets wasted, or ends up lining pockets in hard, or even "soft" corruption, with jobs and contracts steered to friends (qualified or not) via patronage networks. What I think you miss though, is that there's a middle ground. You don't have to be either extreme drive-everywhere suburbia, or a giant mega-city like Beijing or New York. My home town, Homewood, IL, is a nice, walkable city of about 20,000, with a nice downtown, plenty to do, and relatively honest (if not always saintly) government. The mid-size towns and suburbs can do a lot more to encourage the kind of urbanism the author calls for. Getting explicit about cultivating nice, walkable downtowns is a start. Many, including Homewood, don't, because "development" and "jobs" are seen as unqualified goods, without thinking about the cost side of the equation (roads, plumbing, etc required to service this stuff). I've written for Strong Towns. What they get most right is that (1) LAND is the scare resource in a town, and (2) cities should explicitly encourage uses that lead to the highest taxable value of that land. Big box retail isn't this. Denser housing and retail districts (I own one of these buildings), is. The numbers on this are simple and don't lie. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Mohammed-Nuru-to-settle-federal-fraud-case-16710600.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Mohammed-Nuru-to-sett...
- tomohawk 5y ago
  I agree that it would be great if we could get to that, but I've lived near cities that are in aggressive decline for more than 30 years as an adult. Prior to that, they were in decline for 20 or more years. One nearby city lost an average of 20k people a year for decades. I once talked to a guy who had been a 3 star general in the army. He was a logistics guy. He had gone to a school in that city that had been prestigious back when he was a kid. He wanted to give back and maybe bring back what had been there, so went through Gate's program, and became the superintendant of schools there. He left after a year. Said it was the hardest job he ever did, and didn't think he made one bit of difference. He wasn't hopeful that anything would make any difference. Money was not the problem. Per pupil spending was high. Assistance from the state was high. The elites in control of the politics were the problem. Probably too much money was the problem. If you don't have the ability to make your schools perform basic functions and keep kids safe while they're doing it, then who will live there?
- prawn 5y ago
  I'm guessing governance is an issue at almost any scale. You hear of painful HOAs, of strata corporations (our equivalent), councils/towns, cities, etc. Where I live (in Australia) there are constant issues with council staff running up legal bills (at taxpayer expense) over petty personality squabbles (e.g., someone said something abuse at a meeting and started a multi-year drama). It's idiotic, and seems to happen in more councils than not. My argument against the GP comment would be that regional areas would surely have the same problems of maintenance, just without the efficiencies of density. Maintaining longer roads, pipes and cables, still dealing with bridges, etc. Surely part of the solution is working out what level of 'polish' you want in your area (paved road vs gravel, as one example) and deciding honestly what scale of funding will pay for it now and in the future? The quality of roads, footpaths and services in my suburb are generally very good. My council rates (AU$2900/yr) scale with the valuation of my property. Concessions for pensioners, but no rate pausing or whatever some parts of the US have. Separately, we have a fuel excise (40-50c per litre of fuel) which is used to fund federal road projects. Obviously that has a limited shelf life with a shift to EVs and has already been in decline through the fuel efficiency of modern cars.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
TulliusCicero 5y ago
What even are you talking about? The trend for the past several decades is people moving out of rural areas, into urban ones.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It's enough to respectfully provide correct information. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    "What even are you talking about?" is too aggro? Okay. I guess I responded that way because of the clearly flamebait/trolling phrasing in the comment I responded to, but I'll try to do better.

eldavido 5y ago

I think this is an insightful comment and I'm sorry to see it get downvoted. I live in a large condo building. It has its pros and cons. It's great, in theory--750-1000 people pooling their expertise and funds to tackle infrastructure issues. Great recent example: we fixed a sewer lateral (the pipe that connects to the sewer under the building). Three of them, total cost 200k. Sounds a lot until you realize we spread it across ~350 units (600/unit), which is roughly 1/10th what a typical suburban homeowner would pay for the same thing. The other side of the coin is that, in larger political structures, governance REALLY matters. You can end up with a relatively well-run condo like mine, or a large, wasteful organization that squanders obscene sums on pet projects and outright corruption. Many people don't even know this, but SF has been under federal investigation for high-level corruption in the public works department for over a year [1]. The thrust of your comment is correct. Large cities attract large amounts of money, much of which gets wasted, or ends up lining pockets in hard, or even "soft" corruption, with jobs and contracts steered to friends (qualified or not) via patronage networks. What I think you miss though, is that there's a middle ground. You don't have to be either extreme drive-everywhere suburbia, or a giant mega-city like Beijing or New York. My home town, Homewood, IL, is a nice, walkable city of about 20,000, with a nice downtown, plenty to do, and relatively honest (if not always saintly) government. The mid-size towns and suburbs can do a lot more to encourage the kind of urbanism the author calls for. Getting explicit about cultivating nice, walkable downtowns is a start. Many, including Homewood, don't, because "development" and "jobs" are seen as unqualified goods, without thinking about the cost side of the equation (roads, plumbing, etc required to service this stuff). I've written for Strong Towns. What they get most right is that (1) LAND is the scare resource in a town, and (2) cities should explicitly encourage uses that lead to the highest taxable value of that land. Big box retail isn't this. Denser housing and retail districts (I own one of these buildings), is. The numbers on this are simple and don't lie. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Mohammed-Nuru-to-settle-federal-fraud-case-16710600.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Mohammed-Nuru-to-sett...

tomohawk 5y ago
I agree that it would be great if we could get to that, but I've lived near cities that are in aggressive decline for more than 30 years as an adult. Prior to that, they were in decline for 20 or more years. One nearby city lost an average of 20k people a year for decades. I once talked to a guy who had been a 3 star general in the army. He was a logistics guy. He had gone to a school in that city that had been prestigious back when he was a kid. He wanted to give back and maybe bring back what had been there, so went through Gate's program, and became the superintendant of schools there. He left after a year. Said it was the hardest job he ever did, and didn't think he made one bit of difference. He wasn't hopeful that anything would make any difference. Money was not the problem. Per pupil spending was high. Assistance from the state was high. The elites in control of the politics were the problem. Probably too much money was the problem. If you don't have the ability to make your schools perform basic functions and keep kids safe while they're doing it, then who will live there?
prawn 5y ago
I'm guessing governance is an issue at almost any scale. You hear of painful HOAs, of strata corporations (our equivalent), councils/towns, cities, etc. Where I live (in Australia) there are constant issues with council staff running up legal bills (at taxpayer expense) over petty personality squabbles (e.g., someone said something abuse at a meeting and started a multi-year drama). It's idiotic, and seems to happen in more councils than not. My argument against the GP comment would be that regional areas would surely have the same problems of maintenance, just without the efficiencies of density. Maintaining longer roads, pipes and cables, still dealing with bridges, etc. Surely part of the solution is working out what level of 'polish' you want in your area (paved road vs gravel, as one example) and deciding honestly what scale of funding will pay for it now and in the future? The quality of roads, footpaths and services in my suburb are generally very good. My council rates (AU$2900/yr) scale with the valuation of my property. Concessions for pensioners, but no rate pausing or whatever some parts of the US have. Separately, we have a fuel excise (40-50c per litre of fuel) which is used to fund federal road projects. Obviously that has a limited shelf life with a shift to EVs and has already been in decline through the fuel efficiency of modern cars.
TulliusCicero 5y ago

TulliusCicero 5y ago

What even are you talking about? The trend for the past several decades is people moving out of rural areas, into urban ones.

dang 5y ago
Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It's enough to respectfully provide correct information. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  "What even are you talking about?" is too aggro? Okay. I guess I responded that way because of the clearly flamebait/trolling phrasing in the comment I responded to, but I'll try to do better.