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American suburbs are constantly attempting to develop new land, to pay their financial obligations to maintain existing infrastructure. Eventually, they will ru
by sc68cal 5y ago
American suburbs are constantly attempting to develop new land, to pay their financial obligations to maintain existing infrastructure. Eventually, they will run out of land to develop.
https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
- Arnt 5y agoAre the suburbs (the political entities I mean) so small that many of them are nearly full?
- sc68cal 5y agoDevelopment requires demand. You can't just build houses willy nilly and then have them sit empty, because then nobody is paying the property taxes and the infrastructure that was built for those empty houses requires maintenance. So, while there may be plenty of land on which _to_ develop, they can only develop at a certain rate commensurate with demand, otherwise they'll build too much, property values will fall, and subsequently tax receipts will fall. So, they need to build just enough to keep up with demand, and ahead of their infrastructure costs, but not too much.
- Arnt 5y agoNo, that's not what I meant. If the land to build on is on across a budgetary border, then building stops being a solution even if there's demand, because the budget it relieves is someone else's budget. If most suburbs are in political entities that have land on which to build, then building relieves the budget for another while.
- thehappypm 5y agoThis article comes up constantly but it just isn’t consistent with anything I’ve seen about any of the suburbs I’ve lived in. They are well aware of their costs and revenues. They aren’t delusional about any bit of it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]