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All of this is true, but you’ve missed the biggest issue with the above argument, which is implying that we cannot afford to replace what our much poorer ances

• imtringued 4y ago
  Those poorer ancestors built denser housing and commercial real estate. What they built back in the day is often illegal today and has been grandfathered in while outperforming modern real estate in property taxes. Old "blighted" buildings can pay more taxes than fancy new commercial real estate that is designed for car dependency and suburbia.
  • xyzzyz 4y ago
    No, I mean the suburbia. The entire shtick of Strongtowns is that suburbia is unsustainable, because it requires infrastructure that we cannot now afford to replace, despite being able to afford to build it in the first place.
    • csnover 4y ago
      The Growth Ponzi Scheme is the thing that explains this. The cost of building out infrastructure the first time is covered by the sale of the newly constructed properties (and sometimes state or federal grant money) which is all one-time income. Taxes are supposed to cover the eventual replacement cost, but they can’t because the level of taxation required to actually do this would make suburbs unaffordable. Instead, they primarily use debt and tax revenue from newer properties that are supposed to be paying for their own eventual infrastructure replacement to make up the deficit. This is why Strong Towns calls it the growth ponzi scheme: the city can only outrun the cost of infrastructure replacement by taking money from new properties to pay for old ones until they run out of land to build or assets to leverage for debt, at which point the whole scheme fails.