5 ms·

Why should every small sub-section of geographies "pay-out" for themselves. The whole point of higher level organizing constructs (company, conglomerate, state,

by sfifs 4y ago

Why should every small sub-section of geographies "pay-out" for themselves. The whole point of higher level organizing constructs (company, conglomerate, state, country) is we take systemically better decisions - which at a nation level will involve keeping people with different preferences united under the nation's big idea by supporting the diversity of preferences. If to take an example Google insisted every development be independently paying out immediately, there wouldn't be any Maps, Docs, Drive... If there was a similar insistance by Xerox, probably no personal computing. Amd even at a state level, even in the US, there are states that pay more to the nation and there are states that get more. In the rest of the world - particularly in Asia, we just consider this support costs for maintaining nationhood.

orthecreedence 4y ago
Maybe they shouldn't pay out for themselves, but we should at least be aware of the costs so we can collectively plan and prioritize accordingly. The same groups/organizations you named will often end activities or sub-groups that have a cost above a certain threshold. I believe the overall intent here is to show the true cost of suburbs and evaluate if it's a pattern that cities can keep supporting. Ie, is the desire to live in the conditions suburbs create worth the cost of those arrangements?
davidn20 4y ago
The problem with that analogy is, suburbs doesn't benefit anyone besides the people living in them. So, by that logic, they should sustain themselves. Maps, Docs, and etc provide value to people outside themselves.
- jelling 4y ago
  This is incorrect on a political and economic level. Fwiw I live in lower Manhattan, so I’m not saying this because I benefit from suburban subsidies. But if the country as whole subsidizes roads and services for a suburb of net positive income tax payers with otherwise low usage of welfare services, there is an economic logic to that. And obviously it gets votes. As much as I like living in a dense area and riding my bike, the rise of the YouTube educated urban planner has led to a lot conclusions that aren’t particularly sound. Doing a flaw P&L on a small town and deciding, in so many words, that it shouldn’t exist is peak smugness.
  - davidn20 4y ago
    I'm not an urban planner expert, but the logic makes sense to me. I look up my downtown condo vs a suburb home of comparable value, and I pay twice as much in property taxes. It's not hard to understand how density is inherently more efficient.
    - raxxorraxor 4y ago
      Wouldn't that mean that density in your case is less efficient since you pay more by a supposedly less valuable property?
      - davidn20 4y ago
        Depends on your perspective. Yes, it's less efficient for me (individually) because I'm subsidizing suburbs and paying more taxes. But, I was talking about the city, society, or the greater good. Whatever you call it. Higher density is more efficient and uses less resources per capita. Period. Same reason private planes are so bad for the environment.
        raxxorraxor 4y ago
        That might be true that higher density is more efficient, but efficiency isn't a sufficient metric for living overall. Putting everyone in camps would be more efficient too. But do you really pay for suburbs? As I said, the cost intensive positions scale with the number of people. Schools, utilities, ...
- falcolas 4y ago
  Suburbs provides housing. Housing on its own doesn't benefit anyone but those who live in them regardless of the density.
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > Suburbs provides housing. […] regardless of the density. At what cost, especially relative to other options. Lower density may end up costing more over the long term: * https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environmental-footprint-of-transportation/urban-density-energy-consumption/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment... Urban living ≠ Manhattan: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
    - falcolas 4y ago
      Cost is a separate topic, though an important one. But ultimately in these threads, the elephant in the room is that the suburbs are subsidized† by the cities they don't pay taxes into. So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs, instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)? † Side note: I have not found to be true, personally. Suburbs are paid for by the people who live there and the county, into whom we pay our taxes. In truth, a lot of our money goes into businesses in the city (who will in turn pay taxes to the city), since that's where we all go for our goods.
      - throw0101a 4y ago
        > So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs […] Why would anyone want to absorb something that costs more to run to provide the same services? * https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ... > […] instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)? Perhaps they want to kill them because they are wasteful of area (often paving over perfectly good agricultural land), and cause climate change due to their reliance on cars. Further, how much "choice" did suburban dwellers actually have? Post-WW2 most zoning has forced the creation of car-centric, low-density sprawl. Perhaps there are folks in the suburbs that want higher density neighbourhoods but because of the limited supply (due to lack of new build) the prices have gone up and they're priced out. Whose to say that walkable neighbourhoods wouldn't be popular if purchased in the "suburbs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb > † Side note: I have not found to be true, personally. I think this depends on the municipal boundaries involved. Depending on where the border is, on one side it could be that things built in the "old" / pre-WW2 way and on the other the "new" / post-WW2 way, and the taxes go to each municipality appropriately. In other places there could be the pre-WW2 Old Downtown and is walkable, but everything new is non-walkable. In those latter situations the more walkable parts are probably subsidizing the less walkable ones: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
digdugdirk 4y ago
Imagine if Xerox allocated its budget to 90% PARC, and 10% everything else - without adjusting any staffing. There'd be some really cool, really fun stuff going on, and the people at PARC would love it. But without people making and selling copiers, the whole company would be out of business before long. The difference with suburbs/cities is the awareness, the expectation, and societal cost. People living in the suburbs are generally unaware that they're being subsidized by the cities they live adjacent to, and have the expectation that their infrastructure and services be prioritized - generally to the detriment of the entire geographic region. Going beyond that, the car-centric suburbia mindset has become the legal defacto design pattern, increasing costs and reducing livability for everyone. So it's less that they should "pay-out" for themselves, and more that they should stop forcing their lifestyle choices on the rest of the population, and understand the costs associated with their lifestyle.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  Subsidized in a way that they get a disproportionate amount of services perhaps. But I would argue that is almost irrelevant. Costly services like schooling and transport infrastructure scales mostly by the amount of people. You could of course calculate business taxes proportionally to the work suburbs deliver, but that would be quite dishonest. You can always say that only the most densely populated place carries its own... but that isn't convincing. I am not from the US, but we have similar discussions here. That people have to live in the city if they want to live efficient. Problem is that few want to and I think at that point the discussion should be almost ended.
- t-3 4y ago
  If state and federal governments didn't subsidize suburban infrastructure, cities would directly. The broader infrastructure network is vitally important for urban areas, and the suburbs especially are essential to retain the workers needed for productivity. Framing this as cities being exploited by greedy suburbanites is just wrong.
  - digdugdirk 4y ago
    Cities would certainly naturally expand in a suburb-ish type of way. The issue with the current American style of suburbia is how expensive it is, and the extreme subsidies (both monetary and political pressure/force) what were implemented to set up the system in the first place. Without that, America would have much denser "European style" urban hubs, and likely more active small cities than currently exist.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by sfifs 4y ago

orthecreedence 4y ago

Maybe they shouldn't pay out for themselves, but we should at least be aware of the costs so we can collectively plan and prioritize accordingly. The same groups/organizations you named will often end activities or sub-groups that have a cost above a certain threshold. I believe the overall intent here is to show the true cost of suburbs and evaluate if it's a pattern that cities can keep supporting. Ie, is the desire to live in the conditions suburbs create worth the cost of those arrangements?

davidn20 4y ago

The problem with that analogy is, suburbs doesn't benefit anyone besides the people living in them. So, by that logic, they should sustain themselves. Maps, Docs, and etc provide value to people outside themselves.

jelling 4y ago
This is incorrect on a political and economic level. Fwiw I live in lower Manhattan, so I’m not saying this because I benefit from suburban subsidies. But if the country as whole subsidizes roads and services for a suburb of net positive income tax payers with otherwise low usage of welfare services, there is an economic logic to that. And obviously it gets votes. As much as I like living in a dense area and riding my bike, the rise of the YouTube educated urban planner has led to a lot conclusions that aren’t particularly sound. Doing a flaw P&L on a small town and deciding, in so many words, that it shouldn’t exist is peak smugness.
- davidn20 4y ago
  I'm not an urban planner expert, but the logic makes sense to me. I look up my downtown condo vs a suburb home of comparable value, and I pay twice as much in property taxes. It's not hard to understand how density is inherently more efficient.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    Wouldn't that mean that density in your case is less efficient since you pay more by a supposedly less valuable property?
    - davidn20 4y ago
      Depends on your perspective. Yes, it's less efficient for me (individually) because I'm subsidizing suburbs and paying more taxes. But, I was talking about the city, society, or the greater good. Whatever you call it. Higher density is more efficient and uses less resources per capita. Period. Same reason private planes are so bad for the environment.
      - raxxorraxor 4y ago
        That might be true that higher density is more efficient, but efficiency isn't a sufficient metric for living overall. Putting everyone in camps would be more efficient too. But do you really pay for suburbs? As I said, the cost intensive positions scale with the number of people. Schools, utilities, ...
falcolas 4y ago
Suburbs provides housing. Housing on its own doesn't benefit anyone but those who live in them regardless of the density.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > Suburbs provides housing. […] regardless of the density. At what cost, especially relative to other options. Lower density may end up costing more over the long term: * https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environmental-footprint-of-transportation/urban-density-energy-consumption/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment... Urban living ≠ Manhattan: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Cost is a separate topic, though an important one. But ultimately in these threads, the elephant in the room is that the suburbs are subsidized† by the cities they don't pay taxes into. So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs, instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)? † Side note: I have not found to be true, personally. Suburbs are paid for by the people who live there and the county, into whom we pay our taxes. In truth, a lot of our money goes into businesses in the city (who will in turn pay taxes to the city), since that's where we all go for our goods.
    - throw0101a 4y ago
      > So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs […] Why would anyone want to absorb something that costs more to run to provide the same services? * https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ... > […] instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)? Perhaps they want to kill them because they are wasteful of area (often paving over perfectly good agricultural land), and cause climate change due to their reliance on cars. Further, how much "choice" did suburban dwellers actually have? Post-WW2 most zoning has forced the creation of car-centric, low-density sprawl. Perhaps there are folks in the suburbs that want higher density neighbourhoods but because of the limited supply (due to lack of new build) the prices have gone up and they're priced out. Whose to say that walkable neighbourhoods wouldn't be popular if purchased in the "suburbs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb > † Side note: I have not found to be true, personally. I think this depends on the municipal boundaries involved. Depending on where the border is, on one side it could be that things built in the "old" / pre-WW2 way and on the other the "new" / post-WW2 way, and the taxes go to each municipality appropriately. In other places there could be the pre-WW2 Old Downtown and is walkable, but everything new is non-walkable. In those latter situations the more walkable parts are probably subsidizing the less walkable ones: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

digdugdirk 4y ago

Imagine if Xerox allocated its budget to 90% PARC, and 10% everything else - without adjusting any staffing. There'd be some really cool, really fun stuff going on, and the people at PARC would love it. But without people making and selling copiers, the whole company would be out of business before long. The difference with suburbs/cities is the awareness, the expectation, and societal cost. People living in the suburbs are generally unaware that they're being subsidized by the cities they live adjacent to, and have the expectation that their infrastructure and services be prioritized - generally to the detriment of the entire geographic region. Going beyond that, the car-centric suburbia mindset has become the legal defacto design pattern, increasing costs and reducing livability for everyone. So it's less that they should "pay-out" for themselves, and more that they should stop forcing their lifestyle choices on the rest of the population, and understand the costs associated with their lifestyle.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
Subsidized in a way that they get a disproportionate amount of services perhaps. But I would argue that is almost irrelevant. Costly services like schooling and transport infrastructure scales mostly by the amount of people. You could of course calculate business taxes proportionally to the work suburbs deliver, but that would be quite dishonest. You can always say that only the most densely populated place carries its own... but that isn't convincing. I am not from the US, but we have similar discussions here. That people have to live in the city if they want to live efficient. Problem is that few want to and I think at that point the discussion should be almost ended.
t-3 4y ago
If state and federal governments didn't subsidize suburban infrastructure, cities would directly. The broader infrastructure network is vitally important for urban areas, and the suburbs especially are essential to retain the workers needed for productivity. Framing this as cities being exploited by greedy suburbanites is just wrong.
- digdugdirk 4y ago
  Cities would certainly naturally expand in a suburb-ish type of way. The issue with the current American style of suburbia is how expensive it is, and the extreme subsidies (both monetary and political pressure/force) what were implemented to set up the system in the first place. Without that, America would have much denser "European style" urban hubs, and likely more active small cities than currently exist.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]