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Pretty sure based on what? "As a young engineer, I remember sitting in a city council meeting where a senior colleague presented my analysis on the massive bac

Pretty sure based on what? "As a young engineer, I remember sitting in a city council meeting where a senior colleague presented my analysis on the massive backlog of road maintenance the community was facing. My estimation was that the city's capital budget needed to be increased by five times just to keep from falling further behind" "Analyses of new developments suggest that a minimum of $20 in private wealth is needed to sustain, for the long term, each dollar of public infrastructure investment. A ratio of 40:1 would provide an optimal buffer for future uncertainty. Yet, when we examine modern North American localities, it is common to find ratios of 1:1 or worse. That is, in the current development pattern, it takes one dollar of public infrastructure investment to create one dollar of private wealth. That’s a formula for economic disaster." https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/22/the-more-we-grow-the-poorer-we-become https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/22/the-more-we-gr...

nradov 4y ago
The Strong Towns argument is not convincing. Most local governments spend far more on public safety than on road maintenance. The roads are generally fine. Sure public works department employees can always point to long lists of needed maintenance work, but if it takes a few weeks to fix a pothole on some residential street that's not a crisis.
- imgabe 4y ago
  This is just bad reasoning. How much they spend on other items is irrelevant to whether the amount they spend on roads is sufficient. The effects of deferred maintenance take years or decades to show up. Then a bridge collapses or a road needs to be completely redone and there’s no money to fix it. The same effect scales to other services anyway. You need more cops to cover 50 square miles than 10 square miles and if the areas is low density it’s producing less $ / square mile in taxes so they can’t afford it.
  - nradov 4y ago
    No that's not how it works. Many low-density areas have very few law enforcement officers, and still have low crime rates. Whereas some of the densest cities actually need more cops because the residents act out in antisocial ways. Strong Towns just cherry picks data to support their preferred political narrative. I actually agree with some of their recommendations, but let's not be fooled into believing that they're doing high quality analysis.
    - imgabe 4y ago
      Maybe, maybe not. That doesn't change the fact that "we spend more on public safety so the amount we spend on roads is enough" is straight nonsense. They are two different things with different requirements. How much is spent on one has nothing to do with how much needs to be spent on the other. You can underspend on roads for quite a while before things start obviously falling apart. People notice pretty quickly if the cops or ambulance aren't showing up though.

nradov 4y ago

The Strong Towns argument is not convincing. Most local governments spend far more on public safety than on road maintenance. The roads are generally fine. Sure public works department employees can always point to long lists of needed maintenance work, but if it takes a few weeks to fix a pothole on some residential street that's not a crisis.

imgabe 4y ago
This is just bad reasoning. How much they spend on other items is irrelevant to whether the amount they spend on roads is sufficient. The effects of deferred maintenance take years or decades to show up. Then a bridge collapses or a road needs to be completely redone and there’s no money to fix it. The same effect scales to other services anyway. You need more cops to cover 50 square miles than 10 square miles and if the areas is low density it’s producing less $ / square mile in taxes so they can’t afford it.
- nradov 4y ago
  No that's not how it works. Many low-density areas have very few law enforcement officers, and still have low crime rates. Whereas some of the densest cities actually need more cops because the residents act out in antisocial ways. Strong Towns just cherry picks data to support their preferred political narrative. I actually agree with some of their recommendations, but let's not be fooled into believing that they're doing high quality analysis.
  - imgabe 4y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. That doesn't change the fact that "we spend more on public safety so the amount we spend on roads is enough" is straight nonsense. They are two different things with different requirements. How much is spent on one has nothing to do with how much needs to be spent on the other. You can underspend on roads for quite a while before things start obviously falling apart. People notice pretty quickly if the cops or ambulance aren't showing up though.