4 ms·

If we actually tax them, it would be a negative tax. So many people don't seem to realize that without suburbs you don't have farms. Suburbs and farms produce

by ars 4y ago

If we actually tax them, it would be a negative tax. So many people don't seem to realize that without suburbs you don't have farms. Suburbs and farms produce all the things that cities rely on. You don't see heavy industry in the middle of a city. So we actually wanted to do your plan then cities should cough up way more money than they currently do.

jodrellblank 4y ago
The poorer denser city centers (in America) subsidise the wealthier, less dense suburbs. "Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07]" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
- ars 4y ago
  I knew before watching it that it was Strong Towns propaganda. They keep ignoring that without those suburbs you won't have rural farms. Without those suburbs those "productive" cities will have nothing to eat, and nothing to buy. They measure productivity in terms of dollars - but all cities do is services, they don't produce goods. That's left to those places Strong Towns hates. If people actually implemented what Strong Towns wants, people would starve. Try the math again, but completely exclude services and let's see where you end up.
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    The video points out cities which aren't bankrupt, do you think the people in them are starving and the farms near them are gone? The video says that Canada has laws which stop cities paying more than 25% of revenue on debt payments, so they are much less bakrupt than USA cities. Do you think all Canadian cities have starving people with nothing to buy, and failed farms? What about European cities which aren't suburban car dependent sprawl and still have food? What about the explanations in the video (and the related ones on the channel) on why the suburbs are so expensive - you can't handwave away thirty six billion dollars of due road maintenance in a single city with "rural farms need it", even if true it's unsustainable. > "all cities do is services, they don't produce goods." All that needs is one counterexample: London has the largest diesel engine manufacturing site in the world - [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London#Manufacturing_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London#Manufacturin... Yes, fintech nonsense has eaten London, and services are its most profitable sectors these days, but that's not /because it's a city/, it was a major manufacturing center and a city.
amalcon 4y ago
Nonsense. Farms obviously predate suburbs, for one thing: nothing resembling the modern suburb could exist without steam power or something newer than that. There's never really been heavy industry in the suburbs: the modern suburb exists because people didn't want to live near the heavy industry in the cities. The North American suburb, which is what we're discussing here unless I misunderstand, more or less came about in the post-war era. It would really be an extraordinary claim that farms and heavy industry couldn't exist in North America until the 1950s...
adambard 4y ago
> So many people don't seem to realize that without suburbs you don't have farms. This strikes me as a bizarre take. What do you consider a "suburb"?
- ars 4y ago
  A place outside dense cities, somewhere not too far from farms. A place where a farmer can go for services without having to travel far.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    You're describing "rural" living. Suburbs entail something else.
tfourb 4y ago
Farmlands and suburbs are completely different things, especially in the context of urban development. Industrial zones are also a completely different category entirely. Living in Germany, most German cities do not have anything that is comparable to a U.S. "suburb". Building codes demand a quite high density, even for single family homes for new developments and older developments have the tendency to get denser as the demand for housing in a city rises. German planning law specifically aims to concentrate development as much as possible, to limit encroachment on agricultural lands and nature. Doesn't always work out, but we have very little of the "urban sprawl" that is so characteristic of U.S. urban planning.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Except that in most German towns outside the tiny center where almost everything closes between 4 and 6 pm with exception of supermarkets, everything else seems to require a car or at least 30 minute cycling, with most buses ending at 8pm.
- ars 4y ago
  And Germany is tiny compared to the US. A farm in Germany is how far of a drive from the nearest city? In the US you could drive 10 hours from a farm to get to the nearest large city. Suburbs and tiny cities are what farms need to survive.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Tiny overstates it. I think ~30% of the size.
  - lavela 4y ago
    I get your point about small cities, but suburbs? They are attached to larger cities, so they may take the drive down from 10 hours to maybe 9.5. How does that make that much of a difference?
  - tfourb 4y ago
    Yes, farms need market access. But that market does not have to be a sprawling suburb, it can be a decently dense town or city. Also, market access is relative depending on product. Farmers concentrating on crops like wheat and corn don't care about the distance to cities, as their product is traded globally. For fresh produce, distance is a real concern, but on the other hand you don't need a lot of land to fulfill the need of even large cities. You could conceivably provide most fresh produce from inside city limits if urban planning would see this as necessary. Production/acre for something like tomatoes is really huge, depending on the methods used.
bregma 4y ago
Suburbs are the places where what used to be productive farms are paved over with asphalt. Few cities rely on them for anything except maybe cheap labour.
- ars 4y ago
  > anything except maybe cheap labour. Hmmmmm. And that labor does? Please think about this a big more - cities do not have industry or agriculture in them. They need those suburbs to provide that. You can't just dismiss it as "cheap labor" - what exactly do you plan to eat or buy?
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    Farms aren't sub-urbs, farms are rural. Suburbia "lesser-urban" is housing estates. Nothing productive happens there. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia - "the outer parts of a town, where there are houses, but no large shops, places of work, or places of entertainment"
    - ars 4y ago
      People live there. And they create business nearby. And those business are closer to the rural areas than the cities are. And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.
      - kitkat_new 4y ago
        > And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist. this is exactly what suburbs are. You live there, nothing else. You wake up then you drive to work somewhere else
        plumarr 4y ago
        That's maybe a cultural difference. For example I know of no such place in Belgium even if I'm quite well travelled in it. So it's a least really not common to have suburbs as you describes.

by ars 4y ago

jodrellblank 4y ago

The poorer denser city centers (in America) subsidise the wealthier, less dense suburbs. "Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07]" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

ars 4y ago
I knew before watching it that it was Strong Towns propaganda. They keep ignoring that without those suburbs you won't have rural farms. Without those suburbs those "productive" cities will have nothing to eat, and nothing to buy. They measure productivity in terms of dollars - but all cities do is services, they don't produce goods. That's left to those places Strong Towns hates. If people actually implemented what Strong Towns wants, people would starve. Try the math again, but completely exclude services and let's see where you end up.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  The video points out cities which aren't bankrupt, do you think the people in them are starving and the farms near them are gone? The video says that Canada has laws which stop cities paying more than 25% of revenue on debt payments, so they are much less bakrupt than USA cities. Do you think all Canadian cities have starving people with nothing to buy, and failed farms? What about European cities which aren't suburban car dependent sprawl and still have food? What about the explanations in the video (and the related ones on the channel) on why the suburbs are so expensive - you can't handwave away thirty six billion dollars of due road maintenance in a single city with "rural farms need it", even if true it's unsustainable. > "all cities do is services, they don't produce goods." All that needs is one counterexample: London has the largest diesel engine manufacturing site in the world - [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London#Manufacturing_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London#Manufacturin... Yes, fintech nonsense has eaten London, and services are its most profitable sectors these days, but that's not /because it's a city/, it was a major manufacturing center and a city.

amalcon 4y ago

Nonsense. Farms obviously predate suburbs, for one thing: nothing resembling the modern suburb could exist without steam power or something newer than that. There's never really been heavy industry in the suburbs: the modern suburb exists because people didn't want to live near the heavy industry in the cities. The North American suburb, which is what we're discussing here unless I misunderstand, more or less came about in the post-war era. It would really be an extraordinary claim that farms and heavy industry couldn't exist in North America until the 1950s...

adambard 4y ago

> So many people don't seem to realize that without suburbs you don't have farms. This strikes me as a bizarre take. What do you consider a "suburb"?

ars 4y ago
A place outside dense cities, somewhere not too far from farms. A place where a farmer can go for services without having to travel far.
- uoaei 4y ago
  You're describing "rural" living. Suburbs entail something else.

tfourb 4y ago

Farmlands and suburbs are completely different things, especially in the context of urban development. Industrial zones are also a completely different category entirely. Living in Germany, most German cities do not have anything that is comparable to a U.S. "suburb". Building codes demand a quite high density, even for single family homes for new developments and older developments have the tendency to get denser as the demand for housing in a city rises. German planning law specifically aims to concentrate development as much as possible, to limit encroachment on agricultural lands and nature. Doesn't always work out, but we have very little of the "urban sprawl" that is so characteristic of U.S. urban planning.

pjmlp 4y ago
Except that in most German towns outside the tiny center where almost everything closes between 4 and 6 pm with exception of supermarkets, everything else seems to require a car or at least 30 minute cycling, with most buses ending at 8pm.
ars 4y ago
And Germany is tiny compared to the US. A farm in Germany is how far of a drive from the nearest city? In the US you could drive 10 hours from a farm to get to the nearest large city. Suburbs and tiny cities are what farms need to survive.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Tiny overstates it. I think ~30% of the size.
- lavela 4y ago
  I get your point about small cities, but suburbs? They are attached to larger cities, so they may take the drive down from 10 hours to maybe 9.5. How does that make that much of a difference?
- tfourb 4y ago
  Yes, farms need market access. But that market does not have to be a sprawling suburb, it can be a decently dense town or city. Also, market access is relative depending on product. Farmers concentrating on crops like wheat and corn don't care about the distance to cities, as their product is traded globally. For fresh produce, distance is a real concern, but on the other hand you don't need a lot of land to fulfill the need of even large cities. You could conceivably provide most fresh produce from inside city limits if urban planning would see this as necessary. Production/acre for something like tomatoes is really huge, depending on the methods used.

bregma 4y ago

Suburbs are the places where what used to be productive farms are paved over with asphalt. Few cities rely on them for anything except maybe cheap labour.

ars 4y ago
> anything except maybe cheap labour. Hmmmmm. And that labor does? Please think about this a big more - cities do not have industry or agriculture in them. They need those suburbs to provide that. You can't just dismiss it as "cheap labor" - what exactly do you plan to eat or buy?
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  Farms aren't sub-urbs, farms are rural. Suburbia "lesser-urban" is housing estates. Nothing productive happens there. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia - "the outer parts of a town, where there are houses, but no large shops, places of work, or places of entertainment"
  - ars 4y ago
    People live there. And they create business nearby. And those business are closer to the rural areas than the cities are. And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.
    - kitkat_new 4y ago
      > And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist. this is exactly what suburbs are. You live there, nothing else. You wake up then you drive to work somewhere else
      - plumarr 4y ago
        That's maybe a cultural difference. For example I know of no such place in Belgium even if I'm quite well travelled in it. So it's a least really not common to have suburbs as you describes.