3 ms·

Nah, the issue with sprawl appears when everybody finally left the city center: the infrastructure becomes too expensive to maintain without the city center to

by orwin 3y ago

Nah, the issue with sprawl appears when everybody finally left the city center: the infrastructure becomes too expensive to maintain without the city center to subsidize suburb roads and water management, and the city either stop fixing it or indebt itself too much. If you're living in an exurb that's becoming suburbia, and the city propose you to close your septic tank and attach yourself to the suburb water management, only do it if you really, really trust your local politicians. And I mean, really.

cyberax 3y ago
> the city center to subsidize suburb roads and water management Wow. Toxic propaganda is really successful. If you read ACTUAL analyses, the dense cities are not really that more efficient: https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/5/3/69 https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/5/3/69 In particular, water and sewer costs don't go down a lot. An anecdote: I live in Seattle which is fairly dense, yet my sewer+water costs 5 _times_ more than in sprawling Boise, ID.
- orwin 3y ago
  I guess I'm just anti-sprawl. My mother used to live in a small village near a small city, an exurb. Now, it's becoming suburbia, but not the good kind, the 'full detached home' kind (not joking, there isn't even a single semi-detached home here). I see how it changed everything, in the wrong direction. It killed the local bar/dinner in exchange for a monstrosity old people cannot access. It killed the community, the traffic tripled, you had to attach yourself to waste management (and now they have issues). My mother had to add a wall/fence to break the sound of the road, when trees and plants were sufficient, and during rush hour you still feel like you live in a city, without the city access advantages. I would typically call most of Seattle suburbia. It does not seems as sprawly than Stockton (that I actually visited unlike Seattle), but it doesn't look good. Also, high rise is as bad as suburbia in my opinion, I hate it with less passion because I only had to live in high rise building temporarily. But the cost each time you rise 3 meters is exponential for everything (except electricity), so if your city is 10% high rise, 80% detached/semi-detached homes, no shit it'll be expensive. Is Boise, ID a suburban sprawl? Or is it a fairly dense city without a shit ton of high-rise units?
  - orwin 3y ago
    I just checked, Boise ID is 25% denser than Seattle.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      ?!? Seattle is 8000 people per square mile, Boise is 3000 people per square mile.
      - orwin 3y ago
        I compared French numbers for Seattle (people per square kilometers), and US numbers (people per square miles) :/ I don't know why, I end up on French Wikipedia when searching for known US cities. I'm sorry, I'll be careful next time
- ben-schaaf 3y ago
  That paper makes a city-to-city comparison, not a urban-to-suburban comparison. But what it does say is: > These results indicate that a 10% increase in density would reduce operational costs for fire protection by 1.3%, streets and highways by 2.7%, sewer by 3.1%, etc. Not sure about you, but this is the exact opposite of "doesn't go down a lot". If you want actual urban-to-suburban comparisons there's the case studies done by urban3 who map fine-grained expenditure and tax income: * https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/lafayette-la/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/lafayette-la/ * https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/eugene-or/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/eugene-or/ * https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/south-bend-in/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/south-bend-in/ Not only do these show the urban areas being much more efficient, the suburban areas are so inefficient they're not even breaking even.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    Or maybe this one: > Holcombe and Williams [25] found mixed results. They found that for cities with population less than 500,000, higher population density was associated with lower per capita expenditures on highways and sewers, but this relationship did not hold for larger cities. Further, per capita expenditures on services, such as police, increased with density for cities with population above 500,000, and there was no relationship for smaller cities. Their general conclusion was that for cities larger than 50,000, per capita expenditures are not associated with density. Further research by Holcombe and Williams [26] found no relationship between sprawl and highway expenditures and, actually, a positive relationship between population density and highway expenditures. ... > Fewer studies have shown reductions in costs for water, sewer, or sold waste, though this may be expected. Some costs have also been shown to increase with density, such as housing and community development or police. My own research (will publish on Github once I validate it) finds similar results. Municipalities peak in efficiency around 100-200k people. > If you want actual urban-to-suburban comparisons there's the case studies done by urban3 who map fine-grained expenditure and tax income Woohoo. Yet another propaganda outlet. Note that it tracks _tax_ _income_, which is misleading. It's skewed towards Downtowns, simply because that's where companies are registered and pay taxes. But people who _work_ there don't typically live nearby. In fact, if you look at total _personal_ income taxes per zip code collected in the US, it's not even close. Suburbs are paying for most of the US.

by orwin 3y ago

cyberax 3y ago

> the city center to subsidize suburb roads and water management Wow. Toxic propaganda is really successful. If you read ACTUAL analyses, the dense cities are not really that more efficient: https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/5/3/69 https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/5/3/69 In particular, water and sewer costs don't go down a lot. An anecdote: I live in Seattle which is fairly dense, yet my sewer+water costs 5 _times_ more than in sprawling Boise, ID.

orwin 3y ago
I guess I'm just anti-sprawl. My mother used to live in a small village near a small city, an exurb. Now, it's becoming suburbia, but not the good kind, the 'full detached home' kind (not joking, there isn't even a single semi-detached home here). I see how it changed everything, in the wrong direction. It killed the local bar/dinner in exchange for a monstrosity old people cannot access. It killed the community, the traffic tripled, you had to attach yourself to waste management (and now they have issues). My mother had to add a wall/fence to break the sound of the road, when trees and plants were sufficient, and during rush hour you still feel like you live in a city, without the city access advantages. I would typically call most of Seattle suburbia. It does not seems as sprawly than Stockton (that I actually visited unlike Seattle), but it doesn't look good. Also, high rise is as bad as suburbia in my opinion, I hate it with less passion because I only had to live in high rise building temporarily. But the cost each time you rise 3 meters is exponential for everything (except electricity), so if your city is 10% high rise, 80% detached/semi-detached homes, no shit it'll be expensive. Is Boise, ID a suburban sprawl? Or is it a fairly dense city without a shit ton of high-rise units?
- orwin 3y ago
  I just checked, Boise ID is 25% denser than Seattle.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    ?!? Seattle is 8000 people per square mile, Boise is 3000 people per square mile.
    - orwin 3y ago
      I compared French numbers for Seattle (people per square kilometers), and US numbers (people per square miles) :/ I don't know why, I end up on French Wikipedia when searching for known US cities. I'm sorry, I'll be careful next time
ben-schaaf 3y ago
That paper makes a city-to-city comparison, not a urban-to-suburban comparison. But what it does say is: > These results indicate that a 10% increase in density would reduce operational costs for fire protection by 1.3%, streets and highways by 2.7%, sewer by 3.1%, etc. Not sure about you, but this is the exact opposite of "doesn't go down a lot". If you want actual urban-to-suburban comparisons there's the case studies done by urban3 who map fine-grained expenditure and tax income: * https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/lafayette-la/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/lafayette-la/ * https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/eugene-or/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/eugene-or/ * https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/south-bend-in/ https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/south-bend-in/ Not only do these show the urban areas being much more efficient, the suburban areas are so inefficient they're not even breaking even.
- cyberax 3y ago
  Or maybe this one: > Holcombe and Williams [25] found mixed results. They found that for cities with population less than 500,000, higher population density was associated with lower per capita expenditures on highways and sewers, but this relationship did not hold for larger cities. Further, per capita expenditures on services, such as police, increased with density for cities with population above 500,000, and there was no relationship for smaller cities. Their general conclusion was that for cities larger than 50,000, per capita expenditures are not associated with density. Further research by Holcombe and Williams [26] found no relationship between sprawl and highway expenditures and, actually, a positive relationship between population density and highway expenditures. ... > Fewer studies have shown reductions in costs for water, sewer, or sold waste, though this may be expected. Some costs have also been shown to increase with density, such as housing and community development or police. My own research (will publish on Github once I validate it) finds similar results. Municipalities peak in efficiency around 100-200k people. > If you want actual urban-to-suburban comparisons there's the case studies done by urban3 who map fine-grained expenditure and tax income Woohoo. Yet another propaganda outlet. Note that it tracks _tax_ _income_, which is misleading. It's skewed towards Downtowns, simply because that's where companies are registered and pay taxes. But people who _work_ there don't typically live nearby. In fact, if you look at total _personal_ income taxes per zip code collected in the US, it's not even close. Suburbs are paying for most of the US.