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Problem: I want to live somewhere where I have space around my house, and I'm not very close to the neightbor. Car: I have that solved. How did the car cause t

by ars 2y ago

Problem: I want to live somewhere where I have space around my house, and I'm not very close to the neightbor. Car: I have that solved. How did the car cause this problem? And what's the unmeasured cost? I want space to live, I don't want to be packed in close to the neighbors. So any alternate solution you offer must also solve that. PS. Please don't give me "strongtowns" links claiming that suburbs cost the city more, because it's not actually true. Strongtowns lives in a weird world where only expensive services "count" as providing value to a city. Places with manufacturing or farming are unimportant to them because those things don't generate as much in tax. They should rename themselves "Strong Towns Weak County" to be more accurate with their mission statment. (One of their delcared goals is less interstates.)

cycomanic 2y ago
There are are significant externalised costs with how you want to live. So you have preference to live in the country, but would you be willing to bear the actual cost? E.g. the cost of infrastructure like roads, electricity, hospitals, schools etc. is much more expensive per user in the country and is thus cross subsidised by urban tax payers. So the question becomes how much would you be willing to pay for your preferences or why should others pay for your preferences.
- ars 2y ago
  > is much more expensive per user in the country and is thus cross subsidised by urban tax payers. This is not actually true. The cost is a wash because the roads last longer. And the urban tax payer plans to eat what exactly, and buy what goods, without the suburbs? Just because the tax value of what suburbs make is lower that doesn't make it less needed.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - cycomanic 2y ago
    > > is much more expensive per user in the country and is thus cross subsidised by urban tax payers. > This is not actually true. The cost is a wash because the roads last longer. Is that's why providers are falling all over themselves to build fiber infrastructure in the country? Ah no they don't, instead the government created big subsidy programs to get rural areas connected. You seriously don't understand how infrastructure is build finances and ages if you think the cost of infrastructure in the country is the same as in urban areas. And I'm not even talking about infrastructure like hospitals that require staff to run. > And the urban tax payer plans to eat what exactly, and buy what goods, without the suburbs? Just because the tax value of what suburbs make is lower that doesn't make it less needed. Since when is food grown in the suburbs? Also just because food is grown in the country does not mean that lots of people need to live there.
    - ars 2y ago
      You keep randomly switching between suburban and rural as it suits your argument. Fiber infrastructure is well available in suburbs, much earlier than in cities because it's much cheaper in the suburbs. And rural areas grow food, and depend on the nearby suburbs for services. > Also just because food is grown in the country does not mean that lots of people need to live there. Sounds miserable for the "sacrificial" people who you'll put there to grow food for you. Do you not realize that if you want people to live there, you need nearby suburbs and small cities? Strongtowns actually want fewer interstates, to really make sure farm dwellers have no opportunity to go anywhere else.
Tade0 2y ago
> Strongtowns lives in a weird world where only expensive services "count" as providing value to a city. Places with manufacturing or farming are unimportant to them because those things don't generate as much in tax. I originally found their arguments convincing but what you wrote made me reconsider. Could you elaborate?
- ars 2y ago
  Strongtowns does all their calculation on the worth of a city/town etc based on how much tax revenue it produces. Cities are expensive places to live and mostly produce services with high taxes. The city costs a lot, but also generates a lot. And cities are necessary, because we do need those services. (Programmers, accountants, lawyers, doctors.) But it completely ignores that a suburb where the locals commute to a warehouse or a factory also provides value. The tax value is lower - so in strongtowns' mind it's worthless. But I hope it's obvious that without those employees all the cities would have nothing to eat (all those packaged foods are made somewhere after all) and nothing to buy (cities for the most part manufacture nothing). You need both types of places in the world, and I think people should be allowed to live where they chose without people pressuring them to move to a city. They make an "exception" for rural areas because farms are an obvious need, but they want the farms to exist without any cities nearby. The farmers are expected to travel to the nearest large city when they need city services (obviously not something they can do very often). They also have a goal of less interstates - they don't want people driving around a lot. How they expect to ship things I'm not sure (trains maybe?) But also how they expect people to get any enjoyment out of life I'm also not sure. Just stay put in your area and do your job I suppose? There's so much more to criticize: He's the usual city growth plan: The edge of a city becomes those "hated" suburbs. As the suburb fills up with people it becomes worth it to subdivide lots and build more houses, over time it becomes dense like a city. They instead want to skip the suburb step and just directly build very densely on the edge of the city. Their calculations on roads: Suburbs need way more roads per person. But suburban roads cost a lot less per mile - like way less. Suburban roads also last much much longer (far less traffic). The net result is that the cost per person is basically a wash. They ignore that though. They don't like having to run long water pipes to the houses, but the costs of those water pipes is minimal over time, they last 100 years. It's just not an expensive enough problem to worry about. Police have a larger area to deal with, but there's also less crime to deal with. Anyway I'll stop here.
piva00 2y ago
> PS. Please don't give me "strongtowns" links claiming that suburbs cost the city more, because it's not actually true. Strongtowns lives in a weird world where only expensive services "count" as providing value to a city How is it not actually true? Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities, they are not factories nor agricultural lands, they are low density housing which require expensive public services like sewers, roads, water pipes, electricity, fire department coverage, policing, while not having enough population density to actually sustain the costs of maintaining the infrastructure.
- ars 2y ago
  > Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities, they are not factories nor agricultural lands That is simply not true. Suburbs is where all the manufacturing and warehousing is.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Some suburbs, not residential suburbs with single family detached homes which is the point of Strong Towns.
    - ars 2y ago
      And according to them what jobs do the people that live there have? Hmm? They are just wrong, but they'll never admit it.
      - piva00 2y ago
        Can you provide data that shows that most people living in the suburbs work in the suburbs themselves? Hmm? If they work in the cities it's just the same argument from Strong Towns, live in higher density housing, with services and shops nearby so their way of living is sustainable and not a drain to the city's coffers to provide infrastructure where it's not sustainable.
        2y ago
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> manufacturing or farming are unimportant to them Farms aren’t typically in the suburbs. (Manufacturing, yes.) Rural life has historically been one of deep poverty or aristocracy. Suburban living is different, but we’re seeing costs being redistributed to them. Which is fine. I live in a rural suburb, and it should be expensive. It’s a luxury. I probably quintupled my carbon footprint by choosing it. But that’s the trade off. > any alternate solution you offer must also solve that More money. I want an aircraft hangar and a horse, that doesn’t mean society owes me one. If you want isolation and access to civilisation, you pay more money. (Hermitting is the alternative.)
- ars 2y ago
  > Farms aren’t typically in the suburbs. (Manufacturing, yes.) Farms are actually usually adjacent to suburbs. As the suburb ends it switches to farm land. So when the farmer wants services he doesn't need to go in the city, he can go to the suburb. He can't go to the city anyway, there's nowhere to park his car, and he has no other way to get there. > I live in a rural suburb, and it should be expensive. It’s a luxury. I probably quintupled my carbon footprint by choosing it Suburbs are cheaper than cities. Just look at the salaries of the people that live in both places. And your carbon footprint is probably lower than a city, cities are very wasteful places because they can be: People have more money there. A small example: In a suburb you buy in bulk and store it. In a city you buy for a day or two. The carbon footprint difference between those two options is huge, it takes an enormous amount of energy to keep the city constantly stocked with retail products because you have to distribute small quantities of everything to so many places, as opposed to a central area with bulk quantities. I've been in both places. In a city you can buy paper plates for so cheap (relative to your salary) it simply doesn't make sense to have real dishes - you don't have room for them anyway. People waste enormous amounts of goods (relative to suburbs) because the cost of "things" is very low relative to their salary.
  - namdnay 2y ago
    And how are these suburban shoppers getting to this central area with bulk quantities? Walking? Cycling? Buses? Nah … they’re burning gasoline
CalRobert 2y ago
It seems like a poor faith argument to refuse to address people's attempts to offer differing views (and data). Among many, many, many "unmeasured" costs is the fact you're stealing people's freedom. I want to live in a flat above a shop in a 5 story building with no car and you propose making it effectively illegal to build such a structure because it's infeasible unless you tear down neighbouring buildings (ruining the neighbourhood in the process) to build parking.
- ars 2y ago
  Quite the opposite, I want people to be able to live wherever they like and stop pressuring them to move to cities. Where do you see me advocate anything else?
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Every time you push for parking minimums you are making it de facto illegal to build new, dense, walkable cities, making it harder for people like me to live in one.
    - ars 2y ago
      I see the confusion. I was not pushing to add parking minimums in places without them. Rather I was pushing not to remove them in a place that already has them, because I'm against artificially forcing a city to change underneath people who are already there.
nunez 2y ago
Why is a car required to have a spacious house?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by ars 2y ago

cycomanic 2y ago

There are are significant externalised costs with how you want to live. So you have preference to live in the country, but would you be willing to bear the actual cost? E.g. the cost of infrastructure like roads, electricity, hospitals, schools etc. is much more expensive per user in the country and is thus cross subsidised by urban tax payers. So the question becomes how much would you be willing to pay for your preferences or why should others pay for your preferences.

ars 2y ago
> is much more expensive per user in the country and is thus cross subsidised by urban tax payers. This is not actually true. The cost is a wash because the roads last longer. And the urban tax payer plans to eat what exactly, and buy what goods, without the suburbs? Just because the tax value of what suburbs make is lower that doesn't make it less needed.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cycomanic 2y ago
  > > is much more expensive per user in the country and is thus cross subsidised by urban tax payers. > This is not actually true. The cost is a wash because the roads last longer. Is that's why providers are falling all over themselves to build fiber infrastructure in the country? Ah no they don't, instead the government created big subsidy programs to get rural areas connected. You seriously don't understand how infrastructure is build finances and ages if you think the cost of infrastructure in the country is the same as in urban areas. And I'm not even talking about infrastructure like hospitals that require staff to run. > And the urban tax payer plans to eat what exactly, and buy what goods, without the suburbs? Just because the tax value of what suburbs make is lower that doesn't make it less needed. Since when is food grown in the suburbs? Also just because food is grown in the country does not mean that lots of people need to live there.
  - ars 2y ago
    You keep randomly switching between suburban and rural as it suits your argument. Fiber infrastructure is well available in suburbs, much earlier than in cities because it's much cheaper in the suburbs. And rural areas grow food, and depend on the nearby suburbs for services. > Also just because food is grown in the country does not mean that lots of people need to live there. Sounds miserable for the "sacrificial" people who you'll put there to grow food for you. Do you not realize that if you want people to live there, you need nearby suburbs and small cities? Strongtowns actually want fewer interstates, to really make sure farm dwellers have no opportunity to go anywhere else.

Tade0 2y ago

> Strongtowns lives in a weird world where only expensive services "count" as providing value to a city. Places with manufacturing or farming are unimportant to them because those things don't generate as much in tax. I originally found their arguments convincing but what you wrote made me reconsider. Could you elaborate?

ars 2y ago
Strongtowns does all their calculation on the worth of a city/town etc based on how much tax revenue it produces. Cities are expensive places to live and mostly produce services with high taxes. The city costs a lot, but also generates a lot. And cities are necessary, because we do need those services. (Programmers, accountants, lawyers, doctors.) But it completely ignores that a suburb where the locals commute to a warehouse or a factory also provides value. The tax value is lower - so in strongtowns' mind it's worthless. But I hope it's obvious that without those employees all the cities would have nothing to eat (all those packaged foods are made somewhere after all) and nothing to buy (cities for the most part manufacture nothing). You need both types of places in the world, and I think people should be allowed to live where they chose without people pressuring them to move to a city. They make an "exception" for rural areas because farms are an obvious need, but they want the farms to exist without any cities nearby. The farmers are expected to travel to the nearest large city when they need city services (obviously not something they can do very often). They also have a goal of less interstates - they don't want people driving around a lot. How they expect to ship things I'm not sure (trains maybe?) But also how they expect people to get any enjoyment out of life I'm also not sure. Just stay put in your area and do your job I suppose? There's so much more to criticize: He's the usual city growth plan: The edge of a city becomes those "hated" suburbs. As the suburb fills up with people it becomes worth it to subdivide lots and build more houses, over time it becomes dense like a city. They instead want to skip the suburb step and just directly build very densely on the edge of the city. Their calculations on roads: Suburbs need way more roads per person. But suburban roads cost a lot less per mile - like way less. Suburban roads also last much much longer (far less traffic). The net result is that the cost per person is basically a wash. They ignore that though. They don't like having to run long water pipes to the houses, but the costs of those water pipes is minimal over time, they last 100 years. It's just not an expensive enough problem to worry about. Police have a larger area to deal with, but there's also less crime to deal with. Anyway I'll stop here.

piva00 2y ago

> PS. Please don't give me "strongtowns" links claiming that suburbs cost the city more, because it's not actually true. Strongtowns lives in a weird world where only expensive services "count" as providing value to a city How is it not actually true? Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities, they are not factories nor agricultural lands, they are low density housing which require expensive public services like sewers, roads, water pipes, electricity, fire department coverage, policing, while not having enough population density to actually sustain the costs of maintaining the infrastructure.

ars 2y ago
> Suburbs are not providing value to their nearby cities, they are not factories nor agricultural lands That is simply not true. Suburbs is where all the manufacturing and warehousing is.
- piva00 2y ago
  Some suburbs, not residential suburbs with single family detached homes which is the point of Strong Towns.
  - ars 2y ago
    And according to them what jobs do the people that live there have? Hmm? They are just wrong, but they'll never admit it.
    - piva00 2y ago
      Can you provide data that shows that most people living in the suburbs work in the suburbs themselves? Hmm? If they work in the cities it's just the same argument from Strong Towns, live in higher density housing, with services and shops nearby so their way of living is sustainable and not a drain to the city's coffers to provide infrastructure where it's not sustainable.
      - 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> manufacturing or farming are unimportant to them Farms aren’t typically in the suburbs. (Manufacturing, yes.) Rural life has historically been one of deep poverty or aristocracy. Suburban living is different, but we’re seeing costs being redistributed to them. Which is fine. I live in a rural suburb, and it should be expensive. It’s a luxury. I probably quintupled my carbon footprint by choosing it. But that’s the trade off. > any alternate solution you offer must also solve that More money. I want an aircraft hangar and a horse, that doesn’t mean society owes me one. If you want isolation and access to civilisation, you pay more money. (Hermitting is the alternative.)

ars 2y ago
> Farms aren’t typically in the suburbs. (Manufacturing, yes.) Farms are actually usually adjacent to suburbs. As the suburb ends it switches to farm land. So when the farmer wants services he doesn't need to go in the city, he can go to the suburb. He can't go to the city anyway, there's nowhere to park his car, and he has no other way to get there. > I live in a rural suburb, and it should be expensive. It’s a luxury. I probably quintupled my carbon footprint by choosing it Suburbs are cheaper than cities. Just look at the salaries of the people that live in both places. And your carbon footprint is probably lower than a city, cities are very wasteful places because they can be: People have more money there. A small example: In a suburb you buy in bulk and store it. In a city you buy for a day or two. The carbon footprint difference between those two options is huge, it takes an enormous amount of energy to keep the city constantly stocked with retail products because you have to distribute small quantities of everything to so many places, as opposed to a central area with bulk quantities. I've been in both places. In a city you can buy paper plates for so cheap (relative to your salary) it simply doesn't make sense to have real dishes - you don't have room for them anyway. People waste enormous amounts of goods (relative to suburbs) because the cost of "things" is very low relative to their salary.
- namdnay 2y ago
  And how are these suburban shoppers getting to this central area with bulk quantities? Walking? Cycling? Buses? Nah … they’re burning gasoline

CalRobert 2y ago

It seems like a poor faith argument to refuse to address people's attempts to offer differing views (and data). Among many, many, many "unmeasured" costs is the fact you're stealing people's freedom. I want to live in a flat above a shop in a 5 story building with no car and you propose making it effectively illegal to build such a structure because it's infeasible unless you tear down neighbouring buildings (ruining the neighbourhood in the process) to build parking.

ars 2y ago
Quite the opposite, I want people to be able to live wherever they like and stop pressuring them to move to cities. Where do you see me advocate anything else?
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Every time you push for parking minimums you are making it de facto illegal to build new, dense, walkable cities, making it harder for people like me to live in one.
  - ars 2y ago
    I see the confusion. I was not pushing to add parking minimums in places without them. Rather I was pushing not to remove them in a place that already has them, because I'm against artificially forcing a city to change underneath people who are already there.

nunez 2y ago

Why is a car required to have a spacious house?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]