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From a municipal finance perspective, most Dallas-Fort Worth suburban municipalities are far and away outperforming urban Dallas (the City of Dallas proper). Th

From a municipal finance perspective, most Dallas-Fort Worth suburban municipalities are far and away outperforming urban Dallas (the City of Dallas proper). That's not opinion, you can see the finances as they are all public. Ask the LLM of your choice to make research easy. I'm not really sure where people get this idea that suburbs are drowning in liabilities where dense american urban centers are overflowing with revenues. The opposite is the case almost everywhere you look. Or that suburbs are only surviving by pushing costs unfairly onto cities. Most suburbs (in the case of Dallas being plano, irving, frisco, southlake/westlake) are self governing municipalities with their own school districts, police, city management, and credit ratings. Sometimes people say it's just that suburbs are new and have yet to pay the piper, but even in america's (and Dallas') oldest suburbs, many of which have replaced/renovated infra several times over at this point, they are indeed stronger financially than the urban centers they surround.

Teever 3mo ago
I think you're sort of missing my point. After decades of ignored negative externalities from unchecked suburban growth and car-culture are coming to an end. As populations decline and temperatures increase places like Dallas and the wealthy suburbs around it that you mention will have less and less relevance. There isn't going to be a future where the citizens of suburban Dallas are enjoying Starbucks coffee in single-serving cups delivered to them in Waymo vehicles. It isn't viable to just paper over unsustainable nature of these places with self driving cars and ignore urban environments and mass public transit as the comment that started this thread suggested. The only places that are going to survive what is coming are ones that are dense, well managed, and sustainable.
- galangalalgol 3mo ago
  The climate part is certainly an issue for dfw, but the superiority of dense urban areas from a financial or ecological standpoint isn't backed by data. Buses were better for fuel efficiency, but now the bus and robotaxi are both ev, the robotaxi has a smaller impact ecologically due to microplastics scaling with axle weight ^4 and financially because road wear scales with axle weight ^3. If buses and trash trucks didn't drive on streets they would last virtually forever the way they are built now. While the glorious excesses of the last 75yrs are definitely going away, the suburbs may very well not. Urban cores might instead rot in infrastructure until only the highways between them with low density adjacent settlements remain.
- wj 3mo ago
  What is the timeline you expect for this?
- DeathArrow 3mo ago
  What about the problems negative externalities from unchecked crowding and bus culture? Like overcrowding, sky high prices for housing, very high prices for everything, broken infrastructure that is to expensive to fix and over capacity?
airza 3mo ago
The finances of these metros rarely incorporate road costs; their accounting does not require them to incorporate the future liability for infrastructure maintenance and so everything looks good until they need to redo the roads.
- 1123581321 3mo ago
  What leads you to say that? Capex is typically budgeted.
  - irowe 3mo ago
    If it's anything like my municipality, all that stuff is balanced in the budget by issuing bonds. My accounting knowledge is weak, but as I understand it, even though a city's credit rating and the prospective interest on its bonds are a feedback mechanism to help moderate the spending, it's still tempting for a city to overbuild without a plan to fund the bonds plus the incurred cost ongoing maintenance without ending up with too much debt.
    - bluGill 3mo ago
      The other thing people often get wrong is these things are funded by 20 year bonds, but they last for much longer. If you make the incorrect assumption that something must be replaced when the bond is paid off the suburb cannot support itself. However pipes last a lot more than 20 years in most cases. Even if the road surface only lasts 20 years (which is true in some extreme cases but not in general), the right of way is a one time expensive, and the ground work below the surface is generally one and done so the replacement costs are much less than the first time new road costs.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
FromHoiPolloi 3mo ago
[flagged]
cucumber3732842 3mo ago
>I'm not really sure where people get this idea that suburbs are drowning in liabilities Because from the 70s onward the former industrial northeast and miswest was actively de-urbanized and suburbanized with environmental and zoning law (don't blame this all on the locals, a lot of this rolls downhill from the states). This obviously coincided with de-industrialization. So basically all these former market and mill towns basically wound up underwater because they not only kicked out their economy but wound up in a situation where every stupid sidewalk repaving costs a bajillion bucks because pursuant to state law whatever it needs to be brought up to code which means some BS green space buffer, etc, etc. Source: Live in one. At the end of the day you're basically right it's a lie when it comes to some random Dallas suburb.
Yizahi 3mo ago
I wouldn't dispute Dallas numbers and I may be wrong. But in general this feels wrong at a first approach. Denser low rise apartment blocks with more commercial square are per inhabitant and fewer expensive infrastructure per inhabitant (road area, length of water/sewers/electricity/data lines, amount of common things like lamp posts, signs, security (police/fire/medical etc.)) just logically should be better financially performing than single family home suburbs. In any part of the world at any age or local variation. And in fact in most countries that's true so far.
- bluGill 3mo ago
  When logic and the observation disagree that means your logic is missing something. Don't double down on flawed logic, figure out where the flaw is. I don't know where your flaws in logic is coming from, but I have seen the numbers enough different places to know there is one someplace.
  - galangalalgol 3mo ago
    I know this isn't /. but a car analogy seems appropriate here. A city is like a modern cramped engine bay vs an old one where you can sit next to the motor to work on it. Anything you try to fix or upgrade in a dense city causes large problems. Also, governance isn't like manufacturing, it doesn't get easier at scale, it gets so much harder. Living in a perfectly planned super dense urban utopia where I can quickly walk wherever I want is extremely appealing to me. I would also like living in the wilds where once a week I drive to the general store and back as the full day's task. Suburban living is my least desired outcome. But everywhere there is room for it, it happens, even without a city to latch onto. There are good reasons for that.
  - Yizahi 3mo ago
    You are missing one thing. Logic can be faulty AND observation can be faulty just as well (it's just more rare usually). Especially in the financial reporting. I've seen enough to immediately doubt and try to find intentional tricks in any level of financial reporting or analysis. The tools are endless - simple faking, reclassifying specific inflows and outflows to the different time frames or divisions or even separate companies (both fake and real), confusing or obscure terminology is certainly widely deployed, metrics can be fudged from industry standards to some better looking custom ones, companies can "forget" some of their liabilities and debts or even rename them into something unrecognizable. I'm prepared to be wrong though. The question is, are you?..

Teever 3mo ago

I think you're sort of missing my point. After decades of ignored negative externalities from unchecked suburban growth and car-culture are coming to an end. As populations decline and temperatures increase places like Dallas and the wealthy suburbs around it that you mention will have less and less relevance. There isn't going to be a future where the citizens of suburban Dallas are enjoying Starbucks coffee in single-serving cups delivered to them in Waymo vehicles. It isn't viable to just paper over unsustainable nature of these places with self driving cars and ignore urban environments and mass public transit as the comment that started this thread suggested. The only places that are going to survive what is coming are ones that are dense, well managed, and sustainable.

galangalalgol 3mo ago
The climate part is certainly an issue for dfw, but the superiority of dense urban areas from a financial or ecological standpoint isn't backed by data. Buses were better for fuel efficiency, but now the bus and robotaxi are both ev, the robotaxi has a smaller impact ecologically due to microplastics scaling with axle weight ^4 and financially because road wear scales with axle weight ^3. If buses and trash trucks didn't drive on streets they would last virtually forever the way they are built now. While the glorious excesses of the last 75yrs are definitely going away, the suburbs may very well not. Urban cores might instead rot in infrastructure until only the highways between them with low density adjacent settlements remain.
wj 3mo ago
What is the timeline you expect for this?
DeathArrow 3mo ago
What about the problems negative externalities from unchecked crowding and bus culture? Like overcrowding, sky high prices for housing, very high prices for everything, broken infrastructure that is to expensive to fix and over capacity?

airza 3mo ago

The finances of these metros rarely incorporate road costs; their accounting does not require them to incorporate the future liability for infrastructure maintenance and so everything looks good until they need to redo the roads.

1123581321 3mo ago
What leads you to say that? Capex is typically budgeted.
- irowe 3mo ago
  If it's anything like my municipality, all that stuff is balanced in the budget by issuing bonds. My accounting knowledge is weak, but as I understand it, even though a city's credit rating and the prospective interest on its bonds are a feedback mechanism to help moderate the spending, it's still tempting for a city to overbuild without a plan to fund the bonds plus the incurred cost ongoing maintenance without ending up with too much debt.
  - bluGill 3mo ago
    The other thing people often get wrong is these things are funded by 20 year bonds, but they last for much longer. If you make the incorrect assumption that something must be replaced when the bond is paid off the suburb cannot support itself. However pipes last a lot more than 20 years in most cases. Even if the road surface only lasts 20 years (which is true in some extreme cases but not in general), the right of way is a one time expensive, and the ground work below the surface is generally one and done so the replacement costs are much less than the first time new road costs.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

FromHoiPolloi 3mo ago

[flagged]

cucumber3732842 3mo ago

>I'm not really sure where people get this idea that suburbs are drowning in liabilities Because from the 70s onward the former industrial northeast and miswest was actively de-urbanized and suburbanized with environmental and zoning law (don't blame this all on the locals, a lot of this rolls downhill from the states). This obviously coincided with de-industrialization. So basically all these former market and mill towns basically wound up underwater because they not only kicked out their economy but wound up in a situation where every stupid sidewalk repaving costs a bajillion bucks because pursuant to state law whatever it needs to be brought up to code which means some BS green space buffer, etc, etc. Source: Live in one. At the end of the day you're basically right it's a lie when it comes to some random Dallas suburb.

Yizahi 3mo ago

I wouldn't dispute Dallas numbers and I may be wrong. But in general this feels wrong at a first approach. Denser low rise apartment blocks with more commercial square are per inhabitant and fewer expensive infrastructure per inhabitant (road area, length of water/sewers/electricity/data lines, amount of common things like lamp posts, signs, security (police/fire/medical etc.)) just logically should be better financially performing than single family home suburbs. In any part of the world at any age or local variation. And in fact in most countries that's true so far.

bluGill 3mo ago
When logic and the observation disagree that means your logic is missing something. Don't double down on flawed logic, figure out where the flaw is. I don't know where your flaws in logic is coming from, but I have seen the numbers enough different places to know there is one someplace.
- galangalalgol 3mo ago
  I know this isn't /. but a car analogy seems appropriate here. A city is like a modern cramped engine bay vs an old one where you can sit next to the motor to work on it. Anything you try to fix or upgrade in a dense city causes large problems. Also, governance isn't like manufacturing, it doesn't get easier at scale, it gets so much harder. Living in a perfectly planned super dense urban utopia where I can quickly walk wherever I want is extremely appealing to me. I would also like living in the wilds where once a week I drive to the general store and back as the full day's task. Suburban living is my least desired outcome. But everywhere there is room for it, it happens, even without a city to latch onto. There are good reasons for that.
- Yizahi 3mo ago
  You are missing one thing. Logic can be faulty AND observation can be faulty just as well (it's just more rare usually). Especially in the financial reporting. I've seen enough to immediately doubt and try to find intentional tricks in any level of financial reporting or analysis. The tools are endless - simple faking, reclassifying specific inflows and outflows to the different time frames or divisions or even separate companies (both fake and real), confusing or obscure terminology is certainly widely deployed, metrics can be fudged from industry standards to some better looking custom ones, companies can "forget" some of their liabilities and debts or even rename them into something unrecognizable. I'm prepared to be wrong though. The question is, are you?..