". . . Lord Vader, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." This might be a good message for the author of "When Sprawl Hits the Wall," a piece in Urbanophile bemoaning the "doughnut" syndrome around dying cities. Indianapolis, he claims, enacted a brilliant strategy of co-opting its suburbs some decades back. You can't let those people move out to the outskirts without expanding your perimeter and trapping them in your tax-base, right? But then the suburbs themselves inexplicably decay, too, which evidently has nothing whatever to do with their having been trapped in your crazy urban scheme to begin with. Then new suburbs spring up even further out and, dang it, the people with all the money and resources insist on living there instead of in your demonstrably superior urban paradise. Sometimes they even move to a completely new city or state.
The problem continues to be that choice thingy.
17 comments:
"The problem continues to be that choice thingy."
I am altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it further.
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"The problem continues to be that choice thingy."
I am altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it further.
Bring it. If I'm dead, you still can't have me. Not in any meaningful sense, Lord Necrophile.
Eric Hines
My take differs: Few, in building or choosing an environment to live in, are properly taking into account hidden/deferred costs. For example, take streets. When they wear out, as they must, they must be replaced in place--pricier than the original build. Given the life expectancy of a street, will the homes along it provide enough tax revenue to fund the recurring cost of replacement? (Add on sewers, etc)
One analysis I read a couple of years ago suggested that with current road building technology, most streets didn't fund their own long-term maintenance. If the city is growing it can kick the can down the road by tapping revenue from new developments (eat the newer suburbs), but when it stops the bill comes due.
I am not a city planner, and have not run the numbers myself.
Fair enough, but that's a very interesting insight if it's true.
People who live on a street with a finite lifetime will have to figure out how to finance its replacement when the time comes. The question is: will opting into a strong centralized city government do the trick? Or will the money be spent on redistribution schemes instead? If there's no central city system to finance the reconstruction of the street, is there no other option available to homeowners? How about if they pay for their own street? They might find it easier if all their disposable income hadn't been siphoned away for other purposes.
And how is any of this really different from the issue all the homeowners faced with their paint jobs and their roofs? Would more centralized city government help with those problems?
People who live on a street with a finite lifetime will have to figure out how to finance its replacement when the time comes.
You should meet my driveway! Sometimes the answer is a 4x4.
Of course, somehow I get motorcycles up and down it.
DL, I put that video on my blog. It was pretty funny.
The ferry from Port Townsend to Keystone , after 93 years of service, was found to have an unrepairable thinning of the hull, and required replacement. The state dept of transportation held a meeting to discuss what to do, interim measures till a new boat was constructed, etc- whereupon some wit made made the comment, "I don't understand the problem-ya'all have had 93 years to plan for this.."
My husband told me a story about Oxford or Cambridge or some such place, where the people in charge of such things concluded sadly that some huge 400-year-old beams were beyond repair and would have to be replaced somehow. Someone sent for the forester, who told them the hardwood trees intended for that purpose had been planted 400 years earlier and were now waiting to be harvested.
In contrast, the ambulance system in my county, which is run by a non-profit, abruptly announced this spring that they were nearly out of money. They rely for funding on a combination of grants from the County Commissioners, fund-raising activities, and large donations from wealthy individuals. Some of their bigger donors had died and not been replaced. They hadn't given any real thought, apparently, to how much to charge for ambulance services so they could make ends meet. At the very last minute, they're tossing the mess into public with the suggestion that they should become tax-based.
Part of being a grownup is to plan intelligently for these things, not to expect the Mommy State to swoop in and fix them.
Thanks for noticing my post. I hope you didn't gather that these older suburbs are only in decline because they are now part of the city of Indianapolis. You can look around any major city in the US and find miles of similar places, some of which are independent suburban municipalities, others which are in unincorporated territories.
I'm not opposed to suburban development by any means. In fact, it's clearly preferred by a majority of people. However, I think looking at total cost of ownership/lifecycle cost is an important part of the equation.
Many of today's suburbs will likely do well in the future, but I fear for a lot of the newer "vinyl village" type places in towns without a non-retail commercial tax base (e.g. office or industrial). Those homes are going to be out of favor stylistically in 20-30 years and the cheapness of their construction will become apparent.
And the solution for people who build what won't hold value over a period of decades is--what? Let central city governments control them more thoroughly? Require them to establish capital reserves for later renovation? Impose licensing requirements that will ensure more robust design?
The fact that people keep moving away from cities like Indianapolis rather than razing and rebuilding closer to the center gives us an important clue, I think. They're looking at how the centralized government works--its priority for spending, its policies for attracting businesses, its law enforcement, its schools--and voting with their feet. The cities really start to collapse when the doughnut gets big enough, and the aversion to the central city is strong enough, that people who are considering building a new home simply prefer to move to another city or state.
...towns without a non-retail commercial tax base....
This sort of argument proceeds from a false premise: that the (city) government needs the money. Oh, but we have these expenses for these services that we must provide.
The problem is that there are always worthy services that...government...must provide. Where does it end? What's the limiting principle on demanding the citizenry give up their money--their property--and turn it over to government--i.e., to other people--for some public good that someone else has defined as such?
Eric Hines
Too busy paying reparations to pave the sidewalks.
Honestly, what the taxpaying citizens want in order to stay is not mysterious, but cities persist in blowing the money on an astounding array of nonsense instead. After a certain point, what is there really to do but move away? Then the city wails how it's being deserted in its time of need.
Indianapolis may not be Detroit yet, but the way to get there is to blame the people who leave instead of figuring out how to make it attractive for them to stay.
...figuring out how to make it attractive for them to stay.
But that's the problem. They do know how to make it attractive, they're imposing those attractions, and it's inconceivable to them that others might not agree.
Eric Hines
Case in point:
Not even curbs much less sidewalks. Spend any time in Indy as you’ll immediately get it that this place has always been cheap. Even the old city was never built right to begin with.
What would it cost to retrofit this street with real infrastructure?
Attached to an image of a residential neighborhood.
Why, in that bucolic residential area are curbs and sidewalks a necessary part of real infrastructure? Oh, because it must be so.
What would it cost to retrofit? It would cost nothing to leave the non-broken existing infrastructure alone. It needs no "retrofit," except that someone says so, and wants to impose taxes on others to make it so.
Eric Hines
Yeah, the heck with decent schools, law and order, and all that frippery. We want sidewalks and unionized city officials with unaffordable pensions!
"The problem is that there are always worthy services that...government...must provide. Where does it end? What's the limiting principle on demanding the citizenry give up their money--their property--and turn it over to government--i.e., to other people--for some public good that someone else has defined as such?"
Urbanophile- Welcome. Buildings have life cycles, and some of them are as short as 40 years. You keep them up or you tear them down after that. IF the land is closer to the city center, and there's any reason to go to the city center, then it will be worth it to a developer to tear down the old tract and build a new one. Cities are full of areas that have been rebuilt at one time or another. It's the natural cycle of things.
I think the problem is we think we can plan things like cities, and all we can really hope to do is manage them from excesses- mainly the government's.
Amen a thousand times over. We have a client right now who was being asked to give up a thirty foot strip of his lot for highway dedication on about as minor a 'street' as you can imagine (the county doesn't even call it a street- it's technically an alley). The lots along this street are 73 feet wide. 73-30=43. Fortunately, we knew the neighbor had gotten a waiver in 1992. If we hadn't known that, they would have offered us no out, and they'd be holding his permit hostage to his giving up the land. I don't think government bigger than a small town's knows the meaning of the words 'public good'.
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