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computer parts posted:From a city perspective it's good because of higher tax revenue. This... doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would you pay higher municipal rates for living in the city than you would living in the burbs?
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Feb 28, 2015 02:17
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Smudgie Buggler posted:This... doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would you pay higher municipal rates for living in the city than you would living in the burbs? most handouts to suburbs take place on the state level or above. cities tend to have more services and more of them, raising costs comparatively property values and thus property taxes also tend to be higher in cities
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Feb 28, 2015 02:20
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Smudgie Buggler posted:This... doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would you pay higher municipal rates for living in the city than you would living in the burbs? Do you not understand that cities tend to have to offer a lot more services and run a lot more things then some random town that only has homes and a few minor stores?
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Feb 28, 2015 02:38
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Smudgie Buggler posted:This... doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would you pay higher municipal rates for living in the city than you would living in the burbs? Aside from the fact that the city has better/more services the other nice thing is that if you live in the city while also working in it you don't need to commute over an hour. Considering that our government has basically been going "lol gently caress infrastructure" our road system isn't in the best shape and is also not being maintained well.
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Feb 28, 2015 03:04
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Nintendo Kid posted:Do you not understand that cities tend to have to offer a lot more services and run a lot more things then some random town that only has homes and a few minor stores? Um, yeeeeeeees, but how is a random town the same thing as a suburb of a major city. I feel like I'm missing something. Do suburban areas in America tend not to belong to the same municipality as the city proper or something?
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Feb 28, 2015 03:51
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Aside from the fact that the city has better/more services the other nice thing is that if you live in the city while also working in it you don't need to commute over an hour. Considering that our government has basically been going "lol gently caress infrastructure" our road system isn't in the best shape and is also not being maintained well. I think it's so strange how the next big thing is electric cars, autonomous cars, cars as a service. Wouldn't mass transit - busses, rails, subways be way more green, economical than any self-driving car?
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Feb 28, 2015 03:58
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Smudgie Buggler posted:
Usually they're not, no. Quite often they're in separate counties, but usually they're at least incorporated cities all their own. Tab8715 posted:I think it's so strange how the next big thing is electric cars, autonomous cars, cars as a service. Wouldn't mass transit - busses, rails, subways be way more green, economical than any self-driving car? Self driving cars solve a different problem than fuel efficiency. computer parts fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 04:00
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Um, yeeeeeeees, but how is a random town the same thing as a suburb of a major city. A suburb is defined by not being part of a city, instead being located near it. If it's in the city, it's not a suburb anymore. Hell, they're quite often not even in the same state, since so many major metropolitan areas straddle natural boundaries like rivers and the like. This is how the word works in most of the world, Australia and maybe New Zealand are unique in having teeny-tiny city propers and then a whole bunch of effectively neighborhoods that are sort of in the same government. Tab8715 posted:I think it's so strange how the next big thing is electric cars, autonomous cars, cars as a service. Wouldn't mass transit - busses, rails, subways be way more green, economical than any self-driving car? Busses are probably less efficient overall than electric cars in areas where the bus would tend to get low ridership, to be honest. But we're, I'd say, at least 10 years away from that being a real tradeoff to make. Having them would be able to make any given transit mode much more efficient in covering existing development though. Like your bus or rail follows the main road, and the no emissions vehicles could work great for getting Joe Blow out of his subdivision house out to the boarding place.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:06
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Um, yeeeeeeees, but how is a random town the same thing as a suburb of a major city. Yep. Cities are generally separate administrative units from the counties they're within which is where the inner suburbs usually are. The outer suburbs can stretch across several counties with their own municipal and county-level governments. So while people will say the company The Home Depot is headquartered in Atlanta, it's actually in Cobb county to the northwest and is either in the city of Vinings or unincorporated Cobb county. I don't remember which. The county has actually fought tooth and nail to keep a rail transit line from being built to the area where the headquarters is so it's a massive clusterfuck.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:09
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Nintendo Kid posted:This is how the word works in most of the world, Australia and maybe New Zealand are unique in having teeny-tiny city propers and then a whole bunch of effectively neighborhoods that are sort of in the same government.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:14
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Tab8715 posted:I think it's so strange how the next big thing is electric cars, autonomous cars, cars as a service. Wouldn't mass transit - busses, rails, subways be way more green, economical than any self-driving car? Yes but America loving loves cars. There have also been issues where automobile companies have deliberately destroyed mass transit systems. There is also a view that mass transit is communism. Americans are also often not patient enough to use a bus and are terrified of sharing a subway car with those people. The problem with public transportation in America is the "public" part.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:15
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Yes but America loving loves cars. There have also been issues where automobile companies have deliberately destroyed mass transit systems. In that the mass transit systems were privately owned and were going bankrupt all on their own.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:18
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Yes but America loving loves cars. There have also been issues where automobile companies have deliberately destroyed mass transit systems. There is also a view that mass transit is communism. Americans are also often not patient enough to use a bus and are terrified of sharing a subway car with those people. The problem with public transportation in America is the "public" part. Selling buses to replace obsolete streetcars wasn't about destroying transit systems. Don't forget that old timey "mass transit" was generally composed of as many as dozens of competing private companies in the same city unlike today's public transit authorities, and they'd do anything to keep eking out profits.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:18
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computer parts posted:Self driving cars solve a different problem than fuel efficiency. Ah, this is true but I don't understand why mass light-rail isn't a better option. ToxicSlurpee posted:Yes but America loving loves cars. There have also been issues where automobile companies have deliberately destroyed mass transit systems. There is also a view that mass transit is communism. Americans are also often not patient enough to use a bus and are terrified of sharing a subway car with those people. The problem with public transportation in America is the "public" part. This. The American automotive industry lobbied against Streetcars and had them removed. There's definitely a dislike of buses, subways and an attitude of independence that doesn't support public transportation.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:29
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Tab8715 posted:Ah, this is true but I don't understand why mass light-rail isn't a better option. Mass light rail is actually a pretty bad solution. You typically want light rail to be used for lower demand areas, you just run regular rail in most places. People get way too enamored of it because it's a relatively cheap way to get started with a transit system beyond buses. The American automotive industry heavily sold buses, buses replaced the streetcars because gas was dirt cheap compared to running and maintaining electric systems or other forms of streetcars. Most of the streetcars were gone long before cars really made inroads into the mass market, which also coincided with people moving out to suburbs that had never had a streetcar run to them since they were fields and farms before WWII. To this day most bus routes in older American cities have the exact same number and often the exact same route as the streetcar they replaced.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:34
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Smudgie Buggler posted:I feel like I'm missing something. Do suburban areas in America tend not to belong to the same municipality as the city proper or something? Yes. Nations in Europe tend to be smaller, more dense, and thus there's more rationale for the national government to impose regional planning agencies to maintain a relatively centralized level of control across an entire metropolitan area. This is the sensible way to coordinate and steer growth. In the US, we frickin love states rights. Every state can do whatever it wants regarding incorporating cities, establishing regional planning, etc. Most cities in the US do not have ANY regional planning oversight whatsoever. Combine this with the generally larger spread of American cities due to our love for cars, and the colloquial metropolitan area most people regard as a city when they say Denver or Dallas can actually be split among dozens if not hundreds of jurisdictions. For example, I live in the Atlanta metropolitan region, ninth largest in the country, about 70% of the entire state's population in roughly 20% of its land area. Metro Atlanta covers between 12 and 36 counties, depending on what your qualifications are, and at its maximum contains 6.1 million people in the following: 1 city above 250k population (Atlanta, 420k) 3 cities between 75-100k 3 cities between 50-75k 13 cities between 25-50k 3 Census Designated Places (CDP) between 25-50k (a CDP is a place that is not technically incorporated, so is not a city, but is treated as a city socially and may even have a downtown area) 49 cities below 25k 15 CDPs below 25k I live in one of the smaller CDPs, estimated population about 17k in a small dense space, but I can take a short walk to an actual small city, which is a 3 mile train ride into Atlanta proper. My point is that regulatory oversight of American metropolitan areas is enormously irrational and highly fragmented. Atlanta does have an Atlanta Regional Commission, which is largely toothless via state law and mainly issues reports and keeps an eye on things. Aside from that each of these cities can zone and build and tax as they please without having to care at all what the others are doing. Tab8715 posted:The American automotive industry lobbied against Streetcars and had them removed. There's definitely a dislike of buses, subways and an attitude of independence that doesn't support public transportation. Streetcars were dying anyway without NCL and the automakers pushing things along. There's a little truth to the whole Streetcar Conspiracy idea but not nearly enough truth to make an interesting conspiracy. At most, General Motors directly killed about 10% of America's streetcars - what happened to the other 90%? boner confessor fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 04:41
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computer parts posted:In that the mass transit systems were privately owned and were going bankrupt all on their own. Oddly enough that's the other side of it. America cares about little more than corporate profits. Anything that isn't profitable is obviously useless so why should it even exist? If you put money in and something comes out other than "more money" it isn't justifying its existence. Mass transit generally means more taxes and we all know how Americans feel about taxes.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:54
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Popular Thug Drink posted:
I mean the big thing is honestly GM was unfairly and noncompetitively monopolizing bus sales in many regions. But they got off with a slap on the wrist for it.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:56
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Oddly enough that's the other side of it. America cares about little more than corporate profits. Anything that isn't profitable is obviously useless so why should it even exist? If you put money in and something comes out other than "more money" it isn't justifying its existence. Well, yeah. You can't expect a privately owned company to operate a public utility at a loss. Many American cities legislated their streetcar systems out of existence by capping fares and thusly capping profits, and then when streetcars needed public assistance they were widely regarded as inconvenient and antiquated and left to die. By the time the federal government got serious about urban infrastructure they were all about roads and highways - even today many federal legislators struggle to fund urban mass transit, which with few exceptions are largely intrastate deals and thus not subject to the commerce clause. This disparity in funding between roadways and mass transit is the reason for the suburban boom of the mid 20th century - suburbs begain as commuter railroad towns in the 1880s, then as streetcar suburbs from 1890-1930, both reliant on largely privately owned infrastructure, but really started kicking off with mass automobile ownership from 1920-1950 and entered the biggest wave with the development of the Interstate system from the 1950s-present. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 05:04
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Well, yeah. You can't expect a privately owned company to operate a public utility at a loss. And America has this weird idea that nothing should be public and funded by tax dollars to make up for the loss. It might improve the lives of those people and we can't have that!
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Feb 28, 2015 05:54
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ToxicSlurpee posted:And America has this weird idea that nothing should be public and funded by tax dollars to make up for the loss. It might improve the lives of those people and we can't have that! Governments didn't think public transit was worth supporting back then, is the point. It was strictly seen that tranist should be the job of the private sector because that's just how things had been done. You don't start seeing any publicly owned transit until rather late, when some cities were forward thinking and started buying out lines in the late 20s and early 30s to ensure their ongoing service. It wasn't that people thought "oh we should do this but we can't afford the money" it was that it was believed that public ownership would basically be unfair competition in what was then still a reasonably viable industry. It's the same reason Amtrak didn't happen until the 70s, and most major city commuter rails were still being run by (heavily subsidized by state/region/local authority) private freight/passenger railroads as late as the 80s depending on region. We're kinda lucky we didn't go full Thatcher-stupid and attempt to re-privatize all of that like the UK did.
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Feb 28, 2015 06:06
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How'd that turn out for the UK?
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Feb 28, 2015 06:09
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Tab8715 posted:How'd that turn out for the UK? Turned out great if your idea of turning out great is "government hands out vast amounts of extra money to companies so they can continue to be profitable". Or if your idea of turning out great is being a guy who got in on the money. It's a real shitshow, to the point where several times contracts for train operation have reverted back to the government, who proceed to operate service at much less cost to the government and with much higher traveler satisfaction and even on time performance, but the government always demands that some private company take over a contract again. Only the London Underground and a few other public transit services throughout the country survived Thatcher's reign without getting privatized. And even then, many were forced into "public-private partnerships" for various time periods that basically functioned as textbook examples of socializing the losses and privatizing the profits.
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Feb 28, 2015 06:22
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You know whats poo poo about modern commuter rail service? Japanese coding practices. That's right, your train got delayed because the firmware on those Japanese switches had a whole lotta bugs in it. Now how can you have commuter rail suburbs when you have to deal with Japan offering practically free rolling stock and capital investment for purchase of Japanese trackage and equipment, which you know is going to get people killed? You can't, not in most areas where right of ways have already been converted.
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Feb 28, 2015 06:55
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Oddly enough that's the other side of it. America cares about little more than corporate profits. Anything that isn't profitable is obviously useless so why should it even exist? If you put money in and something comes out other than "more money" it isn't justifying its existence. I too support bailouts of private companies.
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Feb 28, 2015 19:49
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computer parts posted:I too support bailouts of private companies. A corrupt bank twisting the government into giving it bailouts to cover its mistake is just doing good business. The only thing that matters is profit who cares where it came from?
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Feb 28, 2015 22:29
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Smudgie Buggler posted:I feel like I'm missing something. Do suburban areas in America tend not to belong to the same municipality as the city proper or something? Once you understand that they don't, a lot of crazy poo poo in America starts making more sense.
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Feb 28, 2015 23:00
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This may be more of a general growth question, than specifically gentrification. But let's say you have a small city, or a specific portion of a city, where the residents are concerned about uncontrolled growth or an influx of outside interests or persons. Would it be legal for the city to enact a growth tax, or higher tax rates, for persons and businesses seeking to move into that area, while protecting (exempting) existing residents and businesses? Only projects or residents arriving after a specific date would be subject to the "growth tax" or "infrastructure tax" or whatever you wanted to call it. Or is this kind of strategy precluded by the law or Constitution? Although in any case it's hard to imagine many politicians being actively anti-growth...
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Mar 1, 2015 08:16
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Number_6 posted:This may be more of a general growth question, than specifically gentrification. But let's say you have a small city, or a specific portion of a city, where the residents are concerned about uncontrolled growth or an influx of outside interests or persons. Would it be legal for the city to enact a growth tax, or higher tax rates, for persons and businesses seeking to move into that area, while protecting (exempting) existing residents and businesses? Only projects or residents arriving after a specific date would be subject to the "growth tax" or "infrastructure tax" or whatever you wanted to call it. Or is this kind of strategy precluded by the law or Constitution? Although in any case it's hard to imagine many politicians being actively anti-growth... There are plenty of permits and inspections and licenses and fees that are usually nominal, but can be set punitively. I know of some desert areas in California that have huge "impact" fees for installing a new water meter, for instance. On a mall-sized or school-sized development, a single meter might have a $150,000 fee, and 5-10 meters might be necessary for the water volume they're talking about.
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Mar 1, 2015 16:47
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Number_6 posted:This may be more of a general growth question, than specifically gentrification. But let's say you have a small city, or a specific portion of a city, where the residents are concerned about uncontrolled growth or an influx of outside interests or persons. Would it be legal for the city to enact a growth tax, or higher tax rates, for persons and businesses seeking to move into that area, while protecting (exempting) existing residents and businesses? Only projects or residents arriving after a specific date would be subject to the "growth tax" or "infrastructure tax" or whatever you wanted to call it. Or is this kind of strategy precluded by the law or Constitution? Although in any case it's hard to imagine many politicians being actively anti-growth... This isn't illegal, but it's hard to pull off. Cities generally don't have the legislative tools available to target growth in this manner. The most common method is to institute impact fees as a condition of approving a building permit. You can also set up something like a Tax Allocation District with some kind of grandfathering mechanism to protect areas from growing too fast and displacing residents. Both of these methods can be challenged in court. There's really no way though to specifically target certain groups or classes of people with varying tax rates, and it requires a large amount of political will to function. The main problem is that cities are usually pretty small, so if you impose higher taxes you can very well chase growth out to a neighboring jurisdiction that's only a few miles away. One reason suburbs spread so quickly in a heavily fragmented environment is that all these small, weak jurisdictions will trip over themselves being the friendliest to developers so as to maximize their share of the growth wave as it happens. So you end up with a lot of cheaply constructed, falling apart homes in badly designed neighborhoods because whoever was the local planning/permitting agency only cared about boosting growth rates rather than actually ensuring that homes were constructed properly and such.
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Mar 1, 2015 21:01
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Infinite Karma posted:There are plenty of permits and inspections and licenses and fees that are usually nominal, but can be set punitively. quote:I know of some desert areas in California that have huge "impact" fees for installing a new water meter, for instance. On a mall-sized or school-sized development, a single meter might have a $150,000 fee, and 5-10 meters might be necessary for the water volume they're talking about.
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Mar 1, 2015 21:22
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My Imaginary GF posted:You know whats poo poo about modern commuter rail service? Where do you get the idea that Japanese rail is killing people? It's my understanding that they have some of the safest and most reliable systems in the world. I'd love to see the evidence for your argument that the Japanese are to blame for the problems with modern commercial rail.
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Mar 2, 2015 16:46
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Daniel Hertz writes an amazing blog about zoning, housing, race, etc and talks about gentrification a lot. It's focused on chicago but does examine other cities as well. Here's an example: http://danielkayhertz.com/2014/12/30/the-problem/ I've read pretty much his whole site because it's so good. Interesting things pop up there I haven't seen elsewhere, such as the richest areas of town shrinking their housing units over the last decade to be even more exclusive, forcing other people to gentrify other neighborhoods.
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Mar 2, 2015 16:58
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Gentrification is a symptom not the disease. Agitate for more jobs and better paying jobs, especially low income jobs (and higher minimum wage). It is a form of economic violence and giving people more power to fight it is the best way to address it. In certain places, public transportation helps but most American cities aren't designed that way. Plus, public transportation can be a major driver of gentrification. For example, the East Village was always popular so when that got too expensive people spread out to the LES and then hopped across the river to Brooklyn. Both were close (from a public transportation perspective) to the hip place people wanted to be. Of course, the Village is also a function of gentrification, so it goes in waves.
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Mar 2, 2015 17:52
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