Comment on A conundrum

• FireRetardant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Whats going on is decades of mismanagement of property taxes and city zoning. People fight tooth and nail to keep their property taxes low, and eventually the city has to do a big increase because they failed to increase incrementally. The bigger issue is how poorly we zone and design most north american cities.

  The average car dependant suburb costs more to maintain than it generates in tax revenue. A denser area like mixed use neighbourhoods and “missing middle” housing fares far better and generates enough that it often ends up subsidizing the rest of the city, the same is usually true for denser downtowns. That trend is dying off as those denser areas demolish tax revenue generating businesses and homes to pave parking lots that don’t generate taxes to park cars from the suburbs that don’t generate enough taxes.

  You can’t afford a home because for decades suburbs were given a massive tax break while denser downtowns (guess where the poors have to rent and ultimately fund the property taxes) have to subsidize car dependant expensive to maintain subdivisions (which is usually for middle class or wealthier people, especially when built new). Add in some racial demographics and we’ve basically engineered every city to have secret tax cuts for anyone rich enough to get into the suburbs.

  The best part is, many cities are keeping the cycle going because the only way they are paying for maintaince of an old subdivision is by using the devleopment taxes and fees from a new subdivision. This is not sustainable and ultimately equates to kicking the can down the road to let a future generation figure it out (which is literally as simple as building cities densely again, as they had been built for 100s of years).

  This hasn’t even touched yet on the urban sprawl, energy ineffeciency, and secondary effects of car dependancy that have all spawned from “the american dream” of suburbia. We seriously need to reconsider how we zone, build, and get around our urban spaces.

  source

  • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I agree with a lot of what you said but this is complete bullshit:

    while denser downtowns (guess where the poors have to rent and ultimately fund the property taxes)

    I have never been able to live in a “downtown” because I’m just a construction worker. So GTFO with “these poor inner city areas are funding the suburbs.” I’m in one of the nicer houses I’ve ever managed to live in and it’s primarily a shithole. You’re telling me that the people downtown are subsidizing my white-trash ass? No way.

    source

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      You’re both right which is what’s so fucked.

      source

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        It depends on the city. Smaller non touristy cities. Your cheapest rents are near downtown core with all the old buildings and the only place density has been allowed to be built for the past 60 years. Bigger cities the central downtown is defintely expensive, i guess in those cities im more so refering to anywhere with apartment buildings density, which can give a downtown feel if older buildings are still preserved nearby. Although a lot of the time they’ve been paved over and thats how we get apartments that stand 20 stories high surrounded by a sea of single story strip malls and box stores.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
    • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yeah, I’m living rural because living in the city is still more than twice as expensive. Some bad faith actors want to reclassify it as ‘suburban’ because it’s doubled in size since covid, but I’m closer to cows than the grocery store, so that falls flat.

      source

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Some places literally build cookie cutter subdivisions on a chunk of land in the middle of farms they bought so the classification may not be that far fetched depending on the circumstances. My parents house is technically zoned as agricultural yet the recent sprawl of nearby cities means there is now a mcdonalds less than 1km away and suburbs creep closer each year.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
      • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I like that metric

        source
  • blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Hello, fellow strong towns enthusiast!

    source