Back in 1972, a one-hit singing pair named Cashman & West released an ode to New York City called American City Suite. The song reflected back on the city’s happy days and mourned its then-current decay. Although a 7-3/4-minute version was produced for radio, the full version of the song was 12 minutes and it became an “anthem” for New Yorkers in the 1970s.
At that time, many people believed that the problem with the cities was that the wealthy and middle-class had fled to the suburbs, leaving only the poor behind. Big-city officials viewed the suburbs as parasites, because they benefitted from the city but paid no taxes to it. They hoped to remedy this by imposing some sort of commuter tax on suburbanites.
Having grown up in a city, I remember repeating this viewpoint as a high-school student to a suburban relative. He vehemently responded that there was no way he would pay taxes to a corrupt city government. The notion that modern government officials might be corrupt, at least outside of Chicago, had never occurred to me.
As historian (and New York City resident) Fred Siegel shows in The Future Once Happened Here, the city’s problems were actually much different. Part of the problem was that 1960s liberals thought that poverty could be solved by simply giving poor people money. Granting that much poverty was due to racism, Siegel says, “Antipoverty policy in the 1960s not only made a tough situation worse but left a long-term legacy the cities have yet to overcome.”
Covering the high costs of welfare forced New York to raise taxes, which pushed taxpayers out of the city. As a result, the city nearly went bankrupt. Meanwhile, corruption among contractors, unions, and politicians on minor to major scales could be found in almost every major American city.
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The real salvation for cities is simpler, yet an anathema to both planners and politicians. The most successful cities will be those that keep taxes low, keep the streets free of crime, maintain high quality schools, and minimize business regulation. It will also help to avoid regulations that make housing unaffordable and to make cost-effective transportation investments focused on relieving congestion.
Some of these things are mentioned in Terry Cashman’s and Tommy West’s 1972 lyrics:
A junkie steals, a mayor deals
Who knows what’s coming next
Traffic jams and greedy hands
Did you read it in the text
Politicians don’t like this solution because, for the most part, it requires that they keep their hands off. Yet they know that they get campaign contributions and their names in the papers for doing things, not for not doing things. Cutting a ribbon for a light-rail line is more politically rewarding than not raising taxes or not passing new rules. Most urban politicians consider schools a competitor for tax revenues, so they love to steal money from the schools to fund their tax-increment finance schemes.
Planners don’t like this solution because they want to meddle with everything in order to prevent “chaos.” Planners’ designs for urban neighborhoods make them more crime friendly. Planners think more people should live in multi-family housing, so they willfully drive up housing prices — and then propose inclusionary zoning ordinances that make housing even less affordable.
According to Wendell Cox, domestic migration numbers show that cities and regions with high housing costs and high taxes to pay for urban monuments are growing slowly or even losing people, while low-cost cities are gaining. Time will tell if this is a short-term trend or if the high-cost cities are killing themselves.
The most successful cities will be those that keep taxes low, keep the streets free of crime, maintain high quality schools, and minimize business regulation
Low taxes, high quality services! Brilliant! Now then: I would like to retain my cake, but also to consume it. Please advise.
numbers show that cities and regions with high housing costs and high taxes to pay for urban monuments are growing slowly or even losing people, while low-cost cities are gaining
Cities grow, demand for housing and services (and thus, housing costs and services costs) increase, people don’t like that so they move out to smaller cities, where demand for housing and services subsequently increase, and the cycle repeats.
D4P –> It actually isn’t that crazy of a notion. Take time to poor through major city budget includes all sorts of crazy crap that a city really doesn’t need to do. For example Denver just raised taxes to help pay for, among other things, rec centers. This in a city where less than 25% of the households have children. And this in a city that is in many ways just as if not more suburban than urban thanks to annexation over the decades. Minneapolis, at least a couple years ago, was spending $2 million on a civil rights department. Now that’s an issue that affects the city but is not a city-level issue. It’s about using the money that is there and using it well.
But who’s to say that keeping the streets free of crime and maintaining high quality schools are legitimate government endeavors that require citizens be forced to fund via taxes, while rec centers and civil rights departments are not? What if, for example, I don’t care about schools: why should I have to pay for them? On a large scale, what if I don’t want national defense: why should I have to pay for it?
Is the AP really supporting government intervention in safety and education? If so, why don’t all of the inefficiencies, corruptions, etc. etc. he believes exist in other areas of government carry over to these areas as well?
who’s to say that keeping the streets free of crime and maintaining high quality schools are legitimate government endeavors that require citizens be forced to fund via taxes
Usually, it’s in the City Charter. If one does not want to pay for X, one moves to where the burden for X is lesser (suburbs, as argued here). If for no other reason than they’ve have decades less time for *mission creep* to develop, the suburbs have far less of the tangential/inefficient spending prk166 points to.
Cities grow, demand for housing and services (and thus, housing costs and services costs) increase
What might matter more is the marginal effect of added population on a municipal services budget. Adding one more dwelling almost certainly leads to more property tax revenue than the demand for non-metered services (like fire protection). But if that dwelling is occupied by *the poor*, who are owed according to city policy some aid, the budget skews red.
Low taxes, high quality services! Brilliant! Now then: I would like to retain my cake, but also to consume it. Please advise.
One can eat their own cake if they are allowed to migrate toward concentrations of like-minded folks willing to abide by whatever the codes and etiquette suggest. Go to where eating the cake of another is still stigmatized, where people order themselves rather than depend on municipal *reminders* of civil and cooperative conduct.
I came of age mocking the suburbs and lamenting the dying city. I prefer the built form of mature cities. Now I see that the garage-fronted cul-de-sacs were filled with *better* people. That matters more than street grid, design standards, and walkability combined.
Now I see that the garage-fronted cul-de-sacs were filled with *better* people. That matters more than street grid, design standards, and walkability combined.
What kind of people live in garage-fronted cul-de-sacs, and what kind live in areas with street grids, design standards, and walkability?
Adding one more dwelling almost certainly leads to more property tax revenue than the demand for non-metered services (like fire protection).
Yes, but residential costs more in service delivery than in revenue generated.
This is borne out in the Costs Of Community Services (COCS) literature and findings. IIRC the rough aggregate numbers are (expressed ratios = $revenue:$expenditure): Res = 1:1.15, Comm = 1:65, Ind = 1:.25
DS
What kind of people live in garage-fronted cul-de-sacs, and what kind live in areas with street grids, design standards, and walkability?
“…people [who] order themselves rather than depend on municipal *reminders* of civil and cooperative conduct” increase in proportion with distance from century-old urban centers. *Better* is, of course, subjective. Predators, ne’er-do-wells and other bloodsucking layabouts are human, too.
Save your fingers from giving examples of nice (rich) neighborhoods in the old grid, or welfare queens in suburbs, or whatever limited-appeal version of Duanyburg you can find just to be contradictory. Covering the high costs of welfare forced New York to raise taxes, which pushed taxpayers out of the city. The data demonstrates that cities lost the competition to provide good living. Although many neighborhoods may have fared better than the average, the general population moved out. It might not fit some ideals, but those who could self-segregated according to race/income/faith/politics/whatever.
but residential costs more in service delivery than in revenue generated.
“What might matter more is the marginal effect of added population on a municipal services budget…where eating the cake of another is still stigmatized, where people order themselves rather than depend on municipal *reminders* of civil and cooperative conduct.” Imagine a Boeing executive moving into (and renovating) that Victorian down the block formerly occupied by a loose confederation of babymommas and *boisterous* crack heads. Gentrification is good for the municipal budget. Too bad planners and politicians keep letting the suburbs capture most of the *better* people.
What might matter more is the marginal effect of added population on a municipal services budget…… Too bad planners and politicians keep letting the suburbs capture most of the *better* people.
Value judgements and ideological code phrases aside, I agree with most of the para. Although I’d say planners have wanted to change Euclidean zoning for some time – nonetheless, it wasn’t due to Euclidean zoning that white flight happened, along with the resultant social effects.
I also strongly suspect (and borne out in Putnam’s latest work) that normal self-sorting behaviors drive locational choice – and simply removing Euclidean or some other single-use zoning scheme won’t magically create affordable housing or equity or anything else that other-regarding people strive to achieve. Normal self-sorting behaviors also, I aver, interfere with calculations of Pareto optima and thus large-scale market forces won’t create affordable housing either.
DS
Blah, blah, Euclidean blah. You quibbled the first time, now you agree. What changed?
They’re not *code words*, as if such ideas can only be stated secretly, or by deeply flawed people. Some people behave more like animals, and others refuse to pay for the zoo. All planners do is design the cages. The flaw is not in some zoning scheme…the victorious suburbs have them, too. I suggest the flaw is somewhere within the implied superiority of “other-regarding people” and their alleged preferences for “affordable housing or equity or anything else”.
*Affordable Housing* is best achieved by increasing real earned income, and eliminating barriers to increased housing supply (like growth limits, zoning, and even some building codes).
*Equity* is a chimera. People ain’t equal. It’s obvious to them as they sort themselves along many axes. Why is this aspect of human nature opaque to planners?
In the spirit of being *for* something rather than just complaining, is there any aspect of the planning discipline which would give people better information about their differences, or make it easier for the desired sorting to occur?
Huh. Lots of erroneous assumptions in there:
Nonetheless, the planning discipline attempts to bring folks together to figure out issues (careful, though – many here deride the entire public process because they don’t like the way PDX does it). If they want to self-sort (and we certainly study this phenomenon, as it has implications for public health as well as land use), then so be it. Making it easier to self-sort is the reason why I focused on the Euclidean blablabla you didn’t like so much.
DS
Sheesh. Preview and ‘actual’ aren’t actually the same, Randal.
Try again without br:
Huh. Lots of erroneous assumptions in there:
Nonetheless, the planning discipline attempts to bring folks together to figure out issues (careful, though – many here deride the entire public process because they don’t like the way PDX does it). If they want to self-sort (and we certainly study this phenomenon, as it has implications for public health as well as land use), then so be it. Making it easier to self-sort is the reason why I focused on the Euclidean blablabla you didn’t like so much.
DS
[sigh]
Affordable housing is what one can afford. Increasing real income makes housing more affordable. It’s not that there’s more money chasing the same amount of property, it’s that the money devoted toward residence becomes a decreasing portion of income. Combine that with removal of phony limits on dwelling supply, and the *affordability* problem goes away.
We could escape the whole poverty/rent trap with a Land Value Tax. I don’t expect that to happen soon. In the interim, I can live with just trying to help people make themselves worth more and getting nannies and scolds out of their way.
One of my thoughts was exactly that those other assumptions were erroneous. They’re subjective to each individual. Happily, I’m not using my interpretations as justification for telling other people how to live. I think that puts me in the most *other-regarding* class possible; I avoid infringing on moral agency.
Increasing real income makes housing more affordable.
It also causes equilibrium rents to rise in desirable markets.
Income must rise with the equilibrium rents in order to maintain affordability (hence my note that affordability is a market-based measure, not an absolute).
There is no direct cause and effect relationship that incomes rise and housing becomes more affordable in any place x, else there would be far less teeth-gnashing over how to deliver affordable housing.
With rising wages, housing becomes more affordable in the aggregate, but not necessarily for any given market x. Therein lies the rub with simplistic policy prescriptions (Randal’s phraseology, not mine).
DS
Oops. Not supposed to hit submit.