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Night_Thastus | on: Just Put It on a Map
The other thing people often forget is that the 'land value' is also a measure of the city's well-being.

Those big spikes you see in the center? They cost very little for the city to maintain, and generate oodles of tax money.

Those big, wide areas out towards the fringes? They generate next to no tax income and cost a lot to maintain.

The urban subsidizes the sub-urban. The sub-urban lifestyle would be completely impossible without the ultra-dense urban centers. If planners and citizens don't keep that in mind, you can easily end up with an insolvent city budget that is bleeding from maintaining all the utilities and roads stretching out to the exterior.

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munchler | parent | next
Most true suburbs aren't within the big city limits, so I'm not sure your point is well-founded. For example, in the DC area, the suburbs aren't even in the same state as the city and yet the suburbs seem to be thriving.
socalgal2 | root | parent | next
Those suburbs outside the city limits still need money. They get it from state and federal funds which were mostly collected from people in the city limits. For example the Highway Trust Fund as one of many examples. If you check the per capita spending, it's higher for suburbanites than urbanites but the urbanites are putting in more money.
bpt3 | root | parent
Absolutely not in the case of the DC metro area, on both the MD and VA sides. Those counties subsidize DC proper in various ways, along with the less populated portions of their own states, and because the median household income is so high, they also pay a disproportionate amount of federal income taxes when compared to DC residents.

I also have no idea why you think city dwellers are the primary contributors per capita to the Highway Trust Fund which is funded via a tax on fuel (i.e. miles driven).

umanwizard | root | parent
DC is an exception, most American cities have large swaths of suburbia within the city limits and even larger ones within the same state.
ghaff | parent | next
The Bronx is sub-urban? As someone else noted, Manhattan and The Bronx are totally different in ways that probably has little to do with population differently.
marcosdumay | parent | next
So, what policy do you change after you learn that economic activity always concentrate on a small part of the city? You go and outlaw a natural law?
gzread | root | parent
You aim to build more centers and less outlying regions.
api | parent
Utilities and roads out into the suburban may be underpriced, but there’s a dark side to cities too. The suburbs and rural areas are often where people can afford homes.

I’ve had this hypotheses for a long time that the car is, at least economically, only incidentally about mobility. In reality it’s a tool for obtaining leverage in the real estate market.

Without sprawl urban landlords would have a captive audience and would extract all surplus. See: the law of rent.

I have a related hypothesis that the car drove the mid century middle class explosion in the US and some other countries, not by providing car jobs or any of the other conventional mechanisms but by allowing people to escape the law of rent.

Telework does this today for those who can use it, allowing people to leave high cost cities where good jobs are concentrated. The car did that until we reached the scaling limits of sprawl.

Also why I am a huge fan of Georgist taxation. Unfortunately we are moving in the opposite direction, taxing productivity and investment and wealth instead of taxing land and rent.

jeffbee | root | parent
Yeah well the problem is that after a moderately prosperous person buys a car and a house out in the suburb, the act of having spent half a million dollars makes them believe that they are entitled to drive their car into the city and enjoy the commerce and culture that the city fosters, plus free parking and toll-free roads and subsidized gas. None of those are great! In my town this manifests as people who live just over the county line in unincorporated places who nevertheless feel entitled to participate in city deliberations over road design and parking policies.