Institutional Anti-Urbanism

[nasa35]

If that's how we did funding, the cities would be screwed. You would have no buses, no LRT, no parks, no bike lanes.

Actually, Minneapolis is basically neutral on the fiscal disparities revenue sharing, and seeing as they manage most of their parks and bike lanes, I think they'd be ok. Had we not built roads/freeways with such subsidization as Snelbian points out and half the metro population lived within the city's borders, the population density would be 29,300/sq mile. This is roughly NYC's aggregate density (though obviously much smaller). They seem to have parks, buses, subways, and even bike lanes (though hotly contested), so I think Minneapolis would be just fine.

Tolls and taxes are pretty prevelant in NYC. It is very expensive to live there. The property taxes for the Island approaches 16 billion alone; a billion in just bridge toll revenue. Yeah, I wouldn't want to ride a bike in manhattan.

[David Greene]

I'm against subsidizing this desire (property tax relief, mortgage interest deduction, minimum down payment reductions through gov't-backed loans, etc etc).

I know we've disagreed a bit in the Colfax thread but I wanted to say that I 100% agree with you here. I would happily give up my mortgage interest deduction so that we can free up those dollars to do something useful.

I'm glad you like living not in the city for your family. I also know plenty of families across the world who get by without a single square foot of yard to themselves and rely solely on transit to get around.

And still others own a home with some land right in the city, family and all!

[RailBaronYarr]

Tolls and taxes are pretty prevelant in NYC. It is very expensive to live there. The property taxes for the Island approaches 16 billion alone; a billion in just bridge toll revenue. Yeah, I wouldn't want to ride a bike in manhattan.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Your statement was that without giant subsidized freeways to far flung suburbs the city would not be able to function with transit, parks, bike lanes, etc. My response was that despite the freeways that carve through valuable Minneapolis land (reducing tax base and lowering adjacent property values), subsidization of people living elsewhere, etc, Minneapolis STILL manages to cover the costs of providing services to its businesses and residents.

Yes, Manhattan is pretty expensive. Biking there would probably be a little dangerous - I wonder where all those cars come from that make it dangerous to ride?

[nasa35]

Tolls and taxes are pretty prevelant in NYC. It is very expensive to live there. The property taxes for the Island approaches 16 billion alone; a billion in just bridge toll revenue. Yeah, I wouldn't want to ride a bike in manhattan.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Your statement was that without giant subsidized freeways to far flung suburbs the city would not be able to function with transit, parks, bike lanes, etc. My response was that despite the freeways that carve through valuable Minneapolis land (reducing tax base and lowering adjacent property values), subsidization of people living elsewhere, etc, Minneapolis STILL manages to cover the costs of providing services to its businesses and residents.

Yes, Manhattan is pretty expensive. Biking there would probably be a little dangerous - I wonder where all those cars come from that make it dangerous to ride?

taxi's and buses!

My comment was in regard to a comment someone made about not paying for roads he didn't use. My point was if that's how it worked the cities would be screwed because of lack of money.

I'm a bit different on this subject, most of you here literally hate the suburbs and the ilk that dares live there. I like the whole metro and see worth throughout. My daughter lives in Uptown and I always enjoy taking her to dinner...in fact, I'm doing that tomorrow. I've lived downtown, near downtown, inner ring suburbs and now the outter ring. I've met fantastic people at every stop.

[RailBaronYarr]

There are roughly 14,000 taxis in all of NYC and 40,000 other for-hire vehicles. About 5,900 buses exist in the MTA system. By comparison, 46% of NYC residents report owning a car (putting the number of vehicles in the city at roughly 4 million), though they're not out on the streets as often. But add in the number of commuters (26% say they drive alone, 5% carpool), and I'd wager that private cars on the road vastly outweigh taxis and buses, probably also outweigh delivery vehicles.

[nasa35]

There are roughly 14,000 taxis in all of NYC and 40,000 other for-hire vehicles. About 5,900 buses exist in the MTA system. By comparison, 46% of NYC residents report owning a car (putting the number of vehicles in the city at roughly 4 million), though they're not out on the streets as often. But add in the number of commuters (26% say they drive alone, 5% carpool), and I'd wager that private cars on the road vastly outweigh taxis and buses, probably also outweigh delivery vehicles.

of course, I was only giving you sheet. I've spent quite a bit of time in NYC; It's congested with cars, no doubt about it.

[RailBaronYarr]

of course, I was only giving you sheet. I've spent quite a bit of time in NYC; It's congested with cars, no doubt about it.

Fair enough I would imagine a person who hasn't been might think that taxis dominate given the way tv shows/movies depict the place. Back to the conspiracy theories of lobbyists and overlords preventing us from an urban utopia!

[helsinki]

If that's how we did funding, the cities would be screwed [...]

Actually, Minneapolis is basically neutral on the fiscal disparities revenue sharing [...]

I'm pulling this exchange out of context, but I thought it would be an interesting point to mention that Minneapolis is actually a net contributor to the Fiscal Disparities Act pool. Indeed, it appears that the further flung suburbs are actually the biggest net recipients from the revenue sharing scheme:

http://www.revenue.state.mn.us/property ... ummary.pdf

(See figure 13 on page 15).

There is a break-down on page 20. Essentially, if the program were eliminated, the cities (well, really just Mpls) and rural areas would gain tax revenue, while the suburbs would lose tax revenue. This should come as no surprise to those acquainted with the suburbs-as-money-pit thesis, but it is interesting to see the counter-intuitive direction of the subsidy on a simple ledger.

[FISHMANPET]

I think it's only been in the last 10 years or so that Minneapolis became a net contributor.

[RailBaronYarr]

^ Is that because that's when the years of gutting our cities finally stopped and re-development of completely under-utilized properties that were parking lots, etc for so long began? ie when Minneapolis started becoming more 'city-like' than it was from 1955-1995?

[Rich]

There are more children per capita in the burbs, and since kids don't pay taxes, doesn't that make it harder for non-central cities to be net contributors? How big of a role do households with kids play in this equation?

[mulad]

Yeah, it is important to look at the younger population -- both to filter out kids from estimates of tax capacity and to gauge how many kids are likely to appear in the future as 20-somethings move into an area.

[FISHMANPET]

But Fiscal Disparities is property tax revenue, isn't it? So the number of children doesn't directly matter.

[Nick]

*commercial property tax revenue

[mattaudio]

And only "new" commercial property tax revenue, although I do not know how long after a project the revenue no longer gets routed for fiscal disparities.

[mulad]

Oof. I feel a need to sign up for a class on all this stuff, if such a thing exists.

[cowboyjones]

"Why Conservatives Hate Citi Bike So Much, in One Venn Diagram"

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... -bike.html

I feel obligated to explain some of the sentiments of this Venn diagram, if only for the sake of understanding. As far as Bloomberg goes, someone already mentioned he's elitist. The "health" issue here is mostly because, as conservatives and libertarians are fiercely independent, they just don't like being told what to do as long as what they do doesn't harm others (as long as they pay for their own healthcare, it doesn't). Sharing, is a word that turns right-wingers away, a better term would be that it is a bike-rental network. Environmentalism is just something conservatives perceive as trampling on their economic freedoms, so the best way to counter that is to reconcile environmentalism and economic freedom.

[mplsjaromir]

Most people on this forum are older than twelve years old and understand the very basic tenets of ideological identity. Thanks for clarifying though.

[Rich]

I feel obligated to explain some of the sentiments of this Venn diagram, if only for the sake of understanding.

Thanks for chiming in. Most of us in this echo chamber will rightly get a kick out of that Venn diagram. But as your post suggests, not everyone who opposes Citi Bike (or urbanism in general) has reasons as noxious as Daniel Greenfield. Some are still open to persuasion. We'll have a hard time bringing the persuadable ones to our side if we lazily resort to ridicule.