Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07]

Well, you're parking it in other places as well, I assume, unless you're only making pleasure rides with no stops at all. I am speaking more generally than just about your particular situation, which I obviously don't know. But in case you live in an American suburb: their entire financial setup is unsound, which arguably means even your own ground is subsidized. I find the arguments of Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes quite compelling: ▶ this video .

No, suburbs cost more per capita than people living in the inner city, generate less tax revenue and end up becoming a net negative to municipalities: ▶ this video The whole series of videos from Strong Towns are good, you should take a look: link

Curious, have you considered the in-between here? Consider medium-density European cities, which still have massively higher density suburbs, but rarely the density -- combined employment and population densities -- of the urban core of most American cities. I hated living in Seattle, but I'm now an American finding I enjoy living in London. I walk around trees and birds every day, because I have good park access, and I can walk to them without having to worry about car traffic. For what it's worth, by the way, you almost certainly AREN'T willing to pay for the infrastructure that supports you: Suburbs are almost overwhelmingly economically supported by cities. I hate NotJustBikes (his self-righteous attitude is just awful), but he does have a great video on this: ▶ this video

If we taxed suburbs by how much they actually drain city budgets, no one would want to live in suburbs. It is by now a well-studied fact that suburbs are effectively subsidized by metropolitan cores. Makers and takers, indeed... Here's a video about some of the studies done to come to this conclusion: ▶ this video The folks at Strong Towns also talk a lot about productive land use measured as property tax income per square foot. They say it is the gold standard way to make sure your budget remains solvent and you can provide the services people need to make your city thrive. Obviously this means building up.

Because "Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High", That means property owners aren't making money. Workers aren't out spending to come in, stay and leave. All that is taxable, which is why government officials want people back in the office. In every city, the downtown core's tax revenue subsidizes the suburban sprawl all around it. Good overview of the research on this: ▶ this video

The current cost of owning and operating an automobile is around 12K USD assuming 15K miles driven yearly according to BTS [0]. This would push it up to a little over 14K USD. Then there's oil and gas subsidies that should be taken into account, since around 24% of oil consumption is from cars and light trucks. [1] Then there's some other factors that are hard to quantify but have a huge impact on taxes, like how low density suburbs are subsidised by high density cities [2] as an effect of car-first infrastructure. It's not as simple as just the cost of roads. [0] link [1] link [2] ▶ this video

> There is just no way to economically justify bikelanes everywhere Roads pre-date cars. Cars muscled in and took over, forced humans off the roads onto sidewalks. Now car drivers say it cannot be economically justified for people to move around outside cars? This is "car-brain" thinking. If the cars were banned, people could walk and cycle and wheelchair and skate on the roads their taxes are already paying for . They aren't "car roads", they are just roads - cycles are allowed on them. Car drivers don't want to share, don't want to slow down, keep hitting and killing people, can't control their vehicles safely, so demand cyclists be moved somewhere else - then complain about the cost of doing that! People say cars have taken over, they want somewhere safe from the dangers of cars, car drivers say no it's too expensive to make yourself safe from me commuting through the places you live and work ! It's crazy land. As if the only reason Christchurch exists at all is for cars to drive through . Can you point to a report that has a cost/beneift analysis of each individual road in Christchurch? Because when Urban3 set out to find out that kind of thing in USA and Canadian cities[2] they found that the dense urban centers ("poor") were the parts of a city with enough tax revenue to cover their infrastructure costs, and the sparse suburbs ("rich") were being subsidised by them. The people in city center apartments, possibly without cars, possibly transit riders, pay for the sprawli

> The US is a continent spanning nation How is that relevant? No one commutes from NY to LA everyday, much as no one commutes from Berlin to Munich everyday. > and half the country does not live in a city Yes, and that's what I mean by "dumb land-use patterns". That people living in suburbs are not technically within a city's boundaries is a distinction without a difference. Land is wasted to highways and parking lots no one can cross without a two-ton machine, useless lawns no one really has time to enjoy or maintain, dumb McMansions that cost and arm and a leg and so on. And all of that is subsidised in what is effectively a [pyramid scheme]< ▶ this video >.

> That money doesn't come from nowhere, the roads are paid for by the property and gas taxes of those burbs. Two points: many roads get federal and state funding from the general tax fund meaning we all pay for them whether we drive or not, and the suburbs are going bankrupt because car infrastructure is so expensive. ▶ this video As for your other complaints, why is living in an apartment you own in a city with shared public spaces rather than owning private land such a downgrade?

> Who cares? People who want fiscally responsible government? "The Many Costs of Too Much Parking": * link And that's not even getting into high(er) density areas subsidizing low(er) density areas: * link * ▶ this video * link * link

Lots of resources on the subject from Strong Towns[1], Not Just Bikes[2], and various consulting firms like Urban3[3] [1] link [2] ▶ this video [3] link

> So why don't the cities expand their boundaries to include the suburbs […] Why would anyone want to absorb something that costs more to run to provide the same services? * link > […] instead of trying to kill the suburbs and pull the people back into the city (where they will generally be unhappy since they had chosen to live in suburbs in the first place)? Perhaps they want to kill them because they are wasteful of area (often paving over perfectly good agricultural land), and cause climate change due to their reliance on cars. Further, how much "choice" did suburban dwellers actually have? Post-WW2 most zoning has forced the creation of car-centric, low-density sprawl. Perhaps there are folks in the suburbs that want higher density neighbourhoods but because of the limited supply (due to lack of new build) the prices have gone up and they're priced out. Whose to say that walkable neighbourhoods wouldn't be popular if purchased in the "suburbs: * link > † Side note: I have not found to be true, personally. I think this depends on the municipal boundaries involved. Depending on where the border is, on one side it could be that things built in the "old" / pre-WW2 way and on the other the "new" / post-WW2 way, and the taxes go to each municipality appropriately. In other places there could be the pre-WW2 Old Downtown and is walkable, but everything new is non-walkable. In those latter situations the more walkable parts are probably subsidizing the less walkable ones: * [V