Re:Levittown
by ghaff on Monday June 17, 2019 @10:38PM
(#20209341)
Whether cities or suburbs, viability is pretty much driven by whether people want to live/work there or not. Some cities are more viable than others. Some suburbs are more viable than others.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I agree with you but disagree with parent who seems to claim suburbs were never viable. They are and so are cities but their viability rests on having a large enough tax base to be self sustaining.
As suburbs reached their apex many cities risked insolvency. As cities begin syphoning people from suburbs some of them too will experience insolvency issues.
Certainly. Plenty of suburbs (and even exurban towns) do quite well. As do many cities. One can argue about who is paying their "fair share" of infrastructure etc. but it's hard to buy the argument that the vast suburbs of elite cities today aren't "viable." Especially given that there actually isn't room for all those people (and companies) to locate in the city even if they wanted to.
But, yes, as housing preferences shift it affects pricing and viability of different neighborhoods, at least at the margin.
I agree that demand is there but one interesting challenge is tax revenue: many people moved to suburbs because the taxes are lower, and many will move again if they’re raised to the level needed to maintain city services & infrastructure. Toss in an aging population with many people unwilling to pay for services such as schools which their grown children no longer need (or climate change hardening which they won’t live long enough to need) and it’ll be an interesting fight in many suburbs across the country, with some finding a viable balance and others falling apart.
The "suburbs were never viable" claim is built upon a few facts about most US suburbs: 1) They are advertised partially based on the low property taxes in their municipalities. 2) They have restrictive building codes that prevent additional development from occurring. In other words, they are built all at once, to a finished state.
Then you run the math on property taxes vs. maintenance costs. If repairing the road, pipes, etc to one additional house costs more money than that house contributes via property tax (over a period of 25 years or so), then the suburb is considered insolvent. It could raise property taxes, or allow additional development, but without those actions the suburb remains insolvent.