Not Just Bikes
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2021–2024
11:01 · 2M views · Apr 5, 2021
Not Just Bikes explains how many American suburbs, built all at once rather than incrementally, cannot cover their infrastructure costs and survive on growing debt. It draws on Strong Towns' work on the growth Ponzi scheme.
Recommended as an introduction to the finances of suburban sprawl and its long-term consequences.
10 comments from Hacker News
Well, this is exactly the opposite to an urban environment - this is urban sprawl. Is it better to construct and maintain 75 miles of roads (and all the other infrastructure) for a couple of hundred folks? I highly recommend this video on the finances around urban sprawl and their long term consequences: this video
The Not Just Bikes [1,2,3] YouTube channel also has an excellent series of videos based on work from Strong Towns. I link to these videos whenever a friend asks why I chose to leave the United States. :) [1] this video [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
In large parts of the United States it should affect single-family homes. A lot of cities constructed their suburbs with one-term fees and subsidies, but are charging extremely low taxes on the houses once constructed. In fact, the taxes are so low that they don't pay for the upkeep of the infrastructure required to service those houses. They are losing money on every house and are trying to make up for it in volume! The sole reason they have been able to continue is because the dense urban core is subsidizing the suburbs. But it'll inevitably end up with decrepit and neglected infrastructure, and cities going bankrupt. The only way to solve this is to increase the revenue per land area, which means a higher land tax, which in turn means a bigger tax increase per-person for single-family homes than for multi-family dwellings. If you want to know more, the following NotJustBikes videos are a good introduction of the subject: [LINK] this video
Child safety and cars sure is related - and history buffs will be glad to know the “kindermoord” of automobiles was what got the Netherlands to change from car-centric cities with many lanes wide traffic jams, to the best city infrastructure in the world [LINK] Cars produce crazy noise pollution, and car lifestyle requires massive subsidies such as street parking, and a huge share of city real estate being used for parking and roads. Lately, I’ve been inspired by this channel “Not just bikes” on the subject, and other HN readers may find it interesting as well this video
There's no "cannot", it's a conscious choice - if you have more space than necessary that absolutely does not require that you expand to fill all of it. And in particular this has caused issues because American cities tend towards sprawl, filling up area with low-density housing that requires significantly more infrastructure per capita, and implementing zoning laws to prevent higher-density development even as the population grows, resulting in housing shortages. Not Just Bikes has some excellent content about this, e.g.: this video