Interesting Article: RIP Suburbs (Fresno, Red Bluff: maintenance, property taxes, living)

[krudmonk]

Far-flung suburbs should be cut off from city funding. You are free to live way out there, but why should we pay for roads, streetlights, sewage and all that just to reach a few people who choose to live in plastic homes that all look alike? The money goes a long way to meet real social services so why waste it patching potholes that will just be reopened by the next Hummer that thunders by?

[EscapeCalifornia]

Originally Posted by krudmonk

Far-flung suburbs should be cut off from city funding. You are free to live way out there, but why should we pay for roads, streetlights, sewage and all that just to reach a few people who choose to live in plastic homes that all look alike? The money goes a long way to meet real social services so why waste it patching potholes that will just be reopened by the next Hummer that thunders by?

Don't pretend that people living in suburbs don't pay property taxes. Are you under the illusion that a city like LA pays to pave the roads in Riverside?

[FinkieMcGee]

Originally Posted by bhcompy

as a telecommuter, i can tell you that they can take away my suburbs when they pry them from my cold dead hands.

urban centers are no place to raise kids. limited park space(especially low on baseball diamonds and football fields), generally increased crime, generally poorer school conditions, and little to no backyards(depending on where you live). ill stick to suburbia where my kid can have some space to grow and get a good education, while i can have the space to sit on my patio and drink while my son plays in the backyard

Couple things here:

1. No one is kicking you out of your boring suburb. All they're saying is that people are moving out because it's unsustainable due to rising costs. Older streetcar suburbs will probably remain because the sustainability is far far higher. They really only built those on the east coast though, I haven't really seen any since moving out west.

2. Schools are only poor due to the communities that surround them. If you stick inner city Detroit into La Jolla the schools in La Jolla will suck as well.

3. Who cares about parking when you can walk your kid down baseball field?

[MIKEETC]

Originally Posted by krudmonk

Far-flung suburbs should be cut off from city funding. You are free to live way out there, but why should we pay for roads, streetlights, sewage and all that just to reach a few people who choose to live in plastic homes that all look alike? The money goes a long way to meet real social services so why waste it patching potholes that will just be reopened by the next Hummer that thunders by?

Eh?

You realize a lot of suburban communities are incorporated cities and are independent entities?

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia

Don't pretend that people living in suburbs don't pay property taxes. Are you under the illusion that a city like LA pays to pave the roads in Riverside?

LA's taxes go to the state. Are none distributed to huge roads in IE that feed back to LA?

Originally Posted by MIKEETC

Eh?

You realize a lot of suburban communities are incorporated cities and are independent entities?

So they pay for freeway widenings and such? The wealth of industry in these exurbs is funding their glut of twelve-lane boulevards?

[EscapeCalifornia]

Originally Posted by krudmonk

LA's taxes go to the state. Are none distributed to huge roads in IE that feed back to LA?

So they pay for freeway widenings and such? The wealth of industry in these exurbs is funding their glut of twelve-lane boulevards?

I'll make you a deal: You won't have to pay for roads in the suburbs if we don't have our property tax money redistributed and poured down the inner-city rat hole of waste and corruption you call a public school system.

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia

I'll make you a deal: You won't have to pay for roads in the suburbs if we don't have our property tax money redistributed and poured down the inner-city rat hole of waste and corruption you call a public school system.

Get out of the '50s already...

[nightbird47]

The *roads* in the county's are paid for by the counties. Thus, Riverside maintains Riverside roads. LA maintains LA roads.

The *freeways* are funded through caltrans. This is a state agency. Improvements and maintaince may be of more immediate advantage and safety of the local area, but the overall idea is to provide somoene in LA who decides to go to San Diego a sufficently maintained road they can get there. And the freeways are a part of the interstate system.

Even if you wipe out the suburbs and have only rural and urban you still have roads to maintain.

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by nightbird47

Even if you wipe out the suburbs and have only rural and urban you still have roads to maintain.

So maintaining two-lanes highways and the dirt roads which feed them is the same maintaining 8-lane freeways and the 6-lane bouelvards that feed those?

[NYSD1995]

A ridiculous article which has incited a number of ridiculous responses.

- Richard Florida has an agenda, he has written this article (or appeared in similar) dozens of times

- no one is abandoning the suburbs, on the contrary most suburbs continue to grow despite an increasing interest in moving back to cities

- newly built exurban cities 1+ hour outside of metros are primarily the ones with the overbuilding and foreclosure problems

- most suburban and exurban communities in CA are THEIR OWN CITIES with their own tax base and get their own share of money from the STATE, not the city they happen to be an exurb to.

I live in the city but I am not going to delude myself into thinking that the majority (especially those in the child-rearing stage of life) will be willing to take bad schools, crime and more expensive housing to be closer to cafes and doggie boutiques. Richard Florida is painfully elite and out-of-touch with how actual people live... he is trapped in his yuppie-academic fantasy about the "creative class" which he has based his entire career on.