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You can't win either way. High density means more crime, driving up the
cost of police and courts. The lack of available land drives up property prices.
City services from utilities to street maintenance and fire protection have to grow and that costs money.
In the suburbs, the problems above do not exist, but because there is no retail or manufacturing tax base, property taxes go up. Because of the lack of crime and better schools, the area becomes more desirable so the home prices go up.
Our city has only a couple of strip malls with a large grocery store anchor tenant. We have really good schools, with home prices averaging about $450,000 and property taxes running about $5,000/year.
$5000 / year sounds low-ish for good schools to me.
Density does not mean more crime, if the demographics are the same.
Debsity vreats mnay difficulties. I mnay areas hosuign taxes do not pay fpr themsleves ;its the inductrial taxpayers and commercial overall taxes that really pay the bills.Add i sales taxes for commerical and it gets to the point that i mnay areas hosues do not pay for the services they use. Once density gets large often its a real losing propostion on housing .
You can't win either way. High density means more crime, driving up the
cost of police and courts. The lack of available land drives up property prices.
City services from utilities to street maintenance and fire protection have to grow and that costs money.
In the suburbs, the problems above do not exist, but because there is no retail or manufacturing tax base, property taxes go up. Because of the lack of crime and better schools, the area becomes more desirable so the home prices go up.
Our city has only a couple of strip malls with a large grocery store anchor tenant. We have really good schools, with home prices averaging about $450,000 and property taxes running about $5,000/year.
Crime doesn't exist in the suburbs? Streets in the suburbs don't need maintenance, you don't need utilities or fire protection? Hm.
The OP provided no data to substantiate that "taxes and cost of living increase exponentially when the density of a place increases."
Without data, all we can do is banter with preconceived notions and/or our own personal bias.
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The OP provided no data to substantiate that "taxes and cost of living increase exponentially when the density of a place increases."
Without data, all we can do is banter with preconceived notions and/or our own personal bias.
I said that it increases exponentially because of my experience in NYC and Tokyo. Maybe the word exponentially wasn't the right word, but all I can say is that New York is very expensive for much of the same things and Tokyo even more so. Thus I felt that the higher the density, the higher the cost of living. I looked at a receipt of a McDonalds in NYC and the sales tax looked like it was 9% which is high. I haven't been to Tokyo itself but I was at the airport and the food there for one small meal was like $8.00 USD for a bowl of noodle soup. The airport at Chicago or New York didn't have food that expensive for the same quantity. In New York City, I've looked at the prices of food there stores there and it does seem more expensive to me compared to a suburban location where I live. Not sure if it might be data, but it is just personal experience.
You might compare the base salaries of those places to smaller cities--in general, cities have higher mean incomes as well as higher cost of living. Stores and restaurants in cities where rent is high have to charge more to meet their overhead.
"Exponentially" means a very specific thing, and I wouldn't say that they rise exponentially, but supposedly some physicist claims to have figured out a mathematical function: every time population doubles, productivity per capita increases 15%--which means commensurate rises in salary, cost of living, economic production, and so on. And yes, crime also increases, according to said physicist, at a similar level (all else being equal.)
Sales tax is close to 9% in most of NY State regardless of density. Is 8.5-8.75 % in the suburbs, 8.25% in some rural counties. It keeps changing, almost always up. Though, they've increase exemptions.
I said that it increases exponentially because of my experience in NYC and Tokyo. Maybe the word exponentially wasn't the right word, but all I can say is that New York is very expensive for much of the same things and Tokyo even more so. Thus I felt that the higher the density, the higher the cost of living. I looked at a receipt of a McDonalds in NYC and the sales tax looked like it was 9% which is high. I haven't been to Tokyo itself but I was at the airport and the food there for one small meal was like $8.00 USD for a bowl of noodle soup. The airport at Chicago or New York didn't have food that expensive for the same quantity. In New York City, I've looked at the prices of food there stores there and it does seem more expensive to me compared to a suburban location where I live. Not sure if it might be data, but it is just personal experience.
It's a broad over-statement. I would say that the urban-dense areas of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, San Antonio, Memphis, Cincinnati, Baltimore have much lower cost-of-livings than their respective suburbs. Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Chicago, Washington DC are the opposite.
Last edited by jimmyev; 01-22-2011 at 11:07 AM..
Reason: []
rent is more expensive because a lot of people want to live there. Also, the cost of living in the cities wouldnt be so bad but ever since everyone left for the suburbs, cities have been taken over by criminals so TONS of people are fighting to live in one tiny portion of a city.
Take chicago for example:
if you go too far south of the loop, you reach south side where no sane person would ever live.
too far west of the loop -- cicero, garfield park -- nothing but crime and poverty.
too far north - uptown and other neighborhoods which are relatively better that those i listed above, but still waay too dangerous compared to the suburbs.
same with new york city. get a map that highlights crime areas and you would see that manhattan and certain sections of queens and brookly are surrounded by crime.
both cities are big in area but people are basically forced to live in those tiny 'good' parts of a city since anything further out is crime and poverty....
Yea it's probably a supply and demand thing. But also the demographics of cities (at least the high costs) one might encourage this. Most expensive American cities have a high proportion of rich (or middle-class with lots of disposable income, b/c of no children) and poor and a low proportion of middle class. Having a large amount poor people increase social costs and make city services expensive while a large amount of well off increase prices because they are willing to pay extra money. Wealthy suburbs can be almost as expensive as big cities. For example, parts of Long Island have extremely high property taxes and housing costs.
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