Urban Sprawl

[tallrick]

As I always state, to stop sprawl control the population. But having homes and businesses spread across the country is a lot better than piling up people in "zones" like concentration camps. What I would prefer is the elimination of the property taxes that drive people out of their rural homes and allow more density in development. The hard undeniable fact is that a neighborhood of free-standing homes surrounded by trees and space always beats a packed city with pidgeon hole apartments, traffic and endless nit-pick regulations. New technology can free us from the historical need for cities. Nobody wants to establish a business in a city where startup costs are artificially high and you have to work with an old network of corruption. Most cities are obsolete and cannot compete with the lure of open space. High cost energy will eventually make suburbs obsolete but people will hold on as long as possible. Many left the cities for the suburbs but I feel that few would willingly choose to limit themselves to city life after experiencing suburban space and convenience. I would go to farming before I moved to a city. Shoveling manure has to be better than living in an apartment.

[doc1]

Originally Posted by normie
...of course, if a community used high taxes to force all those "gluttonous upper middle class people" to buy homes in the city, those same senior citizens would be even more likely to lose their homes. Why? Because the price of city real estate would run sky high and those seniors wouldn't be able to pay property taxes. And all those beautiful old houses that you love in Scranton would torn down to build high density luxury condos and parking garages.

Not to mention the thousands of people who would simply build their McMansions outside the taxed community. That would hurt your town's tax base, and make the commutes even longer.

Ah yes. The laws of unintended consequences.

Once you cajole, force, whatever, to get the middle to upper classes into the urban areas they will start demanding (and receiving) the civil services they want such as better police protection, better schools and more control of profligate machine politicians.

This will result in loud, noisy, traffic impeding demonstrations of outrage over the displacement of some of the other, more established citizenry.

[doc1]

[quote=ScranBarre;5268730].....

The Poconos are replete with thousands upon thousands of people who commute 5-hours daily into NYC for work and have no "ties" to PA as a result.

They just buy cheap homes here and sleep in them. They have no time to join the PTA, neighborhood watch, etc. and just let their children become the responsibility of neighbors who want nothing to do with them.

Is there an unbiased source, anywhere, to support those assertions?

I live in NJ and when I think of Newark, Camden and Trenton, "thousands and thousands of civic minded locals joining the PTA, Neighborhood Watch groups and closely monitoring and caring for their children" isn't what comes to mind.