Are suburbs financially viable? Short answer: "No!"
Here's a longer answer. The linked article is a little scattered but essential to understanding the enormous subsidies suburbia requires.
"What, we haven't had subsidies!"... you might say. The linked article demonstrates (great graphs!) how you need to add "yet" to that sentence.
The truth is that, besides their enormous payoff to land speculators, because of Prop 13, California cities must collect all their costs in building fees, or they aren't going to get them. Folsom's fees are $70K - $80K. Butte County's were $10K (back in the days before it threatened to declare bankruptcy). There's just not that big a difference between the price of roads and infrastructure in Folsom vs. Olivehurst, yet, as far as I can tell, little local governments spend very little effort correlating fees collected with their actual costs for roads, water, sewer, fire and police. In fact, I've asked local planners what are Sacramento's average costs per house, and how does that compare with the building fees collected. Their answer: [crickets]. They've ignored me for decades now.
Excerpt from the "longer answer" linked article:
Marohn: I would say that you have to do the math. We can build places that are beautiful and walkable and well-connected and meet all the other metrics, but if they're not financially solvent, it's going to be for naught. And so unless we take care of the money, it's not going to work. We can build places that are fantastic, that are also financially solvent. And I think when we use that discipline, what we find is that New Urbanism comes out ahead of every other approach that's out there.
Here's a longer answer. The linked article is a little scattered but essential to understanding the enormous subsidies suburbia requires.
"What, we haven't had subsidies!"... you might say. The linked article demonstrates (great graphs!) how you need to add "yet" to that sentence.
The truth is that, besides their enormous payoff to land speculators, because of Prop 13, California cities must collect all their costs in building fees, or they aren't going to get them. Folsom's fees are $70K - $80K. Butte County's were $10K (back in the days before it threatened to declare bankruptcy). There's just not that big a difference between the price of roads and infrastructure in Folsom vs. Olivehurst, yet, as far as I can tell, little local governments spend very little effort correlating fees collected with their actual costs for roads, water, sewer, fire and police. In fact, I've asked local planners what are Sacramento's average costs per house, and how does that compare with the building fees collected. Their answer: [crickets]. They've ignored me for decades now.
Excerpt from the "longer answer" linked article:
Marohn: I would say that you have to do the math. We can build places that are beautiful and walkable and well-connected and meet all the other metrics, but if they're not financially solvent, it's going to be for naught. And so unless we take care of the money, it's not going to work. We can build places that are fantastic, that are also financially solvent. And I think when we use that discipline, what we find is that New Urbanism comes out ahead of every other approach that's out there.
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