Wait, I get it! There are different people out there with different values, who will make different choices.  Congratulations, you're both right.  About some of them.

 

It's OK if we argue, X. No harm done. Everything will be alright.

 

A big part of why so many of us who came of age during that era is the disastrous unintended consequences of "liberal" ideas.[/color]

 

Not all liberals share the same brain. I count myself as a social liberal and I couldn't disagree with Krumholz more. If your transit system is nothing more than a rolling soup kitchen, then it's going to have a hard time winning political support to do anything more than just run in place and survive. If you want it to be a driver of economic development, including accessing jobs (whether the transit gets extended to the jobs, or the jobs get attracted to the transit), then you have to get the "fatcats" on board too.

Article also includes data on Columbus and Cincinnati.....

 

LOCUS report warns Cleveland could lose ground on walkable development if sprawl goes unchecked

By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

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on June 17, 2014 at 6:15 AM, updated June 17, 2014 at 6:17 AM

 

A decade-old burst of downtown development in Cleveland registers loud and clear in the latest national study of urban development patterns in the U.S.

 

Cleveland now ranks a respectable 10th among the nation's 30 largest metro areas in a new report that measures how much development is occurring in walkable urban areas, such as the city's downtown, as opposed to automobile-oriented suburbs.

 

......The change is also occurring, Leinberger and Lynch said in the conference call, because the market – led primarily by the Millennial generation now between 18 and 34 years old - is demanding it.

 

"Companies want to be able to attract new employees and new employees want to be in these walkable urban places," Leinberger said.

 

In Ohio, the political fragmentation caused by home rule and the historical emphasis on automobiles as the main mode of transportation could cause Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus to lose ground economically, Leinberger said.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.cleveland.com/architecture/index.ssf/2014/06/cleveland_ranks_high_in_nation.html

Article also includes data on Columbus and Cincinnati.....

 

LOCUS report warns Cleveland could lose ground on walkable development if sprawl goes unchecked

By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Follow on Twitter

on June 17, 2014 at 6:15 AM, updated June 17, 2014 at 6:17 AM

 

A decade-old burst of downtown development in Cleveland registers loud and clear in the latest national study of urban development patterns in the U.S.

 

Cleveland now ranks a respectable 10th among the nation's 30 largest metro areas in a new report that measures how much development is occurring in walkable urban areas, such as the city's downtown, as opposed to automobile-oriented suburbs.

 

......The change is also occurring, Leinberger and Lynch said in the conference call, because the market – led primarily by the Millennial generation now between 18 and 34 years old - is demanding it.

 

"Companies want to be able to attract new employees and new employees want to be in these walkable urban places," Leinberger said.

 

In Ohio, the political fragmentation caused by home rule and the historical emphasis on automobiles as the main mode of transportation could cause Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus to lose ground economically, Leinberger said.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.cleveland.com/architecture/index.ssf/2014/06/cleveland_ranks_high_in_nation.html

 

I call bs on the report, especially for Columbus.  Sprawl is not currently the dominant growth factor there. 

 

Metro vs. Core City Growth 2000-2010 and 2010-2013

Cincinnati

2000-2010

Metro: +120,519 +6.0%

City: -34,340 -10.4%

Total city change as a % of total metro change: -28.5%

2010-2013

Metro: +22,826 +1.1%

City: +574  +0.2%

Total city growth as a % of total metro growth: 2.5%

 

Cleveland

2000-2010

Metro: -70,903 -3.3%

City: -81,588  -17.1%

Total city change as a % of total metro change: 115.1%

2010-2013

Metro: -12,515  -0.6%

City: -6,702 -1.7%

Total city change as a % of total metro change: 53.6%

 

Columbus

2000-2010

Metro: +223,842 +13.9%

City: +75,293 +10.6%

Total city growth as a % of total metro growth: 33.6%

2010-2013

Metro: +65,092 +3.4%

City: +35,520 +4.5%

Total city growth as a % of total metro growth: 54.6%

 

All cities improved have improved their city growth numbers since the 2000s, and all have lower rates of sprawl growth than the 2000s.  However, in the cases of Cincy/Cleveland, their suburbs are still growing faster (or losing more slowly) than the core cities.  While the rates are better between them, the story remains the same.  Columbus is the only one of the three to reverse it, where the city is now growing faster (by %) than the suburbs.  It also has a much larger share of growth within the city than the other two. 

 

The point is, all 3 cities are trending away from sprawl, not towards a continuation or acceleration of that type of development. 

The point is, all 3 cities are trending away from sprawl, not towards a continuation or acceleration of that type of development. 

 

I agree. I think the data is out of date. I'm just not seeing much suburban development going on, and what is going on is more walkable, like the two new developments in Solon or the new Van Aken District at the end of the Blue Line light-rail in Shaker Heights. In fact, the PD has been running a series regarding suburban developments, the theme of which is "Development is happening more than just downtown"! Yet most of the developments they cite seem to be pretty small and not very transformative.

^^I dare not poke at the volatile intra-C comparison beast, but doesn't "core city" mean something fundamentally different in Columbus' case?  You're conclusion might be right, but not sure looking at municipal boundaries proves the point.

^^I dare not poke at the volatile intra-C comparison beast, but doesn't "core city" mean something fundamentally different in Columbus' case?  You're conclusion might be right, but not sure looking at municipal boundaries proves the point.

 

I was going to say the same thing.  The high % of development happening within Columbus City proper could easily (and likely) mean greenfield development all the same.  There is a lot of suburban/rural land within their city boundaries.

The point is, all 3 cities are trending away from sprawl, not towards a continuation or acceleration of that type of development. 

 

I agree. I think the data is out of date. I'm just not seeing much suburban development going on, and what is going on is more walkable, like the two new developments in Solon or the new Van Aken District at the end of the Blue Line light-rail in Shaker Heights. In fact, the PD has been running a series regarding suburban developments, the theme of which is "Development is happening more than just downtown"! Yet most of the developments they cite seem to be pretty small and not very transformative.

 

Most of the development is happening on the outer fringes. Correct me if I'm wrong but that series is pretty much focusing only on Cuyahoga County which limits things quite a bit.  Summit, Medina, Lorain and Lake are all seeing an uptick in new subdivisions over the past year or so. It seems like many of the developments that had been stalled are back with a vengeance. There hasn't been much in the way of major retail in those areas but residential seems to be moving once again.

I thought the PD article was rather useless.  The headline was negative and misleading and FCE's Corsi got an opportunity to justify why the company is investing elsewhere and not its hometown... save the Van Aken TOD project, apparently. 

^^I dare not poke at the volatile intra-C comparison beast, but doesn't "core city" mean something fundamentally different in Columbus' case?  You're conclusion might be right, but not sure looking at municipal boundaries proves the point.

 

I was going to say the same thing.  The high % of development happening within Columbus City proper could easily (and likely) mean greenfield development all the same.  There is a lot of suburban/rural land within their city boundaries.

 

Eh, not as much as you'd think. Some growth at Easton and Polaris but not really much else in sprawl-type areas within the city limits. Yeah we still have cornfields inside the city limits but they're not seeing much development. Those areas saw their big growth in the last half of the 20C. In fact much of it is losing population such as Linden, the Continent and the Far West Side. They bulldozed almost all of Wonderland and that massive complex on the Far/Middle East Side by the airport off Stelzer Rd.

I think Columbus, because of its sheer geographical area, benefits from something not often considered in population statistics: household size. Columbus enjoys more housing stock that is larger, younger and less obsolete than Cincinnati or Cleveland. A little 2 bedroom 1940's house in Cincinnati might have raised 2 or 3 families by now, and has "retired" to housing a single older person. A 1980's subdivision house, or even a 1960's ranch, in Columbus still has a nuclear family or two left in its life cycle. It means that when Columbus adds infill (which it is also doing at a faster rate than Cin or Cle) it enjoys an actual population boost rather than just treading water.

 

This will ultimately settle out, I think. Market forces will always provide someone to buy a good house, and you can't replace one householder with any less than one householder.

Hmm yes, there's all these 900 sq. ft. houses in Oakley that had full families in them back in the Milacron days but now have a single person or couple in them.

Wait, I get it! There are different people out there with different values, who will make different choices.  Congratulations, you're both right.  About some of them.

 

It's OK if we argue, X. No harm done. Everything will be alright.

 

A big part of why so many of us who came of age during that era is the disastrous unintended consequences of "liberal" ideas.[/color]

 

Not all liberals share the same brain. I count myself as a social liberal and I couldn't disagree with Krumholz more. If your transit system is nothing more than a rolling soup kitchen, then it's going to have a hard time winning political support to do anything more than just run in place and survive. If you want it to be a driver of economic development, including accessing jobs (whether the transit gets extended to the jobs, or the jobs get attracted to the transit), then you have to get the "fatcats" on board too.

 

Yep, and the reference to "liberal" policies was generic and covers a wide policy area.

 

I suspect at this point that bringing the middle class suburbanites on board would involve more trains and express/flyer buses which are perhaps roomier and have amenities like wi-fi.  Thirty years of being a social program rather than a transportation resource seems to have led to a one size fits all mentality that's unattractive to those with options.  This could certainly mean higher fares for certain runs.

 

Unlike some, I believe that "sprawl" represents the desired living pattern for so many people that it's not going anywhere anytime soon.  For various reasons, this is even truer about NE Ohio than some areas.  That's why I feel that embracing the sprawl, rather than fighting it, is a better approach for the region.

Unlike some, I believe that "sprawl" represents the desired living pattern for so many people that it's not going anywhere anytime soon.  For various reasons, this is even truer about NE Ohio than some areas.  That's why I feel that embracing the sprawl, rather than fighting it, is a better approach for the region.

 

The problem is that sprawl is so costly that "embracing" it, as we've done for so long, puts such a tremendous recurring drain on scarce resources that it not only eventually drags down sprawl itself (once the newness wears off and recurring maintenance obligations arise), but it drags down areas that are already more economically efficient and could be made even more so with further investment.  Realistically, suburban property tax burdens should probably be 50-200% higher than they are to maintain the level of infrastructure that their preferred lifestyle requires.  And if those tax rates were set at that level, then we might see a rapid reordering of preferences.  Sprawl is the desired living pattern for a majority of people for much the same reason (at least in part) that people are more likely to "want" to send their child to a public college than a private one.  Even if your child was academically capable of going to Kenyon, you still have tens of thousands of reasons to prefer Ohio State.

Put another way, the fact that a living pattern is desired is a lousy reason to subsidize it. The goal should be to let people make choices but require them to pay the full freight and minimize the impact their decisions have on others.  That would mean indexing gas taxes, ending the mortgage interest deduction for starters. Plus, you can't reliably deduce market demand for living patterns by looking at the actual building pattern.  People choose to live on large lots in Pepper Pike, for example, because the residents there use the police power of their local government to forbid property owners from offering any other choices.

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

 

 

 

That's not always true -- if reality perfectly matched ideal capitalism in its simplest form, perhaps.  But we're not all driving the cheapest cars, are we?  If having my hardwood floors refinished was essentially free, I still wouldn't do it too often due to the hassle of moving everything out of the way and the temporary loss of living space.  If heart transplants were free, I'm not signing up until I actually need one, thank you.  Root canals too. 

 

Sprawl is not entirely a result of subsidies, but is a much bigger problem because of them.

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

 

 

 

That's not always true -- if reality perfectly matched ideal capitalism in its simplest form, perhaps.  But we're not all driving the cheapest cars, are we?  If having my hardwood floors refinished was essentially free, I still wouldn't do it too often due to the hassle of moving everything out of the way and the temporary loss of living space.  If heart transplants were free, I'm not signing up until I actually need one, thank you.  Root canals too. 

 

Sprawl is not entirely a result of subsidies, but is a much bigger problem because of them.

 

It would hardly exist if not for the FHA.  The FHA's goal, beginning in 1937, was to make it cheaper to buy a new house than to rent an old one.  The FHA assumed the risk of commercial loans to developers so that they could build huge subdivisions of hundreds of homes assembly-line style, then assumed the risk of the individual mortgages.

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

 

 

 

That's not always true -- if reality perfectly matched ideal capitalism in its simplest form, perhaps.  But we're not all driving the cheapest cars, are we?  If having my hardwood floors refinished was essentially free, I still wouldn't do it too often due to the hassle of moving everything out of the way and the temporary loss of living space.  If heart transplants were free, I'm not signing up until I actually need one, thank you.  Root canals too. 

 

Sprawl is not entirely a result of subsidies, but is a much bigger problem because of them.

 

The cheapest cars are heavily subsidized?

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

 

Bingo -

 

Mobile phones.  Most people would not have a mobile phone or would not replace their handset as often if they had to buy the device outright.

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

 

 

 

That's not always true -- if reality perfectly matched ideal capitalism in its simplest form, perhaps.  But we're not all driving the cheapest cars, are we?  If having my hardwood floors refinished was essentially free, I still wouldn't do it too often due to the hassle of moving everything out of the way and the temporary loss of living space.  If heart transplants were free, I'm not signing up until I actually need one, thank you.  Root canals too. 

 

Sprawl is not entirely a result of subsidies, but is a much bigger problem because of them.

 

It would hardly exist if not for the FHA.  The FHA's goal, beginning in 1937, was to make it cheaper to buy a new house than to rent an old one.  The FHA assumed the risk of commercial loans to developers so that they could build huge subdivisions of hundreds of homes assembly-line style, then assumed the risk of the individual mortgages.

 

It would still exist, though perhaps not in the same form.  Too many things happened in close sequence to make it inevitable.  World War II had a lot to do with several of them.

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

 

Bingo -

 

Mobile phones.  Most people would not have a mobile phone or would not replace their handset as often if they had to buy the device outright.

 

Errybody in Cleveland got they Obamaphone.

Anything heavily subsidized will be overconsumed.

 

Bingo -

 

Mobile phones.  Most people would not have a mobile phone or would not replace their handset as often if they had to buy the device outright.

 

Errybody in Cleveland got they Obamaphone.

Streetsblog New York ‏@StreetsblogNYC  13m13 minutes ago

Peak sprawl? NY region growing fastest in urban core, as fringe suburbs lose population: http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/02/reversal-of-fortune-report-shows-ny-regions-growth-focused-on-center/ …

 

Ohio farmers see big jump in property taxes

Associated Press

published nov 8, 2014 at 10:32 pm (updated nov 8, 2014 at 10:32 pm)

 

CLEVELAND – Ohio farmers are seeing big increases in their property taxes and, like the weather they curse and embrace, there’s not much they can do about it.

 

Recent reappraisals by county auditors increased taxes on some farm parcels as much as 400 percent at a time when grain prices have plummeted.

 

Taxes on Ohio farmland are not based on market values like houses or commercial property, but instead are calculated using a complex formula that includes crop prices, to determine the land’s current agricultural use value – or CAUV.

 

But the CAUV formula relies on previous years’ prices and not what farmers are now getting for their grain, primarily corn and soy beans.

 

Ohio farmers are essentially victims of their recent success. Favorable growing conditions and technology have resulted in bumper crops the last several years. And while farmers benefited from high grain in the last couple of years, prices have plunged in 2014.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.observer-reporter.com/article/20141108/NEWS05/141109517#.VGAqNDTF98E

Not a big surprise, which is why some don't want compact cities. Just another example of The Man keeping The Little Guy down.....

 

Smart Growth America ‏@SmartGrowthUSA  4m4 minutes ago

People in more compact, connected metro areas have greater economic mobility. http://ow.ly/E7G3O

“Density matters because we’re a social species geared to learn from people around us”—Ed Glaeser on value of cities http://t.co/zyXKtH8llR

Glaeser is good.  And I like that he managed to work in a few good words for Houston there, which many urbanists look upon with undisguised revulsion.  The bad thing about Houston's lack of zoning is that you don't need much in the way of permission to put up another 100 single-family homes.  The good thing about Houston's lack of zoning is that you don't need much in the way of permission to put up a 40-story office tower or a 15-story residential building, either, and they've had a lot of the latter over the past decade or so.

Interesting read. It's curious though, I'd be interested in his reasoning for choosing a suburb to locate his family.

 

Houston is bashed because it deserves it. There are definitely pockets of good things happening. The area around Rice and the Medical Center is great and the rail connecting that to Downtown was great. Downtown is atrocious though. It's a really poor example of urbanism. Actually probably the worst I've seen from a big city so far. No city is without its positives, but the negatives greatly outweigh the positives in Houston.

 

Someone once asked me to describe my time interning there. I described Houston as what would happen if you took an average, mid-size city from elsewhere and just quadrupled the amount of mindless, awful sprawl between the good things. That person, from LA, got giddy and said that was the perfect way to describe LA as well.

Wow, I missed this when it came out a couple months ago....

 

The Conservative Case Against the Suburbs

By CHARLES MAROHN • October 15, 2014, 12:48 AM

 

In his recent column, “Why Suburbia Irks Some Conservatives,” the prominent urban geographer Joel Kotkin creates and then slays a number of straw men in defense of suburban development patterns and all that is right and good in this country. This, unfortunately, is a lament that too often goes unchallenged, ceding a large swath of the American experience in the process. It is time for conservatives to confront the true nature of the suburbs.

 

America’s suburban experiment is a radical, government-led re-engineering of society, one that artificially inverted millennia of accumulated wisdom and practice in building human habitats. We can excuse modern Americans for not immediately grasping the revolutionary ways in which we restructured this continent over the past three generations–at this point, the auto-dominated pattern of development is all most Americans have ever experienced–but today we live in a country where our neighborhoods are shaped, and distorted, by centralized government policy.

 

MORE:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative-case-against-the-suburbs/

Wow, I missed this when it came out a couple months ago....

 

The Conservative Case Against the Suburbs

By CHARLES MAROHN • October 15, 2014, 12:48 AM

 

In his recent column, “Why Suburbia Irks Some Conservatives,” the prominent urban geographer Joel Kotkin creates and then slays a number of straw men in defense of suburban development patterns and all that is right and good in this country. This, unfortunately, is a lament that too often goes unchallenged, ceding a large swath of the American experience in the process. It is time for conservatives to confront the true nature of the suburbs.

 

America’s suburban experiment is a radical, government-led re-engineering of society, one that artificially inverted millennia of accumulated wisdom and practice in building human habitats. We can excuse modern Americans for not immediately grasping the revolutionary ways in which we restructured this continent over the past three generations–at this point, the auto-dominated pattern of development is all most Americans have ever experienced–but today we live in a country where our neighborhoods are shaped, and distorted, by centralized government policy.

 

MORE:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative-case-against-the-suburbs/

 

Very compelling piece.

 

My favorite quote:  “Modern man drives a mortgaged car over a bond-financed highway on credit card gas.”

Wow, I missed this when it came out a couple months ago....

 

I'm sure you've read most of this article from Marohn before. He's sold different versions of it at times in addition to his blogging. Rearrange the paragraphs. Be sure to mention Keynes directly. State assertively that America is a conservative country. All set for the American Conservative.

 

Edit: In case I'm horribly wrong about you reading him before Chuck Marohn is the guy behind Strong Towns. http://www.strongtowns.org/ https://twitter.com/StrongTowns Lots of good stuff from them.

I do remember reading that article when it came out; in fact, I'd bet that it's linked on one of the various development threads around here somewhere.  Or maybe, as Loretto says, I've just read a near-copy of it recently somewhere else, but I'm pretty sure it was this one, and I think I found it shortly after the Kotkin piece that it references.  (Everything that Loretto says about Marohn might be true about Marohn, but it is absolutely true about Kotkin, just in the other direction.)

I got turned on to Marohn through Kunstler.

I got turned on to Marohn through Kunstler.

 

It's a shame that Kunstler has pretty much abandoned the "geography of nowhere" urbanism stuff and gone entirely into the "long emergency" peak oil/financial shenanigans shtick. 

Wow, I missed this when it came out a couple months ago....

 

I'm sure you've read most of this article from Marohn before. He's sold different versions of it at times in addition to his blogging. Rearrange the paragraphs. Be sure to mention Keynes directly. State assertively that America is a conservative country. All set for the American Conservative.

 

Edit: In case I'm horribly wrong about you reading him before Chuck Marohn is the guy behind Strong Towns. http://www.strongtowns.org/ https://twitter.com/StrongTowns Lots of good stuff from them.

 

"Conservative" may actually cover more ground than "Liberal" these days.  Everything from "Dominionists" (Christian Sharia, basically) to Libertarians.  You can find "conservative" support for pretty much anything that is not explicit socialism.

I got turned on to Marohn through Kunstler.

 

It's a shame that Kunstler has pretty much abandoned the "geography of nowhere" urbanism stuff and gone entirely into the "long emergency" peak oil/financial shenanigans shtick. 

 

+1 I think the doomer stuff sells a lot of books though. There were quite a few UOers hanging out on his site for a while.

True libertarianism is not usually called conservative. It's just that many American Conservatives have branded themselves as libertarian. (Like Tea Party Christianists.) There are a lot of people called conservative who don't fitany traditional definitions of the word (I guess that's what you're saying), and there are a lot of conservatives that fit the definition pretty well (Obama, Clinton) who don't get the label.

 

The parties and the media have carved out the political landscape into liberal and conservative, without accurate or consistent semantic distinction. Probably an inevitable symptom of the two-party system, but it really dumbs down discourse into false dichotomies and brews anger and resentment between unnatural "enemy tribes."

Yeah, Libertarianism is much more closely aligned with the general beliefs of liberals than it is conservatives.  It is a hi-jacked term.  The conservative angle of it gets more play now because a lot of what TRUE libertarianism would fight for, Liberals have already won.  And the thought that the conservative spectrum is larger than the liberal political tent is laughable to say the least.  Conservatives are fairly uniform in belief, background, appearance, etc.  There isn't much wiggle room in the party platform.  You certainly don't see the same struggles you see the amongst the Dems/Liberals in agreeing to a platform.  Sure, there are a few outliers, such as Rand Paul, but he (like his Dad before him) pretty much has his own tent.

Yeah, Libertarianism is much more closely aligned with the general beliefs of liberals than it is conservatives.  It is a hi-jacked term.  The conservative angle of it gets more play now because a lot of what TRUE libertarianism would fight for, Liberals have already won.  And the thought that the conservative spectrum is larger than the liberal political tent is laughable to say the least.  Conservatives are fairly uniform in belief, background, appearance, etc.  There isn't much wiggle room in the party platform.  You certainly don't see the same struggles you see the amongst the Dems/Liberals in agreeing to a platform.  Sure, there are a few outliers, such as Rand Paul, but he (like his Dad before him) pretty much has his own tent.

 

I think you seriously misunderstand libertarianism if you think it's more closely aligned with modern leftist general beliefs.  It's true that much of what libertarianism would fight for, liberals have already won, but even more of which libertarianism would fight against, including on social issues where libertarians and leftists tend to find more common ground, liberals have won for the moment.  It's true that libertarians would support generally open borders, drug legalization, gay marriage, and a lower defense budget.  But pure libertarianism would also strongly oppose affirmative action and almost all race-and-gender-based legislation going back to the Civil Rights Act (their stance would be that if a hotel owner doesn't want to serve blacks and take their money, it's his loss and none of the government's business), the Americans with Disabilities Act, campaign finance regulation, and the very existence of numerous federal departments, let alone entitlement programs.  They'd also dramatically cut back, if not completely eliminate, regulation of the financial, healthcare, energy, and communications industries, among others.  I don't know how you can possibly say that they have enough in common with liberals to counterbalance all that.

 

And I actually see significantly more struggles among the Republicans than among the Democrats in agreeing to a platform, and calling Rand Paul an outlier is underselling him.  He's not his father.  The libertarian strain of Republicanism is alive and well.  And even with Ron obviously not getting anywhere near enough support to win the nomination, can you seriously imagine someone like Elizabeth Warren filling an entire second arena at the Democratic National Convention like Ron Paul did in Tampa when the GOP party apparatchiks wouldn't give him the mic on the main stage?  Establishment Republican candidates face far more risk of challenges from the right than almost any Democratic incumbent faces from the left, and the gap between Republicans like Rob Portman or Lincoln Chafee and Republicans like Mike Lee, David Vitters, etc. are vast.

 

Even on the issue of suburban sprawl (not to keep this thread on topic or anything), you probably see more dissent among the Republicans than you do among the Democrats.  On the Democratic side, you have almost no true defenders of suburbia; the range of opinions is basically between suburbia as benign tumor and suburbia as malignant tumor.  Republican positions are much more varied, ranging from the Kotkin-esque (as repulsive as I find him, he certainly does speak for a lot of outlying township types) to those like the ones linked earlier in this thread, who recognize the incredible, perennial tax and subsidy schemes necessary to keep that ship afloat.

Oh, I understand the concept.  The difference between you and me is you view it more as a rigid belief system, whereas I view it as a more wide-ranging ethos.  And you view it more in the hi-jacked sense.  The issue with trying to tie it to liberals or conservatives is that Liberty is too much of an abstract concept..... same as Freedom or Justice or any other platitude you want to claim.

 

As for the other issue, you overstate or don't understand the level of disagreement amongst self-identifying liberals.  There are plenty of liberal defenders of suburbia/sprawl.  Tons of them.  For most liberals, in fact, the whole idea that there is a debate about sprawl is lost on them.

^^Yeah, I generally agree with a lot of that (though I think most dems aren't at all ideological between urban and suburban). How libertarianism folds up into US national politics is entirely issue-specific, and I'm sure it would be impossible to come to any consensus tally of all the issues. The stylized stereotype is that liberals want to regulate "everything," and conservatives want to criminalize and bomb/shoot "everything,"  while libertarians don't really want to do either.

 

FWIW, the closest things we have to pure ideological libertarians in mainstream politics all seem to be in the GOP.  Paul, Amash, and Flake (and others, probably) will openly oppose elements of the GOP party platform on libertarian grounds, and I don't think there's any real analog on the left, even if individual elements of the Dem's platform are more libertarian.

^That's excellent!!

 

Tying infrastructure projects of the 1950's and 1960's to the notion of excessive government spending today? Why can't more of our nation's debates be framed like this?

 

Oh wait, I know why. Our two-party political systems. If the Libertarians split, then we could have a real debate here, since Conservatives would be taking the moderate position.

^That's excellent!!

 

Tying infrastructure projects of the 1950's and 1960's to the notion of excessive government spending today? Why can't more of our nation's debates be framed like this?

 

Oh wait, I know why. Our two-party political systems. If the Libertarians split, then we could have a real debate here, since Conservatives would be taking the moderate position.

 

It's a lot more complicated than that. You have to look at things like white flight, suburbs as tax havens, suburbs tied to the "American Dream", the automobile's association with freedom, large plots of land being associated with individualism. There is a whole marketing engine which leads conservatives and libertarians to effectively abandon their principles by ignoring the market distortions that prop up the suburbs.

 

A really tangible example of this is the NKY Tea Party's battle against tolls on the new interstate bridge. Fuel tax increases have been successfully avoided (in fact the rates were recently lowered in KY) to the point that what used to be covered by a general fuel tax could logically be replaced with more specific user fees (e.g. tolls), but these "libertarians" are upset that NKY residents would pay a "disproportionate" amount of money in tolls because they would be the primary users. This takes enormous leaps of logic, but is a perfect illustration of what passes for libertarian in today's America.

Article in the WSJ about how Google has established a significant urban campus in NYC, and how that trend is being replicated by other tech companies, in the typical tech cities.

 

I posted it both because of the article content (which really just echoes what's been discussed on here for a while) but also because I got a real kick out of the comments. You would think, based on the reaction, that this represents a direct attack on readers' lifestyles, rather than just a brief story on a trend with tech companies.

 

City Living Lures Technology Firms

Move to Urban Clusters Seeks to Foster Collaboration Among Employees

 

Gradually and quietly, Google Inc. is creating something in New York that most of the city’s oldest and largest employers lack: an urban campus.

 

Since it first planted a flag in Manhattan in 2000, Google has expanded from a single executive working out of a Starbucks to controlling over 3.5 million square feet of space—more than the capacity of the Empire State Building....

 

...Google’s accumulation of property is a vivid example of a shift taking place nationwide. In the past, companies that needed large amounts of space often fled to low-slung campuses in the suburbs. Those that decided to keep primary operations in a city often spread other employees throughout the region in search of lower rents. For some banks, dispersion of operations became a security strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

 

But now, more fast-growing employers, especially technology companies, are eschewing suburban campuses for clusters in cities. A chief reason: They are following the younger workers they prize, those in the millennial generation who today are in their 20s and early 30s.

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/city-living-lures-technology-firms-1419544586?tesla=y&mg=reno64-wsj

http://beltmag.com/complications-deteriorating-inner-ring-suburbs/

We've had several discussions on here about the housing stock of some suburbs (not just the inner ring suburbs) and the effect its aging has on the socio-economic demographics of those suburbs.  What is going to be really troubling is when the same inevitable results hit the McMansion clusters built during the housing bubble.  I own what is far from a architecturally appealing house, but at least it was built with solid materials and is very efficient.  These newer builds, with cheaper materials and, perhaps most troubling, not properly aged wood are going to be dumps sooner rather than later.

^That includes newer builds in the city also.  I don't want to mention development names, but there have been several architecturally pleasing developments in the city in the past 10 or so years that are absolute crap builds.  They're not going to look that great in 30 years either.  Can't just single out suburbs here.  I am a cheerleader for urban living myself, but a sign of the times is, people can't afford to pay for quality in large masses these days like they did 100 years ago, and that's reflected in new housing throughout the region...and the nation. 

You'd think it would still be possible, though, if we just were willing to pay more per square foot for less square footage.  That would be a significant cultural shift, but you'd think it would still be possible.

Yeah, it would.  But unfortunately everyone in this country wants the biggest they can get.  That includes everything from houses to cars to sandwiches!

Everybody? Not me. I've lived in a huge house and didn't like it at all.