The trouble is that sprawling development does provide a quick short-term cash infusion for the township/village/city as they get a bunch of new property taxes while having to do virtually nothing.  The developers build all the new infrastructure and it's all brand new when turned over to the municipality.  Unfortunately those taxes don't cover the long-term maintenance costs of that infrastructure, and even if some of it remains privately owned there's still the broader services that have to be increased, such as schools, police, fire, libraries, water and sewage plants, widening arterial roadways, etc. 

 

This situation only works when there's more growth that brings in new taxes to fund the maintenance and replacement of the old infrastructure.  It's what's called the growth ponzi scheme.  So in the long term it's completely self-defeating, but in the short term it provides the illusion of prosperity and economic stability.  A struggling township can try to "grow its way out of their problems" and it will look like a success in the short term, so they have every reason to do it even though it's ultimately making the problems worse.

 

The impact fees, while attempting to do the right thing, really aren't effective because it's a one-time payment that doesn't address the continuing obligations of the municipality to service and maintain the infrastructure.  A $6,000 impact fee is only enough to push the problem back a few years.    To pay their own way, most suburbs would need to quadruple their property tax rates.  That the property taxes in older cities aren't that high, while their infrastructure is almost universally "old" says something about the benefits of density that most suburbs haven't learned yet. 

Thank god!

 

 

Acacia Country Club shareholders reject $12 million offer from retail developer Visconsi

LYNDHURST, Ohio -- Shareholders at Acacia Country Club narrowly rejected a $12 million purchase offer Tuesday evening, after months of talk about a potential deal with a shopping center developer.

 

To pass, the sale required approval by members holding two-thirds of the club's outstanding shares. But the proposal got only 63 percent of the vote, said Charles Longo, the club's president.

 

Developers have been chasing Acacia for decades. The private club's land, nearly 160 acres of green space in Lyndhurst, is surrounded by Beachwood Place mall, Legacy Village shopping center, apartments and single-family homes. The Donald Ross-designed golf course could be a prime site for anything from offices to housing, a hotel or more stores.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/06/acacia_country_club_shareholde_2.html

Hah!  Well, the vote was close.  I can't get too emotionally involved in it (to the point of "thank God" either way), though, considering that my feelings about upscale strip malls and country clubs are somewhat comparable.  If someone decided to demolish a giant retail complex to put up a country club, my reaction would be similarly apathetic.

Sprawl costs regional households and economy

 

The fiscal burdens of sprawl stem from the costs of building and maintaining an ever-expanding network of roads, water and sewer pipes, power lines and other forms of infrastructure, as population in the region declines. Sprawl leads to higher transportation costs per household, according to the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium.

 

The region’s population declined by 7 percent between 1970 and 2010 while the area of developed land increased by 33 percent, or 400 square miles. That means fewer and fewer people are paying to maintain a larger and larger footprint.

 

“The bottom line in the end is that individuals end up paying for these costs whether you pay a gas tax, income or sales tax, or a user fee.” Segedy said.

 

http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/06/northeast_ohio_sustainable_com_1.html

 

Thank god!

 

 

Acacia Country Club shareholders reject $12 million offer from retail developer Visconsi

LYNDHURST, Ohio -- Shareholders at Acacia Country Club narrowly rejected a $12 million purchase offer Tuesday evening, after months of talk about a potential deal with a shopping center developer.

 

To pass, the sale required approval by members holding two-thirds of the club's outstanding shares. But the proposal got only 63 percent of the vote, said Charles Longo, the club's president.

 

Developers have been chasing Acacia for decades. The private club's land, nearly 160 acres of green space in Lyndhurst, is surrounded by Beachwood Place mall, Legacy Village shopping center, apartments and single-family homes. The Donald Ross-designed golf course could be a prime site for anything from offices to housing, a hotel or more stores.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/06/acacia_country_club_shareholde_2.html

 

I think that this is just delaying inevitable.  Their asking price seems way too rich for the MetroParks or any other regional entity that might step in to protect the land from more retail.

They could put in an Acacia Avenue and make the main address 22. ba-dum-pum

 

I fear that I'm the only one here who will get my joke.

They could put in an Acacia Avenue and make the main address 22. ba-dum-pum

 

I fear that I'm the only one here who will get my joke.

 

Perhaps Charlotte the Harlot could open a shoppe there.

I can't believe that an upscale public golf course wouldn't do really well there.

The reverse of suburban sprawl, but Cleveland's data sucks. Geez, at least Detroit's suburbs are growing.....

 

Urban vs. Suburban Growth in U.S. Metros

NATE BERG

8:58 AM ET 06-29-12

 

We already know big cities in the U.S. are growing, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Places like New Orleans, Austin, and Denver saw above-average population growth rates between April 2010 and July 2011.

 

To add a little context, Brookings Institution demographer William Frey dug through the data to break down this estimated growth in terms of cities and suburbs. According to his analysis of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people, the primary cities in those metros grew an average of 1.1 percent, compared with 0.9 percent growth in the suburban areas of those metros. Metros like New Orleans, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. saw their urban populations grow faster than their suburban populations, while metros like Baltimore, Detroit, and Jacksonville saw higher growth in their suburban areas than the central cities.

 

Metropolitan growth is both urban and suburban. These maps show by how much each metro's urban growth outpaced suburban growth (or negative growth, in Cleveland's case), or vice versa.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/06/urban-or-suburban-growth-us-metros/2419/

They could put in an Acacia Avenue and make the main address 22. ba-dum-pum

 

I fear that I'm the only one here who will get my joke.

 

Perhaps Charlotte the Harlot could open a shoppe there.

 

Yes!

Question for the Cleveland folks:  What's going on with the population losses?  Being in the 'Nati I get most of my news about CLE from this board, and generally the take seems pretty positive (both in terms of employment and the current developments going on in the city).  Is there something you can point to as the culprit?  Is it primarily an aging population/declining birth rate situation?

^ What is the story with city population loss in Cincy? Things seem pretty good, then the census comes out. I suspect it's not well understood.

As with most decent sized cities, impressive population growth in the inner core neighborhoods doesn't help much when middle and outer neighborhoods (which make up the vast majority of the population) continue to hemorrhage people.  Chicago is the perfect example, where impressive gentrification of the north side and near-loop neighborhoods is wiped away by the continuing depopulation of nearly the entire west and south sides of the city. 

 

Cincinnati doesn't have such large swaths of nearly empty neighborhoods like Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, or St. Louis do, but it's been hit hard by the gradual eroding away of housing stock and population in nearly every neighborhood.  There's thousands of missing buildings all over, especially in neighborhoods like Walnut Hills, North and South Fairmount, Price Hill, Avondale, the East End, and especially along many of the hidden hillside streets and forgotten pocket neighborhoods.  Cincinnati was historically so dense, especially closer to downtown and up the hillsides around there, that even with the removal of half or even two thirds of the buildings, there's still a lot left that looks pretty dense. 

As with most decent sized cities, impressive population growth in the inner core neighborhoods doesn't help much when middle and outer neighborhoods (which make up the vast majority of the population) continue to hemorrhage people. 

 

Sometimes I dont get the feeling that people here understand this.   

As with most decent sized cities, impressive population growth in the inner core neighborhoods doesn't help much when middle and outer neighborhoods (which make up the vast majority of the population) continue to hemorrhage people. 

 

Sometimes I dont get the feeling that people here understand this. 

 

Actually, most of Cleveland's worst population losses occurred in its poorest neighborhoods.  I would have to believe that this caused the per capita income to actually rise for Cleveland.

Question for the Cleveland folks:  What's going on with the population losses?  Being in the 'Nati I get most of my news about CLE from this board, and generally the take seems pretty positive (both in terms of employment and the current developments going on in the city).  Is there something you can point to as the culprit?  Is it primarily an aging population/declining birth rate situation?

 

This board goes out of its way to paint a rosy picture, which is hardly a bad thing.  But the majority of the city proper has been in free-fall for some time.  Large parts of the east side don't even seem salvageable. 

 

IMO, many of the city's redevelopment efforts have been misguided.  Even the best projects in the most desirable locations are smaller or less dense than they could be.  Cleveland is critically short on apartment buildings, which have been abandoned and torn down at an especially high rate.  That makes it harder for growth to occur.  Areas that were once jammed with apartments are being rebuilt with sparse McMansions.  And instead of developing retail downtown and in the neighborhoods, Cleveland developed a suburban big box plaza in the center of the city. 

 

In short, the whole plan has catered to local suburbanites, who by and large aren't interested.  Even the inner-city poor get new suburban neighborhoods.  Unfortunately they aren't given free cars, so many have moved to the inner ring, much of which is more urban than the city itself.     

As with most decent sized cities, impressive population growth in the inner core neighborhoods doesn't help much when middle and outer neighborhoods (which make up the vast majority of the population) continue to hemorrhage people. 

 

Sometimes I dont get the feeling that people here understand this. 

Actually, most of Cleveland's worst population losses occurred in its poorest neighborhoods.  I would have to believe that this caused the per capita income to actually rise for Cleveland.

 

I suppose as the city continues to empty out and the few remaining pockets of middle class neighborhoods and inner ring suburbs have then lost their middle class to the poor people that had left these Cleveland neighborhoods, I guess this would looking at the bright side? 

 

 

^ What is the story with city population loss in Cincy? Things seem pretty good, then the census comes out. I suspect it's not well understood.

 

The U.S. Census takes a count every ten years, and issues an estimate for the other years. The City of Cincinnati challenged the estimate, and the U.S. Census accepted the data that the city presented. However, it was just plain wrong, and was corrected in the 2010 Census. Population gain in certain areas of the city was offset by loss in other areas.

 

 

What does the city challenging the estimates a few years ago have to do with anything?  These current estimates are building on the 2010 census. 

I was responding to Natninja's question. I thought he was asking about the 2010 Census. Sorry if I misunderstood.

 

 

They could put in an Acacia Avenue and make the main address 22. ba-dum-pum

 

I fear that I'm the only one here who will get my joke.

 

Perhaps Charlotte the Harlot could open a shoppe there.

 

No Maiden is she.

 

If I hit the lottery I'd be tempted to buy the place just to do that.....

Taxes, outmigration, threaten Cuyahoga County, new study by CSU's Tom Bier finds

 

http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/07/analysis_by_cleveland_state_un.html

 

He predicts that over the next 25 years, Cuyahoga County can expect to see another 75,000 houses abandoned as more and more residents leave.

 

Cuyahoga will also lose roughly one-fifth of its property value, along with $5 billion in income. Cleveland’s population will certainly dip below 300,000.

 

Not sure any of his suggestions are remotely viable politically.  One of these days we should have "what will greater Cleveland look like in 50 years thread" to hash out the good and bad of the current trajectory.

Taxes, outmigration, threaten Cuyahoga County, new study by CSU's Tom Bier finds

 

http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/07/analysis_by_cleveland_state_un.html

 

He predicts that over the next 25 years, Cuyahoga County can expect to see another 75,000 houses abandoned as more and more residents leave.

 

Cuyahoga will also lose roughly one-fifth of its property value, along with $5 billion in income. Cleveland’s population will certainly dip below 300,000.

 

Not sure any of his suggestions are remotely viable politically.  One of these days we should have "what will greater Cleveland look like in 50 years thread" to hash out the good and bad of the current trajectory.

 

I'm not sure I agree with him at all.  First, if taxes were the issue, other cities would not be benefitting from Cleveland's/Cuyahoga County's losses.  Columbus, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Indianapolis, etc all have taxes, yet are all gainers of NEO's population losses.  And his own data doesn't really show an equal movement.  If Cleveland, Lorain and Akron lost 100,000 people, but other counties and cities in the area without taxes only gained 40,000, the other 60,000 moved completely away from the area altogether, not just to no or low-tax areas of NEO.  Clearly, there are more significant factors at play.  He's also wrong about the expectation of pre-recession trends returning.  Cleveland is benefitting from the recent urban movement just like most other cities, and it seems to only be getting stronger.  While this will probably not stop losses within the next few years, it's definitely a big change from the suburban explosion of the last several decades.  The trends have already changed.

 

And I have to be honest, the guy says he's been doing this all for 35 years... and what have the results of that been?  All of his experience has occurred during the worst years of the suburban out-migration period, so it's not really a surprise that he would expect more of the same.  The problem with that thinking is that for the past 50-60 years, cities were not what people wanted.  People started to move away from cities in the 1950s because cities had become places of higher crime, decay, poor schools and higher expenses.  The suburbs were heavily promoted (and heavily subsidized) for decades as the "American Dream".  Not to mention that the highway system allowed people to move away yet still maintain jobs within the city itself.  And then many jobs themselves left the city, following the population.  This image of cities being these rundown hellholes is just no longer true in most cases.  Cities have come a long way, through public and private investment.  Crime has been dropping for the better part of 30 years, urban decay has gradually been replaced with new development, parks and other amenities, and new generations, as well as retirees, increasingly don't want a car-based lifestyle.  Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus all saw large population gains in their respective downtowns, something that would not have happened had new trends not been developing and urban centers not become desirable. 

 

All due respect to Mr. Bier, but he just seems out of touch with what's going on today, and he seems to expect the worst-case scenario to continue despite all the trends to the contrary.  Cleveland will probably lose population for the next several years.  Not because cities have too high of taxes or because the suburbs are still the American Dream, but because long-term trends take time to reverse.  To deny that they haven't begun, however, seems like a losing position to me. 

 

 

Video of Bier's presentation if you have an hour and a half to spare -

 

^Not sure I agree with your first comment; he's focusing on migration within the region, and the spreading out of people.  You might be right that taxes aren't a primary driver, but saying that people also move to other metros (which may or may not have as high levels of various types of taxes as Cuyahoga County) is kind of besides the point.  Of course not everyone moves out for the same reason, but it's completely plausible that a plurality people who are relocating within the region are doing so to reduce their tax burden. It's certainly consistent with the data, even though they don't themselves remotely prove it.

 

I also disagree with some of your other points... I do think there is a real strand of "back to the city" energy, but numerically I think it's still swamped in Cleveland's case by the push of households away from its social issues, housing units, small lots, etc.  It's an ecology; no one "story" will describe everyone, so multiple can be true, but they add up to a net population migration, and I think his projects are entirely plausible.

 

As for policy, as metros spread out in the state, I'm not sure how much sense it makes to fund as much as we do at the county level, whether its things with regional economic benefits (community colleges) or that are re-distributive in nature (mental health services). Not sure how fair it is anyway.

The problem with that thinking is that for the past 50-60 years, cities were not what people wanted.  People started to move away from cities in the 1950s because cities had become places of higher crime, decay, poor schools and higher expenses.  The suburbs were heavily promoted (and heavily subsidized) for decades as the "American Dream".  Not to mention that the highway system allowed people to move away yet still maintain jobs within the city itself.  And then many jobs themselves left the city, following the population. 

The problem is that outside certain pockets, which still face many of these issues themselves, all of these things still exist. Their is still higher crime, their is still alot of decay, and most of Cleveland is getting worse, and the schools still mostly suck. And on top of that, suburbs are still promoted, their are still tons of jobs in the suburbs, and the highways still exist and are adding additional lanes to the suburban parts. Yes certain pockets are doing better, such as Ohio City, Tremont, Little Italy, Downtown, University Circle, and Gordon Square. But thats really just a small portion when you really look at it, and even those areas still face those problems. I would love to see the city come back, and I think we have made some great improvements.

 

One thing that I think might hurt the growth is the spreading out of the focus. Honestly, North Collinwood is far away from Downtown/University Circle, not great access to public transportation, and isnt surrounded by the best areas, and areas that are continuing to decline. Does fixing it up really benefit the city? Those urban minded people would have chosen somewhere else in the city. We still have other areas of the city, Ohio City, Tremont, etc, that still need a lot of work. If we focused our efforts in one area, we could achieve one amazing urban area that will then begin to spill over in the surrounding neighborhoods. Even Detroit Shoreway has taken people away from Ohio City, Tremont, Downtown, and Little Italy.

The problem with that thinking is that for the past 50-60 years, cities were not what people wanted.  People started to move away from cities in the 1950s because cities had become places of higher crime, decay, poor schools and higher expenses.  The suburbs were heavily promoted (and heavily subsidized) for decades as the "American Dream".  Not to mention that the highway system allowed people to move away yet still maintain jobs within the city itself.  And then many jobs themselves left the city, following the population. 

The problem is that outside certain pockets, which still face many of these issues themselves, all of these things still exist. Their is still higher crime, their is still alot of decay, and most of Cleveland is getting worse, and the schools still mostly suck. And on top of that, suburbs are still promoted, their are still tons of jobs in the suburbs, and the highways still exist and are adding additional lanes to the suburban parts. Yes certain pockets are doing better, such as Ohio City, Tremont, Little Italy, Downtown, University Circle, and Gordon Square. But thats really just a small portion when you really look at it, and even those areas still face those problems. I would love to see the city come back, and I think we have made some great improvements.

 

One thing that I think might hurt the growth is the spreading out of the focus. Honestly, North Collinwood is far away from Downtown/University Circle, not great access to public transportation, and isnt surrounded by the best areas, and areas that are continuing to decline. Does fixing it up really benefit the city? Those urban minded people would have chosen somewhere else in the city. We still have other areas of the city, Ohio City, Tremont, etc, that still need a lot of work. If we focused our efforts in one area, we could achieve one amazing urban area that will then begin to spill over in the surrounding neighborhoods. Even Detroit Shoreway has taken people away from Ohio City, Tremont, Downtown, and Little Italy.

 

Higher crime, I think, is relative.  Is there higher crime in urban than suburban Cleveland, sure, but you don't have to go down to zero crime (and never will) to have this aspect of a city's negative perception change.  All people need to see is that crime is going down and they'll at least start taking a second look.  Crime in Cleveland, and indeed the vast majority of cities, has been dropping for 20-30 years, and nationally, it's approaching levels not seen since the 1940s.  The idea is not to have crime be nonexistant in a city, but to reduce the perception that living in the city is inherently dangerous.  I don't think that argument can be made, at least not nearly as much as it used to be.  NYC once had very high crime and during the 1970s had the single largest population loss of any US city in history, losing almost as many people that decade as Cleveland had at it's 1950 peak.  Now, although it has far from no crime, it's considered a very safe city with a growing population.   

 

As far as schools go, the big reason why they declined was because so much of the tax base moved away, and you just can't maintain quality schools on continually falling budgets.  I guess it's the chicken or the egg debate.  If you are able to attract residents to the city, that will likely help reverse the quality of urban schools, but you need quality schools to attract more people, especially families.  But all recent trends indicate that people ARE moving back to the city, though probably not yet in large enough numbers.  Still, even in districts that are perceived as bad, individual schools within the district are not all created equally.  People just need to do more research into what's actually out there.

 

Decay levels are getting better in most cities, not worse like they did from 1950 through the 1990s.  I don't think a serious argument can be made that there is more decay in 2012 than in 1982.  If there was, I really don't think you'd see people moving back to the city at all.  Things have clearly changed.

 

The suburbs have the fastest growing rates of poverty, have the most homes in foreclosure, are seeing their rates of growth go below that of urban cores, and sprawl has taken a major PR beating in the last 5 years.  The idea that the suburbs are going to keep right on going exactly the way they were is a fantasy.  And the fact that current young generations don't particularly want the suburban lifestyle is going to have a large impact on growth patterns. 

^Not sure I agree with your first comment; he's focusing on migration within the region, and the spreading out of people.  You might be right that taxes aren't a primary driver, but saying that people also move to other metros (which may or may not have as high levels of various types of taxes as Cuyahoga County) is kind of besides the point.  Of course not everyone moves out for the same reason, but it's completely plausible that a plurality people who are relocating within the region are doing so to reduce their tax burden. It's certainly consistent with the data, even though they don't themselves remotely prove it.

 

I also disagree with some of your other points... I do think there is a real strand of "back to the city" energy, but numerically I think it's still swamped in Cleveland's case by the push of households away from its social issues, housing units, small lots, etc.  It's an ecology; no one "story" will describe everyone, so multiple can be true, but they add up to a net population migration, and I think his projects are entirely plausible.

 

As for policy, as metros spread out in the state, I'm not sure how much sense it makes to fund as much as we do at the county level, whether its things with regional economic benefits (community colleges) or that are re-distributive in nature (mental health services). Not sure how fair it is anyway.

 

Even if he's only focusing on regional migration, his numbers still really don't support his case.  Only 40,000 stayed in the region out of 100,000.  Why did the majority of 60,000 leave the entire region?  Tax rates did not keep the majority in Cuyahoga County, let alone the cheaper tax environments of surrounding counties.  Therefore, there must be other factors involved.  Also, isn't it rather an assumption to say that the 40,000 moved to other counties based only on tax rates?  What evidence is there that supports that kind of conclusion? 

 

And long-term population movements take a long time to happen.  Cleveland didn't fall below 400K overnight, it took 60 years, and the suburban boom happened over decades as well.  People are finally moving back to the city.  It's going to take longer than a few years to start seeing that kind of change spread beyond the immediate downtowns of most cities.  But the fact that it's started at all throws the "the suburban movement will continue" scenariou out the window, imo.

As far as schools go, the big reason why they declined was because so much of the tax base moved away, and you just can't maintain quality schools on continually falling budgets.  I guess it's the chicken or the egg debate.  If you are able to attract residents to the city, that will likely help reverse the quality of urban schools, but you need quality schools to attract more people, especially families.  But all recent trends indicate that people ARE moving back to the city, though probably not yet in large enough numbers.  Still, even in districts that are perceived as bad, individual schools within the district are not all created equally.  People just need to do more research into what's actually out there.

 

We're also still quite possibly in the infancy of the alternative-school movement, with charters, vouchers, and in-district alternative schools (e.g., CAHS) potentially having a long way left to run.  Even in neighborhoods where there really are very few good traditional public school options, those are no longer the only options.  Not only is it no longer necessary to flee to the suburbs to find a decent school, it is also no longer necessary only to locate in one privileged part of a given city to find a decent school.

So many assumptions are factored into those numbers quoted in the Bier article.  I certainly don't mean to minimize the possible outcome he's predicting, but seeing fuel prices climb to steady +$4/gallon would have a big impact on outward migration. 

- There needs to be some state legislation restricting/limiting the ability of these townships to exist.  It would never be approved by any of those representing the township areas of course. 

- There also needs to be continued incentives to attract the same families who choose to live in Medina/Sheffield/Painesville Twp etc back to the urban center/inner ring.

 

Everyone loves to blame highways and cars as the source of sprawl, but I see it as more of a land use/zoning problem.  You can have all the cars & highways in the world, but if you don't allow huge tracts of farmland to be turned into single family homes all over Lorain, Medina & Geauga counties, I don't see the problem.

School performance is generally not well correlated with funding.  Some of the highest funded school districts (through additional subsidies from the state usually) are terribly performing inner-city districts.  The biggest factors for school performance are teachers, parental involvement, and peer relationships.  This is why great teachers who go to bad schools to "reach these kids" usually fail.  No matter how good they are, and by extension no matter how much money gets poured into the school, it can't overcome students who aren't interested in learning.  Their parents never instilled an interest in it and don't follow up with homework or teacher conferences, and peers actively discourage it through bullying or putting higher priority on other activities.  Many historically good schools had a pretty quick flip from good to bad when the student body reached a tipping point of anti-learning, with little change in overall funding in that period.  It's not a case where one bad apple spoils the bunch, but get enough bad apples and the whole thing goes rotten.  When that tipping point gets close, that's when the parents who do care about their kids' education pull out, which accelerates the downward spiral. 

 

It's a tough situation of course.  Basically the schools are bad because they're bad, not through any particular structural fault.  It's not unlike celebrities who are famous for being famous. 

So many assumptions are factored into those numbers quoted in the Bier article.  I certainly don't mean to minimize the possible outcome he's predicting, but seeing fuel prices climb to steady +$4/gallon would have a big impact on outward migration.

 

Maybe at $5 or $6, or with a VMT fee on top of the gas tax to accurately price in the cost of road use.  Maybe.  Quite honestly, there are a number of people in my office who would put themselves at the brink of bankruptcy in order to continue living farther out, away from the city.  A young coworker recently bought a house in Chagrin Falls and is absolutely in love with it.  I have a feeling that she'd willingly (albeit not happily) pay significantly more in gas and property taxes in order to keep it.

 

There needs to be some state legislation restricting/limiting the ability of these townships to exist.  It would never be approved by any of those representing the township areas of course.

 

Why do we need this?  And what would you get if you prevented a township from existing?  Townships are just unincorporated administrative units of a county.  If they get large enough (e.g., Jackson Township by Canton), they can start to look a lot like an incorporated municipality, but they still aren't.  If you "merged" a large, populous township back into its parent county, the county would in turn have to create an administrative body to manage it, since it would have concerns that were more in line with those of more developed areas, not just farmland.  That new administrative body would inevitably look almost exactly like the township government you just eliminated.

 

There also needs to be continued incentives to attract the same families who choose to live in Medina/Sheffield/Painesville Twp etc back to the urban center/inner ring.

 

A good job is a good incentive.  A good place to live is also a good incentive.  Those two are generally enough for most people.

So many assumptions are factored into those numbers quoted in the Bier article.  I certainly don't mean to minimize the possible outcome he's predicting, but seeing fuel prices climb to steady +$4/gallon would have a big impact on outward migration.

 

Maybe at $5 or $6, or with a VMT fee on top of the gas tax to accurately price in the cost of road use.  Maybe.  Quite honestly, there are a number of people in my office who would put themselves at the brink of bankruptcy in order to continue living farther out, away from the city.  A young coworker recently bought a house in Chagrin Falls and is absolutely in love with it.  I have a feeling that she'd willingly (albeit not happily) pay significantly more in gas and property taxes in order to keep it.

 

There needs to be some state legislation restricting/limiting the ability of these townships to exist.  It would never be approved by any of those representing the township areas of course.

 

Why do we need this?  And what would you get if you prevented a township from existing? 

 

It's needed to eliminate sprawl.  "According to Bier’s research, 96 percent of Geauga County land is in townships; 90 percent in Medina County; 86 percent in Portage County and 70 percent in Lorain".  Restricting the ability for these townships to add housing & provide services would help stop the outflow of migration.  The main attraction of living in a township is lower property taxes & no income taxes. 

OK, so you mean restricting development in them, not restricting their ability "to exist," which is what you originally said.

 

I still have problems with direct restrictions on development, but simply ending many of our direct and indirect subsidies for sprawling development would accomplish much of the same goal, at lower financial cost (because it would necessarily mean spending *less* money) and in a fashion less offensive to liberty.

Restricting their ability to exist or restricting their development, tomato, tomahto...  greenfield development is always going to be cheaper, more attractive.  Everyone knows that and Mr Bier's article highlights the problems associated with this.  Unless changes occur to make it less attractive, the problems will continue.  Eventually, these tracts of large parcel, single family cul-de-sac homes will find themselves in similar situations as the inner ring suburbs...  increasing deferred maintenance costs, dated designs which no longer meet buyers needs, etc.  Then what?  And what is the environmental cost of all these large plot single family home developments?  Has North Royalton solved their flooding problems?  How much mature forest area has been cleared for homes in Solon/Chagrin/Bainbridge?  How much farmland was lost in Medina/Lorain for new home plots?  How much has storm runoff increased from these home developments and big box stores that follow?

The problem is (as Gramarye is saying) that we need to appropriately tax people in the greenfield developments for the costs they cause the rest of us, rather than the other way around (we actually actively subsidize these people, which is why they end up paying lower taxes).  This also extends to utilities and services.  Why should Time Warner or the power company provide service to these far out lands at the same price as to a dense urban area?  There is much more cost for infrastructure needed to run cables out to the less dense developments in the middle of nowhere as well as to maintain it (such as when a tree falls on any of the miles and miles of power lines or cables to get out there.  Why should urban areas expand roads for these people?  Why should we pay for the convention center, stadiums, etc. when many of the people using them live out there?  These people should have to pay for the problems with flooding and drainage.  They should have to pay for the deer problem as they destroy their homes.  Etc., etc., etc.

I think some things (stadiums, convention centers, etc) should be MOSTLY funded by local/county governments. the bordering counties should each contribute a small percentage (5% of total costs of stadiums from each surrounding county, for example) since we all benefit as a region. If the plan is executed well, there should be an economic return for the investment that is realized mostly in the urban center which should carry the brunt of the costs. Unfortunately this type of scheme is difficult to do across multiple county/state lines.

 

In the same way, the suburbs should rely on themselves to fund new utility lines, roads, water mains, etc. Unfortunately I don't see any state or federal official promising these kinds of changes. Elderly white residents are most likely to vote, and I would argue that a large majority of them live in the suburbs (in Ohio, at least). And politicians would not sacrifice their potential votes by going against their interests.

 

I think the biggest challenge is educating people about the subsidies they are receiving. Most people don't realize that the suburban lifestyle is heavily subsidized.

Yes, things that provide benefits to the local economy should be funded locally.  The problem is defining "local".  I believe it matches up more to a metro area than city limits or county boundaries.  Do people in Wickliffe not benefit as much from the convention center or stadiums as people in Mayfield?  There's a reason suburbs exist, and it's because they are inextricably linked to the central city.  There is no reason they should be allowed to pop up and benefit from the central city's economy without fully contributing to it.

For things like convention centers and sporting arenas, it's true that the whole area benefits from it, but (assuming the venue is successful, anyway)  the municipality actually hosting it benefits more.  I don't think it's unreasonable to have the municipality hosting it bear the costs.  (Of course, I could insert my usual spiel here about the interconnectedness of the economy ... when a visitor to Cleveland eats at a restaurant on East Fourth, which municipality benefits the most?  The city where the restaurant is located, i.e., Cleveland?  The city where the owner lives and pays his taxes?  What about the city where the bank that's probably getting a good chunk of the restaurant's revenue is located?  What if the restaurant leases space and the building is owned by a company in Independence with owners in Ohio and Florida?)

 

Granted, I also support significant regional integration, so jam40jeff and I might get to roughly the same place--I wouldn't expand the definition of local to include adjacent municipalities; I'd expand the municipality to include adjacent municipalities, and leave the dictionary alone.

Granted, I also support significant regional integration, so jam40jeff and I might get to roughly the same place--I wouldn't expand the definition of local to include adjacent municipalities; I'd expand the municipality to include adjacent municipalities, and leave the dictionary alone.

 

That's where I was going.  The Toronto model.  Regional government is a stopgap solution to the problem of poorly drawn municipal boundaries (likely from olden days when the communities actually were independent because it was a daylong carriage ride between the municipalities).

Well, whatever the original reason, I think the distinctions acquired new meaning and life in modern times because of more serious disagreements about urban policy, particularly the appropriate levels of taxes, spending, and regulations.  Also, cities of 1950 were not cities of 2012.  While they might have had much more industrial activity, it was dirty, noisy, and crowded.

 

School performance is generally not well correlated with funding.  Some of the highest funded school districts (through additional subsidies from the state usually) are terribly performing inner-city districts.  The biggest factors for school performance are teachers, parental involvement, and peer relationships.  This is why great teachers who go to bad schools to "reach these kids" usually fail.  No matter how good they are, and by extension no matter how much money gets poured into the school, it can't overcome students who aren't interested in learning.  Their parents never instilled an interest in it and don't follow up with homework or teacher conferences, and peers actively discourage it through bullying or putting higher priority on other activities.  Many historically good schools had a pretty quick flip from good to bad when the student body reached a tipping point of anti-learning, with little change in overall funding in that period.  It's not a case where one bad apple spoils the bunch, but get enough bad apples and the whole thing goes rotten.  When that tipping point gets close, that's when the parents who do care about their kids' education pull out, which accelerates the downward spiral. 

 

It's a tough situation of course.  Basically the schools are bad because they're bad, not through any particular structural fault.  It's not unlike celebrities who are famous for being famous.

 

This is a pretty accurate post.  You can shuffle kids around from public schools to charter schools to Catholic schools (funded by vouchers), but if you get enough of those kids coming from families that don't value education together, these new schools are going to start to look a lot like the "bad" public schools you were trying to get them away from.  It's not the schools...it's the families. 

 

And on a related note, the WASPy/exurbanist types will never voluntarily put their children in schools with larger percentages of the above types of kids, meaning they won't be moving back into the inner core until they have better (i.e. separated) educational options.  I don't think the mass influx of unproven charter schools is going to cut it, but that's just a gut feeling.  The current neo-segregation of the American public school system is working too well for them at the moment to risk change. 

School performance is generally not well correlated with funding.  Some of the highest funded school districts (through additional subsidies from the state usually) are terribly performing inner-city districts.  The biggest factors for school performance are teachers, parental involvement, and peer relationships.  This is why great teachers who go to bad schools to "reach these kids" usually fail.  No matter how good they are, and by extension no matter how much money gets poured into the school, it can't overcome students who aren't interested in learning.  Their parents never instilled an interest in it and don't follow up with homework or teacher conferences, and peers actively discourage it through bullying or putting higher priority on other activities.  Many historically good schools had a pretty quick flip from good to bad when the student body reached a tipping point of anti-learning, with little change in overall funding in that period.  It's not a case where one bad apple spoils the bunch, but get enough bad apples and the whole thing goes rotten.  When that tipping point gets close, that's when the parents who do care about their kids' education pull out, which accelerates the downward spiral. 

 

It's a tough situation of course.  Basically the schools are bad because they're bad, not through any particular structural fault.  It's not unlike celebrities who are famous for being famous.

 

This is a pretty accurate post.  You can shuffle kids around from public schools to charter schools to Catholic schools (funded by vouchers), but if you get enough of those kids coming from families that don't value education together, these new schools are going to start to look a lot like the "bad" public schools you were trying to get them away from.  It's not the schools...it's the families. 

 

And on a related note, the WASPy/exurbanist types will never voluntarily put their children in schools with larger percentages of the above types of kids, meaning they won't be moving back into the inner core until they have better (i.e. separated) educational options.  I don't think the mass influx of unproven charter schools is going to cut it, but that's just a gut feeling.  The current neo-segregation of the American public school system is working too well for them at the moment to risk change.

 

If it's really the families that matter, then why would the WASPs (or non-WASPs) pay any attention to what school their child attends?  By that logic, it shouldn't matter if your kid goes to Upper Arlington or Briggs.

Because, as I said, the attitudes of peers are very important too.  If a student wants to learn, and has parents who care, they'll still have trouble if they're bullied for being a nerd, or because their friends insist that hanging out with them or playing football is more important than studying. 

Hah!  I hardly think that most WASP parents avoid inner city public schools because they're worried that their kids' peers will want to spend too much time hanging out and playing football.  (Heck, at my WASP school, plenty of parents worried that their kid wasn't trying hard enough to get good at football.)

 

However, the peer group point definitely is on target.  In particular, schools need a critical mass of students who are actually ready for certain advanced courses before they can actually offer them (though postsecondary enrollment offers a somewhat feasible workaround, depending on the school and local colleges).  My high school only offered three AP courses.  It had many highly qualified teachers who could have taught other AP courses.  We didn't have the critical mass of students necessary for many of them.  And, of course, peers also strongly influence one's moral and social development (probably moreso than all but the most influential teachers, such as ones who have a student for multiple courses and act as an athletics coach or performing arts director, for example).

 

Honestly, I think that within the next decade or so, formal education is going to get a significantly more revolutionary and transformational shock than just the introduction of institutional competition to traditional public schools.  This is based on some public speeches I've seen by some major players (Bill Gates among them) and some TED presentations, so nothing resembling a viable product at the moment, but I think it could spread extremely quickly once it reaches a certain tipping point in terms of viability.  They basically envision a suite of products and services that makes home or small-group schooling a significantly cheaper, higher-quality, and less time-consuming (on the part of parents) proposition.  There's enough material there for a whole new thread, but its implications for urban redevelopment and suburban sprawl would be profound.

FWIW, there was a bit of a bombshell of an empirical paper recently demonstrating that students within a very narrow range of test scores that straddled the cutoff for New York's and Boston's famed exam schools had essentially the same life outcomes regardless of which school they attended (ie, whether a selective exam school or a regular big city high school).  Hardly dispositive, but it's pretty compelling evidence that academically speaking, many parents may be obsessing too much about which schools their kids attend.  As my cohort's children begin to reach school age, it's been fascinating hearing their schooling decisions in NYC and DC.  Descriptively though, I agree with everyone that most middle class parents are unwilling to send their kids to schools with a plurality of students of lower SES status.

 

Minor point, but I don't understand why people think white mainstream protestants (ie, WASPS) behave differently in this regard than upper middle class Catholics/Jews/evangelicals, etc.  Non-public schools enroll only a small minority of every group...

If it's really the families that matter, then why would the WASPs (or non-WASPs) pay any attention to what school their child attends?  By that logic, it shouldn't matter if your kid goes to Upper Arlington or Briggs.

 

Part of it is misconception, part of it is real concern about things like school safety and classroom disruption.  For the most part, well-supported and motivated students can succeed in almost any school.  However if a school environment (almost always created by high concentrations of students from troubled families) is extremely destructive, I do think it can hinder even the most well-prepared student.  This generally seems to be what suburban parents are afraid of and are trying to avoid in your typical inner-city/urban school districts. 

 

The new CMSD plan talks a big game about "high-quality" schools and teachers as if these things are currently the biggest problem or if they're even being accurately measured.  However the plan does nothing to address the school issues caused by extreme poverty and a general, widespread lack of parental accountability.  This is why the plan is unlikely to succeed.

Hah!  I hardly think that most WASP parents avoid inner city public schools because they're worried that their kids' peers will want to spend too much time hanging out and playing football.  (Heck, at my WASP school, plenty of parents worried that their kid wasn't trying hard enough to get good at football.)

 

However, the peer group point definitely is on target.  In particular, schools need a critical mass of students who are actually ready for certain advanced courses before they can actually offer them (though postsecondary enrollment offers a somewhat feasible workaround, depending on the school and local colleges).  My high school only offered three AP courses.  It had many highly qualified teachers who could have taught other AP courses.  We didn't have the critical mass of students necessary for many of them.  And, of course, peers also strongly influence one's moral and social development (probably moreso than all but the most influential teachers, such as ones who have a student for multiple courses and act as an athletics coach or performing arts director, for example).

 

I think we're agreeing here that schools are more a reflection of the students that attend than vice versa.

 

Honestly, I think that within the next decade or so, formal education is going to get a significantly more revolutionary and transformational shock than just the introduction of institutional competition to traditional public schools.  This is based on some public speeches I've seen by some major players (Bill Gates among them) and some TED presentations, so nothing resembling a viable product at the moment, but I think it could spread extremely quickly once it reaches a certain tipping point in terms of viability.  They basically envision a suite of products and services that makes home or small-group schooling a significantly cheaper, higher-quality, and less time-consuming (on the part of parents) proposition.  There's enough material there for a whole new thread, but its implications for urban redevelopment and suburban sprawl would be profound.

 

I would love to have such a discussion here but I'm not sure how it would fit into the larger goal of this message board.  I seek out and watch such educational videos with a bit of an obsession and there are definitely some incredibly innovative ideas floating around.  While I agree that technology could be a game-changer, I still don't think that the concept of the physical classroom will cease to exist on any kind of a grand scale.  There are still a lot of limitations to many of these ideas and there will still be a role for the school building--as an educational home base of sorts and for the social aspects of learning--to play. 

Minor point, but I don't understand why people think white mainstream protestants (ie, WASPS) behave differently in this regard than upper middle class Catholics/Jews/evangelicals, etc.  Non-public schools enroll only a small minority of every group...

 

I honestly don't think that.  I used the term earlier in a bit of a rush because I couldn't think of anything better to call those people and most of them appear to me to be WASPs even if that's not really entirely the case.

FWIW, there was a bit of a bombshell of an empirical paper recently demonstrating that students within a very narrow range of test scores that straddled the cutoff for New York's and Boston's famed exam schools had essentially the same life outcomes regardless of which school they attended (ie, whether a selective exam school or a regular big city high school).  Hardly dispositive, but it's pretty compelling evidence that academically speaking, many parents may be obsessing too much about which schools their kids attend.  As my cohort's children begin to reach school age, it's been fascinating hearing their schooling decisions in NYC and DC.  Descriptively though, I agree with everyone that most middle class parents are unwilling to send their kids to schools with a plurality of students of lower SES status.

 

Hah!  Neither side of the school reform debates would welcome that finding, though hardcore libertarian abolitionists (those who want to get rid of public schools entirely and not replace them with anything, vouchers or otherwise) might.

 

I'd be curious to know if that also applied to, for example, lower-income urban schoolchildren in Chicago, D.C., or Detroit that are nowhere near the test score thresholds for the NYC selective exam schools.