This article fails to follow up its theoretical assertions with any data about how much spending is done on new, infrastructure, maintenance, or the split between federal, state, and local governments currently. I assume there’s some context missing, but it’s clearly part of a very specific political agenda that I’m not familiar with. I can’t even tell if I support it or not since the article itself is so vague. Most “infrastructure” spending these days is on maintenance of roads, true enough. Not sure if they are in favor of that or against it. Do they want more bridges or repaired bridges? Do they want local governments to own maintenance of local infrastructure? Do they think we have too much or too little “infrastructure”? Are we building the right or wrong kind of “infrastructure”? Is there a “right” kind? I can’t tell what they think.
I'm a big fan of theirs. They want less car infrastructure. They argue, among other things, that it is inherently not maintainable because it's maintenance is too costly for the level of density it encourages to sustain.
They prefer more housing density and transit options so infrastructure investments are more sustainable.
If you greatly oversimplify the StrongTowns philosophy, you get "fuck personal car ownership". Looking through that lens should let you answer your questions.
That may be as you say, to oversimplify. (Until it's not quite right.) Poorer townspeople can't afford to have cars either. I'd rather be able to afford a car I don't have to use every day, than being forced to keep some rustbucket running because I have to use it every day to get to work and to buy groceries.
"Fuck the absolute necessity of car ownership" I'd say strikes a balance.
I would put it as "Fuck the subsidising of car ownership" - as that's what strong towns really comes down to - the fact that car-focused infrastructure cannot pay for itself and so has to be subsidised
There is something missing here I think. Creating a playing field where only car owners can play, is not even subsidising car ownership. It's some kind of gate-keeping. It's subsidising the preference for car accessability for sure, which would be unkempt even if everyone could afford cars.
But when people can't even afford cars, it becomes something even weirder than subsidising cars.
It’s more like “fuck subsidizing anything other than the 1st ring suburbs.” Strong towns’ fiscal philosophy looks great if you’re in a stable or growth market without any significant poverty. I’m all for investing in small walkable communities, but while their policies rail against the exurbs, they would be just as detrimental to our inner cities as they would be to 1970s onward suburban development.
The key messages of strongtowns are unambiguous 1) fiscal conservatism and 2) small-scale self dependence.
Small scale self dependence is a significant problem in the US (and many parts of the world) where the poor have been, through intentional historic policy, ghettoized. If you first scale back spending to maintenance levels, and then push against state level redistribution, you end up with pretty predictable results that look alot like the ghost of redlining come back to life. Even if you excise #2 from the platform, it's still the end result. By explicitly adopting strongtowns brand fiscal austerity, there just wont be money left to fund schools in poor neighborhoods.
Look, I'm not saying what we've got now is a perfect solution, far from it. I even think that if we could start from absolute scratch, there are some aspects of strong towns that would solve some of today's ills. But we have poor cities, of every makeup, size, demographic, and skin color, and I don't think that "market urbanism" (ie the same market forces that got us to where we are today albeit with stronger federation) can get us out.
Edit: I guess I should clarify that my criticism of strong towns applies equally to economically destroyed rural communities, who make up the largest recipients of food stamps in America.
Who’s subsidizing car ownership? If you look at the rate of car ownership outside of top 5 metro areas it’s 93%+ everywhere with with on average more than two cars per household and that’s before commercial vehicles that take you places, stock your stores, and deliver your packages. And the usage of your own personal vehicles is taxed in proportion via gasoline.
When we’re talking about government services that literally everyone uses
multiple times over it stops being a subsidy and starts being “we all pay for it collectively.”
> Free, off-street parking mandated in building codes
> Exempting pickup trucks and SUVs from emissions laws
> Lack of vehicle safety laws to protect pedestrians and cyclists
> A mortgage interest deduction drives suburban sprawl
> Pedestrians have limited ability to sue drivers
> Pedestrians can’t sue car makers for defects
> Hit and runs are rarely prosecuted
> Out-of-pocket car expenses don’t cover the cost of roads
> That’s right: Registration fees, rising gas prices, insurance, and toll booths don’t come close to covering the cost of roadways. The federal gas tax hasn’t gone up since 1993, under-pacing inflation along with state gas taxes. The difference is recouped with universal taxes that pay no attention to how often a person drives.
Who is subsidising car ownership: the people in the metro areas of course. Huge amounts of infrastructure spending go on suburban sprawl, which is only useful to people who live in the suburban sprawl and who must own cars to do so.
I would say Strong Towns believes that infrastructure in American cities is unsustainable. In particular the "commercial strip" architecture and many suburban developments don't generate enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure that supports them.
They are not against infrastructure development but they are against unprofitable infrastructure development and they see "infrastructure for the sake of infrastructure" not as something that will lift people out of poverty but as something that will keep people poor.
Even if they are correct about the costs and taxes, that doesn't mean the infrastructure is unsustainable. It only implies that more taxes will be needed to pay for infrastructure (which is basically the debate we had recently).
I'm not even sure I should call it a debate - more funding for infrastructure seemed to be popular and bipartisan, even if some parts of the actual bill were controversial.
> It implies that more taxes will be needed to pay for infrastructure
The dollars that need to be diverted to infrastructure could be invested in education, social programs, parks, and so on.
As I understand it, the “unsustainable” argument makes the case that the real costs of maintaining the infrastructure are going to become large enough that there will be no room left without raising taxes (to unsustainably high levels) or (also unsustainably) cut from other also necessary programs.
Judging from the ongoing debate about raising the debt ceiling, one might even argue that we’re already there..
> Most “infrastructure” spending these days is on maintenance of roads, true enough. Not sure if they are in favor of that or against it. Do they want more bridges or repaired bridges?
The Strong Towns movement believes [1], for many decades American towns have been building suburban homes with 75ft of road in front of them, but only making enough tax revenue from the homes to maintain 50ft of road.
Such developments seem like a good deal for the city in the short term, because the tax revenue starts coming in immediately, while the maintenance costs won't come due for 10+ years as the road starts showing its age.
But beyond the short term, it's unsustainable and leaves towns teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because they've got more infrastructure than they can afford to maintain.
So Strong Towns argues for denser communities; but they do so from a fiscally conservative republican standpoint, rather than using left-wing arguments about community, environmental friendliness and public transit.
This article is definitely written for someone who is already aware of what Strong Towns is going for.
But I think that you may be missing the point of the article, which is simply criticizing the heading of the first graph: "Net Civilian Public Investment, percent of GDP". The article is merely claiming that that metric isn't valid, while assuming that you, as a reader of Strong Towns, already believe that too much is being spent on the creation of new infrastructure.
Justifying that point is basically the entire purpose of the rest of the website.
1) this article is six years old
2) dude is using Accountant Magic
3) depreciation is a trick to shift numbers from one spreadsheet to another
4) the dude's own graphs in his own stated terms, do not make sense
5) i don't trust accountants, i believe they should be given to children for food
1) The age of the article isn't particularly relevant, because it's talking about decades long trends.
2) No, he's responding to / explaining Jacobin's use of "Accounting Magic".
3) Are you saying that it isn't appropriate to attempt to account for the degradation of our infrastructure due to time? I don't really think you're expressing an actual thought here.
4) In what sense? It seems pretty straightforward to me.
5) Sure, but let's not stop at accountants.
All in all, your criticism isn't actually saying anything. I still have no idea what exactly you find objectionable. You're only expressing derision for its own sake, I still have no idea what your stance is or even in what direction you disagree with Strong Town's conclusion.
With what you've said, you could just as easily be a Communist or an Anarcho-Capitalist, because you haven't actually expressed anything, aside from a vague and unjustified distaste for Accounting.
> We see a nation used to quick and easy growth from top/down government investments in infrastructure now struggling under the maintenance burden of all that unproductive asphalt, steel and concrete. The simple Jacobin solution of an additional $400 billion per year wouldn't address this problem; it would make the problem way, way worse.
I’m not sure if I really understand this part. But I’m familiar with StrongTowns cause (parafrasing):
There is a lot of public infrastructure build (roads, power, water, sewage, drainage)for land that will never provide enough tax revenue per square foot to pay for maintenance of said infrastructure. This will bankrupt cities and towns.
Yes. American infrastructure has explicitly been deployed time and time again as stimulus spending to shore up the American economy. Nothing in their argument is novel.
What these folks are quietly calling for is Conservatism. What is novel is wrapping conservatism in new urbanism psudoprogressive language.
Conservatism. There's a word that's lost all meaning over the past several years.
"Fiscal Conservatism"? Maybe. But only if we go back to an older definition of "fiscal conservatism", which is closely in line with "financial sustainability". But honestly, many people calling themselves "Conservative" these days care not a single whit about financial sustainability, at least when it comes to the public sector.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 39.5 ms ] threadThey prefer more housing density and transit options so infrastructure investments are more sustainable.
"Fuck the absolute necessity of car ownership" I'd say strikes a balance.
But when people can't even afford cars, it becomes something even weirder than subsidising cars.
Small scale self dependence is a significant problem in the US (and many parts of the world) where the poor have been, through intentional historic policy, ghettoized. If you first scale back spending to maintenance levels, and then push against state level redistribution, you end up with pretty predictable results that look alot like the ghost of redlining come back to life. Even if you excise #2 from the platform, it's still the end result. By explicitly adopting strongtowns brand fiscal austerity, there just wont be money left to fund schools in poor neighborhoods.
Look, I'm not saying what we've got now is a perfect solution, far from it. I even think that if we could start from absolute scratch, there are some aspects of strong towns that would solve some of today's ills. But we have poor cities, of every makeup, size, demographic, and skin color, and I don't think that "market urbanism" (ie the same market forces that got us to where we are today albeit with stronger federation) can get us out.
Edit: I guess I should clarify that my criticism of strong towns applies equally to economically destroyed rural communities, who make up the largest recipients of food stamps in America.
When we’re talking about government services that literally everyone uses multiple times over it stops being a subsidy and starts being “we all pay for it collectively.”
> Exempting pickup trucks and SUVs from emissions laws
> Lack of vehicle safety laws to protect pedestrians and cyclists
> A mortgage interest deduction drives suburban sprawl
> Pedestrians have limited ability to sue drivers
> Pedestrians can’t sue car makers for defects
> Hit and runs are rarely prosecuted
> Out-of-pocket car expenses don’t cover the cost of roads
> That’s right: Registration fees, rising gas prices, insurance, and toll booths don’t come close to covering the cost of roadways. The federal gas tax hasn’t gone up since 1993, under-pacing inflation along with state gas taxes. The difference is recouped with universal taxes that pay no attention to how often a person drives.
-- https://stacker.com/society/how-driving-subsidized-america
Also: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/02/09/study-car-ownership-c... , https://medium.com/radical-urbanist/cars-gets-billions-in-hi... , https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092...
They are not against infrastructure development but they are against unprofitable infrastructure development and they see "infrastructure for the sake of infrastructure" not as something that will lift people out of poverty but as something that will keep people poor.
I'm not even sure I should call it a debate - more funding for infrastructure seemed to be popular and bipartisan, even if some parts of the actual bill were controversial.
The dollars that need to be diverted to infrastructure could be invested in education, social programs, parks, and so on.
As I understand it, the “unsustainable” argument makes the case that the real costs of maintaining the infrastructure are going to become large enough that there will be no room left without raising taxes (to unsustainably high levels) or (also unsustainably) cut from other also necessary programs.
Judging from the ongoing debate about raising the debt ceiling, one might even argue that we’re already there..
The Strong Towns movement believes [1], for many decades American towns have been building suburban homes with 75ft of road in front of them, but only making enough tax revenue from the homes to maintain 50ft of road.
Such developments seem like a good deal for the city in the short term, because the tax revenue starts coming in immediately, while the maintenance costs won't come due for 10+ years as the road starts showing its age.
But beyond the short term, it's unsustainable and leaves towns teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because they've got more infrastructure than they can afford to maintain.
So Strong Towns argues for denser communities; but they do so from a fiscally conservative republican standpoint, rather than using left-wing arguments about community, environmental friendliness and public transit.
[1] https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2015/12/why-conserv...
But I think that you may be missing the point of the article, which is simply criticizing the heading of the first graph: "Net Civilian Public Investment, percent of GDP". The article is merely claiming that that metric isn't valid, while assuming that you, as a reader of Strong Towns, already believe that too much is being spent on the creation of new infrastructure.
Justifying that point is basically the entire purpose of the rest of the website.
2) No, he's responding to / explaining Jacobin's use of "Accounting Magic".
3) Are you saying that it isn't appropriate to attempt to account for the degradation of our infrastructure due to time? I don't really think you're expressing an actual thought here.
4) In what sense? It seems pretty straightforward to me.
5) Sure, but let's not stop at accountants.
All in all, your criticism isn't actually saying anything. I still have no idea what exactly you find objectionable. You're only expressing derision for its own sake, I still have no idea what your stance is or even in what direction you disagree with Strong Town's conclusion.
With what you've said, you could just as easily be a Communist or an Anarcho-Capitalist, because you haven't actually expressed anything, aside from a vague and unjustified distaste for Accounting.
I’m not sure if I really understand this part. But I’m familiar with StrongTowns cause (parafrasing):
There is a lot of public infrastructure build (roads, power, water, sewage, drainage)for land that will never provide enough tax revenue per square foot to pay for maintenance of said infrastructure. This will bankrupt cities and towns.
What these folks are quietly calling for is Conservatism. What is novel is wrapping conservatism in new urbanism psudoprogressive language.
"Fiscal Conservatism"? Maybe. But only if we go back to an older definition of "fiscal conservatism", which is closely in line with "financial sustainability". But honestly, many people calling themselves "Conservative" these days care not a single whit about financial sustainability, at least when it comes to the public sector.