We've Built Cities We Can't Afford
Strongtowns has had the same shtick for years now, predicting that the cities are are going to collapse under cost of maintaining infrastructure. For years though, the numbers just refuse to add up in Strongtowns favor.<p>If cost of maintaining roads and utilities in typical American suburban pattern is so high that cities can’t afford it, where are all the cities that went bankrupt because of it? Strongtowns argues that early on, it’s covered by the developers, but after its useful life, it must be replaced by municipality. Ignoring the whole issue of the original residents actually covering the cost instead of the developer (clearly, the developer didn’t just donate the roads and sewers, it’s all priced in), how long do we actually have to wait for chicken to come home to roost? I live in a suburban development in Seattle, packed row to row with the single family houses with yards and garages that Strongtowns says is a bane to long term finances. The median age of the house is probably something like 50 years, with a good amount over 100 years old — it’s a relatively old neighborhood. When will the road costs will finally kill our budget?<p>If you look at the city budgets, there is no mystery: road maintenance is simply a very small part of municipality budget. It simply doesn’t cost as much as Strongtowns keeps implying. The infrastructure maintenance budget is dwarfed by everything else.<p>Just look at the numbers: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattle.gov&#x2F;city-budget&#x2F;2020-proposed-budget#&#x2F;sdot" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattle.gov&#x2F;city-budget&#x2F;2020-proposed-budget#&#x2F;sdo...</a> Road maintenance is what, $150M-200M counting generously and adding some overhead? Even if you apportion all of that to suburbia, compared to total budget of over $6B, it’s not going to make a serious dent.<p>That the road costs are low in suburbia can even be seen with a simple back of the napkin calculation: assuming cost to repave a mile of suburban road to be $1M, house frontage of 100 feet, and useful life of road at 30 years, you’re looking at $20 000 per house over 30 years, or less than $700 per house per year. Sure, that’s not nothing, but how much do you already pay in property taxes?<p>In short, while I think many suggestions of Strongtowns are good in their own right, and would indeed improve many places in America, the infrastructure costs story simply doesn’t add up.